Rainn Wilson’s son is a “big boy”

The Office star Rainn Wilson appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brien last week and shared some funny stories about his son, Walter McKenzie, 2 1/2, with his wife, fiction writer Holiday Reinhorn, including a chance meeting with Sir Peter O’Toole.

You can watch a video of the appearance here.

Here are some highlights:

Rainn says Walter is a "handsome little tyke," but is a tad odd.

I’m a little worried about him, Conan, he’s a little weird. My son is strange. He’s talking in complete sentences, but I can’t really understand what he’s talking about half the time. The other day I went, ‘Walter, what do you want to do today?’ And he said, ‘I wanna throw a lemon up in the sky.’ I mean, who talks like that? It doesn’t make any sense.

It also troubles the actor that Walter hasn’t gotten the grasp of figurative language yet.

He was running around, doing something and I was like, ‘Oh, Walter, you sure are a busy beaver.’ And he goes, ‘No, I’m a big boy.’ He doesn’t get metaphor. I mean, we’re not really communicating.

That prompted Conan to remark, "God, you’re a tough dad."

Walter also had some difficulty communicating with Peter O’Toole as well at a Super Bowl party. Excited for his son to meet the legendary actor, Rainn "lugs" Walter – who he says is a "tremendously huge child" – over for an introduction. Peter proceeded to quote the opening lines of John Keats‘ "Ode on a Grecian Urn" to Walter:

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness / Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, / Sylvan historian

To which Walter responded with,

No, I’m not a sylvan historian. I’m a big boy.

Afterwards, Rainn says,

I told him, I was like, ‘You don’t talk to a knight that way.’ I took him home, I tried to show him some of Lawrence of Arabia to educate him on Sir Peter and he was like, ‘Oh, look, a camel.’ We’re not communicating, Conan, I don’t know…I’ll give him another year.