The Joy of Shopping!

I took the boy child shopping today at the urging of [My Attorney] who saw there was a sale at Kohl's and insisted we go buy snow boots.

I don't hate shopping but I manshop which means I go in alone, unaided, unprotected, a solitary soldier with an objective and a deadline. I learned long ago that I have no real style so I stick with the classics and never deviate: white shirts, black or khaki pants, no prints, no visible branding, no logos. I know my size and I know where to go and I shop during the day when the pros are at work.

[My Attorney] can close her eyes and visualize any shirt as it would appear on the kids. It's her super power. If she were on Heroes she's defeat Silar by fitting him for winterwear for three hours until he caved and begged for mercy. She can buy a suit off the rack and it will fit me like it was tailored in Shanghai. She's like the terminator--only for clothes.

I am not. I had the actual boy with me today who actually tried on the clothes and stood in front of me wearing the actual shirt and we looked at each other and couldn't figure out if it fit or not.

"Is it too big?"

"I don't know."

"Is it too small?"

"Um, uh"

"Is it a small or a medium?"

"What?"

And the boy isn't exactly in it to win it. Here we are willing to drop a deuce on duds and he steps off the escalator, surveys the second floor and says "Everything here is gay."

Being that I end up in the stores with the moms most of the time, I have learned by carefully concealed observation how to find the stuff that appears to not be in stock. I've learned there is no such thing as sold out, that with enough arms-crossed-lethal-glare ground holding, one can make a befuddled stocking clerk hang by his nails in the rafters to look on top of the office roof and find a discarded pair of Totes Snowcaps size 8 that somehow got left there last winter and are now 80% off. I can do this.

Take today: Your average dad would take a quick look at the boxes stacked underneath the boots we wanted, see that they are all 9s and 11s and walk away satisfied that they don't stock 8s. I, however, am married to SHOPZILLA and, like a Spartan, I either come back with my sale item or draped across it, dead from multiple stab wounds. So I removed the entire wall of 9s and 11s, re-stacked them along the aisle, and lo, there in the back, were 8s and 14s. As soon as I had the pair I wanted, a herd of mothers spontaneously assembled behind me and bought everything I'd uncovered.

Using her super ninja shopzilla armor piercing sale-radar, [My Attorney] realized I had the boots in hand but was walking out before looking at shirts and pants so she called me and ordered me to drag the boy child through the shirts until something stuck.

We walked around the corner and he reminded me that 'everything here is gay' and I reminded him that people who say everything is gay are gay and he said I was working off some kind of repression and I mentally threw him down the up escalator. Physically, I made him try on mauve colored sweater vests until he realized I was just messing with him. Still, not one t-shirt made the bill excepting the "Chuck Norris" shirt which was too small. Everything else? Gay. He walked out with a belt buckle and a belt and a knit hat and a dapper gray button up.

In the parking lot, it was already snowing. The boy had elected not to put on his jacket because it was simply too much work. Now a mom would've busted his chops and made him suit up. But a dad is born with a sink-or-swim mentality that won't let us do that. I asked him once, he said no, I said fine. On the way in, it was still light out and he managed to just make it into the store before he shivered. But when we left? Black as night, falling snow, slight breeze and I had the keys. I made that trip across the parking lot in baby steps, talked on the phone, dropped my keys, asked him if he left his coat in the store. By the time I squelched the doors, he was blue and shivering.

"You cold?"

"Nope."

"People who say nope are gay."

"Shut up, dad."

"People who are cold are gay."

"SHUT UP!"

"People who say shut up are gay."

"Shut Up!"

"See."

Showering with zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Somebody's son, I'm not saying who, but somebody's gigantic, sasquatchian teen, fell asleep on the toilet today and revealed some unusual ablution habits.

He runs the shower while he's pinching a loaf. When he fell asleep, he ran out of hot water. So he turned off the hot water, but continued to run the cold water because "it makes the hot water heat up faster."

This kid gets good grades in science. He reads a lot. He . . . look, I don't know what to say. Kids get weird ideas. Maybe it's because he's a vegetarian. I don't know. But I'm knocking every ten seconds to make sure he's awake . . .

The All In Kid Strikes Again

I was reeling from the funk of old tennis shoes and [OH MY GOD] recently, in my tiny car, driving the boy and his stinkmates home from a movie when my mind tried to alleviate my distress by playing old home movies in my head from back in the day. Particularly, of when I taught the boy poker.

I know what you're saying: "Jesus, Garlington, first you become the designated porn hub of your street, then you let him drink beer, and now you're teaching him how to gamble? We're calling the cops!" But it's not like I handed him a credit card and pointed him to Poker Sites U.S.A.

No, I just decided it was a healthy way to teach him math and cunning. What I didn't realize is the sheer insane glee with which he gambles. It's like he's Richy Rich's dark twin let loose in Vegas or plopped down in front of Online Casinos for USA Players with a bag of digital greenbacks (which is one of the Best US Poker Sites I've ever lost a hundred bucks on . . .)

I showed him the basics and we ran through a couple of games. He was mildly interested. Mostly because I'd shut down the cable feed. After I figured he had a grip on your basic five card game, I introduced him to betting and watched in horror as he morphed from a cute kid playing poker to a full grown man in a double breasted leopard print sharkskin suit throwing money at me, screaming HERE'S FIVE BUCKS, BUY YOURSELF SOMETHING NICE!

It took a couple of rounds before he really understood we were playing for real money.

Roon: Wait, you mean if I win this hand I get to keep the money?

Dad: Yep.

