Signs of Life

Overheard in my House

“Daaaaaaaaaad! She won’t get out of my room!”
“It’s my room tooooo!!!”

…

“I need some toilet paper! I need some toilet paper! I need some toilet paper!!”
“Why didn’t you think of that before you sat down!?”

…

“Ack! What did I just step in? EEeeeew! One of the cats threw up on the floor!”

…

“Bark! Bark! Bark!”
“Shut up! Stupid dog! It’s 2:00 in the morning!”

…

“Dad. I need some help with my homework.”
“Okay. What do you need?”
“I have to write a two page paper on chapters 4 and 5 of The Great Gatsby.”
“When is it due?”
“Tomorrow.”
“It’s 10:30 at night, and you’re just bringing this to me now?!”

…

“MMmmoooooommm! She hit me!”
“I did not!”
“Yes you did!”
“Well, you bumped into me!”
“It was an accident!”
“No it wasn’t!”
“Mooooooommmmm!!”

…

“Daddy? Will you read to me?”
“Sure, Binky. Go get our book.”
…

I’m sorry to be so sentimental this early in the morning. I know you probably don’t come here to get all teary-eyed. I just woke up this morning in a mood and felt the need to share it. I’ll probably think better of it, once I’ve had my coffee… I realize that most of the above is probably enough to drive a sane man crazy, especially when you consider that these are only a tiny fraction of the things that go on in our home on a daily basis. But I was thinking this morning about how much I’m going to miss all of this craziness when it’s gone. I guess as you get older you start to realize how temporary everything is. You blink and your children are born, you blink and they’re teenagers, you blink again and they’re moving out (well, I haven’t blinked that much yet, but it’s coming). I think that sometimes we neglect to count our blessings, sometimes we take our blessings for granted, and sometimes we don’t even realize we had any blessings until they’re no longer there. I’d like to be someone that recognizes his blessings… even when they sound like:

[CRASH!!!]
“I’m not hurt!”
“Good… what broke?”

There. That’s enough glurge for one day…

Fatherhood Revisited

Sixteen years ago yesterday, a young 23 year old man sat in a hospital cafe staring at his uneaten hamburger with a dazed and confused look on his face. One thing kept running through his mind over and over and over again.

“Woah. I’m a dad. I’m not sure I’m ready for this…”

Yesterday, as that same man – now considerably older – hugged his daughter and wished her a “Happy Sweet 16th!” One thing kept running through his mind over and over and over again.

“Woah. I’m a dad. I’m not sure I’m ready for this…”

Feeling Stupid?

Children have a way of making adults feel stupid. Not intentionally (at least I hope not), but they do. Here’s what I mean. I could be sitting down reading a book or watching t.v. or eating some liver or something, and one of my kids could look up from their homework and say, “Dad, what does ‘precocious’ mean?” Now, I know what precocious* means. If someone were to tell me, “That little girl is so precocious.” I’d understand what he meant. Asked to give a definition, however, I become completely stumped. My answer usually ends up sounding something like, “Um. Er. Precocious… preco… preco… hm. I know what it means… I’m just not sure how to define it… Hold on… er. Um. Look it up. I’m not sure how to describe it.”

See what I mean? Not only do I feel stupid, I think I’m giving my kids the impression that I’m stupid. FOX Broadcasting has capitalized on this phenomenon with their new game show Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? The show pits grownups against fifth graders and asks them questions like “What’s the capitol of Alabama?” When the contestant can’t answer, the audience gets a good laugh at his stupidity and the show goes on. But there is a difference between knowledge and intelligence. People rarely make the distinction, but it’s there. Just because I can’t recall a piece of information doesn’t make me stupid. Perhaps I never learned the information in the first place, which makes me uneducated not unintelligent. Or, like the poor guy that doesn’t know the capitol of Alabama, maybe I learned that answer 30 years ago and since I don’t live in Alabama, I’ve forgotten it.** Frankly, I think the show’s title is a little misleading. Maybe they should have called it Are You As Well-Versed In Trivial And Useless Knowledge As A Fifth Grader?, but then again, maybe that title is too long.

Maybe I should sit down and have a talk with my kids about how Dad really isn’t dumber than a box of rocks. I’m not sure it would do any good, especially when they bring me their math homework and ask me how to do it. Math was never very fun for me. Don’t get me wrong, I can add, subtract, multiply and divide with the best of them, but when it comes to algebra, my brain starts to quiver. It’s not that I never learned it. I took the classes in high school. It’s just that I’ve never used it in real life, and my brain has dismissed it as unimportant. Case in point, my daughter brought me a problem the other day and asked me to help her solve it. I took one look at it and said, “What problem?” There were some hash marks and squiggly lines and a number or two, but nothing I recognized. Like I said, kids can make you feel stupid.

*Precocious means unusually advanced or mature in development. I looked it up.

**Contrary to popular belief, the capitol of Alabama isn’t Birmingham. It’s Montgomery. I knew that, so I guess I’m smarter than a fifth grader.

