DadCentric

Learn'd Astronomer

I'd gotten through about half of my emails when the smell hit me - dirty socks soaked in sour milk. I looked over at Zoe; she was thumbing through her latest book, something about Barbie having a Halloween party. "Is that you?", I asked. "Huh?", she asked back. I raised my left arm and sniffed. "How long's it been since I took a shower?" She giggled. "I dunno! You funny, Daddy!" She hugged me in spite of myself. 

When was that? Today? Yesterday? Last week? No idea. The reel's been unspooling at a frenetic rate. Everything's been tossed into the back seat. Groceries: the freezer's only occupants are a forlorn box of fish sticks and a package of pork chops that have turned gray from neglect. Exercise: on hold, following a jumping side kick that ended with my right calf making a loud POP and the rest of me collapsing in a heap on the do-jon floor. Personal hygiene: three days without a shave or a shower, and what timing - we were in the grip of a heat wave, temperatures hitting 104 at one point. Down time: my latest consulting gig requires the utmost focus, as does my two-year-old daughter. Every dad who stays at home to take care of the kids is a work-at-home-dad; sometimes, you pull double duty. Writing: whatever I have to say has been limited to 140-character bursts. I'm tapped out. 

This afternoon: I'm appearing as a guest on DadLabs. The show is live. I've showered. I'm wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with a picture of a cartoon squirrel holding a hand grenade. It seems appropriate. The topic: "Do Dad Blogs Suck?" I don't know. Do they? Objectively speaking, I suppose some of them do. Empathetically speaking, there's value in everyone's story. I don't really answer the question. I say something about voice and impact and blah blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit. 

Later: more work. I'm mining a database, Zoe is sitting next to me. She has a couple of dolls, and the three of them are engaged in conversation. I think: my son is dazzled by the way the world is: here be volcanos, lightning, wolves, and meteors. My daughter brings life to the fallow: ordinary rocks become flawless gemstones, plastic toys become boon companions. Science is magic is science. Really, what else is there? 

 

Life Is Just A Fantasy...

Can you live the fantasy life?

For the past several years my oldest son has been begging me to join a fantasy football league with him.

At seven, he was stoked on the idea but was more interested in memorizing his football cards and creating "fantasy" teams with them. He could have cared less to watch any football much less sit through an entire game.

At eight he was still juiced on the idea and, by now, a budding Chris Berman chock full of facts and stats gleaned from his 6am viewings of SportsCenter as well as phrases like, "He. Could. Go. All. The. Way," and "Rumblin', bumblin', stumblin'" now part of his vocabulary.

Last season, at nine, we broke down and joined a team that was part of SIKids. It was pretty one dimensional and we both lost interest at about week four.

This year we took part in a basic ESPN league, and as you can see by the photo, the kid is jazzed. 

"Can we set up your lap top and geek out on scores?" he asked.

"Sure," I said. 

Suddenly a Giants/Panthers game is worth watching because we have Hakeem Hicks; a Chargers game worthy of his attention because we have not only Philip Rivers but Antonio Gates as well. It has opened up a whole new father/son relationship, one that is not just about homework, video games, skateboarding or soccer. It is now one about trades and player management; about whether or not a player on the roster is listed as probable, or who has to face the Jets defense. 

It has renewed my interest in professional football and has me seeing my son in a whole new light.

 

Is That a Lobot in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to Read This?

When Lando Calrissian wasn't betraying his friends to the Empire he liked to spend his time knocking back Colt 45s with the lovable Lobot. The conversation was always to Lando's liking, what with Lobot being a mute and all, and since Lobot's brain was connected directly to Cloud City's central computer nobody ever had to get up to turn the channel or stop the microwave before the popcorn burned. Burnt popcorn smell lasts for days -- even in the clouds.

That's why the good people at MIMOCO, makers of fine designer MIMOBOT USB Flash Memory Drives, decided to pay homage to Lobot by capturing his likeness forever in flash drive form (no carbonite was used in the capturing of said Lobot likeness).

The Lobot MIMOBOT was introduced at Comic Con in San Diego and Star Wars Celebration V, respectively, in a limited run of 1,000 units. That makes it special!