Roon: And you won't say anything? I mean, I don't have to mow the lawn for this, right?

Dad: Shit.

Three hands later, the kid's rainmanned me out of ten bucks. I get a hand that makes my knees weak, a flush of such staggering rarity I kick myself for not being at the "fishcamp" poker cabin. I go all in.

Roon: What the hell is that?

Dad: I'm betting everything I have on my hand. You match my bet.

Roon: What if I can't match it?

Dad: You have to bet everything you have.

He matches my bet and loses gracefully. I drag the pot over and deal another hand. He looks at his cards and on his bet he says "All in." The next three hands he goes all in. Every hand after that, he goes all in. Every bet, every time, he's all in.  By the end of the afternoon, he's smoking a cheroot and I'm drinking straight Rye whisky from the bottle.

You know those signs for casinos that have a tagline at the bottom in print so small amoebas go blind trying to read it, saying If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call 800-blah-blah-blah? I called them.

 

800: Do you have a gambling problem?

Me: My son just took me for everything I had.

800: Has your son's gambling affected his job or friendships?

Me: Well, I don't like him anymore.

800: Has he asked you for money in the last 30 days?

Me: Every day.

800: Oh dear. And how old is your son?

Me: Ten.

800: . . .

Me: And a half. Here's the thing, I can't seem to explain to him that "all in" is a rare gambit.

800: We're here to help gambling problems—

Me: It is a problem. How's this kid gonna play two games in a row if he's all in every hand.

800: Every hand?

Me: Every bet.

800: And . . .

Me: Cleaned me out.

800: I can't believe it works.

Me: Wanna bet?

800: [click].

Hello, I'll be your lunch mom today.

Wednesdays are lunch mom days.  I stand scowling in front of 21 highly articulate, devious, well-heeled know-it-alls and try to prevent them from destroying their classroom in the 19 minutes we dedicate to peanut butter and jelly mayhem.

I debated how to play these half hour displays of volunteerism. I thought maybe I'd be the cool dad who only steps in when the flames are creeping toward the fetal pig storage bins; I thought maybe I'd be the funny dad who tells hilarious stories and knock-knock jokes hat are just on the verge of inappropriate, just enough to make them think you think they're thinking; I thought maybe I'd be the wise, erudite elder, sitting buddha like at the front of the class dispensing brilliant bon mots, changing lives. But I'm not any of those.

I'm exactly the same guy  I am at home when the boy's asked me for the mac like the four hundred and sixty-seventh time and I lose my self control and embed it in his forehead like a crushed keg tossed off by Andre the Giant.  I'm . . . cranky.

This bothers me a little as I wonder where it comes from. I have, in the past, been the child dazzler. I was famous among four year olds in my previous career as a middle manager at a cavernous bookstore where I did the Friday night storytime. Seriously--it was standing room only. And I have had to swerve off the side of the road while carting scouts home from camp because I made them laugh so hard they were about to ruin my upholstery. I can make kids laugh. I can entertain. I could be the Chris Rock of lunchroom moms. But I'm not.

I'm the guy in the picture up there. Why? I think it's Wednesdays. I'm the Wednesday lunch mom. Wednesdays are hump day from way back and by 11:30 on Wednesdays I've had just enough time after dropping off Dr. Whines N. Ces'antly at school, to grab a shower, finish my coffee and get into a project just enough to develp a little wind which I then have to let out of my sails so I can go play sheep herder for the sixth grade.

When I get back, I have to start all over. I have to get the coffee, re-open the project, and worse, somehow wrestle my original train of thought back into submission so I can get it down on paper and get paid.

So being a lunchmom, precious and altruistic as it is, wrecks my day. I don't know how people with real jobs do it. I saw one mom furiously texting on her blackberry because she's in the middle of a big real estate deal (probably the only person in the United States who is in the middle of a real estate deal) and had to break off the meeting to come utter such prestigious chestnuts as "Do NOT chase the ball into the street!" and "Please do not throw candy through the open window of the first grade, McCorski!" Tell me a 1.9 million dollar contract can compete with that.

Rapping Rhapsodic on Bohemian Rhapsody with my Bonne Homme

Roon switched schools this week, moving from a parochial school to public, thereby losing his uniform, meaning I had to buy him new clothes.

I thought it was telling that when we went to the store, he didn't care about what pants we bought as long as they were jeans. But he took a long time to pick out three t-shirts. See if you can detect a theme here. The shirts displayed the following pop memes: The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd. He topped them off with an AC/DC cap.

I have to say he's starting off well in his musical snobbery. Those are all good bands and he really does listen to them. He recently started paying attention to my iTunes and put together a playlist labeled "Good Music" (to distinguish it from the baffling crap I usually listen to). I pulled some songs off of it to make him a morning mix tape. Check it out:

1. "Mr. Blue Sky," by Electric Light Orchestra


2. "Park & Beans," by Weezer


3. "Bohemian Rhapsody," by Queen


4. "Dracula from Houston," by the Butthole Surfers


5. "Storm in a Teacup," by the Red Hot Chili Peppers


6. "Science Fiction Double Feature," punked out by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes


7. "Death of a Martian," by Red Hot Chili Peppers


8. "Black Times Bad Times," by Led Zeppelin


9. "More Than a Feeling," by Boston

At first I thought this was a further extension of his newfound rock snobbery but I realized it wasn't really about the music so much as it was about self definition. Roon wanted to define himself to his new school as a rocker, and he wanted to establish his musical taste right off the bat not to lord his 1970s playlist cred over anyone else, but to let them know where his head is at.

