Burning Ring of Truth

Regular readers may remember that I recently mocked my eldest son because he wanted to learn how to play the recorder. Chiefly, I judged the wind instrument to be a less-than-manly instrument much unsuited to rocking out. Because I wanted Gabriel to lose interest in the recorder quickly - I did what any smart parent would do in order to force his kid to drop something like a hot potato - or in this case, a hot cross bun.

I fully supported him.

I bought him a new recorder. I forced him to play for me. I forced him to play for other people. And once my son sensed my enthusiasm, he walked away from his plastic recorder like it was radioactive.

Mission accomplished. And yet, a month later, my nine year-old would have his revenge when I came across a Julia Nunes ukulele-version of Weezer's "Keep Fishin' on YouTube.

To begin with, Julia Nunes clearly rocked the song. I liked it even better than the original Weezer version. But I was also dumbstruck by how much her little ukulele rocked. And more than that, the tingy melodies reminded me of the mandolin my grandmother used to play before she passed away. And that's apparently the recipe that gets me hooked - two parts rocking and one part dearly-missed grandmother.

So I bought a soprano ukulele, the smallest you can get, about a week later and tried to hide my new obsession from everyone including my family. I retreated to the tiny, dark re-purposed closet that is my office, shut the door and started practicing ukulele chords, some of which require only one finger to play.

Occasionally, my wife would knock on the door.

"Uh, Richard? What's that noise?" she would ask.

I would look at my beautiful 20 inch uke and back toward the door. I considered shoving aside my masculinity and admitting my fondness for the tiny four-stringed powerhouse in my hands - maybe even busting out some Cashian "Ring of Fire" to make my wife understand. And then I said:

"I'm looking at pornography on the computer! Could I have some privacy, please!"

The best lies have the ring of truth.

Later, when I finally sat down and discussed my ukulele problem with Bridget, she did something I didn't expect her to do.

She fully supported me.

Clever, clever woman.

Editor's Note : For those of you who want to see Julia Nunes' great cover of Weezer's "Keep Fishin""

Eye Rolling

    There is a huge population of retired people in Florida. I am, of course, being politically correct when I say "retired people". I'm actually mean that Florida has a huge population of old, wrinkly people who will sometimes forget that they're driving - even though they're in the middle of of an intersection and have just run over a Guatemalan guy on a bicycle.

    But here's the advantage to this skewed surplus of wrinkly people in Florida: being 40 years-old in Florida is like being 20 anywhere else. And we middle-aged people take full advantage of that down here. We drive around listening to Ting Tings songs way too loud. We drink like college freshmen and we curse the old people who just don't "get us."

    The only thing that spoils the illusion is when we run into actual young people in Florida. A few weeks ago,for instance, I was driving through the supermarket parking lot when I locked eyes with a young woman with tan skin.

    Because I'm married to an easily-riled woman with a formidable right hook, I am unusually good at not noticing women. When I'm with my wife, in fact, I could walk past a naked Monica Bellucci and never move my gaze from the floor.

    But my natural instincts were overcome at the supermarket for a few reasons. First, this particular woman sported what car enthusiasts might refer to as "aftermarket parts". If I make take the euphemism further, someone had mistakenly ordered truck parts for the young woman's sub-compact chassis.

    Further, thieves had clearly stolen this woman's clothes and replaced them with tiny, midget versions that did not properly cover the delicate, tasteful tattoo that graced the small of her back. Also, I was looking for a parking space, so my guard was down.

    In any case, I locked eyes with the twenty-something woman. A little embarrassed, I smiled, which was intended to say, "Excuse me for staring. My eyes are just passing through". Or something to effect.

    I expected her to smile back and shrug. Instead, she gave me an eye roll. This, in turn, gave me an unwanted epiphany which caused me to hit the brakes.

    "Oh, just freakin' terrific," I said. "I'm a creepy old guy."

    My wife off-handedly confirmed this a few days ago, while my family munched on donuts at a table outside of a Dunkin' Donuts.

    "Did you notice," I said as I sipped decaf coffee, "that our cashier looked exactly like Phoebe Cates? The resemblance was amazing. I almost asked her if anyone else had mentioned that before."

    "You mean Phoebe Cates, the actress from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High?," my said wife answered. "Yeah, I wouldn't do that."

    "Why?" I asked. "She might find it flattering."

    "Hmmm. She might find it flattering that she reminds you, a guy twenty-five years her senior, of an actress whose most famous scene involves playing an underage high school student who walks in on an older guy masturbating to the image of her in a bathing suit?"

    "You make an excellent point," I conceded.

    "She's probably never heard of Phoebe Cates. That would be like a senior citizen coming up to me and saying that I remind him of Bette Davis or Lana Turner. It's just creepy."

    "Enough," I said. "You can stop making sense anytime now."

    And yet, the reminders of my newly-discovered creepiness keep coming.

    Yesterday, I sat in my car at a stoplight. I looked out the passenger window, lost in thought, when a car rolled up next me and stopped exactly in my sight line. The blonde driver turned to her left, saw me staring in her direction and quickly eye-rolled me.

    I lost it.

    "Hey," I called. "I'm not looking at you. I was thinking about lunch. I thought I saw a french fry on our dashboard left over from a trip to McDonald's."
    She didn't turn around.

    "In fact," I yelled," I'm totally gay and completely uninterested in you. Seriously. I was checking out the hot guy on the other side of you. You're in the way of my...hot...guy..checking...stuff."

    The blonde did not look around. But my wife did turn around to face my kids in the backseat.

    "You know Dad's just joking right?"

 

Facebooked!

I've been at peace with this whole social communications thing for a while now. I'm LinkedIn. I'm down with the MySpace. I get deviant on DeviantART. I'll sometimes even Twitter when no one is watching.

And I used to like Facebook. Lately, though, Facebook has evolved into something terrifying.

My wife is on Facebook now.

