So then she drops a drill right on his face!

I paid a visit to my dentist yesterday, and they did something new and weird and different. Once my mouth was all numb and they were about to go in to start tooling around, the nice assistant lady broke out a pair of sunglasses and affixed them to my face in the usual sunglass position. "This is nice," I thought. "A little protection from the blinding rays of that 'Flight of the Navigator' light that they shine into your face." As they get to work on my teeth, the dentist starts telling the story behind the glasses. Turns out he had run into a dentist friend of his -- I was surprised that dentists are actually friends with other dentists, but there you have it -- and this dentist friend of his told him this hee-larious story about how his assistant had dropped an instrument right into a patient's face! Ow! Fuck! He didn't specify which tool, but they're all metal, and many of them have sharp points, so chances are it probably hurt like a sumbitch. So he's telling this story to both me and his assistant while they're working on my mouth, and he proceeds to tell us how he asked his friend, "well what'd you do to the employee?", and his friend tells him he didn't do anything to her because she was his wife. "What's he gonna do, fire her?" At this, my dentist laughs a hearty guffaw, his assistant sort of titters nervously, and laying there with my jaw open like Pac-Man on a binge, I can clearly see the message that he is conveying to her, perhaps even clearer than he does: I ain't put no ring on your finger lady, so if you fuck up, I'm free to send your ass packing. I felt just the slightest bit awkward being an unwitting third party to his unconscious passive aggression.

I picked up the boys and still managed to beat The Ash home. When I saw her car in the driveway, I walked out with Simon to meet her. She was carrying a single plastic bag, out of which she triumphantly pulled a 24 ounce can of Budweiser, A.K.A. a tallboy. The explanation? Cheap American beer kills slugs, and slugs seem to be having their way with some of the plants in her garden. But it doesn't take 24 ounces of fine American lager (that's what it says on the can, it must be true) to kill a few slugs, so guess who washed down the rest of it? I immediately felt like I was tubing down the Guadalupe River in the summer time. It was like a gross-tasting Calgon moment.

A Peculiar Declaration

It was one of those mornings where the house was filled with the sounds of sad little boys. The previous afternoon had been spent at the pediatrician's office, a visit that ended with both boys getting several shots, so their angst was entirely expected. Not being particularly caught off-guard, I was able to move through the sounds of crying and screaming to get done with the morning routine. Simon was rather easily appeased, but Henry was having none of my soothing. That's nothing new.

With Simon mostly relaxed and secured in his carseat for the ride to the grandparents' house, I sat Henry down on the couch to put on his shoes. This is a boy who loves his shoes. They're green with black trim, and just the thought of putting anything else on his feet amounts to blasphemy in his mind. Thus, the shoe putting-on ritual is typically one that he enjoys. He calmed down as I slipped them onto his feet, mentally checking "get Henry ready" off of my list for the morning.

Henry stayed seated on the couch as I finished with the last few bits of business. It was then that he said something that I found rather bizarre:

"I'm done crying now, Daddy."

What did he say? "You what?"

"I'm done crying now, Daddy."

"Oh. Oh. Kaaaaay."

I gave him a hug. I really didn't know quite how to respond because I didn't know quite what he was telling me. Was he really feeling better? Was he trying to pull it together? Or, oh my God, was I giving off some sort of gross "I'd love you more if you'd just stop crying" vibe? I'm not exactly a "men don't cry ya pussy!" kind of guy, so the last one seemed a bit ridiculous.

Still, it had me a bit bugged. Sometimes when I see joggers running by, my evil side creeps up and I imagine their inner voice goading them on with wicked encouragements along the lines of "Must keep running...must shed more pounds so as to be deserving of love and kindness." Of course, I don't actually mean it, but it gives me a laugh. I don't really know what this has to do with my son's oddball statement, other than the fact that sometimes I'm afraid I'll inadvertently interject a bit of my dark humor at an inappropriate moment, and just really mess the kid up.

The ride to the grandparents' was tear free. I guess he really was just done crying for the morning, and wanted me to know about it. What a little person.

I used to be in the business of keeping Mickey's in business

Which is why if you were ever to find yourself checking out my left calf, you'd not only be a strange one indeed, but you'd also see this here little beauty:

Yup, that is indeed the Mickey's bee. Second tattoo I ever got, and though I no longer quench my thirst with 40 oz. servings of that fine malt liquor as I did in my younger days, I have, as they say, no regrets. About the tattoo anyway. Things done under the influence of Mickey's? Well, I guess drop me a line if I owe you an apology or anything.

This weekend though, my little tattoo got ID'd by what I would have thought to be the unlikeliest of culprits. See, with The Ash off at a cooking class, it was just me, a baby, and a dog. So I strapped Henry into my custom-made mei-tei, enleashened the dog, and headed down the block for a little swing/slide/crawl around in the dirt action at the park. The place was mostly quiet, but there were these two little boys, no older than 7 or 8 years old, riding their bikes around the perimeter. And every time they came back around near us, they wanted to pet Elliott, who is about as likely to bite as a tulip. "Hey Mister, can we pet your dog? I have nineteen dogs at home, but he don't 'cuz he lives with his mom. Hi little baby!"

And then one of the little dudes noticed the tattoo. "Hey that's that bee on top of the beer bottle, huh?" Um, yeah kid, that's right. "Yeah, I seen that before" And then he takes a careful look around, smiles, and says "Don't tell nobody, but I drank some before, and I liked it! But I can't tell nobody my secret!" I pointed out that he'd just told his friend. "Oh he already knows, he won't tell nobody." I pointed out that he'd told Henry. "Oh he's just a little baby, when he grows up, I bet he won't even remember." I didn't bother to point out that he'd told me his little secret, for some reason I was safe in his book since he'd volunteered the info. Guess it was the ink. What do you say exactly when a kid that age tells you that he's already discovered the joys of really cheap beer? I laughed at the time, but it was more an uncomfortable "oh geez kid what are you gonna tell me next" kind of titter than a guffaw. Guffaw, what a great word. But really, I was left kind of speechless. Was this kid before me a future alcoholic? What was his home life like? I pictured a broken down Trans-Am up on blocks in an overgrown yard next to a driveway full of beat-up trucks in front of a house badly in need of major repairs. That's totally unfair on my part, sure, but hey, I think we all knew that kid growing up.

Henry fell asleep in the mei-tei on the walk home from the park. For some reason I've been thinking about that little kid ever since then. Here's hoping he stays sober a few years.