Tag Archives: fatherhood

It’s bedtime, so cuddle up with your favorite paperweight and go to sleep

None of our boys have ever become attached to a particular security blanket.  Buster once had a short phase when he wanted to take a Star Wars Lego Stormtrooper in the car with him wherever we went, but he kept losing his Star Wars guy in the back seat, so he decided Lego people were too slippery to make constant companions. And those volatile little dudes were always losing their heads.

Big Man had a stuffed dog he liked for a while. But he also exhibits the family trait of being inattentive. He could rarely remember where he left his puppy and no matter how much he called for it, the disloyal mutt would never come. He was often so aggrieved by his fair-weather dog that he would refuse its companionship at bedtime. “No puppy. No puppy,” he declared as he waved it off.

I’m not saying Big Man doesn’t like to sleep with a favorite object. It’s just that the object changes from night to night.  Last week he insisted on taking two plum-sized rocks to bed with him. Why would a boy want to sleep with rocks? He’s fascinated with pebbles and coins and buttons, and whatever little trinkets are fun to put into pockets, and maybe these rocks were awesome mega-pebbles. Or maybe it’s because rocks will never turn their backs on you like moody plush puppies do.

Before that, I think he snuggled up with an empty spray bottle. Somehow the spray top went missing and he lost his fascination with it. Meanwhile, we never got to use it and the shower mildew thrives.

Getting ready to cuddle up with a day planner.

Getting ready to cuddle up with a day planner.

Yes, he sometimes wants to take a toy to bed with him, but he’d prefer a calculator or whatever other office supplies he can get his hands on.

Sadly, there are some things he’s not allowed to cuddle in bed, as much as he’d like to. It can be difficult for a two-year-old to understand the problem with taking a power cord, or a box of thumb tacks, or a loaded stapler to bed. He’s sure he can handle them, and gets angry at whoever makes him give up his new pet, which, as far as he knows, is OSHA. It’s always handy to have a government regulatory agency to deflect your child’s anger.

And post-it notes! Jackpot!

And post-it notes! Jackpot!

I guess it’s a good thing he doesn’t have a single bedtime favorite. I’ve heard stories of parents traveling long distances to retrieve an inconsolable child’s security object. We don’t have to hurry home for anything as long as there’s an Office Depot within reach.

I suppose there will come the day when he’s heading off for college and I’ll wish I had some childhood favorite to present to him as a bond to home. I’m sure he won’t even remember his puppy, and I think the damned thing ran away anyhow. But, he’ll probably need paper clips for school and we’ll likely both have a good, nostalgic cry when I hand him those.

Looking for a special friend, sailor?

Another hooker is after me.

I’m not sure she’s a bona fide hooker; I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt.

This is not in real life, of course. This is even more real than that because it’s on Facebook.

About once a quarter I get a Facebook friend request from someone I’ve never met. I’m not talking about one of those where the name might almost sound familiar if you close your eyes and repeat it slowly. These are total strangers, always women.

Because I’m the kind of guy who never turns my back on anyone without being sure she is not someone I used to know, I click the link that takes me to her wall, or whatever FB calls the place where you keep your naked selfie. This is followed by a sigh, as I think, “Oh my! I’m sure I’d remember her.”

But I don’t remember her. I don’t remember anybody like her. I’m not alone, because she only has seven friends – all lonely looking males. They don’t remember her either, but they so badly wish they did. Plus, it’s a nice photo to come back to when the loneliness scrapes bottom.

I know she means me no good. She is only some invention, created to lure me to the dark side of FB, if there is a side darker than the shallow political memes and associated insightful commentary.

Therefore, I’m sorry, lovely young lady who really knows her camera angles, or creepy dude who stole her photo and attached it to a fictional name on Facebook – I cannot be your friend. Your seven admirers will check in on you regularly, I’m sure.

I'm deleting your friend request.

I’m deleting your friend request.

I don’t know what the end goal of this proposed acquaintance is, but it disturbs me in a couple of ways. First, my oldest son is becoming aware of social media. He is also realizing there are parts on women that make his pupils dilate for reasons he can’t understand. The Internet and his own wide eyes can easily lead a boy astray. I’m trying to stop him from going astray, but it will be harder to keep the Facebook Hookers and their ilk at bay as he gets older.

I hope there are still a few years between us and this danger. In the meantime, these nefarious friend requests disturb me because they are the most common requests I get anymore. The world has run out of real people who want to be my friend, even in an unreal way. I’ve long ago given up on my ability to make friends in three dimensions, but now it seems I’m nothing special in two dimensions either. That’s okay though; I flourish amongst one-dimensional people.

This is the world we live in. I’ll be busy protecting my children from the pitfalls of social media. So if you are a 22-year-old woman, or are pretending to be, it may take me a while to get around to remembering you from our 1980s college days.

