Laid-Off Dad

The first best friend, part II

When last we read LOD, he was prattling on about his first best friend, a former fixture in his life upon whom he now looks with decidedly mixed emotions ...

Like I said earlier, Sam and I spent much of our afternoons goofing around with cassette recorders. We pretended we were running a radio station (with clever call letters like WEERD-FM), and we taped all sorts of goofy skits--most of which involved music and inept employees in the background dropping things on each other's feet. Then we made the big purchase--a stand-alone microphone!--and morphed into news reports of terrible car accidents. We'd fill a waste basket with metal doohickeys, announce that we somehow had audio footage of the wreck, then drop the mike into the metal and shake it like gangbusters. Then the police would come, and the fire department, and the EMTs, all of whom would also careen into the mess, with similar percussive results. Then the news vans, and the mayor's limo, and the governor's limo, and the Popemobile, and any other vehicle we could think of until Sam's mom would finally plead for us to Please For The Love of God Find Another Hobby.

During the summers, we were often separated by family vacations. This was long before the Internets, mind you, so we used to write zany letters to each other. We'd write diagonally, or in scalene triangles, or concentric trapezoids, complete with illustrations that seemed breathtakingly original at the time but were really just rip-offs of Don Martin.

Sam was a year ahead of me in school, and after his first year at college he wouldn't stop yammering about how great it was. So I visited him for a weekend, and sure enough it was awesome, and before you knew it I enrolled there, too. For three years we carpooled back and forth, and each trip was 8 hours of silly joy.

He got married at the ripe-young age of 26, and I was his co-Best Man. On his wedding day he gave me a Best Man gift and a card that read, in part:

I value your friendship more than any other. I guess that says it all. I don't want my getting married to put distance between us (as often happens to people). That would be stupid. So there.

And yet. He went away to grad school, and when he came home he had to spend all his time with his parents, who missed him, and his wife's parents, who missed her. Our visits became fewer and further between; our calls soon did, too. He became a devoted husband and father, and a partner in a small architecture firm, and before you knew it we didn't have anything in common anymore. Our lives, parallel for so long, just veered away from each other.

If you're out there, Sam, I want you know that I hope you're OK, that your friendship was about the only thing that kept me going through those first awkward months in my new town, and that whenever I see a multiple-car wreck on the interstate, I think of you.

A cooler head prevails

Yesterday was a moment of weakness, I'll grant you. I made the mistake of looking at blogging empirically, as a pure activity of time usage, and prioritized it behind 1) playing with my children, 2) feeding my children, 3) cleaning up after my children, 4) getting my children into their pajamas, 5) getting my children back into their pajamas, 6) getting my children to brush their teeth, 7) getting them to brush all their teeth, not just the popular ones but also the wallflowers hiding in the back, and 8) sleeping. Such is one's process when you spend three or four hours working on 1-7 and then more time on 8 than you anticip'ated, on the couch among the MegaBlocks.

So here I am, recuperating from one of those "Wake Up, It's Time For Bed" moments and reflecting on yesterday's filler post, which sucked. I felt bad about it, you felt bad about it, and whatever happens I'll never feel as though I really scaled Mt. Bloppington this year as I did in 2006. That said, I feel I owe you a little something better, so here goes:

When I was was a teenager, my best friend was a fellow nerd named Sam. He was the first kid I met when I moved to a new school system when I was 12, and we fell in like with each other almost right away because we had so many similar nerdy interests. Like taping Monty Python and the Holy Grail off of PBS with a cassette recorder, and playing it over and over again until we had memorized it, and over-attempting to work lines from the movie into everyday conversations. My first year in the new town was a tough one, because I felt I was always being tested by all the different cliques to see if I was worthy of inclusion. The result was the kind of social pressure that sends a kid up to his bedroom chanting about the Knights of Nee.

We stayed very close friends until our early 20s, when he got married and moved away, physically and emotionally. I'm thinking about him now as I usually do at least once this time of year, because his birthday is coming up soon. I think I might have an old e-mail address hanging around here somewhere ...

[to be continued]

Can'twritenowmustdash

Somehow, I don't think the purpose of this Blopathon is to make people frantically post things at the last minute in order to appease some arbitrary goal. But the truth is, that's the case for me right now. My wife is out of town again, and I have a 7:15 meeting tomorrow morning. So I'm making lunches and readying the pot of freshly ground, freshly brewed coffee for Bridget, who will be arriving almost two hours earlier than normal. Everything will be fine if I can find everyone's sneakers and if I remembered to buy snack bags and if I don't forget to shave.

