The doctor reports that this is currently located in my wife’s womb.
It’s due to come out in late May.
We told Clara last night.
She informed me that it’s a girl and that it’s beautiful.
Then she kissed my wife’s belly a few times and asked if she could feed the baby with a bottle when it came out.
Then she did the first somersault of her life and told me that Teddy taught her how to do it at school.
Teddy is two years old.
This is the kind of gift that isn’t right for everyone, and it might not go over well with the boy’s parents, but here’s a possible holiday gift idea that might be perfect under the right circumstances: Give a boy a real name to replace his wimpy, girlish, pansy name.
I'm not going to call out any names in particular in fear of offending, but you know the kinds of names I mean. We all do.
Place the new name, preferably something like Stan or Jake or Troy, in a small box with an explanation that reads something like this:
Despite your parents’ unwavering love for you, they have inexplicably saddled you with a name normally assigned to girls, dolls, and small animals. Therefore, I hereby assign you a new name. A manly name. A name that you can feel free to use whenever your parents aren’t around.
And when you turn eighteen, you can get your name legally changed to this new name if you’d like. I’d be happy to take you down to the courthouse and help facilitate the process, and maybe afterwards, you’ll let me treat you to a celebratory dinner.
Like I said, this idea might not be fully appreciated by the boy’s parents, but sometimes the best gifts are the ones that parents despise.
Finger paints, water guns, fireworks, and now new names.
Under the right circumstances, this might turn out to be the best gift ever.
Trust me. I speak from experience.
My father’s name is Leslie Dicks.
Can you imagine how happy he would’ve been as a kid to receive a new name?
My two-year old daughter can accurately identify a triceratops, and a poor facsimile at that.
Perhaps that Dinosaur Train show isn’t as stupid as I had thought.
I told a story at last night’s Moth StorySLAM in Manhattan. As always, I had an amazing time, and I actually learned a lot.
Here are some of my observations and thoughts from the evening:
1. There are two Bleecker Streets in New York.
Who knew?
147 Bleecker Street in Queens is a large brick building currently available for rent.
147 Bleecker Street in Manhattan is the location of The Bitter End, the bar in which last night’s event took place.
When you’re leaving for The Moth immediately after work from Hartford, Connecticut, there is little room for error in terms of arriving on time, so finding yourself at 147 Bleecker Street in Queens instead of 147 Bleecker Street in Soho two minutes before doors are supposed to open makes for a rather rather harried trip.
Thankfully, I had purchased two of the limited number of tickets available for the event, so when we arrived at The Bitter End five minutes after the show was supposed to begin, my friend, Bengi, leapt from the car, cut the exceedingly long line, and asked the doorman if we could still get in.
After being verbally abused for our lateness, we were given permission to enter.
Fortunately, there was also plenty of illegal parking just a block away. I managed to get inside, force my way to the edge of the stage, and place my name in the hat just seconds before the show began.
2. The limited number of tickets that The Moth sells for these events has never made me the most popular person upon entering the venue. The tickets allow me to cut in front of people who have been standing in line for an hour or more, but the tickets are available to anyone who wants to purchase them, so it’s not as if I am getting an inside deal. And without them, it would be impossible for someone like me, who lives almost three hours from Manhattan, to attend any of the shows. I am extremely grateful to The Moth for making them available.
3. Having my friend, Bengi, with me last night was very beneficial in terms of improving future storytelling performances. He is one of the most analytic people I know (which can be annoying at times), but having him at the show to help diagnose my performance was exceptionally helpful.
4. I was called to the stage second to tell my story. I followed Erin Barker, the storyteller who beat me in last month’s GrandSlam.
As expected, Erin’s story was fantastic and possibly worthy of victory had she not been forced to go first.
My story was received very well by the audience, but it ran long, and considerably longer than I even knew. I failed to hear the first or second whistle warning me that my time was up (I’m still not sure which one), so when I stepped off the stage, Bengi said, “You went long, dude.”
“Yeah, but just a smidgen,” I said.
“You went way past the second whistle,” he said.
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t even get the second warning.”
Apparently, I did. What should have been a five minute story went almost seven minutes, and this most assuredly impacted my scores. I finished in fifth place last night, and while I shouldn’t have won last night’s competition (there were at least three other storytellers far better than me last night), I expected much better scores.
I can’t let this happen to me in the future.
How the hell did I miss the whistle?