New goat technology befuddles older generation

My boys are sharing a goat.

Let me explain.

The goat is virtual. It is a game app that allows the player to manipulate the activities of a standard goat.

It is really only Big Brother and Buster who are sharing this goat. I’m sure Big Man would be interested if it were a real goat – somebody he could pet or chase as the mood struck him. But he’s not really interested in screen goats, yet.

These flesh goats are so 2013.

These flesh goats are so 2013.

By sharing I mean they are constantly fighting over who gets to play the goat game. Big Brother is searching for some legal loophole or parents’ edict that will cause Buster to cease playing the game altogether. It’s not that he doesn’t want his little brother to have a happy childhood, but it seems as though you, or your goat, can build things in this game, and he lives in terror that the poorly trained, younger goatherd will somehow destroy all he, and his goat, have created.

This only makes Buster’s fire to play the game burn more brightly. I’m sure he understands as little as I do about how virtual goats build apartment complexes, but if Big Brother doesn’t want him playing, it must be an awesome game.

I don’t understand this fascination with the pixel goat. Sure, you can make him swim across a river and break things with his hooves, (Goats have hooves, right? I grew up with cows.) but I can’t figure out how that translates into an addicting game.

It’s not that I don’t like computer games. There are a handful of games I play. I even kind of get the appeal of Minecraft. In that game, you build up some kind of civilization (I think) while working toward some sort of goals (I think). And the best part is, you can create cats and dogs and then leave your tablet in the kitchen so your dad goes crazy trying to figure out where all the meowing and barking is coming from as he makes dinner. Who wouldn’t get a kick out of that?

But this goat I don’t understand. Every time I look at the game, the goat is just swimming or walking, or in the really exciting moments, sleeping. Who spends their time making a fake goat sleep? Okay, don’t answer that. The goat did build a house of some sort, so I guess there’s more to it than that.

How do you put a goat to sleep? Tap the sleep icon, of course.

How do you put a goat to sleep? Tap the sleep icon, of course.

I just can’t imagine my childhood revolving around virtual goats. I used to read, and play ball, and go swimming. My kids do that stuff too, and yet still find time for the goat. Maybe that’s the time I spent milking cows. Or maybe we had more innings in our ball games.

I’m trying to get Big Brother to read more and play games less. I wish I could get him to do so more willingly. Maybe he needs more interesting stories. Anybody know where I can find books about sleeping virtual goats?

And the award for Parent of the Most Civilized Pooping Child goes to . . .

Since I first became a parent, I’ve been taking an informal survey on how old children are when they complete potty training.  This has been an unintentional survey; I’ve never asked parents how long it took to potty train their children. Yet, scads of parents seem to think I want to know. The word potty can’t come up in conversation without people laying out the impressive timetables of their children’s migrations to the toilet.

Due to the unwilling nature of my research, I have never recorded the results of my survey. This could have the slight potential to erode the credibility of the findings. The only result of which I am certain is that 0.00% of respondents’ children took longer to potty train than my own.

My two potty trained children became so somewhere in the three-year-old range. The remaining child seems on pace to match that timing. When it comes to deciding where to poop, I thought I had pretty normal kids. The older two, in their own time, came around to a decision I can endorse. I have high hopes the third will eventually see the wisdom in their choices. On the other hand, I can’t honestly argue that a diaper isn’t a convenient alternative when you’re on the run.

Assuming my youngest takes approximately the same time to potty train as his brothers, he represents the third strike in my beginning hypothesis that my children are normal. It will prove beyond the margin of error that they are outliers – sluggard, ne’er-do-well poopers – the slowest children ever to be potty trained.

Further research has confirmed my fears about the futures of poorly trained children like my own. Source: Delusional Parent Magazine.

Further research has confirmed my fears about the futures of poorly trained children like my own. Source: Delusional Parent Magazine.

The stats don’t lie. And the stats are backed up by random, self-reported data from proud parents that happened to come up in conversation. These facts were presented to me by confident (almost beaming) individuals, through the famously unbiased memory of parenthood, who were prescient enough to ascertain that I was conducting a survey on this exact topic. That’s pretty solid, considering I didn’t even know I was conducting this survey. How can I begin to question the validity of such information?

Having not ever encountered a single survey subject whose children were slower to evolve than mine, I am left to consider the consequences of my children’s backwardness. Will these arrested beginnings hinder their futures? I fear so. None of the survey respondents who offered updates reported that their advanced pooping children are now incarcerated. And since someone has to fill the prisons, I can only conclude it will be the slow toilet adopters, of whom my children are, statistically, the slowest.

I know you’re probably thinking how brave it is of me to publicly admit these facts about my own beloved children. But now that I’ve done it, I wonder if I should have just lied about it. I can’t do that though. I wouldn’t want to be known as the first parent to embellish his children’s toilet skills.