Focus on the good guys

After I get all my hugs and kisses, I go to the garage and get into my car, ready to drive to work. This morning Big Man came to the door as I was about to leave. “Wait! I have to tell you something!” he yelled from the threshold.

I rolled down the window. “What is it?”

“If you see somebody, and it’s a bad guy, tell us. Call us!”

“Okay, I will,” I answered.

There was no particular impetus for this request that I know about. It’s not as if Big Man lives his life in fear of bad guys, but he doesn’t like to let his guard down either.

Big Man and Buster like to keep the family protected from bad guys. They don’t always have a sharp picture in their minds about who these bad guys are, but they have little doubt they’ll know ‘em when they see ‘em.

Whenever they build forts, they make sure the entrances are well-protected so the bad guys can’t get in. They keep plenty of Nerf ammunition behind the ramparts in case the bad guys are foolish enough to try them.

Big Brother is not as interested in erecting fortifications throughout the house anymore. He fights his bad guys in Fortnite. He does his best work for the forces of light from the couch, a game controller his only weapon.

One evening, Big Man barricaded the two of us in the back room so we could watch TV together without being bothered by any bad guys. In that instance bad guys might a have been a euphemism for big brothers. I’m not sure. All I know is I had to dig myself out of the room when I wanted a snack. Next time, put the barricades on the far side of the fridge, General.

Looking out for bad guys

Build your fort, look out for bad guys, and most importantly, don’t barricade the path to the ice cream sammiches.

Clearly, these boys don’t have a consistent picture of who the bad guys are. That’s understandable. Lots of people have trouble identifying bad guys. The world changes its mind about who the bad guys are all the time. I’m not worried about that.

What’s more important to me is these boys know what good guys look like. I’d like them to know who they see in the mirror.

I have many aspirations for our boys. I want them to be happy and successful. I want them to find their talents. I want them to form healthy relationships. High on the list of things I want is this: I want them to be, in the big things and in the little things, good guys.

Good manners warrior

I write a lot about my children, but I try not to do too much open bragging about them. Instead, I like to keep it subtle and sprinkle my boastfulness in between the lines, so you’ll know how awesome my boys are without even noticing all the syrup you’re standing in.

Today, I am so overcome with pride I have to just cut loose and let the treacle fly. I hope you have a sweet tooth.

Our little Big Man has such excellent manners. I mean, lots of four-year-olds know to use good manners when speaking to adults, but it’s a whole different level of politeness to use manners when dealing with your brother.

We were riding in the car, when I heard Big Man address his big brother in the back. The object he needed must have been out of reach, so he asked his brother, “Will you please hand me that weapon?”

It did my heart good to know no one needed to prompt him to say please. What a little gentleman!

Also, no one in the car was wounded during the journey.

When the zombie apocalypse comes, I am confident my boys will be the most gracious battlers of the undead hordes. So you can see why I had to jettison my usual understatement today. Now you know why I couldn’t contain myself.

Back seat

Life in the back seat can get pretty dull when you can’t reach your weapons. (Image: Russell Lee, US Farm Security Administration)

The great bovine penis debate

A couple of weeks ago, my wife took the boys to a free dairy farm event. I didn’t go, because I had to work, and also because when I was a child I got to go to a free dairy farm event every day. It was called chores.

After the event, my wife called me to tell me about it. Big Brother and Big Man had each taken a turn at milking a cow. Buster refused. “Do you know why he wouldn’t milk the cow?” she asked.

I can think of lots of reasons a boy wouldn’t want to milk a cow. When I was Buster’s age, I didn’t want to milk cows either. Unlike me, Buster had a choice.

I started through my litany of reasons: It’s not really that fun; you can get kicked; fresh, warm milk isn’t very enticing, unless you’re a barn cat . . .

Sensing I was going off on the wrong track, my wife stopped me. “He wouldn’t milk the cow because he said the milk was coming out of its penis.”

She tried to explain to him that cows don’t have penises and that the milk came from the teats, but he wouldn’t be persuaded. I’m not sure I blame him. For a six-year-old boy, penis talk is old news, but having your mom discuss teats with you can shut your mind right down.