The thing about MIMOCO is that they're givers. They sent me a 2GB Lobot, which is awesome, and they also provided one for a giveaway. That's for you, people. Use the Force and win this bad boy.

If you would like to win a 2GB Lobot MIMOBOT USB Flash Memory Drive then fill out the form below before 5 p.m. PST on Friday, October 1st. One winner will be picked at random. The winner will be contacted by email. If the winner does not respond to the email within 24 hours another winner will be drawn, and so forth and so on. See how that works?

Checkmate

We sit facing each other. I study her face, looking for hints, signs, the slightest tell. She's Fischer, I'm Spassky. On the wall there's a calendar, homemade, a picture of Sleeping Beauty's castle and a bunch of princesses (or, as she calls them, PWINCESSESSES). The pictures ring a grid of boxes. The boxes are numbered. 1 - 15. The numbers represent days, days spent wearing underwear, not diapers. We are phasing out the diapers. If, at the end of 15 days, she's fully entered the world of the Potty Trained, she gets to go to Disneyland. ("DINNYLAND!") We're into Day 3. 

"You should try to pee-pee, baby." 

"Ein not a baby! Ein a big girl!"

The bathroom's an arena. I study her. She studies me right back. I think: potty training is the bridge between what I knew of her and what she'll become. What I know: she's immensely headstrong. She turns her back and crosses her arms and I can hear her brow furrow. That was five minutes ago, when she insisted that she didn't need to go. "No, Daddy. Ein not wet! I dwy!" I picked her up and sat her down. "That's why you need to try and go now. So you don't get wet." I'm sure she gets it. I'm convinced that she's aware of her power to control us. We're sitting here, she on her padded potty seat, me on a battered plastic stepstool. What I think: This was easy with Lucas - drop trou, point, and shoot. But she's a little girl, and they are riddles wrapped in enigmas wrapped in leotards and tutus. She reads me like a book. A gambit: "Daddy, Marmaduke was funny." (She's referring to that ghastly movie.) "Why was Marmaduke funny, baby?" She laughs. "Because the DOGGIE has a PENIS!" I snort. Queen takes Bishop. Now she can pee, or not. "You funny too, Daddy!" She pees. What she knows: cause and effect. Hold on to the rails and you don't fall. Pee in your pants and you get wet. Pee in the potty and you get a cookie. Pee in the potty for 15 days and DINNYLAND! What she'll become: someone who's taken a step away from relying on us. 

 

First Step Into A Larger World

 Luke Skywalker had a plan. He was going to go off to the Academy to train to become a fighter pilot. And if those new droids worked out, he wanted to go sooner rather than later. But his Uncle Owen had a plan too, for Luke to stay on for just one more season. It was the harvest, after all, when he needed the boy most.  And Han Solo, that man had himself some plans. Score some fast cash, pay off Jabba, and get that price off of that handsome head of his. His old buddy Greedo had a plan too, but that green son of a bitch didn’t count on Han’s habit of shooting first. Princess Leia’s plans included delivering the Death Star’s schematics to the Rebel base in person and hanging out on her home planet at some point. C-3P0’s plan was to stay out of danger and not get into any trouble while R2-D2’s plan was basically the exact opposite.

Plans: to their ownselves not always true.

Educated

 The indoctrination has begun.  Smiley faces for coloring inside the lines.  None if you don’t.  Patriotic songs and books about the American flag.  Discussions of the differences between boys and girls.  Gold stars for filing orderly out of the building during a practice run for an escape from a fiery death. 

 

School. 

 

It’s the coloring that set me off.  The P-Nut came home 2 days in a row with happy faces on her colored-in pictures of shapes.  Yellow star.  Orange square.  She used the prescribed color.  Stayed near the proper borders. 

 

Day 3 she comes home with a rectangle.  Colored in orange and green and black.  Half colored.  In the borders she has written recognizable M’s and A’s.  Backwards D’s.  Partial people.  Imaginary worlds.  Cool shit.  This time, the neat smiley face of a more disciplined adult hand is missing.  What.  The fuck.

