My daughter starts kindergarten next week.  She is our oldest and it’s going to be a big moment.  Everyone tells me so.  And tells me so.  And tells me so.

I don’t doubt that it will be a big deal.  I’m sure that when she gets on that big yellow limousine for the first time and rides off to school, I will probably cry a little bit.  But right now, I am just way too busy and way too tired to get caught up in that.  The best I can do is mentally tell myself that I will need to prepare some time so that I can get emotional later, but I’ll have to look for a few spare minutes on my calendar first.  Maybe in between filling out FAFSA forms for the college students staying with us and finishing that darn playset in the backyard (it’s getting close, I swear).

Well, in the midst of this chaos as I continue to demonstrate what a lousy father I am by not constantly living in the moment and cherishing every passing second as the elderly always tell me to do, I took Audra to Target to get a bookbag for school.  As you might imagine, Audra is very, very, very excited about going to Kindergarten.  She is our child that is all about being grown up and a “big girl.”  Our son, Asher, couldn’t care less.  I think he would wear diapers till he was 10 out of sheer convenience, if we didn’t protest a little.  But Audra is dying to be older - to be able to do big girl things like homework, science fair projects, and sighing loudly at her parents’ simplest requests.

So, we’re at Target looking at book bags.  I told Audra that she could pick her book bag out herself since, you know, she’s a big girl.  I walk her over to the one that I could have told you she would pick before we even got in the store.  It’s a cheap little plastic coated number with pictures of the Disney Princesses on it and it come with a free plastic tiara.  It might as well have Audra’s name stitched on the side.  My only concern is that there may be 10 of these in her classroom on the first day of school.

“Do you like this one?” I ask her, thinking that I’ve got a dozen other things we’ve got to get here and it’s getting near nap time.

“No,” she says casually.  “Let’s look over here.”

What is going on?  My daughter loves princesses.  She knows all of the stories, and is constantly running around the house singing the various songs and dancing asking me if I’ve seen the prince, or the magical warlock, or the frozen waterfall of perpetual bliss or some such nonsense.  She has been some kind of princess every Halloween that I can remember.  She has all the dresses.  She has all the movies memorized.  Why in the world would she not want this horribly tacky, chintzy backpack?

She leads me down the aisle and around the corner, as if she secretly works here on the weekends and has memorized the store layout.  She takes me over to a wall display of teenager backpacks.  They’re all solid colors or have weird designs like pink camouflage (a concept that makes me want to barf a little bit.  Unless you’re trying to hide from Charlie in a cotton candy machine.  It seems kind of stupid).  They also all have little pockets for ipods and cell phones and holes for headphones to come out through the back and secret compartments to store cigarettes and Danny Zuko’s spare comb.  They are also all about as tall as Audra is.

“I like this one,” she says pointing to a plain pink one.

“What do you mean?”  I ask, my pulse starting to quicken a little bit as I’m finally realizing that my daughter might actually blatantly disobey me and start to grow up.  “What about Dora, honey?  You love Dora.  Wouldn’t you rather have a Dora back pack?”

She looks at me solemnly.  “Dora’s for little kids.”

It’s like daggers through the heart, I swear.  In My turmoil I managed to resist shooting back at my petite daughter ‘you’re only 37 inches tall, you are a little kid!”

So we spent 20 minutes trying on these enormous backpacks that literally hung down to the backs of her knees.   With each one she insisted that it felt really good, although she could barely keep her balance with it empty much less full.  I have no doubt that she could have physically zipped herself into one of these monster packs and gotten a 5th grader to carry her home if she wanted to, but this didn’t seem like a good plan.

 She became completely enamored with a bag that only had one strap, which was about as practical as her buying a backpack made out of Jell-O.  I eventually called my wife at work, to relate my epiphany that our 5 year old daughter was now apparently 13 and that we better have that “talk” with her soon.  Luckily Sarah knew the origination of all this.  Apparently when Audra was staying with her older cousin, they had gone back to school shopping and her older cousin Sean wanted a plain backpack with one strap.  It turns out Audra just wanted to be like her cousin Sean, not Vanessa Hudgens.

It was actually kind of sweet, if not entirely impractical.  So, I steered her toward the smallest giant pink backpack I could find in hopes that the teacher wouldn’t report us to CPS for child abuse.  She acquiesced, even though it had two straps (stupid second strap) and we started to go.  As we’re walking out of the “Back to Cool!” area (I promise you, that does nothing to make middle school seem any cooler) Audra says:

“Hey look at that,” pointing to a My Little Pony backpack with hair hanging out of the front.  “You can comb and braid the pony’s hair with the brush that comes with the backpack.

“Uh huh,” I said tentatively.  “Do you want to try it on?”

She slides on the only slightly enormous backpack.  This one only comes down past her bottom.  A huge improvement. 

“It’s pretty big !” she says approvingly.  I have no idea what she thinks she needs all this room for.  I imagine she’ll be carrying home 3 sheets of paper every day.  I mainly want a backpack as a glitter containment device.

So, as we’re leaving, my daughter somehow magically shrinks from being the 13 year old back to being the 5 year old pony loving kindergarten student she’s supposed to be.  I guess we’ve staved off her impending getting older for a few more days.

At least until she gets on that school bus for the first time.

I’m sure I’ll be a total wreck.

There is a small petting zoo just down the road from our house.  I know this, because as I drive the little winding country road that passes by farms and the occasional mcmansion, there is a small hand painted sign for “Bobs Petting Zoo.”  (That’s not actually the name.  I said I saw the sign as I drove by, I didn’t say I paid attention).

It’s the kind of place that you have to call ahead to make reservations at.  It’s not a full time business and is just open when they have a school group come through.  They presumably have a few goats and chickens for you to pet while wandering around their backyard and I mentally made a note that it might be a fun outing to schedule with the kids sometime and didn’t think much more about it.

Last Spring my daughter’s preschool class decided to take a field trip there.  I was unable to go with them because of a doctor’s appointment or something, but when Audra got back home I asked her all about it.

“What kind of animals did you see, honey?”

“Well, there were donkeys and geese and llamas and tigers and turtles and…”

“Wait a minute!  Go back.  What did you just say?”

So my 5 year old daughter is claiming that the petting zoo about a mile or so from our house has a tiger, maybe two.  Now Audra is a pretty smart girl.  She knows her animals, and she’s not prone to lying, so there was a part of me that became somewhat concerned about this tiger down the road.  I mean, what kind of a cage do you think Bob has constructed for a tiger in his backyard?  I’m guessing chicken wire and two by fours.

There are lots of animals that crash through the woods behind our house.  When I can spot them, they are almost always squirrels or deer or the occasional fox, but it hadn’t occurred to me to keep an eye out for Panthera Tigris.  What exactly do you do to protect your family against such a thing anyway?  Obviously I need to stop drying meat outside on the porch and no more hanging dead zebras from the trees to ward off the mosquitoes (old family remedy).  But what else?  I’m not sure our 10 year old golden retriever who usually takes about 30 seconds to stand up is going to be much of a help.  And the biggest gun we own is the Nerf Powerblaster 3000, which is a pretty awesome gun, but I’m not sure it will stop a tiger.  Maybe I can somehow lure it into the pool and then…. Except wait!  Damn!  They can swim!  We are just totally screwed.