At work a few months ago, I sat with my co-workers and checked my Facebook account via my phone. On my "wall", my wife had posted this:

"Please stop at the store on the way home and buy some milk. Love Bridget."

"What the..!" I said

One of my co-workers looked over at my screen and shook his head.

"That's too bad," he said matter-of-factly.

"What's too bad?," I asked.

"Your wife just made you her Facebook bitch."

A few nights later, I sat in my office writing. By "office" I mean that I sat in the dark little bedroom closet where I keep my desk and computer. By "writing" I mean that I was surfing the Internet - which still officially counts as writing because there was no porn involved. I got a Facebook notification that someone had posted to my wall.

"Sweetie, come out on the porch...Marnie's doing something really cute."

Excellent. My wife, who sat fifty feet away on the porch, was using Facebook on her wireless laptop to send a message to the Facebook servers three thousand miles away in California, which in turn routed that message through seven or eight far-flung computers and back to me - all to command me to come out to the porch to watch our Boston Terrier do tricks.

My wife is one of those people who treats a dog exactly like a human, which leads to some pretty bizarre experiences. I am, for instance, not allowed to call the dog "stupid" in front of the dog. When people ask me how many kids I have in the family, Bridget forces me to include the dog in the count. Occasionally, Bridget even dresses the dog up.

I walked out to the porch.

"Bridget, you can't use Facebook to call me out to the porch to look at the dog."

I pointed at the dog for emphasis.

Bridget looked around at the tableau - me standing on the porch looking at the dog - and she bit her lip. Lip biting is one of the many reasons I love my wife.

"Look," I said. "You're new to Facebook, so you don't understand. Facebook is a dangerous place. Facebook is like the Old West, except gunslingers don't shoot you down. Instead, your friends judge you. When my friends see you sending me on errands for milk on Facebook, they assume that I'm a whipped husband."

"That's ridiculous," my wife answered. "Now look at Marnie. Isn't that cute?"

I could sense that my wife wasn't taking me seriously.

"Besides," she said. "How exactly is that different from exaggerating the foibles and eccentricities of your family to spice up a blog posting?"

This seemed like a good time to change the subject.

"Omigod. Is the dog using your Iphone? That's amazing."

A few weeks later, my wife learned the hard way after we spent an enjoyable Saturday night at a friend's party. The party had great food, little shots of some flavored alcohol and someone roving around with a camera. It was a recipe for disaster that was missing only one ingredient:

Facebook.

The following Monday, Bridget's friend Monica provided exactly that. I called Bridget at work.

"Hi, Sweetie," she said. "What's up?"

I tried not to sound panicked.

"Monica posted the party photos on Facebook."

"Oh, cool. I'll look at them a little later. Are they good?"

I said nothing for a moment and then jumped in.

"You know how they took that picture of you with your arms around Monica's shoulders? You're both smiling and you're wearing that sleeveless blouse?"

"Yes..."

I continued. "Well, whoever took the picture kinda messed up the...I think it's called "depth of field" or something...and it makes your arms look...elephantine."

"Elephantine?"

Bridget wasn't getting it.

"The photo makes your arms look like your Nana's arms."

I swear she screamed.

And a parting gift....

Lee Evans from "There's Something About Mary" and the Lee Evans Trio.

Overwhelm

I began writing this in the ICU unit of children's hospital in Florida. Ten feet away, my wife was sleeping in a hospital bed, curled around my five year-old daughter Riley. Riley was hooked to two IVs - one for steroids and one for blood pressure medication - so she had to sleep with her arms straightened at her sides.

Riley had been diagnosed with something called Nephrotic Syndrome. Her blood pressure was high - within the stroke range even for an adult - and the doctors and nurses had been trying different medications in the hope that her blood pressure would go down to normal. At around 2 a.m. in the morning, they would find the right medicine.

But at that moment, we didn't know that.

I thought about different things there in the dark ICU room, as one of Riley's favorite Scooby Doo DVDs played over an over. I thought about a ritual that Riley performs when I pick her up from pre-school on Mondays. As soon as I walk through the gate to her school yard, she backs up, plants her feet and races toward me. Then she jumps. My only job is to catch this lanky, golden juggernaut girl and then stagger back - as if she has almost knocked me over. Riley doesn't like it as much if I don't stagger. The purpose of her leap is to overwhelm me.

And she does.

That night I also thought about health insurance. What if we didn't have it? Riley didn't seem that sick at first, but we took her to the doctor's office just in case. What if we had waited because we didn't have the money?

Two weeks after Riley left the hospital, I was repairing a computer at customer's house when the customer began talking politics. In general, he felt that President Obama was going to bankrupt the country. I've heard this stuff before, sometimes from friends, and I try to keep my responses measured. I do this because it's the polite thing to do, but I also do this because even though I voted for Obama, I have no idea how this is going to turn out. I'm not an economist.

But then the customer started talking about socialized medicine. I tried to steer him away from the conversation.

"My daughter just got out of the hospital," I said. "Every time I see something about universal coverage on the news, I think about her. I'm probably not the most rational about the subject."

The man persisted. "You're living proof, though. You've got a job and you've got medical coverage. Almost everyone can afford medical coverage. The problem is that you've got people who would rather spend the premium on other things..."

I flinched because I thought he might be the kind of person to end that sentence with "...like spinners and rims."

But he didn't. He seemed to sincerely believe that our medical system was in great shape.

I didn't try to change his mind. I'm not a preacher, either.

Riley is doing better now. Her medicine costs, thanks to health insurance, only about $300 a month. We're happy to pay this. The money is not the tough part for us.

Riley's medicine gives her something called "moonface" - meaning that her thin, sweet face has become almost round. Her cheeks are hard to the touch and her stomach swells out, too. And for the first time in my five year-old's life, she is afraid to be seen in a bathing suit. She is like Eve just after she was thrown out of the Garden of Eden - only Riley never stole an apple. We think she might be able to stop the medicine in a few weeks.