5. I was especially frustrated about my story running long because there were definitely places for me to cut if time was an issue, which leads me to think that if there is a part of the story that I can eliminate if time becomes an issue, it should probably be cut anyway.
I need to be a better editor in the future.
6. I continue to be surprised at the number of repeat storytellers who participate in The Moth. Of last night’s nine other competitors, I had heard five tell stories before, and I’ve only attended six Moth events in my life.
7. I learned an important lesson last night:
You don’t need an amazing story to be a successful storyteller. You only need to tell the story well. My two favorite stories from the evening were hardly astounding in terms of content, but both were told brilliantly.
In the end, it’s more about delivery than content. I have some amazing stories to tell from my sordid past, but a simple story told well might be just as effective.
8. Another important lesson learned:
Successful storytellers match persona with story.
The story that I told last night was about a time in my life when I was not exactly confident or successful. It was a time in my life when I was awkward around girls, uncertain about my future, and feeling like a bit of a loser.
But Bengi pointed out that of all the people on the stage last night, I seemed the most confident and self-assured and therefore did not effectively convey the tone of my story well.
By contrast, the winner of last night’s StorySlam told a story from a similarly awkward and difficult time in his life, but his onstage affectations matched his story. He is clearly a quirky, somewhat anxious guy in real life, so the way in which he performed onstage, in a halting, less-than-confident cadence, helped to bring his story to life.
Interestingly enough, the story I told to win the StorySLAM last summer featured me as a self-centered jerk, a persona that I was able to effectively convey through my confidence and bravado onstage.
And while I did not win the GrandSLAM last month, I placed third by also telling a story in which I was a less-than-savory character.
In the end, I suspect that audiences want to believe that storytellers are being themselves onstage, and this is harder to achieve if your persona in the story does not match your persona onstage.
This means I’ll either have to stick with stories in which my confidence helps enhance my story or find a way to match my onstage persona to the story I am telling.
I suspect that the former is the right way to go.
Over the past three years, I have been extremely critical of people who demand apologies, more so than I ever even realized. In February of 2010, I was critical of a parent who demanded that a teacher apologize to her daughter for doing something exceptionally stupid.
In July of 2010, I commented on this favorite quote of mine by P.G. Wodehouse:
It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.
In March of 2011, I posted my own quote about apologies:
The need for a thank you and/or the request for an apology is a clear indication of a person’s likelihood to be eaten first in a zombie apocalypse. That is, if the zombies can stomach their degree of self-importance.
In April of 2011, I commented on NATO’s refusal to apologize for bombing rebel targets in Libya.
In October of 2011, I commented on how the request for an apology is often a signal of a lack of self confidence.
Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t think there is anything wrong with an apology, and I often counsel colleagues and students to simply apologize for their mistakes rather than trying to explain or defend them.
It’s a strategy I employ quite often.
My complaint is when people feel the need to demand an apology, as if doing so will somehow improve their position or make them feel better.
The only kind of apology that anyone should desire is the unforced, unrequested kind.
Otherwise an apology is nothing more than an assemblage of meaningless words.
Which brings me to my latest apology criticism, this time leveled at GOP candidate Michele Bachmann, who announced that she is dissatisfied with the apology she received from NBC after she was introduced on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon with the song “Lyin’ Ass Bitch.”
From The Daily Beast:
After NBC’s senior vice president for special programs sent Bachmann a written letter of apology, Bachmann said, "Of course I accept the apology, but my guess is that it would have been the president of the NBC that would have been apologizing not a senior vice president," if the same thing had happened to a liberal candidate.
Seriously? The network apologizes for what amounts to a tasteless joke on a late night comedy program and you feel the need to complain about the source of the apology?
Jimmy Fallon, the person actually responsible for the choice of song, has already apologized to her.
This should’ve been enough.
Now the senior vice president of NBC has now apologized as well. In writing.
This really should be enough.
The woman is campaigning to become President of the United States and leader of the free world, and yet she finds it necessary to whine that the source of her apology isn’t important enough?
Wodehouse was right.
The wrong sort of people take mean advantage of apologies.
And I was right, too.
If these are the things that concern Michele Bachmann in the middle of a Presidential race, she would likely end up as an appetizer in a zombie apocalypse.
When I was a kid, my brothers and sisters and I would often spend our evenings playing a game that we called Monster. I would be given a few minutes to hide somewhere outside and around our home, and then my brothers and sisters would begin wandering about, hoping to avoid being snatched up by me.
