Tag Archives: humor

Don’t look a gift dad in the mouth

My son has quite a little collection of Matchbox cars. He likes to line up all his cars in the manner of a miniature used car lot. It’s a way to organize his ever-expanding empire and make its growth quantifiable.

The miniature car lot: Bad credit? No problem! Just go work your charm on Mommy or Daddy.

One day, while he was lining up his cars, a burst of generosity overcame him. “Here, Daddy,” he said. “I have a surprise for you.” He held out his hand in the way a child does when offering an imaginary gift.

I took his pretend present eagerly. I was happy that his head was not so turned by the success of his car dealership that he had forgotten his poor old dad.

“It’s a transformer,” he told me as he handed the gift to me.

“Oh good,” I said. “I love transformers.” I made some turning motions with my hands and some transformative sounds through my teeth. “Schwitt, schwitt, schwitt,” I said as I twisted the air between my fingers. “It’s a truck. Schwitt, schwitt, schwitt. Now, it’s a robot with a laser canon.”

The boy laughed. He was pleased with how well I understood the workings of his gift to me. “Do you have a surprise for me?” he asked.

“Oh yes, I certainly do,” I replied. I could give the kid these kinds of toys all day long. They are imaginative and economical, and that is just the sort of world I need to live in, even if it is make-believe and only lasts until our next trip to Target.

I quickly put my empty hand behind my back and pulled it out again, offering him all the treasure it held. He took the wonder from my hand. “What is it?” he asked.

“It’s an airplane,” I said, happy that I could give him something so nice.

All good things must end. What caused our precious moment to end is hard to know. The best I can guess is that a surge of petulant testosterone spiked up his spine to that reptilian spot in the brainstem of all little boys. Who can say for sure what it is that transforms the pleasant Master Jekyll into that nasty Hyde urchin in the blink of an eye.

He flung my gift away. “I hate airplanes,” he huffed. His cerebrum does not hate airplanes in the least, but a spastic, testosterone-drenched medulla oblongata is liable to hate anything and everything.

“Oh,” I said. “If that’s what you do with my presents, I guess you don’t need to get any more from me.” I looked meaningfully at his array of die-cast cars.

He followed my eyes to his cars. I could almost see self-interest tamping down the testosterone at the top of his neck. “Wait,” he said. “Can we do that again? Here’s another surprise for you.” He held out his hand. “It’s another transformer.”

“That’s so nice,” I said. “I love it.” I drew out the word love as I gazed my meaning into his eyes. “And here’s another surprise for you.”

He took his present out of my hand. “What is it?”

“It’s another airplane.”

He stared at his hands for a moment, too proud to love his imaginary present and too wise hate it. “Let’s play with my cars,” he said after he had given the problem in his hands just enough time to evaporate.

Somewhere between pride and humility there lies a sanctuary of comforting die-cast vehicles. Diplomacy is a complicated playroom.

Five years of trading bacon (and it’s only the beginning)

Five years ago today, my sweetheart and I became husband and wife. Five years may not seem like a long time when it comes to the longevity of marriages, but it’s only just the beginning for us.

My wife and I come from vastly different backgrounds. Neither of us imagined marrying someone like the other before we met. Even after we met, it took a while for this to change. It was easier for her to reel me in because she’s so darned cute. I still don’t know how I got her to fall for me. I’ve never come near that level of salesmanship in any other situation.

My wife is and extrovert with a capital E. I’m a steadfast introvert. She’s a spur-of-the-moment gal. I’m a planner. She jumps from one hair-brained scheme to another. I stick with the one hair-brained scheme I’ve had since I was 12. She prefers the fat part of the bacon. I didn’t know there existed people who preferred the fat part of the bacon.

Sure, we drive each other up the wall sometimes with our different outlooks. But mostly we give each other balance. I keep a foot on the ground and she extends a hand into the sky. Together, we make sure that no one will drift too far away from home and no one will miss a chance to touch the stars.

We also don’t waste any part of the bacon. I’m not big on the term soul mate, but if I were, I’d define it as someone you can always trade bits of bacon with.

I’m looking forward to the next five years, and beyond. I’m sure my wife will take me places I wouldn’t have gone on my own. I feel so lucky that I found the person I wasn’t looking for, the one person I truly needed. It’s easy to love a person completely when they are always making you feel lucky. That’s just one of the reasons why I find it so easy to love her so completely.

Happy anniversary to my soul mate, bacon-swapping, love of my life!

Let’s all go for a ride in the clown car

I bought my car 14 years ago — five years before I began dating my wife and 10 years before we had our first child. I was a single guy who lived in a one-bedroom apartment and watched TV on a 19” box.

My little car has two doors, crank windows, and no A/C. Also, it has a manual transmission, which occupies my kid-swatting hand much of the time I am driving. I chose my car because it promised reliable, low-cost transportation for myself, and possibly a date. Those were the only souls I could imagine transporting.

In recent years, it would have been reasonable to trade in my car for something more family friendly.  As sensible as this act would have been, there are a few reasons why I have not done it.