I've written this column for something like five years now. I try to keep it humorous; I exaggerate a little here; I poke a little fun there. Every now and then I make a pee pee joke for the kids and husbands. But this thing with Riley has changed me. I can't stand the national conversation about health coverage.

Most of the debate is generated by interest groups with something to sell. The purpose of their talk is not to inform us or educate us; their purpose is to overwhelm us - and they do.

So, I'm not an economist, but I'm gonna say a few things about the economy. Nor am I a preacher; but I'm gonna fucking preach a few things.

Someone you know - someone you like and admire - is going to tell you in the next few months that America doesn't need "socialized" medicine. They might even be an actual doctor. They're going to spout talking points about how it will affect job growth in a faltering economy. They might talk about how doctors will actually leave the field of medicine because they can't pay their bills. This is what you should say:

Almost nine million kids don't have health insurance, part of the almost 45 million people in the United States without any kind of health coverage. It's estimated that at least 18,000 people die each year because they lack medical insurance.

If your friend talks about America becoming Socialist - whatever that means - appeal to their rationality and point out that our libraries, police departments and fire departments are already socialized. They have been since the beginning of our country. Tell your friend that our medical infrastructure needs to be exactly like a fire department - because the health of America is dangerously close to being on fire. Appeal also to their common sense. When the next pandemic rolls through, do we really want nearly 20% of America avoiding a doctor's office?

I don't. But then, I'm not an epidemiologist. I could be wrong.

I'm just a father haunted by the thought of all the uninsured families out there that have a daughter like Riley with an undiagnosed problem. The girl is feeling a little sick, but is otherwise okay.

I wonder how long they wait.

Wrong Banana Leaf

Life in the jungles of South America can be brutal, brief and deadly. Survival means always being aware of your surroundings. You never know which banana leaf might be hiding a deadly Bushmaster or, God forbid, a Brazilian Wandering Spider.

    Marriage is a lot like that, too.

    A few weekends ago, for instance, I let my wife sit in the car while I ran into the house for something. This was a stupid move because my wife was already displaying the classic spousal signs of unrest. Bridget had,for instance, already referred to me as an "ass" twice that morning when, honestly, I had only deserved being called an "ass" once. Also, she had started to blame me for problems that were probably outside the traditional scope of my husbandly duties - like the swine flu pandemic and the resurgence of bedbugs in the hotels of America.

    So, I was clearly out of my freakin' mind when I ran back inside the house to get my sunglasses and left my wife and family in my car with nothing constructive to do. In the space of few minutes, my wife had rifled the contents of my car and had discovered in the glove box a - wait for it - deadly Brazilian Wandering Spider.

    Actually, it was a Taylor Swift CD.

    And when I came out, there was cold silence in the car until I buckled in. And my wife said the following nonchalantly:

    "So, whose Taylor Swift CD is in your glove compartment?"

    She pointed to a CD half hidden under auto handbooks and garage receipts.

    "Uh, who is Taylor Swift?" I responded.

    Wrong banana leaf.

    "Why would you have a Taylor Swift CD in your glove compartment if you don't even know that she's a multi-platinum recording artist who's currently enjoying great success with her song "Love Story" - which is very likely on that CD sitting in your glove box."

    This was actually a good question - and one for which I did not have an answer. I improvised.

    "Isn't it yours?"

    "I don't like Taylor Swift. Apparently you know someone who does.

    Improvisation clearly wasn't working, so I decided to try it again.

    "Where are you going with this?" I asked.

    "Nowhere. I just want to know whose CD that is."

    I had no idea whose Taylor Swift CD it was. I needed more time to think.

    "I forgot to go to the bathroom," I said and jumped out of the car. I ran inside and feigned going to the bathroom for twenty minutes. This gave me plenty of time to think but I was unfortunately distracted by a copy of "People Magazine" that had, from the look of it, been in the bathroom since before our house was built.

    I returned to the car, prepared for the worse but very, very up-to-date on what Suri Cruise was wearing.

    Bridget smiled at me and kissed me.

    "I have to apologize," she said. "It's not a Taylor Swift CD; it's a Shakira CD. I didn't pull it all the way out and look at it before."

    "Why is there a Shakira CD in my car?" I asked.

    "Oh," she giggled. "It's mine. I left it in here."

    Life in the South American rainforest. It's deadly. It's dangerous. It's very mercurial.

    

    

    

    

Stuck

    In theory, my kids are old enough to dress themselves. I should be able to wake them up at six every morning, give them a good morning hug and then stand back as they shower, dress and then fix themselves a nutritious breakfast. 

    But that's not the way it works with my kids. My kids get stuck.

    On some mornings I come out of my room and find all three kids standing buck naked in the living room and staring at a rerun of Jim Cramer's "Mad Money" on CNBC.

    "Why aren't you getting ready for school"? I ask my kids.

    They just shrug without answering, which bothers me for a few reasons. First, it's important that my kids leave for school on time because it shows respect for the institution. 

    Also, only daddies are allowed to get naked with Jim Cramer.

    Booyah.

    Even without Jim Cramer to distract them, my kids still get stuck.

    Take the other morning. As is my habit, I was wandering confused around the house in my underwear. I passed through the kitchen. Gabriel and Julian were eating cereal out of red bowls. Both were in their boxers. What follows is their actual conversation.

    "Three million," said six year-old Julian.

    "Nope," said his older brother Gabriel.

    I took my shower, put on my clothes and resumed strolling around the house. I contemplated getting my wallet and keys together, but I consider procrastination a kind of art - and you can't rush art. I passed the boys again. They were still at the table.

    "Twenty-one million," said Julian.

    "Nope," said Gabriel.

    Now, I was interested.

    "What are you doing?" I ask.

    "We're playing a game," Gabriel volunteered. "I pick a number between one and infinity and Julian has to guess it."

    "One bazillion!" Julian shouted out as if he's picked up a clue from our conversation.

    Gabriel looked at him with a mixture of disdain and boredom.

    "Nope," he said again.

