Big Daddy Paul

I took Malcolm to his first Giants game as a fully functioning person yesterday.  He is really into the Giants and he can recite the roster by position (with the exception of part-time left fielder and second baseman Eugenio Velez, pronounced "Ay-Yu-Hen-eeo.")  I decided I hadn’t been to a Giants game in far too long, so when Amy suggested I took Malcolm to a day game, I leaped at the opportunity.

We had to stop at the nearby Safeway before the game, and we passed a big black dude in the aisle.  Malcolm took a look at him and asked, "Daddy, is that fat brown guy Pablo Dandoballs?"  I have grown accustomed to Malcolm making derogatory comments about strangers, so I handled this the usual way.  I sprinted away from him and muttered something like, "I think all the players are already in the dugout.  Let’s go find some sun screen!"

At the game, Malcolm was a gem! We watched around six innings of the game, and Malcolm made a good showing at the tot baseball diamond by slamming a whiffle ball off of a ball park employee’s knee.  During the game, I taught Malcolm to say, "Grab some pine, meat!" when the opposing player struck out.  The first time he was able to bust it out, he yelled, "Put some meat in my hand!"  After some coaching, he responded to a strikeout by yelling, "Grab some pie, matey!"  Not quite there yet, but we are making progress.

We thoroughly enjoyed the game, he sat in my lap most of the time so I could point out where the ball was heading.  Of course, this meant that he kicked the old woman sitting in front of us in the head a couple times.  I should have been more concerned, but at least he didn’t call her a dried up bag o’ bones. 

I took Malcolm to his last soccer practice last week.  The coach never really came to understand how a three year old child’s mind works and had the enthusiasm of a hungover cop.  During the final practice, he had the kids try and scrimmage again, and when it didn’t work and he got tired of yelling at the kids, he gave up.  That’s right, after a grand total of ten minutes of “practice” time, he told the kids it was over, and then took them to the rec center and gave them ice cream bars.  They played foosball in the rec center after wolfing down the ice cream, and it was the most excitement the kids showed toward soccer for the entire summer. 

With his summer now winding down, I can reflect on what we have done and what the future holds.  This will forever be the summer that Malcolm got into baseball. We go to the park almost every day and he really enjoys playing the game.  He has even started to hit from both sides of the plate!  While I am a little sad that he won’t be the left handed middle reliever that every baseball minded dad wants out of his kid, at least I have the prospect of a switch hitting middle infielder.  Go Malkie! I don’t care if he is ever good at baseball, but the fact that he is excited by playing ball with me is enough (for now!).

Malcolm returns to preschool this week, and I couldn’t be more excited.  I now will get a break for four and a half hours a day. I could lie and say that it will probably mean that I can blog, exercise or bathe more regularly, but the reality of it all is that I will probably just use the time to research my fantasy football draft.  Sue me.

P.S. I am quite aware that the dad (or child abductor) pictured to the left has two kids, and we have but the one. This picture is supposed to be a metaphor for the winding down of our summer lives together.  Consider the second child to be a metaphor for just how much I like to each nachos.  Not the best metaphor you will ever see, but really, metaphors are a pretty lame rhetorical device, don’t ya think?

I took Malcolm to a Baseball Game yesterday.  This wasn’t his first game, as I dutifully took him to games when he was an infant.  This was, however, his first game as a little person, able to both talk in complete sentences and use the men’s room. (I am definitely not counting our first trip to the Oakland Coliseum as a “trip to the men’s room.”) I considered the game a test run, as the tickets only cost $2 and I wanted to make sure Malcolm would be OK at a game before I shelled out serious money to take him to see a real team, the Giants. We had a pretty good time and lasted until the 7th inning.  I think we’ll go to another game this year, as long as he is able to enjoy the things that he did yesterday.

Malcolm loves hot dogs.  This week, he has loved them off the grill at dad’s group, out of the microwave at IKEA, and from out of whatever-the-hell-they-use-at-the-ballpark.  That’s three straight days of lips and assholes, (it’s almost like he’s at Burning Man!)  I would have suggested something else today (like nachos, sweet nachos) but the hot dogs only cost 1 dollar, and there was no way that the dads from my dad’s group and I were going to pay more than a few bucks on food.  Perhaps it was this general interest in a cheap date that made me boycott beer for the first time in my life, and I refused to spend $8 on a tea cup full of bud light.  A half hour later, and 8 Oakland A’s runs later, I had 10 hot dogs and I returned to the group to find that Malcolm had run off and the kids were generally uninterested in baseball. Malcolm loved his dog and a half, and after I had eaten my two and half dollars’ worth, I wish I had eaten nachos.