This may seem like over intellectualizing t-shirts but it's a completely valid effort on his part to adopt a new uniform: the cobbled-together non-uniform of the Boheme. I don't know how much of that need to define himself played into his decision to switch schools, but it mattered a lot that on his first day in the cradle of public knowledge he was representing Pink Floyd, a band he equates with stellar musicianship, individuality, and intellectualism.

Pink Floyd is his second choice, however, after Queen. If he'd had a Queen shirt, he'd probably never take it off, hoping that their operatic falsetto rock cred would somehow seep into his skin along with dirt, taco sauce, and diet coke stains.

His transition to public school marks a loss for me in one regard--quality time.

I get to spend a lot of time with my spawn because I work at home. But driving them to school has always been important to me because for the eight minutes we had together in the car, remarkable conversations would occur.

The other day we rocked to school under the auspicious and noble refrains of Bohemian Rhapsody, singing at top volume, until Roon killed the song to ask questions about it, to talk about complex rock & roll, Freddy Mercury, gay rock stars, and the song itself.

It's easy to think that the tent-pole conversations are what matters--the sex talk, the dope talk, the Bischon Frieze talk. But I don't buy it. I think it's the sum total of all these little seemingly inconsequential talks--the argument about what 'scaramouch' actually means--that ultimately make up a longer, broader, and permanent body of discussion in the mind of our children that transmits the concepts we truly believe. It teaches them our real philosophy and assists them in building their own.

Now that my daughter is gone so much, I hardly ever get to talk to her except to ask her to please stop singing in the shower at midnight. We quip in passing and she's obviously witty as hell and, like her mom, [My Attorney], a brain on legs. But I don't get much conversation time.

Now that Roon will be walking to school I'm losing face time with him as well. Of course, he'll be walking in the door every day at 3:30 demanding food. It's not like I won't see him. But there's something about the drive time. All you have is driving and talking. At home there's laundry, living room, lunch, dishes, dog walking, laundry, homework, house cleaning, laundry and sometimes laundry. I won't have that brief break where I have nothing to do but drive, that time when we talk about those things that matter. Like gay rock stars.

Thankstaking Day

It's my fault. Mine and [My Attorney]'s. We had to go see Rah at Doctor Funacular's

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="283" caption="Music is my life, man."][/caption]

University for Advanced Sneering and Home for Wayward Girls in North Carolina. Like all highly intelligent people, we tried to buy plane tickets the day before we left—you know, the day before Thanksgiving—when the tickets were the cost of a small house in Chicago made entirely of Adamantium. Instead, we drove.

I drove.

And drove. And drove. And. . .where the hell is North Carolina anyway?  I visited every state that seceded and still couldn't find it. Only after we'd gotten a speeding ticket and paid bridge tolls exceeding the GNP of Bolivia did we finally enter the magical world of North Carolina.

As a former Alabamian, I am reluctant to cast aspirations on those with the good sense to be born in the south, but seriously, everyone in North Carolina, West Virginia, and Kentucky, allow me to introduce you to the Garlingtonian Theory of  Motion: The Faster You Go, the Sooner I Get There!

I attempted to explain this to West Virginia but they couldn't hear me over the sound of their state trooper writing me a ticket for going 14 miles an hour over the speed limit. Kudos to Officer Glare for only writing 69 on the ticket, thus avoiding a mountain of paper work and putting me in jail with all the people who stopped at any rest stop within 50 miles of Point Pleasant while displaying the egregious audacity of declining their expensive handcrafted native Mothman DVDs.

It only took us 342 hours of tailgating to get there and back. Had a wonderful time. More on that later. We arrived back in Chicago to find our son, Squatch, had decided to make a controversial decision to turn our house into a participatory exhibit on the cave-keeping habits of unmarried neanderthals.

We were careful to let him know he was being left at home at the tender age of 14 because he had proven his remarkable maturity in the past. We should have been more specific about a few things. The house was  . . . Askew? Tilted? Pukey? Phlegmatic? Words fail me.

But bulleted lists do not:

• Feed the dogs




• Every. Day.




• When we say feed the dogs, we mean the cat too.




• But not on the stairs and maybe throw the cans away. And the lids. Oh my God I just threw up.




• Let the dogs out to pee.




• Every. Day.




• Check the cat sand.




• But remember to leave the door to the bathroom open or the cat will relieve himself on my favorite—JESUS OH MY GOD!




• If the dogs pee in the house, please clean it up.




• As soon as you see i—  At least the same d— Before we get h—Sweet Jesus!




• Please go to school.




• Every. Day.




• Eat the food we left for you.




• A little at a time. Not all in the first hour.




• Here's $100 for emergencies.




• Call of Duty Three is not an emergency.

I Love You, Stinky Oversleeping Teen Sasquatch!

He overslept again. Then he over-showered. I knocked on the door. I yelled. He missed first period.

So I'm pulling up to the school and there's a bunch of kids sitting on the gym steps and he opens the door to get out. I tell him I love him. He slams the door shut.

"Dad, shut up."

"Oh no—are you embarrassed?"

"Look, man. That was funny in grade school but I'm in high school now."

"Who's your favorite possum?"

"Dad, seriously."

"I loooooove you."

"Dad, I will beat you up. You know I can."

He cracks the door a little, then cuts a look. I think, he was daring me. I decided to be the bigger man and I let him go.

I'm Giving My Son Eyes in the Back of His Ass

I'm taking Roon to the plastic surgeon and get him eyes in the back of his ass.

