The last thing you want or need is 500 words from me about the Chardon High School shootings earlier this week. Other than having a niece and nephew who are students there and who thankfully escaped safe and sound, the whole thing really has little to do with me.
And even if it did, seriously, what do I know? I'm not going to tell you anything you don't already know. I'm not going to give you any pearls of wisdom to make sense of the whole thing. I have no insights and little advice to offer.
But I will say this: What happened in Chardon on Monday morning in no way made me hug my kids any tighter or feel any more apprehensive about dropping them off for school. I'm no more worried for their safety today than I was last week.
Why? Because my approach to parenting has always been to operate at a consistent state of low-level panic. I don't show it very often (people will describe me as being "laid back"...I wish), but deep down, every day I run through a mental checklist of Things That Could Go Wrong for the Kids.
What if they get hit by a bus? What if they get into a fight? What if someone picks on them? What if they fail a test?
And yes, what if some kid brings a gun to school? That's something that crosses my mind from time to time, largely because I live in Wickliffe, Ohio. As many of you know and/or remember, we in Wickliffe dealt with our own school shooting back in 1994. A heroic custodian was killed and two staff members and a police officer were wounded, including my old 8th-grade football coach, Mr. Grimm.
I didn't have kids in the school at the time. In fact, my oldest daughter, Elissa, was only 7 months old. Every day I would take her for an afternoon walk in the stroller so that she could get some fresh air and a little shuteye, and I could get some exercise.
We generally took the same circular route, one that took us past Wickliffe Middle School. It was pretty nice for early November (an online weather almanac says the high in Cleveland that day was 57 degrees, but I seem to remember it being warmer). As we walked down Route 84 toward Lincoln Road, it suddenly seemed like sirens came from every direction all at once. Police cars, fire trucks and ambulances from surrounding cities zoomed past, all of them turning down Lincoln toward the elementary and middle schools.
I didn't know what was happening at the time, but my first instinct as a parent was that it couldn't be good and that I should turn around and go home, so I did. When I got back to the house, I put Elissa down for a nap and turned on the TV. And there on CNN, for all the world to see, was a still photo of the middle school lobby, with glass and debris on the floor after a lone gunman had come in and shot the place up.
Like I said, I had no older kids at the time, but I was shocked. I had attended that school. I had lived in this city my entire life. There were the usual choruses of, "This is the last place you would expect something like this to happen," just as we heard over and over again about Chardon. It was terrible.
It's still terrible. It's terrible because you can't be a parent in this city and not have that memory burned somewhere into your mind. At some level of my consciousness, it's always there.
That's why I am no more on the lookout for things that could hurt my kids now than I've ever been before. When it happens that close to home, it never quite leaves you.
I hate that we live in a world like this. I hate that in addition to all of the natural worries I have as a father, there's always that incident hovering in the background, too. But it's the way things are, and it's something we deal with as parents.
As I type this, I'm wearing a red shirt and a red and black tie in what I hope is some feeble but meaningful gesture of support for the people of Chardon. Few if any of them will ever see it, and I suppose it's really more for myself than anything.
In a few weeks, things will start to return to something approaching "normal" in Chardon. People will be back in their routines. Teachers and kids will go back to classes, assemblies and school concerts. The TV people will finally leave, surfacing once a year on Feb. 27th to mark the anniversary of the shootings. And slowly but surely, as it always does, life will go on.
But I'll tell you one thing. The memory of it will never go away completely. The parents of Chardon, Ohio, will always carry it with them, and perhaps subconsciously they'll continue hugging their kids a little tighter and worrying about them a little more every day for the rest of their lives. It's just what happens. It's heartbreaking, but it's what happens.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
The necessary evil of Chuck E. Cheese
So Jack got invited to a friend's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. You veteran parents know how this works: You go to Target, buy a gift in the toy department, wrap it, take your kid to the House of Cheese and either drop him/her off (if you're smart) or else agree to stay and help supervise (if you're not).
My good friend Lenny Luscher once called Chuck E. Cheese "Babylon for kids," and I think that's pretty accurate. Contained within those four walls is every possible kid form of sin and vice...and, thanks to the addition of beer and wine to the menu, some for the adults, as well.
The rides and games vary by Chuck E. Cheese location, but there are at least three constants no matter which one you visit:
(1) A jumbo-sized Habitrail in which kids crawl around and share germs with others their age
(2) A variety of games that introduce them to gambling by offering tickets for the winners
(3) Noise - lots and lots of noise
That last point is crucial. Do not go to Chuck E. Cheese thinking you'll be in for a relaxing time while your child eats pizza, ingests mass quantities of sugary soda and plays skee-ball. The Cheese Experience is loud, and it's almost always uncomfortably hot. Little kids will constantly run into your knees like tiny Ndamukong Suhs, trying to get from one activity to the other. No matter how well you have trained your children, they will quickly conform to the pattern of obnoxious, rude behavior so favored by the tiny denizens of The Cheese.
And yet, I would argue the world needs Chuck E. Cheese. It wouldn't bother me if I never walked into one again the rest of my life, mind you, but it's my firm belief that there's a certain ying and yang between grown-ups and kids that needs to be maintained.
Think of it from a child's point of view. Ninety-five percent of the time, kids are forced to live, work and play in decidedly adult-oriented environments. Even when they're around other kids, like at school, they do it in a setting created and supported by adults.
Chuck E. Cheese is one of the few places they can go that is entirely theirs. That fake Chuck E. Cheese band up on the stage? They love that! Seriously, they may not admit it, but listening to that animatronic band strike up a bluegrass version of "The Farmer in the Dell" for the 27th time in less than an hour is like scoring front-row seats to Led Zeppelin for them.
The games, the grimy ball pit, the noise...this is paradise for small people. They can do what they want for as long as they want (or at least until the tokens run out) and no annoying grown-up is going to yell at them for being too loud or for having too much fun.
Trust me, this is a good thing. If we as the people in charge were to take away that last 5% of freedom they possess, they would revolt. Mark my words, there would be a full-scale kid revolution if we shut down Chuck E. Cheese and places like it. These kids (who already tend to be fast and agile) would be angry, as well, and pre-adolescent anger is sufficiently powerful to destroy civilization as we know it.
The Chuck E. Cheese people understand this. Which is why they offer booze now. They don't want you getting crazy ideas in your head about how their environment is probably damaging to your child's long-term mental health, so they offer up fairly low-cost Chardonnay and Budweiser to head you off. That nice little buzz you get not only gives you the stamina to endure the chaos, it also keeps you from setting fire to the place.
Trust me, as parents and as a society, we need The Cheese.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Dramatis personae
When I launched this blog in December (as a continuation of the old "They Call Me Daddy" blog), it was intended for family and Facebook friends. Just a way for me to write about something other than broadband Internet, which is what I spend my days fixating on at work.
But along the way we've garnered quite a few new readers, largely as a result of being part of the News-Herald's Community Media Lab and also through the retweets and online recommendations of a few very kind regulars here. The result is that I can't just assume everyone knows who I'm talking about when I reference "Terry" or "Chris Dorazio" or "Percy."
So I thought it would make sense to run down the main characters who constantly pop up here...a sort of online scorecard for those new to our little group. To wit:
TERRY: My wife of almost 20 years. Pretty, smart and the glue that keeps my life together. Also an excellent kisser. Likes chocolate, Hallmark movies, and the color yellow. More on her later this month, as we're approaching the 26th anniversary of our first date.
ELISSA: My almost-18-year-old daughter. Smart as a whip, seemingly jaded, not a lover of children (which makes life with four younger siblings challenging, I imagine). Elissa is on the brink of selecting a college. I'm on the brink of financial collapse. These two things are in no way unrelated.
CHLOE: My 15-year-old daughter. The most unique individual I know. Not quite clinically insane, but well down that path. Chloe is very much the overachiever. I'm just starting to teach her to drive. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Chloe is one day named president of the world.
JARED: My 6-foot-tall, 13-year-old son. The Man Beast is a good soccer and saxophone player, though he tends not to do those two things simultaneously. Like his father, a fan of Cleveland sports and the Ottawa Senators. I have set the boy up for a lifetime of disappointment. What a terrible parent I am.
MELANIE: My sweet little 11-year-old daughter. Mel is a goalkeeper in soccer. It takes a special kind of person (*cough* CRAZY *cough*) to be a goalkeeper, so I give her credit. Melanie is also a great actress. Thankfully, she hasn't yet learned to transfer that skill from the stage to her home life, but I know it's coming.
JACK: My 6-year-old son. An evil genius. I used to say it was just coincidence that we decided not to have any more kids after he was born. Now I'm not so sure. In any case, he's good for at least one belly laugh a day. The most unintentionally funny person I know.
SEAN: Elissa's boyfriend. Her intellectual equal AND a sax player. This is a good combination.
CHRIS DORAZIO: Chloe's Vietnamese-Italian boyfriend. Always referred to by both his first and last names.
FRED, GEORGE & CHARLIE: The family cats. Fred and George are brothers. They are scared of Charlie, a stray we took in a year-and-a-half ago and the definite alpha male.
PERCY: Elissa's chinchilla. He has a cage that's nicer than my house. May outlive me.
S'MORES: Melanie's guinea pig. Chloe refers to her as "Muffins" for reasons only Chloe understands.