If he truly believed it was the cow’s penis, I applaud his decision not to tug on it.

Nothing for me, thanks.

“I don’t care what your brother told you, you’re not leaving this pen until you eat your breakfast!”

One morning, about a week later, I’d given the boys some cereal and gone to put some clothes in the washer. I was summoned from the laundry room by a loud argument. In the dining room, Big Man and Buster were hotly debating the origin of milk. Buster was trying to convince his little brother that milk comes from a cow’s penis.

This did not bode well for the continued consumption of their cereal, so I intervened.

“Cows are girls, so they don’t have penises,” I explained. I believe this generalization is still valid in regard to the four-legged world. “And besides that, have you ever known of any animal that had four penises?”

“Yeah,” Buster replied. “A cow.”

“They’re not penises,” I reiterated. “They’re teats. That’s why milk comes out instead of pee.”

“Yeah, they’re teats!” Big Man, the younger but more reasonable brother, backed me up. “Cows have teats!”

I didn’t know if we convinced Buster, but at least I was confident he wouldn’t scare Big Man away from his Cap’n Crunch. I went back to the laundry before the neighbors overheard me shouting anatomical terms at my children.

I heard the patter of little feet follow me. Big Man entered the laundry room. My little font of scientific reasoning gazed up at me, his face bright with sacred knowledge. “And you know what else? Girls don’t poop!”

So there’s that.

Belief

“It’s hard to know what to believe anymore.”

*Photos: Ben Shahn/US Farm Security Administration

Stumped!

I must be part Amish. The English would have rented a stump grinder or other motorized technology their loose morals allow them to operate. Not me. Because I am righteous, fearless of hard work, and also unwilling to part with my money, I did it old school.

Weeks ago I documented the pioneer spirit with which I chopped down our dead maple tree. The plan was to replace that tree with a new one. The plan was not to wait so long to do it, but we hearty woodsmen have to roll with the punches.

The first step was removing the stump. After six weeks’ meditation on the subject, I decided the way to do this without spending money was just to dig the thing out. I was under no illusions about how difficult it would be to dig up a tree stump.

Yeah, I may have been under some illusions about the difficulty. Illusions can become a burden to the psyche. They’re tricky little bastards, and so are tree trunks. Tree trunks can mutate into philosophical quagmires.

I got my shovel and dug around the stump, and I got my ax and hacked off roots, and this all went well for about 10 minutes. I’m not saying I stopped after 10 minutes; it’s just that the digging and hacking grew tiresome. I persisted, because I’ve never been one to surrender to the reality of a situation without a fight.

My tree stump spiritual adviser.

Big Man came out to help after an hour, at which point I was ready to accept advice from a four-year-old. Being a man of action, most of his ideas involved more digging and hacking. Since a preschooler’s digging and hacking can quickly become unfocused, we hit upon a new plan. We got some wedges and split the stump in its hole. Amazingly, this kind of worked.

Having mostly cleared the hole, it remained to locate and new tree. It can be handy having a garden you abandoned when children stole your free time. In this forsaken spot, a sapling had sprouted where it had no business. Its leaves look Maple-ish, but I can’t prove its pedigree – it’s my first week as an arborist. I guess we’ll find out.

Plants grow best in my garden when I let them fend for themselves.

Maybe we’ll find out. We might have killed it in transit. Its roots were twined in the neglected chicken wire surrounding the neglected fence around the neglected garden. Some of its thicker roots were casualties of our tug-o-war with the chicken wire.

Dead or alive, we dropped it in the hole. We added all three shovelfuls of fertilizer our composting barrel has produced from eight years’ worth of vegetable contributions. Then, we filled in the dirt and gave our new baby a long drink of water.

Possibly a Maple; possibly a tall weed; possibly dead.

If we planted a dead tree, we’ll just try again. We have all kinds of little ones growing where they don’t belong. We’ll keep trying until we get one to prosper or the rest of our yard looks civilized. Either way, it’s a win.

The result of all this hard work on my delicate blogger’s thumb.