The kid will sit on anything. He sits on the remote, on game controllers, on entire stacks of folded laundry, on my laptop--if it's on the ottoman even for a second there's a near certainty it will end up as a permanent imprint on his dimpled butt. Like a rebus of uh-oh.

I'm particularly upset about him sitting on the phone since they all look alike and I'm running low on Lysol.

Thinking about this makes me wonder what other specializations might be worthy of parental plastic surgery fantasies . . .

A nose in back. Faster fart detection.

Extra wide nostrils. Better booger access.

Night vision. So they can sleep with the lights off.

Prehensile probyscis. So they can hoarf their food and play video games simultaneously.

Eyes in the back of their ass. So they can see things before they sit on them.

Gay is the New Dude

An unscientific poll of grade school boys in northwest Chicago shows a disturbing trend toward a new epithet that is entirely inappropriate: instead of 'stupid', they say 'gay'.

For instance: when my father would play me, say, a Roger Miller song when I was ten, I'd say "Dad, that song is stupid." Today, when I play, say, King Crimson, Roon says "Dad, that song is gay."

Where the hell do they get this language? Who says stuff like that? I mean using an entire subculture's sexual proclivity as an epithet is totally gay.

Oh.

Ok, so they get it from, um, us.  Surely they didn't make up the word and surely they didn't decide to use it as an interlocutory substitute for "unacceptable" without a little modeling. (And by modeling I mean behavioral modeling, not runways.) I know you think I'm talking about parents but I'm not. I'm talking about comedians.

Every single comedian doing a gay impersonation drops the prancing fey bomb and impersonates the very same gay guy from 1987 who idolized Kate Bush and wore his button down shirts like halter tops. We all know that guy didn't rep the gay community even then, but today it's so far off the mark it's like thinking Amos & Andy are hip.

Today's gay is indistinguishable from today's not so gay. They have earned their place in the status quo by becoming so typical and every-day that there's not even any drama in coming out anymore. I expect parents will be throwing coming out parties with the same indifference as sweet sixteens. And as much as I'd like to follow my comedic instincts and make a Cotillion joke, I just can't. Not because it's not politically correct, but because it's just not funny. Why? Because gay is boring. Big yawn.

But the poofy queen has become such a stock character in sitcoms and stand-up that comedians just can't give it up. They keep swishing across the stage in a parody of a person that hardly exists anymore and truthfully, I wonder if the slang logic of ten year-olds is picking up on this.

When they say 'gay' they actually mean 'boring' or 'stupid' and so in that respect, they're dead on. Maybe this isn't indicative of intolerance but of sophisticated linguistic theory at work. Maybe they're all micro Chomskyites and we're really behind the language curve here, like finding out phat means awesome, a linguistic shift that has a perfectly intact logic but didn't trickle down to the elders until it was already passe.

I distrust political correctness, but I insist on linguistic integrity and I'm leaning toward an appreciation for the 'gay' epithet coming from these tiny Stevie Pinkers. The big swishy gay is as dead as E. Aaron Presley and impersonating either of them is as lame as the current GOP. It is, in a word, stupid. Kids know this instinctively and they're language reflects it. To think otherwise is to promote a belief that children are not sophisticated users of language, and that's, in a word, gay.

The Long Con

Sasquatch: Dad, can I have $20?

Dad: I gave you money this morning.

Squatch: Dad, that was yesterday.

Dad: Oh. Yeah. Wow. Summer, right?

Squatch: It's cool. You've been working a lot.

Dad: Yeah, thanks. . .wait a minute.

Squatch: Working on . . . on getting old.

Dad: Gimme a second (dials mom).

[My Attorney] What?

Squatch: EVERYTHING HE SAYS IS A LIE!

Dad: never mind (click).

Squatch: Ten bucks for trying?

Dad: Seriously?

Squatch: Five for bravery?

Dad: You've got balls, kid (hands him a fiver).

Squatch opens his wallet to put in the five bucks–it's full of money.

Dad: What the hell?!

Squatch: What?

Dad: How much money is that?

Squatch: A buck twenty.

Dad: WHY ARE YOU HITTING ME UP FOR CASH?

Squatch: I need it for lunch!

Dad: [cursing]

Squatch: Dad, I'm not spending MY money on food.

Dad: [cursing]

Squatch: I mean, you guys are my providers, right?

Dad: What the hell am I going to eat?

Squatch: (pulls a 20 out of his billfold) Here, buy yourself something nice.

Dad: [explodes]

That little ^%$#%#$%!

He got me:

Son: Dad, did you see that evil clown that hides from ugly people?

Me: No . . .

Son: [Grin.]

Dad: [Facepalm.]

High Performance Parenting: The Hairy Eyeball

In this episode, we learn how to apply the time honored heavy artillery of fatherhood: the stare, the look, the dadface. Also known as, the Hairy Eyeball.

Last night, the kid ratcheted his online kill ratio up into the stratosphere right up to the legally agreed-upon bed time. I had checked his grades online and they had improved, but I'd had a long day and  didn't check his assignments. Apparently, neither did he.

As he was going to bed last night he says this to me:

Kid: Dad, can you wake me up at 7:30 tomorrow?

Dad: So you can go online? I don't think so.

Kid: No, no. It's just, I hate rushing in the morning, you know, I hate just jumping into the shower then running out to school. I want a little time just to hang. With you.

Dad: Oh, progeny! Oh, wondrous offspring! Oh, son of mine, thy wisdom knows no bounds! The sun, it doth radiate from thy nether orifi! (Or something like that.)

