Happy Pulaski Day! A Day in the life of a nearly 10 year old boy

[My Attorney] went to Delaware this week for a patent trial in which a lot of people grumble and kvetch about who owns the intellectual rights to the number 7. So I’m left at home with the monkeys.

Girl monkey tells me she doesn’t have school Monday. I ask why. She declares: It’s Pulaski day!

Boy Monkey chimes in “Oh yeah, we don’t have school either--happy Pulaski Day!”

My kids go to different schools. Monkeyboy goes to a Catholic school and girlmonkey goes to a public school. They’re both geniuses and their state-manded ISAT scores pretty much lend measurable evidence to the idea that they’re smarter than me. This is a concept they exploit mercilessly and they’ve come to accept it as fact. So they assume any idea they have for putting one over on me is a perfect idea since by context it will exceed my stated level of understanding. I firmly believe that they sometimes think that when they talk in my presence I think they’re speaking a different language. Their arrogance is unfathomable.

And dead on. When Monkeyboy said he had Pulaski day off, I didn’t even blink I just thought 'great, I can sleep in'.

His school wakes me up at 8:45.

“We’re just calling about Connor’s absence.”

“That little bastard.”

“Pardon me?”

“He told me it was Pulaski day.”

“That’s not a Catholic Holiday.”

“I’m going to kill him.”

“So he won’t be coming in?”

“Oh, he’ll be there.” [evil music rises . . .]

When I want to, I have a voice like a cannon. I reserve this voice for unsolicited calls from mortgage resellers and republicans. I used vox artilleria to wake up Connor by loudly wishing him HAPPY PULASKI DAY! He leaped straight out of the covers and landed feet first in an excuse.

“I said I thought we had Pulaski Day Off!”

I hadn’t done laundry—Pulaski day, right?—so the only gym pants he had were a pair discarded by his sister. They were too big and sagged around his ankles like he was wearing swanky potato sacks. I almost made him walk but I honestly believe it’s so cold outside his brain might explode like an ice-decavitated Pepsi can.

Later: at school, he and his friend-who-just-happens-to-be-a-girl whom shall never be referred to as a girlfriend, __ __ __ __ ___ __ __, have a knock down drag out over which dog is most popular, Border Collies (ours) or bulldogs, (hers). Pretty soon they have the room divided and at each other's throats like one of those weird psyche experiments from the 60s and he and __ __ __ __ ___ __ __, his friend-who-just-happens-to-be-a-girl, aren’t speaking. Which is ok because, ‘dude, she’s a girl.’

Later: To fulfill a promise, I take them to dinner at Gino’s East where you can write on the walls. I heard they serve pizza but scribbling on the bench is the principle attraction. I stop by Walgreen’s and bone up with sharpies and gel pens and we get a booth and start drawing on everything in sight. The simians disappear into the Gothic depths and I busy myself with some intricate graffiti. The male child comes back with the satisfied swagger of a dictionary-loving preteen who’s managed to write a word on the wall so vulgar and satanic a nun would drop dead after one syllable. He also sports a dumbass badge of truly classic stature: he’s used the brown sharpie to draw a mustache on himself.

A. Sharp. Eee.

I crack up and he tries to shrug it off but I catch him trying to read the fine print on the marker later on.

“Dude, are you aware you have a mustache?”

“Yeah!”

“Are you aware that a sharpie is a permanent marker?”

“Yeah, uh, what?”

“You’re going to have that mustache for three weeks.”

“I can get it off.”

"How?"

"Spit."

“Jesus Hapolid Christ. Why’d you draw a mustache on yourself.”

“I didn’t—Sarah did.”

“Well—why—what--how" the kids know when I’m about to 'splode. He cuts me off.

“Dude, I let her.”

“Why?!”

“Because she bet me I wouldn’t do it! Duh!”

Later: we get home and the Roon is declaring himself bored and I’m writing and I keep hearing this clickity clickity sound.

Let me admit here and now that I have an affliction. I can’t handle little clicky sounds when I’m trying to work. I fully understand that this makes me a whacked out freak hell-bent on one day driving a car with little plastic airplanes superglued all over the top. I understand that. But. The. Clicking. Has. To. Stop.

After the fourth snarling imprecation for him to CEASE! I turn around and give him the hairy eyeball. I hold out my hand and tersely demand that he give up whatever he’s picking his teeth with. I’m expecting a toothpick or a crayon or something marginally believable but instead he hands me a tooth. A fnarcking tooth! He lost it yesterday and I had him put it in a little bowl in the china cabinet and here he is sitting on the sofa driving me crazy by PICKING HIS TEETH WITH A TOOTH!

Little freak.