Tag Archives: humor

Conversations with my wife: Royal Deodorant

Wife: You know our William and Kate?

Me: Our William and Kate?

Wife: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Me: Oooooh. Our William and Kate! Yes, of course.

Wife: Do you think they make a special, stronger deodorant for them?

Me: Why?

Wife: They do a lot of formal events. You know how when you go on a job interview, you get nervous and start to sweat a lot?

Me: If you had three job interviews a day, every day, I guess you wouldn’t sweat as much at them.

Wife: They must sweat a lot, with all those showers they make them take.

Me: I’m really not sure how many showers they are required to take.

Wife: Well, they have to change into a new outfit for every event.

Me: I didn’t know they had to take a shower every time they changed clothes.

Wife: And then, they’re always meeting with important people, and that’s got to make them nervous. Especially Kate, because she’s a commoner and not used to that sort of thing.

Me: At some point, she met the future king. If she’d had big, smelly sweat balls under her arms, he probably wouldn’t have started dating her.

Wife: But what about when they’re late and they have to run to catch their plane?

Me: I think the king’s plane will wait for the king.

Wife: Yes, but they still have to make it to their events on time. What if they’re late and they have to run to the plane to make their event on time?

Me: How often do you find yourself running late for an appointment?

Wife: All the time.

Me: And how many times do you find yourself running half a mile to make up the time? I’m sure they get dropped off closer to their destination than that.

Wife: I bet they do have some kind of special deodorant.

If our George and Mary, with all their hot fur and other dry-clean-only regalia, didn't need heavy-duty deodorant, why would anyone need it now?

Quit making me laugh; I’m trying to be mad at you!

My son has reached the age when he wears his emotions on his sleeve. It’s not that he can’t control his emotions, or hide them if he wanted to, he just wants to make sure Mommy and Daddy notice the terrible effects that their horribly unfair actions are wreaking upon his tender psyche.

He turns his back and stomps off like an old pro. He has a flare for the dramatic that would make the Booth boys proud. His motivation to play the scene goes something like this: “When Daddy sees how his decision to not let me draw on the walls has turned me into a miserable wretch, he will be crippled by guilt. Then he will relent and let me deface whatever I want, and maybe even offer me some candy for good measure.”

John, Edwin, and Junius Booth. The first family of 19th century American drama.

My little pouter. The first boy of 21st century American drama.

So, he lowers that cross stare over his face, fold his arms tightly, and sits down hard upon some object that is not a chair. He roosts on a spot that is far enough away so that I can feel the emotional gulf that my unreasonable edicts have opened between us, but close enough so that there is no danger of me not seeing him. Thus begins my punishment. Sic semper tyrannis.

I have never been much for histrionics, and I don’t enjoy sitting in the radiation of waves of guilt powerful enough to cripple. I have to defend myself; I have found no better way to do this than by making the pouting little thespian laugh. This completely ruins his performance and saves me from becoming a man broken by guilt.

It is rare that I can make the boy laugh so hard as to forget all about his grudge, but I can often make him laugh just enough to make his grudge a burden to support. It is difficult to exude crushing guilt vibes when you are giggling.

Even though he can’t always keep himself from giggling, my son does not like it one bit when his grudge is thrown out of focus by laughter. As soon as he can stifle the giggle, he makes his face look meaner than ever and grunts his displeasure at me. I understand that, in the short term, I am doing little to soothe his anger. In the long term, maybe I am teaching him that the power of the pout, although seemingly immense, will almost never get him what he wants.

If little Johnny Booth had ever outgrown his pouting stage, he might have avoided breaking his leg during this ill-advised leap from the theater balcony. This is not the sort of dramatic personality I want my son to become.

Before anyone gets the idea that this method of attacking the scowl with laughter has given me the upper hand over the child, I should make it clear that he uses the same strategy on me. I’m sure other parents have experienced this: The kid does something naughty. You’re ready to give him a stern talking to and lay down the law. The problem is that the thing that was naughty is also hilarious, and you can’t even look at the child, let alone speak to him, without bursting.

This is an especially volatile situation if Mommy doesn’t think it’s funny, because then Daddy is implicated in the naughtiness. Mommies know how to punish daddies as well as children, and Daddy can’t make Mommy laugh away her cross face, no matter how funny his jokes are.

But, there are plenty of times when Mommy is laughing right alongside Daddy, and neither one of them can manage to turn a stern face toward the boy. My son uses humor to try to turn a dicey situation to his advantage quite regularly. It is a peculiar disposition of his. I don’t know where he gets it.

Zoo of shattered illusions

Our local zoo is free during the winter. Since we had a 70+ degree winter day on Saturday, we decided to take the boy out to see how the animals are getting along. All I was looking to get out of it were a couple of hours of family fun. What I got was the crumbling of the pillars of my understanding of the animal kingdom. Apparently, everything I thought I knew about animals and zoos is based upon myth. Here is a small sampling of how my world got turned upside down.

