August 2008 - Posts

• That’s it Kids! Don’t Make Me Drive to Nebraska!

  Child abandonment laws have been around for some time.  They were initially created so that mothers of a newborn could leave their child at a hospital without facing any legal punishment.  The hope was that this would give a safe option to teens who might be panicking over an unwanted baby. Last month Nebraska became the last state in the nation to develop such a law.  There’s just one catch.  In all the other states, the law has been narrowly defined to apply only to newborns.  Nebraska decided to extend their law to cover any minors.  This means that you can drop your 2 year old, 12 year old, or 19 year old off at any local hospital in Nebraska and drive away, scott free.   Obviously, there has been some criticism of this law.  Many analysts and child activists suggest that it is one thing to give new mothers who may act in a desperate manner, a safe way out of a difficult situation, it is another thing entirely to allow parents who have become frustrated or tired of their responsibilities the right to pull up the minivan and dump the soccer team out into the emergency room. But these critics seem to be missing the point.  Nebraskans aren’t stupid.  They didn’t accidentally write the law to include surly 15 year olds.   They were the last state in the country to adopt this law.  They had 49 other states to cut and paste from.  No, they did this on purpose, and the reason may surprise you. Tourism. That’s right, the corn husker state has struggled in recent years to draw tourists to their flat and boring state.  Overshadowed by flashy South Dakota to the North and dapper Iowa to the East, plain Jane Nebraska has suffered for years from large swaths of emptiness and, lets be honest, not much to do.  Sure they have attractions like carhenge, but how far are you really going to drive to see such a thing? So a meeting was instituted.  They talked about what could be done to draw people to the area lovingly known as East Wyoming.  They talked about trying to open up Six Flags over Omaha, but realized that there had only been one flag over Nebraska and only since 1963 for that matter.  Then they talked about turning Grand Island, NE into a boating resort, but then realized that Grand Island was actually land locked.  And then they stumbled on the idea that could save their state.  What is the one thing that makes driving to Nebraska so miserable? (aside from Kansas) - The kids squabbling in the backseat.  Then Sen Tom White of Omaha, humbly raised their hand and said: “What if we could ensure that no child would ever act up while in the state of Nebraska?” Silence filled the room as everyone took this possibility in.  The perfect vacation spot.  The place where children would always behave.  Who wouldn’t drive 2,000 miles to come there? Sen. White then laid out his plan for an abandonment law that would include infants through teenagers.  Thus allowing parents to hold over their child’s head, this terrifying statement: “I swear to Pete!  If you don’t stop hitting your sister we’re leaving the fish hatchery and I’m dropping you off at the hospital for good!  Do you want to grow up in Nebraska?  Do you?  Do you?!?” There were general nods of consent around the room.  “But what will we do with all these surly teens and naughty kids being dropped off at Nebraska Methodist Hospital Center?” Hmmm, this could prove to be a problem.  But then a voice called out. “I could always use some help on the farm.” And so it was decided, Nebraska would institute its child abandonment/tourism law and any abandoned kids would go work on Dicky Freeman’s ranch.  So far, the results have been spectacular.  Car after car of silent children has wheeled through downtown Omaha, the fearful eyes of stock still youngsters peering out at what could be their future.  Since the law was instituted only three children have been abandoned.  One for hitting his sister one more time and making his father, despite several warnings, pull his car over.  The other two were involved in a border dispute over the line in the backseat that they were not allowed to cross.  After several hours of negotiation and cross border attacks, the only solution was to give each child 1,000 acres to farm and let them go at it. “We’ve been very pleased with the response,” said Senator White from his grounded yacht in Grand Island.  “Tourism is up 23%, discipline reports in school are down 42% and mail order sales of Nebraska post cards are apparently up 278%, because parents are using them as visual threats.  We couldn’t be happier.” All of this has even led to the adopting of a new License plate slogan: Posted Aug 29 2008, 05:26 AM by superdad with 5 comment(s) Filed under: travel, Vacations, news, Better off Dad, parody [Edit Tags]

• The First Day of School - Now How Did That Happen?

  In a couple of hours, my daughter is going to climb onto a school bus for the very first time and ride it, by herself, to kindergarten.  Somehow, despite my best efforts, we have arrived at this moment.  It’s one of those huge transitional events in the life of a parent and child superseded only by going away to college and getting married.  And I have it on good authority that by the time they go away to college you’re usually happy to get rid of them. Obviously, I’m excited for Audra, but I can’t say I’m quite ready for this.  The truth is that I like having her around.  Sure, she can be a little annoying at times, what with the incessant talking and the incessant talking, but in general I enjoy having her run around the house while she talks incessantly.  And whatever ease my life gains from only needing to drag two kids to the grocery store instead of three, will be far outweighed by the loss of all the cute, silly and brilliant things she says and does. My daughter is a child of big dreams, and because of this I am happy that she’s going to begin school and start down that path toward following them.  A couple of days ago during breakfast we were watching a recording of Michelle Obama’s convention speech from the night before.  I was explaining to Audra who everybody was and why this was important.  She looked up at me and asked. “Well, what do you have to do to be president?” Good question.  I explained that there isn’t anything you really have to do.  The requirements are simply that you be 35 years old and get enough people to vote for you.  Audra thought about this for a few moments and said. “Well, how old do you have to be to work at Ritas?  You can get free ice cream if you  work at Ritas.” That’s my girl.  She either wants to be president or get a career that provides free ice cream.  Maybe the school system has a vocational track for that. Of course, whatever reservations I may have about my little angel leaving me for 8 hours a day are not at all shared by Audra herself.  Audra can not wait to get on that bus and go to school.  It’s all she’s been talking about for weeks.  She carries her backpack around everywhere and keeps asking me to teach her math so she’ll be ready.  Last week my wife was teasing Audra and telling her that we had decided to just home school her and that I would be teaching her everything here at the house.  Audra burst out into tears and my wife had to backpedal furiously, explaining that she was just joking.  Yesterday while we were buying folders Audra again started one of her monologues about school. “I think I’m going to really love school.  There’s going to be lots of stuff to do and I’m going to learn how to read and do math and it’s just going to be so much fun. I think I’m even going to like it more than going to the dentist.” Yes, we can only hope. So, while I’m packing a lunch this morning, I can’t help but have some regrets about this whole going to school thing.  I feel like I should have spent more time reading on the couch or playing princess or chasing her on the playground.  When I think rationally, I know that we did a lot of those things, but it’s hard not to feel like that is coming to an end now.  That she is going to get on that bus a sweet, wacky little 5 year old and step off a busy, self sufficient 18 year old with homework, boy troubles and no time to sit with her dad and read a book.  I know it doesn’t happen quite that quickly, but this is the first sign that it might actually happen at all.  Up till now I was pretty sure that she would just stay my little girl forever. She’s not awake yet, but in a few minutes the kitchen will be filled with excitement.  I’m going to make pancakes, because that’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to do on the first day of school.  And then we’re going to put on her first day of school outfit with her new shoes.  We’re going to help pack her bookbag for the first time.  We’re going to put the very first turkey sandwich into her brand new lunch bag and prepare to kiss her goodbye as she climbs on to that giant bus for the very very first time.  For her it’s going to be wonderful and exciting and nothing but smiles and joy.  For me it’s just going to be painful - even more painful than going to the dentist. Posted Aug 28 2008, 04:28 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Audra, Better off Dad, school [Edit Tags]

