Tag Archives: Dads

Exposed: the toddler battle plan

From the moment a child can stand on his own two feet, he begins reaching his little hands upward. This is the instinctive, human thing to do. In his simple way, the child is measuring.

He is measuring whether he can reach high enough to rip out his father’s heart.

He is not tall or wily enough to accomplish this goal in one stroke, so he satisfies himself with whittling down Daddy’s spirit by breaking all of his material possessions.

I have two categories of material possession that each of my boys has spent his late infancy and early toddlerhood trying to destroy.

The lesser of these is my CD collection. I spent decades carefully amassing this collection. They are all on my iPod now, but a CD is more concrete than a digital download and old people need to touch things to know they are real. A bookcase of my favorites still sits in the living room, near the seldom-used stereo.

It’s been the favorite hobby of every boy, at a certain age, to pull down the CDs, trod on the cases, and redistribute the inside media. My once pristine collection is a shambles. God help me if I want to play one of them ever again.

picking some music

“What’s this one? Days of Future Passed. That’s a classic.”

classifying

“Better throw it on the ‘Classics to be Smashed’ pile.”

Why don’t I stop being stupid and just move them?

The only other place I have for them is that “storage” part of the basement where obsolete items live with the spiders until everyone agrees they should be thrown away. For God’s sake, they are not an old vacuum!

Also, it has become a battle of wills. These children need to learn they cannot defeat me by attacking my cherished belongings. Nothing is sacred in this war.

Besides, history predicts that the last of them will outgrow this habit in a few months and I can reorganize the remaining rubble once and for all. Time is on my side, you little freaks!

The other thing they have all yearned to destroy are my glasses. Unlike the CDs, I use my glasses. I’ve had the same pair for 10 years. This is a testament to the strength of my will, and the fact that I don’t have vision coverage.

As we watch TV, like the peaceful family I always intended us to be, a little hand will flash before my eyes and snatch my glasses. If snatching glasses were a recognized superpower, our house would be the Hall of Justice. Thank goodness for flexible frames.

I don’t know why they want me to have poor vision, unless it is to make it easier to convince me when it’s time to go off by myself and die, leaving the pride in the charge of younger males.

I’ve gotten pretty good a seeing the world through finger prints, which is good because there’s really no other way for me to see it.

I still have two who do this, though the older one makes a show of cleaning the lenses for me. This is not kindness; it is cunning. But I see right through him like three layers of thumb prints.

Meanwhile, I await the teen years, for the heart-tearing-out to begin in earnest.

Who invited Batman?

For his birthday, Buster wanted a Batman-themed party. The great thing about three-year-olds’ parties is you don’t have to rent out a hall to satisfy them. As long as you have cupcakes, pizza, and few of his closest friends, you can spend two hours in your own living room, hosting the best party he’s ever had.

The great thing about three-year-olds is that their closest friends are whichever few kids they happen to be playing with. There’s no need to look up his old army buddies.

Batman cupcakes and a few Batman party favors meant this party was about 10% of the cost of the party he’ll require in three years. With some of the windfall savings, my wife picked up an adult Batman costume, because what little kid wouldn’t love a surprise visit from a masked man?

I am Batman cupcakes

I would have preferred chocolate cupcakes with whipped frosting, but after my wife pointed out that they weren’t for me, I gave her a classic Batman “whatever” shrug.

She wanted someone none of the children would recognize to wear the costume. It’s not as easy as you might think to get an affirmative reply to, “Hey, how would you like to show up to a children’s party in a Batman outfit this Saturday?”

As Saturday neared, she got more desperate. I think she was hoping the UPS guy would deliver something so she could sound him out about whether he liked playing make-believe. But since we didn’t have any mail order scotch in transit, the UPS guy didn’t show. I convinced her I should be Batman. Yes, I’d be recognized, but the boys would always remember the time Daddy played Batman for them.

I don’t know much about Batman, outside of the Adam West TV show. I can’t imagine how he changed into costume sliding down the pole to the Bat Cave because I had trouble getting into costume sitting on my bed. Batman’s outfit doubles as an evening gown, I discovered as I texted my wife to come zip me up.

The suit was designed for a pectorally endowed man. “You have concave nipples,” my wife informed me as I turned my rubber chest to her. A plump pillow fixed that.

I snuck out and rang the doorbell. My wife herded the children to the door and had Buster open it. I crossed the threshold; he hid behind his big brother. I knelt down to talk to him; he fled to the back room and closed the door.

And we were worried that I would just be Daddy in a cape.

Why can't you give Batman a chance?

Fear turns to contempt as Batman resorts to pleading.

I took some pictures with, and punches from, the other children, but Buster would not enter the same frame with me. I cut my losses and made my exit, reappearing as just Daddy.

They had cupcakes and Buster opened presents. That creepy Batman faded in memory.

After the party, I had some errands. “Okay, I’m leaving,” I announced, as a man does when he’s about to leave his wife alone with three sugar-laced children.

Buster looked up from his new toys. “Don’t go to Batman, Daddy,” he pleaded. “I don’t like it.”

Sometimes Daddy’s best as boring, safe, reliable Daddy.

