If you’re like me, you’re wondering what to do with this gift. It’s like coming across a crumpled $20 bill on the sidewalk. Think of the possibilities! I’m rich! I can go buy some gold! Only this isn’t money. It’s time. Found time! I’m rich! Mine — and maybe yours — comes courtesy of elementary school letting out for summer. One of my major parental responsibilities — I was removed from math homework when we started getting notes like this: “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, your daughter’s math work has taken a turn for the worse. For instance, 8+8 is not B” — one of my big parental duties was packing my daughter’s lunch each morning.
May that little kid voice last forever
Boy, I hope that voice never changes. I was sitting in the rocking chair in my daughter’s room. It was night. She was doing pre-bed reading. She’ll go all night if her absent-minded parents drift off to sleep before she does. And her absent-minded parents often do! I tried to keep my eyes from growing heavy and tipping shut. They were fluffing the pillows and turning in for the night. (No! Don’t do it! She’ll read ‘til 3 a.m. if we let her!)
Goodbye pillow fights, hello concussion
There is absolutely nothing funny about this column. I am legally obligated to state this right up front. In fact, I’m legally obligated to believe it. I’m legally obligated to promote it, preach it, scream it from the hills. I am also legally obligated to say that pillow fights are bad. That they can lead to serious injuries, and should never be performed with actual pillows. Air pillows — the imaginary kind — are the only kind that should be used in a pillow fight. I am legally obligated to say that if you do use real pillows, bad things can happen. Horrible things. Major injuries may ensue. Society might collapse. You will spend the rest of your days starting sentences with, “I am legally obligated to …”
BDE: Getting in touch with my ‘Best Day Ever’
There’s something post-apocalyptic about January. Maybe it’s because Christmas is over. Maybe it’s because a new year is always a little bit scary. It stretches out toward the horizon, long and endless, full of unpredictable twists. Maybe it’s because summer and vacations and swimming pools seem so far away. The weather is miserable. Usually. And when the weather is great — it’s been pretty great! — something still comes along to ruin it. Does any other state get pollen blizzards in January? Not like Florida. Gesundheit!
Favorite things this holiday season? Just one, little daughter
It was something I realized while riding with my daughter. We were taking our dog to a park. She’s almost two, that dingo of a dog. We were going to throw the ball to burn off some of her energy. It gets stored up in reserve batteries she keeps in her haunches.
A grand experiment to slow down time
Great men — brilliant men — have often speculated about time machines. Devices that might take us backward or forward to our past or our future. But why hasn’t anyone explored the idea of a time-slowing machine? This occurred to me the other day after walking my daughter to school. As I strolled back carrying her scooter, I marveled at the Christmas blowup toys in someone’s front yard. “Already out!?!” I thought. “How can this be? It’s too early.” But it isn’t. Thanksgiving is almost here, and that means we’re locked and loaded, buckled up and bundled in with a heavy foot on the gas, headed for Christmas.
Elementary school field trips: The adulthood reminder
Nothing reminds you you’re an adult like hanging out with a bunch of kids. On a field trip. In a school bus. It’s chaotic chatter — like birds in the trees — until one child starts humming Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Why Beethoven’s Ninth? And then they all start to join in, one after another. Only … wait a minute … no, they’re not humming. They’re moo-ing. They are all moo-ing like cows! Beethoven! All of them now. Every last one. The bus is filled with the sound of bovines. And I just have to smile. Nothing reminds you you’re an adult like hanging out with a bunch of kids.
Last flight of the kindergartner
She had to say it again. Her tone sounded … well, it sounded like she thought I was an imbecile: “Yes! TOMORROW is the last day of kindergarten.” OK, I am sort of an imbecile. We men don’t compute things until they’re laid out in front of us with neon and barbecue sauce slathered all over. We should pay better attention. We should listen once in a while, but that requires more brain cells than we have in the bank.
Injured fingers and trips to the hospital
Put a Band-Aid on it. It’s about as typical an injury response as you’ll ever get from a father. Kid is missing three layers of skin? Put a Band-Aid on it. Bone is protruding at a 90-degree angle? Grab a stick from the yard as a splint and put a Band-Aid on it. Major gastrointestinal problems? Crush up a Band-Aid, add to boiling water with a pinch of lemon and drink it. Soothes the savage beast.
Believing in Grandmom Evie
“Believe in her, dad. Believe in Grandma Evie.” My daughter — just 5 years old — was pleading with me. Sounded like a line from a bad baseball movie. It was 86+ degrees in my mother’s house. After a rainstorm. A temperature she would dispute using complex physics and something about the silver in the China cabinet causing things to heat up by the thermostat. “That thing isn’t right,” she said. I had been complaining about how hot it was inside. Had walked over to the digital thermostat to read it. To prove that it was hot. Which would explain the sweat on my kid’s brow and why she was fanning herself. My mother doesn’t use her air conditioning. Thinks it’s a scourge. Calls once a quarter to tell me that I need to get used to life without it myself. Because the economy is crap, the energy is in crisis and soon we’ll all be AC-less. Her words not mine. She’s been saying it my whole life.