GEORGE!!!!

A couple of years ago, when Hayden was 2, we had briefly lived with my cousin Kelly and Bob. During that summer, Hayden had become very familiar with the UFC fighter Georges St.Pierre. For those of you who don't know him, he's probably one of the best Canadian MMA fighters we have to offer. Anyway, that year for her birthday, Bob bought Kelly a cardboard cutout of GSP. Hayden always asked who 'he' was so we just told him that it was George, like he was a regular guy. Every morning, Hayden would wake up and walk down the hallway, turn to GSP and say "Good morning George!" and go about his day. It was a pretty funny thing to watch a 2 year old say good morning to a cardboard cutout....until we went to the mall.

One day we were at the Bayview Mall in Belleville. Outside of Red Beard's, a sports goods and memorabilia store, there were a few MMA fighter cutouts set up in front of the store. I didn't happen to see which fighters were out there until Hayden started full tilt running towards them from the other side of the mall. There goes my 2 year old son, running towards a cardboard cutout screaming “GEORGE!!!!!” like he hadn’t seen him for years. Talk about embarrassing! What was even better, was it seemed that every person who worked that day was standing outside the store. Apparently they thought it was the funniest thing ever. I didn’t know if I should be proud that my son knew who GSP was or if I should be embarrassed that my son talked to cardboard. Needless to say, a lot of people that day got a good laugh.