Laid-Off Dad

Good manners are a terrible, terrible thing

As I entered my barber shop this morning, I got to the door at the same time as the kid who parked next to me. When I noticed he was wearing a Brooklyn Cyclones cap, I asked him if he was a fan. Turns out, he played for them this summer.

This was a big deal for me. You don't see a lot of Cyclophernalia around here, and I've been a big fan since the franchise came to be in 2001. When I lived in New York City, I often made the trek to Coney Island to sit a few rows off the field, in a stadium a few hundred yards off the beach, with a Nathan's hot dog in one hand and a program in the other. (Fun fact! It actually takes less time for me to fly from Detroit to LaGuardia than to ride the subway from Inwood to Surf Ave. I used to get off the train and earnestly wonder if Obama was still president.)

While we were waiting, we talked about his summer experience living in Brooklyn. The team lived in a hotel not far from the Barclays Center, and they were bused to and from the stadium for every home game. They didn't see much of the boardwalk, the carnies, or the Cyclone itself. Furthermore, since they had only a few nights off all season long, they didn't even see much of the rest of the city, either. For the most part, his summer was spent in a hermetic bubble of play, practice, travel, and hanging out playing video games.

At one point, another guy in the shop asked him whether he was playing in any developmental leagues over the winter, and he said, "I think I might be a little old for that." And since I am me, I made a crack about how I have clothes older than he. (I was specifically referencing my R.E.M. Green concert t-shirt, which is almost old enough to run for Congress, and would likely govern more effectively.) 

We laughed and shot the shit, as you do in barber shops. It was convivial and manly and fun, and I was enjoying myself.

Then, as the kid left, he said, "Great to meet you, sir!" And my guts jumped off a bridge.

Semiperfect, Narcissistic, and terribly grateful

Today, I'm 48 years old. 48 might not seem all that special on its surface, until you convert it to a nice, round 110,000 in binary. (For the record, I don't feel a day over 101,011.) Four dozens, three Sweet-16s, one-third of a gross. 48 is semiperfect and Narcissistic, and it is the smallest number with exactly ten divisors.

There are 48 hours in a weekend, and I've been alive for the equivalent of 8,766 of them. 

You could say this is a great day because it's absolutely beautiful outside. 74 degrees, breezy and cloudless.

You could say it's because the Yankees have been eliminated from the playoffs, or that AMC is running a Breaking Bad marathon all day long.

You could say it's because I'm so grateful for all your helpful comments, Likes, DMs, RTs, +1's, thumbs-ups, Hey Nows, and So Glad You're OKs I've received over the past couple of weeks. This is the warmest and fuzziest I've felt about the Internet since I spilled my divorce beans 5+ years ago. Thank you all so much, again, for your support and encouragement.

You could say it's because we live in an age when you can save a human's life by threading a piece of metal macaroni from his groin to his heart using a micro-fiber with a camera at its tip.

You could say it's because the last vestiges of my marionetting at the ICU are almost gone. My inner elbows no longer look like those of a heroin addict. The adhesive residue has worn off my elbows. My bruises have healed. My groin feels groiny again. My chest hair is growing back, and I look less like a Man-O'-Lantern (or, more accurately in this case, a Man-tato).

But the main reason this is a great day is that, for the first time since I was myocardially infarcted, after 16 days of confinement and clamor, I am autonomously alone in my house.

Parents and former hospital denizens: You feel me?

Ack-ack-ack-ack

Throughout much of my writing life, readers have noticed that I like burying the lede. I can't help it. I like the idea of a build-up and reveal. Wow 'em in the end, and you'll have a hit.

That's not going to happen this time around, though. This lede is coming at ya, right between the ribs:

Last week, this 47-year-old, non-obese, non-diabetic non-smoker had a heart attack.

Exactly as you might expect, it came about unexpectedly, while I was on the treadmill at the gym. Further unexpectedly, I didn't feel any chest pains or waves of numbness down my left arm. I just started feeling light-headed and nauseated, and since it was 96° and the gym's AC was out, I thought I was having a heat event instead of a heart event.

It turns out, a genetically predisposed hunk of arterial plaque had ruptured and formed a clot that ruined my whole day. 

The good news is that there is a lot of good news. For one, I'm home and feeling fine. I spent a day in the ICU, a day in the not-ICU, and was released a day earlier than anticipated. And all of the doctors I've seen (including my GP, whose parents probably met when I was in college) predict that, after cardiac rehab and acclimation to the mini-pharmacy I'll ingest every day for the rest of my life, I'll be better off than before.