This morning, after staying up all night making sure the girl was doing her sleep therapy, I hauled my noble carcass out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7:30, as requested by the boy. He shuts his door and I go make tea and I'm thinking, oh well, at least he's interested in something.

I open his door to tell him he's running out of shower time and instead of the harsh staccato of gunfire and the horrified screams the digital dead and dying, I get total silence. I peek around the door and there he is, bathed in the radium glow of his open laptop, writing a report. That little .  .  .

Dad: Is that homework?

Kid: [unintelligible]

Dad: It better not be.

Kid: Come on, dad! This is the first time this semester I didn't do my homework.

Dad: So what? That doesn't make it right.

Kid: Alright!

So I go do my thing. He runs up the stairs a few minutes later.

Kid: Dad, print this right now!

I open the document, a book report, and start reading. Usually, five sentences into one of his reports, my teeth are ground down to nubs from the frustration and tedium of capitalizing names, respelling simple words, and changing there to they're. But the time it starts out like this:

“The executioner works on Tuesdays.”

The first page sets the mood for this haunting work of historical fiction, which is based on the life of Helmuth Guddat Hubner, a member of the Hitler Youth and the title character of THE BOY WHO DARED. Susan Campbell Bartoletti has taken one episode from her Newberry Honor Book, HITLER YOUTH, and fleshed it out into a thought-provoking novel.

Wow! The kid's getting good! He's even got thought-provoking hyphenated. I scroll down, waiting for the telltale squiggly crimson underlines, but they're not there. Instead, I'm reading perfectly spelled gems like this:

Life is not easy for his family or for the German people after losing the Great War (World War I). At school Helmuth learns how the Treaty of Versailles—the peace agreement that ended the Great War in 1918—has forced Germans to make costly reparations, which have led to unemployment, poverty and inflation. Even more, the treaty has caused shame and humiliation to the once proud and cultured German people, who gave the world Brahms, Beethoven and Bach.

Holy awesome, batman! This kid's got some chops! I keep reading.

After seeing a classmate scorned and beaten up for being Jewish, and later watching a Jewish neighbor who served nobly in the Great War get hauled off by Nazi stormtroopers, Helmuth becomes disillusioned and vows to take action. But can one teenage boy stand up against the Nazis? If so, how and at what risk?

    THE BOY WHO DARED is a story about having the courage to act upon one’s beliefs, no matter one’s age or the risks and consequences involved. Bartoletti’s use of flashbacks builds the suspense, and her inclusion of numerous photos, along with a Third Reich timeline, complement the experience of reading this memorable novel.

Jesus Hat-trick Christ! I'm beaming. This is my "That's my boy!" moment! I finally got . . . I . . . wait a minute. He not only used Chicago Manual of Style ALL CAPS for the title of the book in the body of the story; he not only used disillusionment; he used complement. With an E. Correctly! Crap, even my English professor got that one wrong sometimes.

Dammit.



It is at this point that I swivel slowly around in my desk chair, gaze into his highly suspicious face, and apply, generously, the hairy eyeball.

Dad: What's disillusion mean?

Kid: I don't know, hurry up!

Dad: Spell complement.

Kid: Duh, C-O-M-P-L-I-M-E-N-T

Dad: No, the other one.

Kid: Huh?

Dad: Did you write this paper?

Kid: Dad!

Dad: Did you?

Kid: [floor stare of shame; hardly speaking] No.

Dad: Did you read this book?

Kid: [Staring a shame-hole through the floor, hoping to escape; barely audible] No.

Dad: [furiously restraining a torrent of invectives. Voice full of malicious disappointment. Eyeball full of hair.] Get back down there and write a report on a book you've actually read.

He slinks down the stairs. I call the school to report him Tardy—only his second tardy of the semester—and go about my biz.

He comes back forty minutes later and turns in the following, which I present unabridged:

It all strarts when annamarie and ellen are racing home from school. Two men stop them. They are nazi soldiers. (this takes place during world war 2 in which nazi soldiers were targeting jews). Luckily they get away even though ellen is a jew.

That's my boy.

Sperm Wail

Today I walked out onto the Mother Theresa tarmac to retrieve Boy and saw him from all the way across the lot, beaming at me, loaded with promise. What a moment. I mean, he's like a little Kennedy doll and he's picked me out, made eye-contact, from like 50 yards and I know he's just bursting with pride. It's like he's barely containing a nuclear bomb of pride and I'm so glad. I could use it.

I had a bad day. My mac deep-sixed at THE VERY MOMENT I WAS UPLOADING A CLIENT'S FINISHED WEBSITE. I mean like as my finger hovered over the return key, as the space between the fingerprints and the Baleek china surface of the mac grew increasingly smaller until I could practically feel the nano indentation of the word "enter," the screen froze and my mac died it's third and least noble death.

Also, I absorbed the brunt of the snot gargling this week and received my dubious infection like a church wafer, spending most of yesterday lying in bed watching Top Chef re-reruns and wondering if I had the temerity to stand erect in the shower long enough to shave (I didn't). I actually went to the store in my "cold clothes"--cut-off -jersey-raggy-old-shorts that look like I cleaned a crime scene in them with a matching t-shirt complete with an espresso-tinged ellipses running down my front like some weird t-shirt semaphore, a semiotic self-referential version of "I'm with stupid," the kind of high-end hyper-intelligent garb Umberto Eco would wear to a micro-brew ten-pin bowling alley old-school martini joint.

And my guitar was out of tune.

And my headlight went out.