Being the eldest, I was faster and stronger than the rest, so if I caught one of them, dragging them away and hiding them in the barn or the garage or behind the oak tree at the end of the driveway was not difficult. It was then the job of the surviving siblings to rescue their comrade before they were captured as well.
I think it was actually a little terrifying for them at times. We would play well after dark, and I was extremely good at surprising and scaring the hell out of them.
I think the game may have been an offshoot of a similar game we played with our father before he and my mother divorced, except his version of Monster had us wandering around the darkened house, clutching one another in mortal terror, waiting for him to pop out of a closet or from behind the sofa.
When he left, I guess I took his place and became the monster.
We played this game for years, ignoring rain and snow and Gypsy moths in order to do so. And I’ve often wondered what caused the game finally end, and more importantly, when our last game of Monster was played.
Did I know that this would be the final time I played a game that filled up so much of my childhood?
Probably not. As with most things, the game probably came to an end without any of us ever even noticing.
Well, it turns out that Monster hasn’t ended after all. While playing a much-simplified version of hide-and-go seek with my daughter at the park this week, I popped out from behind a slide and shouted, “Boogha! Boogha!”
She thought this was hilarious and immediately dubbed me The Boohga Boogha Monster.
And so a new version of Monster was born.
Someone please explain to me how a quarterback can fail to complete a single pass or do anything productive for his team and still have a rating of 39.6. Shouldn’t his rating be zero. Or at least closer to it?
Perhaps there is something to be said about ESPN’s new QBR rating, which at least operates on a 100 point scale.
Regardless of how many times I see this (and it’s almost daily), I’ll never understand it: Two women are working out together at the gym.
One is dressed in a tight-fitting, leopard-print leotard, black and pink tights, pink sneakers and a matching pink headband. The other is wearing a yellow hoodie with coordinating socks and a black and gold headband.
Both are wearing large, hoop earrings.
They are deeply tanned and both have clearly spent a great deal of time on her hair prior to arriving at the gym.
There is product in those follicles. Lots of product.
Best of all, both are plastered in more makeup than I have seen my wife wear in her entire life. Eye shadow, mascara, blush and who knows what else.
If you work out at the gym regularly, you’d probably recognize the type immediately.
While the great majority of people at a gym appear to give little thought to their general appearance (and justifiably so), there are always a couple women who walk around the place as if it’s some kind of athletic singles club. These are women who appear to spend a great deal of time dressing up for the gym.
Probably more time getting ready than actually exercising.
In a sea of ragged tee-shirts and fading gym shorts, they look like slightly less athletic versions of the aerobic instructors that you used to dominate early morning television.
Unable to sweat because of the amount of makeup caked onto their faces, they often do as little as possible while attempting to appear as active as possible.
Four reps on a leg machine here. Three there. Half a dozen sit-ups. And stretching.
Lots of stretching.
Watching them try to be noticed while not actually exercising is often more entertaining than anything I can find on the television affixed to my treadmill.
But I can’t help but wonder if any of this attention seeking yields results. Are these women catching the eye of some hunky lady killer at 8:30 AM on a Sunday morning?
Are they routinely leaving the gym with guys’ phone numbers?
Do they hope to find Mr. Right amidst the barbells and rowing machines?
Or could their goals be completely unrelated to men? Is there another, more mysterious purpose to this attempt to look good while not actually exercising?
Curious minds want to know.
There may even be a male version of this female oddity, a manly prima donna more interested in being seen than actually exercising, but I am not observant enough to have noticed these particularly breed yet.
Though I suspect that absent the makeup that these women wear, even the most vain of men could probably manage a genuine workout while still donning the most stylish of gym paraphernalia and tanning their skin to a golden brown.
Right?
I went upstairs to see if I could get my two-year old to nap. She had been sitting in the crib for almost an hour, talking and playing but not exactly sleeping. “Clara,” I said. “Why didn’t you go to sleep?”
“I tried to go to sleep, Daddy,” she said. “But I was freaking out.”
I have no idea where she learned this phrase, but it was enough for me to pluck her from the crib.
It’s unrealistic to think that anyone could sleep while freaking out. Right?
