Laid-Off Dad

You and me and children's safety and you

Mom 2.N0LA and Spring Break have made the last couple of weeks blissfully abnormal. And now that the New York area has strung together a few days that are actually springlike, I’m looking to extend this abnormalcy as long as possible by taking my kids north for Easter weekend—where I’m told it is now 29 degrees, and there is still snow on the ground. After all, the boys and I have been hunkering down against this Zombie Winter for months, and I see no reason to stop now.

When school resumes next week, and stuff finally starts to veer back toward ordinary, I will resume the mantle as TwoBert’s tee-ball coach. Did I tell you I’m doing that this spring? I might not have, now that I think of it. But let me tell you, this is a great gig. Sort of like chasing down flubber balls in a racquetball court, only with more knock-knock jokes. Every kid hits, and every kid fields, and every kid runs for every ball like pigeons after a crust. And when you squat at home and beckon the kid in from third, and he high-fives you and skips exuberantly into his welcoming dugout, you’re pretty sure everyone else on the planet is having a worse time than you.

Did you also know that this is Safe Kids week? I did, because the guy at the coaching seminar told me. And he could not stress enough that even though the job is fun, you’re also in charge of 16 little bodies that run first and ask questions later. Coaches have to keep them limber, and hydrated, and as aware as possible that there are projectiles about. This is why I spend so much time reminding them to stop daydreaming about ninjas and dogs with bandanas on their heads and PLEASE GOD KEEP LOOKING WHERE THE BALL IS.

Johnson & Johnson came to New Orleans last week to talk about social media for social good, and when they asked me to help promote Safe Kids, and the work it does to help reduce children's sports injuries, I said, “Hell no! You namby-pambies are ruining America! Outlaw dodgeball?!? Are you kidding me?!?”

Then I sobered up and changed my mind.

OK. Seriously.

We all want our kids to get out and play, and we want them returned to us in one piece. And to help spread the work about sports injury prevention, Safe Kids is cranking up an educational webcast on Monday, May 2, at noon EST. If you RSVP to this page and tune in here, you’ll see a discussion about the importance of pre-participation exams, hydration, concussion awareness, and acute and overuse injury prevention. And it will be brought to you by three doctors and Steve Young, former NFL star and possibly the world’s most concussed Mormon.

Please check it out. Flubber-chasers like me will be glad you did.

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Thanks, J&J, for sponsoring this webcast, and this post to promote it. This does not represent an endorsement of your products, but the number of Band-Aids we go through per year could cover the USS Intrepid. You're welcome. 

Dad, too

It's late Tuesday, and only now, some 36 hours after my plane left New Orleans, am I able to let my brain linger on my five excessive days at the Mom 2.0 Summit. The boys are on Spring Break, and since I picked them up the moment I got home, I've had to shift rather abruptly back into Referee Mode. Which is fine with me; otherwise, it would be way too easy to think wistfully about all that bottomless everything.

If you've never been to Mom 2.0, you should know that New Orleans was the perfect venue for it. During its first two years in Houston, the conference emerged as the place to work hard and play harder, thanks to the who's-who of attendees and the what's-what of recreation. This was the year Mom 2.0 let her hair down, threw her heels off, and danced in the street. It was also the year she decided to give back by creating a philanthropic wing, establishing a writing grant, and (at its most charitable) inviting me to organize some Dad Content.

Naturally, having never done anything like this before, I was nervous as hell. But I was also intrigued by the opportunity to bring together a lot of dads whom I hadn't seen speak before. And after the day was over, and I had the chance to get shitfaced hang out with these guys, and talk about their wives, their kids, the bands they rock out to when the house is empty, I thought the world of Parents Who Blog can use more of this.

Milk's favorite extortion scheme

We're a couple weeks into the new Staggering regimen, and the results have been amazing. Illuminative. A refeshing respite from the nonstop noise of single parenting (or temporary independent co-parenting, or whatever I'm supposed to call it now). Subway rides home with both boyspawn are dependently rife with conversations like this:

TwoBert: Daddy! Today? In reading workshop? I was reading? And I spelled "fish"! Because S-H makes the SH sound like SHHHH!

Robert: And like "SHut up."

TwoBert: DAA-AAD!

Robert: That's cool. It's like SHHH and Shut Up. It's like telling someone to shut up TWICE.

Me: Can you relax for a second? Your brother was talking.

TwoBert: YEAH I WAS TALKING ABOUT FISH!

Me: So what other words did you spell?

TwoBert: Well, um....

Robert: Dad, did you know that John Wilkes Booth was an actor?

TwoBert: [face purpling] DAAAAAAAD!

At which point I threaten to ban all video games¹ from the household, and peace prevails. My children would have been good boys, if there had been someone to threaten to shoot their DS's every day of their lives.

¹ [I went to a Nintendoggle in Seattle last weekend. Remind me to write about that.]

Now that I have 90 minutes alone with each boy each week, I can finally turn off Pardon The Interruption and settle in for a little Charlie Rose. And I can learn things. Like the time a couple of kids tried to jackmail² Robert's Oreos.

² Jackmail: To blackmail someone with intent to take possession of something forcibly. Is this a word? Not yet. But the way the OED is expanding³, look for it by Christmas.

³ Chillax? Seriously?