And did I mention my Mac had crashed? I mean, I had just spent something like 8 hours crunching through a Flash site from scratch, turning it into a beeeautiful work of art that screamed through transitions and just looked gorgeous--for free. And can't. Show. It to any. Body.

And I got bad customer service from the Mac store. This is what kills me. The MAC store, my place of worship, Middle Managemented me. I know the face, I've worked retail. I know when I've hit the customer service terminal wall.

So walking across the hot sticky tar (90 degrees in Sept!) and seeing my son broadcasting a radiant ear-to-ear and knowing that he's at this top-shelf school and knowing that he's finally working at the level he deserves, I'm thinking he's going to say something like:

• Father, dear, you were right! The Brothers Karamozov really is incredible!


• Wow; the similarities between Latin and English are stunning. Did you know . . .
  or even


• I owned pre-calc today!

Because your kid, smiling, smart, achieving, can blow the bad day away. That genuine enthusiasm, the kind of all-in yeah-baby crash-the-car bravado that only kids can provide, can clear it all out like a firehose. Reset. Do over.

And that's what I wanted. And just like any good Wuthering Heights remake, I loped in slomo across the blacktop to my prideful, beside-himself with accomplishment, scion of 5th grade intelligentsia, fruit of my loins, heir to my . . . fortune; mini me, my boy who drops in beside me and says:

Dude, today we totally talked about sperm!"

Death By Children's All Inclusive Back to School Sale and End of Summer Halo 3 Body Count

I'm bleary eyed and woggly because it's the last week before school and my kids are attempting to induce sleep deprivation psychosis because, apparently, there's some kind of unspoken contest to see who's groggiest on the first day of school.

The young hommes d'G has been on a three day killing spree on Halo 3, Army of 2, and Call of Duty and is going to walk away from summer with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and a pack of Lucky's rolled up in his shirt sleeve.

The girl child remains obsessed with her monosyllabic post-midnight-calling flop-haired paramour to the exclusion of everything else including sunlight and food. She has to annotate Into the Wild, the hippy bush death manifesto, by Tuesday and I'm relentless and cruel in my efforts to keep her focussed.

The niece is about to finally abandon us for Portland, Hippy Mecca, the Haight Ashbury of the 21st century, leaving me defenseless and alone before the drooling horde of drowsy, unwashed, wrinkled, laze narcotized, couch dwelling summertards my children have become.

I have had to go downstairs every night and threaten my hideous spawn with torture and maiming to get them into bed using what I believe is the sane argument of pointing to the clock where it is plainly after 2 am, well past the allowable period of microwaving popcorn, playing Halo, and watching the "Mysterious Ticking Noise" YouTube video three hundred and seventy four times without headphones.

It would be one thing if I came downstairs to find them studying Latin or using a ouija board or engaging the ring valve on the flux capacitor or something useful, something that shows their mind is vibrant and spinning in its gambols but no, I come down and they are pasted into the back of the couch, eyes wide and glazed, face bathed in a gray light from the computer, from the TV, from the video game, mouth partially open, like grandma after three days at the slots.

And I'm not much better. I usually reserve the summer for drooling and watching tv and then maybe drooling but I put a bid on a fun job and I won so I've been working all the time and not paying attention unless I smell fire or hear sirens. I walked into the living room today and realized the boy child hadn't bathed in . . . well, I actually can't remember which is bad since he will only take a bath after I'm literally holding his Xbox out the window so I should recall his last ablution. I did notice the dog stopped sleeping with him.

What I'm saying is I can't wait for school to start so I can have my routine back, so I can have a house where the walls don't ring from ordinance and if the phone rings at midnight it means somebody got hit by a truck and breakfast is at 6:30, not 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I want my life back. I want peace and quiet. I want normal again. Thank God for school.

En Domini Sanctus, por Roonicus' Butticus. Amen.

I'm sitting on the back porch with Connor while he's doing his homework and I notice that he's singing to himself. Connor has a really sweet, boy's voice and he rarely sings nicely. But today, I swear he's singing in Latin and it's beautiful.

Beaming and thinking I'm in one of those Hallmark moments, I quietly ask him what it is he's singing. He looks at me like I'm deranged and says "The Go Go Diego Theme Song".

-------

My Son Loves to Read

This is so important to me. I think mostly because I'm a writer and it's kind of nice to see him learn this important art that's so important to my art. He's staying up late reading and twice TWICE I've caught him killing the video game and kicking back with a book. There might be a God . . .

All in all, there is a change-a-comin' for the kid. I can see it in the way he pays attention to the world, the way he's picking up on the power and grace of good rock and roll, and the way he is disappearing into books.

I can't remember when I started reading. I think I was annotating Tolstoy in the womb. I have always been reading. In fact, it is safe to say I have been reading every day since I learned how. I should get paid for it.

I'm one of those crazy (gifted) readers who needs several titles at once. Librarians either love me or hate me. The really cool ones get this look in their eyes when I walk up to the counter with 14 books. Others see me coming with an 85 pound backpack full of books and they go on break.

Worse, I have multiple libraries. The upstairs loo usually has a stack on the sink; there's always a Harpers and a book in the car; the kitchen counter usually has a cookbook on the counter; there's a stack on my bedstand; a row on my desk; a literal library along the upstairs hall; then there's the stack on the end table by my chair in the living room. I don't know if my collection of rare books in PDF form on my hard drive counts, but they're there too.

Reading is an acti of magic as powerful as writing any day of the week. More importantly, reading is seperate from writing. They are intimately related but not the same. Both are creative acts (hence, magic). A person who is reading a book is working as hard as the writer to create a world and that world is distinct from the one laid down on those pages by the author.