A few years ago, I posted a list of all the jobs I have held in my life in chronological order. Things have changed since then, so here is my updated list:
1. Farm laborer, Blackstone, MA: When I was 12-years old, I began working for Jesse Deacon, an aging farmer in need of some help. Every Saturday, I would spend 4-6 hours loading hay onto trailers, mucking stalls, repairing fence lines, and other typical farm chores. I earned $50 a day for the work and was happy to get it.
2. McDonald’s restaurants, Milford, Norwood, Brockton, Hanson, Bourne, MA: My illustrious and rather sordid career with McDonald’s began when I turned 16-years old. My friend, Danny Pollock, heard that the McDonald’s in Milford, MA was hiring, so even though Milford was more than 30 minutes from my hometown of Blackstone, Danny and I drove out there for interviews and were hired on the spot. We started out just above minimum wage, $4.65 per hour. Danny didn’t last long and eventually became a dishwasher across the street, but I stuck, eventually being promoted to manager when I was 17-years old. I can still remember sitting in history class with my professional development binder from McDonald’s, studying for my management exam when I was supposed to be reading about the Great Depression. I stayed with McDonald’s after graduation (college was not an option for me after high school), eventually moving to Norwood with my store manager and later to Brockton, Hanson (where I opened a new store), and Bourne, where I was eventually fired after being arrested for grand larceny.
3. Cobra Marketing, Foxwood, MA: After being fired from McDonald’s, I was hired by Cobra Marketing, a company that marketed consumer products to employees at a variety of businesses throughout the state. I began as a salesman, dropping off samples to businesses early in the week and then returning for orders at the end of the week and earning my salary strictly through commission. I worked in the book division, which meant that the samples I was dropping off to businesses were all books. Eventually I was promoted and was placed in charge of a sales team.
4. Cobra Marketing, Washington, DC: Following my promotion, I was sent to DC for four months to establish a new office for the company. A team of eight people from Connecticut spent the summer of 1993 living in a two-bedroom apartment in College Park, Maryland. During this time we hired, trained, and put the systems in place that would allow the business to function on its own once we returned to Massachusetts. Having lost the coin toss for one of the two beds in the apartment, I spent the four months sleeping on an air mattress in a walk-in closet with a girl named Kim. It was during this time in Washington that I met Ted Kennedy, shook Cal Ripken’s hand, and was mugged at knife point.
5. South Shore Bank, Stoughton, MA: After returning to Massachusetts and resuming the sales routine, I decided to move on and was hired to work as a teller by South Shore Bank (later Bank of Boston), the same bank that would later testify against me during my grand larceny trial.
6. McDonald’s, Brockton, MA: Needing to pay for my legal defense, I also went to work for a privately-owned McDonald’s restaurant in Brockton, across town from the company-owned store where I had worked years before. My girlfriend at the time was working in the company-owned store, as were the Jehovah Witnesses with whom I was living. I would work at the bank from 7 AM- 4 PM and would then manage the closing shift at McDonald’s, working from 5 PM until 1:00 AM. I did this for eighteen very long months until my trial concluded and I was found innocent. It was while managing this restaurant that I was robbed at gunpoint.
7. Legal Copy Service, Hartford, CT: Having been found not guilty at my trial, I was free to leave the state, so I moved to Connecticut, chasing a girl and my best friend. I landed my first job at a legal copy service in downtown Hartford. Beginning as a machine operator but unable to stand the monotony of the work, I eventually managed the company’s delivery service until finally quitting after less than four months on the job.
8. The Bank of Hartford, West Hartford, CT: Needing more money, I went back into banking, landing a job at the now defunct Bank of Hartford on Park Road in West Hartford. I was eventually promoted from teller to customer service representative but left after a year when I decided to go to college and was in need of a more flexible schedule.
9. McDonald’s, Hartford, CT: Negotiating a decent salary and a flexible schedule because of my experience and expertise, I went back to work for McDonald’s, this time managing a company owned store on Prospect Avenue in Hartford. I would work from 5 AM- 1PM on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, plus ten hours a day on Saturday and Sunday while going to school, first at Manchester Community College and later at Trinity College and St. Joseph's College.
10. Trinity College, Hartford, CT: While attending Trinity College, I was hired as a writing tutor in the school’s Writing Center. I would spend about three hours each evening teaching freshmen to write a clear and grammatically correct sentences and helping seniors to edit and revise their thesis papers. My name actually appears in the acknowledgements of several thesis papers in the Trinity College library.
