DadCentric

Tagged

One of the great joys - and by joys, I mean unnerving possibilities - of the interweb lies in the inevitability that sooner or later, someone from your past is going to post something online that makes you feel as if a bucket of frigid water has been poured over your head. Case in point: my mind was already in a somewhat contemplative and nostalgia-ready state as a result of Sarah's post yesterday - and by nostalgic, I mean struggling to recall any of the vague details of pre-college life that I've largely (successfully) blocked from my memory - when I checked my e-mail this morning. And discovered that I'd been tagged in a Facebook photo.

A prom photo.

Me & the Bee

I'm a terrible speller.  Seriously, my phonetic offerings are often so far off the mark that spell check doesn't even try to guess my intended target.  Rather it offers suggestions on altering my career choice, LOL Cats and open mocking.  Spell check has a wicked sense of humor.

My wife finds this shortcoming of mine much as she does the others (the list is long), with a mix of disgust, pity and smug superiority.  It doesn't become her and frankly, it makes the consistent little hobgoblins in my mind very insecure.  There is a lot of hugging in my noggin. 

But I digress.

I hope you know this will go down on your permanent record

They were called blue slips because they were printed on blue paper. A name decided by committee, I’m  sure. Standard 8 1/2” x 11” paper, black typing, and several blank spaces where the teacher could fill in various specifics (student name, date, description of offense, teacher’s signature), typically with a red pen. Just the sight of them instilled me with a cold terror, like catching a glimpse of your father washing blood off of a machete through a door left slightly ajar. That color combination became, in my mind, representative of some awful unknown fate. Had you placed me in a room with walls of light blue adorned with black and red decor, I’m sure my anxiety level would have increased with each passing minute. 

Fromage Rage

Scene:  Dinner.  Monday, 6 PM.  Casa de Cheeky.  Cheeky is assembling and disassembling Balloon Lagoon on the living room floor.  Her father is helping. Her mother enters from the kitchen.

Mother:  "Cheeky, what do you want for dinner?"

She is greeted by silence.

Mother:  "Cheeky, what do you want for dinner?"

Father:  "Cheeky, your mother asked you a question.  What do you want for dinner?"

Cheeky:  "Um, noodles!  And meatballs.  I noodles and meatballs."

About a Tween

She grabs for my hand as we walk up our hill toward school. At the drop-off door, she runs off without a kiss or a "bye." Sometimes, though, our dog still gets a hug.

In the pool I'm her surfboard, laying prone on the rough texture and holding my breath; I'm then her springboard for aquatic somersaults and back flips. Ninety minutes later, I give her a quick wave from across the lawn and she turns quickly toward one of her newfound friends.

On Monday when I check her into the kids' camp at the vacation resort, they ask if she is "free," meaning she can come and go as she pleases. "No," I say, "she wanted me to pick her up right after lunch."

On Wednesday, I drop her off and before I can finish talking with the parent on my right, she huffs, "Can you go now?"

On Friday, I sign the counselor's lined sheet and tell him: "Yes, she's free."

I hand her a blue walkie-talkie. "Turn it on after the show finishes," I tell my daughter. "Let me know when you are on your way back."

"OK, Daddy," she says. "I will."

She's absorbed among the ponytails, hairbands and giggles.

I wait for her face to appear one last time but all I see is a mess of long tangled blond hair bouncing away.

Nightmare at 34,000 Feet

Portrait of a frightened man: Jason Avant, thirty-nine, husband, father, and writer on vacation. Mr. Avant is what they call a "nervous flyer", which is a polite way of saying "flyer who requires several glasses of something strong and several handfuls of something stronger to prevent himself from having a nervous breakdown every time the plane shakes or makes a course". Tonight, his flight home will be like something out of an old episode of a TV series known as...The Twilight Zone.

Let me just say this about flying with 17 month old toddlers...oh, that's right. Zoe is now a toddler. As in "one who toddles". As in "one who started walking on her own the day before our flight to Florida, and who discovered that she really enjoys walking on her own, and getting her to sit still on a 5+ hour plane flight after she's discovered that walking is fun HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA that's a good one, God or Whatever Name One Choses To Give To The Force That Runs The Way That The Universe Unfolds; you're an asshole, you know that?" Anyway, flying with 17 month old toddlers is something that should never be done ever. In fact, I'd recommend not flying with a kid under 5; it will be a cold day in Hell before we do it again. I discovered this as soon as we took our seats on that flight home from Florida; a flight that became a voyage of nightmarish discoveries.

Disney + Dads II: Electric Bugaloo

In last week's brilliant, groundbreaking and award-winning post, we established a solid baseline of SUCK in the Disney dad pantheon. In movie after movie, we found a cartoon landscape littered with weak father figures, dead or missing mothers, pubescent princesses bursting free from the surly bonds of girlhood, and a clusterfuck menagerie of anthropomorphicized critters, household objects and magical fauna.

Shall we explore further? We shall. We shall.

Black Hockey DadCentric Reviews: All A's

Your 5th Grade Kid getting all A's gets all kinds of stars. It's like those cool nights when you're not at odds with anything or anyone and some inexplicable thing tells you to look up and: Stars! It's more than four.

It feels good. And I think it's more than proud.

I want to start from that basic feeling and say something weird about being a Dad. It feels good. You might be inclined to begin with the notion that your son getting all A's is a reflection on you. In this way, your good feeling is automatically kinda wack and selfish. You walk around with that knot in your gut that whispers to you about what a crappy parent you are, your kid gets all A's, and you use your kid's A's as some kind of eff you to the knot in your gut. Bam. See how quick that happened? You can't feel good for 3 seconds without your good feeling indicating some form of self-esteem issue. Stop being such a pussy.

Your Cheatin' Heart

Let's get something straight right up front. I am not a prude. Nor am I priggish, prissy or, for that matter, altogether prim or proper. Pshaw. And even though I might once have been an altar boy, that was a long time ago. But even I think that some things might just go too far in what might otherwise be considered civilized society. I think ashleymadison.com might just be one of those things. No, I'm not linking there. If you wanna go, you type it in.

Listen, I know people are going to cheat. Like the Gloved One says, "it's human nature." But, do we, as a so-called polite society, need to be so blatant and "in your face" about it? We've all seen ads in the back pages of local, alternative papers a la The Boston Phoenix or some such. MWM seeks SF for intimate encounters. MF looking for secret fun. They were clandestine; relegated to the 1-900 and escort ads.

Say Goodbye to Hollywood

My life is spread across Craigslist and packed tight in so many boxes.  Every breath is a dollar spent and every memory a melancholy moment.  We are moving to pastures greener, literally- the greener part, not the pasture. 

We are leaving Los Angeles in a matter of weeks and I'm already over it.  Our corner of the county is for cowards and meth labs, hate crimes and crimes of hate.  This isn't the life of movie stars and swimming pools.  It is a life unfiltered and the daily grind has left us stained and lethargic.  

Say goodbye to Hollywood.