Big Daddy Paul

Best title ever? Probably so. I’ll probably have to delete the post once Malcolm starts surfing the internet on his own, but until then: enjoy!

We went camping this weekend. Amy had to go to Europe for work, so Malcolm and I joined some of my friends with kids for some roughing it on the Yuba river. I don’t know if you can call it “roughing it,” considering we had access to decent bourbon and premium salami, but since I packed neither shoes nor deodorant, I noticed a difference from a normal weekend. Who’s got two thumbs, flip flops and stay at home dad musk? This guy! (Now that I write that, I see a tremendous opportunity for a new cologne: SAHD musk. Marketing campaign will go something like this: For the man who doesn’t need to impress anyone. Salami. Funk. SAHD Musk: the scent of unemployment.)

I am hoping this is a normal thing with kids, but Malcolm does very odd things when he gets excited. I wish that he expressed his excitement in a productive manner, like, say, helping me unload the car or making guacamole. Instead, he tends to get a little pervy. As we were getting dinner ready the first night, Malcolm and some of his little buddies went down to the river with the other parents playing the part of chaperone. After about five minutes, my friend Greg came back and said, “I think that you should know that your son was groping me down by the river. I would have let it slide but he did it three times and it got really annoying.” Pausing and wondering whether I wanted to know, I caved and asked where Malcolm touched him. He told me Malcolm grabbed his junk and then jabbed him twice in the butthole with his finger.  We had been there all of 20 minutes and Malcolm’s first notable act was to treat my good friend like a home schooled proctologist. I tried to hide my shame by doing what comes naturally. I jammed my finger up Greg’s butt and told him that’s how we roll on the Yuba. He wasn’t impressed. The last thing you want to do when you are trying to enjoy the great outdoors with your fiends is have to explain to your child that he shouldn’t be tickling anyone’s prostate. Malcolm has a history of shenanigans like this (his schoolmates call him Clarence Thomas) so I had to banish him to his tent to contemplate whether he was going to spend the whole weekend acting weird or if he could calm down a little. There was some occasional semi-clothed wrestling with one of the other kids, but for the most part he turned it around.

Take this stick, sneak right up behind Greg and...

The rest of the weekend went a bit smoother. The kids played. The parents drank. We swam in a cold river. We ate marshmallows and other yummy camp food. When the kids went to bed in the tents, the grown ups sat around the campfire discussing important issues like, “What’s the theme song to the show, Growing pains?” and “Should we allow the Schwarts boys along when Amy can’t come?” The kids there ranged from a few months old to fourth grade, and, despite the age difference, they got along fabulously. They organized themselves into imaginary games and for some of the scarier missions, the older kids led the younger ones around by holding their hands. It was some truly cute stuff.

With my selective memory, I will remember this weekend as the weekend that Malcolm took up whiffle ball. We played a game with the older kids and dads, with people generally pitching as fast as the could. There were strikeouts, dramatic tag outs and some epic home runs. (Not by me, mind you. I put the whiff in whiffle ball out there.) I did have the foresight to draft Malcolm on my team, meaning I didn’t have to suffer the indignity of having him strike me out, which some of the other dads did.

On Monday, after we had arrived home and I took Malcolm to school, Malcolm asked me if we could go to the park and play some whiffle ball. My heart leapt! When kids ask their parents to do stuff that parents really like to do, whether it’s work on crafts, read, play music, cook or throw rocks at the neighbor’s cat, the parent is overcome with an emotion that is often lost in the day to day routine: sheer bliss. Malcolm asked me to play whiffle ball and I was in nirvana. After school, we played for 90 minutes straight at the park near his school. It was awesome. Afterwords, Malcolm slapped me a high five and said, “Daddy, that was really fun.” The smile grew across my face, my spirits soared and I couldn’t help but think, “Well that sure beats a finger in the butt.”

Every Memorial Day, we visit our friends Regina and Judd. They live on a cattle ranch near the California-Oregon border. Together, they do three out the following five things: raise cattle, grow alfalfa, function as the guidance counselor at the local high school, murder bad guys that the mainstream police can’t catch, and tattoo each others chests with pro-racism messages. (I’ll leave the guesswork of which ones fit to you.) It is one of our favorite weekends of the year, as evidenced by our prior trips here, here, and here.

Most of the time, we go up to the Hanna Ranch to experience life in the country, complete with guns, “barrel-food” and a bar where people on dates often wear the same outfit. (Apparently, camouflage hats and vests are the hot fashions for both men AND women in some places!) I sometime help Judd out with his chores around the farm, Malcolm spends a little time on the back of the horse and Amy wears non-skinny jeans. It’s a welcome change from our normal weekends.

Who's ready for some vomit-free fun?

