Wanna See Ridiculous?

One week ago today, I took the razor to my own face and hacked my beard clean off. It had been there nearly two years, since right around the time Simon was born. We had some friends coming over to the house that night, so Ashley begged me, BEGGED I tell you, to keep just the mustache. And so...

So what do you think? Race car driver? Bear hunter? Coach? Personally, I'd go with bumbling British detective.

I say!

In case you haven't seen me in the past week, allow me to assure you that the 'stache has followed the rest of the beard down the drain.

I'm Sorry Mr. Jackson, I'll Never Know If You Were For Real

It was Sunday morning. I was in Genuine Joe's, my all time favorite coffee shop, my favorite place to sit down with a bottomless cup of coffee and my laptop, plunk my headphones in, and try to make some magic happen on the page. There are built-in bookshelves stacked with aged volumes that gives the place a home library sort of feel. Add to that the fact that I was sitting at a somewhat large table, and you'll understand why I didn't give it a second thought when a girl walked up to the other end of my table and quietly set a book down, then walked away. It was an intentional setting-down action, careful, as if it needed to be placed in that exact spot with no discernable sound created by the meeting of book and table. I noticed also that no title was visible, either on the cover or the spine. And I noticed the note card poking out from the book's pages. But still my focus remained on my work.

It was only later when I reached something of a stopping point that I looked over at this book that had been placed within arm's reach of me and noticed some writing on the note card. I opened the book to the place where the note card was sandwiched, and I found this:

Social experiment? Bizarre act of random charity? Would a trap door open beneath my feet when I lifted that wooden Indian? As a former member of the teenaged demographic, I can attest to the fact that a 20 dollar bill has approximately .031% chance of playing a part in any of these schemes once it has fallen into their hormone-riddled hands. Still, I liked the idea that perhaps there was an experiment being conducted, bill or no. But why was the book placed closest to me? My kindly face? Perhaps that book with that notecard has been floating around Genuine Joe's for ages, and I was just the latest to find it.

I closed the book and put in a little more time on my writing. On my way out, I poked my head into the Boardroom. There was indeed a wooden Indian head on the bookshelf, but if Mr. Jackson was hiding under it, I'll never know. That head, I decided, could stay unturned.

Kids. Making.

Look at these fantastic little people. Look at them I say!

The two boys in blonde you may recognize as my progeny. The artist to the right with her back to us is Stella, eldest daughter of my friends Tim and Julie. Here they are gathered around, each with a pumpkin before them and a table full of paints, brushes, pipe cleaners, glue, and lotsa googley eyes. Everything a little person needs to transform an ordinary little pumpkin into something fabulous. This was the activity for Henry’s fourth birthday party last weekend. The original idea was full-on pumpkin carving, but after a wee bit of thought, we ended up realizing that the grown folks would end up doing all the work, and you know, why mess with the kid’s fun and the grown-up’s beer-drinking like that?

And no, you’re not imagining things. Simon’s smock is what you think it is.

I know, he’s only been hardcore since ’07, but whateva.

I love watching little people make things. I love going back and looking at pictures taken of little people engaged in the act of making, crafting shit outta other shit. Like when they’re really in it, you know?

They ain’t thinking about whether or not anybody’s gonna like it. They ain’t stressing being misunderstood. They’re not wondering what the hell they’re gonna do with it when it’s done. They’re just doing. Making because making is fun. They’re all process -- product is secondary, if at all. The whole project can be all but forgotten once the making part’s done and over.

Childwen and Cweating - peas and carrots, methinks. Which makes me think that People and Cwe - ahem - Creating also go hand in hand. All ages and sizes. It ain't a shirt with a firetruck on it, you don't outgrow it. I’m a believer in the idea that everybody’s got a healthy dose of creativity in them. When people say they’re not very creative, I have a hard time buying it.

I’ve started writing again. To clarify, yeah, I never really stopped putting words down on electro-paper, but I’ve found my way back to the form that most influenced my desire to do this word-slinging thing in the first place: playwriting. It’s been a while since I pulled some people out of my head, dropped them in a jar and gave it a good shake. In fact, it was during the run of last play that we discovered we were going to be parents. So yeah, been a little while since I rock and rolled.