    They were stuck. Neither of these two would give up this game - no matter how inane it is. We would be late for school and I hate being late for school. Partially, this is because I respect the institution. It's also because Gabriel's principal gives me the hinky evil eye every time I drop him off late. I decided to help the boys get unstuck.

    "Julian, I'm thinking of a number between one and three. Guess it."

    "Two!" shouted Julian.

    I high-fived him. "Good work, little man. Now, put your bowls in the sink. It's time to get dressed.We have ten minutes before we leave for school."

    Gabriel got up. He seemed irritated and relieved at the same time. He picked up his bowl and turned toward the sink. At least we're making headway, I thought. We've got a chance to make it on time.

    "Where's your sister?" I ask the boys.

    "She's still asleep," Julian answers, unworried.

    

    

    

...or We Could Do That

    Excerpt from a real-life conversation in the Grim Richard car, after all three children have been picked up from school: 

    First, some background. Julian the six year-old is, by nature, an instigator. In fact, if you ask Julian what he wants to do when he grows up, he does not answer that he wants to be a fireman or policeman. 

    No, he's got bigger things on his mind.

    "I want to cuss and chew bubble gum."

    I am not making this up.

    Anyway, it's 3 in the afternoon on the way home from school. Nine year-old Gabriel has taken a break from peppering me with unanswerable questions about Star Wars. There is peace.

    "Hey, I've got an idea," says Julian.

    I brace myself.

    "Why don't we get gloves and pick up all the dog poop in the backyard?"

    In the rear-view mirror, I can actually see confused question marks floating above everyone's head. Except for Julian. He's smiling.

    "And then once we all have a bag of poop...we can have a poop fight!"

    All of the kids crack up. If you're under ten, this is like Nobel Prize-winning comedy material. This is comedy gold, a rich jambalaya of Cosby and Martin with a spicy dash of Kinison.

    And then my little, sweet daughter Riley chimes in.

    "Or we can have a water balloon fight!"

    This, of course, kills the laughing.

    I look in the rear-view mirror again and that's when I start laughing. Because four year-old Riley has an excited look on her face that says she's up for either one - poop fight or water ballon fight. It doesn't matter.

    I have clearly failed as a parent.

...And Some Yuca

I work about 40 miles away from where I live - which makes me next to ineffectual when a family crisis arises. By the time I find out about most problems, the problem has probably already been taken care of.

Bridget points out that I'm also ineffectual at solving family crises that occur right in front of my face. Which is true. Personally, though, I think this has less to do with my crisis-handling abilities and more with the types of crises that are thrown my way.

For instance, a voice mail that I received from my wife went something like this:

"Your six year-old son Julian has been taken down to the principal's office because he was dancing on the cafeteria tables and yelling for his friends to hit him in the balls. Call me as soon as possible."

I considered calling Bridget for a moment. Then I went to lunch at Pollo Tropical.

Before you judge, let me explain my reasoning. First, Pollo Tropical has this really amazing chicken soup with corn, plantains, soft pumpkin and yuca. I don't even know what yuca is, but I do know that God meant for it to be in soup. I had been thinking about a bowl of that soup all day and it would have been both disappointing and nutritionally unsound if I had skipped lunch to discuss my child's testicles.

Second, it seemed to me that the principal had swooped in and swiftly averted any possible testicle crisis. Bridget, didn't, for example, leave me a message that said, "Come quickly, your son was kicked in the groin by, like, 20 kids. He needs a teste transplant and you're his only donor match."

So, I relaxed and had some soup. Later, I got the whole story from Bridget which, as I guessed, was different from the voice mail message. It seems that Julian got in trouble because of two separate incidents in the cafeteria. In the first, Julian decided to impress his easily amused friends in the lunch line by shouting out,"Hey, dudes, don't hit me in the balls!"

Don't laugh. I hear Ashton Kutcher got his start the exact same way.

The second incident, which occurred ten minutes later and in front of the same adults, involved what Bridget says the principal described as Julian "gyrating on the tables like he was in the "High School Musical" movie."

Now that things are calmed down, I'd like to apologize to the state of Florida for my son's inappropriate behavior in school. But I do have two other comments.

I enjoyed the fact that the principal insisted on using the word "gyrate" to describe Julian's dancing. Because of his word choice, I will always picture him as Ed Sullivan and Julian as a really short, curly-haired Elvis. I appreciate that more than you know.

Finally, I saw parts of the "High School Musical" movie.

And it could have used some balls.

...And a Parting Gift:

Will Smith and the Ukulele

Thumbhole

Probably every parent wants their kid to learn how to play a musical instrument. I'm no exception. Each of my kids, I announced recently, will have to play at least one musical instrument of some kind.
"I don't care what musical instrument you play," I said to the kids, "as long you play an instrument."
That turned out to be a lie.
Six year-old Julian jumped on the, uh, bandwagon without hesitation. I think this is because curly, golden-haired Julian secretly suspects that he's supposed to be a rock star of some kind but just hasn't gotten around to picking up the accessories yet - the leather pants, the Ace-bandage-tight Lenny Kravitz shirt or the ability to play some kind of music.
Julian asked for a guitar for Christmas, and Santa promptly supplied a Julian-sized acoustic guitar. We plan to work on the rock star clothes once Julian has figured out how to wear his boxers right-side-out with the fly in the front. So, we've got some time.
I thought Gabriel would be easy. He loves playing Rock Band on the X Box and he even sings Karaoke at his grandparent's house, so when I solicited him for ideas I was mentally sizing him up for a drum kit or maybe even singing lessons. We have a student piano in our living room now, so I thought maybe he'd go for that.
"I want bongos," he said.
I stared at him like he was somebody else's kid. Somebody else's weird kid.
"I don't think you understand," I demurred. "You're supposed to let me live vicariously through you by doing the things I was too disorganized and uncool to accomplish when I was a child. I've already mastered dorkiness."
He pondered this for a second.
"How about the trumpet?"
A week later, I picked Gabriel up from school and he fairly jumped into the car.
"You remember how you said you wanted me to learn an instrument?"
"Uhhhhhhh," I said, sensing a trap.
"Well, I figured out which one I'm gonna play."
"Uhhhhhhh," I said again, but with this time with emphasis.
"I want to play the recorder!"
I looked at him like he was someone else's weird, recorder-playing kid.
"Oh," I said. "Do boys play that instrument, too?"
Still, I got him a recorder that day. I've got my fingers crossed that the ridicule of his peers would eventually drive him toward a cooler instrument, like maybe the xylophone or even the bassoon. In the between the repetitions of Hot Cross Buns, I take what enjoyment I can from the instrument. For instance, did you know recorders have something called a thumb hole? It makes me giggle every time I say it - and I say it alot.
Thumb hole.
Gabriel doesn't find it as funny.

