Big Daddy Paul

It is a fact. Kids get dirty. Oh, you can try to stop them from picking up goose poop and then jamming their tiny little fingers in their nose (and then eating the whole mess, something we call the “Canadian Boogie” in our house,) but the truth is, kids are going to explore the world. Sometimes that means getting dirty. The real question is, “How do you deal with it?”

A growing group of parents are dealing with it by sanitizing the shit out of their kids. Each contact with germ laden materials is immediately met with a visit by the hand sanitizer fairy with the hope that a cleaner child is somehow a healthier child. In this world, there is no five second rule and touching anything at the doctor’s office is a strict no-no. Forget about play dates with the snotty kid from school. Germs are the enemy of the people and must be eradicated by any means necessary.

Well, I am here to tell you today that this is all nonsense.

I need a name for this drink

Sure, it’s handy to have a high-alchohol gel on hand to take quick nips from when you desperately need some hair of the dog to combat last night’s festivities, but it’s just not worth it. A recent Slate Article interestingly found that what this 100 million dollar a year industry doesn’t want you to know: these hand sanitizers won’t stop you from getting sick. Worse yet, a recent study found that pervasive use of these products will actually make you sicker later in life. The theory goes: if you expose yourself to germs early on, your body learns how to deal with them. When you don’t, your body struggles with germs later in life (in the same way that people who take up golf later in life suck at it.) Consider early childhood germs the equivalent of locking your child in a closet with a box of cigars so that they will think smoking is a disgusting activity. The kicker is that, since sanitizers can’t kill all of the bacteria, the bacteria that survive become resistant to anti-bacterials and become something totally frightening called “super bugs.” There’s only one place in this world where “super bugs” should be allowed and that’s in a smash up derby.

In light of all this, we have made a conscious decision to expose Malcolm to as much filth as possible. In China, we smiled when he grabbed a lollipop from a local kid and licked it, and smiled even more when he dropped it on the ground (in Tianenmen Square, mind you) and then plopped it back it his mouth. If he starts licking the backs of seats on an airplane, we call it, “character building.”  We don’t have a five second rule. In fact, we slow cook meals on the hood of the car. If it’s true that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Malcolm will become a bodybuilder (until he dies of E.Coli exposure.)

Oh sure, we tell Malcolm to wash his hands after pooping in the middle of dinner, but we don’t sweat the small stuff. Germs are everywhere, and each disgusting lollipop he eats is one bug that won’t get him later in life. One day he’ll figure out on his own that there are places his tongue doesn’t belong, but only because it’s embarrassing and not unhealthy. So let your kids give eskimo kisses to the snotty kid and at school, and if one day your kid’s  sandwich accidentally falls into a homeless person’s shoe, let it slide. They’ll be better off for it. We don’t carry around a diaper bag anymore, but, even if we did, it wouldn’t have Purell in it. No need to, it’s in the flask!

I love my kid. He is a fun, energetic little ball of curiosity. He gives me some of the funnest days that I can remember. He does have a pretty significant drawback, though. He is bad at art. Really bad. Think Jackson Pollock if he was blind and had no arms and legs. Each time I see copies of his latest “project” I put on the happy face and say, “wow, did you do that?” In reality, I think to myself, “how much more of this stuff do I gotta put up with. My kid can’t draw for shit!”

I realize how poor my reaction is. A better parent would spend more time with their kid on art projects to develop their skills along to the point where they don’t inspire cringing. The problem is, I am even worse than him! If I had an artistic bone in my body, then I broke it years ago and it never fully healed. We played drunken charades last weekend and all I got for my clues were blank stares and head scratches. Maybe my irritation is that Malcolm can already draw better than me and he is four. It is precisely that reason that Malcolm and I never do art projects around the house (that is clearly Amy’s job.) I have utterly nothing to offer him in the artistic development department, and he is falling behind.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t present much of an issue, Malcolm is terrible at a lot of different things. He doesn’t know how to properly cook a steak, his Spanish sounds like gibberish, and he couldn’t shoot a squirrel to save his life. The unique problem with the art, is that we have so much of it lying around the house. Between his art class at preschool and Amy’s occasional afternoon paint fests, Malcolm has already generated a substantial body of work. Our house shows it too, as evidence of his prolificness occupy every nook and cranny in our home. We got pottery on the counter that looks like cat poo, pictures reminiscent of baseball diamonds on the floor of his room, paintings of giant blobs, some of which having arm and legs, hanging from every square inch of wall space, and collages looking like nothing special and containing every known waste item known to humanity sitting around everywhere.

I realized today that cleaning up the clutter around this place is so difficult because it always involves the same question, “Does throwing this away make me a bad person?” Sure, I’d like to keep all of it, but that would require the use of a rented storage unit, which is simply not going to happen. I don’t want Malcolm to think that I don’t appreciate his effort, but does it really make sense to keep all of it? We have our favorite paintings (Pablo Sandoballs, Funny Looking House and Odd Rainbow) all hanging up on specially designed picture hangers, but what to do with the rest. So far, I have just been throwing the rest into the back of his closet, but one day that pile of near trash is going to come down, and if it contains the wrong collage, it may take Malcolm with it. Is there a better way?