Anyway, a friend of mine had scheduled a visit for his family and wanted to know if we would like to tag along.  I jumped at the chance.  I was very eager to examine the tiger situation and determine the percent possibility that one day I would be washing dishes, hear a scream and then look out the window to see one of my kids being dragged into the woods by an 800 pound orange striped cat.

I turned on to the dirt road and followed it to a couple of modest homes surrounded by a number of fenced in areas.  We got out and met the owners who seemed nice and friendly and did not seem to feel the immediate need to carry a shotgun over their shoulder.  As we made our way through the various pens, feeding donkeys and goats and this one ram, whose endowment made me deeply uncomfortable, one of the kids shouted:

“Look a tiger!” 

I turned and there was a living room sized cage, but to my relief it did not hold a tiger, but an Ocelot, which is a small jungle cat about the size of a beagle.

Of course, it all made sense now.  My daughter’s not stupid, just easily confused.  She saw the Ocelot, probably heard a friend say it was a tiger and took that to be gospel.  I could now call my wife and tell her not to worry, since the last thing she said to me this morning was “If you get there and that tiger cage does not seem sturdy, I want you to get my kids out of there immediately, ok?  I’m serious!  You run to the van and drive off with the doors locked.  I’m not kidding,”  All of which was accompanied by a stern finger wag.

Of course, it is always in the calm that horror truly strikes.

“No!” shouted the kid.  “Not there!  The tiger’s over here!”

We all turned and sure enough there was a large cage with two fully grown Siberian tigers inside it. 

Of course, I was foolish to imagine that the cage was made out of chicken wire.  This was made out of chain link and was open on the top and had a nice tall tree for climbing in the middle.

I literally had no idea why the tigers were inside this cage.  I could have easily gotten out of this cage.  Heck, I think my three year old could have gotten out of this cage.  We had a schnauzer as a kid who used to escape chain link by digging under it.  I was becoming more and more inclined to follow my wife’s advice and sprint to the car.  Now, to be fair, the open topped chain link fence was about 10 feet high, but aren’t tigers known for their climbing ability?  And their ability to chew threw chain link fence like it was made of pretzels (or was that goats?)

Anyway, we continued on our tour, feeding llamas, sheep, geese and even a kangaroo, but I always kept an eye on that tiger cage.  I also noted that the same chain link they used to keep the tigers in was the same chain link deemed necessary to keep the geese from breaking free.  Something was very wrong here.  So, we concluded our tour, got back into the van, liberally applied purell to the areas that had been licked by various animals and started to drive away. 

I was now completely convinced that the tigers could easily escape at will, either by climbing up the side of the fence, or by fleeing through the gate while it was open when they were being fed, but after what I had learned about the magical principals of chain link, I was no longer worried.  Because I remembered that we had screens on our doors and windows.  Those tigers don’t stand a chance.

 Last week I was at a wedding with a number of my friends.  There’s nothing quite like a nuptial ceremony to spark a series of thoughts, memories and speculations.  Of course, I think back to my own wedding and what a wonderful day that was and I also think about the weddings of friends, particularly the ones I’m sitting around a table with.  And I also manage to let my mind wander to thoughts about weddings of the future.  Thinking about my friends and relatives, I wonder when so and so will get engaged and what their wedding will be like.

But I also had a different reaction, one I hadn’t quite expected.  As we went through the ceremony, and then the reception, and the toasts, and the first dance, I kept imagining what my daughter’s wedding was going to be like.  This was the first time that I had been at a wedding and had these thoughts, but at each of those traditional, somewhat cheesy, wedding moments, I found myself thinking about my little girl in a long white dress with some icky boy kissing her and found myself repeatedly tearing up.

Now you have to understand, Audra is 5.

I’m not expecting this wedding to happen soon or anything.  Lord knows we couldn’t afford it if it did, but it was sort of a milestone for me – that moment when weddings stop being about you and your friends, and start being about your children. 

Now, it doesn’t help that my daughter is the girliest thing alive.  My wife was a major tomboy as a child, always playing basketball and soccer or shooting her rifle and climbing trees.  Neither of us can figure out where this little princess loving bundle of chiffon and taffeta came from, but boy is she here.  She runs around the house in a perpetual flurry of make believe, pretending to be a movie star, or a princess, or a ballerina or any other occupation that requires wearing a dress and tiara.

So even though she’s only 5, it doesn’t take much imagination to age her 20 some years and stick her skinny body into a wedding dress. 

That will be quite a day.

Not ironically, it didn’t once occur to me to think about either of my sons’ weddings.  Partly this is because they’re younger and the closest they’ve shown to an interest in girls is occasionally letting Dora ride shotgun in the Diego jeep, but it’s also because no one really ever thinks about the groom at a wedding.  It’s not really about him. 

I’ve been a groom and to be honest, it’s pretty thankless job.  My wife was off in a room getting ready with about 20 people hovering around, a photographer taking pictures, and attendants offering to fulfill her every need.  I was in a 3rd grade Sunday School class by myself trying to figure out how to get my clip on bow tie to lie straight.  I’ve always wanted to go to a gay wedding with two grooms.  Do people show interest in the groom then, or does the congregation simply feign interest for the whole wedding?  Are lesbian weddings simply the most amazing thing ever?  Double the fun!

But back to my point.  For me, it was a transitional moment to be sitting there thinking about my beautiful daughter and what kind of stunningly creative and outrageously expensive wedding she is likely to have.  You see, most of our friends are married and there are probably only a hand full of weddings left in our future until it becomes time to start attending the weddings of our children.  And since Audra is one of the oldest in our circle of friends, it is likely that her wedding will be one of the first.

It was with all this in mind that I turned to a friend of mine after the toasts and asked if she had gotten to the point where she started thinking about her own daughter when she attended weddings.  She looked at me like I was making a joke she didn’t understand, laughed anyway, and then said, “Of course not!  Don’t be silly, she’s just 3!”

Then she paused, realization passing across her face, and said to me.  “Why?  Do you?”

“No,” I said.  “Of course not.  What kind of a freak would do that?”

Apparently this kind.

                                                                 The Future Bride dreaming of her Prince.  Or, possibly, stock broker

 We have a nice backyard, it’s not completely level or anything, but it’s a nice backyard.  Precisely the kind of nice backyard that seems to be yearning for a playset.  It’s something I had been meaning to do for a long time.  Kind of like I had been meaning to finish (er.. start) the kid’s babybooks and been meaning to clean the bathroom.  But somehow it just never made the top of the list in the way that things like flat tires and “desperate need to get out of the house” tend to make the list. 

Well, our kids’ birthdays are backed up to one another in July, August and September (we’re hoping for a full set… 9 more to go!).  This gave my mother the very kind idea to pitch in and help buy a playset for the kids’ birthdays.  This was just the kind of incentive I needed to get out in the backyard and get those kids a swingset.

I’ve had my eye on a pretty little number at Sam’s club, so I talked my buddy Jack into bringing his 15 passenger van to Sam’s and we loaded up 5 massive 10 foot long boxes and a  slide.  I brought them home and deposited them triumphantly on the ground.  This was when Jack (who I don’t care for anymore) says, “where are you going to put it?”

“Oh, I don’t know maybe over here,” I said pointing to a lovely shaded area.

“But, the ground’s not level.  The whole thing will tip over and kill someone.” He then starts talking about building retaining walls and drainage pipes and blah, blah blah. 