Pictures at an Exhibition: First Grade parent-teacher conference

The results of the First Grade teacher conference were similar to the results of the Kindergarten conference. The boy is doing pretty well academically, especially in reading and writing. He’s okay in math, but he sometimes gets a little frazzled by the clock during the timed quizzes.

The surprising news is that he actually knows how to tell time. At bed time he acts like the clock is some mysterious Nordic Rune that is beyond hope of translation. Ever since Daylight Savings Time began, he places no trust in clocks anyway, with their new trick of sending him upstairs before dark.

Like last year, we gained insights into the workings of the boy’s mind through his creative work.

For Valentine’s Day, the kids put together a book called, “Love is . . .” Here’s our boy’s page.

distant kiss

With enough practice, you can kiss them and still not violate the restraining order.

The longer your lips are, the more discretion you have about how close you want to get to someone you love. If the combined extendibility of the kissing individuals’ lips is greater than 6”, you can completely avoid intersecting your personal spaces.

This picture shows a great leap in maturity, as he would have been kissing a Ninja Turtle last year.

For their 100th day of school, they made a book about what they would do with $100. Hence:

football gloves

I have no idea what anything in this picture has to do with football gloves.

Why would he want to spend $100 on football gloves? You might even wonder what football gloves are.

Football gloves are worn to help catch the ball in wet weather. The boy and his friends play football at recess. Apparently, one of the kids has such gloves. Therefore, he desperately needs football gloves. I told him he should learn to catch first.

On the back of the $100 page is this.

Old boy

You can tell he’s old by his gray hair.

In 100 years he will be a 106-year-old boy, still with prominent red lips. He will have huge, misshapen hands (no doubt maimed from not having football gloves), gray hair, and no feet. The loss of feet is lamentable, otherwise he’s a good looking 106-year-old. Even the kids whose nice dads bought them adequate sporting goods won’t hold up much better than that.

Hanging on the walls were cutouts of George Washington the kids had made for Presidents’ Day.

wooden teeth?

“With all these splinters in my gums, I may never smile again.”

All the other Washingtons were smiling. When the teacher asked our boy why his was not, he replied, “Maybe he’s embarrassed about his wooden teeth.” He gets credit from me for being half right.

With the cutout was a familiar page. We’d seen this question last year.

presidential to-do list

If Washington is not too big a man to sell snow globes, neither is our boy.

Some things never change. He still holds the philosophy that the President’s primary duty is as Commander In Chief of the armed forces. He still would not be reluctant to use the armed forces, or for that matter, lead them personally. This year he’s added a new layer of sophistication. Armies are expensive. Not wishing to raise taxes or cut social spending, he’s discovered the perfect solution. He’ll  open a gift shop, just like he noticed Washington did at Mount Vernon. Now that’s learning from the master.

The year I peaked as a manly man

His name was Richard. I don’t remember him being around during Kindergarten, and I know he was gone by junior high. I don’t know where he came from or where he went. He rode my bus in third grade and we threw down every morning.

I recall as little about why we fought as I do about why he came and went so quickly. He showed up out of nowhere and wanted to fight, like those guys wearing suits and sunglasses in The Matrix. In third grade, I was not one to back down from a fight. That’s funny to me now, but it’s true.

matrix agent

Time has treated you well, Richard. You haven’t lost a step. (Warner Bros.)

By third grade, every inch of my body had been kicked many times over by dairy cows and I’d been cuffed plenty by older siblings. Taking on humans of my own size and weight was almost a vacation.

I was a scrapper, and so was Richard. Maybe I called him Dick; more likely we just didn’t like the cut of each other’s jib. Whatever the reason, we got to the back of the bus and went at it. It was mostly wrestling; third grade is early for fist fights. We’d tussle for a while, then the bus would pull up at school and it would be over. I went into school as if the fight had been a part of my morning routine no more noteworthy than brushing my teeth.

Next day, we’d be right back at it.

old bus

Of course, those were the days before cameras in the back of the bus. You could settle your differences without going viral.

One morning Richard banged my head against the metal wall of the bus. Richard and I had pushed each other’s skulls into this metal many times, but this time my scalp caught a protruding rivet. Blood trickled down my face.

I was taken to the school nurse and there was talk of stitches. I was reconciled to being kicked by cows and having my head banged into the wall during a fight, but I truly feared doctors. I had tried to fight doctors once when they wanted to draw blood. It was no use fighting a doctor; they’d just call in more and more of their friends to hold you down until they could stick you with a needle.

he'll cure you if it kills you

This is still what it looks like when I go for a physical examination.

I didn’t get stitches, but the damage was done. I lost interest in my daily bouts with Richard. It wasn’t worth facing a needle.

Gradually, I lost interest in fighting altogether. I lost daily contact with cows. I grew soft, to the point where I can no longer imagine what I would do in a fight. Besides run away, that is. Probably I would cycle my fists in the air and puff out my chest, hoping to bluff my way through, a la Fred Sanford. Let’s hope it never comes to that.

Now I have three boys. I want them to be tough, but I don’t need them to be scrappers. I want them to be mentally tough – able to stand up to adversity and handle disappointment.

They should walk away from their Richards. The world has tilted away from scrappers now that differences between children are resolved administratively.

The world has become much more enlightened since my boyhood – everybody except the dairy cows.