  • Cars cost more now than they did in 1998. I now have a wife and children. By definition, this means that I have less money than I had in 1998. The gap between myself and a new vehicle only seems to be widening.
  • I love my car. It still gets great gas mileage and has been cheap to keep in good running order. Besides, she’s never whispered a peep about where I went, and with whom, during those five years before my wife came along.
  • My wife’s car, though not perfect, has been adequate as a vehicle for transporting the children. It transports them far more often than my car does.

Sleek, inexpensive, and good at keeping secrets. What more could a man want?

Still, there are times when I need to transport the kids in my car. The first time I tried this, it was quite an eye-opener. We were in a hurry, and since my older son’s car seat was already in the middle of the back seat, I put the baby’s car seat in the most easily accessible spot: behind the driver’s seat.

I couldn’t put the driver’s seat back upright without sliding it all the way forward. I’m not short enough to drive comfortably with the seat all the way forward. It made it kind of difficult to let the clutch all the way out without rolling my ankle to the point of a sprain. My elbows extended perpendicularly from my body whenever I put my hands on the wheel. I had to roll down my window to make enough room to get my left hand on the wheel.

It was a short trip, so I decided to bite the bullet and drive all folded up this one time. I didn’t reckon with a difficult parking situation at my destination. Searching out a parking spot in a crowded area is a very active, albeit slow, piece of driving. As I was resting my chin on my knee, contemplating where best to park, this became painfully clear to me.

In 1922, bachelor Rocco thought only of cutting a dashing figure in his zippy sports car.

An indeterminate number of children later, Rocco reluctantly traded in his sports car for this early minivan. This transaction began the period commonly known as the Great Depression. (Image: Russell Lee – U.S. Farm Security Administration)

Fortunately, the throbbing of my clutch ankle was superseded by a cramp, closer to the spine, in the calf of that same leg. The three-year-old asked from the back seat why the ride was so jerky today. I told him to save his questions until he had identified a viable parking spot.

As I was losing feeling in my lower body, I broke down and decided to pay to park in a ramp. It was a bitter decision, taken for the sake of the children. It meant that I would have to carry the baby a bit farther to our destination, but as I limped away from the vehicle, I decided it was a small price to pay to allow the imprint of the steering wheel to start to fade from my chest.

The urinal whisperer

In a three-year-old’s world there are a lot of things that can distract from the need to take action when the urge to potty strikes. At home, my son sometimes gets so involved in his play that he needs to be reminded that nature won’t just leave him alone because he can’t find a spare moment to heed its call.

Way back in his caveman days, he didn’t need to worry about taking time out of his busy wild man schedule for potty breaks. Now that he is civilized, having traded the diaper for underwear, life is more complicated.

Accidents at home are one thing, but accidents that happen when the family is out are doubly inconvenient. We quickly learned the habit of making the little man empty his bladder before we head out of the house. We continue to do this as a precaution, though I’m not sure it’s necessary anymore.

It is not necessary because our little guy has developed a most disturbing hobby. He loves to patronize public restrooms. He did not inherit this trait from me.

The boy is fascinated with urinals. While I agree, urinals are amazing pieces of technology, allowing men to get in and get out of the restroom faster than ever in recorded history, my appreciation for them falls far short of fascination.

Some people like to go around to different cafes, making mental notes of which ones have the best lattes or creamiest cheesecakes. Like these folks, my boy is also an amateur critic. He specializes in comparing our community’s urinals.

In 1917, Marcel Duchamp entered this urinal into an art exhibition. If he had been there, my son would have voted it a blue ribbon. Then he would have put it to the test as functional art.

The first criterion that sets a particular urinal apart from the competition is height. He bursts into the restroom scouting out a “little one.”  I’m always relieved when he finds one, because I’m never comfortable with his accuracy when he has to aim high.

Another exciting feature is the self-flushing urinal. I appreciate this advancement also, as I don’t like for him to have to touch anything not absolutely necessary in the public restroom. Whereas flushing occurs to him to be optional at home, he insists on being a good citizen and flushing even the most repulsive receptacles in the public arena.

While I try to be patient with the boy’s desire to chart all the public restrooms in town, it really drives me up the wall in restaurants. He usually waits until our food comes before announcing that he has to go. In the olden days he could go with Mommy sometimes, but now he’s getting big for that, and he’s also noted a disturbing lack of urinals in the bathrooms Mommy frequents.

If you asked my son to read this sign, he would tell you it says, “There are only boring toilets in here. Go to the other bathroom.” Image via Wikipedia

Instead of eating our food before it gets cold, we are off to the men’s room. Hopefully, there is no novelty in this one to catch hold of his imagination and derail him from focusing on the task at hand. Regardless, there are a lot of steps to a successful toddler trip to the bathroom. These steps take time.

Time-consuming procedures are bad enough in a clean, comfortable bathroom, which some restaurant bathrooms are certainly not. I hover around him, making every effort to slap his hands away from anything that is not soap or water. Even so, I usually emerge with a waning appetite. The cold food that is now waiting for me doesn’t do much to help.

It may be that urinals are something that are helping the boy establish his gender identity. I’m no psychologist, so they may just be something that allow the kid to pee at a wall. That’s a good reason to like them too, I suppose. Either way, I can’t wait until he can hold it until after dinner.