Do I sound like someone who knows how to build a retaining wall?

“It’ll be fine!” I said.  This is when Jack shook his head and left.  He may have literally done that washing his hands motion, I’m not sure.

Anyway, I have my trusty cadre of college students sleeping in the basement, so I rounded them all up and we began to open boxes, pick up boards and look at them and then put them back down again.  I then found a box within a box.  I opened it up and it had about 5 million screws and bolts in it, as well as the instruction book.  Excellent!

The first thing on the instruction book, which I have to note was not anywhere on the boxes, is a little note that says:

“Construction of the playset should take two moderately skilled adults 20-24 hours.”

Holy Crap!

And what if you’re not “moderately skilled.”  What if you’re marginally skilled, or moderately unskilled?  How long then?  40 hours?  100 hours?   The rest of your existence on this planet?

Well, no time like the present, so we flipped open the book of instructions  (oh yeah, it was a book) and read step 1:

 “Attach board G7 to post A3 using a 2.5 inch lag screw, 5/16 inch lock washer, washer and tap bolt.”

Ok. 

The three of us worked for several hours.  We managed to construct a rudimentary outline of a building, sort of a large cube of posts and boards.  “We’re looking good!”  I reported to the troops.

“How’re we doing?” asked Aloysius.  “How much more we got?”

I ckecked the instructions.  “Let’s see.  We’re on step, uh, 5.  Out of, um, (flip flip flip), ok, (flip flip flip), uh, 111 steps.”

(Let’s see.  What’s the math on this?  5 out of 111.  Carry the one.  We are 4.5 % done.  Ok, and if it took 3 hours to get 4.5% done, that means that we should be finished in, uh, 2017.)

Of course, there’s nothing else to do, but keep working on it, and I must say it’s looking good.  Eventually we get to the point where we need to level it off and so we dig a little hole for it and that works pretty well.  Who needs a retaining wall?

Somewhere around now, I’ve got a guy coming out to do some work on our water system.  He feels it’s necessary to tell me about how he bought one of these and then ended up hiring someone to put it together because it was so difficult and oh, by the way, have you considered building a retaining box for the base of the playset?  Because that’s what he did.

How is that helpful?

Jack comes by the next day, because he said he would help me with my project.  He takes one look at the little Lincoln log building we’ve constructed so far and then asks to see the finished picture of the playset on the instructions.  He then proceeds to laugh at me and says something along the lines of “there’s no way I’m getting involved in this.”  He then leaves, mumbling something about buying an aluminum playground for his kids.

But I don’t need them.  I can do this.  I just turn the music up louder (Yes, thank you very much.  I am simply the best) and get cracking.

Well.  It’s been almost a week now and.  I’m on step 47.  (Only 64 more to go!)  And the best I can say is that we’re getting there.  Slowly.  Very slowly.  Oh, and I’m going to have to move the location of the slide because there’s not really enough room for it, but that’s probably no big deal right?  And I’ve learned that I really am not very good with a power drill, but I’m getting better.  Oh, and one more thing:

If you know 2 moderately skilled adults, would you please have them give me a call.

 The finished project as printed on the instruction book

uh... where we are after a week

 My wife just returned from her 15 year high school reunion.  I was unable to go, but I can’t say that I missed a whole lot.  Sarah attended a small town high school with only 70 people in her graduating class and very few of them went on to receive Nobel prizes.  In fact, for a while it seemed like every time we called Sarah’s parents they had another tale of craziness from her high school.

“It’s all over the news.  Johnny Larkins has locked himself in his trailer and is having an armed stand off with the police.  He apparently was running a meth lab, but couldn’t afford Sudafed, so he’s been trying to make it work with crushed up alka seltzer and managed to explode foam all over half of the trailer park.”

“Do you remember Teresa Jaspers?  Well, she’s been working at the stop and save and got caught taking money out of the till to support her boyfriend’s velvet painting addiction.  They caught her paying above market value for a 36x20 of Elvis and Jesus playing pool.”

“Carol Thompson from church just called and said that Ernie and Darryl Winchester are in jail for selling Black market toothbrushes.  Yeah, a real shame.  Used panda hair for the bristles.  They claimed it was an aphrodisiac, but the users all just got mouth herpes.”

Don’t get me wrong, there are also some very nice people who went to her high school and certainly they’re not all in jail.  Many went to college, or got jobs that didn’t lead to arrests.  Anyway, my point is that the turnout at these reunions can be artificially low due to incarceration rates, but she went anyway and had a reasonably good time.  Less people got drunk than at her 10 year reunion (ah, what a few years of maturity and the absence of an open bar will do for you).  And it happened to coincide with the local community festival, so there was cotton candy.  What else could you want?

But my point here (do you ever notice how my point doesn’t tend to come until about ½ way through my entries) is that after she got home, she nonchalantly tells me that two of her classmates are now stay at home dads.

“No they’re not,” I said.

“Yes, they are.  One of them is in a local band, so he is free during the day as well as Sunday through Friday nights, and the other told me that he started staying home because it was too expensive for him to drive to work.”

Uh huh.

Now, perhaps I have a chip on my shoulder, or perhaps I am a little defensive about a career choice that many people might deride as “easy” or “feminine,” or “something only a total loser would do.”  But there is a big difference between being a stay at home dad and being at home as the same time as your children.

I am part of a group of Dads that get together a couple of times a week.  It’s a chance to let the kids run around and play and a chance for us Dads to talk with another adult.  Anyway, this very topic came up recently, primarily sparked by the presence of a SAHD that did not seem to be particularly good at his vocation.

For most of us SAHDs, we chose this role.  We are all competent people who could be working if we chose to and yet we decided to stay home with our kids.  Sure, for many of us there is a financial aspect.  I am a school teacher, my wife is a lawyer.  Our family could live on her salary, whereas our family could live in someone else’s basement on my salary.  But that’s not to say that was why we chose for me to stay home.  There is no doubt in either my wife’s or my mind that I am better suited to staying home with our kids. 

As group of Dads we came up with the following formula, if you are a stay at home dad solely because that is the best job you could get… then you probably shouldn’t be.  You’re not a stay at home Dad.  You’re just unemployable and happen to have children.  And this is, I believe, what is going on with Sarah’s classmates.

“Plays in a band?”  This is his reason for staying home with the kids?  You have to understand.  If he plays in a band in this little town, that means that the largest venue he has ever played in is the downtown bar which is primarily known as the location where a local police officer ate a live mouse as part of a bet.  This is not an occupation.  This is what you tell your friends when you fail the employment drug test at Wal-mart. 

As far as the guy who said it costs too much to drive to work…. I mean, I know gas prices have gone up, but unless he commutes to Anchorage every day, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the cost of commuting in a rural town outweigh the paycheck.

Now I am willing to concede that these two gentleman might actually be very good parents who, although not home by choice, have accepted their role with dignity and good humor and provide a loving and nurturing….. Ok, no I’m not.  I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts that they sit around all day watching ESPN and eating twinkies dipped in PBR.  

In the past when people were unemployed, they would say they were finding themselves, or writing their novel.  Now they say they are stay at home dads.  But being at home with your kids doesn’t make you a stay at home dad anymore than going to a museum makes you a dinosaur.

