Originally posted September 4, 2005

So my daughter comes in and says matter-of-factly, “Daddy, did you know dinosaurs are stink?”

I thought this was kind of funny, in both her comment and her “learning how to use language” mangling of the sentence, so I answered, “Really? I didn’t know that dinosaurs stink.”

She kind of looked at me with furrowed brow and said, “No, dinosaurs are stink!”

I was not getting it, but I decided to play along. “Ewww, dinosaurs are stinky!”

Now she was getting into that frustrated dad-you-are-such-an-idiot place that all my girls know so well, “No! They don’t stink. They are stink.”

So I kind of scratch my head and break this down to the very basics: “What does stink mean?”

She replied, “It means they aren’t around any more.”

Dad’s can be plenty stupid some times.

Originally posted July 9, 2005

I was perusing Jamie Dawn’s blog, which has a lot of neat anecdotes about things like her husband needing eight Q-tips to clean his skull orifices every morning, when I stumbled upon a comment from someone with the word “G-d” in it. Now, my immediate instinct was that they were using a polite acronym for goddamn, one of those good old-fashioned curse words that still has a bite, unlike these lame modern imposters like assclown or asshat. But, no, I was mistaken. The usage of “G-d” was actually describing “God,” as in the almighty creator and the one who will eventually mete out the punishment for my subjecting you all to my thoughts.

Now, call me overly sensitive, but using a word for “God” that also means “goddamn” seems a tad disrespectful to the big guy. I mean, we don’t call our country’s leaders “dick” and “bush” do we? Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best example, but you get my point.

I do understand the philosophy behind what the G-d people are trying to do (that’s G-d as in “god” smartass), but the trouble is that this eventually leads to chaos. To wit: Presumably the goal in using G-d is to show respect for God by not using his name. Well, “God” isn’t really his name is it? It’s our representation of his name in the English language.

Now the more pious among you may say that it being a representation of his name is enough that we should respect it by not using it in print. Fair enough, but the moment we start using G-d, that becomes a representation of his name. Soon, we’ll be needing to replace G-d with G–, and eventually after that it will have to be —. Alas, even this homage to the hyphen will need to be replaced since it, too, will be a representation of God’s name.

The only real solution is to simply avoid the naming thing entirely. Unfortunately, this leads to us referring to god as “you know who” or “he who shall not be named.” And, I don’t know about you, but when I hear phrases like that I immediately assume that someone named Hermione or Ron will be involved in the conversation shortly.

Originally posted June 18, 2005

One of my pet peeves occurs when a family member yells through two or more rooms for me. Generally speaking, unless they are drawing my attention to a debilitating injury, something amusing that another family member is doing, or a cat with its head in the fish bowl, I believe they should come to me and discuss it.

Recently I tried to use some forceful parenting to break my three little daughters of this habit. It was during this pursuit that I learned that I was not facing laziness and bad habits; I was facing nothing less than a hardwired element of my daughters’ personality. Or so my 3 1/2 year old daughter would have me believe.

She informed me of this while yelling across the house for me. After numerous attempts to get her to come to me, I finally decided to address this head-on with her on her turf. So I walked sternly into her room to find out what she needed and why, by all that is right in the world, she couldn’t come to me and ask me directly.

She thought about it for a moment, and then very simply stated, “Because I’m a Yeller, and you’re a Goer, Daddy.” I then proceeded to be taught by my 42 month old daughter that she, her sister, and my wife were all “Yellers.” I, on the other hand, was a Goer. This was how life was, and, as a Goer, I had to “go” when the Yellers called.

There was no room for discussion. This was the way of the world, and if I didn’t like my position as a Goer, well, I should have thought of that before I became one. My wife witnessed this conversation and didn’t help matters by vigorously nodding in agreement.

I actually tried the opposite tack and became a Yeller myself. Little did I realize that society as we know it breaks down when there are no Goers and all Yellers. Of course, as the Goer, I got blamed. A Goer that no longer “goes” is even worse than a Yeller apparantly.

As it is, I continue to fight the good fight, doing my best to recruit someone–anyone–over to the Goer side. It rarely works, however. Just the other day I told my daughter that if she wanted something, she would have to go get it herself. “Be a Goer!” I enthusiastically told her. She smiled, and replied, “But I’m a Yeller. You’re the Goer!”

I nodded slowly. Sometimes acceptance is best.

Originally posted June 11, 2005

So my daughter walks up to me and say, “Here’s your ring, Daddy,” and hands me my wedding ring. Now this completely shocks me, as I didn’t remember ever taking my wedding ring off. It is extremely rare that I ever take my wedding ring off, and even then it is generally just so my daughters can play with it for a bit. But here was my three and a half year old daughter walking up to me and handing me my wedding ring, and I had absolutely no memory of taking it off. I certainly did not take if off that day for them to play with.