The art of disappearing into a book is one developed over time though the trick of it can be learned in the blink of an eye, in the turn of a phrase. It's that moment in a story when you forget that your're reading a book and become part of the story, the invisible observer, the ghost in the room. That's what we are as readers, ghosts in the stories we love.

Maybe that's a great Halloween concept, something to scare you and make you worry a little. Think about the powerful sense that these characters in your favorite stories are alive. When you're reading it, you don't question it at all. They breathe, they love, they kill, they worry, weep, and waylay. And it doesn't end when you put the book down. You can return it to the library and forget about the thing, the sheaf of leaves you were studying so long, you can pretend it wasn't a talisman that evoked these characters into your head where they now live. You can believe they are all just a trick. But they're still there in your head.

What if the book doesn't evoke the characters out of the page, like a zip file, but instead invokes you into their world? What if we're the book?

Happy halloween.

Proper Potty Training for People with Penises

For sending parents into drooling catatonia, nothing compares to potty training. It's first of the classic thresholds of child development and the first time you and your spawn have a shared weird experience. Trust me, there will be more.

All parents will have to teach their kids this simple skill. Every "What to expect when you're Expectorating" book out there has a chapter devoted to the minutiae of merde and most of them try to convince you that potty training is an intricate, delicate, and difficult period, requiring endless couch-time for the parents and their progeny. Most guides imply that improper potty training can lead to lifelong neuroses and Emo music.

My kids were so easy it was almost spontaneous. I sat the boy down on his little chair at exactly the right moment and the resulting efficacy of exporting his effluence sans diaper made an instant impression on him.

My great neglect at that moment was a lack of follow-through. I should have explained immediately that the chamber of reflection has a dual purpose, that one can use it for sitting or for standing. I figured it would come up in the very near future and shelved the whole idea and went back to doing laundry.

[My Attorney] was on deck for the next Number 1 and wasted no time in teaching the boy proper penis procedure: sit, release, wipe.

She told me she was teaching the boy how to pee in the bowl and I didn't think twice about it. I just crossed it off my to-do list. Only later did I wonder about the obvious mechanics and thought to myself, how does she know what to do?

"You taught him to shake, right?"

"What?"

"You know--shake."

"Shake what?"

"His thing."

"Why!?"

"Guys shake."

"Before or after?"

"What did you teach him to do when he's done?"

"Use a tissue, duh."

"Oh my god. Babe, how exactly did you teach my son to pee?"

"I don't know, like everyone pees: you sit down---"

"@#!^%$ ^$##@!"

I want all the new moms and moms to be to please listen up and listen up good: leave proper penile procedural to the papas.

When it comes to penis training, the dad has the upper hand because the dad, presumably, is furnished with the same equipment as the son. He has, in fact, been training his entire life in peni practicalia, and, again, presumably, knows things that, as a mom, you don't know.

Specifically, and this is paramount penis procedure, are two habits unique to the water closet ways of woman-kind: tissues and sitting.

Pay very close attention: men don't sit down to pee. Pay even more attention: when we're done, we S H A K E. We don't W I P E.

I realized [My Attorney] had been teaching the toddler to touch up his tallywacker with a tissue for two weeks before I found out. Then I realize that it is too late--TOO LATE--to change. He's been trained.

Then it really hit me: my son pees like a girl!

His life as a man was finished. Now when other boys make jokes about writing their name in the snow, the Roon will have to ask them what they're talking about. I had a vision of him walking into the urinal bay at school and wondering out loud,  "Dude, where are the wipes?"

He would be an urinary outcast; a pee pariah.

I acted fast. I called him over.

You know you're supposed to pee standing up.

Gross!

And you don't wipe.

What? Well . . .  well . . .what do you do?

You shake.

Shake what?

What do you think?

Oh my god! Dad, that's gross! Gross! It'll go everywhere!

I was too late.

I went out to the garage. I dipped my hands into a bucket of crude oil, lit a cigar, and thought about guns. I had to protect my manhood and for some reason I thought it was at stake. I thought maybe the boy's manhood was at stake too. I remembered great pee moments from my childhood:

• Peeing into the wind off the back of a moving pick-up truck;


• Peeing onto an electric fence;


• Writing my name in the sand at the beach then drinking three whole cokes because my name is 22 letters long and I was trying to write in cursive and I ran out at christopher pa--


• Peeing off the side of a boat


• Peeing off the top of a building under construction


• Peeing into the campfire


• Peeing into the bait-well in our boat


• Peeing on a cow


• Starting a forest fire . . .

Those are cherished memories, the very building blocks of a boy's life. How was my son supposed to ---

Hey dad, you're right. It totally works. I can pee standing up.

Awesome. You made it into the toilet?

Toilet?

The Joys of Scouting

Roon crossed over into scouting recently and I became a leader in the scout troop: I am the senior patrol advisor for the Funky Ninjas. This means I'm responsible for standing around drinking coffee and yelling such precious nuggets of wisdom as Who left their plastic spoon on the table? If you don't keep your plastic spoon then you'll be eating your ice cream with your fingers tonight, freaking spaz!; the incessant plea of put that knife away; this sage advice: peeing in the woods means BEING IN THE WOODS not standing five feet from your tent under a streetlight while half the troops in the council are pulling in to set up camp, spaz! and the classic WHAT. THE. HELL. ARE. YOU. DOING?!!