ROGER: Chloe's female dwarf hamster. Yes, female. Don't ask.
ALLIE: The gecko that started as Jared's pet but was recently hijacked by Elissa. Jared appears to be fine with this.
GINEVRA: Elissa's rat. By now I assume you are not at all surprised that we have a rat.
Life is a crazy whirl of people, pets and activities at our house, and these are the people/animals who make it happen. They should all be proud.
But along the way we've garnered quite a few new readers, largely as a result of being part of the News-Herald's Community Media Lab and also through the retweets and online recommendations of a few very kind regulars here. The result is that I can't just assume everyone knows who I'm talking about when I reference "Terry" or "Chris Dorazio" or "Percy."
So I thought it would make sense to run down the main characters who constantly pop up here...a sort of online scorecard for those new to our little group. To wit:
TERRY: My wife of almost 20 years. Pretty, smart and the glue that keeps my life together. Also an excellent kisser. Likes chocolate, Hallmark movies, and the color yellow. More on her later this month, as we're approaching the 26th anniversary of our first date.
ELISSA: My almost-18-year-old daughter. Smart as a whip, seemingly jaded, not a lover of children (which makes life with four younger siblings challenging, I imagine). Elissa is on the brink of selecting a college. I'm on the brink of financial collapse. These two things are in no way unrelated.
CHLOE: My 15-year-old daughter. The most unique individual I know. Not quite clinically insane, but well down that path. Chloe is very much the overachiever. I'm just starting to teach her to drive. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Chloe is one day named president of the world.
JARED: My 6-foot-tall, 13-year-old son. The Man Beast is a good soccer and saxophone player, though he tends not to do those two things simultaneously. Like his father, a fan of Cleveland sports and the Ottawa Senators. I have set the boy up for a lifetime of disappointment. What a terrible parent I am.
MELANIE: My sweet little 11-year-old daughter. Mel is a goalkeeper in soccer. It takes a special kind of person (*cough* CRAZY *cough*) to be a goalkeeper, so I give her credit. Melanie is also a great actress. Thankfully, she hasn't yet learned to transfer that skill from the stage to her home life, but I know it's coming.
JACK: My 6-year-old son. An evil genius. I used to say it was just coincidence that we decided not to have any more kids after he was born. Now I'm not so sure. In any case, he's good for at least one belly laugh a day. The most unintentionally funny person I know.
SEAN: Elissa's boyfriend. Her intellectual equal AND a sax player. This is a good combination.
CHRIS DORAZIO: Chloe's Vietnamese-Italian boyfriend. Always referred to by both his first and last names.
FRED, GEORGE & CHARLIE: The family cats. Fred and George are brothers. They are scared of Charlie, a stray we took in a year-and-a-half ago and the definite alpha male.
PERCY: Elissa's chinchilla. He has a cage that's nicer than my house. May outlive me.
S'MORES: Melanie's guinea pig. Chloe refers to her as "Muffins" for reasons only Chloe understands.
ROGER: Chloe's female dwarf hamster. Yes, female. Don't ask.
ALLIE: The gecko that started as Jared's pet but was recently hijacked by Elissa. Jared appears to be fine with this.
GINEVRA: Elissa's rat. By now I assume you are not at all surprised that we have a rat.
Life is a crazy whirl of people, pets and activities at our house, and these are the people/animals who make it happen. They should all be proud.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
My favorite joke
Almost everyone has a favorite joke they like to tell. Mine happens to be the same as my father's. He used to tell this one in slightly different form, but I stumbled across it this way on the Internet and decided to post it as is:
There once was a monastery that was very strict. Following a vow of silence, no one was allowed to speak at all. But there was one exception to this rule: Every 10 years, the monks were permitted to speak just two words.
After spending his first 10 years at the monastery, one monk went to the abbot. "It has been 10 years," said the abbot. "What are the two words you would like to speak?"
"Bed... hard..." said the monk.
"I see," replied the abbot.
Ten years later, the monk returned to the abbot's office. "It has been 10 more years," said the abbot. "What are the two words you would like to speak?"
"Food... stinks..." said the monk.
"I see," replied the abbot.
Yet another 10 years passed and the monk once again met with the abbot, who asked, "What are your two words now, after these 10 years?"
"I... quit!" said the monk.
"Well, I can see why," replied the abbot. "All you ever do is complain."
I still laugh when I hear that joke. Every single time. I'm easy that way.
After spending his first 10 years at the monastery, one monk went to the abbot. "It has been 10 years," said the abbot. "What are the two words you would like to speak?"
"Bed... hard..." said the monk.
"I see," replied the abbot.
Ten years later, the monk returned to the abbot's office. "It has been 10 more years," said the abbot. "What are the two words you would like to speak?"
"Food... stinks..." said the monk.
"I see," replied the abbot.
Yet another 10 years passed and the monk once again met with the abbot, who asked, "What are your two words now, after these 10 years?"
"I... quit!" said the monk.
"Well, I can see why," replied the abbot. "All you ever do is complain."
I still laugh when I hear that joke. Every single time. I'm easy that way.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
25 things that make me happy
(1) Getting the mail
(2) Sitting down in my seat right before the start of a hockey game
(3) John Coltrane playing "My Favorite Things"
(4) Terry's laugh
(5) Thickly sliced Swiss cheese
(6) A clean car
(7) A clean kitchen
(8) A clean bathroom
(9) Pretty much a clean anything
(10) A Saturday with no appointments, kids activities or obligations
(11) Dennis Miller doing stand-up (before he got all political all the time)
(12) The sound of my kids' voices
(13) A well-played cello
(14) Any memory of Mapledale Elementary School, circa 1978
(15) Game shows
(16) Running
(17) World War I books
(18) Really, really dark chocolate
(19) Any given episode of "The Jeffersons"
(20) Libraries
(21) Spotting planets in the sky (not the stars so much, just the planets)
(22) Landing on Boardwalk AND Park Place early in the game, ensuring that eventually I will crush you
(23) The Guinness Book of World Records
(24) Virtually any comedy produced in the early 80s
(25) Maps
(2) Sitting down in my seat right before the start of a hockey game
(3) John Coltrane playing "My Favorite Things"
(4) Terry's laugh
(5) Thickly sliced Swiss cheese
(6) A clean car
(7) A clean kitchen
(8) A clean bathroom
(9) Pretty much a clean anything
(10) A Saturday with no appointments, kids activities or obligations
(11) Dennis Miller doing stand-up (before he got all political all the time)
(12) The sound of my kids' voices
(13) A well-played cello
(14) Any memory of Mapledale Elementary School, circa 1978
(15) Game shows
(16) Running
(17) World War I books
(18) Really, really dark chocolate
(19) Any given episode of "The Jeffersons"
(20) Libraries
(21) Spotting planets in the sky (not the stars so much, just the planets)
(22) Landing on Boardwalk AND Park Place early in the game, ensuring that eventually I will crush you
(23) The Guinness Book of World Records
(24) Virtually any comedy produced in the early 80s
(25) Maps
Saturday, February 18, 2012
The mystery of the plastic clothing containers
Stacked in our basement storage room are dozens of plastic bins filled with children's clothes. Each of these containers is labeled and sorted by gender, size and season ("Boys winter 3T," "Girls summer 4-6," etc.)
As is the case with many men, these containers are a mystery to me. There are several things about them I can't explain:
(1) Where did they all come from? I realize many are gifts and hand-me-downs from other families, but seriously, we don't know enough people for them to give us THAT many clothes. The only plausible theory is that the clothes spontaneously reproduce while inside their plastic bins. Two little jumpers go in, and six months later you open the lid and 16 identical jumpers come out.
(2) Who wears what size? When Elissa was a baby I was pretty well aware of what size clothes she wore at any given time. But then Chloe came along and it messed me up. I couldn't remember who wore what after that. And after five kids? I am clueless.
(3) Why do so many baby clothes look like something a clown would wear? Are these things all designed by Bozo's House of Fashion? With all the bright colors and little ruffles, I can't understand why they don't just go the whole way and give you big matching clown shoes with every purchase.
(4) Why, after a child reaches the age of 2, do we switch from months to years for sizing purposes? Wouldn't we all be better off, math-wise, if they kept using months until a child was, say, a teenager? I would enjoy kids clothes shopping much more if I could walk into Target and ask a sales assistant, "Yeah, where would I find boys pants size 113 months?"
(5) Where do the clothes go once they're gone? I see Terry taking clothes containers INTO the storage room all the time, but I never see her taking containers OUT. Yet there always seems to be a relatively constant amount of childwear in that room. How does this work? Is there some sort of wormhole in the storage room? Do the larger clothes eat the smaller clothes? I can't figure it out.
In truth, I can't figure ANY of it out. And neither can you, if you're a guy. This is why the wife handles all clothes storage, sizing and procurement issues in 99.8% of marriages. It comes naturally to them. I hear women having conversations about kids clothes all the time, because next to the related subject of laundry, it seems to be the one thing moms of multiple kids have on their minds on a consistent basis.