What was perhaps just as disturbing was the fact that I didn’t notice. That would be like losing your middle finger and only realizing it when someone cut in front of you while you were driving to the grocery store. What was going on here?

The mystery was made only slightly less mysterious when my passing wife remarked, “Oh yeah, it was lying on the side of the bed when you woke up this morning.” This was good in that I could be sure I wasn’t losing my Conscious Mind. However, what the heck was my Unconscious Mind doing to me? I mean I thought we had a good thing going, and here it is somehow making me wiggle off my wedding ring in the middle of the night while I’m sleeping.

Then again, I can only imagine that after some 14 years of marriage to my wife, my Unconscious Mind has finally given in to its simmering jealousy of the daylight and Mr. Conscious Mind. Sure, it gets to be the one that plays in the NBA, is often rich, and I’m sure it even found a cure for cancer and world hunger in there at some point. Heck–let’s be honest here–it even gets to have sex with lots of different women. But, it also is the one that has experienced the crash of a plane into a building (before 9/11 no less), a child dying, and countless occasions of running from a monster only to find his feet can’t move for some reason.

So it’s not all Hugh Hefner and James Bond in there.

Now put yourself in Unconscious Mind’s shoes during the day. It has to sit there in the background while Conscious Mind is playing in the pool with my kids, having an amusing conversation with my wife, or taking joy in solving one work problem or another. Even the bad things that happen are a cruel joke. You can almost hear the spite in his voice, “You’re upset over a fight with your wife? Well, try fruitlessly searching for that mail you left in your college post office box…for 15 years! Not bad enough? How about showing up somewhere important and realizing you have no clothes on! Still not bad enough, how about watching a plane fly straight toward your eightieth floor office window!”

Damn, maybe having sex with Angelina Jolie doesn’t make all those other moments any easier for Unconscious Mind.

So I think my Unconscious Mind has finally had it. It’s trying to break up my marriage. It made me remove my wedding ring while I slept. So simple. So brilliant. Imagine facing your wife with this scenario: “Uh, honey. I seem to have lost my wedding ring, and I appear to have blacked out as to when and how I did it.” A blackout and lost wedding ring isn’t the kind of combination that would be easy to rationalize to a suspicious wife.

Thankfully, my wife trusts me and found the whole thing rather humorous. So… Up yours, Unconscious Mind! It didn’t work! I’m still happy during the day, and I will be swimming again with my daughters again tomorrow.

Oh, and just between you and me… James Bond would be nice tonight. Especially if he meets Angelina Jolie.

Originally posted May 28, 2005

Okay, I admit it: Sometimes I go into something with a smug attitude knowing that my brilliancy will just dazzle others. I do that thing I do and then just sit back and enjoy the adulation. Unfortunately, when you are surrounded by people smarter than you are, these planned moments never turn out the way you hope they will. Case in point: Toilet training my three year old daughter.

So my daughter is sitting on the potty, and I had planned an incredible and, dare I say it, quite brilliant way of getting her to be enthusiastic about pooping on said potty. Up to that point, to put her at ease on the toilet, I had promised her that I would tell her stories, which helped a little bit. Then I had the idea of weaving the process of using the potty into a story that would make my daughter never want to use her diaper again. Brilliant!

What made this better of course was that my wife was sitting in the next room and could hear. Now I could be brilliant with an audience. It doesn’t get any better than that.

So I started telling my daughter the story of Roger the poop, who wanted, more than anything in the world, to swim in the ocean with the fish. So Roger the poop really hoped that my daughter would not use a diaper, because then he would never end up in the potty. I then explained that the potty led to pipes under the house, and these pipes led to the river, and the river led to the ocean. If only she would use the potty, Roger would be happy and be able to swim in the ocean with the fish!

Well, it kinda sorta worked. She did use the potty, but it didn’t really seem that she was more enthusiastic than before my story. Still, I thought it was the building block of an innovative and creative way of toilet training my daughter.

After my daughter ran out of the bathroom, I rather jauntily walked over to my wife. I was about to say, “Am I not the most brilliant potty trainer ever,” when she looked up from her book and stated matter-of-factly, “You know, now she’ll never want to swim in the ocean.”

Damn.

I thought I was deflated then, but the very next day my daughter came up to me and said, “Daddy, tell me the story about Roger the poop and how he likes being in a diaper!”

Sigh. At least now she’ll swim in the ocean.