11. Jam Packed Dance Floor DJ’s: It was while I was attending Trinity and working for McDonald’s that Bengi and I went into the disc jockey business, entertaining at weddings throughout Connecticut and Massachusetts. We went from booking three weddings in 1997 to 41 weddings in 1998 and have been going strong ever since.
12. Kindergarten tutor, Wethersfield, CT: When I began student-teaching in the spring of 1999, I left McDonald’s for good in order to accommodate the full-day schedule that student-teaching demanded. To supplement the loss in salary, I began tutoring underprivileged kindergarten students for the town of Wethersfield for a period of about six months. The time that I spent with those kids convinced me that kindergarten was not for me.
13. Substitute teacher, New Britain, CT: Having completed my student teaching in early May, I went to work as a full-time substitute teacher in New Britain, the town in which I had done my student teaching. I worked nearly every day until late June, teaching everything from bi-lingual kindergarten to high school physical education.
14. Teacher: In the summer of 1999, I was hired to teach at my current school. I’ve been there ever since.
15. Minister: After becoming ordained by the Universal Life Church, I began conducting wedding ceremonies and baby naming ceremonies as a minister. Many of the wedding ceremonies (but not all) have been booked in conjunction with the DJ business, and I have since branched out into other areas of ministerial work as well. One family actually refers to me as their "family minister".
16. In 2007, I sold my first book, SOMETHING MISSING, to Doubleday Broadway and became a professional author. I had made a little money publishing pieces in newspapers, magazines and professional journals prior to the purchase of my novel, but it had never amounted to much. Since then I have also published UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO and have a two-book deal with my current publisher, St. Martin's. Writing has become a full time career for me.
17. Life coach: After learning about the existence of life coaches from one of my wife's friends, I decided that I was eminently qualified for the job. I began my career as the pro-bono life coach for a colleague and friend but have since been hired by my first client.
Since then I’ve also managed to make a little money as an occasional tutor and public speaker, and there was a time when my blogging brought in a little money each month when I was serving advertising, but nothing has panned out to the point of real profit.
I still have dreams of becoming a professional best man, a gravesite visitor and a professional double date companion (with my wife). I would also like to earn more money public speaking and blogging and am currently working on expanding these career paths.
Recently I began tossing around the idea of becoming a firefighter (a childhood dream of mine), so that might be something I begin exploring, too.
But for now, I’m pretty happy as a writer, a teacher, a life coach, a DJ and an occasional minister.
Had you asked the ten-year-old version of me what I wanted to be when I grow up, I would’ve said teacher and writer. For a long time, I said that I wanted to “write for a living and teach for pleasure.”
I’m not there yet, but it’s not as far away as it used to be, either.
The Forbes piece is “What Your Mother Never Told You About Life After Marriage.” The thesis of the piece (if you haven’t already guessed) is this:
Marriage is not easy, and you were naïve and foolish to think otherwise.
The author cites potato chips in the bed, battles over the remote control, and snoring as irritants that will eventually make any spouse, but especially a wife, crazy.
I find this position to be trite, whiny, shortsighted, cliché and typically advanced by individuals who have made bad spousal choices and are lacking any reasonable degree of perspective.
I would like to offer an alternate thesis:
Marriage can be almost perfect if you marry the right person, avoid selfishness, and have a sensible perspective on life.
A friend recently asked me how Elysha and I manage to have such a good marriage. He pointed out that we almost never argue and continue to live as individuals within the context of a couple.
“How do you guys do it?” he asked.
First, I assured him that we are far from perfect. I still haven’t learned to wash the dishes to my wife’s satisfaction and recently left my daughter’s hair full of shampoo. Last week Clara spent an entire day with her shoes on the wrong feet, courtesy of her father.
I can’t be easy to live with.
Elysha is not without her flaws as well. She is incapable of syncing her iPhone until it becomes nearly inoperable and places items on counters and can no longer see them in the same way the T-Rex in Jurassic Park loses track of it prey if the prey isn’t moving.
We all have room to grow.
Still, our marriage is pretty fantastic. It’s true that we almost never fight and genuinely love spending time together.
We’re frightfully and disgustingly blissful on most days.
So my answer to my friend’s question about how Elysha and I manage this constant state of bliss was this:
I spend 75% of the time ensure that Elysha is happy and 25% of the time ensuring my own happiness.
Elysha spends 75% of the time ensuring that I am happy and 25% of the time ensuring her own happiness.