Semi-Duh

    We're moving into a new house in two days, almost exactly a year after we first moved to Florida. And though we're excited about the new house, we're less excited about actually moving. Here's how I know: 

    With two days to go, we haven't started packing. Not a thing. 

    The pans, pots and spices are still in the cabinets, the DVDs are still in the bookcases and the towels are still in whatever you call that little closet near the kids' rooms.

    In all fairness, we did try packing yesterday. We prepared by waking up early and getting breakfast out of the way. We skipped church (because God understands when you're moving) and Bridget instead picked up flat-packed cardboard boxes from our in-laws and brought them home. 

    All this was accomplished by 9 a.m., leaving us a good nine hours to dismantle the house, cram it into boxes and seal it with brown tape. The weather, as is usual for Florida, was sunny and cooperative. We were psyched.

    From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m, we watched television. We did not even put together a single box during this time. I'm not even sure what we watched; it might even have been an all-day marathon on the "Anything But Packing" channel. Or maybe it was that new HGTV show "We've Got to Be Out of This House in the Next Week But We Don't Give a Crap" show. I'm not really sure.

    At almost 3 p.m., we began to make a kind of progress. Bridget began cleaning the garage. I thought this was odd, since the plan was to move everything out of said garage in exactly two days, but I tried to remain positive.

    "Hey," I offered, "Do you want me to start taking down the wall hangings?"

    Bridget paused and looked at me incredulously.

    "No, we're cleaning the garage now."

     I could tell she was fighting the urge to append the phrase "duh" to the end of her sentence. It was a kind of punctuation - a "semi-duh".

    About ten minutes later, she found a tool that belonged to her friend Monica and left immediately to return it. I didn't see her for a couple of hours. But that was okay. I caught two back-to-back episodes of "Watch Old Guys Golf While Important Deadlines Loom" on the Golf Channel.

    I love that show.

    Grim Bonus: Dimitri Martin goes over some pie charts.

Denouement, Dudes!

    I have noticed that a lot of big time writers will use the end of the year as an excuse to revisit the previous year's columns. Supposedly, they do this to update the readers and add a kind of psychological denouement to the year.

    Personally, I like doing it because it makes for some easy writing. Also, I really like saying the word denouement.

    Let's start with flip flops. Readers may remember that I started wearing flip flops  for the first time this year. I did eventually learn to saunter in those laid back shoes. In fact, I successfully rocked those flip flops until one of the tiny toe thongs gave out at church one Sunday.

    I wish I was kidding about this.

    It seems I am both tacky enough to wear flip flops to church and unlucky enough to have one of the tiny toe things blow out, effectively turning my flip flops into just flops. Very loud flops if you must know.

    2008 was the year that I gave a name to the biggest e-mail scourge of all time, Spom  - or spam sent by your mother. Many of you reached out to me by sending me examples of the complete crap your mother had sent you via e-mail. Ironically, this meant that I was essentially being spommed by your mothers - as well as by my own. 

    So, we're gonna put that in the "backfired" column.

    I bought both an Iphone and an Amazon Kindle this year, successfully spending a thousand dollars to do things I could already do and neatly proving that I am both a consumer tool  and a completely legitimate candidate for some kind of government bailout.

    We also discussed my wife's addiction to celebrations this year. I'd like to think she's making progress, but we had a birthday party for a friend last night on December 30th, and we're having another for New Year's Eve tonight. Draw your own conclusions.

    Finally, I'm gonna do some gloating. In 2007, I pointed out that the conventional wisdom  re: losing more than half of your body heat through your head was, uh, stupid. Turns out I was right, for once.

    Happy new year, people.

Editor's Note: If you're like me, you sometimes forget how cool the 80s were. My gift to you as we head into 2009...

  

Ridiculous

    Here's the thing about my nine year-old son, Gabriel. He is a humongous nerd, obsessed with building Lego play sets and playing Halo video games. He is racked by social anxiety and has trouble concentrating in school. And despite all of this, he is convinced that he is right about everything.

    He reminds me of someone...

    Oh, wait. I remember now. It's me.

    And here's the other thing about Gabriel. Though he loves me, he clearly thinks I'm a moron.

    The other day, for instance, my younger son Julian asked me about Santa Claus while we played in the front yard. By playing, I mean that the kids were hurling a football and I was drinking a Pete's Cherry Wheat in a pink plastic Adirondack chair.

    "Dad," said Julian, "How old is Santa?"

    This was a relative easy question, as far as Santa questions go, and I jumped on it.

    "Santa is thousands of years old, Julian."

    He seemed placated by my answer and since placation is really all you can hope for when you answer your children's questions, I took a satisfied swig.

    "That's ridiculous!"

    I turned to see Gabriel rolling his eyes.

    "Excuse me?"

    "Santa is not thousands of years old," Gabriel retorted. "The Santa Claus position is thousands of years old. It's actually passed down from person to person, like a king or a queen. Nobody lives for a thousand years."

    I looked squarely at this little blond kid with the serious look on his face.

    "It does sound stupid now that I think about it."

    "Sheesh!" he answered.

