 1. Zander's birth was a huge drama: the umbilical chord got wrapped around his neck and Mommy had to be rushed into the delivery room. After he was born the doctors worked furiously and one of them called out in anguish "I want to hear some crying..." Then Zander began babbling amiably. 2. When Zander was very little and still in the stroller he could recite the entirety of 'The Cat in the Hat'. One time he was doing it when we were rolling through Red Hook and we passed a group of men who were welding (with sparks flying) two different ends of the same model of car together (I wanted to say "er, isn't that dangerous?") but they all stopped what they were doing in amazement at the way Zander was carrying on.  3. Zander could type before he could read or write. He put letters and words together that way. Then he discovered hand-writing, and after that, he rarely wrote by typing. The only thing Zander liked about typing was choosing colors for his station lists. Zander also liked fonts. Sometimes Zander would hand-write station lists in alternating serif and non-serif fonts. 4. By age 3 the main difference between Zander and an adult was that you could give Zander a sheet of paper and pack of crayons and he could amuse himself for an hour and the adult could not. 5. Zander liked to enunciate every syllable in a word and had such bizarre diphthongs that he could sound as if he was from Somerset in the West Country of England and Philadelphia in the same sentence. He was also a master of spinning out his sentences until he had you hooked: "I'm thinking... I'm thinking... I'm thinking about... I'm thinking about going to the store... to the store... to the store... There must be, must be, must be, something we need, something we need, like milk or eggs or juice. Let's check the fridge and see (and while we're there I could get some candy)."  6. Zander was adamant that real music came from CDs because you didn't know what you were listening to unless you could sit and study the liner notes. Downloading music from the Internet was perverse because you didn't know what you were listening to. One time he insisted that downloading music was like eating something when you didn't know if it was good for you. 7. Zander had adult tastes in music: he liked ska, the blues, opera, and anything you could dance to, such as disco, funk, big band, and ballroom dance. He famously detested jazz music, and thought John Coltrane and Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk were abominable. Radiohead and anything electronic was "too noisy". 8. Zander did not like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One time, when he was about 3, Mommy was carrying him up the steps of the Met and he cried out: "I am not going in that museum. I don't like ANY of the art in THAT museum." Hundreds of people all over the steps chuckled in sympathy. 9. Zander's favorite parts of the Natural History Museum were the gift store and the cafeteria. One time when we were in the Natural History Museum and Zander was 4 a guide told me that that puzzle was too advanced for a child of his age. Five minutes later Zander had solved the puzzle and showed the guide which pieces were missing.  10. Zander was so excruciatingly cute that little girls would chase him up into the top bunk and threaten to come up and rescue him if he tried to climb down. Zander once said little girls weren't half so adorable when they were your size. 11. Zander knew his states. There's a big map of the American states on the playground at PS 29. Zander once took a stick of chalk and labeled every state and knew all the state capitals. 12. Zander was fascinated by the Romans: their weapons, their coinage, their road-building, their food, their construction techniques, and so on. For Zander, there was nothing finer that a visit to a Roman ruin in England (and especially the gift shop).  13. Zander's reaction to adults arguing (mostly his parents) was to tell them off for arguing in front of children and to point out, insistently, that he didn't need to hear it. One time he humiliated two particular adults who should have known better by drawing up a written contract for them to sign because he'd had enough of it. Another time he got particularly exercised with us he announced: "Right, that's it, I'm through. I resign as your son!" 14. Zander was mild-mannered about almost everything except subway directions: then he would shout down adults by reciting mta.info service alerts. People would ask me "Is he right?" and all I could say was "Well he reads mta.info every Saturday morning." 15. Zander was a stickler for the rules. One time we were in downtown Newark on the Light Railway and I made us stay on the train (after the public were ordered to leave) while the driver turned it around to go back down the line. As I surmised the driver was only too happy to take Zander into his cab and show us how to operate the train. Zander apologized for my behavior and told the driver off for letting us into his cab. 16. Zander quite liked trains, thought networks were fascinating, but what he really loved more than anything in life (apart from candy) was stations, and especially lamps and fences and the views over neighborhoods. He could look at a subway map and tell you exactly where every line ran above ground.  17. Zander's top 5 movies were: Madagascar, and then Madagascar again, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and anything with Wallace & Gromit. Zander quite liked Star Wars but found it a bit far-fetched (when he found out that Luke was Darth Vadar's son he exclaimed "And we're supposed to believe this?" After that it was "And how are these two related?") Zander tolerated Spiderman for the sake of his friends, but in general, he thought super heros were dummies compared to detectives. However Zander was engrossed by the Lord of the Rings triology (and wanted to know why Middle Earth was not marked on the map of New Zealand). 18. Zander was a total candy hound. Nothing else mattered more. One time when he was 4 and I wouldn't buy him any he turned to a nice middle aged man and said "Sir, would you buy me a candy?" and the poor dumb schmuck said "Yes" and he turned to me and said "Well this guy will buy me a candy!" Watching Zander buy candy was always like watching a $30 bottle of wine guy buy a $100 bottle. 19. Zander was not shy. One time we were in Hoboken station and he walked up to a young lady with very long legs (she turned out to be an actress from Chicago) and asked in his sing-song way "Well hello, my name's Zander. This is my Dad, his name is Chris. What's your name?" and when she replied he asked "We're going to the end of the line. Which station are you going to?" and she replied and then she turned to me and said "Well that's the fastest that ever happened."  20. Zander was an awful soccer player. His general utility to the team was distracting the opposition by disputing the score or arguing about the rules. At this he was brilliant. One time when he was playing indoors and our guys were being pasted by the best team in the division, he scored a spectacular own goal, and then started arguing with the adults sitting behind the goal that since his team hadn't scored many that one should be counted for his team. After this had gone on for several minutes, an amazed Dad from the opposing team said "We're being sent up." And indeed they were. 21. Zander had bizarre luck at games. If he needed to throw six 6's in a row it was going to happen. He wasn't a great chess player, but he was brilliant at card games and Monopoly and Risk. Zander loved the part about games people generally hate the most: reading the rules and figuring out how to play. 22. Zander subscribed to the ballet theory of karate. He thought it was all about sailing through the air gracefully and that you shouldn't have to hit any one. He never broke the block of wood in any of his promotions. But he did take the longest not to break it and he still provided the most extensive commentary.  23. Zander loved music but he didn't like practicing the piano. "Do you know how hard this is?" he would yell. Zander knew Mommy & Daddy couldn't do this, and they couldn't read music either, so sometimes he would just bang out a few nonsense notes, and we would cry "No plinking!" "Plinking? What do you know about plinking? You can't even play!" 24. One time, in the last week of his life, Zander was being bullied at recess. Mommy suggested it might be time to use his karate. But Zander did it his way: he made a game out of evading the kid at recess and the kid lost interest. 25. Zander loved Grand Central Central station with all of his heart. His favorite place on Earth was the MTA gift store. You can still find his spirit there or eating an ice cream in the Food Court. If you close your eyes, you can still hear a little voice talking like a grown-up telling people which subways to get and where to change. Zander lives on in our hearts!  |
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