With seven people and one income in our house, there is always someone who is missing some crucial item of clothing. Usually it's Jared, who is plagued by two disadvantages: (a) he grows 3 inches a week, it seems, so he's constantly outpacing the stuff in his closet, and (b) he's a relatively non-communicative 13-year-old boy, which means it never occurs to him to tell his mother about wardrobe gaps until it's too late ("There's a band concert in an hour and the only dress pants I have reach about halfway down my calves.Can we buy some?")
Terry and I don't do a lot of clothes shopping for ourselves, since most of the disposable income goes toward keeping the young'uns dressed and fed. I have shirts from the 90's that I still like wearing, but they're getting a little threadbare. And poor Terry hardly ever has anything to wear when we go out, though she always manages to make do and ends up looking fantastic. I'm not quite sure how she does it.
Ultimately, keeping track of clothes storage and sizes is another one of the 837 reasons why Terry Can Never Die. If anything ever happens to her, the kids and I will go around wearing shopping bags with arm and leg holes cut out of the sides...but at least I'll finally know which size Giant Eagle bag each of them wears.
As is the case with many men, these containers are a mystery to me. There are several things about them I can't explain:
(1) Where did they all come from? I realize many are gifts and hand-me-downs from other families, but seriously, we don't know enough people for them to give us THAT many clothes. The only plausible theory is that the clothes spontaneously reproduce while inside their plastic bins. Two little jumpers go in, and six months later you open the lid and 16 identical jumpers come out.
(2) Who wears what size? When Elissa was a baby I was pretty well aware of what size clothes she wore at any given time. But then Chloe came along and it messed me up. I couldn't remember who wore what after that. And after five kids? I am clueless.
(3) Why do so many baby clothes look like something a clown would wear? Are these things all designed by Bozo's House of Fashion? With all the bright colors and little ruffles, I can't understand why they don't just go the whole way and give you big matching clown shoes with every purchase.
(4) Why, after a child reaches the age of 2, do we switch from months to years for sizing purposes? Wouldn't we all be better off, math-wise, if they kept using months until a child was, say, a teenager? I would enjoy kids clothes shopping much more if I could walk into Target and ask a sales assistant, "Yeah, where would I find boys pants size 113 months?"
(5) Where do the clothes go once they're gone? I see Terry taking clothes containers INTO the storage room all the time, but I never see her taking containers OUT. Yet there always seems to be a relatively constant amount of childwear in that room. How does this work? Is there some sort of wormhole in the storage room? Do the larger clothes eat the smaller clothes? I can't figure it out.
In truth, I can't figure ANY of it out. And neither can you, if you're a guy. This is why the wife handles all clothes storage, sizing and procurement issues in 99.8% of marriages. It comes naturally to them. I hear women having conversations about kids clothes all the time, because next to the related subject of laundry, it seems to be the one thing moms of multiple kids have on their minds on a consistent basis.
With seven people and one income in our house, there is always someone who is missing some crucial item of clothing. Usually it's Jared, who is plagued by two disadvantages: (a) he grows 3 inches a week, it seems, so he's constantly outpacing the stuff in his closet, and (b) he's a relatively non-communicative 13-year-old boy, which means it never occurs to him to tell his mother about wardrobe gaps until it's too late ("There's a band concert in an hour and the only dress pants I have reach about halfway down my calves.Can we buy some?")
Terry and I don't do a lot of clothes shopping for ourselves, since most of the disposable income goes toward keeping the young'uns dressed and fed. I have shirts from the 90's that I still like wearing, but they're getting a little threadbare. And poor Terry hardly ever has anything to wear when we go out, though she always manages to make do and ends up looking fantastic. I'm not quite sure how she does it.
Ultimately, keeping track of clothes storage and sizes is another one of the 837 reasons why Terry Can Never Die. If anything ever happens to her, the kids and I will go around wearing shopping bags with arm and leg holes cut out of the sides...but at least I'll finally know which size Giant Eagle bag each of them wears.
Friday, February 17, 2012
The world's greatest breakfast cereals: One man's (very well-informed) opinion
My former News-Herald colleague Marty Gitlin recently co-authored and published "The Great American Cereal Book: How Breakfast Got Its Crunch." (You can buy a copy on Amazon, if you're interested.) Marty had talked about writing this book for years, and he finally did it.
I haven't yet read it, but I can personally guarantee that it's one of the greatest books in the history of the universe because it deals with one of the greatest food products in the history of the universe: cereal.
I consider myself something of an expert on cereal. Over my 42 years on this planet, I've just about tried 'em all, from King Vitamin and Quisp to Alpha-Bits and Cap'n Crunch. And you know what? They're all good. Seriously, I've never had a cereal I didn't like...and I include Grape Nuts and Fiber One in that statement.
Did you ever eat a bowl of Grape Nuts? Awesome taste, but they have the texture of scrap metal. Seriously, one serving of Grape Nuts has the potential to rip the inside of your mouth to shreds. But like I said, awesome taste, so the pain is worth it.
Still, Grape Nuts don't make my Top 5 All-Time List of the Best Cereals. Only the elite of the cereal world qualify for inclusion on my list, which is widely recognized as the definitive ranking by cereal connoisseurs the world over (NOTE: That's in no way true, but I thought it would sound good.)
So here, then, is my list of the greatest cereals, in reverse order. If you're an American of my generation, you'll probably disagree somewhat with this list, which is OK. You're entitled to be wrong...and if your list differs from mine, then rest assured, you ARE wrong.
(5) FROSTED FLAKES
There was this horrible period during the 1980s when many of my favorite childhood cereals decided it would be wise, from a marketing perspective, to drop the word "Sugar" from their names. When I was growing up, every cereal that was worth eating had the word "Sugar" in its name: Super Sugar Smacks, Sugar Crisp, Sugar Puffs, etc. And then of course there were Sugar Frosted Flakes. As Tony the Tiger told us, they're GRRRRRRRREAT! And they had sugar on them. Deal with it. Why did we suddenly decide to fool ourselves by dropping the sugar-themed names? Do you think the cereals themselves were any different? That the sugar suddenly disappeared and was replaced by wheat germ? We may have been hyperactive from our constant intake of corn syrup-based products, but we weren't dumb.
(4) LIFE CEREAL
You can't keep a box of Life in our house very long. Between me and the kids, it will be eaten in a matter of hours. Life Cereal is pure happiness packed into tiny squares. The commercial with that Mikey kid didn't hurt, either. One time (this is true) my parents went out of town for Easter weekend and left me home alone. I was 15 years old. Rather than stocking the fridge with food or giving me money to feed myself, my mom simply bought two grocery bags full of cereal – including a big box of Life – and put them out. I ripped through all but two boxes by Monday morning. I kid you not. That was one of the greatest weekends of my life.
(3) FROOT LOOPS
Let's be clear on the spelling here: It's F-R-O-O-T. If you thought they were F-R-U-I-T Loops, then you don't deserve to eat these tiny ringlets of delight. One of the pleasures of cereal is drinking the milk that's left in the bowl when the cereal itself is gone. A lot of people will tell you that the chocolatey goodness left in the wake of Cocoa Puffs is the best post-cereal milk. Don't believe them. Try some Froot Loop-flavored milk and then make up your mind.
(2) FROSTED MINI-WHEATS
When I was growing up, my mom would often fix me a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats by breaking each Mini-Wheat into two pieces. I never questioned this practice until I had a bowl of pure, unbroken Mini-Wheats. I can't explain why, but keeping the Mini-Wheats intact enhances the flavor potential exponentially. (I realize that makes no sense. Just go with it.) The problem with Frosted Mini-Wheats is that I can easily – EASILY – eat a whole box in one sitting if I'm not careful. If Life Cereal goes fast in our house, then Frosted Mini-Wheats disappear almost instantly. And it's always my fault.
(1) RAISIN BRAN
I know Raisin Bran is on almost nobody's list of top cereals, but it is a clear-cut #1 on mine. To say I love Raisin Bran is to engage in gross understatement. I get almost teary-eyed with joy whenever Terry buys a box. And to be specific, I'm talking about two-scoops-of-raisins-in-every-box Kellogg's Raisin Bran, not that Post or (worse yet) generic stuff. It has to be Kellogg's. The raisins are plump and plentiful, and the bran flakes are crisp and flavorful. But like anything awesome, you can have too much of a good thing. Bran and raisins both have certain, um, bowel-related effects that can be nasty. When I was younger, this wasn't a problem. Now that I'm in my 40s, I can't have more than one bowl at a time. That's just the way it is. If I go for that second bowl, horrible things happen, my friends. Things of which it's not polite to speak in any sort of mixed company. Let's just leave it at that.
I haven't yet read it, but I can personally guarantee that it's one of the greatest books in the history of the universe because it deals with one of the greatest food products in the history of the universe: cereal.
I consider myself something of an expert on cereal. Over my 42 years on this planet, I've just about tried 'em all, from King Vitamin and Quisp to Alpha-Bits and Cap'n Crunch. And you know what? They're all good. Seriously, I've never had a cereal I didn't like...and I include Grape Nuts and Fiber One in that statement.
Did you ever eat a bowl of Grape Nuts? Awesome taste, but they have the texture of scrap metal. Seriously, one serving of Grape Nuts has the potential to rip the inside of your mouth to shreds. But like I said, awesome taste, so the pain is worth it.