So, here’s my request, at the 20 year reunion, just man up and tell everyone that you’ve developed an addiction to pain killers or have the lost the ability to drive a car as a result of that drunken bow hunting incident.

Just leave us Stay at Home Dads out of it.

 Yesterday I wrote about the travails of trying to get Felecia out of the state of Mississippi.  It’s never easy.  Mississippi has a way of sucking people back in even as they’re trying to pull away, like a very hot and humid vacuum cleaner.  But Felecia made it.  She arrived at the airport last night at 6:00pm acting like she flew every week.  Her flight got in a little early and by the time I arrived she had collected her luggage and was standing around like this was the most normal thing in the world, when, for her, it couldn’t have been more bizarre.

This is a girl who has never flown on an airplane and never set foot in an airport.  In fact the only planes she’s ever seen are the crop dusters that divebomb the cotton fields in the Delta.  She’s only ever left the state a couple of times, either on school trips or with me.  Leaving her home, driving an hour and a half to the nearest airport, getting on a plane by herself and flying here strike me as one of the bravest things a person could do.

Felecia had to convince her older brother to drive her the hour and a half down to Jackson.  They didn’t quite know where they were going, nor did they have a map.  They drove around lost for awhile trying to find the airport.  They called me for directions, but it’s very difficult to give directions if you don’t know where someone is currently and they don’t either.  They finally asked someone at a gas station arrived at the airport and parked.

They then called me again because they couldn’t figure out where the airport itself was and were lost in the parking garage.  Again I was not much help.  “Uh, look for a big building?” was the sum total of my advice – again, not very helpful.

Eventually they made it into the airport, squabbled with the check in people about the fact that Felecia didn’t have an ID (This is an interesting dilemma.  What do you do if you don’t have an ID?  Obviously most of us have driver’s licenses, but driving is sort of an odd requirement for flying, isn’t it.   Do all those subway riders in New York City only travel by Amtrak?).  They ultimately accepted her birth certificate as proof and let her pass through security.  She called me again from the waiting area at her gate.  She had gotten there 3 hours early.

Now, I’ve been down this road before, where things didn’t work out when I came to get someone in Mississippi and the only solution was to leave a difficult pathway (such as taking a flight for the first time by yourself) for a former student to follow on their own.  Most of the time it doesn’t work out.  They miss the plane, or the train was late so they just went home.  Their brother talked them into staying instead, or their neighbor’s house burned down (as houses are apt to do down there) and this inexplicably struck them as a reason to stay instead of go. 

So, I tried to make things easy.  I made sure it was a direct flight.  I wrote out lots of hopefully helpful information (at security, they will make you take off your shoes.  This is normal) although my helpful information didn’t include such things as directions to the airport.  But honestly, when I first had to set up the plane reservation for her to fly by herself.  I thought, “this is money down the drain.”   I just knew that she would get there too late, or forget her birth certificate and ID, or be unable to find someone to drive her to the airport.  There were a million ways it could all go wrong.  I wrote in my notes that she needed to get to the airport two hours early, but I didn’t expect her to.  I’ve just had too many experiences where my worst predictions ended up not being nearly dire enough.  It ingrains a pessimism that is hard to overcome.

But Felecia shot all that down.  She exceeded my expectations in every way and overcame her own fears in order to do what she needed to.  When I emailed my wife to tell her that Felecia was at the airport 3 hours early, she wrote back.  “I can’t believe it.  She must really want to get out of Mississippi.”  Yes she did.  She saw the complete absence of jobs and anything resembling a comfortable lifestyle and decided that she wanted to get out.

And now she’s here, and is going to try to build a new life.  I’m not quite sure what she’s going to do, and she’s not either, but I know that she has the determination to accomplish whatever goals she sets before herself.  And that’s half the challenge right there.

So here’s to Felecia.  My Southwest Airlines pioneer.  It may seem like a small thing, but for a young woman from the Delta, it’s huge and I am very, very proud of her. 

 As I mentioned in my blog yesterday, I was just coming off a weekend of reliving the freedom and independence that used to be my every day life back in my twenties.  But when you’re on one of these fantasy vacations, sooner or later, reality comes knocking - usually with a sledge hammer.

So, I was enjoying my weekend in Chicago, at a wedding with other adults having a great time, when my phone buzzed.  It was a text (yeah, I get texts.  I’m that cool) and it said something along the lines of

“This is Felecia, can you call me.  There’s a problem.”

(sigh)

All of that lightheaded, youthful joy came crashing down around me until I was sitting alone and somber amidst the rotting detritus of my recent happiness.  I instantly went from feeling like a 22 year old back to feeling like an adult, but worse than that, this was dealing with a teenager, so I felt even older than I am.  Age 22 to 52 in 3.4 seconds.

So, here’s the story.  Many moons ago, I taught 3rd grade in a tiny little town in the Mississippi Delta.  I left there about a decade ago, but have kept in touch with my former students.  I would bring a couple of them up to stay with me for a couple of weeks each summer and last year I brought a couple of my students (now high school graduates) up to live with us while they attended college in the area. 

The trick is that Mississippi has a magical way of screwing up anything that falls within its borders.  After years and years of going down there to pick a kid up only to have the whole plan collapse in a blaze of glory due to some crazy unforeseen event (houses burning down, people dying, crazy grandparents, catfish related incidents), I’ve taken on a Zen-like approach to the region.

“Crazy is normal.  Come with high hopes, but no expectations. Things will not go smoothly.  Don’t count on anything for sure until you’ve crossed back into Tennessee. And, only in the sound of darkness can one hand be found to hold the heart of life like a butterfly nesting warmly in your esophagus (or some such nonsense)”

It’s not a great philosophy, but it seems to work.  So anyway, back to our story. 

I’m at the wedding, eating some cheesy polenta when I get the text.  My heart sinks, mainly because Mississippi is a place where nothing is ever a problem.  (“my leg just got eaten by a Wildebeest, but it’s alright.  We’re cool”), so if somebody tells you there’s a problem, you know it’s going to be a doozy.   I was supposed to fly down and pick up Felecia along with two other students first thing in the morning.  This was almost certainly not going to go well.  So I excused myself from the wedding, called the number and heard a story that went something along the lines of:

Ok, so Felecia is best friends with this girl who’s lesbian ex-girlfriend is all mad at so she called the police and told them that that girl and Felecia broke a window and broke into her house, even though she didn’t and so the police came and arrested them and their supposed to be in court on Monday, but we think they can still leave tomorrow, they just have to pay this $200 and then they can go, because the other girl isn’t going to show up anyhow, so it doesn’t really matter.

If you’re confused, join the club.

So I made a few phone calls, talked to Felecia’s aunt, her cousin, her cousin’s aunt who also happened to be her bail bondsman and the other students involved with this debacle.  It turns out (no surprise here) that she does have to go to court, or she becomes a wanted felon who skipped out on her bail. 

Not wanting to have Dog the Bounty Hunter break into my house in the middle of the night, I insisted that Felecia go to court and that we would try to come up with a different plan for her to exit the state, because apparently as soon as she goes to court, regardless of the outcome, she is allowed to leave.   Or so everyone tells me.

I returned to the party and related this story to my friends who had all been watching me out the window for the last half hour as I cradled my head in my hands and occasionally banged it against the wall.   There was much confusion.  My lawyer friend kept insisting that this was not how criminal legal proceedings operated and that surely… blah, blah, blah.  He might as well have been talking about how to julienne mangoes for all the relevance it was going to have on how things were actually done in Mississippi. 