Malcolm loves running around with his friends.  We were there with my friends from dad’s group, so Malcolm had his full compliment of cohorts to get into trouble with.  We couldn’t really see anything since the $2 seats give you a view similar to that from the Hubble Space Telescope, so Malcolm decided the best way to enjoy the game was to run races around the handicap seating area.  This lasted until the very large, very mean security guard came and told us that the kids really shouldn’t be running around like that.  My initial thought, “Well, you really shouldn’t be wearing a mustache like that,” never made it out of my mouth, and we reluctantly corralled the kids back to our area.

Malcolm loves ice cream.  Amy’s mom was in town and had promised to make brownies with Malcolm after his nap.  He had been offered cookies at the park, which I said he could have in lieu of brownies, which he politely declined.  (Delayed gratification in a 3 year old, I love this kid!) When his friend Priya announced that she wanted cotton candy, Malcolm joined in the chorus saying, “I want cotton candy too! What is cotton candy?”  When offered the choice between this strange cotton candy phenomenon, he stuck to the know qualities of brownies.  That lasted only until the ice cream guy showed up.  More specifically, the guy pedaled ice cream sandwiches, two chocolate cookies with vanilla ice cream in the middle.  Malcolm told me that he really wanted one and that he no longer wanted to make brownies with grammy.  It was getting warmer and I thought he actually made a good decision, and isn’t that what parenting is all about? So he had a fantastic ice cream sandwich and enjoyed himself greatly.

We’ll probably be checking out the Giants later this summer, as long as the following conditions are met.  First, the tickets can cost no more than $4.  Total food expenditures cannot exceed $10.  He must have at least 5 friends to play with, and everyone needs to sit together.  Now that I think about it, maybe we won’t be going to anymore games…

Up until now, Malcolm has been brutally and unbendingly honest with us. When we ask him if he hits somebody, he says, “yes.” When we ask him if he broke something, he admits it, if he did. Yesterday, I asked him if we was being mean to the cat, he replied, “just a wittle bit.” Today, however was a different story.

We went to baseball practice again. (For those who follow this blog closely, I was excited because the regular coach was absent and the replacement had lots of energy and engaged the kids really well. I was so bummed to learn that the regular coach will be back next week!) After practice ended, we rounded up the gear and set off for the car. I couldn’t find his bat, and we looked all over for it. After a while, Malcolm told me that he saw the little boy take it. I asked which boy, and he said the boy with the brown skin. This kinda made sense to me, as I had seen one of the boys playing in the outfield with a bat during the practice. I didn’t remember taking Malcolm’s bat out of our sports bag, so I asked whether Malcolm had seen the boy take the bat out of our bag, and he said, “yes.” I asked a second time to confirm that he had, in fact, seen the boy take our bat out of the bag, and he confirmed that he did. Boy, was I mad.

I got my speech ready for the boy’s mom as we walked around the park looking for them. I was going to say something along the lines of, “Are you teaching your kids to steal, or are you just not parenting at all?” I realized that I, the white guy, was walking on slippery ice by accusing the black kid of taking our stuff, but I had an eye witness, and my eye witness had never been wrong before. When we didn’t find them in the park, I went to the office and told the coach everything that I knew, hoping that justice would come next week at the latest. And then, we got home.

Sitting on the floor of our kitchen, underneath a large pile of shopping bags, was Malcolm’s bat. I was really bummed. Not only did Malcolm stop telling the truth, but this was the first time I had noticed Malcolm noticing a difference in skin color. Sadly, his first act of racial identification was to accuse (wrongly) a black kid of stealing. Thus, Malcolm joined the huge population of white people who, when asked about their assailant’s identity said, “I don’t know, but was a black guy!” I can only guess at how bad I would have felt if the family had still been at the park and I would have laid into them. We’re not out of the woods, yet, as we still have to explain what happened to the coach next week. This week, though, we have to start talking to Malcolm about telling the truth. It is a sad time, indeed.