Still, Grape Nuts don't make my Top 5 All-Time List of the Best Cereals. Only the elite of the cereal world qualify for inclusion on my list, which is widely recognized as the definitive ranking by cereal connoisseurs the world over (NOTE: That's in no way true, but I thought it would sound good.)
So here, then, is my list of the greatest cereals, in reverse order. If you're an American of my generation, you'll probably disagree somewhat with this list, which is OK. You're entitled to be wrong...and if your list differs from mine, then rest assured, you ARE wrong.
(5) FROSTED FLAKES
There was this horrible period during the 1980s when many of my favorite childhood cereals decided it would be wise, from a marketing perspective, to drop the word "Sugar" from their names. When I was growing up, every cereal that was worth eating had the word "Sugar" in its name: Super Sugar Smacks, Sugar Crisp, Sugar Puffs, etc. And then of course there were Sugar Frosted Flakes. As Tony the Tiger told us, they're GRRRRRRRREAT! And they had sugar on them. Deal with it. Why did we suddenly decide to fool ourselves by dropping the sugar-themed names? Do you think the cereals themselves were any different? That the sugar suddenly disappeared and was replaced by wheat germ? We may have been hyperactive from our constant intake of corn syrup-based products, but we weren't dumb.
(4) LIFE CEREAL
You can't keep a box of Life in our house very long. Between me and the kids, it will be eaten in a matter of hours. Life Cereal is pure happiness packed into tiny squares. The commercial with that Mikey kid didn't hurt, either. One time (this is true) my parents went out of town for Easter weekend and left me home alone. I was 15 years old. Rather than stocking the fridge with food or giving me money to feed myself, my mom simply bought two grocery bags full of cereal – including a big box of Life – and put them out. I ripped through all but two boxes by Monday morning. I kid you not. That was one of the greatest weekends of my life.
(3) FROOT LOOPS
Let's be clear on the spelling here: It's F-R-O-O-T. If you thought they were F-R-U-I-T Loops, then you don't deserve to eat these tiny ringlets of delight. One of the pleasures of cereal is drinking the milk that's left in the bowl when the cereal itself is gone. A lot of people will tell you that the chocolatey goodness left in the wake of Cocoa Puffs is the best post-cereal milk. Don't believe them. Try some Froot Loop-flavored milk and then make up your mind.
(2) FROSTED MINI-WHEATS
When I was growing up, my mom would often fix me a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats by breaking each Mini-Wheat into two pieces. I never questioned this practice until I had a bowl of pure, unbroken Mini-Wheats. I can't explain why, but keeping the Mini-Wheats intact enhances the flavor potential exponentially. (I realize that makes no sense. Just go with it.) The problem with Frosted Mini-Wheats is that I can easily – EASILY – eat a whole box in one sitting if I'm not careful. If Life Cereal goes fast in our house, then Frosted Mini-Wheats disappear almost instantly. And it's always my fault.
(1) RAISIN BRAN
I know Raisin Bran is on almost nobody's list of top cereals, but it is a clear-cut #1 on mine. To say I love Raisin Bran is to engage in gross understatement. I get almost teary-eyed with joy whenever Terry buys a box. And to be specific, I'm talking about two-scoops-of-raisins-in-every-box Kellogg's Raisin Bran, not that Post or (worse yet) generic stuff. It has to be Kellogg's. The raisins are plump and plentiful, and the bran flakes are crisp and flavorful. But like anything awesome, you can have too much of a good thing. Bran and raisins both have certain, um, bowel-related effects that can be nasty. When I was younger, this wasn't a problem. Now that I'm in my 40s, I can't have more than one bowl at a time. That's just the way it is. If I go for that second bowl, horrible things happen, my friends. Things of which it's not polite to speak in any sort of mixed company. Let's just leave it at that.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Homework and the useless father
There comes a time in the life of every parent when they are forced, however grudgingly, to acknowledge a painful reality:
They can no longer help their children with homework.
It hurts to admit this, because what you're essentially saying is, "Yes, this person whose diaper I used to change as recently as 10 minutes ago, it seems, is now learning things that are beyond my capacity to understand. Or if I do have the capacity to learn them, I certainly don't have the time or inclination."
There is no clear-cut dividing line between the time when I was Smart Daddy and when I became Clueless Daddy on the homework front. That's partly because the complexity of your child's schoolwork increases very gradually, and partly because it happens more quickly in some subjects than others.
Take math, for example. My daughter Elissa is studying calculus this year. I never took calculus. I managed to get a college degree from a highly regarded institution of higher learning, yet they never forced me to take calculus. In retrospect, that doesn't seem right.
The end result is that, when Elissa is having trouble with calculus, she knows it's absolutely no use coming to me. Really, if she approached me for help with calculus homework, I would break down crying then and there and ask if there was something easier I could do for her - like building a working model of the solar system out of Corn Flakes.
The same goes with Chloe's geometry homework, and both of the girls' high school-level science homework. Just not my thing. But an English or history essay? Ah, now we're in my territory. No matter how far my kids climb up the academic ladder, I'm confident I will always be able to edit their papers. Writing and editing are what I do every day. That's my sweet spot. Even if I don't fully understand the content, I can make it sound good.
Jared is right about in my transition zone. He's in 7th grade, which is the time when everything starts getting more difficult and out of my Middle-Aged Guy Sphere of Knowledge. Fortunately, Jared is a pretty smart kid and rarely needs help. And when he does, it's in French. I got a pretty solid grounding in French, having taken 14 years of instruction in the language (from 1st grade all the way through my junior year in college). I can still conjugate most of the common verbs, and my vocabulary isn't bad, either. French I can do.
Melanie has been coming home the last couple of years with what would seem to be simple arithmetic problems. Right now they're multiplying three-digit numbers. Easy, right? Well, yeah, I can get the correct answer. It's just that they've changed the method on me.
You remember how we were taught to multiply multi-digit numbers, right? It was a pretty straightforward process of multiplying the top row by each bottom-row digit one at a time, and adding together the resulting products. Short of breaking out a calculator, that's the only way I know how to do it, and it's what the good people who comprised the faculty of Mapledale Elementary School taught me.
But it's not what they teach now, apparently. Now they have the kids breaking out the numbers by the hundreds, tens and ones places in a process that at first seemed to me to be a lot more work until I realized it's actually no harder than the old-fashioned method. AND it would appear to help them understand numerical relationships better. With all my heart I want to scream, "Why can't they just do it the way we used to do it and leave well enough alone?" And all the while I'm thinking to myself, "Hey, this is actually pretty cool."
Jack, meanwhile, is in kindergarten. I can still totally dominate kindergarten. There's nothing school-related Jack asks that I can't answer, which is why he still thinks I know everything. I want this phase to last as long as possible because he's my youngest and therefore the last kid who's going to think that, and I know when the day comes that he starts asking me about quadratic equations, I'll have no choice but to break out the Corn Flakes.
They can no longer help their children with homework.
It hurts to admit this, because what you're essentially saying is, "Yes, this person whose diaper I used to change as recently as 10 minutes ago, it seems, is now learning things that are beyond my capacity to understand. Or if I do have the capacity to learn them, I certainly don't have the time or inclination."
There is no clear-cut dividing line between the time when I was Smart Daddy and when I became Clueless Daddy on the homework front. That's partly because the complexity of your child's schoolwork increases very gradually, and partly because it happens more quickly in some subjects than others.
Take math, for example. My daughter Elissa is studying calculus this year. I never took calculus. I managed to get a college degree from a highly regarded institution of higher learning, yet they never forced me to take calculus. In retrospect, that doesn't seem right.
The end result is that, when Elissa is having trouble with calculus, she knows it's absolutely no use coming to me. Really, if she approached me for help with calculus homework, I would break down crying then and there and ask if there was something easier I could do for her - like building a working model of the solar system out of Corn Flakes.
The same goes with Chloe's geometry homework, and both of the girls' high school-level science homework. Just not my thing. But an English or history essay? Ah, now we're in my territory. No matter how far my kids climb up the academic ladder, I'm confident I will always be able to edit their papers. Writing and editing are what I do every day. That's my sweet spot. Even if I don't fully understand the content, I can make it sound good.
Jared is right about in my transition zone. He's in 7th grade, which is the time when everything starts getting more difficult and out of my Middle-Aged Guy Sphere of Knowledge. Fortunately, Jared is a pretty smart kid and rarely needs help. And when he does, it's in French. I got a pretty solid grounding in French, having taken 14 years of instruction in the language (from 1st grade all the way through my junior year in college). I can still conjugate most of the common verbs, and my vocabulary isn't bad, either. French I can do.
Melanie has been coming home the last couple of years with what would seem to be simple arithmetic problems. Right now they're multiplying three-digit numbers. Easy, right? Well, yeah, I can get the correct answer. It's just that they've changed the method on me.
You remember how we were taught to multiply multi-digit numbers, right? It was a pretty straightforward process of multiplying the top row by each bottom-row digit one at a time, and adding together the resulting products. Short of breaking out a calculator, that's the only way I know how to do it, and it's what the good people who comprised the faculty of Mapledale Elementary School taught me.