• Chik-Fil-Lame

  Let me begin by saying that I love Chik-fil-a.  When I was a kid, chik-fil-a was just that weird fast food place that you could only find in a mall, but something happened.  In the last decade, they have created the greatest fast food family place in the country.  The food is good, the restaurants are clean, they have awesome play areas, and the service is better than almost any restaurant I’ve ever been to (Which probably says a lot more about me than chik-fil-a).  It’s amazing.  They are always quick and friendly and efficient.  If I pull into the drive through and there are 10 cars in line that spill out into the street and around the corner, I don’t worry about it, because I know we’ll be up to the window in about 5 minutes.  If there’s more than three cars in line at our local Wendy’s, you’re better off harvesting your own food than committing the four hours necessary to order your frosty.  Heck, Chik-fil-a even has a crazy old lady who walks around offering to go get you free refills.  I usually have to send up a flare to get a free refill in Applebees. Yes, the Chik is great.  However, it has a fatal flaw.  Their kids meals consistently have the lamest toys ever created on this planet.  I don’t say this flippantly.  I have been to a lot of fast food joints and even those who think that make toys from craptacular kids movies like “A Troll in Central Park” (featuring Dom Deluise as Stanley the Troll!) have nothing on the utter lameitude of what Chik-fil-a regualarly conjures up. Here’s the problem.  Chik-fil-a is run by a bunch of well meaning old white men who want the toys to be educational.  They think that kids watch too much junk on tv and hear too many violent tales, like when pooh got stuck in rabbit’s hole and had to be removed by force. That’s all well and good.  I can get behind that logic.  The problem is that kids don’t like Metamucil.  Sure it’s good for you, but it tastes like strained grass.  Kids want to have fun.  Do you know why?  Because they’re kids.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me give you some examples.  The toy they have the most often is a series of abridged versions of classic books.  This seems like a good idea, but for some reason, my four year old didn’t want to read a 30 page summary of “David Copperfield.”   What’s next?  An illustrated edition of Ulysses?  On the Road?  Lolita? The otter toy that seems to reappear every few months like a cockroach infestation are their language CDs.  These are literally CDs that teach you different languages.  We got Chinese.  At first, Audra was very excited when she saw it.  “Oooooh Daddy!  What’s that?”  I’m sure she was imagining that it was a CD of kids songs or a DVD of some kind. “Well, honey, it’s a CD that teaches you how to speak Chinese.” Audra looked up at me “Are you frickin’ kidding me?!”  Ok.  She didn’t say that, but I’m sure that something along those lines was running through her mind. Right now, they have a line of reading toys (I swear it’s like going to Toys R Us and the only thing they have there is a line of Elmo brand enemas:  “Elmo LOVES being clean!”)  There are 4 different toys.  One is a bookmark with a magnifying glass, in case your 5 year old reads chapter books and is partly blind.  The other is a book end.  Not two bookends, mind you, just one.  That’s always fun to play with right out of the box.  The next is a story game.  And by story game, I mean it’s a plastic box with words in it.  You dump the words out and try to make up a story.  It’s not the most fun game if you are 5 and can’t read yet.  Heck, it’s not even the most fun game if you can read.  Although to be fair, I saw Robert James Waller stocking up on them. The last toy in this series is my favorite.  It is a line reader.  For those of you who didn’t attend special ed classes as a child, let me help you out.  A line reader is a flat piece of plastic (in schools we use a strip of paper, but chik-fil-a is fancy) that is designed to help students with certain reading disabilities stay focused on the line on the page they are reading.  For children without reading disabilities, it’s sort of the equivalent of having someone sit beside you while you drive and constantly pointing to the road so you know where to go.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  This can be a useful tool.  When I taught 3rd grade, there were several kids who used this, but it’s not a toy.  It’s not even an educational toy.  So, I was about to write a paragraph that started off saying “What’s next?” and I was going to list really absurd lame toys, but I couldn’t think of anything lamer than a line reader and a Chinese language CD.  I mean think about it?  Is there anything less fun that you could possibly receive in a bag of chicken nuggets?  A dead rat, I suppose? But here’s my main annoyance.  As a former teacher, one of the great challenges of that profession is to take things that may not be inherently interesting and to make them so.  You have to figure out how to get the kids to care about carrying the 1 in 3 digit math.  You have to get them to want to learn about the first governor of Maryland.  You have to figure out how to make learning their 8 times tables a game.  And I think what I resent is that Chik-fil-a isn’t trying.  They’re not trying to add a spoon full of sugar to their medicine, they’re just saying “here’s the castor oil.  It’s good for you so shut up and drink it.” It wouldn’t be hard to make toys that are both good for you and fun to play with, but you’d have to bother.  Because if you don’t you’re either filling up the landfills with unopened Italian language CDs or kids are taking their line readers and using them as swords instead (that would be my 3 year old). So get it together Cik-fil-a!  You’ve got a great restaurant with a lot going for it, but you’re toys are being chosen by someone’s childless elderly librarian aunt.  Fire her.  And feel free to offer the job to me.  I could clearly use the work. Posted Aug 27 2008, 05:16 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Better off Dad [Edit Tags]

• Wasn't this an Adam Sandler Movie?

  Two years ago, one of my best friends, Cindy, had the absolutely bizarre experience of, in the same week, sending one child to college and one to kindergarten.  She literally drove up to college, dropped off her stepson and then had to hurry back to prepare her oldest daughter for her first day of school.  We all laughed about the absurdity of going through those two giant parenting milestones all on the same day and how probably only 1 in a million ever ends up doing such a thing Fast forward two years.  Yesterday I was up, dressed and yelling downstairs at 8:00am to make sure that Aloysius and Felecia (the Mississippi teens staying with us) were ready to go.  They were not.  Shocking, I know.  But 30 minutes later, they both stumbled up the stairs into the blinding greyness of waking 4 hours earlier than usual.  I hustled them into the car, force fed them both a chewy granola bar and we were off for the first day of community college. Due to circumstances that can be blamed on a number of people, including myself, the kids, the college bureaucracy and the fact that carrying a wallet is apparently “uncool” for people under the age of 30 who wear baggy pants, we still needed to register Felecia for classes.  The plan was to get her registered BEFORE classes started.  A reasonable enough plan I thought, but one that had proven out of reach.  But this morning, finally, we had all our ducks in a row.  I won’t bore you with the details of the hoops that the school made us jump through, let’s suffice to say that logic was not the primary ruling factor in the admissions process.  But we did get her and Aloysius all signed up for classes, got the financial aid process jump started again and it was almost time for me to leave my two baby eaglets on their own to soar into the infinite sky around them, or hurtle to their deaths on the craggy rocks of failed dreams below them. After lecturing all parties involved about the importance of a good education, the value of asking questions and be an active participant and how they darn well better remember to turn their cell phone off while in class, I made Aloysius promise to show Felecia where her classes were (it was her first day on campus) and I literally ran for my van.  Also known as the Daddy mobile (Ok, no it’s not, but I feel like it ought to have some kind of name.  I do spend more time with it than I do with, say, my wife) I drove through hordes of zombie like 19 year olds in Hollister shirts, finally cleared the college border and then took off for Audra’s elementary school.  It was her “meet the teacher” day at kindergarten and this was the first time she would go into her school, see her classroom and find out how to pronounce her teacher’s ambiguous looking last name. (Tangent Time!:  While I’m writing this, two squirrels are outside on the porch squeaking furiously at one another.  One of them has eaten a hole through the plastic cooler that we keep the bird seed in and is now defending his sunflower booty against an invader.  I personally hope the two fluffy tailed rats get in a knife fight and end up killing each other.  They’re driving me nuts and eating me out of seed and cooler!  Ok, back to whatever I was talking about). So, I arrive at the school a little late, (we’ll blame this on Aloysius’ inability to find his ID in the morning and that whole walletless baggy pants thing).  My wife, Sarah, had taken Audra and I arrived just in time to shake hands with the woman who will be shaping my daughter’s future and take a quick peek at the classroom.  It looked a lot like a, well, classroom – with lots of books and tables and stuff.   Audra insisted on bringing her giant “my little pony” backpack to the meeting, in case the teacher needed her to smuggle out a watermelon, or a border collie, or something and was practically dripping with excitement as if she had just been hosed down by the sprinkler system.  So I loaded up my daughter and drove her home so we could look through the giant packet of rules, forms, and various requests for money.  I still had one more teenager in the basement that I had to send into the workforce in the next week and my two boys who were keeping my job as stay at home Dad secure, but nonetheless, taking two kids to college and one to kindergarten in the space of an hour is a pretty mindblowing experience (wasn’t this the plot to Billy Madison?  Who knew Sandler did documentaries). I must say, I’m feeling a little daunted.  But, as long as I remember to drop everyone off at the right location, I think we’ll be ok.  Otherwise Audra’s going to have a lot of catching up to do in Psych 101, but on the other hand, Aloysius would absolutely dominate on the elementary basketball team.  So, I guess it all evens out.  Here’s to a good school year.  For kindergarten, college and everyone in between, not that I have anyone in between, but you know what I mean. (P.S.  I think one of the squirrels is wearing gang colors, I’m not sure). Posted Aug 26 2008, 05:44 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Audra, Better off Dad, Mississippi [Edit Tags]

• Fun, Cool, and Dorky! Meet the Segway!

