What's worse: being the only

What's worse: being the only sick person in the house, or being the only well person?

Unjokes

Despite my griping here, the Boy has basically moved into good joke-telling. He understands setup - wham bam unexpected twist - humor ensues. But he's still a kid, which means sometimes he loses the train halfway out of the station. This morning, on the way to school:

Why did the baby's mom hate the letter 'R'?

I don't know. Why did the baby's mom hate the letter 'R'?

Because when he said it she couldn't stand how it sounded and it made her all crazy! I'm pretty sure I told that wrong.

A curse on Ross Bagdasarian

Took one for the team: mall-walking and a perfectly good cheeseburger, interrupted by watching - and paying for! - Alvin and the Chipmunks part 2.

The new transparency

Kid: Knock knock!

Dad: Who's there?

Kid: Bank robber!

Dad: Bank robber who?

Kid: I'm knocking on your door because I'm getting ready to steal all the money in your town!

Boy: I have had enough

Boy: I have had enough of that milkshake!

Me: Did it give you a stomach ache?

Boy: No! It made my brain crazy!

Enduring a second round of insane knock knock jokes.

Knock knock!

Who's there?

Underpants!

Underpants who?

I like you!

Monster mash

Heppy Helloweeny.

Sick day

It's not great being home with a fever, but it has its moments.

IMG_0132

IMG_0132
Originally uploaded by RichMilNix.

Spent Independence Day in Maine with Grandpa and Coco (and cousin in the middle).

Truth in marketing

Dad, attempting to effects some behavioral-modification-through-guilt after a session of sibling fury:

Why are you two so nasty to each other sometimes?



Boy, plainspoke and wise:

Because we want to take each other's toys.

"I'm the caramel pig!" -

"I'm the caramel pig!"

- The Kid, thirty times in the last five minutes

Shhh

Lego Jedi play.

Kid: I've got a top secret plan for how to get the bad guys!

Boy: What is your plan?

Kid: Shoot 'em!

Call me sometime when you have no class

class
Originally uploaded by RichMilNix.

Happy Father's Day!

CSM dads day
Originally uploaded by RichMilNix.

The kid has never played Wii. I don't know what he's talking about.

Happy Father's Day!

DCM dads day
Originally uploaded by RichMilNix.

The teacher nervously came over to Amy to ask what the "crazy driving" is.

Until tomorrow

Benediction from the boy:

Sleep tight.
And sleep well.
And don't let an arrow poke you in the butt.

Guess who's coming to dinner?

Katie!

Heaven knows Darth's miserable now

From the Boy just now: "Dad, does Anakin die in Revenge of The Smith?"

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Untitled from I. Murphy on Vimeo.

02

01

Fling it anywhere you want, son, maybe you'll grow up to be the president

The entendre is barely even double enough to qualifgy, if you ask me, but it gets pinned here with that famous last justificaiton, It Really Happened:

In showing off the Bat-logo at the waistband of his new Bat-pajamas (you forget to pack pajamas for one overnight trip, your standards go to hell), the Boy, evidently forgetting the word Bat-logo, stood up on his chair at the dinner table, put his hand on his crotch, and Really Said

This is where I keep my thing! And I can whip it out any time, and fling it around!

Out of the mouths of fiends

The Boy seemed a little blue after stories tonight, so I poked him a little bit.



After breakfast tomorrow, we'll walk around to get pledges for your Math-A-Thon, all right?


Yeah.


How are you feeling? Are you okay?


Yeah. I always have to feel okay, or else I throw up.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~






I picked up the Kid Wednesday, and as usual, we had a bit of conversation about what the day had brought each of us. I can probably reconstruct the input form his classmates that led to this proud pronouncement:

(as if remembering something pressing) Oh! Dad! I have to tell you something!


You do?


We have a new president!


That's right, we do! Do you know his name?


He's BIG! And he's BLACK!

Na na na na na na na na, na na na na na na na na

 

Good lord, there's nothing better than Halloween.

First day of school.

Well, for the Boy, it was the first day back to school. I think he thought he was going to rule the roost somewhat more securely than he found when he arrived (his returning classmates won't arrive until next week, giving the new kids a chance to get the run of the joint. It's his own fault, for having a mother who's a teacher).

For the Kid, though, it was the real thing: the First. Day. Of. School; we tried telling him it was coming up, but how do you really prepare for such an enormous change? When you're three? By the way, son, we won't be your parents anymore, and you speak French now. Au revoir, et bonne nuit. So we told him school was coming up, and showed him his backpack, and figured the trauma would emerge naturally.

So: Grab your rucksack! No trauma to date!


Get in the car! Get out of the car! All's well.



A minor hiccup ends with us finding our "indoor shoes." On they go. All remains well.


Walking around after a minute, though, it began to dawn that all might not be well. This was the first time, I think, that it occurred to The Kid that he might get, er, left here. For the first time, he came over to tell me, "I want to go to Mommy's classroom."