Our troop attended the annual Lincoln Pilgrimage, camping at New Salem, a living rendition of Abe's hometown and birthplace. We camped in a slough by the parking lot after snaking our way through the maze of campsites in the dark watching people put up tents in the glare of halogens and hearing snatches of conversation like "Well it's gonna be a long weekend if you two are fighting all the time" and "Stakes? Tents have stakes?" Grinned like a stuck pig the whole time because our troop is old school. We don't use inflatable tent furniture, pop-up dome tents, and portable gas grills. We sleep on the ground in Vietnam War era canvas a-frame tents, make the boys do all the work, and we cook over an open fire. Our camp looks like a set piece from "Follow Me Boys."

Cub Scouts always felt like an obligation to me. It was alright but for the most part, the boys were snarky and high on sugar all the time, could barely tie their shoes, much less get a project done, and didn't listen to me if their life depended on it. Which is fine. We had a great time anyway but the adults involved do get the feeling, eventually, that they're a breed of specialized volunteer babysitters. Scouts is different.

First of all, all the scouts refer to each other as Mr. So one scout will call out to another who has, for instance, gone off toward the latrine in a hurry and say "Mr. Skidz, I hope everything comes out alright!" I hardly ever heard them call each other by their first names. Oddly, this eliminates nicknames which I kind of miss as I was prepared for a slew of monikers. I even tried to label a couple of kids, like my favorite Ninja, a 5th grader whose hormones are biding their time, a kid as small as a second grader. I love this kid cause he's always smiling, always throwing himself into the crowd, and kills himself to keep up on hikes even though he's literally walking twice as fast and twice as far as everyone else because he's half their size. He never shuts up, seems to bilocate all over the campsite, and has a voice like a cartoon squirrel. I think he eats sugar coated helium pops for breakfast every morning. I tried calling him squeaker and thinmint but the scouts wouldn't have it: as much as they tossed him around and made polite fun of his helium voice, the boys in the troop fully adopted this boy, never made him feel bad about lagging behind because of his size. At the end of the hike, this kid was beat. He really had walked twice as far as anyone else. His feet were killing him and he was exhausted. But, as always, he was all smiles. Even when he told me he was dead on his feet, he smiled.

And here's the astonishing, amazing thing about scouting. One of the other boys, a ear or two ahead of Squeaker, took a hard fall early in the day. Our first aid scout patched him up but you could see in his eyes that it hurt pretty bad. Then we hiked five hundred thousand miles and he never complained. At the end of the day, this scout, injured and tired, heard Squeaker complaining and without even thinking about it, hauled him up for a piggy back to the campsite.

There was an article in the Trib today about how Scouting is working hard to make itself relevant. As Scouting nears it's 100 year anniversary (2010) it faces dwindling numbers and criticism for some of the principles by which the organization is run.

The biggie: Boy Scouts excludes openly gay men from becoming scoutmasters or leaders in a troop. Although I'm not going to be carrying a sign anytime soon, I don't agree with this policy. I think the times are generally past the days when homosexuality is considered uncommon. It's becoming part of mainstream culture, losing it's taboo, except in certain highly fraternal cultures--like Scouts. I've had some gay friends, work friends. One of them was so flamboyant he made Rip Torn look like an Amish preacher. I didn't know the other guy was gay until he mentioned it one day. In both cases, I loved these guys like all my friends. They worked hard, treated people fairly, and stood by their principles. In both cases, these guys were legendary managers and everyone who worked for them became their friend. They would have been great leaders in any organization and would have done a great job as scout leaders.

The thing is, we don't sit around talking about sex in scouts. And a Scoutmaster is so busy ordering people around and cooking dinner and organizing a campout, they don't have a lot of time to exhibit their nascent sexuality. This weekend, even when the boys were finally asleep and in their tents and the men sat around the fire to bullshit with each other, even then we didn't talk about sex. This may come as a big surprise, but men, generally, don't sit around talking about their sexuality. We talked about leadership, cigars, writing, gear, our own legendary car wrecks, old jobs, and the efficacy of spaghetti dinners over golf tourneys for raising money. We didn't talk politics, religion, or our respective tendencies when getting it on. It just doesn't come up.

Of the 14 boys I hiked with this weekend, I couldn't tell you if any of them are gay, if they're Mennonite, or if they believe in God and I just don't care. When you see them working together, teaching each other, helping each other; when you see one of them cheerfully binding some other kid's wound--with great skill; when you sit around the fire and listen to them tell stories, bust each other's chops, and talk about what they learned on their hike, you realize that the program is great. That these kids will do well. That they will easily and happily join in, help out, organize.

What really struck me was how the new guys took to it. My son, who's future appears to involve a lot of lounging, some flopping, and a propensity for couches, worked his butt off. I can barely get this kid to take out the trash without having to pay him off but when he was made the bungie carrier while the troop assembled their enormous tarp, he was into it. Through out the weekend, he pitched his tent, unpitched his tent, gathered firewood, cleaned the campsite, loaded and unloaded the troop trailer, and various other jobs. He pitched in, without me screaming at him. He took responsibility and he acted independently on it. At the same time, I saw the other scouts just assuming positions of leadership. I mean, they jumped in and took control. They were quickly able to take on a task, grab some other scouts, organize the thing, and follow through to getting it done and done right. These guys, as much as they desperately want to push their online kill ratio in Halo 3, are also becoming leaders. It's obvious when you're with them. And the merit badges they earn are all lessons in living in the real world, they're all about civic duty, character, honor.

I'll happily defend a program that makes that happen. I look forward to when the organization finds its way to 21st century policies like any other but their arcane policies are minor when compared to the good they do. Find me another organization that's generated these kinds of principled graduates.