  Yesterday, I had an experience.  Yes, an experience.  I went and experienced something.  Before you get your hopes up that it was an exciting experience like skydiving or a game of table tennis with Bon Jovi, let me stop you and tell you what it was.   I went on a Segway tour in Annapolis.   It was one of my best friend’s 35th birthday and we were looking for some kind of unique experience (there’s that word again) to celebrate it.  And I’ve got to tell you it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve ever done.  Never before have I experienced such a profound combination of fun, cool and dorky.   You see, that’s the thing about the segway.  It is unquestionably fun.  It shouldn’t be.  I mean, you’re just standing on a scooter for pete’s sake, but it definitely is.  It’s also cool.  People stare at you.  Complete strangers ask you if it’s easy, or if you’re enjoying it.  We got stopped by a couple of tourists who wanted to take their picture with us, as if we were one of those British guards with the big furry hat, or possibly Rick Springfield (who inexplicably has a song on the pop charts now).   And yet, despite the coolness, and the funniosity, you are inherently dorky when riding around on this thing.  You stand a good foot taller than everyone else as you silently glide through crowds wearing a bike helmet (which seems a little overkill for a vehicle that tops out at a speed slower than I can run).  Plus you travel around on your tour in a little gliding line, like something out of Wall-E. Very cool – couldn’t be dorkier.   We met at this tiny office on a backstreet that looks like it used be a vacuum cleaner repair shop.  And after applying liberal amounts of SPF 50 to my pale body, I donned my goober helmet and the Hawaiian shirt wearing grandmother who was leading our tour brought out one of the segways and told me to step on it.  I did and wobbled back and forth manically, convinced that whoever designed this was a complete moron and that the chance of me careening accidentally into the bay was around 84%.   But surprisingly, after about 1 minute, all of that awkwardness disappeared and it truly did become very natural.  Within 5 minutes we were all riding as if we were pros.  I have never done anything in my life that progressed so quickly from complete incompetence and awkwardness to total mastery in such a short period of time.  It would be like if you went surfing for the first time, spent a couple of minutes falling into the water every time you tried to stand up and then on your third try rode a 50 foot wave all the way into shore.    Our behelmeted geek squadron then took off on our little tour.  We all had these little headsets on so we could listen to our wacky tour guide as she told us stories about the area’s history.  She wheeled us past a few historic houses that old famous people we hadn’t heard of had lived in, told us how the naval academy has an always sold out Halloween concert in the chapel and that there’s a ghost who lives in this one house because someone read too much Edgar Allan Poe and bricked some woman into a crawl space where she died.   I can only assume that she made all of this up and that the next tour was treated to stories about UFO sightings over the capitol, navy plebes dressing in drag for Hanukkah and the night 1,000 little old ladies wielding torches marched on Bud’s Crab Shack demanding extra drawn butter.   We then spent the next hour looking at various waterfront real estate and taking a tour of houses that she had almost bought.  It was a little weird, but I enjoyed it.  All in all, it was a lovely tour of Annapolis and I would take another segway tour in a heartbeat.  I would not, however, buy one, because with a top downhill speed of 12 mph, a nerd factor of 10.3 and a price tag of $5,300 (not including the saddlebag) you’d be better off getting a 10 year old civic.   But if you’re looking to fill an afternoon by scooting around an historic water town while you get stared at by strangers and you experience the simultaneous emotions of pride and humiliation, then you can’t beat the seg tour.  Check it out.   http://www.annapolissegwaytours.com/   Posted Aug 25 2008, 04:48 AM by superdad with 1 comment(s) [Edit Tags]

• The Beach is Back

  We went to the beach yesterday.  A good friend of mine rented a house right on the beach in Ocean City and invited us to come out for the day.  I immediately accepted for a number of reasons.  One, because taking a tired, cranky, one year old to the beach, without a house nearby, simply means that you spend the entire time trying to persuade him not to eat sand and worrying about whether the screaming will wake the couple tanning next to you. Secondly, while I am not above driving the three hours back home with sand stuck unceremoniously to my nether regions, it is not my favorite activity.  And the chance to put Micah down for a nap and take a shower pre-departure is a luxury worth taking advantage of whenever offered. I was especially glad to go because I hadn’t had a chance to take the kids to the beach yet this year.  Like all normal children, they love the beach.  There is something endlessly entertaining about sand.  I can’t quite say what it is.  They would surely get bored if I told them to go play in some dirt in the back yard, but tell them that they can run around in a 50 square foot patch of sand and you’ve got a day full of fun. Neither of my miniature children was quite up to getting in the water.  The waves were pretty rough.  But Audra spent a delightful couple of hours with my friend’s kids running into the surf, capturing sand fleas, crabs and other ocean vermin, and then imprisoning them in plastic buckets.  This, in fact, was her primary entertainment for the day until my buddy’s wife jokingly said that if she caught a seagull, they would buy her an ice cream cone.  My 5 year old then spent, literally, the next 2 hours running around with a net trying to sneak up on the birds.  True to form, she even managed to corral a local 20 year old into helping her.  I would look over and there’s my daughter taking those Scooby doo sneaking steps while some girl in a bikini, who I’m sure had planned on spending the day tanning, was bent over trying to entice the birds closer with goldfish crackers. Needless to say, despite some extraordinary tenacity, Audra never did capture a seagull.  But we bought her an ice cream anyway.  Sometimes you need to reward the effort.  My 3 year old son was a little freaked out by the water and how it would, seemingly without warning, get closer and then retreat and then, when you least expected it, rush up and soak your feet.  What is that about? So he spent most of the day rolling around coating himself in the sand until he resembled nothing more than a giant blonde snickerdoodle.  He built castles and jumped off sand dunes and ran willy nilly to his hearts content, stopping only occasionally for peanut butter crackers and water.  The life of a three year old isn’t too bad. Aside from spreading some joy and happiness amongst my children, the other reason I was anxious to come out to the beach was for those three Mississippi teenagers in the basement.  Two of them had been to the beach before when they came out to visit a couple of summer’s ago.  The third had never even seen the beach except for that one week a year when 106 and Park broadcasts live from Spring Break.  So I was looking forward to sharing an experience.  A chance to see the Atlantic Ocean, jump through waves and feel the sand betwixt their toes. They were having nothing of it. After several hours, I was able to talk Jessie, who had gone body surfing with me a couple of years ago, to come out and try it again.   To be fair, the water was a lot colder than I remember it being, but Jessie jumped in and, although he took a couple of waves in the face, did ride some others in and seemed to have a good time. Felecia, who had never seen the ocean, was very skeptical of the whole enterprise.  We had gotten her a bathing suit the day before, but it never emerged from the bag.  She spent a little while sitting in a beach chair, but, in general, decided that this whole sand and ocean thing was too cold and scary to mess with. Aloysius, who had also gone body surfing with me a couple of years ago, walked out to the edge of the dune, looked out at the water and then immediately turned around, went inside and watched a Colts game from ’06. I, of course, tried to tempt, cajole, beg and shame them into abandoning BET reruns and coming outside on a perfect cloudless 80 degree day at the beach, but apparently sand and salt water can not compete with the antics of the Fresh Prince.  (Oh Carlton, can’t you ever lighten up?) Their refusal to do any marrow sucking did have one upside – free babysitting.  I had expected to spend a good chunk of the day watching Micah crawl around the living room and merely listening to the waves crash against the shore.  Luckily, I had three sullen teenagers hermetically sealed inside a house, freeing me to play with my older kids, ride some waves and generally bask in what was a darned near perfect day.  I think everyone should get some sullen teenagers.  They’re great!        Aloysius and Felecia enjoying the beach Posted Aug 22 2008, 05:10 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Vacations, Audra, photo, Asher, Better off Dad [Edit Tags]