This year’s trip was a bit different. Malcolm has a nice little tradition of throwing up in the car on the way up. This year? No nacho cheese Dorito-colored vomit worked its way into every crevice of the back seat. Similarly, he showed little interest in cruising around the ranch to play with all the old trucks and tractors dotting the property or going for a horsie ride. We didn’t go for our family four wheeler ride and I only pressured Judd to take me out squirrel hunting once. I didn’t even sneak out at night wearing Judd’s clothes and cowboy hat to pretend that I was a real rodeo cowboy. (Bulls weigh somewhere around 2,500 pounds. I find it is much easier to ride them at night, while they are sleeping!) This year was different.

This year, we had gourmet weekend away. Regina and Judd arranged for babysitting one day and we went wine tasting with them and some friends of theirs from the local college. While sipping fine pinots, we made comments like, “Does this taste more like saddle or wet wool?” We learned the proper way to pronounce the word, “Qatar.” Hint, it doesn’t rhyme with guitar. We pretended that we were too highbrow for corn dogs and moose munch. We even laughed at some poor schmuck in Ashland that took a drink from a fountain, thinking it was fresh spring water, only have it turn out to be sulfuric nastiness that smelled and tasted like a Nascar fan’s butt. Poor sap. All his friends were laughing at him, probably because they were so jealous that he was so good looking and fun to talk to. Anyways, it had been a while since we had been wine tasting and we had a great time.

When they weren’t whisking us around Southern Oregon showing us how the 1% lives, the Hannas  treated us to some pretty stellar food around their place. They served us farm eggs in the morning and roast lamb, hearty Brazilian black beans superb pasta and, get this, bacon-wrapped venison tenderloin for dinner. I am pretty sure I would eat anything that started with the words bacon-wrapped, even if the name of the dish ended with the words, “salmon vagina.”

Ummmm, yes.

When we finished stuffing our pie holes with dinner, they brought us homemade lemon bars and white chocolate fruit tarts. While we were eating the amazing food, we drank excellent wines and expertly crafted cocktails. I thought we had checked into the Scotts Valley Four Seasons.

You may be asking yourself what Malcolm was doing while we were eating like royalty. I am proud to report that I have no fucking idea. He was quite content to muck about with the Hanna kids around the house. We occasionally received word from the Hanna five year old that Malcolm wasn’t sharing and there were reports that he removed his pants at one point, but, for the most part, the kids did an excellent job of entertaining themselves. This meant we got to eat, drink and be merry with our pals on the Hanna ranch, and were we treated to a ridiculously fine time. What’s better than a weekend where your kid has a great time and you get to have fun doing grown up stuff (besides bacon-wrapped salmon vagina)? Nothing, we can’t wait for next year!

Kids have a nasty habit of growing up. When they are born, their shit literally does not stink. Perhaps as a harbinger of things to come, little baby excrement one day turns foul, letting you know that everything you know and like about your kid will one day disappear. Every time we seem to hit a point where we have conquered the demons that torment Malcolm, something new, unexpected and unwanted pops up.

Malcolm is currently going through some personality changes that we aren’t so thrilled about. He is testing boundaries. Sometimes this can be quite charming, like when a young tiger cub cautiously ventures out into the world, periodically checking back with his mom to make sure everything is OK. Malcolm isn’t acting like a cautious cub, however. Right now, he mostly channels a velociraptor, violently throwing itself against an electric fence to methodically find weakness. He has gone from a child who mostly wants to please his parents into a kid who wants to find out what he can get away with. His teachers at school used to beam about him to us during afternoon pickups. Now, they generally roll their eyes at me when I ask how everything is going.

By far, the most disappointing aspect of this phase is the lying. Malcolm used to be honest with us, copping to everything from biting to secret cookie consumption. When that got inconvenient and embarrassing, his memory began to fail. When asked about subjects that he didn’t really want to dive into, he would claim that he “couldn’t remember.” This seemed to work for him until he began claiming that his memory couldn’t go back as little as fifteen minutes prior. Realizing this strategy didn’t have much in the way of legs, he began to spin the truth, “Yes, daddy, I hit Billy, but he hit me first.” Then the justifications got sufficiently wild that we both knew he was stretching the truth, “Well, if I HADN’T shown Louis my wiener at school, he was going tell everyone I didn’t have one!” He has now come to the conclusion that it’s just better to lie and save himself all the drama.

Raise your hand if you've ever told your parents you've got your pajamas on, when, in fact, you don't have your pajamas on!

Like a young Skywalker, impressed with his newly developed powers of the Force, Malcolm is using his new trick as often as he can. He lies about brushing his teeth. He lies about changing his socks. He lies about washing his hair in the shower, even though his hair is completely dry. Mostly, he lies to protect his habit of being alarmingly lazy, even to the point of bearing false witness to whether he wiped his butt after pooping. (!) The other night, he told us that he finished his dinner, when, in fact, he had just dumped half his plate under the ottoman. When we found it the next day, he blamed it on his friend Henry. A double whopper! Impressive for a six year old, no?

