My nine-year-old and me are going to create a YouTube channel.
Ever since she walked in and saw the articulating camera and mic set up clamped to my desk, she’s had this dream.
“I can’t believe we don’t have a YouTube channel yet,” she said the other day.
That was enough.
“Okay, let’s do it,” I said.
“Really?!” She lit up, no doubt with visions of fending off record deals and piles of in-kind jewelry.
“We need a location.”
“Let’s just use your desk.”
“Meh. I don’t think that’s us.”
“What about the Bombshelter?”
She’s referring to our basement, which has been gradually converted into a karaoke speakeasy bar.
“I’m thinking something more natural. Like us just laying around.”
“Like on the couch?”
“Close. Where do we tend to have the best conversations, where we talk about the world?”
Her eyes brightened. “My bedroom!”
“Yeah, let’s just lie on your bed. We can get Evaline to help us with the camera stuff.” Evaline is her older sis, well-versed in making cosplay TikTok videos and now in college.
“What’ll we talk about?”
“What we always talk about…”
“The world and stuff?”
“Exactly. You ask great questions.”
It’s true; she does. She sometimes catches me off guard, and I’m not claiming to know everything about everything or even a little bit about a few things, but I like connecting dots and I like spiraling through conversations with her.
“This is gonna be so fun!” she beamed.
One thing is for sure: we know how to have fun. We have these things that are guaranteed to make us laugh. No matter what’s going on, if she brings up the space rocks that turned into cats or the last scene in Shaolin Soccer, we will both start laughing — like to the point where Molly comments that there’s something wrong with us.
We watched that Shaolin Soccer scene 20 times. Tears in our eyes, falling off the couch, and then she’d grab the remote, her little red face so happy it’s like a drug. “Just one more time,” she’d say. And I’d swear it wouldn’t get me again, but it did.
Man, we can laugh. There will definitely be laughing in the YouTube videos.
She has this great laugh that just makes the world fall away, that kid giggle; it’s the best. I remember when Evaline first had that giggle. Her great-uncle was bopping her in the head with the pillow, and she laughed every time. She was so cute, none of us wanted to stop the bopping. “Again, again,” she demanded.
Hazy pulled me out of my daydream.
“We’re going to need microphones,” she said. “Maybe we can get those ones you clip to your shirt, with the fuzzy ball thing.”
“Maybe,” I said.
And we’re off.