Laid-Off Dad

Off the rails

For a while now, I've been thinking about why I haven't been writing. And a while is about as benign a term as I can conjure, because a while is of such indeterminate length. A while can be half an hour while you're waiting for someone to pick you up at the airport, but it's also been a while since the last Olympics.

My writing drought has skewed toward the latter. On Monday, however, I had a bit of a breakthrough. 

I was over at Moxie's, picking up TwoBert for his Cub Scout meeting, when she and I began discussing the Boston bombings. Since we hadn't talked about them with the boys yet, we were speaking as obliquely as possible, especially about contact we'd had with people in the Boston area. ("Everyone's fine." "I hear one was only 8." "No word yet about Why or How.")

And then the 11yo said, "Are you guys talking about the bombings in Boston today?"

Because of course the story was discussed in school, and he'd had the chance to digest this latest abomination before he'd had any interaction with us.

That seems like the crux of my problem right now, something bigger than how my sons are already desensitizing themselves from the string of deranged, craven assholes determined to kill innocents. When such high-profile violence occurs, a parent's instinct is to figure out how to Discuss It With The Kids. But in this case, someone else had discussed it with them first.

Our ability to control how our kids experience the world is slipping away.

Yes, that's an exceedingly maudlin thing to write. It's also completely inaccurate, since so many of us persevere by deluding ourselves into thinking we have more control than we do. I liked to think my divorce and all those job layoffs inured me to life's transience, but the one constant has been that my kids need me to shelter them from this world that is more full of weeping than they can understand. They still do, but not as much. And as this trend continues, it won't be long until my sons are adolescents and I become a complete idiot.

Parenting is becoming more complicated. My learning curve is steepening. And it's odd to think I'm losing control of the last thing I ever thought I could control, even though I know intellectually that I was never in control in the first place.

I think I need to go to the gym and overthink this some more.

Justice is balance

It's Wednesday, which means 1) the boys will arrive later today for the dadportion of their week, and 2) I've spent most of my morning eradicating all the evidence of my debauched, kid-free bachelorhood. I may raise some eyebrows when I say this, but I truly believe responsible parenting means rinsing all that caked vomit out of the drapes and recovering every bullet casing -- even the ones that roll under the fridge -- in order to be the best role model I can be.

As I was gathering up all the undergarments and drug paraphernalia from the grotto, I found myself thinking about work/life balance. It's been a huge topic among moms forever, but in this time of elevated expectations, dads are feeling it, too. I wish I could write more about it, but the truth is I'm terribly unqualified to do so.

Because at this moment, right now, pending the inevitable cataclysmic event that will screw everything  up, my work/life balance is really great.

I'm not sure how it happened, but I guess it dates back to my dad, whose bankers' hours brought him home at the exact time every night. Door, kiss, couch, martini, right before dinner. The steadiness of his routine is sort of amazing, when I think about it. But that's the model I had to work with when I envisioned my own fatherhood, and I think it's served me pretty well.

I had The Crazy Jobs in my 20s and 30s, but since I've been a dad I've been a financial editor, then unemployed, then a high-school math teacher, then unemployed again, then WAHDing it up in my current gig. All of which got me home every night, kept my weekends free, and afforded me lots of time with my kids, even after I split up with their mom.

And that's a big point: It's not lost on me that a big part of this balance is being single. Frankly, cramming "engaged fatherhood" and "engaged couplehood" into a nebulous term like "life" seems terribly reductive, since each of those is a full-time job completely separate of your full-time job.

I'm grateful that circumstance has let me be such a big part of my kids' lives. And even though I'll likely die alone, it's good to know that, when my sons come home, they will find me there, waiting for them on the couch. Usually after I've just finished vacuuming all the cocaine out of the cushions.

The coolest beans

Dad 2.013 ended almost three weeks ago, and since then, I've been indulging myself in ways some might not describe as all that indulgent. In between the post-mortem calls with sponsors and the reading of the many gratifyingly recaps, I've been been busy remembering how to write for me rather than for my job. This involves a lot of reading, and scribbling, and making a dent in my bloated Netflix queue. (Game of Thrones. Yes.)

There has also been a lot of digging out from under. Incentivized by my sweet-ass new vacuum cleaner. (Indulgence!)