The Delta is a nation unto its self, with it’s own ways of doing things that don’t necessarily have any relation to accepted practices or that pesky constitution.  This had its good side and it’s bad.  On one hand, you could apparently be locked up because someone’s crazy girlfriend made up a story.  On the other hand, because everyone knew this was what happened, there was no expectation that you needed to proceed through the  legal system in the same way they do in the rest of the country. 

So, I got up at 5:00 the next morning.  Flew down to Mississippi, changed Felecia’s flight, picked up my other students, Aloysius and Jessie, as planned and left Felecia with explicit instructions on how to get to the airport, navigate it’s peculiarities etc.  On the way down I would have put the odds of all of that working out at about 20%, but her aunt seemed on the ball and when I left, I felt like the odds of all this coming to fruition were pretty good.

I got a call the next day.  When Felecia went to court for her scheduled hearing / trial / whatever, no one was there.  No judge, no prosecutor, no nobody.  So they rescheduled the case, but the clerk told her not to worry about coming.  It was no big deal.   Felecia talked with her bail bondsman and, randomly enough, the mayor of the town who also told her she was free to go.  It turns out all the predictions were right.

See, that’s the thing about Mississippi.  People tell you crazy things, which you are sure can not be true (kids eat pickles soaked in Kool-aid, after desegregation the whites sold all the school books to the new white private schools, Catfish mate in buckets) but then, sure enough, those crazy things turn out to be 100% accurate.  Thus necessitating my Zen approach to the region.

So Felecia is supposed to arrive tonight at 6:00.  I will then be a stay at home parent to three kids, three teenagers, a geriatric dog, a dozen fish and a turtle we found swimming in our pool filter.  My soul’s age just jumped to 52…at least.  But I’m sure it will get easier from here and if not I’ll just develop a new Zen philosophy:

“It is only by boarding the Amtrak and fleeing to Manitoba that true Peace can be found resting in your soul like a lilypad”

 Let me explain.

A friend of mine was getting married in Chicago, but it coincided with my wife’s 15 year high school reunion.  She really wanted to go to that and see how many of her classmates had been incarcerated in the intervening decade and a half, and we were both unsure about what to do with our kids at a wedding in Chicago.  We could obviously bring them, but it greatly limits the fun of a wedding

“Whoops!  8:30.  Gotta go get the kids to bed.  Let me know if the cake is any good and who the crazy girl in the red dress ends up leaving with.”

So, after some debate, it was decided that Sarah would take the kids up to her parent’s house for her High school reunion and I would go to the wedding….

BY MYSELF!

Wow!

I don’t really even remember how to use those words accurately in a sentence – “by myself.”   - “At the movie, I was eating ‘by myself’, the popcorn.”   Hmmm, I’ll have to google it or something.

So for the first time in a decade or so, I was off for a weekend of fun with some friends in an exciting city.  I spent the first hour and a half after I got off the plane in C-town walking around singing that old Frank Sinatra song that always sounds like it was poorly translated from the original Italian – “My kind of town, Chicago is…”  I’m sure I was very popular with the locals, who probably appreciated my extensive knowledge of their cultural heritage.

I arrived with a couple of my friends and we set out to explore the windy city.  Now here’s the deal, though.  My friends were an unmarried couple who regularly take fun coupley trips to resorts and spas and places like that.  I, on the other hand, am a stay at home dad who regularly takes trips to Chik-fil-a and Target with three kids in tow.  So, while they were content to casually walk the streets, complete in the knowledge that they have been here before and would probably be back again, I was trying to squeeze all of the entertainment I could into the next 36 hours.

“Hey!  Let’s ride the Ferris wheel.  Or maybe we should take a segway tour.  Do you want to go see some improv later tonight?  I’ve heard the pizza here is supposed to be really good.  Maybe we should go to the top of the Hancock tower observatory.  We could wander Michigan Avenue and look at some shops.  How about we rent bikes and ride along lakeshore drive?  The art museum is supposed to be excellent!  Ever since reading ‘Devil in the White City’ I’ve wanted to visit the site of the Columbian Exhibition.  Should we take one of those boat tours?  What about those Frank Lloyd Wright houses?  We could do a lake cruise, or maybe one of those architecture cruises.  Hey look!  Cotton Candy!”

So, I’m afraid I was a bit of a pest.  I just knew my time was short.  It was kind of like if you were told you only had a day to live, what would you do?  In my case, it was as if you were told you only had a day to live as a single, childless person with no real responsibility for anyone else.  I just wanted to suck the marrow out of life.  I didn’t even really care which marrow, or what it tasted like.  I just wanted to get busy sucking.

So we did.  We rode the Ferris wheel and walked Michigan Avenue (I bought some shorts!).  We drank beer and ate some pretty terrible nachos overlooking the river.  We rode the El, ate Indian food, went to a terribly hip bar which ended up making me feel terribly unhip (although maybe that’s because while the techno music thumped overhead, I was huddled in a corner trying to help the bride write her vows).  We would have ridden segways and taken the boat tours, but apparently you have to make reservation for those kinds of things in advance (stupid organized tourists).  But the art museum was great, the view from the Hancock building was spectacular, and in general, my kind of town, Chicago is.

Oh yeah, the wedding was pretty nice too.

All in all, it was a pretty great weekend of marrow sucking.  I’m not sure people without kids can quite understand the freedom that comes with pretending that once again you are in your twenties and only have to worry about yourself.  It’s one of those luxuries that you don’t realize you have until it’s gone. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids.  I missed them and I spent most of the wedding thinking about how my daughter will someday be walking down the aisle in a white dress and I desperately wished my wife’s name was listed beside mine on our seating card.  But, think of it this way.  I also love my house, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to travel back in time and spend a weekend living in my old, tiny, cramped college dorm with the shared bathroom. 

So, truly, it was a great weekend.  One with too little sleep to match the too much fun.  But then Sunday rolled around and that wasn’t so much fun.  I’ll detail that in tomorrow’s blog.  One I’m calling:  “And then I was 52.”

 So I assume most people have seen McCain’s new ad about Obama being a celebrity.  If I were a really good, hip, cutting-edge blogger I would have written about this a week or two ago, but I’m not.  Yesterday I wrote about my son’s birthday and the day before I probably wrote about poop.  I can’t remember for sure, but it’s always a good guess.  But as it turns out, my kids didn’t do anything funny yesterday, so I’ve resorted to blathering on about politics again. 

Well, if you haven’t seen McCain’s ad, here it is.  It basically belittles Obama by comparing him to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton because he has big crowds show up at his political speeches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c0vctCfhH8

The republicans have always been good at turning someone’s strength into a weakness and visa versa (remember how Kerry’s voluntary military service became his primary liability when compared to the current administration of draft dodgers)

But there still is a fair amount of chutzpah needed to basically belittle your opponent because lots of people want to hear him speak, while you yourself are having difficulty getting a few hundred people to show up at a Saturday night appearance at the Elk’s club.

Only in America could it possibly be deemed a bad thing to have lots of people show up to listen to you explain your policies.  It’s extraordinary that this could ever be portrayed as a negative.  Of course, there is truth to the accusation that politicians have become more like celebrities.  Certainly Bill Clinton had an aura of celebrity about him.  He even had a couple of rock star gropies… excuse me, I mean, groupies.