• Somewhere, Snow White is Weeping

  My daughter starts kindergarten next week.  She is our oldest and it’s going to be a big moment.  Everyone tells me so.  And tells me so.  And tells me so. I don’t doubt that it will be a big deal.  I’m sure that when she gets on that big yellow limousine for the first time and rides off to school, I will probably cry a little bit.  But right now, I am just way too busy and way too tired to get caught up in that.  The best I can do is mentally tell myself that I will need to prepare some time so that I can get emotional later, but I’ll have to look for a few spare minutes on my calendar first.  Maybe in between filling out FAFSA forms for the college students staying with us and finishing that darn playset in the backyard (it’s getting close, I swear). Well, in the midst of this chaos as I continue to demonstrate what a lousy father I am by not constantly living in the moment and cherishing every passing second as the elderly always tell me to do, I took Audra to Target to get a bookbag for school.  As you might imagine, Audra is very, very, very excited about going to Kindergarten.  She is our child that is all about being grown up and a “big girl.”  Our son, Asher, couldn’t care less.  I think he would wear diapers till he was 10 out of sheer convenience, if we didn’t protest a little.  But Audra is dying to be older - to be able to do big girl things like homework, science fair projects, and sighing loudly at her parents’ simplest requests. So, we’re at Target looking at book bags.  I told Audra that she could pick her book bag out herself since, you know, she’s a big girl.  I walk her over to the one that I could have told you she would pick before we even got in the store.  It’s a cheap little plastic coated number with pictures of the Disney Princesses on it and it come with a free plastic tiara.  It might as well have Audra’s name stitched on the side.  My only concern is that there may be 10 of these in her classroom on the first day of school. “Do you like this one?” I ask her, thinking that I’ve got a dozen other things we’ve got to get here and it’s getting near nap time. “No,” she says casually.  “Let’s look over here.” What is going on?  My daughter loves princesses.  She knows all of the stories, and is constantly running around the house singing the various songs and dancing asking me if I’ve seen the prince, or the magical warlock, or the frozen waterfall of perpetual bliss or some such nonsense.  She has been some kind of princess every Halloween that I can remember.  She has all the dresses.  She has all the movies memorized.  Why in the world would she not want this horribly tacky, chintzy backpack? She leads me down the aisle and around the corner, as if she secretly works here on the weekends and has memorized the store layout.  She takes me over to a wall display of teenager backpacks.  They’re all solid colors or have weird designs like pink camouflage (a concept that makes me want to barf a little bit.  Unless you’re trying to hide from Charlie in a cotton candy machine.  It seems kind of stupid).  They also all have little pockets for ipods and cell phones and holes for headphones to come out through the back and secret compartments to store cigarettes and Danny Zuko’s spare comb.  They are also all about as tall as Audra is. “I like this one,” she says pointing to a plain pink one. “What do you mean?”  I ask, my pulse starting to quicken a little bit as I’m finally realizing that my daughter might actually blatantly disobey me and start to grow up.  “What about Dora, honey?  You love Dora.  Wouldn’t you rather have a Dora back pack?” She looks at me solemnly.  “Dora’s for little kids.” It’s like daggers through the heart, I swear.  In My turmoil I managed to resist shooting back at my petite daughter ‘you’re only 37 inches tall, you are a little kid!” So we spent 20 minutes trying on these enormous backpacks that literally hung down to the backs of her knees.   With each one she insisted that it felt really good, although she could barely keep her balance with it empty much less full.  I have no doubt that she could have physically zipped herself into one of these monster packs and gotten a 5th grader to carry her home if she wanted to, but this didn’t seem like a good plan.  She became completely enamored with a bag that only had one strap, which was about as practical as her buying a backpack made out of Jell-O.  I eventually called my wife at work, to relate my epiphany that our 5 year old daughter was now apparently 13 and that we better have that “talk” with her soon.  Luckily Sarah knew the origination of all this.  Apparently when Audra was staying with her older cousin, they had gone back to school shopping and her older cousin Sean wanted a plain backpack with one strap.  It turns out Audra just wanted to be like her cousin Sean, not Vanessa Hudgens. It was actually kind of sweet, if not entirely impractical.  So, I steered her toward the smallest giant pink backpack I could find in hopes that the teacher wouldn’t report us to CPS for child abuse.  She acquiesced, even though it had two straps (stupid second strap) and we started to go.  As we’re walking out of the “Back to Cool!” area (I promise you, that does nothing to make middle school seem any cooler) Audra says: “Hey look at that,” pointing to a My Little Pony backpack with hair hanging out of the front.  “You can comb and braid the pony’s hair with the brush that comes with the backpack. “Uh huh,” I said tentatively.  “Do you want to try it on?” She slides on the only slightly enormous backpack.  This one only comes down past her bottom.  A huge improvement.  “It’s pretty big !” she says approvingly.  I have no idea what she thinks she needs all this room for.  I imagine she’ll be carrying home 3 sheets of paper every day.  I mainly want a backpack as a glitter containment device. So, as we’re leaving, my daughter somehow magically shrinks from being the 13 year old back to being the 5 year old pony loving kindergarten student she’s supposed to be.  I guess we’ve staved off her impending getting older for a few more days. At least until she gets on that school bus for the first time. I’m sure I’ll be a total wreck. Posted Aug 20 2008, 04:54 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Audra, Better off Dad, school [Edit Tags]

• Lions and Tigers and…. Wait a Minute. What was that Again?

  There is a small petting zoo just down the road from our house.  I know this, because as I drive the little winding country road that passes by farms and the occasional mcmansion, there is a small hand painted sign for “Bobs Petting Zoo.”  (That’s not actually the name.  I said I saw the sign as I drove by, I didn’t say I paid attention). It’s the kind of place that you have to call ahead to make reservations at.  It’s not a full time business and is just open when they have a school group come through.  They presumably have a few goats and chickens for you to pet while wandering around their backyard and I mentally made a note that it might be a fun outing to schedule with the kids sometime and didn’t think much more about it. Last Spring my daughter’s preschool class decided to take a field trip there.  I was unable to go with them because of a doctor’s appointment or something, but when Audra got back home I asked her all about it. “What kind of animals did you see, honey?” “Well, there were donkeys and geese and llamas and tigers and turtles and…” “Wait a minute!  Go back.  What did you just say?” So my 5 year old daughter is claiming that the petting zoo about a mile or so from our house has a tiger, maybe two.  Now Audra is a pretty smart girl.  She knows her animals, and she’s not prone to lying, so there was a part of me that became somewhat concerned about this tiger down the road.  I mean, what kind of a cage do you think Bob has constructed for a tiger in his backyard?  I’m guessing chicken wire and two by fours. There are lots of animals that crash through the woods behind our house.  When I can spot them, they are almost always squirrels or deer or the occasional fox, but it hadn’t occurred to me to keep an eye out for Panthera Tigris.  What exactly do you do to protect your family against such a thing anyway?  Obviously I need to stop drying meat outside on the porch and no more hanging dead zebras from the trees to ward off the mosquitoes (old family remedy).  But what else?  I’m not sure our 10 year old golden retriever who usually takes about 30 seconds to stand up is going to be much of a help.  And the biggest gun we own is the Nerf Powerblaster 3000, which is a pretty awesome gun, but I’m not sure it will stop a tiger.  Maybe I can somehow lure it into the pool and then…. Except wait!  Damn!  They can swim!  We are just totally screwed. Anyway, a friend of mine had scheduled a visit for his family and wanted to know if we would like to tag along.  I jumped at the chance.  I was very eager to examine the tiger situation and determine the percent possibility that one day I would be washing dishes, hear a scream and then look out the window to see one of my kids being dragged into the woods by an 800 pound orange striped cat. I turned on to the dirt road and followed it to a couple of modest homes surrounded by a number of fenced in areas.  We got out and met the owners who seemed nice and friendly and did not seem to feel the immediate need to carry a shotgun over their shoulder.  As we made our way through the various pens, feeding donkeys and goats and this one ram, whose endowment made me deeply uncomfortable, one of the kids shouted: “Look a tiger!”  I turned and there was a living room sized cage, but to my relief it did not hold a tiger, but an Ocelot, which is a small jungle cat about the size of a beagle. Of course, it all made sense now.  My daughter’s not stupid, just easily confused.  She saw the Ocelot, probably heard a friend say it was a tiger and took that to be gospel.  I could now call my wife and tell her not to worry, since the last thing she said to me this morning was “If you get there and that tiger cage does not seem sturdy, I want you to get my kids out of there immediately, ok?  I’m serious!  You run to the van and drive off with the doors locked.  I’m not kidding,”  All of which was accompanied by a stern finger wag. Of course, it is always in the calm that horror truly strikes. “No!” shouted the kid.  “Not there!  The tiger’s over here!” We all turned and sure enough there was a large cage with two fully grown Siberian tigers inside it.  Of course, I was foolish to imagine that the cage was made out of chicken wire.  This was made out of chain link and was open on the top and had a nice tall tree for climbing in the middle. I literally had no idea why the tigers were inside this cage.  I could have easily gotten out of this cage.  Heck, I think my three year old could have gotten out of this cage.  We had a schnauzer as a kid who used to escape chain link by digging under it.  I was becoming more and more inclined to follow my wife’s advice and sprint to the car.  Now, to be fair, the open topped chain link fence was about 10 feet high, but aren’t tigers known for their climbing ability?  And their ability to chew threw chain link fence like it was made of pretzels (or was that goats?) Anyway, we continued on our tour, feeding llamas, sheep, geese and even a kangaroo, but I always kept an eye on that tiger cage.  I also noted that the same chain link they used to keep the tigers in was the same chain link deemed necessary to keep the geese from breaking free.  Something was very wrong here.  So, we concluded our tour, got back into the van, liberally applied purell to the areas that had been licked by various animals and started to drive away.  I was now completely convinced that the tigers could easily escape at will, either by climbing up the side of the fence, or by fleeing through the gate while it was open when they were being fed, but after what I had learned about the magical principals of chain link, I was no longer worried.  Because I remembered that we had screens on our doors and windows.  Those tigers don’t stand a chance. Posted Aug 19 2008, 05:18 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: wildlife, photo, Better off Dad, field trip [Edit Tags]