But it's not what they teach now, apparently. Now they have the kids breaking out the numbers by the hundreds, tens and ones places in a process that at first seemed to me to be a lot more work until I realized it's actually no harder than the old-fashioned method. AND it would appear to help them understand numerical relationships better. With all my heart I want to scream, "Why can't they just do it the way we used to do it and leave well enough alone?" And all the while I'm thinking to myself, "Hey, this is actually pretty cool."
Jack, meanwhile, is in kindergarten. I can still totally dominate kindergarten. There's nothing school-related Jack asks that I can't answer, which is why he still thinks I know everything. I want this phase to last as long as possible because he's my youngest and therefore the last kid who's going to think that, and I know when the day comes that he starts asking me about quadratic equations, I'll have no choice but to break out the Corn Flakes.
Monday, February 13, 2012
My great-niece/greatniece/great niece is coming
Suddenly everybody I know is having a baby.
(NOTE: That is clearly not true, but isn't it funny how we do that? If we see three people with the same t-shirt in the same day, we'll say, "I see those shirts EVERYWHERE! Seriously, I think I've seen 17 different people wearing them.")
But really, lots of babies among my family and friends. And the most significant of those is my soon-to-arrive great-niece, Payton.
Payton, due next month, is the daughter of my niece Jessica. I actually had to ask several different people whether Payton would be my "great-niece" or my "grandniece." According to some sources, the two words mean the same thing, but I'm sticking with "great-niece." "Grandniece" is too close to "granddaughter," and that's a word I don't want anything to do with just yet.
(ANOTHER NOTE: Interestingly, "great-niece" is hyphenated but "grandniece" is not. I wasn't sure how to handle that at first. "Greatniece" definitely doesn't look right, and "great niece" makes it sound like I'm describing her as "great." I'm sure she'll be great, but that's not the point I'm trying to get across. Actually, if you've been reading this blog for the last two months, you know I'm never quite sure of the point I'm trying to get across.)
Anyway, I'm excited for Payton to come. It has been a little more than six years since Jack was born, and I miss having a baby around. There's always so much anticipation and excitement around the birth, bringing them home, getting the nursery ready, etc.
Of course, I personally never had to go through the whole pregnancy and birth thing. I was only involved in the very earliest biological stages of the process, after which my job was limited to picking things up off the floor as my wife's belly grew and walking very close to her whenever we went somewhere, as if I was a guard dog and someone was going to leap out of the bushes at any instant and attack my wife and impending offspring.
It was at the end of Terry's first pregnancy when I came to realize that giving birth must be a wee bit uncomfortable. In fact, I still maintain it's physically impossible. I know billions of human beings have entered the world through the perfectly natural process of childbirth, but I choose to believe there's just no way it could ever work. Seriously, compare your average-sized baby with the opening through which it's supposed to pass and you'll see what I'm talking about.
I obsessed over this throughout Terry's 16-hour labor with Elissa.
"So, doc, we're still going with the standard birthing procedure here? I mean, that's what you've opted for? Having the baby come through the, uh, birth canal, as it were? It is? OK, so then I guess I have to ask -- and I realize you're a licensed, board-certified physician and all -- but really, have you taken a look in that area? You have? Uh huh, OK. And it's your opinion that the baby (whom you have judged to be somewhere far north of 8 pounds) will, in fact, just slide right out of there? No problems or anything? Right, right, OK. And will the baby somehow significantly shrink before this happens? No? Well, will the, uh, whatchamacallit get any bigger, then? It won't? Ah ha, I see. OK, um, can we get another doctor in here? One with a grasp of physics?"
And yet somehow Terry managed to have five of those little buggers, four of whom came through the whatchamacallit.
Amazingly, she did it almost without making a sound. A few grunts, sure, but she always made it seem effortless.
Women like to say that men could never have babies. I disagree. I could DO it, but there's no way I would do it as gracefully as my wife did. I'm telling you, she was good.
God gives women this incredible strength when they give birth. Guys, if you haven't experienced this firsthand, my advice to you when it happens is to hold her hand, give her ice chips if she asks, and pretty much just stay out of the way. You're dealing with forces you cannot possibly understand.
Plus, the actual mechanics of childbirth are, to put it delicately, messy. There's just a lot going on there, and it takes more than a few paper towels and a bottle of Pine-Sol to deal with it. I'm not especially squeamish, but trust me when I say that you're going to want to stay at the head of the bed in your support position, if at all possible.
But back to Payton, I'm pretty psyched about meeting her. For one thing, as a great-uncle, I get all of the benefits of a baby (i.e., holding them, listening to them make their little noises, changing them only when I actually want to, etc.) without all of the difficulties associated with your own kids (lack of sleep, lack of money, lack of clothes that don't have spit-up stains, etc.)
I don't know how I did with Jessica, but my goal with Payton is to be both her "great-uncle" and her "great uncle." And I promise here and now to change at least one poopy diaper every time I see her. You read it here first, Jess.
(NOTE: That is clearly not true, but isn't it funny how we do that? If we see three people with the same t-shirt in the same day, we'll say, "I see those shirts EVERYWHERE! Seriously, I think I've seen 17 different people wearing them.")
But really, lots of babies among my family and friends. And the most significant of those is my soon-to-arrive great-niece, Payton.
Payton, due next month, is the daughter of my niece Jessica. I actually had to ask several different people whether Payton would be my "great-niece" or my "grandniece." According to some sources, the two words mean the same thing, but I'm sticking with "great-niece." "Grandniece" is too close to "granddaughter," and that's a word I don't want anything to do with just yet.
(ANOTHER NOTE: Interestingly, "great-niece" is hyphenated but "grandniece" is not. I wasn't sure how to handle that at first. "Greatniece" definitely doesn't look right, and "great niece" makes it sound like I'm describing her as "great." I'm sure she'll be great, but that's not the point I'm trying to get across. Actually, if you've been reading this blog for the last two months, you know I'm never quite sure of the point I'm trying to get across.)
Anyway, I'm excited for Payton to come. It has been a little more than six years since Jack was born, and I miss having a baby around. There's always so much anticipation and excitement around the birth, bringing them home, getting the nursery ready, etc.
Of course, I personally never had to go through the whole pregnancy and birth thing. I was only involved in the very earliest biological stages of the process, after which my job was limited to picking things up off the floor as my wife's belly grew and walking very close to her whenever we went somewhere, as if I was a guard dog and someone was going to leap out of the bushes at any instant and attack my wife and impending offspring.
It was at the end of Terry's first pregnancy when I came to realize that giving birth must be a wee bit uncomfortable. In fact, I still maintain it's physically impossible. I know billions of human beings have entered the world through the perfectly natural process of childbirth, but I choose to believe there's just no way it could ever work. Seriously, compare your average-sized baby with the opening through which it's supposed to pass and you'll see what I'm talking about.
I obsessed over this throughout Terry's 16-hour labor with Elissa.
"So, doc, we're still going with the standard birthing procedure here? I mean, that's what you've opted for? Having the baby come through the, uh, birth canal, as it were? It is? OK, so then I guess I have to ask -- and I realize you're a licensed, board-certified physician and all -- but really, have you taken a look in that area? You have? Uh huh, OK. And it's your opinion that the baby (whom you have judged to be somewhere far north of 8 pounds) will, in fact, just slide right out of there? No problems or anything? Right, right, OK. And will the baby somehow significantly shrink before this happens? No? Well, will the, uh, whatchamacallit get any bigger, then? It won't? Ah ha, I see. OK, um, can we get another doctor in here? One with a grasp of physics?"
And yet somehow Terry managed to have five of those little buggers, four of whom came through the whatchamacallit.
Amazingly, she did it almost without making a sound. A few grunts, sure, but she always made it seem effortless.
Women like to say that men could never have babies. I disagree. I could DO it, but there's no way I would do it as gracefully as my wife did. I'm telling you, she was good.
God gives women this incredible strength when they give birth. Guys, if you haven't experienced this firsthand, my advice to you when it happens is to hold her hand, give her ice chips if she asks, and pretty much just stay out of the way. You're dealing with forces you cannot possibly understand.
Plus, the actual mechanics of childbirth are, to put it delicately, messy. There's just a lot going on there, and it takes more than a few paper towels and a bottle of Pine-Sol to deal with it. I'm not especially squeamish, but trust me when I say that you're going to want to stay at the head of the bed in your support position, if at all possible.
But back to Payton, I'm pretty psyched about meeting her. For one thing, as a great-uncle, I get all of the benefits of a baby (i.e., holding them, listening to them make their little noises, changing them only when I actually want to, etc.) without all of the difficulties associated with your own kids (lack of sleep, lack of money, lack of clothes that don't have spit-up stains, etc.)
I don't know how I did with Jessica, but my goal with Payton is to be both her "great-uncle" and her "great uncle." And I promise here and now to change at least one poopy diaper every time I see her. You read it here first, Jess.
Friday, February 10, 2012
I'm not saying all women are smarter than me, but...
I don't have a lot of "rules to live by," but one that I follow religiously is to always do whatever a woman tells me to do.
This is a corollary to my unwavering belief that the smartest, most organized people in the world are women without children. Seriously, these are the people you want to turn to if you need something done.
Why women without children? Because once a woman has children, she becomes mentally disabled. I say this with no disrespect, but it's true. Mothers -- especially mothers of multiple kids -- are usually shells of their former selves in terms of their mental faculties.