 

Homeschooling.  That’s the answer.  I leap to it quickly. Let her imagination run wild.  Let her facile mind pursue what ever makes its synapses crackle. 

 

I don’t have a college degree.  Or a high school one, technically.  GED. 

 

Ok, not homeschooling. 

 

But . . .she’s so creative and unique.  She tells great stories.  Big, whopping, lies.  She makes up elaborate games using characters she’s seen on tv or in books mixed with ones from her own growing brain.  She doesn’t need the lines.  The lines are just holding her down, man.  Boxing her in. Maaaan!

 

I know.  I’m ridiculous.  I tell myself this after the coloring incident.  Then she comes home talking and talking about how this one is a boy and that one is a girl.  It’s so important at her age for her to begin to recognize the stereotypes and support the traditional gender roles.

 

Maaan.

 

I never learned to color inside the lines.  Or to be quiet in class.  Or behave.  And here I sit.  A good father.  A literate person.

 

A person re-embarking on a college career.  Junior college. Terrified of my lack of organizational skills; my inability to see a course of education through; my heretofore unwillingness to work within a certain order to achieve certain ends. 

 

Maybe school is for the best.  At home, she can color where ever she wants.  Her little brother doesn’t mind.  He looks great in Crayola. 

 

The Tooth

Lucas has his second wiggler. He keeps grabbing it, testing its solvency, moving it back and forth in the socket with his finger. It's bothering the shit out of him. Thus it's bothering the shit out of me. I tell him he should eat an apple. 

Every so often I dream about teeth. It's the same dream. Lucas' latest wiggler caused this particular dream to move to the top of the Playlist. Nothing much happens. It's me watching myself. I'm looking at myself in a mirror. Staring. Through myself, really, past my own reflection. My expression is blank. Waxen. 

So he walks over to the fridge and grabs an apple. "Granny Smith?", he asks. "The only kind that matters", I reply. He picks out a good one and rubs it on his shirt, like he's seen me do. He walks over to me. "Is my tooth still there?", he asks. "Yep", I reply. "Still there." He opens his mouth. "Ih eh eady 'oo all ow?", he asks. I see the tooth. Another tooth has pushed its way up through his gums and sits behind it, stacked like a shark's. The offending tooth dangles there. I think I catch a glimpse of root.

My tooth dream - because of course it's a tooth dream, and I'll get to the ending in a bit - reminds me of another fucked up dream: the one where I'm sitting in a chair in a empty room. A light bulb dangles from the ceiling, attached to a frayed cord, swinging back and forth, drooling sickly amber light. There is a window. And a tapping sound. I turn my head towards the window and I see a figure there. It's a person. The person has no face. He - it - taps on the window with fingerless stumps.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap. 

Lucas sits down to do his homework. "Can you just reach in and pull out my tooth?", he asks. I shudder. "Er, no. It'll fall out when it's ready." "Maybe I'll tie a string around it and you can YANK!!!!! on the string", he offers. My jaw clenches. "Uh, no", I reply. "Maybe I'll just punch myself in the mouth", he says, then balls up a fist. "Hey!", I say. "Really? You want to punch yourself?" He considers this. "I guess not. But it's so annoying! It's so loose I can even get my tongue underneath it. Wanna see?" 

But luckily, or maybe not, I'm not having the Stump Guy dream. Informed by real-life events, my subconscious is treating me to my tooth dream. It's slow and for the most part, uneventful. Time is distorted in dream-space. It feels like hours. It's probably just minutes. An eternity of Just Me, looking at myself in the mirror.

Then I open my mouth. And all of my teeth fall out in a bloody cascade.

Lucas considers the apple. Looks at it. "What if my tooth just gets stuck in it and won't fall out and you have to pull on the apple and tug out my tooth?" This could actually happen. I'm vaguely horrified. No, not vaguely: Lucas reads my face. "Ha! Just kidding!"

Then he bites down on the apple.

Crunch.

Thinking of Brian Wood

I was going to write something long, deep and hopefully meaningful about the video that follows, but it doesn't need me for that. It's a story that took place not far from where I live. I read about it in the paper the morning after it happened. It was the type of story that made me question everything, curse the world and hold my children tight until they begged me to let them go.