• I’m Going to the Chapel and It’s Going to be Harried

  Last week I was at a wedding with a number of my friends.  There’s nothing quite like a nuptial ceremony to spark a series of thoughts, memories and speculations.  Of course, I think back to my own wedding and what a wonderful day that was and I also think about the weddings of friends, particularly the ones I’m sitting around a table with.  And I also manage to let my mind wander to thoughts about weddings of the future.  Thinking about my friends and relatives, I wonder when so and so will get engaged and what their wedding will be like. But I also had a different reaction, one I hadn’t quite expected.  As we went through the ceremony, and then the reception, and the toasts, and the first dance, I kept imagining what my daughter’s wedding was going to be like.  This was the first time that I had been at a wedding and had these thoughts, but at each of those traditional, somewhat cheesy, wedding moments, I found myself thinking about my little girl in a long white dress with some icky boy kissing her and found myself repeatedly tearing up. Now you have to understand, Audra is 5. I’m not expecting this wedding to happen soon or anything.  Lord knows we couldn’t afford it if it did, but it was sort of a milestone for me – that moment when weddings stop being about you and your friends, and start being about your children.  Now, it doesn’t help that my daughter is the girliest thing alive.  My wife was a major tomboy as a child, always playing basketball and soccer or shooting her rifle and climbing trees.  Neither of us can figure out where this little princess loving bundle of chiffon and taffeta came from, but boy is she here.  She runs around the house in a perpetual flurry of make believe, pretending to be a movie star, or a princess, or a ballerina or any other occupation that requires wearing a dress and tiara. So even though she’s only 5, it doesn’t take much imagination to age her 20 some years and stick her skinny body into a wedding dress.  That will be quite a day. Not ironically, it didn’t once occur to me to think about either of my sons’ weddings.  Partly this is because they’re younger and the closest they’ve shown to an interest in girls is occasionally letting Dora ride shotgun in the Diego jeep, but it’s also because no one really ever thinks about the groom at a wedding.  It’s not really about him.  I’ve been a groom and to be honest, it’s pretty thankless job.  My wife was off in a room getting ready with about 20 people hovering around, a photographer taking pictures, and attendants offering to fulfill her every need.  I was in a 3rd grade Sunday School class by myself trying to figure out how to get my clip on bow tie to lie straight.  I’ve always wanted to go to a gay wedding with two grooms.  Do people show interest in the groom then, or does the congregation simply feign interest for the whole wedding?  Are lesbian weddings simply the most amazing thing ever?  Double the fun! But back to my point.  For me, it was a transitional moment to be sitting there thinking about my beautiful daughter and what kind of stunningly creative and outrageously expensive wedding she is likely to have.  You see, most of our friends are married and there are probably only a hand full of weddings left in our future until it becomes time to start attending the weddings of our children.  And since Audra is one of the oldest in our circle of friends, it is likely that her wedding will be one of the first. It was with all this in mind that I turned to a friend of mine after the toasts and asked if she had gotten to the point where she started thinking about her own daughter when she attended weddings.  She looked at me like I was making a joke she didn’t understand, laughed anyway, and then said, “Of course not!  Don’t be silly, she’s just 3!” Then she paused, realization passing across her face, and said to me.  “Why?  Do you?” “No,” I said.  “Of course not.  What kind of a freak would do that?” Apparently this kind.                                                                     The Future Bride dreaming of her Prince.  Or, possibly, stock broker Posted Aug 18 2008, 04:54 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Audra, Better off Dad [Edit Tags]