(I have a theory as to why that is, by the way. When a baby forms inside its mother's womb, it obviously needs brain cells, right? There can only be so many brain cells in the world at a given time, and I believe the baby simply takes its brain cells from its mother. Good for the baby, but not so good for the mom, whose IQ drops 15 to 20 points with every child she bears.)
Still, this is all relative. Moms, in my experience, tend to lose their edge over time, but they're still a lot smarter than me, and probably smarter than most fathers in general. But I'll say this for we dads: We may start at a low level, but we pretty much stay there our entire lives. There's not the same dropoff you see with moms.
So, ladies, that guy you live with who consistently leaves a wet towel on the bathroom floor after he showers? Yeah, he probably won't ever stop doing that. BUT...he probably won't get much worse, either. You can take some solace in that.
In any case, whether they have children or not, I take very seriously the advice and/or outright commands I get from women, because most of the time they're right.
If I had any sort of ego, I might be offended when I hear myself say that. But I've been married for almost 20 years and I have five kids. Whatever pride and vanity I had was crushed long ago. Nowadays, I just want to know the right thing to do, and I don't care whether the person guiding me is a man, a woman, or something in between. When I need to be pointed in the right direction, who you are is of no automatic consequence to me.
Thus, I'm going with whomever seems to know what they're doing, and most of the time that's a female.
Not that guys aren't ever right. Some of the smartest people I know are men. But I'm just playing the odds here. I think back to when I was a kid, and I look at the decisions made, say, by me and my friends on one hand, and the girls I knew on the other.
When the girls got together, they would usually do fun, responsible, girl-type things. But my friends? Not so much. We would regularly put ourselves in mortal danger without any real understanding that we were even doing it.
Case in point: The railroad tracks. There was a period of three years or so (say ages 11 through almost 14) when we spent a lot of time hanging out around the tracks. There were at least 47 ways to kill yourself on and around the tracks, from falling off the light towers we always climbed to slipping under the slow-moving trains we used to hop aboard. For all intents and purposes, we were mentally retarded, but we sure had a good time.
The girls didn't do stuff like that. They were too smart. We would come home all muddy and smelly from the tracks (I would often jump into the dirty sewage runoff creeks around the tracks, did I mention that?), and I think my mom would sometimes wonder why God only gave her two daughters.
Anyway, I look back on that now and I realize my decision-making abilities were compromised at an early age, as were those of virtually every guy I know. So just to be on the safe side, I trust the women.
Except when it comes to why so many of them are afraid of tiny, harmless spiders. That part I don't get. But everything else? Yeah, ya gotta side with the estrogen, guys.
This is a corollary to my unwavering belief that the smartest, most organized people in the world are women without children. Seriously, these are the people you want to turn to if you need something done.
Why women without children? Because once a woman has children, she becomes mentally disabled. I say this with no disrespect, but it's true. Mothers -- especially mothers of multiple kids -- are usually shells of their former selves in terms of their mental faculties.
(I have a theory as to why that is, by the way. When a baby forms inside its mother's womb, it obviously needs brain cells, right? There can only be so many brain cells in the world at a given time, and I believe the baby simply takes its brain cells from its mother. Good for the baby, but not so good for the mom, whose IQ drops 15 to 20 points with every child she bears.)
Still, this is all relative. Moms, in my experience, tend to lose their edge over time, but they're still a lot smarter than me, and probably smarter than most fathers in general. But I'll say this for we dads: We may start at a low level, but we pretty much stay there our entire lives. There's not the same dropoff you see with moms.
So, ladies, that guy you live with who consistently leaves a wet towel on the bathroom floor after he showers? Yeah, he probably won't ever stop doing that. BUT...he probably won't get much worse, either. You can take some solace in that.
In any case, whether they have children or not, I take very seriously the advice and/or outright commands I get from women, because most of the time they're right.
If I had any sort of ego, I might be offended when I hear myself say that. But I've been married for almost 20 years and I have five kids. Whatever pride and vanity I had was crushed long ago. Nowadays, I just want to know the right thing to do, and I don't care whether the person guiding me is a man, a woman, or something in between. When I need to be pointed in the right direction, who you are is of no automatic consequence to me.
Thus, I'm going with whomever seems to know what they're doing, and most of the time that's a female.
Not that guys aren't ever right. Some of the smartest people I know are men. But I'm just playing the odds here. I think back to when I was a kid, and I look at the decisions made, say, by me and my friends on one hand, and the girls I knew on the other.
When the girls got together, they would usually do fun, responsible, girl-type things. But my friends? Not so much. We would regularly put ourselves in mortal danger without any real understanding that we were even doing it.
Case in point: The railroad tracks. There was a period of three years or so (say ages 11 through almost 14) when we spent a lot of time hanging out around the tracks. There were at least 47 ways to kill yourself on and around the tracks, from falling off the light towers we always climbed to slipping under the slow-moving trains we used to hop aboard. For all intents and purposes, we were mentally retarded, but we sure had a good time.
The girls didn't do stuff like that. They were too smart. We would come home all muddy and smelly from the tracks (I would often jump into the dirty sewage runoff creeks around the tracks, did I mention that?), and I think my mom would sometimes wonder why God only gave her two daughters.
Anyway, I look back on that now and I realize my decision-making abilities were compromised at an early age, as were those of virtually every guy I know. So just to be on the safe side, I trust the women.
Except when it comes to why so many of them are afraid of tiny, harmless spiders. That part I don't get. But everything else? Yeah, ya gotta side with the estrogen, guys.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Life among the ink-stained wretches
You may have noticed on the right side of your screen that the blog is now carrying headlines from the News-Herald, our local newspaper in Willoughby, Ohio.
This was the small tradeoff required to have "They Still Call Me Daddy" listed in the Herald's Community Media Lab. Being the latest addition to the Media Lab, the blog is listed waaaaaay down at the bottom of the page, but hopefully it will bring in a few new readers from around Northeast Ohio and parts unknown.
As many of you know, I spent the first part of my career as a sports writer for the News-Herald. I started there in the summer of 1988 as what was known as a sports agate clerk, taking little league and high school sports scores over the phone, writing up small articles on community athletic events, etc. It was a great job for an 18-year-old sports fanatic, and I loved being around the newsroom every night.
Because it was a night job, of course. Sports tend to happen at night, so sports writers tend to work at night. By the time I was a sophomore in college, I was working there a solid 30-40 hours every week, occasionally doing the 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift. The News-Herald was an afternoon paper at the time, and the presses didn't roll until 3 in the morning or so. A couple of us would always work late to make sure the sports section articles and photos looked good and didn't contain any obvious swear words.
TRUE STORY: One time a classified ad ran in the News-Herald for a house that someone had put up for sale. The ad described every feature of the house, including a "party-sized deck." Only the ad didn't say "deck." Instead it had a word that's very similar to "deck" and is in fact only one vowel away from "deck" and which made the ad absolutely hilarious. I'm going to let you figure out the word AND perhaps come to some understanding of what exactly constitutes "party-sized" in this context.
Anyway, I left the News-Herald for nine months during my junior year at John Carroll to take a similar position at the Plain Dealer, the large Cleveland daily paper, working out of the Lake & Geauga County Bureau. That was a good experience, but as I neared my college graduation, knowing I was going to get married, I realized I needed a full-time job with benefits. And while the 32-hour-a-week Plain Dealer position was fun, it didn't include insurance and the like.
So the News-Herald graciously accepted me back on a full-time basis, and I worked there for five happy years from 1991 through 1996. I got to cover a lot of sports in that time, mostly high school but with doses of college and professional assignments to keep me happy.
ANOTHER TRUE STORY: One time I was standing in the Cleveland Indians' clubhouse waiting to do a player interview, and third baseman Carlos Baerga walked by me carrying a plate of food from the sumptuous clubhouse buffet. With his mouth full and still chewing, Baerga looked at me and said, "You want some chicken? It's good!" I politely declined, but I love the fact that it even happened (plus, I don't think media members were technically supposed to have any of the food anyway).
I figured I was set. I would work in newspapers the rest of my life, eventually taking over a pro sports beat and traveling with the team I covered. That was my professional goal and it seemed a worthy one.
But three things got in the way:
(1) Terry and I started having kids. Kids cost money. Sports writers don't make a lot of money.
(2) Terry and I started having kids. As a parent, I wanted to spend time with my kids. Looking ahead to the time when they would be in school, I realized that working night hours would not be conducive to attending their sporting events and concerts, helping them with evening homework, etc.
(3) Newspapers and their budgets began shrinking, and beat writers no longer traveled to all of the road games, thus taking some of the luster away from what I had considered to be among the most glamorous professions.
And so I moved into other types of writing and journalism, and eventually got into marketing and PR. I still miss the newspaper life from time to time, but I know I made the right choice.
As I've mentioned previously, I also still read a newspaper every day. I like to think of it as my small contribution to a rapidly evolving (some would say "dying") industry. But honestly? I also really appreciate being in my bed at 3 a.m. these days instead of in a newsroom.
This was the small tradeoff required to have "They Still Call Me Daddy" listed in the Herald's Community Media Lab. Being the latest addition to the Media Lab, the blog is listed waaaaaay down at the bottom of the page, but hopefully it will bring in a few new readers from around Northeast Ohio and parts unknown.