As a result, we are both happy, and we are both supremely happy with one another.
Simple. Right?
Will this plan work for everyone?
I’m not sure. There are certainly some problems that our 75/25 split cannot overcome.
I know a couple who negotiates free time from the kids as if they are negotiating nuclear nonproliferation.
I have a friend who married a shallow, soulless woman who is incapable of experiencing happiness on any level.
I know a man whose in-laws despise his wife.
I know a woman who cannot share information with her husband because he lacks discretion and tact (no, this is not me).
These are problems that our 75/25 plan might not overcome.
But I also know many couples who are extremely happy in their marriages and do not complain about potato chips in the bed or snoring.
In fact, I know more happy couples than unhappy couples, regardless of what the Forbes piece would have you believe.
Perhaps the people around you play an important role, too.
My daughter has taken to dancing right before bed. We read our books, and just when we are ready to turn off the lights and plop her in her crib, she starts dancing. It’s cute, and she has some genuine moves, but it’s not the best way to relax before going to sleep.
It’s the kind of thing that parents love because they get to watch their kid run around a pole as they genuflect on tradition and ancestry and Earthy goodness, but in the end, the kid is just hanging onto a ribbon and running around a pole. Of all the ancient traditions to survive into the modern day, why this one?
I mean, if your kid grabbed the clothesline and ran around the pole in the backyard, you’d tell him to knock it off.
Right?
Add a few men in skirts and funny hats, a beer garden, and some old timey music and suddenly it’s a thing.
Even if your kid is excited about dancing around a maypole, how long does that last?
Three rotations? Four?
Why couldn't trebuchet firing been the tradition that lived on?
The dog woke up at 2:30 AM. She was acting crazy. Snorting, sneezing, rolling on the ground. I thought she was sick.
Then I smelled something foul.
“Oh no,” I thought. “What has she done?”
I quickly inspected the floor and found nothing. “Just gas,” I thought and decided to bring her outside.
I tossed on some clothing and carried her downstairs as she continued to wheeze and snort.
The smell grew worse by the time we reached the first floor. For a moment I thought it was the dog, about to erupt, but then I realized what it was.
Skunk. Somewhere in the neighborhood, and probably fairly close, a skunk had decided to spray some unfortunate animal. The entire house smelled of skunk and my dog, with her advanced sense of smell, was suffering the worst.
She ran to the front door and scratched. She wanted to go outside. Already dressed, I figured it was still as good a time as any to take her outside, so I attached her leash, opened the door and stepped out onto the stoop.
I looked up. The sky was cloudless and filled with stars.
The dog whined and crawled between my legs.
I looked down. Standing on the front lawn, less than four feet away from me, was the skunk.
I froze.
The skunk didn’t move.
The dog continued to whine.
It was a large skunk. A well-fed skunk. Considerably larger than my 21 pound Lhasa Apso.
Larger than I had ever imagined a skunk to be.
Then the smell hit me. It had been bad inside the house, but out here, the air reeked of the skunk’s scent. The smell had replaced all other smells. For a moment, I thought I had already been sprayed.
I decided to not move. I’d wait and see what the skunk did first. I’d be Hamlet, choosing inaction over action.
I stood there for what felt like a long time. No, it was a long time.
Finally, the skunk turned and trotted around the house toward my backyard.
It’s Thanksgiving. I have much to be thankful for today.
I love The Daily Beast, but their headlines can occasionally be sensationalized to the point of absurdity. Yesterday The Daily Beast reported on a Groupon deal gone bad. British bakery owner Rachel Brown was forced to hire temporary workers when the 75 percent discount she offered through Groupon on a dozen cupcakes was purchased by more than 8,500 people, amounting to about 100,000 cupcakes in need baking.
Brown ultimately lost money on the deal.
The Daily Beast’s headline for this story:
Not only is the headline inaccurate, but the the word terrorize is often used by news agencies in reporting genuine acts of willful intimidation and violence upon individuals and organizations, making The Daily Beast’s inaccurate use of the word highly inflammatory as well.
Shame on you, Daily Beast.
I was leaving the gym at 8:20 PM on Monday night, hurrying home to catch the kickoff of the Patriots game, when I noticed a mother and her two sons standing by the wall of soundless television screens that stretch from floor to ceiling. The boys were elementary school age, probably second and fourth grade, wearing footed pajamas and holding small pillows. Mom was ordering them into a pair of cushioned chairs, which she then swiveled around so that her sons were facing the televisions. The boys had the choice of watching basketball, hockey, the NFL pregame show or ESPN news while their mother walked away to begin her workout.