    "What if I told you Santa Clause was a vast conspiracy by adults to make kids believe in an imaginary being? What if I told you also that adults formulated this conspiracy without ever actually discussing it? Further, would you believe that most parents have no clear idea why they're part of this vast conspiracy? And what if I told you parents buy all of the toys at Christmas and give the credit to this imaginary Santa because they love their children and don't care about getting the credit for it?"

    Gabriel didn't hesitate. "That's ridiculous!"

    "Yeah," I said. "I suppose it is."

    

    

    

Twenties

    When we moved down to Florida, we left most of our family behind. We also left behind some of my oldest friends in the world - guys I grew up with. They are the best kind of old friends, the kind that knew me when I was a fat and acne-covered high schooler, the kind that hung out every Friday night even if no one had any concrete plans. And when we hung out, we did stupid kid shit, watched movies, played Dungeons and Dragons, read comics and fragged the crap out of each other in Halo 2. 

    I knew I'd miss them even before we left Virginia, but we left just the same.  

    We've gained new friends here in Florida and they are the best kind of new friends. They are intelligent, funny, responsible people with beautiful kids. They understand how hard marriage is. They only like their jobs some of the time, but they soldier on anyway, because that's what you do when you have a family. They have magnificent parties, actual shindigs that last into the early hours of the morning, shindigs with all the elements of a good story - narrative, rising action, spicy dialog and denouement. And like those parties, life is bigger here in Florida.

    Last weekend, for instance, we joined our friends in their front yard to watch the space shuttle Endeavor launch into space. We hadn't actually planned to watch the launch. It was more like an afterthought, a nice bonus that you get for living in Florida. Cape Canaveral is maybe 150 miles away, but we watched the countdown on our friends' living room television and rushed out to join the neighbors as everyone looked north for the fiery trail of the rocket booster. And about a minute later, we saw it. It didn't look like a rocket, really. It looked like a shooting star. And for the first time in a long time, I thought about the seven people on top of that little orange flickering light. I wondered if they were afraid. Or were they just excited?

    I miss my old friends at the weirdest times. I missed them the night the new James Bond movie opened, because I knew that a thousand miles away, my friends would be meeting at the mall to catch the late show. Afterwards, they might play Halo if no one had work in the morning.

    I miss my friends when I wear certain clothes. I have a black t-shirt with a red and white picture of a twenty-sided die, the kind of dice you roll in Dungeons and Dragons to determine a character's probability to hit another character. To the right of the picture of the die are the words "I roll twenties." 

    I wore it to a party the other night. 

    I like to wear the shirt to parties because it's like a secret nerd signal. Usually, one or two guys will quietly acknowledge the shirt by smiling or saying "I used to play that game when I was kid." Occasionally, I'll hear a semi-drunken cry of "Critical Hit!" and I know that some of my kind are at the party, hiding like nerdy Wildebeests in a pride of lions.

    A few people asked about the shirt the other night, but no one knew what the picture and legend meant. 

    I kinda expected that, but I was hoping just the same.

    I'll tell you what else I thought about on the night of the shuttle launch. I thought about the seven people strapped into their seats and hurtling as fast as they could toward their futures. In the midst of all the violent shaking and huge explosions, did they think about the people behind them?

    I think they did.

Daddipedia

    Fatherhood is a breeze, if you don't count all the studying.

    It was last Saturday at the local Supercuts. I've got the whole family there, plunked down in those plastic chairs and reading golf and travel magazines. There are a few other people waiting. Gabriel asks a question - kind of casually.

    "When was World War II, Dad?"

    I had just found an article in my magazine that promised to shave 10 strokes off of my golf game, so I shot him back a casual answer.

    "A long time ago, Gabriel."

    When I didn't look up from the magazine, Bridget punched me in the arm.

    "Answer him," she said.

    "It's a trap," I said without looking up. One of the male patrons laughed.

    "A trap? That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard," said Bridget. "Answer the question."

    I didn't move. She appraised me for a moment.

    "Unless you don't know the answer."

    I looked at my wife for a second and put down my magazine. I looked at Gabriel, who was playing a Nintendo DS game.

    "The United States entered the war in 1941, but it started in Europe earlier, in 1939."

    I picked the magazine back up.

    "When did World War II end?" he asked.

    "1945."

    "I thought that was the Civil War."

    "Nope. The Civil War ended in 1865."

    "When did the Civil War start?"

    "1861, I think."

    Gabriel changed tack.

     "Who were the good guys in World War II?"

    "Lots of countries, but I'll go with the biggies...the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union."

    "Who were the bad guys in World War II?"

    "The Axis - the Germans, the Italians and the Japanese, mainly."

    Gabriel wasn't done, but I could see my wife getting a little antsy.

    "When did it end?
    "1945, roughly."

    "Why did it start?"

    "Lots of reasons, mostly economic. But Hitler lit the fuse by invading Poland."

    He flicked off his DS and sighed.

    "Dad, why was Hitler bad?

    "Gabriel!" Bridget almost shouted. "That's enough. Let your dad read his magazine."

    I scanned the golf tips.

    "I told you it was a trap."

 

    

    

   

    

     

    

Grim Richard Rocks the Vote

    The other day, while dropping off a library book, I noticed the early voting line winding around the library. Naturally, I was intrigued. Longtime readers of this column know that there's nothing I like more than a good, long line. And since there's no Iphone or Harry Potter book coming out in the next couple of months, the early voting line might be my last chance to faire en queue until, say, Black Friday.

    So I decided to get in line, but first I picked up the kids from school. Sure, part of me hopes that they'll learn to enjoy long lines with the same reverence I do, but also I figured it would be nice if my kids had at least one memory of me doing something responsible.

    But as much as I like standing in line to buy stuff, the early voting line almost broke me. When I arrived, the line only ran down one side of our tropical library and was fairly short, maybe 300 feet long. Soon after, though, the computers that checked for voter eligibility went down and turned a 30 minute civics lesson for my kids into something a little more difficult.