Malcolm is getting a babysitter tonight.  Amy has work functions, and rather than be a responsible parent and take care of my child by myself, I am outsourcing the job to a babysitter so that I can go out with my friends, drink beer and play poker.  I guess I’ll play softball at some point too.

I was thinking earlier this week that I would have to skip the game, as I couldn’t think of anyone who would be willing to stay with Malcolm while I went out and ruined myself.  I posted an email to our neighborhood listserv and one of my neighbors gave me a referral for a nanny who is looking for nighttime work as well.  Some parents may have checked on references, cross checked against the sex offender list, and interviewed the prospective sitter.  I on the other hand, did this: 1) retrieve phone number from email, 2) called “Gabriella”, and 3) asked her if she could do it.  She had me at, “I’m available!” I am not sure whether my computer or Malcolm, for that matter, will still be here when I return, but my team needs its third baseman and I have a better than average shot at winning the poker game. It’s a good thing, too, because I need to win just to break even for the night. $15 an hour for babysitting?!  He’ll be asleep most of the time!!! At that cost, I am expecting our refrigerator to be cleaned up when I get back.  I guess I just hope the fridge is still here when I get home.

In order to ready the house for the arrival of a stranger, I have been working all day to make it look like Malcolm and I don’t live in a fraternity.  Amy has been gone early in the morning all week, and has been returning late in the evening, so she hasn’t really been able to notice that our house has been taken over by clutter.  So, I have spent the day furiously eliminating all traces of my domestic ineptitude.  I started in the office, the room that connects Malcolm’s room to the family room.  The room is scary, and I don’t like to go in there if at all possible.  It is the place where everything else in the house goes before other guests arrive.  By now, it looks like the underside of a bridge, so I had to find a new place for all the junk that has no other place in the house.  After a mere four hours of stashing stuff either under the desk or in the closet, I downgraded the room to messy, which is good enough for the babysitter.

I next moved to the kitchen, where removing a few days worth of gunk and stains proved a little more difficult than imagined.  I felt a little conflicted, as Rosie, our house cleaner is coming tomorrow and I didn’t want to spend too much time doing something she is going to end up doing (better) tomorrow. I ended up throwing out a fair number of screws that had accumulated on the kitchen counter, and I couldn’t help but wonder how they all got there. Something is definitely going to be falling apart soon.  Cleverly, I put all the empty wine bottles into the recycling, masking how Amy and I spend our evenings at home.

Finally, I made me way to the family room/Malcolm play room.  Good thing too, for, in my infinite wisdom a few days ago, I allowed Malcolm to play with a canister of toothpicks.  (He called them his “friends” and played baseball with them.  He is definitely settling into his role as single child!) I imagined what a child care professional would say after  Malcolm dragged her over to his table and proudly pointed to his favorite “toys” to play with, only to find that they were 200 or so small pointy sticks.  I piled the toothpicks into his drawer and gave a little prayer that she wouldn’t go prying around and come upon them unsuspectingly.  Then again, for $15 an hour, she probably is a pretty good private eye too.

I have a problem. It’s not the problem you might think, considering the title of this post, but it is a problem nonetheless. I can’t put anything away. Long time readers already know about the various things lying around the house that have never been put away, but my problem extends into other aspects of my world.

My wallet is a disaster. In it, is every receipt that I have been given in the last two years. In addition, I have loyalty cards for cheesesteak restaurants, membership cards from video stores (in Reno and Davis), and betting slips from the horsetrack and sportsbooks. The sad thing looks like a worn out old sofa, with stuff sticking out in every direction trying to make an escape.

This is particularly dangerous development when I hang out with my softball team, for we spend a lot of time betting on things, and the size of the bet is always a dollar. Wondering who will get more hits that game? Bet someone a dollar. Think you know the name of the obscure band who’s song is singing on the jukebox? Put a dollar on it. One time I bet a guy as to how many times one of the boys would look at his cards during our weekly poker game before he either bet or folded. (The answer was 7, and I won).

The end result of these dollars flying all around is that I come home with many, many dollar bills in pocket. At the end of a long night of drinking and gambling, I usually am quite put out after the laborious task of taking my wallet out of my pocket. So, the dollar bills get left behind, and only see the light of day when I prepare my monthly task of washing my pants. Since I am a complete train wreck, I typically leave the dollars wherever I am when I check the pockets. That is why we have dollar bills on the top of my dresser, the floor of the closet, the top of Amy’s dresser, the foot of the washing machine, the desk in the kitchen, all over the office, and on top of the entertainment center. (I wanted to call it a credenza, but only old people have credenzas and I don’t want to be an old person yet.)

So, every Thursday morning, our cleaning lady, Rosie, scurries about the house, making us look like we are not complete slobs. In the process, she gathers up all the little wads of cash, and places them nicely in a pile on top of the “not-a-credenza.” I can only assume what she thinks I use them for, but honestly it is not that. Amy if you are reading this, it is not that. I swear. This whole convoluted story is the real reason.