As a teacher of children their age, my initial thought was this: I’m glad I don’t have those boys in my class. While their classmates were probably already asleep, these two boys were left unsupervised in the lobby area of a gym at 8:20 PM on a school night in front of a dozen television screen so their Mom could exercise.
In their pajamas.
It’s moments like this that I have a difficult time refraining from saying something. While it’s not my business how this mother chooses to parent her children, it is my business.
Kids are my business.
I work hard every day to ensure that my students will have the brightest futures possible. I counsel them daily on how the decisions they make today will impact their lives forever. I tell them that the world is filled with intelligent, talented people who went nowhere because they were unwilling to put in the effort. Kids are my business, and they should have been this woman’s business, too.
But on Monday night, it did not appear that they were. This is a problem. Eventually, these boys will become a problem, if they aren’t already. Someday they might become my problem.
It would’ve been wrong of me to stop this woman before she began her half-hearted leg lifts and warn her about her parental folly. Not only would it have been rude, but the scene could’ve gotten ugly fast.
Besides, kickoff was less than ten minutes away. I had to get home.
But part of me still thinks I was wrong to not say something that night. That every time we choose to say nothing in a situation like this, a child suffers. Parents have a right to choose how they raise their children, but there comes a time when lines are crossed and people, even strangers, need to step in.
But was a line crossed on Monday night? I’m not sure.
When we arrived at the playground, my daughter told told me to stay in the car. “This is Mommy and Clara’s playground,” she said. “You stay here. You can’t come.”
Mind you I’ve been to this particular playground with her many times.
Eventually you agreed to cede me temporary use of the property after I threatened to take her home.
She may own the playground, but the car is mine.
When I was a child, I suffered from paralyzing claustrophobia. I was unable to put my head under blankets, enter closets, crawl under furniture or hide in the dryer (which my sister often did). Tight quarters of any kind terrified me.
I’m not sure if I was born with this fear or suffered a traumatic episode at some point as a child, but one of my first memories is a dream in which I am thrown inside a sack by a handful of shadowy men and tossed into the trunk of a car, unable to warn my unsuspecting father as they prepare to attack and presumably kill him.
I managed to make my way through life relatively unscathed by this fear until my first camping trip as a Cub Scout. Though I wanted to go camping with my friends, I was also keenly aware that we would be sleeping in tents, and in terms of my claustrophobia, I knew that even stepping inside a tent would be impossible.
It was also the first and only camping trip attended by my evil stepfather. I would go on to spend more than 300 nights sleeping outdoors as a Cub Scout and Boy Scout, but this was my one and only chance to have a parent alongside me.
We were sharing a tent with another family, and when it came time to go to bed on the first night, I panicked. I poked my head into the tent, large enough for an adult to stand upright, and knew there was no way I could ever sleep inside.
I couldn’t bring myself to even enter. The prospect of spending an entire night in that tent, zipped up and trapped, frightened me like nothing before. There have been moments in my life when I have been more frightened than that moment, but they are few and far between.
At first I tired to play off my fear as a desire to sleep under the stars.
When that request was refused, I argued that if I slept outside, there would be more room for everyone else inside the tent.
When that request was refused, I panicked. I cried. I became inconsolable. Fear and tears and snot mixed in what must have been an ugly combination.
My stepfather gave me two choices:
Sleep in the tent or go home. He shouted this at me in front of my friends and their parents, mostly fathers but a smattering of mothers, and when I opted for the trip home, he retracted his offer and told me to get inside the tent.
I refused.
There was yelling. Crying. Screaming. At one point the struggle became became physical. I looked to the other parents for help, but their eyes were averted from the scene. Lots of staring at the ground and sudden concern for the loose shoelaces and the cleanliness of the dinner plates.
Eventually my stepfather forced me into the tent and zipped it closed. His only concession was to allow me to sleep by the door. I huddled against the zippered door and cried. Even the confining nature of the sleeping bag frightened me. I was afraid that if I fell asleep, someone might find a way to zip it closed like the sack in that childhood nightmare and trap me inside.
I lay there against the edge of the tent, my sleeping bag fully unzipped, waiting until the last flashlight was switched off and darkness consumed the tent’s interior. Then I pulled the zipper on the tent door open a single inch and pushed one finger through the opening.