Another girl began to seriously wail, which also set him off, just as a distant early warning – as if you parked on an unfamiliar block of the Bronx, and as you pulled into your space, you heard glass shatter, followed by a car alarm. It sends the clear message that This Might Not Go Well.


Apres moi, le déluge.

Yes, that (above) was an actual shot of the Boy patting him to try and comfort him. Your heart should grow three sizes.

Guess what I found, though, upon my noonish return?



Success! Triumph! The only tears came when he was told that he'd have to go home, as he's a half-day student.

A splendid time was had by all.


I'm not sure, but I don't think they taught him to read yet.

Conversations with boys

It's funny 'cause it's true.

Midwest vacation

Freshly returned from the Wisconsite hinterland, we present 693 of your new favorite pictures. (The Northeastern vacation, which occurred before we'd set up the Flickr Pro account, is documented less substantively here.)

P.S. 01: About 20% of these pictures, by the way, are the somewhat obscure type that She calls, derisively, "art": intentional blurs, textures, or giant hissing cockroaches. The first Flickr Pro who can tell me how to easily get the art out of the set without deleting it wins the Boy's autograph.

P.S. 02, to parents: Flickr is a service like Snapfish, or Picasa, that allows you to order prints online. You can mail them to yourself, or pick them up at Target. These enormous image files should make good-quality prints as big as 8" x 10". Go wild.


Edit, 19 August: Aunty Christy's pics are posted here.

Out of the mouths of fiends

I began writing this post in July. Because I remain me, I'm sure I had some crazy, two-thousand word preamble peramble in mind by way of introduction, but lucky for you, I put it off long enough that all I remember now is the punchline.

I don't remember why I was trying to get the Boy to guess "clown." We didn't see any that I remember, over the summer. Maybe I was reading Circus MkGurkus. One way or another, though, I wanted him to say "clown." This was the exchange that followed:




Who wears lots of makeup and acts silly all the time?


(reflective thought; then, with a flash of inspiration:)

Mommy!





(Post script, for the sake of not divorcing, at least not today: she doesn't, and she doesn't.)

Realpolitik

Grandpa Gene is visiting, and asked Declan about the departed pup.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Do you remember Lawrence?

Oh, yes.

And he's in dog heaven now?

No, he's in the ground.

Media-savvy family

Maybe I'm reaching, but the layout made me smile when I tidied up the table today.


(And yes, you wiseacres, stop smirking: I tidied up the table.)

Granted, soul and history don't give you lockjaw

Now that the sun's starting to come out, and we can afford some mid-day park trips, I again have a choice of several area playgrounds. (Another way of saying that when you live far away from everything, everything's far away.)

Some of the playgrounds feature equipment that's obviously of recent manufacture. No components older than a decade, all pieces fabricated from brightly painted adamantium. The older playgrounds, though, have a certain something ... what's the term for what they have? Soul? History? Oh, no, I remember the phrase: it's "rusted, inch-long, exposed screws."






Full disclosure: these photos are legit, but the hardware protrudes from walls, not floors. The bottom shot has been rotated for, let's say, maximum shock value.

Sitting on it

Coins aren't a regular part of unsupervised play – there are still noses and ears to be considered – but The Kid loves finding "money," and it was fine that he came up to the counter and found two twenty-five-cent "moneys" while I did the dishes. After rubbing their edges together for a minute, he asked for help putting them in his pocket. As we both sat down, we had this exchange:


Did you get all your money?

I have all my moneys.

Where did it go?

It's in my pocket!

What are you going to do with it?

(Brow furrowed, as in 'Are you stupid man?') Sit on it! I sit on it in my rocking chair.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


So maybe he had the good fortune to be born with his aunt's fiscal sensibility rather than his dad's.

Cameron Simpson

This portrait courtesy of the good people at Simpsonize Me.

phonecameron

phonecameron
Originally uploaded by RichMilNix.

Bookworming.

Now wasting your bandwidth, not just your time

Santa brought Mom a video recorder.

Can you tell me how to get to Misery Street?

One benefit of a day job at the library is that you get to take home some of the extras and castoffs. These 80s-era Sesame Street books are pretty good, but many of them use the Muppet characters to help the young reader explore bad times and hard feelings; the upshot of that is that as I was sorting through them, it just seemed like cover shot after cover shot of sad Muppets. And that, of course, calls for malevolent rechristening.

The menorah was still burning when I hauled the Christmas tree inside, out of the rain.

Between the nights I work, the two afternoons at the YMCA, and a weekend trip, this was the first night I’d been home to see the candles get lit; as I began to sing, “Baruch atal adonai, don’t poke me in the eye,” She poked me in the ribs and said “Stop!” It turns out she knows – and can sing! – the real prayer. Who knew?

Nothing makes you examine your own loosely held agnostic disbelief as ardently as the possibility that you might accidentally pass it along to someone else.