For two, my boys were blissfully unaware of the worst of it. They were with their mom in my house, and all they saw was me conjuring my Benigni-esque best while I was attached to all those machines and drips and doodads.

For three, my older son didn't buy any of it. I've decided that he is actually Benjamin Button, 11 going on 64. Because when I got home, he asked me, "Dad, did you have any conversations with yourself while you were alone in your hospital room?"

(I'll pause a second while you take that in.)

The truth is, of course I did. About my life, my mortality, whatever legacy I'll leave. And all things considered, it's all going pretty well. I love my job, I'm a big part of my boys' life, and my ex-wife and I have patched our friendship up enough for her to move in here (and sleep on TwoBert's lower bunk, of all places) until I'm cleared to drive a car. Which could very likely be today.

Yes, I know. For someone avoiding stress, having your ex move in doesn't appear high on the priority list. But I like to think of our situation a lot like how Georgia put it: "We will always be a family of four, although without a marriage at the center of it." For that, I will always feel weirdly blessed.

And for four, this 47-year-old heart-attack survivor is going to turn 48 next week. It will be the best birthday ever.

"Like 'Days of Our Lives,' but with more nipples"

A couple years ago, my older boy started watching "Days of Our Lives" with his mother. I can't say I'm totally happy with the arrangement, since some of the adult themes, watered down as they are for daytime network television, are a lot for an 11yo boy to process. It's definitely a PG show, but at least she watches it with him and gives him all the PG he needs.

For me, taking the boys to SummerSlam last weekend was the flipside of this arrangement. Pro wrestling is also definitely a PG experience, what with the crowds, the relentless spectacle, the posturing, the body worship (both male and female), and all the backbiting skulduggery. ("But Dad, I thought those guys were friends! Why did he hit him with a chair?")

Like I said, I hadn't invested much time in pro wrestling for some 20 years; I'm happy to say, though, that the one-ring circus hasn't changed a lick. The difference comes when you attend one of these events LIVE, and these hulks that you see flying cartoonishly around your TV screen take on a visceral force, mass, and acceleration. Part of the genius of these athletes is that when bodies collide, you feel it (probably because the billion-decibel music sets your ribcage vibrating like a xylophone. If you bring your kids to one of these things, bring earplugs; otherwise, your kids will cram their fingers into their ears so intently that they could very well meet in the middle). 

The weekend was about a lot more than that, though. It was about Axxess, a deeper (and unfortunately-spelled) look at what goes on Behind The Tights:

• It was about meeting Cody (son of Dusty) Rhodes, who told me how great it was to grow up with a famous, well-loved dad and how important it is for him to carry on the family reputation. He's great with kids, especially when he brought my sons into the ring and showed them the exact pacing of how you throw yourself into the ropes to generate the most momentum;
• It was about him and Hornswoggle reading Otis aloud to a couple hundred adoring kids, in advance of We Give Books's attempt to set a world record for reading on October 3 (details here);
• It was about meeting reps from Make-A-Wish, and Komen, and other groups WWE is trying to serve with its massive popularity. 

And like a good soap opera, you can step a way for a while, and when you come back, it feels like you never left. I had to study up on the latest backstory and the parties therein, but in the end it played out as it always does: Square-jawed hero is upset by scraggly crowd favorite, who celebrates for about three minutes before the ref turns on him, knocks him senseless, and conspires with the evil guy with the briefcase to take the belt away; bearded guy vows revenge, but then falls into amnesia and forgets he has fathered a secret love child with the daughter of the ruthless tungsten magnate, who conspires with his evil twin to blackmail the heroic town DA, who doesn't yet know that he's actually the rightful heir to the tungsten fortune and whose wife has a simmering feud with Stefano, the crime boss who's been killed off every time his contract was up for negotiation.

It's all just a hulking heap of enjoyable nonsense.

After we left the Staples Center (and my 11yo had had sufficient time to recover from the sensory overload), he and I discussed all this on the way back to the hotel:

• "Let me get this straight," he said. "The ref was really in on it with the bad guy, who snuck in at the last second and won the belt."
• "That's right."
• "So it's just it's just another wacky story, and they put in a lot of drama and injustice so we'd come back and see what happens next."
• "Pretty much."
• "Sounds to me like it's just like 'Days of Our Lives,' but with more nipples."

