Laid-Off Dad

The human drama of aquatic registration

I listen to a lot of sports radio because I know my prime days of athletic competition are over. I haven't played pick-up hoops in an age, and by the time my club softball games are over, I'm usually too buzzed to remember who won. I was never much of a jock; in high school I lettered in soccer, golf, and managing the baseball team, and since then there have been only a few situations when I could tax my body to the limit and take home a victory that leaves my muscles whimpering like lost bunnies.

About all I have left is registering my kid for an after-school swim class.

The process works a lot like the deli. You line up, first-come first-served, and they hand out numbers at 7am. The K-only swim class is very popular, because the teacher is lovely and skilled and can coax the most petrified aquaphobe into the pool. Last fall the class closed right before my eyes, and TwoBert (who recently decided he'd like to be called "Fireball" instead) was crestfallen. So when spring registration came around, it was time to tape my ankles and launch an "Eye Of The Tiger" workout montage.

I had it all planned out. I stayed over with a friend who lives six blocks from the school, and when I left Monday morning I smirked at the bitter predawn cold. I got my coffee, sauntered past all the cars parked at awkward angles on the rutted icephalt, and arrived at school at 6:45am to find ... no one.

Because registration wasn't until tomorrow.

Time will have its fancy, tomorrow or today

So are you enjoying Palindrome Week? When it dawned, I found it necessary to find the longest palindromic word in human parlance. And the Internet responded with saippuakuppinippukauppias, which apparently is Finnish for a wholesale vendor of soap dishes. As overjoyed as I am that this word exists, it has caused me to take stock of my daily routine.

As the year turned, and I listed a few things I want to accomplish in 2011, I finally succumbed to the reality that I absolutely cannot get any writing done while I have access to the Internet. Facebook and Twitter are just plain kicking my ass, and the only way to ward off this compulsion to snark with friends and click on links is to cork the deluge at its source.Which is fine, because as much as I enjoy Twitter, all those tweets and links sometimes feel like so many hectoring seagulls trying to build nests with my beardfuzz.

[Speaking of which, the manifestation of my wintertime facial introversion is still growing strong, to the point where I have to wash and brush it regularly. I've never grown one this epicly large before, and I'm starting to wonder how the world's Galifianakises manage.]

In order to accommodate my new, net-free strategy, I'm spending most of my days writing at the Rose Reading Room, which has always come up big when deadlines loom. I think my brain has come to associate the room's musty smell with the need to WRITEDAMMIT.

The new routine was steaming right along, uninterrupted for almost two weeks, when I got the call Thursday that TwoBert had pink-eye and had to be picked up from school. If you're five years old, pink-eye is sort of fantastic, because it's a license to hang out with Daddy in your underpants while your apoplectic brother has to trudge back to the gulag and memorize times tables. 

Before TwoBert and I set to building our LEGO Ninja Whatevers, I put the iPod in its dock and hit Shuffle, and the first song up was "Down to The River to Pray," off the O Brother, Where Are Thou? soundtrack. My mind shot backward to the summer of '05, when I sang that song to TwoBert every night while he murmured himself to sleep in the crook of my neck. And now, that little larva is a 42-pound burst of sinew, who is reading, and throwing himself headlong down snowy slopes, and giving me daily tallies of the number of girlfriends he currently has. (As of Friday, it's seven.)

The years, they run like rabbits.

A glint in my eye for MMXI

Morning has broken on the first work day of 2011, and I've discovered I'm in a stupid-giddy mood. I know this because I saw that, on this year's list of probable celebrity deaths, Dick Cheney is tied with Amy Winehouse. And I thought, wouldn't it be great if they were together when it happened? And literally tied with each other?

I find it's always a good idea to turn to the blog when I'm feeling this way, because these are the brainstates I want to remember and reflect on when I'm laid up in a hospice somewhere watching Larry Sanders episodes. Which, by the way, are currently streaming on Netflix and which, were I the 2010 me, would be confining me to my couch right now. But this is the 2011 me, the one with either A) a new lease on life, or B) a big, hairy-eyeballed writing deadline at the end of the month. 

I've never been too big on new year's resolutions, because I've always felt that January 1 is just as arbitrary a date as any to start improving yourself. This year feels a little different, though, because before it's over I have a very strong impression that many of the vines that are meandering around the trellis of my life will either be cultivated or cut loose.

One thing I've resolved to do is to make a greater effort when it comes to my friendships. It's been a challenge living this far from where my life used to be, and too often I've had the chance to reconnect with friends only to be cowed by a long, horrendous commute on NYC's rapidly decaying mass-transit system. But you can only hope to receive an effort commensurate with the one you give, and that change begins with me.

Another idea I've been toying with for a few years is to use this blog to chronicle the things I learn each day--mostly so my dying mind doesn't forget them. So every blog entry will feature a little addendum called "What I Learned Today." It might be common knowledge to a lot of other people, but it will be new (and possibly fascinating) to me. And with luck, I won't repeat anything. After all, what else is a personal blog but a textual scrapbook you might leaf through while you're laid up in a hospice somewhere watching Larry Sanders episodes?

Thus:

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: Regardless of which of the appoximately 43 quintillion possible starting arrays, any 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube can be solved in at most 20 moves. Put that in your cube and rotate it.