    You see, my kids have to the ability to behave for roughly 29 minutes. And sure enough, for exactly that short period of time, my kids amused themselves by collecting rocks at the edge of the parking lot and asking precocious questions about the election process. At about 30 minutes, though, you could see their kidness cracking through the good behavior, like monsters awaking inside ancient terra cotta statues.

    Some of the crowd was getting surly, too.

    "I thought the whole point of early voting," said one middle-aged guy in dress slacks, "is to avoid the long lines on election day. This stinks."

    A lot of people in line agreed. Since early voting started, we've been seeing reporter after reporter detailing the difficulties and long lines for voting in this neck of the woods. Standing in the same place without moving only confirmed the news reports that was something potentially wrong here - that South Florida was screwing up again.

    And as my kids flitted in and out of the line, throwing leaves and arguing over rocks, I started to feel the same way. I started to feel like voting was harder than it was supposed to be. 

    And then I remembered something.

    I stood in two separate lines to buy the last Harry Potter book. I once stood in a mile-long line to get into an event at the San Diego comic convention. I once waited five hours to buy a video game console. In other words, I will stand in line for hours just to get some amazingly stupid shit.

    And I remembered, too, that this is South Florida. There are a hundred Guatemalans within a half mile who traveled a thousand miles to get to the city I live in. That's a pretty long line, too. I bet any one of those people would trade places with me, even if it meant spending two hours in line once every four years.

    Don't believe the media and don't believe the grumpy people in line. Our system is working, even when the voting machines aren't. Our system is working because I can stand in line with kids without worrying about their safety.

    I finally got to vote. And I'm glad my kids did see it. If you're reading this, I hope you vote - no matter who your candidate is, no matter how busy you are. Our kids are watching. And some of them are going to remember that their mom and dad once stood in line for eight hours to buy a Wii, but they couldn't find one extra hour to vote.

.

The Five

    I was driving my son Gabriel to school today and listening to Wilco's song "Hummingbird" when I realized what an amazing song it is. To begin with, it has possibly the best lyrical opening line ever created for a pop song:

    "His goal in life was to be an echo."

    This line is, of course, pure genius - rich, creamy imagery surrounding a satisfying nougat with just the right amount of artsy fartsy. It reminds me of moi, frankly. Especially the nougat.

    The rest of the song is just as good. In fact, when the song got to these words...

    "Remember to remember me

    Standing still in your past

    Floating fast like a hummingbird"

    ...I realized that "Hummingbird" is one of The Five - my personal list of the five best songs ever written. As you might expect, this is not a permanent list. The collection varies, sometimes on whim. There was a dark day this summer, for instance, when "I Kissed a Girl" occupied all five spots. I don't like to talk about that day or my brief struggle with lesbianism.

    As of today, though, The Five are as follows:

    "Hummingbird" by Wilco

    "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" as covered by Israel Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole A.K.A Bruddah Iz

    "My Babe" by Little Walter

    "Love Stinks" by the J. Geils Band

    "Little Tornado" by Aimee Mann

    As you can see, I'm feeling a little "sensitive" right now. BTW, If you've got a list of The Five, let me see 'em. 

Bounce House

    In principle, I like birthday parties. But my wife, honestly, has a celebration problem and she's making it hard for me to enjoy any of party or holiday celebration. Take my son Julian's recent sixth birthday party. 

    Julian duck-duck-goosed his way into pre-pre-pre teendom with 60 guests from his class and neighborhood, two separate SpongeBob birthday cakes and a full range of alcoholic drinks for the parents.

    Also, Julian and his guests enjoyed a full-sized bounce house, one of those inflatable rooms that kids jump around in at carnivals and school fairs. I planned to include it in the list of birthday excesses detailed earlier, until Bridget pointed out that I spent more time bouncing than any of the kids.

    I couldn't help it. It made my stomach feel funny.

    Friends and family know that Bridget's preoccupation with celebrations doesn't stop at birthday parties either. We put up two Christmas trees every year. Bridget picks a theme for one and I pick a theme for the other. This year, for instance, one of the trees (Bridget's) will use Herbie the Dentist and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as metaphors for man's alienation from society. My tree's theme will be, uh, candy canes.

    Bridget's obsession is not just wearing me down. Gabriel's ninth birthday is coming up and Bridget talked with him about the party as we set the table for dinner.

    "So, Gabriel, how many kids are you inviting to your birthday party?"

    Gabriel shrugged. "I don't know, maybe five. I don't have a lot of friends."

    Bridget smiled.

    "Well, honey, you've got a month to make some more friends. Get on it."

    Gabriel looked to me for sympathy, but I couldn't help him. I've seen the party budget that Bridget prepared and there's no way we're gonna be able to justify the bounce house for just five kids.

    

The Pianus

Many thanks to the readers who helped me briefly beat the sales ranking of "Identifying Wood" on Amazon. It was, however, just the first salvo in the war. Today, however, we take a break from the publishing battles and return to my roots - embarrassment by family members:

Our story starts when the Brown family invited our family over to their house for a pool party. Bridget and I looked forward to this. When you're new in town, it's difficult to meet people and make friends. And by "people", I mean neighbors with common interests or goals. As I related in a past column, my kids have already introduced us to local law enforcement, so we're covered on that side of things.    

Anyway, we went over to the Brown family house around 2 p.m. on a sunny Saturday. Our kids jumped immediately into their pool with the Brown kids and began swimming. On the tiled deck next to the pool, Bridget and I jumped into the conversational pool and began treading water with Hank and Anya, the Brown parents.     

Hank and Anya, it turns out, are not only attractive people, they're funny and smart as well. About an hour into our conversation, when their Ipod began playing "Why I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats, I had to stifle the urge to grab Bridget and squeal out loud like a teenage girl, "These people are so totally cool. I hope they like us."  It was only later that things went horribly wrong. And by "things", I'm referring to my four year-old daughter Riley.              