I'm only looking at a few hours sleep tonight, so you can bet that tomorrow's post will be even better than this one.

Blue v. Scarlet

It's surprising how caught up I've become in this Michigan/Ohio State madness. This morning I watched an HBO documentary about the rivalry, narrated by the same guy who narrates every documentary ever made. I always thought the rivalry was just the usual rabid sports loyalty inflamed by those walking blowtorches, Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler. Back in the early '90s I visited my girlfriend's family in Traverse City, MI, and her brother-in-law had an entire bathroom festooned in maize and blue--right down the the GO BLUE toilet seat, which I thought was sort of grim. Anybody who "goes blue" in that context probably has a very serious medical condition.

Turns out, the states have been at each other's throats since they battled over the "Toledo Strip" in the 1830s. Eventually Michigan ceded the area to Ohio in exchange for control over the Yoopers, but the area's still divided today. My in-laws live right smack dab in the middle of this disputed territory, where it's customary to declare your allegiance with enormous banners and bunting all over your house. So if you're a little maize-and-blue paperboy you can approach a Buckeye household with appropriate caution, lest you be pelted with stinking, poisonous chestnuts.

We're off to the grandparents' today to make some cookies, and break in our mitts, and see if we can play in some leaves. And of course, watch the game. I hope BLUE GOES, but if anyone GOES BLUE I'll assume TwoBert ate a crayon.

Stuff that comes out when it's two hours to deadline

There are definite benefits to blopping in November, and the first is the ability to choose this most public of forums to congratulate my parents on their wedding anniversary. They were married on this date in the early 8th century by the druid thaumaturge Haarlem Ruith, after an especially bountiful gourd harvest. And every year since they have punctiliously re-enacted the sacred marital Laying of the Cloths ritual, signifying their devotion to each other and to their god,  Lord Tree-Trunk the Thick.

Actually, they were married 44 years ago today, and mathusiasts will note it was in 1963, just six days before JFK was assassinated. Mom and Dad like to tell the story of how they had the darnedest time picking a wedding date because my grandfathers hemmed and hermed over their alma maters' football Saturdays. So Mom threw her hands up and said "It's the 16th, period. Work around it." And by the luck of the draw they spent their wedding day giggling about their honeymoon rather than mourning the president.

Another great thing about November is you get to bitch and moan about how much earlier all the Christmas Crap is starting up. The Retail Bedouins who set up shop along Union Square south usually don't start assembling their tents until after Thanksgiving. But they're up now. Stores are already piping in Christmas muzak, Starbucks has already whipped out the Red Cups. It's madness.

The Grinch also comes on earlier every year, and tonight the boys and I cleaned it off the DVR. After it was over, Robert said, "You know the Grinch could really have kept Christmas from coming? He could have stolen all the people!"

Boy's got a point.

Regardless, I called my sister

As I walked past the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, birthplace of The Method, I overheard a man in his mid-30s, gesticulating madly with a cigarette in his right hand:

"What does she want from me? I mean, I've been spending the past four and a half months jetting back and forth between here and LA, going to my fucking sister's murderer's trial! Sitting ten feet from the guy and fighting every impulse to reach out and strangle that sonofabitch!"

I hope they were just rehearsing something.

Swirling into chaos

The situation beneath our bathroom sink has reached DefCon Three.

It began when the slow drain devolved into a very-very-slow drain, the kind of slow that demanded about 10 minutes of rinsing my shavelings away from the side of the sink. This clog clearly meant business, as it was developing organs and a circulatory system. We needed it out, pronto, so my wife went out and bought the Really Caustic Stuff recommended by our hardware guy. She poured it down the sink and within 15 minutes the clog was gone--along with most of the U-pipe. So now my shavelings don't linger in the sink anymore. Instead, they're resting comfortably in the big bucket that sits where the crudbunker used to be.

The crudbunker has a story of its own that begins, as many stories do, with testicles.