I can't improve on that.

WWE're going to LA!

During the week after Father's Day, I took part in a roundtable discussion about marketing to parents that was organized by PR Week and featured a lot of PR people that I hope a lot of other PR people will listen to. The two parents were Liz Gumbinner and me (which was fine by me, since I always come off smarter when I appear with Liz), and the result was a productive dialogue about what resonates with modern parents, and why so many advertising efforts are trapped timidly in the Bronze Age. 

You can read the full transcript here; it features a picture of me looking as though I'm explaining how to fit your head into a toaster oven.

While I was there, I met a representative of the WWE who had come down from her feral tree dwelling (or whatever it is that WWE people live in) in Connecticut to see how she could work with parents to help showcase their mayhem. And a few weeks later, she offered to fly the boys and me to LA to see SummerSlam this weekend.

I told her, straight up: I enjoyed Ric Flair and "Superfly" Snuka when I was a kid, but I haven't paid a lick of attention to pro wrestling since Jerry Lawler bitch-slapped Andy Kaufman. (My kids know even less; when I asked the 11yo about it, he said, "that's where those huge guys pretend to beat the grickle-grass out of each other, right?") But I think that's part of her goal -- to reach out and grow the fan base among those who wouldn't know John Cena from John Sununu.

(Note to self: There needs to be a reality show where those two guys swap jobs. CENUNU!)

I decided to go for a few reasons. First and foremost, even though these donnybrooks are pure theater, they ain't fake. These are showmen and women who also happen to be incredible physical specimens that work their asses off to make it all look good.

Second, I'm told I'll hear a lot about the WWE's literacy programs, its anti-bullying efforts, its work with Make-A-Wish -- stuff you don't normally associate with a savage ballet of colliding Colossi, and just the sort of thing that parents should know more about. Stay tuned for that.

Third, in a show of really great timing, John Cena handled himself masterfully when TMZ ambushed him with the news that Darren Young had come out as a gay man. The "reporter" tried to bait him with questions about how much trouble this would cause among the other wrestlers, and Cena was better than just diplomatically distant. He was proud and happy for him. I'm not sure I'll get the chance to meet Cena, but if I do I'll be happy to shake his immense meathook of a hand.

I also want to give the boys a glimpse at what exactly it is I manage to do for a living. They're still not quite sure why I'm always home to greet them in the afternoon while all their other friends' dads aren't, and yet I manage not to live under a bridge. 

Mostly, though, I'm doing it for the adventure. My kids are becoming harder to shake out of their summer routines lately, and I want to create a memory about having no idea what we're in for and saying, "Screw it. Let's roll." We're headed out because an opportunity happened, and there is value in not dismissing everything as completely lame.

We'll see how it goes. If they enjoy themselves, I'm a hero who ignited their desire to seize opportunities and explore realms outside of what they think they know.

And if they don't, I'll never pry them out of the house again.

Testicular particulars

A lot has been going on since that last post. I'm glad it received the attention it did, and there's definitely a follow-up or two in the making. There's also the small matter of the 3,288 miles the Three French Men logged on our four-week Atlanti-ganza. Until then, though, there's much more important business afoot.

It's Man UP Monday, and it's time to talk about happy balls.

Right now, Castle Frenchington is home to six of the happiest balls around. That's mostly because my sons are 11 and 8, when any talk about testicles is hiLARious. And because, as of my last physical, my testicles don't have any insidious scrotal roommates.

Most boys learn early on how vulnerable their balls are, but it's usually after a swift, undefended blow (and about an hour of fetal bargaining). It's easy to talk to your sons about the importance of cups and jockstraps, but discussions about lumps and cancer are at best awkward, and at worst ignored entirely.

That's why I'm proud to support my friend Jim Higley and serve as a member of the Team Single Jingles Man UP Monday parent blogging team. I want to do my part and spread important messages about testicular cancer. For example, did you know that: 

• Testicular cancer is the #1 cancer in young men aged 15 to 35;
• Testicular cancer is highly survivable is detected early; and
• Young men should be doing a monthly self-exam?

If you're a parent of boys, they need to know that their own boys are more vulnerable than they think. If you stop by the Testicular Cancer Foundation website, you can find a lot more information about testicular cancer. You can also request a FREE shower card with self-exam instructions - it just might save a young man in your life.