As many of you know, I spent the first part of my career as a sports writer for the News-Herald. I started there in the summer of 1988 as what was known as a sports agate clerk, taking little league and high school sports scores over the phone, writing up small articles on community athletic events, etc. It was a great job for an 18-year-old sports fanatic, and I loved being around the newsroom every night.
Because it was a night job, of course. Sports tend to happen at night, so sports writers tend to work at night. By the time I was a sophomore in college, I was working there a solid 30-40 hours every week, occasionally doing the 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift. The News-Herald was an afternoon paper at the time, and the presses didn't roll until 3 in the morning or so. A couple of us would always work late to make sure the sports section articles and photos looked good and didn't contain any obvious swear words.
TRUE STORY: One time a classified ad ran in the News-Herald for a house that someone had put up for sale. The ad described every feature of the house, including a "party-sized deck." Only the ad didn't say "deck." Instead it had a word that's very similar to "deck" and is in fact only one vowel away from "deck" and which made the ad absolutely hilarious. I'm going to let you figure out the word AND perhaps come to some understanding of what exactly constitutes "party-sized" in this context.
Anyway, I left the News-Herald for nine months during my junior year at John Carroll to take a similar position at the Plain Dealer, the large Cleveland daily paper, working out of the Lake & Geauga County Bureau. That was a good experience, but as I neared my college graduation, knowing I was going to get married, I realized I needed a full-time job with benefits. And while the 32-hour-a-week Plain Dealer position was fun, it didn't include insurance and the like.
So the News-Herald graciously accepted me back on a full-time basis, and I worked there for five happy years from 1991 through 1996. I got to cover a lot of sports in that time, mostly high school but with doses of college and professional assignments to keep me happy.
ANOTHER TRUE STORY: One time I was standing in the Cleveland Indians' clubhouse waiting to do a player interview, and third baseman Carlos Baerga walked by me carrying a plate of food from the sumptuous clubhouse buffet. With his mouth full and still chewing, Baerga looked at me and said, "You want some chicken? It's good!" I politely declined, but I love the fact that it even happened (plus, I don't think media members were technically supposed to have any of the food anyway).
I figured I was set. I would work in newspapers the rest of my life, eventually taking over a pro sports beat and traveling with the team I covered. That was my professional goal and it seemed a worthy one.
But three things got in the way:
(1) Terry and I started having kids. Kids cost money. Sports writers don't make a lot of money.
(2) Terry and I started having kids. As a parent, I wanted to spend time with my kids. Looking ahead to the time when they would be in school, I realized that working night hours would not be conducive to attending their sporting events and concerts, helping them with evening homework, etc.
(3) Newspapers and their budgets began shrinking, and beat writers no longer traveled to all of the road games, thus taking some of the luster away from what I had considered to be among the most glamorous professions.
And so I moved into other types of writing and journalism, and eventually got into marketing and PR. I still miss the newspaper life from time to time, but I know I made the right choice.
As I've mentioned previously, I also still read a newspaper every day. I like to think of it as my small contribution to a rapidly evolving (some would say "dying") industry. But honestly? I also really appreciate being in my bed at 3 a.m. these days instead of in a newsroom.
Monday, February 6, 2012
There's winners and there's losers (and I'm south of the line)
If you've ever had a baby - or, like me, have watched your wife have a baby - you're probably familiar with the Apgar score.
The Apgar score is a way for doctors to instantly assess the health of a newborn baby. It takes into account things like pulse rate, muscle tone and breathing, and it's done on a scale of 1 to 10.
I can't remember the exact Apgar scores of my five children when they were born, but I'm pretty sure they were all something like 9 (there may have been one 8 in there, I don't know). But what I do remember is that none of them got a 10.
In every instance, this genuinely offended me as a father. These kids were seconds old, dripping in goo and in some cases still physically attached to their mother through a slimy umbilical cord, and already someone was judging them...and finding them lacking.
"Wait, why didn't my kid get a perfect score? What's wrong with her? She's beautiful and perfect, DO YOU HEAR ME? SHE'S PERFECT!"
As if the case with almost everything in my life, I now realize that I was an idiot. The Apgar score obviously is not a measure of a baby's worth as a person, but right away I became The Overbearing Protective Father.
If one of my kids had received, say, an Apgar score of 5 or less, I guarantee you my thought process would have been something like, "Oh no, he's deformed. All of the other kids are going to make fun of him. He'll have no confidence and won't be able to get into an elite kindergarten. That, of course, will put him on the 'normal track,' and Harvard and Princeton will never accept him. I've already failed as a parent!"
(NOTE: If this sounds neurotic to you, it is. I'm a far mellower dad now than I was 18 years ago when Elissa was born, though most of the time back then I kept my insane thoughts to myself. Thankfully.)
Anyway, I bring this up in the wake of Solo & Ensemble Contest, which we attended on Saturday at Cleveland Heights High School. For those of you who aren't band geeks, Solo & Ensemble Contest - or just "Contest," as it's commonly referred to - is an annual event in which instrumental and vocal students perform in front of judges, who in turn assess their performances and given them ratings from 1 to 5...or actually "I to V," since they use Roman numerals.
Not every band kid participates in Contest, but a lot do. Terry and I did when we were in high school, so between that and the fact that their private lessons teachers would find it unacceptable if they didn't, Elissa and Chloe also endure the Contest experience each year.
What happens is that your band teacher or private instructor assigns you a piece to perform, usually something classical and challenging to play. Then you practice it for months on end in preparation for a single 10-minute period when you have to play it for a judge. The goal is to earn a "1" (superior) rating because...well, I don't know the "because." Really, until this moment, I never considered why this is done. To make you a better musician? To teach you something about the value of hard work and discipline? To humiliate you in front of others? I'll say yes, yes and yes.
The kids put a lot of work into the process, and it's always a nerve-wracking thing when it's time to walk down to your performance room and play your piece for evaluation. "Nerve-wracking," that is, for the parents. The kids get nervous, too, but nothing like the parents, believe me.
I hate the whole Contest experience only because I'm afraid my kid will feel like a failure if he/she falls short of his goal. And since the kids have my nonsensical, stress-inducing tendency toward perfectionism, the goal for them is always a "1." Always. They're like little Asian overachievers, and I'm seriously afraid they'll slit their wrists if they get anything less than the top score.
Because honestly, I don't care if they get a "1" or not. I would like them to earn the highest rating, of course, but it's not that big a deal to me if they don't. But it IS a big deal to them, and I don't want them to feel bad. So I worry. And get really nervous. And so does Terry.
When Elissa was playing her solo on Saturday, I glanced over at Terry at one point and noticed she was doing the same thing I was doing: Looking straight down toward the floor. I did it because it made the knot in my stomach even bigger if I looked at Elissa while she played. Terry did it because she figured eye contact would make Elissa more nervous. Our family is just one big, sensitive Ball of Nervous at Contest. What should be a fun experience instead shortens each of our life spans by five years.
I feel the same way at spelling bees. The whole thing is unpleasant for me. Really, any event in which my kid will be evaluated, judged, assessed and/or otherwise put up for appraisal makes my insides churn. I know it's good for them, but I don't like it.
Now Elissa is a senior on the verge of entering college, and the whole competition thing is even worse: What's your class rank? Your SAT score? Your ACT score? Your grades?
This Sunday she and two teammates will be taping an episode of "Academic Challenge" to air on Cleveland's WEWS Channel 5 in the spring. They'll be up against two other schools, which means there will be a winning team and two losing teams. Get that? Only 33% of participants will succeed, while the other 67% will fail. That's the way it is, and either way my heart will be racing.
It almost makes me look forward 15 or 20 years into the future when we'll have grandchildren and my own kids can be the ones doing the worrying. Of course, I'll probably get even more nervous for THEIR events and competitions. Maybe I should just have this inevitable heart attack now and get it over with.
The Apgar score is a way for doctors to instantly assess the health of a newborn baby. It takes into account things like pulse rate, muscle tone and breathing, and it's done on a scale of 1 to 10.
I can't remember the exact Apgar scores of my five children when they were born, but I'm pretty sure they were all something like 9 (there may have been one 8 in there, I don't know). But what I do remember is that none of them got a 10.
In every instance, this genuinely offended me as a father. These kids were seconds old, dripping in goo and in some cases still physically attached to their mother through a slimy umbilical cord, and already someone was judging them...and finding them lacking.
"Wait, why didn't my kid get a perfect score? What's wrong with her? She's beautiful and perfect, DO YOU HEAR ME? SHE'S PERFECT!"
As if the case with almost everything in my life, I now realize that I was an idiot. The Apgar score obviously is not a measure of a baby's worth as a person, but right away I became The Overbearing Protective Father.
If one of my kids had received, say, an Apgar score of 5 or less, I guarantee you my thought process would have been something like, "Oh no, he's deformed. All of the other kids are going to make fun of him. He'll have no confidence and won't be able to get into an elite kindergarten. That, of course, will put him on the 'normal track,' and Harvard and Princeton will never accept him. I've already failed as a parent!"
(NOTE: If this sounds neurotic to you, it is. I'm a far mellower dad now than I was 18 years ago when Elissa was born, though most of the time back then I kept my insane thoughts to myself. Thankfully.)