But now here I am, at it again. And my god, it feels good. I can’t really say I’ve missed it, as I think maybe I needed some time away. I don’t know what I needed. But I’m back in a place where I’m full of story, full of pictures, full of these people that want to talk and interact and love and fuck and grow and change and sing and rap and all the other shit that us humanish types do. I feel like I’m doing good work, but more importantly than that, it feels good just to be making again.

Go Fly A Kite

My Mom came to visit us a few weekends ago, and among all the things that she brought with her, she brought a kite, a gift for Henry that she had promised on her previous trip. He had originally asked for a rainbow kite, and I believe her when she says she looked everywhere for it because she is the type to look everywhere for just the right gift. But in the end, it was a giant lizard kite, and from the way Henry reacted, you would think it was all he'd ever wanted. Any thought of a rainbow kite was completely forgotten.

The three of us, my Mom, Henry, and I, walked down the street to the elementary school at the end of the block. Next to the building, they have playgrounds and a  basketball court, but beyond that is a giant field, empty save a bit of plant life, plenty of room to let the wee folks set loose with their imagination. Or, as in our case, try to catch a bit of wind. The wind wasn't raging, but it wasn't exactly still either.

The funny thing is, most of what I remember of that day's kite-flying is repeated frustration. Again and again we tried to get that lizard up in the air, but most of our attempts ended with the kite slamming itself back down to the rain-softened planet. We had a few successes, but most of those were short-lived.

But now as I flip back through the few pictures I managed to snap that day, just about everything I see shows that kite in the air. Selective documentation at its finest.

Then we went and sat by a dinosaur. Good day.

IV

Happy birthday, my amazing little fellow. May you always have that amazing smile. You will always be The Hamster to me.

Gun For The Whole Family

I need to get some blood pellets...

My son has guns that he keeps strapped to the ends of his wrists. He sticks out his index, pops up his thumb, then curls in the other three fingers to create the universal sign for firearm. He shouts out his shots like BANG! BANG BANG BANG! BANG! Sometimes it’s out of anger, the barrel of his gauge aimed at the object of his ire, be it baby brother, Mom, me, some stranger who gave him a funny look, not funny ha-ha, but funny BANG BANG! Other times he does it to amuse himself. He blasts with a laugh, giggling with every trigger pull.

I know he didn’t pick this up at home. That may sound defensive, but it’s not intended as a defense of our parenting, just a statement of fact about how things are around here. We don’t keep guns under this roof. The Ash and I don’t play-shoot each other. Aside from a spacey looking bubble blower, the boys have no toy guns. And I never quite got the hang of that two pistols greeting thing that some guys are so good at. Maybe he picked it up at school, I don’t know. And you know, so what if he did? Now he’s the one passing it on to other kids. To be honest, I have a hard time getting myself too worked up about it. I’m not even sure that he “picked it up” anywhere. I think back on my own experience of being a boy, of boys I was friends with, and the boys I taught for all those summers, and gunplay was always present in one form or another. Flip through a picture album of me as a kid and you’ll see picture after picture of me carrying toy rifles, pistols, machine guns, uzis, laser blasters. I might not have been wearing anything more than tighty-whiteys and a cowboy hat, but I was strapped with my gat.

 

I’m not saying all this as some sort of “boys will be boys” defense, or to suggest that it’s healthy in some way. All I’m saying is that It Is. Gunplay is there, er, here, no matter how the wife and I may feel about the reality of guns. I don’t remember what kind of thoughts went through my head back when I was a kid going around everywhere armed. Maybe they weren’t the kind of thoughts that made their way up to the surface enough to be articulated so as to be burned into memory. But what I do remember is that the fascination with guns among boys (probably some girls too) bordered on near universal. And when you think about it, why not? Guns represent instant power, something that most kids are pretty short on. Power to do what you want, power to move obstacles out of your way, power to make the world go your way. And yes, that power comes from the ability to dole out death, but I wonder if maybe that understanding dawns a bit later on. Or hey, maybe these kids know exactly what they’re imagining, but they know they’re just imagining it. Maybe my son knows perfectly well that he’s pretending to install the contents of his clip in dad’s chest, but that it’s just pretend. Chill out old people! We’re only play killing here! Jeez!

Or not.