This is an Easter egg… Well, maybe not. An Easter egg is traditionally colorful and oval in shape. A regular egg is white, so I guess this could be considered an egg, but it’s not oval in shape, so I guess that blows that theory. In any case, if you’re reading this, you can pat yourself on the back for being very clever for having noticed that there was some extra space at the bottom of this post. Well done!

Heart Attacks and Headaches

I always used to think my parents were a bit anally retentive about curfews, and checking in with them when I was out, and that sort of thing when I was a teenager. That is, until I had teenagers. Case in point, two of my kids are up in the mountains on a school retreat for the next couple of days. I thought I was okay with this, at least until last night. About 10:30 p.m. the phone rang. When you’re a parent, the phone ringing after 9:00 o’clock at night can only mean that someone is dead, or at least mortally wounded.

My worst fears seemed to be confirmed when the voice on the other end said, “Hi. This is the nurse at the campground your daughters are at.” My heart skipped several beats. Time must have slowed down, because an eternity later she continued. “I have one of your daughters in my office. She has a headache and I need your permission to give her a couple of Tylenol.”

“Tylenol!?” I screamed into the phone. “You nearly gave me a heart attack calling this late at night, and it’s just a flippin’ headache!? Yeah! You can give her some Tylenol, but only if you pay for my trip to the ER, because I’m about to have a stroke! Don’t ever call this late at night unless someone is dead (or mortally wounded)!” Okay. I didn’t scream that. I resisted the urge… barely. What I really said was, “Um. Sure. Tylenol is fine.”

“Do you want to talk to her?” She asked.

It was tempting, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep from yelling (and being yelled at has never cured a headache). It’s a strange feeling – equal amounts of anger and relief. Kids don’t always realize the power they hold over their parents. I know I didn’t, and that’s probably a good thing. I just thought my parents were paranoid psychos. So, I’m sorry Mom and Dad, for any unnecessary chest pain I might have caused you when I was growing up. I understand now.

Congratulations. You’ve just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farmhouse.

That Dad

You know who I admire? Calvin’s dad. You know, from Calvin & Hobbes? No, not because he has a son that’s a holy terror, but because he can tell his son the most outlandish things and Calvin believes him! Consider the following conversation from one such classic strip:

CALVIN: Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn’t they have color film back then?
CALVIN’S DAD: Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It’s just the world was black and white then.
CALVIN: Really?
CALVIN’S DAD: Yep. The world didn’t turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
CALVIN: That’s really weird.
CALVIN’S DAD: Well, truth is stranger than fiction.
CALVIN: But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn’t artists have painted it that way?
CALVIN’S DAD: Not necessarily, a lot of great artists were insane.
CALVIN: But … but how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn’t their paints have been shades of gray back then?
CALVIN’S DAD: Of course, but they turned colors like everything else in the ’30s.
CALVIN: So why didn’t old black and white photos turn color too?
CALVIN’S DAD: Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?

Now contrast that with a conversation I once had with one of my own children:

CC: Dad? Where do babies come from?
Me: Well, in your case, we found you on the side of the house… Out by the trash cans.
CC: Daaaaaaadd…

See what I mean? They don’t even believe me when I tell them the truth! Sometimes I wish my children were a little more gullible. I suppose that’s a terrible thing to say, but you’ve got to admit they’d certainly be a lot more entertaining to have around.

But you know who I really want to be? I want to be That Dad. You know the one I mean. You’ve seen him in countless chick flicks. He’s usually the father of the lead female character. He spends the entire movie bumbling around, doing everything wrong. He can be a trifle overbearing at times, love for his child motivating him to be this way. His sole purpose in the film seems to be to provide comic relief. He pretty much acts like a doofus for the first 70 minutes of the movie, and then That Dad gets to that moment. It’s the moment in the movie when his daughter hits an all-time low, her heart is broken, or she’s screwed up her life in some way and she just doesn’t know what to do. It’s right at that moment when That Dad shines.

He sits down, puts his arm around her and words of pure wisdom pour forth from his mouth. He asks her poignant questions that get her thinking in the right direction. He tells her just what she needs to hear. Her tears begin to dry up and he hands her a handkerchief so she can blow her nose – which she does… loudly. She looks up at him, and a smile hesitantly touches the corners of her mouth. A new light of hope dawns in her eyes.

“I love you, Daddy,” she whispers and kisses him gently on the cheek.

“I love you too, Princess,” he replies.

Tears pour down the cheeks of everyone in the theater. It’s the pivotal moment in the film. All of the conflict that has been building up from the beginning of the movie has come to a head, and now – because of That Dad – things will turn out right.

Do you see why I want to be That Dad? Sadly, I don’t think I’m even close. Well, I do have the “acting like a doofus” part down pretty well. So maybe I’m not as far off as I think. It’s just the “words of wisdom” bit that I struggle with.

If only I had a script!