The kids and I have seen a lot of each other this week when they're off school, and the other day the 10yo saw the Dad 2.0 foamboard signs I saved from the scrap heap and asked, "Just what did you accomplish with this conference, anyway?"

I wasn't sure how to answer him. It's been enough of a chore over the past two years explaining Dad 2.0 to friends and family and potential landlords. The prospect of describing it to my tweener son, for whom just about everything has become "epically lame," was daunting. It did, however, give me a clear template for how to take stock of the last six months of my life.

I could have said something about the theme of Dad 2.013, which was "Elevated Expectations." It was inspired by a quote from Michael Chabon in Manhood for Amateurs: "The handy thing about being a father is that the historic standard is so pitifully low.” We came to Houston for the counterintuitive purpose of rocking the boat and asking to be held in higher regard.

Putting together the first conference was a lot different, because to say people had low expectations for a disproven dad market is to imply there were any expecations at all. This year, though, we had a Title Sponsor (Dove Men+Care) and three Presenting Sponsors (Honda, ReadySetEat, and Kraft Cheese). We had a media event in MetLife Stadium. We had a weekend of our own choosing, rather than a strategic piggyback onto SxSW.

We had means, and a track record to improve upon. 

That Dad 2.013 even existed stood for something important. We weren't just a one-and-done. We were back, and (22%) bigger. We had a lot of new faces, and an established, annual opportunity to galvanize them into a community that expects more from the media that portray us, the content that represents us, and the conduct that defines us.

I could have said that, after so many years as a vocational itinerant who never quite fit into the three consecutive jobs that got rid of him, I feel like I've found my place. A gig to feel good about, and makes sense with me in it, and makes we walk around with a goofy smile on my face:

Photo by Jon Armstrong. 

All of which would ring irredeemably tedious in a kid's ears. Yeah, Dad. Whatever.

So instead I dialed it back a bit and went as elemental as I could: "We spent the weekend talking about how cool it is to be someone's dad." 

"Cool beans," he said, unaware of just how ridiculously cool those beans are.

Sticking to our guns

I've held off writing about the Newtown murders because I've been way too paralyzed with impotent rage about them. I wanted to calm down and process everything with a level-ish head. It's not just how any subhumanoid with a face can buy a Bushmaster rifle at a gun show. It's about the scourge of influence-peddling, the bare-bones budgets for treating mental illness, a glut of "information" that tends to entrench opinions rather than challenge them.

But it's still mostly about guns, dammit.

I haven't shot a gun since Scout camp more than half my life ago. I don't hunt, I don't practice at ranges, and I don't believe having a revolver in my house makes me any more safe. I also know half the country disagrees with me, and I'm really truly OK with the vast majority of gun owners who use and store their weapons safely and responsibly.

But you're never gonna convince me that the average American needs a semiautomatic with a 30-round banana clip in his closet. There's just too much data correlating fewer guns with less gun-violence. I also know that the status quo isn't working, and that resorting the same heated rhetoric, on both sides of the gun debate, will only ensure that the "Status Quo" will never be supplanted by "Quo Vadis?" 

I know enough to know I need to know more. What I do know, though, is that I love how kids question things so bluntly, with a common sense unburdened by an awareness of humanity's inherent flaws and frailties. When Moxie and I took the boys to dinner for French Fryday last week, and we discussed what had happened in Newtown, the 10yo reacted with disgust: "This is the 21st century! Aren't things supposed to be fixed by now?"

He was likely motivated to say this because he and I had recently seen "Lincoln," when all those old-timey muttonchoppers didn't have electricity, and left mounds of severed limbs gathered from Civil War casualties in open pits, and carriage rides to the grocery store took a month and a half. We can equate the polarizing nature of slavery, and the terrible price we paid to "solve" it, with an ancient time, a century and a half ago, when we didn't know any better. 

Plus, when you're a kid, it's easy to think that Now is the modern time, the pinnacle. We've survived conflicts and invented smart phones, and we've arrived, at the end. You can look back at the primitives carrying torches and marvel at how they ever got by in the world.

Movies like Lincoln help us realize that humanity, and the challenges of our society and politics, haven't changed. People (all of us, not just the half of the country that you disagree with) are just bigger-brained, less-hairy animals, who can be too proud, too threatened, too obstinate, too righteous, too pedantic, too underinformed, too unwilling to listen, too easy to anger, too mistrustful of others' motives. 