I had a quick talk with my older son about this, and after the initial sniggering, he processed it all pretty quickly. We talked through a few aspects of self-exams, and he said, "Any extra grapes in the sack, and I tell you or Mom. Got it."

I love this boy. He's a big fan of the bottom line.

Of the girls, by the girls, and for the girls

Last week, my 11yo participated in a "completion" ceremony at his elementary school. I say this to the school's credit, because there was no mention of graduation anywhere. There was no circumstance, and only a few ounces of pomp. Just a gymatorium lined with folding chairs, certificates printed on mid-grade card stock, and a maudlin slide show with a Phil Collins-saturated soundtrack. 

Oh, yes. And speeches.

The principal said some things, some alumni said some more things, the teachers rephrased those previous things, and six students came up one by one to say things in a disarmingly precocious way.

I love the idea of inviting members of the grade to write a brief speech and then deliver it in front of a large crowd. Public speaking is an important skill that builds organized thought and feeds self-esteem, and anyone allowed to do so, especially at this young age, gets a strong leg up toward understanding how crucial it is to be able to present ideas cogently before an audience.

The thing is, they chose six kids to speak from the 53 in the class. And all six were girls.

I mentioned this to my son's teacher, and she sheepishly replied that the boys' speeches were all a little "scattered." (At first I thought she said "scatological," which made all kinds of sense.) But then I had to fight hard to keep it together when the large annoyance balloon burst in my head.

First of all, so what? I mean, I get that these speeches serve as marketing to the parents that "Look what a great job we did educating your kids!" But does every one of them have to read like Churchill during the blitz? Will the Earth wobble off its axis if a fifth-grader's 200 words don't have a taut throughline? 

And even if most of the boys' essays were lacking, was it too much trouble to sit down with a couple of the more promising authors and work with them to craft speeches that were more presentable? Are we teaching our kids, or merely evaluating them?

I'm surprised to realize how ticked off I still am about this, over a week after the fact. I think it sent a crappy message to the boys that they don't measure up, and it's put me on my guard to look for warning signs that either of my sons is becoming educationally discouraged.

Boys are having a hard enough time keeping up in an educational system that is failing them. Many of them don't even have a male teacher until they're teenagers. They're learning that education is the girls' thing, along with responsibility, nurturing, and other characteristics of adulthood, while males are more aligned with wreaking havoc and creating messes that the girls will clean up.

I'm not saying that stereotype isn't true. But we're doing everything we can to perpetuate it, and if we want it to stop, and help mold better men and better dads, where better to shift the perception than when the kids' brains are young and squishy?

An imperfect ten

Over the weekend, something noteworthy happened: This blog turned ten years old.

Decile anniversaries have their purpose, I suppose. They make us stop swimming long enough to look up and assess where we are in the ocean, whether we've made any progress or been swept off course by the riptide. And when you're a Man Of A Certain Age (a show I still miss), it's common to think about how many strokes you have left in you, before the inevitable time comes when the best you can manage is to ride with the current.

I'm happy to say I'm not there yet. I bring up the whole swimming thing, though, because yesterday I began physical therapy on my left shoulder, which recently has decided not to let me swim freestyle (or open a car door) without sending shooting pains down my arm. From what we've figured out, these pains come directly from hunching over a laptop and staring at my phone (which I usually hold in my left hand). As of now, since it's an unnamed thing that is affecting my rotator cuff, I'm applying for a trademark on "French Cuff Syndrome." Look for me on a fearmongering medical website near you!

So, yes. I'm still swimming, even though it stings like a bitch. And when I noticed that my blog was 10, two thoughts occurred to me.

• I've been blogging for longer than I was married, suggesting a phrase like blog longa, matrimonia brevis, which I just made up.
• On the same day as my blog's birthday, June 1st, my older son mowed my lawn for the first time.

When I began this blog, in the dark days of clam-shell phones and TVs as deep as a mini-fridge, R was 15 months old. He was nursing, grappling with object impermanence, and had progressed from mere walking to a type of "speed waddling" that most closely resembled "Fred Sanford with a pressing appointment." And now, that winsome little pip was maneuvering a 50-pound mulching mower. Like a BOSS.

The stock response in situations like this might be to lament lost time, crank up Time Stand Still, and rage against the dying of the light (which I do enough of, anyway). But I didn't feel that way at all.

I felt joyful. Because throughout these ten years, as he and his brother have grown from larvae to tweenolescents, I've been with them. For all of it. I've left jobs and a marriage and New York all behind, but my touchstones are still the boys and this blog. I love all three of them, they nurture and define my life, and I can't imagine the person I'd be without them. 