But of course it’s all in the details isn’t it?  Obama spoke to a crowd of 200,000 in Europe (boy, being in Europe makes it inherently evil, doesn’t it?  Nothing worse than having our allies support us.).  I don’t know that Paris or Britney have ever… uh.. (performed?)  for a group that large.  True, Britney has played to arenas and Paris has had a large group of, ahem, video followers, but neither of them have been drawing any fans lately.   (Biggest Irony, the Hiltons are big McCain supporters that each gave the maximum amount they could).

It’s not really a fair analogy is it?  If you want to compare Obama to a celebrity who draws hundreds of thousands of people you probably need to compare him to a big Central Park concert crowd, maybe Simon and Garfunkel or Pavarotti.  Or I suspect Bruce could draw a couple hundred thousand on a good day.  If you want to compare him to Tina Turner, that’s fine by me.  (insert jokes about “Simply the Best,”  the campaign being “thunderdome” or even “What’s Love got to Do with it” here.  Please avoid private dancer jokes.  Again, we’ll leave those to Bill).

But of course, the whole point is to compare Obama to ditzy celebrities, whether the analogy fits or not.  Because if there’s anything that Obama is, it’s certainly ditzy.  That’s how they usually describe the editor of the Harvard Law Review.  (Remember that whole strength / weakness thing?   Well, McCain graduated almost last in his class at the Naval academy, and while I’m not saying the only reason he got in the first place was because his Dad was an admiral, somebody else might).

The saddest thing about all of this is that I have always had a lot of respect for McCain.  I remember thinking back in 2000, that if McCain became president, it probably wouldn’t be all that bad.  He had been known as an independent thinker and someone who, like Obama, had tried to rise above politics as usual.  This ad isn’t exactly rising above politics as usual, as much as it is embracing it wholly at its very rotten, stinking core. 

Obama of course has taken the low road more times than I like, but it would be hard to imagine his campaign coming out with something as asinine and just downright mean as this. 

I was excited when Obama and McCain became the nominees.  I thought, Wow.  This could be the election where the candidates really do spend time talking about the issues and distinguishing themselves.  My first disappointment came when Obama rejected McCains’ proposal to hold weekly debates.  I thought that was wonderful – precisely what a campaign ought to be.  And now here we are, not event to the conventions and we’re seeing ads that look like they ought to be coming out of a mayoral race in Alabama, not the presidency. 

There has been one victor in all of this though.  If you haven’t seen Paris Hilton’s response ad.  It’s worth a gander.  It was written by someone else, but she does a good job delivering it.  I’ve never really cared for Paris or anything she stood for, but she rose  a couple of notches in my mind with this.  Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W2nUrH67LY

 It’s my oldest son’s birthday today.  He turns three, which is going to change a lot of things around here, not least of which is his name.

His name is Asher, but at some point my wife and I started tacking on his middle initial and calling him Asher T.  There was no particular logic or reasoning for this.  I guess we just liked the way it sounded.  Well, Asher has always been a bit more stubborn than his older sister and began referring to himself as Asher T. and correcting us if we forgot to tag that T on there.

Around this same time, we began to say things to Asher about being a “big boy.”  He liked this.  Who doesn’t like being a big boy?    So, of his own accord, he began calling himself Big Boy Asher T.  The following scenario was rather common:

“Asher, come here please.”

“I’m not Asher!  I’m big boy Asher T.”

“Alright nutjob, come here.”

“I’m not nutjob.  I’m big boy Asher T.”

The final appendage to his name came a few months later.  After the 3000th little old lady asked him how old he was, he apparently got tired of all of the small talk and just started introducing himself as “Big Boy Asher T–2.”  Everything you need to know about him squeezed into a short bio/introduction.  He was so enamored of this that he started trying to introduce his sister as “Big Girl Audra E–5,” but she was having none of it.  If anybody is going to be cute in this family, she’s going to make sure it’s her. 

So anyway, today is a day of transition for us.  Big Boy Asher T-2 will officially become Big Boy Asher T – 3.  (sigh)

So, in celebration, here are 10 things I love and, if they change, will dreadfully miss about Big Boy Asher T-2.

1.  His hair. 

He has this awesome thick, strawberry blonde hair with about 100 different colors in it.  When we cut it short he looks like a little preppy who can’t seem to find his sweater vest.  But when it gets long, it sticks up and flops around and seems to be begging for nothing more than a good tousling.

2.  His crazy run. 

Asher is probably the most athletic of our children, which isn’t saying a whole lot.  He has this wonderfully bizarre run that sort of looks like his left leg is running and his right leg is skipping.  It gives him this lilting half hop with every couple of steps, which is highly inefficient as a method of transportation but is pretty darn adorable to watch.

3.  He’s our Jekyll and Hyde Baby.

Asher is the child that can go from happy as a clam to angry and crying in a heartbeat.  This wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing, but there is something a little charming that emerges from the sheer absurdity of it.  He can be playing happily and then at the most random provocation will lose it.

“Asher come to the table”

“No! I don’t like the table.”

“We’re going to have ice cream!”

“I don’t like ice-cream!”

(uh huh)

4.  He has crazy dreams

Everyone once in a while we’ll be at the dinner table and Asher will start relating some crazy dream.  They are usually these absolutely bizarre scenarios that he relates with a somewhat banal delivery.

“I saw a monster last night.”

“You did?”

“Yep.”

“What did it look like?”

“It was big.”

“what color was it?”

“Purple.”

“Did it try to chase you.”

“no.”

“What did it do?”

“It tried to eat my books.”

“What did you do about that.”

“I told him ‘no’”

“Did that work?”

“yep.  And then I woked up.”

5.  He loves trains.

I know this isn’t anything unique.  Lots of little boys, if not all of them, love trains.  It’s something written into the gene code, but Asher loves them with an unbridled enthusiasm that is contagious.  If we pass a Thomas the Train display, he starts jumping up and down and saying things like. 
“Look, look!  Thomas!  And there’s Clarabelle and there’s Spencer, he’s really fast.  And those are the giggling troublesome trucks, and that’s Bulstrode, he’s a boat.” 

And on and on and on. 

One of his favorite past times is to take the little fold out sheet, that comes in each of the Thomas trains, and stare at the pictures of the 100 or so trains that are on it.  At bedtime, in lieu of a story, he likes me to just read all of their names and point them out to him.

6.  He’s a card.

In no way should I be proud of this.  I should be absolutely ashamed, but unfortunately this is endearing to me. 

Somewhere….and let’s not speculate as to where….. Asher picked up a bad habit.  Whenever he or someone else toots or burps, instead of saying excuse me, he quickly looks around with a confused look and says, “oh no, what was that?” 

Cracks me up

7.  He tells me he loves me.

It’s a simple thing, but especially in the last few months, Asher has taken to saying, completely out of the blue.

“Daddy, I love you too.”

Usually this in the middle of a diaper change, or some other quiet moment.  It cracks me up and touches my heart all at the same time. 

8.  He loves him some cereal.

As soon as he wakes up, Asher heads straight to the kitchen table and asks,

“Daddy, can I have some cereal?”

Every day.  First thing.  Spoon in hand.

Somehow, it’s endearing.

