Laid-Off Dad

If only this were narrated by Garrison Keillor

It's been a quiet week on Lake Laidoffegon, my current hometown, out on the edge of the borough. Autumn is flaunting its full regalia among the park's red oaks and tulip trees, providing a variegated canopy for the dormant herbs and wildflowers. We've long said goodbye to the the downy yellow violets, the bloodroot, and the Dutchman’s breeches, and the last black-capped chickadees, the great blue herons, and the belted kingfishers are all busying themselves for the last push to a warmer elsewhere.*

* Actually, I have no knowledge of any of those species. I am a city person, and about the only animals I could pick out of a lineup have sprays designed to kill them. I cribbed most of those names from the NYC Parks Department website. Blogging With Integrity!

Mostly, I've been keeping busy with the day-to-day, beating the bushes for writing assignments. I stumbled upon a trove of my old banners and installed one of my favorites above. I also found some time to tinker with the blog's layout by demarcating the Content on the left and the Filler on the right. A ripe political metaphor just in time for Election Day.

This morning I was attending to the aforementioned day-to-day when I caught myself day-to-daydreaming about autumn and the natural cycle of being. Why are we here? Is there a plan? Or is this just a finite stream of random events until some crucial organ wears out?

A walk in the woods

Over the Columbus Day weekend, when I took the boys up to see some family and foliage and whatnot, we went to a Renaissance Faire fundraiser for a local elementary school. There was fencing, and archery, and ordinary food trussed up with medieval names (chili with meat = the Devil's potage!), and an extensive treasure hunt that took us into the surrounding woods.

While we were walking along the trail, looking for a "fearsome, fire-breathing beast" that would end up being a foot-long dragon plush hanging from a tree, Robert got to talking about a problem he's having with this one kid at school. He's the sort of emotional bully who manipulates other kids into trouble by pushing their tease buttons and then skates away clean. And while you talk to your son about peaceful conflict resolution, you fantasize about finding this kid and hanging him on the top of the jungle gym by his Underoos.

Robert had tried talking to him, appealing to him, ignoring him, and yelling at him, but the kid still found a way under his skin. He was at a loss as to what to try next and feeling like this weird energy between them was somehow his fault. "What is this kid's problem?" he said. "And why is he always picking on people? What exactly am I supposed to do now?"

Bullying among kids has been a hot and horrible topic lately, and it hit closer to home two weeks ago when Tyler Clementi's body washed ashore a few hundred yards from my doorstep. And talking with your kids about bullying, no matter how seemingly benign, can fill a parent with dread, because you want your advice to be knowledgeable and relevant, somewhere between "well, if he's teasing you he's not really your friend" and "point out that little snot-nosed SOB so I can give him an atomic wedgie."

Just as I was piecing together something to say, we saw this:

Always look on the bright side of soul-crushing bureaucracy

I need to tell you all about some troubling events that culminated in Lost Wednesday, October 6. I think I've come down with a case of Irrational Sunshine Syndrome, and I might need someone to help pull me back into a more normal mental morass.

It all started on Monday afternoon, when I parked too close to a fire hydrant. In my defense, it was near a corner, and I didn't overlap the red curb, and I'd seen many cars parked there before. It wasn't my finest judgment, I'll grant you, but sometimes searching for parking in this city is like hunting for a ghost orchid, in that it can turn your brain to chutney.

The next day was uplifting, because I remembered where I had parked on the first try. And then deflating, because when I got to that place, the car was gone.

When I called the police, I learned that my car was in a tow pound 15 blocks away, but I'd have to travel 180 blocks in order to pay for it, and then bring the receipt all the way back to my neighborhood. Ridiculous, right? But did I gnash my garments and rend my teeth?

No!

I instead thought: Hey, that tow pound is right there on the West Side Highway, and I've biked past it a hundred times. I'll turn a bad situation upside-down and get some exercise!

So I biked to the NYPD TowQuarters--a dour, filthy, windowless prism with a line of cashier's windows along one wall and several signs urging us to Please Be Patient: Our Employees Are Horribly Underincentivized. I turned in my paperwork and waited 20 minutes until my name was called. Brilliant! I'll have my wheels back by lunch!

Not quite. My driver's license has expired.

This was all perfectly understandable. Every three years, the great state of New York has mailed me a renewal notice. But since I had moved, and my forwarding thingy had expired, I never got the latest one. And as of now, I was an unlicensed driver who couldn't bail his wheels out of the hoosegow. But did I curse my existence and launch a fusillade of profanity?

No!

I instead reasoned that I had been meaning to replace my license for years; the photo was from 1993, when I had a full head of fluffy black hair, and lately airport security people had been giving me the stink-eye. So I thought: Onward to the DMV!

(If at this point you want to hold me down and beat me with a bag of oranges, rest assured that this post is making me far sicker than it could ever you. If you don't want to read on, please just walk away. I understand.)