How to be an Evil Genius

Watching reruns of The Office, waiting for Chad to get home from work, my kids are at their dad's house for the evening...all is quiet, when the doorbell rings. I know who it is. Who it always is. I open the door, just a crack just to mess with him...."Yesssssss?" I say in my Lerchy-i-est Lerch voice. Tate just giggles.

Tate is my son Kiefer's best friend. A year older, a bit rounder, a hair blonder than Kiefer...they share a love of all things Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon and Lego. Theirs is a true bro-mance. I hate to let Tate down and tell him the boys are not here, "Sorry Charlie," I say.

Tate usually tells me some piece of trivia when he comes to the door. Yes Tate, I did actually know the average human head weighs eight pounds, and yes, you already told me how you have reached the two-hundred mark of silly-band-acquisition. Today, though, I decided to ask Tate the questions. (I think I may have caught him off guard.)

"Tate," I asked, "How does one become an evil genius?" Now, if you asked this question to a grown-up right out of the blue like that, with no leading-up-to-it at all, a grown-up might immediately take your temperature or think you've finally cracked. But not a kid. Especially not a kid like Tate. So precocious is he that my question didn't even shake him, not for a second even.

"Well," he replied, pausing only to tap a finger on his chin, "You'd have to first have an secret lab somewhere, like your chocolate store. Evil geniuses always have secret laboratories."

"And there should be scary music playing in the background whenever you enter the scene..."

"Go on," I said.

"And, you would definately need to rap your fingers together like this, when you're thinking of evil plans." Tate then unwittingly did his impression of The Godfather.

"And, of course, you MUST have an evil laugh! Mu-ah-ah-ah!"

"So, to sum up," I interject, "to be an evil genius, I'll need a secret lab, scary music, an evil laugh, and The Godfather finger-tap."

"CORRECT!" Tate is giggling now. "Oh and you'll need some guy named Igor, but I don't know WHERE you could find him, and you could use some minions."

I told Tate that I had PLENTY of minions, hello! He thought this was hilarious. "You could make only DARK chocolate in your store, see, like the dark side, get it?" We were clearly on a roll now.

I used to call Tate, "Tate-r Tot", but he asked me to stop, he's no longer a tot he explained...he likes my new nickname now though, "Funyon." Cause he's fun and many-layered, you know like an onion (Shrek-reference, HE got it) Tate then exclaimed, "HEY! I could be one of your minions, I'd be Funyon Minion!"

"Oh Tate, that's awesome! You could be the minion in charge of snacks!"

"Yessssss," said Tate, rapping his fingers together in his evil genius fashion, "if you're going to be an evil genius, you'll need snacks."

With Halloween approaching in 65 or so days, it's not a bad idea to start polishing up my evil-genius-ways...and I love the lessons I got today, and the dark-chocolate/dark side idea. I don't know why grown-ups don't get more ideas from kids; they are a wealth of information. And Tate, thank you my little Funyon Minion. You're a righteous dude!