Luckily, everyone reminds me that this behavior is “developmentally appropriate.” These words are useful to avoid blaming my DNA for leading Malcolm down behavioral paths that lead to prison, but they also scare the shit out of me. If lying is part of the developmental equation, then so is getting good at it. Right now, the lie doesn’t come easy to him. Right before making up a tall tale, he pauses, looks directly at his eyebrows, and then blurts out the most obvious non-truth. He gets called out on it because we can totally tell that he is not giving us a straight story. Things are going to get a lot more dicey when we aren’t able to decipher whether his story is true or not. If he gets really good at it, he may even go to law school one day, a truly horrific thought!

At some point, we are going to have to sit down with him and teach him how to lie. Of course, we don’t want him to be generally untruthful, but sometimes the lie is the right way to proceed with things. When a classmate asks why Malcolm isn’t going to a birthday party, it’s not really cool to say that the birthday boy smells like a wet goat. I can’t tell you how many uncomfortable social situations I have gotten out of by harmlessly telling people, “Yes, that is a banana in my pocket!” There are times in life when a nice little harmless lie will do the job just fine. We can’t really show him how to do this right now; he’s got to finish his Jedi training before he can face the emperor. Until then, some socks won’t get changed, some teeth won’t get cleaned, and the family room floor may have more pork on it that we are accustomed to. We’ll just take our lumps.

Everyone has holidays that like more than others. There are Christmas people, Halloween people, and I know one guy who thinks that Flag Day is the coolest day of the year. (It may also be his birthday.) (“He” may be me.) I can honestly tell you, I’m not all that fond of Easter. Why, you ask? Let me tell you:

First, I find the religious aspect of it all quite confusing. Easter Sunday comes on the heels of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and So-So Saturday. That’s a lot of stuff in one week!  If “Good” Friday is the day Jesus is paraded through town and then crucified, then I would hate to see what happens on a bad day. (Maybe that explains why people always tell me that they think my blog is “good!”) There’s treachery, Italian meals, gruesome death scenes, and happy endings. It’s not a holiday, it’s an episode of the Sopranos! And what’s a Maundy? I looked it up and it means “Laundry.”  Mmmmkay.

Not even the music can save the holiday. Christmas has a million songs and you can teach them all to kids. Throw them “Away in a manger” along with “Rudolph” and they can happily sing their way through the holiday. Ever try to teach a kid to sing Handel’s, “Messiah?” Not gonna work. We need more accessible Easter music.

Explaining all this to kids gets pretty tough, too:

What are we celebrating today daddy?

Jesus came back from the dead.

Cool! Can our cats come back from the dead?

No, only the son of god can do that.

Why not?

Well, you know how I let you play goalie in soccer more than the other kids? It’s like that. Sometimes parents play favorites with their kids.

How did Jesus die?

Everybody hated him. They tortured him, made him wear a hat with pricklies in it and then nailed him to a cross and stuck a pitchfork in his ribs. He died slowly and in agony.

[While slowly approaching for a hug] Can we just celebrate Valentines Day again? I like pink!

Even if you strip out the religious story behind it all, Easter really is a pain in the ass to celebrate. There is no more terror-inspiring figure in all of the holiday world than the Easter Bunny. I have yet to see a Easter Bunny suit that doesn’t make the wearer look like a member of the occult. Sitting on Santa’s lap makes kids cry. Being approached by a six foot tall psychedelic bunny makes kids shit their pants. You then have the difficult task of explaining where the Bunny got all those eggs and why he/she is hiding them all over the place. Does the Easter Bunny just hate chickens? You tell me! You also have to describe just what the heck “Peeps” are made of, and why they all appear to have been made in 1947.

Of course, no Easter is complete with the time honored tradition of decorating eggs. If your family is like ours, it means your house stinks like vinegar and boiled eggs. They should rename the holiday, “Smells Like Fart Day.” If your family is REALLY like ours, it also means that you accidentally buy brown eggs to decorate every year, meaning ALL of the Easter eggs turn out varying shades of green. Not all that exciting! After the kids decorate the eggs, you feed them to the kids, hoping that the various chemicals you use won’t erode the kids’ tiny little brains. You could just throw the eggs away, but that I don’t think Jesus would be too thrilled that he went through all that so you could create some brightly colored garbage. Nope, you have to make them eat the eggs.

I don't think he dislikes the holiday like I do.

By Sunday, your kids misbehave because they have eaten about 3 pounds of chocolate, marshmallows and greenish hard boiled eggs. They distrust you because you have attempted on several occasions to furiously scrub the dye off their hands and they don’t have much skin left on their paws. Some kids are pissed because they have been forced to dress in nice outfits and subjected to church services. Others are confused as to what Laundry Thursday means. If you ask me, it makes for a pretty shitty holiday. Or a “good” one, as the case may be.