Anyway, I bring this up in the wake of Solo & Ensemble Contest, which we attended on Saturday at Cleveland Heights High School. For those of you who aren't band geeks, Solo & Ensemble Contest - or just "Contest," as it's commonly referred to - is an annual event in which instrumental and vocal students perform in front of judges, who in turn assess their performances and given them ratings from 1 to 5...or actually "I to V," since they use Roman numerals.
Not every band kid participates in Contest, but a lot do. Terry and I did when we were in high school, so between that and the fact that their private lessons teachers would find it unacceptable if they didn't, Elissa and Chloe also endure the Contest experience each year.
What happens is that your band teacher or private instructor assigns you a piece to perform, usually something classical and challenging to play. Then you practice it for months on end in preparation for a single 10-minute period when you have to play it for a judge. The goal is to earn a "1" (superior) rating because...well, I don't know the "because." Really, until this moment, I never considered why this is done. To make you a better musician? To teach you something about the value of hard work and discipline? To humiliate you in front of others? I'll say yes, yes and yes.
The kids put a lot of work into the process, and it's always a nerve-wracking thing when it's time to walk down to your performance room and play your piece for evaluation. "Nerve-wracking," that is, for the parents. The kids get nervous, too, but nothing like the parents, believe me.
I hate the whole Contest experience only because I'm afraid my kid will feel like a failure if he/she falls short of his goal. And since the kids have my nonsensical, stress-inducing tendency toward perfectionism, the goal for them is always a "1." Always. They're like little Asian overachievers, and I'm seriously afraid they'll slit their wrists if they get anything less than the top score.
Because honestly, I don't care if they get a "1" or not. I would like them to earn the highest rating, of course, but it's not that big a deal to me if they don't. But it IS a big deal to them, and I don't want them to feel bad. So I worry. And get really nervous. And so does Terry.
When Elissa was playing her solo on Saturday, I glanced over at Terry at one point and noticed she was doing the same thing I was doing: Looking straight down toward the floor. I did it because it made the knot in my stomach even bigger if I looked at Elissa while she played. Terry did it because she figured eye contact would make Elissa more nervous. Our family is just one big, sensitive Ball of Nervous at Contest. What should be a fun experience instead shortens each of our life spans by five years.
I feel the same way at spelling bees. The whole thing is unpleasant for me. Really, any event in which my kid will be evaluated, judged, assessed and/or otherwise put up for appraisal makes my insides churn. I know it's good for them, but I don't like it.
Now Elissa is a senior on the verge of entering college, and the whole competition thing is even worse: What's your class rank? Your SAT score? Your ACT score? Your grades?
This Sunday she and two teammates will be taping an episode of "Academic Challenge" to air on Cleveland's WEWS Channel 5 in the spring. They'll be up against two other schools, which means there will be a winning team and two losing teams. Get that? Only 33% of participants will succeed, while the other 67% will fail. That's the way it is, and either way my heart will be racing.
It almost makes me look forward 15 or 20 years into the future when we'll have grandchildren and my own kids can be the ones doing the worrying. Of course, I'll probably get even more nervous for THEIR events and competitions. Maybe I should just have this inevitable heart attack now and get it over with.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
The one where he grumbles about college tuition...again
(NOTE: This is one of those posts where I'm going to complain about the high cost of college, as if I'm the only parent in the history of the universe who has helped pay for their child's education. Honestly, I wouldn't blame you at all if you skipped this one. Just know that even I'm starting to have a hard time listening to my own whining on this subject.)
So Elissa got her acceptance letter to the University of Dayton yesterday. It was actually kind of nice. They mounted the letter on a piece of cardboard with a little fold-out stand on the back so you can prop it up and show it off to your friends and family, I guess.
She applied to four schools (Dayton, College of Wooster, Miami of Ohio, and Cleveland State), and so far two - Dayton and CSU - have sent letters that, to Elissa, say, "We think you are awesome and would love to have you here. Just the thought of being in your presence makes us all giddy." But to me they say, "Hey, bozo, time to whip out the checkbook. This is going to cost you...big time."
I was surprised the Dayton letter made mention of the money thing. The third paragraph read this way: "It is also my pleasure to inform you that you have been awarded the Trustee's Merit Scholarship in the amount of $60,000 over four years. Worth $15,000 per year, this scholarship is valid for a four-year period."
$15,000 per year? All right, then! Now we're getting somewhere. Actually, the figure that caught my eye was the 60 grand. That's a slick bit of marketing by the Dayton folks: Give 'em the total figure so they get really excited, and hope they don't start doing the annual math in their heads.
Unfortunately for the Dayton people, I did start doing the math. Here, according to the Dayton website, are the school's undergraduate costs for the 2011-12 school year:
Tuition and fees: $31,640
Residence halls: $5,400- $8,100
Meal plans: $3,890 - $4,520
I like how they give you ranges for the last two categories. Let's just assume that Elissa will live in a large cardboard box and eat ramen every day if she attends Dayton, thus putting her on the low end of the scale. $31,640 + $5,400 + $3,890 = $40,930. And that doesn't count books. Or gas. Or spending money. Or everything else a college student is likely to spend money on.
Let's see, then...$40,930 minus the $15,000 scholarship they're promising leaves us with...a scant $25,930 to come up with every year! Over four years, that's $103,720. For one kid. I have five of them.
Hold on a second while I check my wallet to see if I have $100K just sitting there.....Uhhhh, nope. Nope. I found $3.57, pictures of the family, and my Starbucks card. I'm a little short.
Now granted, the Trustees Scholarship is just the beginning of the entire financial aid package that Dayton is likely to put out there. At some point over the next couple of months, they'll come back to us with the academic equivalent of an offer sheet. And that offer sheet will probably include other (smaller) scholarships and grants, along with possible loans and work-study programs.
Make no mistake there, by the way. As Elissa well knows, she'll be working her butt off throughout college to help defray the cost. I'm just hoping they can secure her a nice, easy $5,000-an-hour job somewhere on campus.
Anyway, the point is, I know there's more help coming, and that's not even to mention the independent scholarships and grants we've been researching. But as usual, I've used a few hundred unnecessary words to make a few very basic points:
* College is expensive.
* It costs more money than I have.
* This distresses me greatly.
And you know what's worse? We'll still not through this process yet. I have at least three more whiny, pathetic blog posts on this subject in me. Please accept my apologies in advance.
So Elissa got her acceptance letter to the University of Dayton yesterday. It was actually kind of nice. They mounted the letter on a piece of cardboard with a little fold-out stand on the back so you can prop it up and show it off to your friends and family, I guess.
She applied to four schools (Dayton, College of Wooster, Miami of Ohio, and Cleveland State), and so far two - Dayton and CSU - have sent letters that, to Elissa, say, "We think you are awesome and would love to have you here. Just the thought of being in your presence makes us all giddy." But to me they say, "Hey, bozo, time to whip out the checkbook. This is going to cost you...big time."
I was surprised the Dayton letter made mention of the money thing. The third paragraph read this way: "It is also my pleasure to inform you that you have been awarded the Trustee's Merit Scholarship in the amount of $60,000 over four years. Worth $15,000 per year, this scholarship is valid for a four-year period."
$15,000 per year? All right, then! Now we're getting somewhere. Actually, the figure that caught my eye was the 60 grand. That's a slick bit of marketing by the Dayton folks: Give 'em the total figure so they get really excited, and hope they don't start doing the annual math in their heads.
Unfortunately for the Dayton people, I did start doing the math. Here, according to the Dayton website, are the school's undergraduate costs for the 2011-12 school year:
Tuition and fees: $31,640
Residence halls: $5,400- $8,100
Meal plans: $3,890 - $4,520
I like how they give you ranges for the last two categories. Let's just assume that Elissa will live in a large cardboard box and eat ramen every day if she attends Dayton, thus putting her on the low end of the scale. $31,640 + $5,400 + $3,890 = $40,930. And that doesn't count books. Or gas. Or spending money. Or everything else a college student is likely to spend money on.
Let's see, then...$40,930 minus the $15,000 scholarship they're promising leaves us with...a scant $25,930 to come up with every year! Over four years, that's $103,720. For one kid. I have five of them.
Hold on a second while I check my wallet to see if I have $100K just sitting there.....Uhhhh, nope. Nope. I found $3.57, pictures of the family, and my Starbucks card. I'm a little short.
Now granted, the Trustees Scholarship is just the beginning of the entire financial aid package that Dayton is likely to put out there. At some point over the next couple of months, they'll come back to us with the academic equivalent of an offer sheet. And that offer sheet will probably include other (smaller) scholarships and grants, along with possible loans and work-study programs.
Make no mistake there, by the way. As Elissa well knows, she'll be working her butt off throughout college to help defray the cost. I'm just hoping they can secure her a nice, easy $5,000-an-hour job somewhere on campus.
Anyway, the point is, I know there's more help coming, and that's not even to mention the independent scholarships and grants we've been researching. But as usual, I've used a few hundred unnecessary words to make a few very basic points:
* College is expensive.
* It costs more money than I have.
* This distresses me greatly.
And you know what's worse? We'll still not through this process yet. I have at least three more whiny, pathetic blog posts on this subject in me. Please accept my apologies in advance.
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