9.  He thinks Tom and Jerry is the funniest thing ever

For a long trip a few months ago, I got the kids a 2 disk set of Tom and Jerry.  It’s a collection of some of the classic cartoons where Jerry is tying fireworks to Tom’s tail, Tom is chasing Jerry with a meat cleaver or the bulldog is beating Tom with a frying pan until all of his teeth fall out. 

The cartoons are crazy violent.  If it was a new cartoon, no parent in America would let their kid watch it.  But it’s a classic.  Apparently it was ok to electrocute cats back in the 50s.  Regardless, Asher loves it.  He could watch it over and over again and in fact does.  The kids take turns choosing videos in the van and Audra always chooses something different, but when it’s Asher’s turn, the only questions is whether he wants to watch the Tom disk or the Jerry disk.

10.  His cheeks.

I am in no way impugning the kissability of my other children’s cheeks, but Asher has these soft chipmunk cheeks with dimples that are just begging to be kissed.  And I do.  As often as I can.

Asher is my little boy even if now he’s Big Boy Asher T -2.  And I know that some day, possibly even some day soon, he’s going to start running like a normal kid, only going to want to watch Ben 10 on TV, absolutely refuse to be kissed on his dimples 10 times a day, and he’s likely to drop the “too” off of his “I love you” and at some point, he’s going to drop that phrase all together.

But for now, he’s my adorable little boy who, despite my best efforts, is growing up.  I am going to try to treasure these remaining days of boyhood and as I look forward to all of the amazing things my Big Boy Asher T-3, 4, 5, and 18 is going to do, I just want to take a short moment to revel in my beautiful little boy Asher T-2.

 I think I’ve talked in the past about my soul’s true age.  This is the concept that, despite your chronological age, your mind and soul are completely different.  So, even if you are, in fact, 50 years old, you might feel and act like a 30 year old.  This explains Sex and the City.

Most people that I know usually feel younger than they actually are.  For instance, when I went around the circle with a group of friends and we all shared our “soul’s age,”  just about everyone gave a soul’s age of about 5 – 20 years younger than they were.  Heck, even the 25 year old said her soul’s age was about 20. 

I, on the other hand, am 35, and I would say my soul’s age is about 46. 

Yeah, yeah, I know.  I’m kind of lame.  We’ve been through this.

I don’t know.  I’ve always just been older than I really was.  I was that kid who liked to hang out with teachers and adults (I KNOW!) and even now I frequently find myself in older situations.  When I’m at meetings at church, I am invariably the youngest person there (usually by a couple of decades).  And when my wife and I go to concerts we frequently arrive only to discover that we are the only couple in attendance who didn’t have to drink a can of Ensure along with our All-Bran that morning.

This is largely due to the fact that we tend to enjoy music that draws a somewhat more (ahem) mature crowd.  I like folk music and opera and big band stuff and singer songwriters and pop acts who have to drink a can of Ensure along with their All-Bran in the morning (I’m talking to you Bruce and Tina).

So it was a pleasant surprise to arrive at the concert we went to last night.  My friend Kris, who has a soul’s age a couple of decades younger than her driver’s license insists she actually is, has become my music guru for what the kids are listening to nowadays.  You see the thing is that I like all kinds of music, well, all kinds of good music, so I really like to hear all of the new stuff that’s coming out I just get sick of wading through the Ashley Simpsons of the world to get there.  And that’s where Kris comes in.  She finds the obscure good stuff and clues me in.  Because of her, I was into Amy Winehouse, the Kooks and the Fratellis well before even the hippest teenagers.

Anyway, one of her finds is a kid from Maryland named Eric Hutchinson.

http://www.erichutchinson.com/

He does acoustic pop stuff and his music is a ton of fun.  So when we discovered that he was playing a boat cruise around the Chesapeake we ran out and got tickets. 

My wife, Sarah, isn’t always as enthusiastic about some of my musical choices, but I knew that she liked Eric because I kept catching her humming his music.  Kris didn’t have as much luck with her husband, so she got to double date with another friend of ours – Cindy.  Anyway, the four of us show up at the boat and while we were not the oldest people there (we’ll leave that honor to the grizzled, drunk guy in the Hawaiian shirt), there were a large number of folks who were unable to get the little red paper bracelet that signified they were allowed to drink.

It was a pretty different sensation being one of the old people at a concert and I’m not sure it suited me.  Kris didn’t seem to care (of course her soul’s age is like 22).  In fact Kris was really really excited.  I knew this because every few minutes she would turn to us, jump up and down a little and say “I am Soooo EXCITED!”

Well, what can I say, it was a beautiful night, the company was great, my wife looked smokin’ hot and the music was wonderful, if a tad loud (Oh geez.  Did I actually just write that?)

The younger folks, including Kris and Cindy who’s soul’s age allowed them to do so, formed a mini folk-pop-acoustic mosh pit at the front of the boat while Sarah and I grooved in the corner.  It was a great concert.  He played all of our favorite songs as well as a wonderfully bizarre medley of the songs “My Girl” and “My humps.”  It was beautiful, in a Temptations rolling over in their graves kind of way.

Afterward, Sarah and I went to the top of the boat and gazed at the moon and all of the rich people’s houses while Kris went off to get her picture taken with Eric (see right).  She came back elated, although maybe a bit disappointed that he seemed even too young for her soul’s age.  It’s always disappointing when even your soul’s age is a cougar.

But it was a great concert.  If you can catch Eric somewhere I would highly recommend it.  He’s a good singer, a great songwriter and a fun performer and I think he’s about to be big.  One of his songs is being used in a new teen movie trailer (traveling pants) and he certainly has the potential to break out and start playing in places where old people like me can’t even go see him because of the lack of ramps.

So check him out and if you like his music go see him live.  It will do your soul some good, even if you’re the only one in the audience old enough to know that the material girl is not a reference to raggedy ann.

 
As some of you may recall.  My parents live in the charming river town of Paducah, KY.   It’s a nice place with a cutesy downtown area, an artist community and, from what I recall, a higher percentage of children on leashes than dogs.  And they are always improving.  They have recently added a Frisbee golf course in an effort to keep their young people from moving away to more exciting places like Lexington, and a skate park, in an effort to keep the teenagers away from everyone else.

On a tangential note, while writing about this, I decided to look up what’s going on in today’s Paducah Sun newspaper.  In the process I came across the following headline:

“Bunning Avoids Man and Banana”

I’ll let everyone take that in for a minute, and mull over what it might be about.

OK, good.

It was essentially a story about Sen. Jim Bunning touring some kind of farm festival.  Apparently he asked for extra police protection because he claimed that the last time he came to the festival he was “roughed up” by democrats.  This is of course ridiculous.  Aside from the fact that we all know that Democrats are peace loving, tofu eating, tie dye wearing, pinko wimps who couldn’t rough up someone if they wanted to.  There’s not enough democrats left in Kentucky to rough anyone up.   They could maybe mumble disparaging comments about how Bunning is a nutjob who once said that his country doctor opponent looked like one of Osama Bin Laden’s sons because he is Italian, but that’s really the worst that could happen.

Or so I thought.