Too determined to stick to our guns.

I hope we can finally--after however many gun deaths we've had to endure--find some headway to keep people from being slaughtered so senselessly. I want to believe this is the tipping point that brings to the forefront the need to find compromise for some gun reform. But I'm skeptical, because we're the same now, as we were then. The torches we carry might help us talk with someone around the world or find a neighborhood Thai restaurant, but we're still human.

Presents of mind

This morning, on my way to brunch, I listened to A Prairie Home Companion in the car. And the skit I heard was of two Christmas trees confronting their imminent mortality and resolving to live for now. They could feel the life-force slowly receding from their trunks as they leaned against each other on 43rd Street, and they lamented their destiny to die in the gutter and be mulched into oblivion. But they knew they'd go out in style, as a decorated protector of some family's Christmas presents. (At least, that was the male tree's opening line. Which worked like a charm.)

After we were seated in the restaurant, I learned that one of the men at the table was recovering from two surgeries after his system was attacked by a staph infection that came out of nowhere. The only symptom was a pimple-sized welt on his leg that grew to six inches in diameter in four hours, and his doctor said that had he not taken himself to the ER right then, they might not have caught it in time. It was either aerobic or anaerobic, could have come from without or within.  

After eight days in the hospital, this was his first meal as a free man. And he ordered about 1,000 calories' worth of Eggs Benedict. And ate every bite with the relish of a man whose body almost ate itself.

This was a tough day to process all this, since after a particularly festive Christmas party last night, my aging body has had a tougher time recovering from the (decidedly reduced) excess. It helped, though, when Moxie texted me a picture of TwoBert's letter to Santa, in which he said all he wants for Christmas is "a kiss from a pretty girl under the mistletoe."

I can suggest an opening line that might make that wish come true.

A month of growth

I'd like to say that NaBloPoMovember 2012 served as a watershed moment in my development as a man, father, writer, and pickle enthusiast. At the least, it was eventful--more so than I anticipated, anyway. November re-elected a president, washed away countless lives and livelihoods, and celebrated two people who somehow managed to spend 2/3 of their lives together. I caught the Bourbonic plague, met the diarist of a wimpy kid, and got a heaping helping of perspective along with my Thanksgiving meal.

Mostly, though, I wanted to get writing again. Dad 2.013 is only two months away, and it could have been really easy to melt into the work that ultimately resulted in our first of three speaker announcements. The truth is, though, for all the phone calls and interviews and other opportunities to champion dad-based content, I'd have felt like a hypocrite if I'd stopped making any of my own. November helped me get the oil back in the engine and strike a work/write balance that I hope to sustain as long as I can.

About the only real growth was this comical T-shaped hair-thing on the front of my face, which--even though it clearly brought all the girls to the yard--will either be 1) be washed down the sink or 2) overwhelmed by a DecemBeard. If you'd like to salute its memory and donate even a small, token amount to the team, thank you. My mustache would definitely have wanted it that way.

One day more! Another day, another destiny!

You know how proud Jerry Seinfeld was of his non-vomit streak? And how devastated he was when it came to an end? My mind was with him this morning as I, too, contemplated the end of a streak I hold sacred: In the Post-Marriage Era, on days that the kids have been with me, neither has ever stayed home sick from school.

I'm not sure how you're reacting to this at home. You may be awed. You may scoff incredulously. You superstitious types may be chiding me for mentioning the streak so brazenly and thus inviting a jinx. (You people are the most narcissistic and sad of all.) Superstitions are malarkey, jinxes do not exist, and children do not stay home from school on my watch.

The Streak nearly ended, however, when the 10yo staggered out of his room feeling "groggy." He'd missed school yesterday (thanks to his mother, whose lenience is her tragic undoing) and asserted he didn't feel any better today. His throat was scratchy. He coughed a few times into his elbow. He looked at me as if he'd spent one day too many aboard a cruise ship. He made his case to stay home a second day, foolishly forgetting with whom he was dealing:

R: Dad, I think I should lay low today.
Me: If you do, no movies or computer. You'll need your rest.
R: That's fine. All I want to do is sleep.

Hmm. A willingness to forego electronic entertainment without protest.

Me: You might have to get dressed anyway and come to the library while I work.
R: I could to that. I'll just sit and read in the corner.

Maintaining his message. He was bringing his A-game today.