It is about young people losing their way and the demons of their own creation. It is about their doings begetting their undoing.

It is about a woman named Erin, and how one blink is all that stands between dreams and a nightmare. It is about a man named Brian Wood, and how one tragic, selfless act said more of love, sacrifice and fatherhood than any man should ever have to.

His actions said everything.

 

 

Video via Parenting.com

Rumble In The Jungle

The whole family took our first ever trip to the Rainforest Cafe' this weekend.  We kind of stumbled upon it.  If you've never been, imagine a sensual, humid, tropical Rain forest.  It smells of earth and wet wood and decomposition and flowers you thought only existed in fairy tales.  The air is thick with moisture and the unknown.  You're enveloped by dark foliage.  The animals are gigantic and alien and wilder than anything you've ever encountered.  There are butterflies bigger than your head made up of vivid vermilions, cadmiums, lavenders, fuchsias, and goldenrods.

Now imagine that same seen done completely in plastic.  And animatronics.  Inside a mall.  

Welcome to the Rainforest Cafe'.

As My Wife put it, "How do they dust it?"

How, indeed?

We were pretty excited when we found it.  Something new to try with the kids.  We came away with mixed feelings.

Despite my bitter description, the audio-visual display was pretty tight, yo.  Screeching chimps, grunting, chuffing, gorillas shaking the plastic vines.  Trumpeting elephants, eyes a-light, ears flapping as they ready for a charge they'll never start.  

The Pumpkin man stared at those elephants, slack-jawed and blinking, while I contentedly tossed bits of pizza into his mouth from two feet away.

What I'm trying to say is, there was so much to see, the kids actually behaved.  In a restaurant.  Nary a spoon was whipped at a passing waiter.

Those poor bastards.  Not a place I'd want to be employed.  I'd walk away from my mortgage before I worked there.  A constant, artificial, jungle cacophony broken only by the sounds of tired parents demanding their money's worth.  I'd rather work as a sandal cleaner at Burning Man.  I'd rather work as a fluffer in a German Scheisse video.  I wouldn't work there, is my point.

On to the food. This is from their website: "Offers moderately priced food and beverage items . . . ."  If you consider 19 dollar chicken fajitas moderately priced, then sure, it's moderately priced.  And Betty White is moderately old.

The flavor of the food . . .well.  Consider this:

Instead of a chef, they had a magician.  A great magician.  And this great magician made all the flavor in the food disappear.  

It was all style, no substance.  But it was still enjoyable.  The Rainforest Cafe:  It's the Avatar of restaurants.

Let's see which one would win in a fight.

When The Teacher Becomes The Student

As parents and fathers, we often write about how we are trying to raise the best sons and daughters that we can; we talk about how we want to instill respect not just for their fellow man but for nature and that which surrounds them; we talk about not just wanting them to be like us, but to be better than us.

So we spend our days and nights, our weeks and months, teaching both through expression as well as through lesson. Large doses of didacticism have recently come back to bite me in the ass; whether it is the rap career my boys want or their dreams of their own reality television show, they never cease to amaze me with what they walk away from when we break it down to using the tools around you to the best of your ability.

Recently, I heard my oldest son telling one of his friends something, and halfway through I realized the phrase coming out of his mouth was one I had been using with them over the last few months. So it should have come as no surprise that eventually things would turn back on me.

During a recent trip to the skatepark, the kids were watching as I was about to drop-in to the ramp. I second-guessed myself and in a split second I was splayed across the bottom of the cemented transition. The summer had been spent explaining to them how they need to commit to tricks, that you need to charge into a line one hundred percent. I told them that this applies to many facets of life: You need to own the mic, own the stage, own the ramp or own the field. If you don't, your lapse in concentration and commitment will, more than not, bring about unpleasant results.

And here they saw their father do just what he said you shouldn't do.

"You scared, dad?" said my seven-year-old.

I chuckled. "Nope, I just didn't commit. And you see want happened?"

"It's okay to be scared, dad," he said. "Everybody is afraid of something."

And then he turned and pushed off toward the angle of a bank he wanted to carve.