• If I Had a Hammer…. I'd Probably, Like, Hammer With it or Something

  We have a nice backyard, it’s not completely level or anything, but it’s a nice backyard.  Precisely the kind of nice backyard that seems to be yearning for a playset.  It’s something I had been meaning to do for a long time.  Kind of like I had been meaning to finish (er.. start) the kid’s babybooks and been meaning to clean the bathroom.  But somehow it just never made the top of the list in the way that things like flat tires and “desperate need to get out of the house” tend to make the list.  Well, our kids’ birthdays are backed up to one another in July, August and September (we’re hoping for a full set… 9 more to go!).  This gave my mother the very kind idea to pitch in and help buy a playset for the kids’ birthdays.  This was just the kind of incentive I needed to get out in the backyard and get those kids a swingset. I’ve had my eye on a pretty little number at Sam’s club, so I talked my buddy Jack into bringing his 15 passenger van to Sam’s and we loaded up 5 massive 10 foot long boxes and a  slide.  I brought them home and deposited them triumphantly on the ground.  This was when Jack (who I don’t care for anymore) says, “where are you going to put it?” “Oh, I don’t know maybe over here,” I said pointing to a lovely shaded area. “But, the ground’s not level.  The whole thing will tip over and kill someone.” He then starts talking about building retaining walls and drainage pipes and blah, blah blah.  Do I sound like someone who knows how to build a retaining wall? “It’ll be fine!” I said.  This is when Jack shook his head and left.  He may have literally done that washing his hands motion, I’m not sure. Anyway, I have my trusty cadre of college students sleeping in the basement, so I rounded them all up and we began to open boxes, pick up boards and look at them and then put them back down again.  I then found a box within a box.  I opened it up and it had about 5 million screws and bolts in it, as well as the instruction book.  Excellent! The first thing on the instruction book, which I have to note was not anywhere on the boxes, is a little note that says: “Construction of the playset should take two moderately skilled adults 20-24 hours.” Holy Crap! And what if you’re not “moderately skilled.”  What if you’re marginally skilled, or moderately unskilled?  How long then?  40 hours?  100 hours?   The rest of your existence on this planet? Well, no time like the present, so we flipped open the book of instructions  (oh yeah, it was a book) and read step 1:  “Attach board G7 to post A3 using a 2.5 inch lag screw, 5/16 inch lock washer, washer and tap bolt.” Ok.  The three of us worked for several hours.  We managed to construct a rudimentary outline of a building, sort of a large cube of posts and boards.  “We’re looking good!”  I reported to the troops. “How’re we doing?” asked Aloysius.  “How much more we got?” I ckecked the instructions.  “Let’s see.  We’re on step, uh, 5.  Out of, um, (flip flip flip), ok, (flip flip flip), uh, 111 steps.” (Let’s see.  What’s the math on this?  5 out of 111.  Carry the one.  We are 4.5 % done.  Ok, and if it took 3 hours to get 4.5% done, that means that we should be finished in, uh, 2017.) Of course, there’s nothing else to do, but keep working on it, and I must say it’s looking good.  Eventually we get to the point where we need to level it off and so we dig a little hole for it and that works pretty well.  Who needs a retaining wall? Somewhere around now, I’ve got a guy coming out to do some work on our water system.  He feels it’s necessary to tell me about how he bought one of these and then ended up hiring someone to put it together because it was so difficult and oh, by the way, have you considered building a retaining box for the base of the playset?  Because that’s what he did. How is that helpful? Jack comes by the next day, because he said he would help me with my project.  He takes one look at the little Lincoln log building we’ve constructed so far and then asks to see the finished picture of the playset on the instructions.  He then proceeds to laugh at me and says something along the lines of “there’s no way I’m getting involved in this.”  He then leaves, mumbling something about buying an aluminum playground for his kids. But I don’t need them.  I can do this.  I just turn the music up louder (Yes, thank you very much.  I am simply the best) and get cracking. Well.  It’s been almost a week now and.  I’m on step 47.  (Only 64 more to go!)  And the best I can say is that we’re getting there.  Slowly.  Very slowly.  Oh, and I’m going to have to move the location of the slide because there’s not really enough room for it, but that’s probably no big deal right?  And I’ve learned that I really am not very good with a power drill, but I’m getting better.  Oh, and one more thing: If you know 2 moderately skilled adults, would you please have them give me a call.    The finished project as printed on the instruction book     uh... where we are after a week   Posted Aug 15 2008, 04:54 AM by superdad with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Better off Dad [Edit Tags]

• Will the Real Stay At Home Dad Please Stand Up! .... The rest of you, please just get a job

  My wife just returned from her 15 year high school reunion.  I was unable to go, but I can’t say that I missed a whole lot.  Sarah attended a small town high school with only 70 people in her graduating class and very few of them went on to receive Nobel prizes.  In fact, for a while it seemed like every time we called Sarah’s parents they had another tale of craziness from her high school. “It’s all over the news.  Johnny Larkins has locked himself in his trailer and is having an armed stand off with the police.  He apparently was running a meth lab, but couldn’t afford Sudafed, so he’s been trying to make it work with crushed up alka seltzer and managed to explode foam all over half of the trailer park.” “Do you remember Teresa Jaspers?  Well, she’s been working at the stop and save and got caught taking money out of the till to support her boyfriend’s velvet painting addiction.  They caught her paying above market value for a 36x20 of Elvis and Jesus playing pool.” “Carol Thompson from church just called and said that Ernie and Darryl Winchester are in jail for selling Black market toothbrushes.  Yeah, a real shame.  Used panda hair for the bristles.  They claimed it was an aphrodisiac, but the users all just got mouth herpes.” Don’t get me wrong, there are also some very nice people who went to her high school and certainly they’re not all in jail.  Many went to college, or got jobs that didn’t lead to arrests.  Anyway, my point is that the turnout at these reunions can be artificially low due to incarceration rates, but she went anyway and had a reasonably good time.  Less people got drunk than at her 10 year reunion (ah, what a few years of maturity and the absence of an open bar will do for you).  And it happened to coincide with the local community festival, so there was cotton candy.  What else could you want? But my point here (do you ever notice how my point doesn’t tend to come until about ½ way through my entries) is that after she got home, she nonchalantly tells me that two of her classmates are now stay at home dads. “No they’re not,” I said. “Yes, they are.  One of them is in a local band, so he is free during the day as well as Sunday through Friday nights, and the other told me that he started staying home because it was too expensive for him to drive to work.” Uh huh. Now, perhaps I have a chip on my shoulder, or perhaps I am a little defensive about a career choice that many people might deride as “easy” or “feminine,” or “something only a total loser would do.”  But there is a big difference between being a stay at home dad and being at home as the same time as your children. I am part of a group of Dads that get together a couple of times a week.  It’s a chance to let the kids run around and play and a chance for us Dads to talk with another adult.  Anyway, this very topic came up recently, primarily sparked by the presence of a SAHD that did not seem to be particularly good at his vocation. For most of us SAHDs, we chose this role.  We are all competent people who could be working if we chose to and yet we decided to stay home with our kids.  Sure, for many of us there is a financial aspect.  I am a school teacher, my wife is a lawyer.  Our family could live on her salary, whereas our family could live in someone else’s basement on my salary.  But that’s not to say that was why we chose for me to stay home.  There is no doubt in either my wife’s or my mind that I am better suited to staying home with our kids.  As group of Dads we came up with the following formula, if you are a stay at home dad solely because that is the best job you could get… then you probably shouldn’t be.  You’re not a stay at home Dad.  You’re just unemployable and happen to have children.  And this is, I believe, what is going on with Sarah’s classmates. “Plays in a band?”  This is his reason for staying home with the kids?  You have to understand.  If he plays in a band in this little town, that means that the largest venue he has ever played in is the downtown bar which is primarily known as the location where a local police officer ate a live mouse as part of a bet.  This is not an occupation.  This is what you tell your friends when you fail the employment drug test at Wal-mart.  As far as the guy who said it costs too much to drive to work…. I mean, I know gas prices have gone up, but unless he commutes to Anchorage every day, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the cost of commuting in a rural town outweigh the paycheck. Now I am willing to concede that these two gentleman might actually be very good parents who, although not home by choice, have accepted their role with dignity and good humor and provide a loving and nurturing….. Ok, no I’m not.  I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that they sit around all day watching ESPN and eating twinkies dipped in PBR.   In the past when people were unemployed, they would say they were finding themselves, or writing their novel.  Now they say they are stay at home dads.  But being at home with your kids doesn’t make you a stay at home dad anymore than going to a museum makes you a dinosaur. So, here’s my request, at the 20 year reunion, just man up and tell everyone that you’ve developed an addiction to pain killers or have the lost the ability to drive a car as a result of that drunken bow hunting incident. Just leave us Stay at Home Dads out of it. Posted Aug 14 2008, 05:06 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Better off Dad, Sarah [Edit Tags]