It happened as Anya prepared to serve dinner and called everyone out of the pool. Hank stood in his swimsuit to one side of the breakfast counter. Riley charged around from the other side of the counter, pointed to Hank at about crotch level and said:     

"You have a little penis."

For a moment, I thought I might be mistaken about what Riley had said, so I glanced over to Bridget. The horrified look on her face told me that she had heard the same thing. I also saw 8 year-old Gabriel's face, which looked radiant and full of joy, so I knew he had also heard the same thing.

To make matters worse, Riley had mangled the pronunciation of the word "penis" so that it came out sounding like a horrible combination of "penis" and "anus".

She pronounced it "pi-anus".     

And this is how Hank responded:     

"Uh, what?"     

"You have a little pi-anus," Riley restated helpfully.     

"Uh, what?" Hank re-restated.    

Which was exactly what I would have said in the same situation, except I would have added,"I, uh, just got out of the pool."    

Hank looked at me, confused.

I considered telling Hank the truth - that I regularly let Riley hang out with two of the most scatologically-obsessed people on the planet. These two people - Riley's brothers - spent most of every day teaching her inappropriate words. And even worse, God help me, I had laughed at some of the jokes. Rather than teaching my daughter manners, I had probably been subtly telling her it was okay to talk about someone's pi-anus.

But that's not what I said. No, I was trying to look cool in front of the Browns. For all they knew, I was a responsible parent. I decided to act like one.

"Riley," I said. "We don't talk about people's penises in public. That's unacceptable."

"Your father's right," Bridget echoed.

We felt very parental and very mature until Anya spoke.

"Your minds are in the gutter. Riley didn't say that Hank had a little penis. Riley said Hank had a little piano."

"Uh, what?" I said.

"Riley said that Hank had a little piano," Anya restated. She seemed amused.

I didn't know what to say to Anya. I felt relieved that she had misinterpreted Riley's speech, but her interpretation was ridiculous. It was a humongous stretch of the imagination - until Anya pointed to the other side of breakfast bar.

That's where the Brown family keeps a little, tiny wooden piano.     

Identify This!

    It's done. Last week, my first published book, "The Book of Gabriel" hit Amazon.com and set the Web site on fire.

    Okay. That's an overstatement. It's ranked like 362,762 today.

    I really thought this whole bestselling author thing would be easier. I figured readers might need maybe a week to find my book, an hour to read it and possibly a day or two to start tearfully enjoining their friends to jump on the Grim Richard bandwagon. According to my calculations, I should already be sitting by the pool in a smoking jacket and turning down interviews from Oprah.

    No such luck. And to make matters worse, writing this entry just reminded me that I totally forgot to buy a bandwagon. How are people going to jump on the Grim Richard bandwagon, when I don't even have one?

    This bestselling author thing is tougher than I thought.

    I can take it. After all, I'm an unknown author who wrote a book smart-ass book of advice for his son - A smart-ass book that includes stories about growing up in nudist camp and babies with rotisserie heads. There's a reason why I kept getting rejection letters that said, "I love this book, but I have no idea how I'd sell it."

    But here's what hurts. You want to know what book is currently perched at number 71,634 on Amazon.com's book list? It's a hardcover book called "Identifying Wood: Accurate Results with Simple Tools ". As you might expect, it's a book about looking at wood grain and identifying which species of tree it comes from.

    I'm being outsold by a book on wood.  That really puts things into perspective. And I really, really hate perspective.

    I don't care about the smoking jacket and Oprah anymore. I don't care about being a bestselling author. I just want the "The Book of Gabriel" to outsell a book about wood. That's my lofty goal. I'll let you know how it goes.

    I only have one problem so far. I truly, deeply and devoutly want to buy "Identifying Wood" just to say I have a book about wood identification. The only thing stopping me from giving it the quick click purchase on Amazon?

    I'm saving up for a bandwagon. They're outselling my book, too.

                                                                                                                                                                 

    

    

The Bathroom Tourists

My sons are bathroom tourists.

Anytime we go to a restaurant - and we go to a lot of restaurants - both boys find some excuse to visit the bathroom.
Several times.

This would be less irritating if I had no plan to, say, eat at these restaurants. Unfortunately, I usually wait until I'm hungry to visit a restaurant and eating is pretty much the foremost thing on my mind. I might even go alone, but society pretty much demands that I feed my family, too.
Damn society.

Instead, like most parents of young children, I spend only 25% of my time at restaurants actually eating. Another 50% is spent repeatedly visiting the bathroom. The final 25% is spent yelling.

"No. You cannot go to the bathroom. I don't care if your bladder swells to twice its usual size and then explodes; you are not going to the bathroom again."

And then I usually take them to the bathroom again because I see fellow diners are dialing 911.

I know why my sons like going to the bathroom. It's those frickin' paper towel dispensers with the laser-activated mechanisms. My kids enjoy washing their hands and then waving them like a wand under the dispensers until the box magically rolls out a sheet of gritty paper.

I get that. I really do. I myself frequent exactly one movie theater in Florida and I do it for one reason only - the theater has the new Dyson Air Blade machines that actually squeegee your hands with air. Sometimes, I lose complete interest in the movie and spend most of my time in the bathroom. Sometimes, I'm forced to stand in a line of like-minded guys, each one tearing himself away from the Dyson with an embarrassed laugh.

I swear to you right now that I will have one of those Dyson Air Blades in my home - right next to the immensely practical urinal I'm planning to install.

Occasionally, I don't mind the frequent trips with my kids to the bathroom. My favorite trip so far was to an older diner attached to a drug store. We visited the bathroom, and after the boys finished their business, 5 year-old Julian walked expectantly to the paper towel dispenser and waved his hand under it.

When nothing happened, he waved his hand again. Still nothing. 9 year-old Gabriel took a swipe, apparently under the impression that Julian had waved his hand incorrectly.

I reached over and pulled down on the black old-style lever on the side of the brushed metal dispenser. One sheet advanced and my sons' mouths fell open.

They liked even better than the lasers.