Tag Archives: children

The reason this blog isn’t as good as it could be – Spoiler Alert: it’s me

Many of the posts I write stem from something funny one of my kids said. With all the hilarious things they say (both intentionally and unintentionally), you’d think I’d have more than enough material to post quite often. And I would, if I could remember things.

Last week, Big Man and Buster had a hilarious conversation. It would have made for an excellent blog post. I remember it was hilarious, but I don’t remember anything they said. What’s more, I don’t even remember what they were talking about.

So why did I wait a week to try to write it down? I didn’t. I wanted to make something of it the very next day. Even then, I could not remember a single word either had said, or what topic they were discussing. All I knew was that they cracked me up, and probably would have cracked you up too, if their father had any kind of memory.

To be accurate, there are some things I do remember: the dates of a great many Civil War battles; lyrics to 1940s ballads; the Pythagorean Theorem and how to apply it.

Antietam (Sharpsburg, if you’re a Confederate): September 17, 1862. Just one of many dates locked in my memory.

On the other hand, there are lots of arguably more useful things I tend to forget: what my kid needs to take to school today; the coupons I have in my pocket at the grocery checkout; where I’m driving to – if it isn’t to or from work. Less important but still vexing: the plot of nearly every novel I’ve ever read.

When not traveling to work, I like a friend to drive me. Otherwise I will end up . . . at work.

Since I’m getting a little long in the tooth, you may naturally conclude that age is getting the better of me. While this is certainly true, it is not the cause of my forgetfulness. I’ve always been absent-minded. There is limited space for information in my brain. All the bits I try to stuff into that walnut shell compete with each other like rats in a crowed cage, inevitably killing each other off, until the sole survivor is the tune to a commercial jingle from 1975 – the winner and still champion!

So, the reason this blog doesn’t happen more often, and isn’t as sharp as it should be when it does happen, is me. Sure, those little comics who can’t be bothered to record their own jokes aren’t exactly helping, but the buck stops with the blog registrant.

I’m not one to write notes as things are happening; I noticed in school that when I took notes I ended up missing the important tidbits. I write too slowly to keep up and I’d end up missing all the punchlines.

The truly amazing thing is that I’ve managed to retain so much of their words to actually get what posts I have out of them. That must be some sort of redeeming quality. Or maybe, sometimes, they say things that are more important to me than where I’m driving to. Some days, their words are probably almost as important as that old TV commercial. Almost.

Who’s king around here anyway?

I was sitting at the dining room table when Big Man came up and stood beside me. “How long before I grow up and get to be a daddy?” he asked.

“That won’t be for a long, long time,” I told him. “Do you want to be a daddy?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Well, parents get to tell people what to do.”

This is our relationship through four-year-old eyes. He’d like to get a little taste of the power he imagines I, and Mommy, have. The only problem is he got it a smidge wrong. If he would replace the word get with the appropriate word, have, he’d be much more accurate.

Parents have to tell people what to do. This little change drops parents down from perceived household aristocracy to their true place as household public servants.

If the children did the things they were taught to do, we wouldn’t have to tell them to do much. In reality, we have to tell them to do lots of things:

“Do your homework.” (12 times a day)

“Put your dirty clothes in the hamper.” (16 times a day)

“Take your dishes to the kitchen.” (34 times a day)

“Get in bed.” (>100 time a night)

We even have to tell them what not to do.

“Don’t wrestle at the top of the stairs.”

We don’t like having to say these things. It’s not a perk. I long for the day when Big Man is empowered to chase resistant children to bed.

“How many times do I have to tell you kids to put out your cigars and go to bed?”

In reality, it is children who get to tell people what to do. If you’ve ever heard your little kid yell, “I’m done!” from the bathroom, you know your duty. And you’d better hop to it before the little ruler gets tired of sitting on the throne.

“I need some juice.”

“I don’t like this dinner.”

“MacDonald’s!”

Children are masters at implied demands, and if their desires are necessary, or even reasonable, they usually get us to do what they want. They don’t realize this because their demands are so many, and so often unreasonable, that it seems we acquiesce to a miniscule percentage of them.

“You only bought me chicken nuggets one time when I asked for them about a million times.”

That’s a low percentage of satisfaction.

Having to tell a child to put on his coat 11 times in a row is no fun. On the other hand, children do not feel the fleeting moments of life left to them slipping away with each repetition, which is why they have no problem demanding chicken nuggets with every breath.

At the end of our discussion, I asked Big Man if he were ready to change baby diapers like daddies have to.

“Nobody showed me how to do it,” he answered.