• A Tale of Courage and Determination and a Need for Maps

  Yesterday I wrote about the travails of trying to get Felecia out of the state of Mississippi.  It’s never easy.  Mississippi has a way of sucking people back in even as they’re trying to pull away, like a very hot and humid vacuum cleaner.  But Felecia made it.  She arrived at the airport last night at 6:00pm acting like she flew every week.  Her flight got in a little early and by the time I arrived she had collected her luggage and was standing around like this was the most normal thing in the world, when, for her, it couldn’t have been more bizarre. This is a girl who has never flown on an airplane and never set foot in an airport.  In fact the only planes she’s ever seen are the crop dusters that divebomb the cotton fields in the Delta.  She’s only ever left the state a couple of times, either on school trips or with me.  Leaving her home, driving an hour and a half to the nearest airport, getting on a plane by herself and flying here strike me as one of the bravest things a person could do. Felecia had to convince her older brother to drive her the hour and a half down to Jackson.  They didn’t quite know where they were going, nor did they have a map.  They drove around lost for awhile trying to find the airport.  They called me for directions, but it’s very difficult to give directions if you don’t know where someone is currently and they don’t either.  They finally asked someone at a gas station arrived at the airport and parked. They then called me again because they couldn’t figure out where the airport itself was and were lost in the parking garage.  Again I was not much help.  “Uh, look for a big building?” was the sum total of my advice – again, not very helpful. Eventually they made it into the airport, squabbled with the check in people about the fact that Felecia didn’t have an ID (This is an interesting dilemma.  What do you do if you don’t have an ID?  Obviously most of us have driver’s licenses, but driving is sort of an odd requirement for flying, isn’t it.   Do all those subway riders in New York City only travel by Amtrak?).  They ultimately accepted her birth certificate as proof and let her pass through security.  She called me again from the waiting area at her gate.  She had gotten there 3 hours early. Now, I’ve been down this road before, where things didn’t work out when I came to get someone in Mississippi and the only solution was to leave a difficult pathway (such as taking a flight for the first time by yourself) for a former student to follow on their own.  Most of the time it doesn’t work out.  They miss the plane, or the train was late so they just went home.  Their brother talked them into staying instead, or their neighbor’s house burned down (as houses are apt to do down there) and this inexplicably struck them as a reason to stay instead of go.  So, I tried to make things easy.  I made sure it was a direct flight.  I wrote out lots of hopefully helpful information (at security, they will make you take off your shoes.  This is normal) although my helpful information didn’t include such things as directions to the airport.  But honestly, when I first had to set up the plane reservation for her to fly by herself.  I thought, “this is money down the drain.”   I just knew that she would get there too late, or forget her birth certificate and ID, or be unable to find someone to drive her to the airport.  There were a million ways it could all go wrong.  I wrote in my notes that she needed to get to the airport two hours early, but I didn’t expect her to.  I’ve just had too many experiences where my worst predictions ended up not being nearly dire enough.  It ingrains a pessimism that is hard to overcome. But Felecia shot all that down.  She exceeded my expectations in every way and overcame her own fears in order to do what she needed to.  When I emailed my wife to tell her that Felecia was at the airport 3 hours early, she wrote back.  “I can’t believe it.  She must really want to get out of Mississippi.”  Yes she did.  She saw the complete absence of jobs and anything resembling a comfortable lifestyle and decided that she wanted to get out. And now she’s here, and is going to try to build a new life.  I’m not quite sure what she’s going to do, and she’s not either, but I know that she has the determination to accomplish whatever goals she sets before herself.  And that’s half the challenge right there. So here’s to Felecia.  My Southwest Airlines pioneer.  It may seem like a small thing, but for a young woman from the Delta, it’s huge and I am very, very proud of her.  Posted Aug 13 2008, 05:00 AM by superdad with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Better off Dad, Mississippi [Edit Tags]

• And Then I was 52

  As I mentioned in my blog yesterday, I was just coming off a weekend of reliving the freedom and independence that used to be my every day life back in my twenties.  But when you’re on one of these fantasy vacations, sooner or later, reality comes knocking - usually with a sledge hammer. So, I was enjoying my weekend in Chicago, at a wedding with other adults having a great time, when my phone buzzed.  It was a text (yeah, I get texts.  I’m that cool) and it said something along the lines of “This is Felecia, can you call me.  There’s a problem.” (sigh) All of that lightheaded, youthful joy came crashing down around me until I was sitting alone and somber amidst the rotting detritus of my recent happiness.  I instantly went from feeling like a 22 year old back to feeling like an adult, but worse than that, this was dealing with a teenager, so I felt even older than I am.  Age 22 to 52 in 3.4 seconds. So, here’s the story.  Many moons ago, I taught 3rd grade in a tiny little town in the Mississippi Delta.  I left there about a decade ago, but have kept in touch with my former students.  I would bring a couple of them up to stay with me for a couple of weeks each summer and last year I brought a couple of my students (now high school graduates) up to live with us while they attended college in the area.  The trick is that Mississippi has a magical way of screwing up anything that falls within its borders.  After years and years of going down there to pick a kid up only to have the whole plan collapse in a blaze of glory due to some crazy unforeseen event (houses burning down, people dying, crazy grandparents, catfish related incidents), I’ve taken on a Zen-like approach to the region. “Crazy is normal.  Come with high hopes, but no expectations. Things will not go smoothly.  Don’t count on anything for sure until you’ve crossed back into Tennessee. And, only in the sound of darkness can one hand be found to hold the heart of life like a butterfly nesting warmly in your esophagus (or some such nonsense)” It’s not a great philosophy, but it seems to work.  So anyway, back to our story.  I’m at the wedding, eating some cheesy polenta when I get the text.  My heart sinks, mainly because Mississippi is a place where nothing is ever a problem.  (“my leg just got eaten by a Wildebeest, but it’s alright.  We’re cool”), so if somebody tells you there’s a problem, you know it’s going to be a doozy.   I was supposed to fly down and pick up Felecia along with two other students first thing in the morning.  This was almost certainly not going to go well.  So I excused myself from the wedding, called the number and heard a story that went something along the lines of: Ok, so Felecia is best friends with this girl who’s lesbian ex-girlfriend is all mad at so she called the police and told them that that girl and Felecia broke a window and broke into her house, even though she didn’t and so the police came and arrested them and their supposed to be in court on Monday, but we think they can still leave tomorrow, they just have to pay this $200 and then they can go, because the other girl isn’t going to show up anyhow, so it doesn’t really matter. If you’re confused, join the club. So I made a few phone calls, talked to Felecia’s aunt, her cousin, her cousin’s aunt who also happened to be her bail bondsman and the other students involved with this debacle.  It turns out (no surprise here) that she does have to go to court, or she becomes a wanted felon who skipped out on her bail.  Not wanting to have Dog the Bounty Hunter break into my house in the middle of the night, I insisted that Felecia go to court and that we would try to come up with a different plan for her to exit the state, because apparently as soon as she goes to court, regardless of the outcome, she is allowed to leave.   Or so everyone tells me. I returned to the party and related this story to my friends who had all been watching me out the window for the last half hour as I cradled my head in my hands and occasionally banged it against the wall.   There was much confusion.  My lawyer friend kept insisting that this was not how criminal legal proceedings operated and that surely… blah, blah, blah.  He might as well have been talking about how to julienne mangoes for all the relevance it was going to have on how things were actually done in Mississippi.  The Delta is a nation unto its self, with it’s own ways of doing things that don’t necessarily have any relation to accepted practices or that pesky constitution.  This had its good side and it’s bad.  On one hand, you could apparently be locked up because someone’s crazy girlfriend made up a story.  On the other hand, because everyone knew this was what happened, there was no expectation that you needed to proceed through the  legal system in the same way they do in the rest of the country.  So, I got up at 5:00 the next morning.  Flew down to Mississippi, changed Felecia’s flight, picked up my other students, Aloysius and Jessie, as planned and left Felecia with explicit instructions on how to get to the airport, navigate it’s peculiarities etc.  On the way down I would have put the odds of all of that working out at about 20%, but her aunt seemed on the ball and when I left, I felt like the odds of all this coming to fruition were pretty good. I got a call the next day.  When Felecia went to court for her scheduled hearing / trial / whatever, no one was there.  No judge, no prosecutor, no nobody.  So they rescheduled the case, but the clerk told her not to worry about coming.  It was no big deal.   Felecia talked with her bail bondsman and, randomly enough, the mayor of the town who also told her she was free to go.  It turns out all the predictions were right. See, that’s the thing about Mississippi.  People tell you crazy things, which you are sure can not be true (kids eat pickles soaked in Kool-aid, after desegregation the whites sold all the school books to the new white private schools, Catfish mate in buckets) but then, sure enough, those crazy things turn out to be 100% accurate.  Thus necessitating my Zen approach to the region. So Felecia is supposed to arrive tonight at 6:00.  I will then be a stay at home parent to three kids, three teenagers, a geriatric dog, a dozen fish and a turtle we found swimming in our pool filter.  My soul’s age just jumped to 52…at least.  But I’m sure it will get easier from here and if not I’ll just develop a new Zen philosophy: “It is only by boarding the Amtrak and fleeing to Manitoba that true Peace can be found resting in your soul like a lilypad” Posted Aug 12 2008, 05:44 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Better off Dad, Mississippi [Edit Tags]