One finger on the outside while I was trapped inside. Somehow it made the terror slightly more bearable.
I spent the night in this position, sleeping very little, if at all.
I cried and screamed the second night as well, but it was better.
On the third and final night, I was still sleeping with a finger outside the tent door, and I had cried a bit upon entering the tent, but the panic was gone. It had been replaced by resignation, anger, and shame for how I had behaved on the first two nights.
As I said, I spent many nights sleeping in tents as a Boy Scout, and it took a long time before I was ever comfortable inside a tent or even a sleeping bag. Large family-sized tents eventually gave way to smaller, more confining, two-man models, and these posed an especially difficult challenge for me.
But nothing was ever as bad as that first night with my stepfather, and never again did I require the prodding of an adult to get inside a tent. While I am sure that the spectacle of that first night remained burned in the minds of my friends and their parents for a long time, I entered every tent after that trip with falsified confidence, a counterfeit smile, and a slowly diminishing sense of terror.
I remain claustrophobic today, though only slightly. The only time I ever feel that panicked sense of confinement is when I am in a large crowd, unable to move freely. Closets and sleeping bags no longer frighten me, and if I could fit inside the dryer, I think I’d be fine in there as well.
In many ways, I began to overcome my claustrophobia on that first night of camping as a Cub Scout when my stepfather forced me to face my fear.
Was it right for him to force me inside that tent?
Was it right for him to embarrass me in front of my Cub Scout troop?
Could he have handled the situation more deftly? He was, after all, a psychiatric social worker who occasionally worked with children.
Was this really the best strategy to help a kid overcome an unreasonable fear?
I’m not sure. While I am certain that I would handle the situation differently as a parent, with considerably less anger, physicality and volume, I sometimes think that this was the best thing, and perhaps the only good thing, that my evil stepfather ever did for me.
Had he allowed me to go home that night, I might have quit Scouting altogether and missed out on some of the best moments of my childhood.
Had he allowed me to sleep under the stars, I suspect that my fear for the tent would have only grown larger and more difficult to manage in subsequent camping trips.
It makes me sad to think about that eight year-old version of myself, crammed against the door of the tent, alone, a single finger extended into the cold, autumn air. But had it not been for that long night of terror, I might still be suffering from this paralyzing fear today.
Is good parenting sometimes cruel parenting?
As a parent, I hope to always have the courage to do the right thing for my children when the easy thing would be to coddle and protect them.
But perhaps there is a middle ground.
A space between coddling and the actions of my stepfather that might serve to help my children while not leaving them alone, ashamed, and afraid.
Either way, I think I am grateful to my stepfather for forcing me to face my fear that night.
It may be the only thing I am grateful for, but it's something.
I had a thought. My daughter and I were standing at the top of the slide. The sun was setting. It was unseasonably warm. Geese were flying overhead.
Clara reached over, grabbed my cheeks, and pulled me in for a kiss. Then she counted to three and pushed me down the slide.
A second later she followed. She and I piled up at the bottom of the slide in a tangled, giggling pile.
“Again!” Clara screamed as she disentangled herself from me.
As she began to climb back up the slide, it suddenly occurred to me:
Has any moment in my life been better than this one?
I didn’t think so.
A few may have been comparable, but none have ever been better.
That’s a pretty good feeling.
Two exciting pieces of foreign news related to my upcoming MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND:
1. The UK audio rights to the book have been purchased by WF Howes, an audio and large print publisher based in Leicestershire, England. Since the story is told in the first person, this means that Budo (my protagonist) will presumably be speaking with a British accent.
I cannot wait to hear this.
2. My Italian publisher has hired the translator of JK Rowling’s HARRY POTTER novels to translate MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND.
In the words of my agent:
“This is a pretty big deal. Unlike the in the US, translators’ names hold weight in Europe, so this adds a recognition factor to your book. Plus the translator is supposedly one of the BEST!”
Unless I learn Italian, I’ll never be able to judge the quality of the translation, but it’s wonderful to hear that my book will be in the company of Rowling’s masterpiece.
At least in Italy.
In translation.
On an unrelated note, my second novel, UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO took another baby step this week on its journey to film adaptation.
Nothing is even close to definite yet, but the chances of seeing Milo on the big screen became slightly more probable this week.
Good things apparently come in threes.