It turned out that Bunning, a former MLB player was accosted at farm fest.  While he was getting ready to speak, a man got too close to Bunning and began to unpeel a banana, but luckily Kentucky’s finest were on top of it and managed to remove the Bananamanic from Bunning’s presence before…. before…. well, it’s hard to imagine what the danger was.  Potassium overdose?  But regardless, it was averted.  God Bless America.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.  Belittling Kentucky’s junior senator is just an added bonus this morning.  No, the real thing I want to discuss is this memo that my Mom forwarded to me.  Apparently the city of Paducah (which, in full disclosure, my father is city manager of) has expanded their already extensive Wifi system in the community.  Now anyone with a computer or one of those new fancypants Ipods can boot up in a half dozen different locations and have access to that whole world wide web thing.  It’s just like San Francisco, but with more Nascar stickers.

This is part of the memo that she sent me.  See if you can find the funny:

“The City of Paducah has added another wireless hotspot for citizens to use.  The latest location for free wireless internet access is in downtown Paducah at the Paducah-McCracken County Convention & Visitors Bureau. … Seven other locations are already active in the City:  Robert Cherry Civic Center, Dolly McNutt Plaza, the skatepark at Noble Park, the Noble Park swimming pool area, the Texaco Station in LowerTown, Paducah’s riverfront, and Oak Grove Cemetery.”

Yes, that’s right.  The city, apparently sat down to make a list of the top 10 places people in Paducah might want to go to use a computer.  And from the best I can tell, that list includes a gas station, a swimming pool, a skatepark (those skaters have to keep up with their daytrading) and, of course, the cemetery. 

The cemetery.

Now, in all fairness, this is the cemetery where John Scopes (of Scopes Monkey Trial fame) is buried.  So perhaps there’s some kind of evolution process going on that allows the recently departed to still log into their yahoo accounts.  Or perhaps Paducah is the kind of place where after a hard day in the office it’s nice to head off to the cemetery, prop your feet up on a tombstone and play a couple of hours of World of Warcraft.  That way, if you get killed off, you don’t feel so bad. 

Who knows?  All I know is that if I die in Paducah (a realistic possibility based on second hand smoke alone) I’m asking to be buried with my computer.

Yesterday I was getting everyone dressed and the kids started talking about freckles.  My daughter got a little bit of sun on vacation and some adorable freckles appeared across her nose in a previously freckleless location.  She’s quite proud.

Combine this with her recent “Annie” obsession and freckles have definitely taken on a greater level of significance than might normally be expected.

So, Audra points out to my 2 year old, Asher, that she has freckles.  I don’t think she would have described it as bragging, but I suspect that pretty much anyone else who overheard it would.  Well, not to be outdone, Asher, my blonde, blue-eyed son pulls up his shirt and proclaims:

“I have freckles.”

“Those aren’t your freckles,” insists Audra.  Those are your nipples.”

“My nipples?”

This conversation went on for a while until somehow it turned to me.  Audra nonchalantly tells Asher, “Daddy doesn’t have freckles either.”

I think this was supposed to make Asher feel better.  ‘See, you’re not the only one cursed with creamy unblemished skin.’  However, the reality side of things is that I do in fact have freckles, lots of freckles.  My hair color has mellowed with age, but as a child I had bright red hair and pale white skin.  Freckles were the only thing that gave me the illusion of a tan.  My skin color just turned red in the sun, but with enough density of freckles I could appear from a distance to have a nice brown skin tone as compared to what might uncharitably be referred to as “splotchy lobster.”

So, I say to my daughter.  “Of course I have freckles.  I have lots of freckles.  My body’s covered with them.”

I’ve never felt particularly defensive about my freckles before, but now that they were being wholeheartedly dismissed, I felt like I needed to stand up and represent.

My daughter, loathe to cede a point unless absolutely necessary, says, “yeah, but they’re not big like Mommy’s.”

“Ok, those are not freckles,” I point out.  “Those are moles and I wouldn’t bring them up if I were you.”

And so the great freckle debate of ’08 whimpered to an end.  That is until Asher, from across the room, pulls up his infant brother’s shirt and with great enthusiasm proclaims:

“Micah’s got freckles.”

And then I hear Audra, now a bit exasperated, “Those are nipples!”

 I was in the grocery check out line yesterday and I saw something I hadn’t seen in years.  Next to stories about Britney’s weight issues, and some old dying celebrity (maybe Liz Taylor, or is she dead already?  Hard to keep track) and just above an article about Hillary Clinton’s secret love child with one of the backstreet boys (I think the one with the mustache) was an Archie comic.

That’s right, a comic featuring that scrawny red-headed kid with the pound sign on the side of his head.  I stared in disbelief.  They still make this?

I picked it up.  Archie had been updated for our generation - somewhat.  He was on the beach and had clearly been working out.  He had pecs and if not a full 6 pack, at least a pack of those weird mini cans their selling nowadays.  He was standing in the middle of three angry girls (Betty, Veronica and some other chick) looking between them desperately.  Jughead was incongruously juggling apples in the background and says “I can juggle three apples.”  Archie replies, “Try juggling three girls.”

Oh, that Archie!

Who reads this crap?  No, I’m serious; does ANYONE actually purchase and read this? I left the store trying desperately to figure out who in the world would buy a copy of Archie.  The stories are about things like accidentally setting up two dates for the same night and not having enough whip cream on your milkshake at the soda fountain.  I’m not sure anyone under the age of 8 would get it and I don’t think anyone over the age of 8 would care.  In a world of gossip girl it seems that Archie is just a little too quaint.  And I know that’s kind of sad, but no one reads Little Lulu any more either.  Well, heck, what do I know maybe there’s a big Little Lulu display at the drugstore.

The last time I saw an Archie comic was at my grandfather’s house.  It was on a book shelf and had belonged to my uncle, I suppose.  I was eight at the time and read it because I was bored, but I remember at the time thinking that it was pretty lame and outdated.  And that was almost 30 years ago.  (I think that was the same summer I came across another of my Uncle’s books lying underneath a mattress titled “What the Teacher Taught” and let me tell you, it wasn’t algebra.)

My only thought is that maybe old people are all nostalgic for Archie and like to relive the days when stories like this were hysterical:

“Pool Player – Archie’s job as a pool cleaner gets him all wet!”  (that’s real, I swear)

I don’t know.  I don’t even think old people would find that funny.  I just can’t see them throwing that on top of their cart of Metamucil and All-Bran.  Besides the font is too small.

In my effort to get to the bottom of this phenomenon, I did check out the Archie website

www.archiecomics.com

Which includes things like Archie’s blog, a section where you can buy a Veronica throw pillow and some really strange fan art.  It’s all very odd and all very wholesome in a the-whole-premise-is-that-Archie-is-a-two-timing-horndog kind of way.

I don’t know.  I’m sure it appeals to someone, maybe people with pound signs on the side of their head.

 Editors note:  This is the fourth in a series of articles we have obtained from the future.  The articles were found in a sort of reverse time capsule and have been verified to be 100% accurate…. To the best of our knowledge.

Washington Post October 2038

Schools Ban High Rise Pants

Schools from California to Maine have been enacting policies to restrict the height of many students’ pants.  In what is seen as a reaction to the low rise jeans of their parents, students across the country have been clearing the shelves of the new “high rise jeans.”
 
These pants, sold at stores ranging from the conservative Abercrombie and Fitch to the cutting edge TeenHOR! Have been flying off the shelves in droves according to most area retailers.  And they’re not just being worn at parties.  Sporting names like “the girdle” and “the Cramden,” these overly concealing jeans are finding their ways into High Schools across