I'm very happy, ten years on, that I don't have to.

With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse

Today is 5/12/13, so to all those moms out there, happy Pythagoras Day! And I know what you're thinking. It's a shame that a cruel twist of the calendar would cause Mother's Day to be overshadowed by our culture's universal love of geometry. 

I have nothing against Mother's Day, personally. I'm all for honoring mom, and for giving consumer spending another artificial kick in the pants. I'm all for calling my own mom, to tell her I love her and to please stop voting Republican. I support breakfast in bed, clayed handprints, crayoned love notes, cuddles, kisses, all of it. Motherhood is sacred, and essential, and America, and YES.

But there are two reasons it leaves me ambivalent. For one, I really hope that one day Father's Day can be as big a deal. (Or at least bigger than "Hey, it's June. Let's move some pliers.") And I don't want a handout, either. I want us to earn it, to deserve it, to knock our brains out being the dads our kids need.

Some days, though, the idea seems elusive. I have alerts set up for as much fatherly news as Lord Google can find, and a lot of the stories aren't all that encouraging. You can read only so many headlines about dads with phrases like "shoots son in the liver" and "robs area convenience store" and "watches p0rn on Dad's phone" before you start muttering to yourself, "C'mon, you jags. Do better."

Mother's Day also reminds me of how much of a drag it is not to be in love with the mother of my kids. But I really can't complain (much). Things with Moxie are pretty okay right now. We're friendly, and we see eye-to-eye on most things when it comes to the boys, and that's a lot more than I can say for several friends, whose marriages have blown apart terribly (or are about to). It's just that building a life with someone was one of my primary life goals (even though I had absolutely no idea how to do it), and having failed will always be that little bit of sand in the underpants that won't ever fully rinse away.

I like Pythagoras Day because, unlike life, his theorem is simple, elegant, and eminently provable. Fitting that his day only comes around 11 times per century.

The kindness of strangers

This week, in spiteful defiance of a winter that outlived its welcome months ago, we held our Cub Scout meeting outdoors at a nearby playground. The boys were learning the very important Life Lessons that:

1. picking up litter is a very important expression of civic duty, and
2. many people are careless slobs who drink booze and fornicate near children's playgrounds.

When we arrived, the boys spent about 20 minutes running and yelping and climbing all the things. And just as we were settling down for our meeting, a 30ish woman with a troubled expression and arms crossed firmly across her chest came over to our picnic table and asked to speak with me.

If you've ever spent time on the playground with your kid, you know it's never good when a stranger parent asks for a word. I learned this on some of the tonier NYC playgrounds that are infested with over-earnest helicopter parents devoted to sheltering their children from conflict. So when she pulled me aside, I braced for the worst.

"I just want you to know that I'm very emotional right now, because I'm three months pregnant," she began. "If I start crying, I'm sorry in advance."

Noted. And so we ratchet up to DEFCON 3.

"I just wanted to say that I saw these boys all playing together near the climbing structure, and when my son tried to join in, they all said, 'No, you can't play with us, because we're all Cub Scouts and you're not."

(Emphasis mine, to indicate that as she finished that sentence the tears began pouring forth.)

"But your son ... [sob] ... was the only one of them ... [sniffle] ... who said it was OK and ... welcomed him into the group."

I processed this as my buttcheeks slowly de-clenched.

"Your son was just ... [sob, sniffle] ... so kind. Thank you!"

I have a sense that you could be thinking, in your best Chandler Bing voice, "Could this post BE any more self-indulgent?" And I get that. But I'm writing about it anyway, in part because my sons spend a lot of time being unkind to each other, and it's a relief to see them revert to Jekyll Mode when civilians are involved.

I'm also not in a place to crow too loudly, since I'm not only just half of this parenting effort; I'm almost completely removed from the other half.

Mostly, though, this conversation is sticking with me because it was such a nice surprise. In this era of highfalutin parenting opinions, parents have become experts in bitching about What Your Kid Did. And at the end of a particularly trying day, there really is no better selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor than having a complete stranger approach you out of the blue to tell you you're doing something -- anything -- right.

So I guess what I'm saying is, if your mood has been befouled by the truly nasty detritus that some lazy jagwagon left 10 feet from a trash can, there's nothing like a sweet, emotionally unstable, incipient mother of four to help balance things out.