Me: You know that middle school we all want you to go to next year?
R: Yeah.
Me: One of the things they'll check on your application is your attendance and lateness record.
R: What for?
Me: Because they want to see that you're willing to apply yourself, and they know that kids who miss a lot of time can struggle to catch up.
R: [pause] Let me see if taking a shower helps. 

Miracle of miracles, the shower restored him to only slightly imperfect health. He went off to school, came back feeling fine, and my streak remains unbroken. Javert would be proud.

Seven Five Oh

Typepad tells me this is Laid-Off Dad's 750th post. Which can mean only one thing: I'm zoning in on Barry Bonds's record and will one day be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. And I've done it all steroid-free, relying instead solely on various parts of speech, fatherhood, insomnia, bourbon, joy, anguish, a WYSIWYG interface, and lots of fresh greens.

As fate would have it, the subject of this momentous monologuing milepost will be how I took my 10-year-old son to have his IQ tested. Because he will graduate (?) elementary school in the spring, and we're looking at all kinds of middle schools for him, and some of them think an IQ (or FSIQ, as they call it now) is a good piece of data to help reject sift through applicants. 

The test is the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Fourth Edition, which a psychological assessment you can read about in this somewhat impenetrable APA report. It mentions Covariance Matrices and Kurtosis and First-Order Breadth Factors and lots of other highfalutin terms you will yearn to memorize and drop casually at your next holiday party. After which your boss will regard your false intellectual facade as a direct threat to his authority and trump up some bullshit reason to fire you. 

The process was painless enough. We arrived at the doctor's house at 8:15am, he took my son into the other room for about 75 minutes of brain rigor, and an hour later we received a comprehensive and incomprehensible report from which I hope the middle schools will derive more value than I do.

The kid has not stopped begging us to tell him what his IQ is, and we keep telling him it's not going to happen. (Maybe on his 40th birthday, Moxie suggested.) Because one thing we do understand without doubt is that we don't really care how "gifted" he is. Achievement is a vector that requires direction AND magnitude. (OH YEAH!) Without direction, magnitude can veer off anywhere. My cousin tested off the charts when he was a kid and never lifted a finger in school, and after he served a couple of jail terms for various drug charges, he sort of fell off the grid. 

The consensus says we need to laud effort, not intelligence. Otherwise, your kid will end up a drug user like my cousin. And Barry Bonds, allegedly. (I'm coming for you, you surly melonhead.)

They don't make insults the way they used to

Tonight was the first official event of the Virginia Club of Michigan, and I am its Communications Director (because I'm the one who knows how to work the Twitter). Our guest was Gordon Burris, who's been with the University for as long as I've  been alive and has more anecdotes than I have hairs on my head. The conversation took a turn toward Jon Meacham's new book, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, and how it fits in with the myriad interpretations among Jefferson and His Time, The Hemingses of Monticello, and American Sphinx.

As you've probably guessed, I'm fascinated with Our Nerdiest President, because of quotes like this:

"... I rarely waste time in reading on theological subjects, as mangled by our Pseudo-Christians.... Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. If it could be understood it would not answer their purpose. Their security is in their faculty of shedding darkness, like the scuttlefish, thro' the element in which they move, and making it impenetrable to the eye of a pursuing enemy, and there they will skulk." [source]

Say what you will, but the man could bring the withering smack.

Mo money, Mo Giving

It's the final week of NaBloPoMovember, and now that we've spent the majority of it NaBloPo-ing, it's time to shift attention to the Movember-ing. And the good news is, there's a lot of Movember-ing going around. There are a lot more teams growing a lot more mustaches and raising a lot more dough, thanks in part to high-profile Mo-growers like Aaron Rodgers. And the Dad 2.0 Summit /NYC Dads Group team, and the teams within the overall network, have raised over $93,000 so far.

Now that we're in the home stretch, the Dad 2.0 Summit is discounting tickets to the 2013 event next January by 25%, and donating the price difference on each ticket to our Movember team. If you're thinking of coming to Dad 2.013, now's the time to get your ticket (using the promotional code "MoGiving25" and donate $50 to a great cause.

If you'd like to donate to our team (and the mustache that my ex-wife says makes me look like a poor man's d'Artagnan), you can do so here.

And if you haven't grown a Movember 'stache yet, you should consider it. This thing is a lady magnet.