Bald Eagle

This eagle is anything but bald. If his head were black, he would be the Fonzi of the bird world. I don’t know, maybe back before Rogaine he had a receding hair-line. But after a few visits to the Bosley Treatment Center, his wavy locks are back. Now the lady eagles can’t resist him, and with the way he’s got it goin’ on, the species is in far less danger of becoming extinct.

The famous "bald" eagle.

For your reference, this is a more accurate representation of bald and eagle. Bald – foreground. Eagle – background (lower right).

Everybody sing: "I want to know what bald is. I want you to show me."

Tortoise and Hare

We all know the respective reputations of the tortoise and the hare. Guess what? It’s all wrong. The tortoise did not win the race because the hare got cocky and lazy. The tortoise won because his speed was vastly under-rated and the hare was lazy long before he got cocky. In fact, I could find no evidence that hares are ever faster than tortoises.

I can’t show you the video we took of the tortoise and hares because I don’t own the blog upgrades necessary to post it, so you’ll have to rely upon my vivid prose to paint the picture. The tortoise was running around his area like a madman, chasing trespassing peacocks out of his yard, weaving like a sports car, turning on a dime. A little girl was heard to proclaim, “That turtle is on the move!”

The hares were resting from a hard day of resting. One of them tried to rise, but his frail legs seemed unequal to the task and he lay back down. Another took a lethargic swipe at the back of his ear with his rear paw. He missed. Either his ear didn’t itch badly enough to make him care to take another swing at it, or he was just too sleepy. In the next fable I come across, I’m betting on the tortoise, even if the hare seems like he’s taking the race seriously.

Kids are fascinated with zoo animals

This is not 100% myth; my son did seem quite enamored of the tiger cubs. It’s not that he didn’t enjoy seeing the other animals, just that they didn’t inspire that special childish wonder within him. He was not at all above saying, “Okay, let’s see what’s next,” after staring down a lemur for a few seconds.

That tiger cub is tearing up a plastic sled. If you are a zoo animal and you want to be a hit with little boys, kill or destory something right in front of them.

To my son, the most fascinating aspect of our zoo is that it abuts a railroad track. Every so often, a freight train would roll by. No matter where we were, or what animal we were facing, my son would tug me toward the tracks. “I wanna see the train,” he said, as if there just happened to be this mildly amusing collection of animals right next to the most interesting railway line. If you want to know what it is that fascinates little boys, it’s trains. If a train happens to be transporting construction vehicles, the little boy is in nirvana.

I now consider myself to be righteously disabused of my innocent fancies.

A boy riding a baby giraffe: one of the few things you can still believe in.

Brotherly love: the bruise that keeps on giving

The other night, after feeling the baby in Mommy’s belly, my son came over to announce to me that his little brother had kicked him. “What?” I asked. “You two are fighting already?” I knew it would come to this, but I’d imagined that we would have peace until his brother was born. I should have known better, because if there is one thing I have a little experience with, it is brothers.

I have four brothers, three of them older. Any toughness I have in my constitution is largely thanks to them. They did an outstanding job of terrorizing my childhood toughening me up. Every charred spot on the back lawn, its black silhouette exactly matching the shape of one of my model airplanes, made me a stronger person. Every one of my toy soldiers fed to the dog prepared me a little more for the hard knocks of life. Their mangled, tooth-marked bodies were a constant reminder of the dangers of getting too close to the men.

I have confidence that my son will do a good job in teaching brotherly life lessons to his new sibling. He will, no doubt, learn a few things himself. There are a lot of useful things that brothers teach each other. If you never had a brother, you might be tempted to retreat when someone jumps out at you from a hiding place. Retreat invites attack. A brother teaches you that you should charge and punch that someone square in the middle as hard as you can. Further, you should keep punching until the threat is adequately diminished.

Gettysburg

And they called this the brothers' war? Milquetoasts! My family could have shown these Quakers a thing or two about how to throw down.

Brothers teach each other how to sleep in defensible positions. Just because it’s dark and the house seems quiet, don’t assume that a heavy body won’t land on top of you of a sudden, pinning you down on your bed. Don’t tie up your limbs in blankets, making yourself vulnerable to attack. Keep an arm free, so you can at least get a handful of ear or something. A would-be attacker with an ear that still hurts from last time is more likely to think twice before he pounces.

I don’t envision adding three more boys to my brood, so my sons will have to work overtime if they hope to teach each other all the lessons my brothers taught me. I wish I could lend them a hand, but there are some things you can only learn from a brother. If Dad nails one of the boys in the back of the head with a snowball, it’s not so much a learning opportunity as it is child abuse.

A boy needs to learn how to anticipate an ambush from his big brother. If he has multiple big brothers, he may be fortunate enough to have this teachable moment reinforced with a second snowball to his neck. The neck snowball does not pack the same instant enlightenment as the skull snowball, but the red welt is a good reminder for up to a week.

If their shirts are any indication, these brothers were out back educating each other with dirt clods. Nothing brings home an important lesson quite like a dirt clod up side the head.

My wife did not grow up with male siblings, so I’m not sure how much she knows about the educational services brothers offer each other. One thing I do know is that, in the coming years, she will find out.