Well, that’s another shock in store for you, kid. No matter how many times somebody tries to show you, you won’t be ready.

Our glue guy

I watch a fair amount of college basketball. Over the past few years, I’ve heard the TV commentators using the term “glue guy” when referring to certain players. The “glue guy” is a player who exerts leadership and keeps the team playing together through difficult moments. He keeps the team from falling to pieces; he is the glue that holds them together.

Big Man is our family’s glue guy. It’s not because he holds us together when the going gets tough. That would be a tall order for a four-year-old. Big Man is our glue guy because if we find any two random things in our house affixed to each other, it’s a sure bet he’s the one who bound them.

Glue Guy isn’t really even the best description for Big Man, since we don’t let him loose with actual glue, outside of an occasional Elmer’s glue stick. He’s more of a tape guy, or random adhesive strip guy. Sometimes he’s a long piece of ribbon strung between chairs guy.

Of the tape consumed in our household, 12% is used wrapping presents. The other 88% is used by Big Man to stick stuff to other stuff. As one of three boys, Big Man lives in a house of many broken things. When he discovers one of these items, he brings it to me for fixing. If I tell him it is beyond repair, he scoffs. “We can tape it,” he replies as he hurries off toward the utility drawer.

Big Man fixes things with a will. No amount of tape is too much. Sometimes the fixed item resembles a ball of tape more than whatever it used to be, but that’s the price you pay for repairs when you keep the Krazy Glue on the high shelf.

Big Man’s fascination with adhesion is not limited to broken things. Sometimes it’s part of research and development. It’s about making our daily lives easier, like when he ties bathrobe belts across the bottom of the stairs. Aesthetics plays a part too, illustrated by the many decorative things he’s affixed to our living room walls.

When I decide to freshen up the walls, I know where all the painter’s tape is.

As far as I know, nobody ever taught Big Man to tie knots, yet every cord or string that can pass for a rope in a boy’s imagination is tied in hearty knots to two separate things in our house. We’re good to go if we should ever find our house battling rough seas. Everything is lashed down tight.

Old phone cords are the new rope.

You never know what you will find tied or taped together in our home. We can only hope Big Man incorporates more subtlety in his engineering before he grows to reach the top shelf and truly becomes the “glue guy.”

We must all hang together

It wouldn’t seem right to skip my annual report on putting up the Christmas tree. We were a little later than usual putting ours up this year. The boys forgot to nag about it for a little while which allowed the parental holiday sloth to take over.

Eventually the boys realized there was some hulking monstrosity missing from our already crowded living room. The sloth was chased from the house, but the parent host was made to stay and drag all his tubs of festive cheer up from the basement.

We have an artificial tree (the sloth’s legacy), which the boys were eager to assemble. You don’t get that kind of quasi-LEGO experience with a real tree, no sir. On the other hand, a real tree doesn’t require the dreaded chores of spreading wire branches and fluffing Mylar needles. It’s a Yuletide tradeoff.

Hanging together.

After the first minute of branch-fluffing, I noticed Big Brother and Buster had disappeared. Big Man was still invested though. He helped me test the lights, and gave me tons of helpful advice about where I should run each strand. I was switching the TV back and forth between a basketball game and a football game, and trying to finish cooking a stew in the other room, so he certainly put more thought into running the lights than I did. One way or another, they got on the tree.

The football game was coming down to the wire, so I corralled Big Brother and Buster and made them help Big Man hang ornaments while I let myself become distracted. There was an indirect correlation between the height of the decorator and his enthusiasm for the job, which is why the bottom of the tree is more densely populated than the top.

We have a number of TV character ornaments. Big Man found two from the same cartoon. “I have to hang these two next to each other, because they’re friends,” he told me. I couldn’t argue with that. Besides, I gave up arguing with children about the proper ornament disbursement years ago. Joyful little hands always make a more beautiful tree than cold geometry does. Sure enough, Finn and Jake ended up dangling from the same branch. Friends should always hang together.

Finn and Jake always hang together. It’s what friends do.

Later I noticed Rudolph, Clarice, Yukon Cornelius, Hermey, and the Abominable Snowman hung in a group. So were Homer, Bart, Marge and Lisa. Both television casts were on display near the bottom of the tree, leaving no doubt as to who hung family and friends together.

Why are Rudolph and Hermey in such a hurry?

Abominable Snowman is after them!

Big Man may not win any Martha Stewart Christmas Tree decorating awards, but he’s ahead of the game on empathy. I’ll take that over a perfectly balanced tree any day. It’s a good thing.