I have faith that this kind of thing works itself out in the long run, provided we do our jobs as parents. There are a lot of important lessons to be taught, and sometimes you have to get creative with how you instill those lessons. So I’m going to get some blood pellets, and, along with a bit of inspiration from Arrested Development, I'm going to set up a little lesson about the reality of what guns can do. Next time we're sitting at the dinner table and Henry points his little hand cannons at me and BANG BANG BANG!s away, I’m going to drop my silverware and clutch my chest, smashing those pellets open so that bright red blood runs down my shirt. I'll scream “MY GOD! YOU’VE SHOT ME!” I’ll have a pellet ready in my mouth to bite into for some instant internal bleeding. I’ll fall to the floor, smearing blood all over the white tile, clutching at the sucking chest wound out of which my life force is leaking. I’ll ask over and over again “Why, Son? Why?” I’ll get the wife in on the act too. She’ll kneel down by my dying form and cry out to the heavens, “No God, please don’t take him from us! My son knows not what he does! We tried to tell him not to shoot people but he wouldn’t listen and now he’s shot his father and there will be no one to take care of us and we’ll have to live on the streets and I’ll have to sell my body just for a loaf of bread, which I will in turn trade for crack to feed the drug habit that I will now inevitably pick up!”

And then, I’ll sit up and look my son in the eye and tell him, with all the gravitas I can muster, “And that’s why you never pretend to shoot people!”

Of course, the little punk may be laughing his ass off.

Rainy Day Donuts

I own an umbrella now, but I didn’t when I woke up last Saturday. I swear we used to own umbrellas. Two beat-up little fold-up numbers, black, full of holes, but still more protection than any halo could ever afford. We spent the summer forgetting we ever needed them, but now that the rain has found its way back, we realized that our old umbrellas are nowhere to be found. Perhaps they felt unappreciated. Maybe they found each other in the dark depths of our closet, fell in love, and moved somewhere where they could be of use. Maybe we’ll get a postcard from Seattle.

The Ash and I were in Fredericksburg last weekend on something of an all-day date/one day vacation while the boys stayed with my Mom. It was raining and we were umbrellaless. It’s true, there’s a certain romance to being a couple in the rain, darting hand in hand from awning to awning, giggling at each other’s soggy dog impersonation. But after a while it gets old and you ask a kindly shopkeeper to point out the nearest umbrella vendor. We bought the last two umbrellas that this little store had on the rack. They were the long kind that The Penguin was so fond of with a J-hook handle for catching wayward geese and a point at the end for pressing elevator buttons from a whole three feet away.

My umbrella was in my car this morning when I awoke to the sound of rain. With both boys ready and myself as ready as I’d ever be, I ran out to get it, then ran back to the house, then walked the two of them out to the car. It was Friday morning, so we had to get going, for Friday is Donut Day. Donut Day is something of a tradition I’ve established with the little guys ever since Pablito’s, the little family-owned bakery up the road, opened their doors. The people there know us, and they know to expect us every Friday morning. Donut Day gets Henry to bed on Thursday nights and wakes him on Friday mornings. Donut Day does not get put on hold just because of a little rain.

I managed to get both boys strapped in while holding the umbrella mostly over my head. Now that I type this, I realize I could have done the actual strapping part from inside the car, but obvious solutions, much like witty retorts, have a way of escaping me when they’re really needed. We pulled into the parking lot of the strip center where Pablito’s is located and they were….closed? Their doors were open, but it looked like a bunch of their furniture was outside, their Open sign was turned off, and the place was full of carpenters. I have no idea what was going on, but they didn’t seem to be open for business. I sincerely hope that’s temporary because there’s nothing quite like the neighborhood bakery.    

Pablito’s aside, there was still the question of Donut Day. Pablito’s may have inspired Donut Day in the first place, but Donut Day is bigger than that now. Donut Day lives on with or without Pablito’s. And besides, the baby was crying. “I’m not crying,” Henry pointed out. Thanks buddy. Daddy needs the break.

A baker’s dozen or so minutes later, we were at another donut store. It was completely out of our way and not quite as good as Pablito’s, but they had donuts dammit. I was already late for work, so our donut consumption happened in the car rather than in the doughy oveny warmth of the donut shop. I dropped the boys off at daycare around the time I normally man my cube. Another Donut Day, successful in spite of the odds.