• I Got to be 22 this Weekend

  Let me explain. A friend of mine was getting married in Chicago, but it coincided with my wife’s 15 year high school reunion.  She really wanted to go to that and see how many of her classmates had been incarcerated in the intervening decade and a half, and we were both unsure about what to do with our kids at a wedding in Chicago.  We could obviously bring them, but it greatly limits the fun of a wedding “Whoops!  8:30.  Gotta go get the kids to bed.  Let me know if the cake is any good and who the crazy girl in the red dress ends up leaving with.” So, after some debate, it was decided that Sarah would take the kids up to her parent’s house for her High school reunion and I would go to the wedding…. BY MYSELF! Wow! I don’t really even remember how to use those words accurately in a sentence – “by myself.”   - “At the movie, I was eating ‘by myself’, the popcorn.”   Hmmm, I’ll have to google it or something. So for the first time in a decade or so, I was off for a weekend of fun with some friends in an exciting city.  I spent the first hour and a half after I got off the plane in C-town walking around singing that old Frank Sinatra song that always sounds like it was poorly translated from the original Italian – “My kind of town, Chicago is…”  I’m sure I was very popular with the locals, who probably appreciated my extensive knowledge of their cultural heritage. I arrived with a couple of my friends and we set out to explore the windy city.  Now here’s the deal, though.  My friends were an unmarried couple who regularly take fun coupley trips to resorts and spas and places like that.  I, on the other hand, am a stay at home dad who regularly takes trips to Chik-fil-a and Target with three kids in tow.  So, while they were content to casually walk the streets, complete in the knowledge that they have been here before and would probably be back again, I was trying to squeeze all of the entertainment I could into the next 36 hours. “Hey!  Let’s ride the Ferris wheel.  Or maybe we should take a segway tour.  Do you want to go see some improv later tonight?  I’ve heard the pizza here is supposed to be really good.  Maybe we should go to the top of the Hancock tower observatory.  We could wander Michigan Avenue and look at some shops.  How about we rent bikes and ride along lakeshore drive?  The art museum is supposed to be excellent!  Ever since reading ‘Devil in the White City’ I’ve wanted to visit the site of the Columbian Exhibition.  Should we take one of those boat tours?  What about those Frank Lloyd Wright houses?  We could do a lake cruise, or maybe one of those architecture cruises.  Hey look!  Cotton Candy!” So, I’m afraid I was a bit of a pest.  I just knew my time was short.  It was kind of like if you were told you only had a day to live, what would you do?  In my case, it was as if you were told you only had a day to live as a single, childless person with no real responsibility for anyone else.  I just wanted to suck the marrow out of life.  I didn’t even really care which marrow, or what it tasted like.  I just wanted to get busy sucking. So we did.  We rode the Ferris wheel and walked Michigan Avenue (I bought some shorts!).  We drank beer and ate some pretty terrible nachos overlooking the river.  We rode the El, ate Indian food, went to a terribly hip bar which ended up making me feel terribly unhip (although maybe that’s because while the techno music thumped overhead, I was huddled in a corner trying to help the bride write her vows).  We would have ridden segways and taken the boat tours, but apparently you have to make reservation for those kinds of things in advance (stupid organized tourists).  But the art museum was great, the view from the Hancock building was spectacular, and in general, my kind of town, Chicago is. Oh yeah, the wedding was pretty nice too. All in all, it was a pretty great weekend of marrow sucking.  I’m not sure people without kids can quite understand the freedom that comes with pretending that once again you are in your twenties and only have to worry about yourself.  It’s one of those luxuries that you don’t realize you have until it’s gone.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids.  I missed them and I spent most of the wedding thinking about how my daughter will someday be walking down the aisle in a white dress and I desperately wished my wife’s name was listed beside mine on our seating card.  But, think of it this way.  I also love my house, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to travel back in time and spend a weekend living in my old, tiny, cramped college dorm with the shared bathroom.  So, truly, it was a great weekend.  One with too little sleep to match the too much fun.  But then Sunday rolled around and that wasn’t so much fun.  I’ll detail that in tomorrow’s blog.  One I’m calling:  “And then I was 52.”   Posted Aug 11 2008, 05:28 AM by superdad with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Vacations, Better off Dad [Edit Tags]

• We'll Always Have Paris ...... great

  So I assume most people have seen McCain’s new ad about Obama being a celebrity.  If I were a really good, hip, cutting-edge blogger I would have written about this a week or two ago, but I’m not.  Yesterday I wrote about my son’s birthday and the day before I probably wrote about poop.  I can’t remember for sure, but it’s always a good guess.  But as it turns out, my kids didn’t do anything funny yesterday, so I’ve resorted to blathering on about politics again.  Well, if you haven’t seen McCain’s ad, here it is.  It basically belittles Obama by comparing him to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton because he has big crowds show up at his political speeches. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c0vctCfhH8 The republicans have always been good at turning someone’s strength into a weakness and visa versa (remember how Kerry’s voluntary military service became his primary liability when compared to the current administration of draft dodgers) But there still is a fair amount of chutzpah needed to basically belittle your opponent because lots of people want to hear him speak, while you yourself are having difficulty getting a few hundred people to show up at a Saturday night appearance at the Elk’s club. Only in America could it possibly be deemed a bad thing to have lots of people show up to listen to you explain your policies.  It’s extraordinary that this could ever be portrayed as a negative.  Of course, there is truth to the accusation that politicians have become more like celebrities.  Certainly Bill Clinton had an aura of celebrity about him.  He even had a couple of rock star gropies… excuse me, I mean, groupies. But of course it’s all in the details isn’t it?  Obama spoke to a crowd of 200,000 in Europe (boy, being in Europe makes it inherently evil, doesn’t it?  Nothing worse than having our allies support us.).  I don’t know that Paris or Britney have ever… uh.. (performed?)  for a group that large.  True, Britney has played to arenas and Paris has had a large group of, ahem, video followers, but neither of them have been drawing any fans lately.   (Biggest Irony, the Hiltons are big McCain supporters that each gave the maximum amount they could). It’s not really a fair analogy is it?  If you want to compare Obama to a celebrity who draws hundreds of thousands of people you probably need to compare him to a big Central Park concert crowd, maybe Simon and Garfunkel or Pavarotti.  Or I suspect Bruce could draw a couple hundred thousand on a good day.  If you want to compare him to Tina Turner, that’s fine by me.  (insert jokes about “Simply the Best,”  the campaign being “thunderdome” or even “What’s Love got to Do with it” here.  Please avoid private dancer jokes.  Again, we’ll leave those to Bill). But of course, the whole point is to compare Obama to ditzy celebrities, whether the analogy fits or not.  Because if there’s anything that Obama is, it’s certainly ditzy.  That’s how they usually describe the editor of the Harvard Law Review.  (Remember that whole strength / weakness thing?   Well, McCain graduated almost last in his class at the Naval academy, and while I’m not saying the only reason he got in the first place was because his Dad was an admiral, somebody else might). The saddest thing about all of this is that I have always had a lot of respect for McCain.  I remember thinking back in 2000, that if McCain became president, it probably wouldn’t be all that bad.  He had been known as an independent thinker and someone who, like Obama, had tried to rise above politics as usual.  This ad isn’t exactly rising above politics as usual, as much as it is embracing it wholly at its very rotten, stinking core.  Obama of course has taken the low road more times than I like, but it would be hard to imagine his campaign coming out with something as asinine and just downright mean as this.  I was excited when Obama and McCain became the nominees.  I thought, Wow.  This could be the election where the candidates really do spend time talking about the issues and distinguishing themselves.  My first disappointment came when Obama rejected McCains’ proposal to hold weekly debates.  I thought that was wonderful – precisely what a campaign ought to be.  And now here we are, not event to the conventions and we’re seeing ads that look like they ought to be coming out of a mayoral race in Alabama, not the presidency.  There has been one victor in all of this though.  If you haven’t seen Paris Hilton’s response ad.  It’s worth a gander.  It was written by someone else, but she does a good job delivering it.  I’ve never really cared for Paris or anything she stood for, but she rose  a couple of notches in my mind with this.  Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W2nUrH67LY Posted Aug 07 2008, 05:29 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Politics, Better off Dad [Edit Tags]