On Monday my wife took Alex Rodriguez in to get neutered. (Next week, we'll take the cat! Zing!) While he's healing, the cats can't have any litter in their box. Instead, we apparently have to use shredded newspaper, which absorbs enough but does exactly zero for the stink. Furthermore, whenever Blossom does her business she stays around for about five minutes burying and ripping and hiding any possible evidence that she has pooped. (Because she is a lady, and ladies do not have digestive tracts.)

So now where most people might have a clean, elegant pedestal or a functional vanity, we have a fetid morass of cat effluent and shredded newsprint and caustic water and shavelings that get doused with Febreze every three or four seconds. On the plus side, however, since his namesake is in every paper every damn day of the week, there's a very good chance that Alex Rodriguez will poop on himself.

I sing the storage electric

Have you ever imagined what it must have been like for Howard Carter when he finally broke the seal on King Tut's tomb? You spend eight years roaming around the inhospitable Valley of the Kings -- enduring the unrelenting heat, following unfruitful trails, digging unending holes in the unforgiving sand. Then you suddenly happen upon fazillions' worth of gold and jewels, and all those years of frustration and despair and sand-abraded body parts magically melt away. And you spend the next hour or so jumping like a junebug and serenading the sand dunes with barbaric YAAAAAWPS!

I, too, was wandering in the desert, looking for something that would bring me unbridled joy. When I first realized it was missing I became distraught, sure that my life would never recover. But as I rummaged through an old backpack, one that had fallen into disuse a few weeks after I bought it, I felt  a little lump in the back pocket and found ... the flash drive I lost last year.

Can we talk about barbaric YAWPs? Hoo-boy, Mr. Carter ain't got shit on me. I had worked by brain bits to the bone trying to replace the irreplaceable, and now so many long-lost writing samples--essays, fiction, effluvia--are returned. Carter might have found acres of booty deep beneath the sand, but what I found is immeasurably more valuable. And thanks to modern technology, my treasure trove is small enough to fit up your butt.

The morning sun is shining like ...

Back on Labor Day weekend, Robert and I were playing baseball in my sister's expansive back yard with a Whiffle bat and a red, rubber ball. Robert likes this combo because the red ball is really easy to see on its way to the plate, and if you make good contact it goes for about a mile and a half. And nothing is more fun than trotting confidently around the bases while Daddy chases el pelota into the next-door sorgum field.

At one point, Robert threw the ball to me and said, "Daddy? You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna shoot for the stars and stay drug free."

Um, what? I thought to myself. The kid hasn't even started kindergarten and he's already aware of drug use? What kind of father am I to 1) expose him to this sort of thing, and 2) not know that he'd been exposed to this sort of thing? I'm a product of a suburban upbringing! What business do I have sending my child to a public school in the city? The city! Where public schools are hives of scum and villainy! I could have sheltered him from all this in the suburbs, but instead, by the time he's six, he'll be hanging out on the playground comparing escort agencies and huffing Elmer's!

Then, as I readied my next pitch, I happened to look at the ball:

Two boats meet as one

It is beyond terrific to tell you that the woman who looks after the boys each day, Bridget, is a great find. She is young, energetic, conscientious, and wonderful, and the Berts love her. She's especially great when there's no school, and she has a free day to take the boys someplace they'll completely love and jabber about for hours after I get home.

The other day gave her such an opportunity, so she took the Berts to the Central Park boathouse, rowed them around for a bit, and helped them throw bread parts at ducks. She also took a short film with her digital camera, so that Daddy could see the bread-throwers in action. All this compared to the  vast majority of nanny/sitters, who let kids loose in a playground and spend hours on the phone to offshore relatives, instructing them to remain calm and wait for the signal.

When I got home that day and prepared to be regaled with tales of wondrously wayward watercraft, Bridget said she was rowing while facing away from the bow, as is the custom, when she made contact with another boat. We don't know the degree of the contact, and we may never know. Because when she turned around to see whom she'd crashed into she saw Bono, who was out rowing with two young boys. From that moment on, all details of the impact fled from her brain. All she remembers is a smile and a wink from behind those dorky, yellowpink wraparounds as he veered off.

This is just my luck. I was with them every day for ten weeks. We did all sorts of cool stuff, and the best story I have is when TwoBert got in a water fight with Molly Shannon's daughter. Bridget's on the job for eight weeks and she rams Bono?!?

Just you wait. I'll have the kids all summer again, and nothing will happen, and in the fall Bridget will take over and take out Paul Newman's hip with the umbrella stroller.