Cool kid

vintage: 21 November 2006.

Mwah!

vintage: 12 November 2006.

all this stuff

The bother-in-law* has posted, more succinctly than I ever would have, the explanation:


And I know, it's been a while.
It'll be a while longer, terribly busy.
As are we all, I suppose.
And yet.
There's all this stuff, you see.




(Haiku formatting mine.)

*The typo was accidental at first, but was also perfect, though not, I assure you, true.

Knights errant

As opposed to "Just Pikt," I guess

The lollipop that The Boy was just given (as reward for successfully pooping, praises be) was labeled, in the flavor label place, Artificial Cotton Candy.

Is that a necessary clarification? Is it even a meaningful one?

A new kind of tired

Her mom came out from Mannahatta for Mother's Day. No one was sure that that was in the spirit of the 'holiday,' but as Grandma pointed out, "you're a mother, too." So Grandma rode the bus, and arrived with bagels (still warm), lox and cream cheese. (The Boy has found his muse in cream cheese, by the way. It's ten days later and he still asks, nearly every morning, for "the white butter.")

Our contribution to the Kosher Lunch Festival was a bottle of white wine that She picked up the night before. Both of 'em are lightweights, and didn't even finish the half-glasses that they poured themselves with lunch. I don't know from wine, but I know from budget; as I prepped for an afternoon at the playground, I put water in the two yellow sip cups, then dumped the remaining wine into the pink sip cup. I figured whoever wasn't driving might enjoy a little secret sauce. They're insulated! It's fun to be a covert playground lush! She didn't think this was such a good idea.

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Have I mentioned that I never drank a cup of coffee prior to my thirty-fifth birthday? It was kind of along the lines of a personal sin tax. The thought process wasn't about aversion, the way I avoided booze & smokes, so much as: okay, it's an acquired taste. Well, given that it's basically bad for me, and that in every habit I harbor, I tend toward excess, let's just not acquire it. If I stopped by your house with some small rocks, and told you that sucking them could make you pleasantly jittery and irritable, and eventually you'd get used to the taste and even like it, and it would only set you back a few bucks at the market every week, would you suck some rocks to see how well they worked?

Yes, you would. As would I. I'm on my third cup as I write this.

(An aside - I mean, not my usual digression, but a real aside - if you want to read more prattle about drinking coffee, prattle I didn't write but recommend, here's a terrific paragraph by Jim Crace.] [Link to come.]

Coffee was a conscious choice, because this is a new kind of tired. I've worked summer stock theatre, and anyone who gets the reference will know what it means: I know what it is to be tired. But this is a new kind of tired, and it's coming when I 'm closer to fifty than I am to twenty. the other day, I realized that I was sitting on the third step on the staircase, idly-but-seriously trying to parse: if cooked, would I contain both white meat and dark meat? And if not, would my texture be more like beef or lamb?

I've often compared and contrasted rearing boys to rearing dogs (including, briefly, here, but more often aloud in conversation). Having the Kid around the house is no longer like having a demure, two legged pup. It is like having a caffeinated lemur with Attention Deficit Disorder. He leaps, shrieks and grabs. There's baby proofing, and there's baby proofing, and I had forgotten how hard we had to work when we went through this with The Boy. I had honestly forgotten that it means taking down all frames with glass in them. Clearing everything off the top of every dresser because he can get there. He can get onto the dresser! He's not even three feet tall! He's like a grasshopper!

--------------

Monday morning is a time for breakfast. It's a time to start off the week right, particularly if you're three and there are so many available ways of starting it wrong. I made waffles; I cooked bacon. I served breakfast, and got down vitamins. I started cleaning dishes when The Boy pointed out that he didn't have any orange juice. No juice! At mention of it, The Kid starts to bay jooose! Jooose! Drop everything! Here's some OJ! Here are two cups! Cut the OJ half-and-half with water! Screw on the top! Serve it up!

The Boy pulled a swig (ever try to drink from one of those things? Some work is involved) and made a face. He held it out to me with the somber observation: "Daddy, this is not fresh."

Yep, I served my three-year-old son a concoction I call a Bum's Mimosa: one part organic Tropicana orange juice, one part warm, day-old white wine.

It took less than twenty minutes

Daddy was on the phone with Sears.

Self-promotion

I'll take this posting down in a week, as it's just a commercial for something you can't buy, but I've finally been updating the Sketchblog with some regularity (about one per week). While it's conceivable that some of you might want to see what I put there, I'm really noting it for (of course) selfish reasons - as I've learned from keeping this one up this year, if you think somebody's looking, you keep a neater room. As Tony Millionaire pointed out in his Times profile this weekend, a cartoonist is only as good as his last deadline.

There aren't many actual sketches there, by the way. The definition of what goes there is graphic content that doesn't go anywhere else. The two categories that tends to include are: A) images I'm working on that might be done but I'm not sure I'm ready to (or don't have the time to) put them in the portfolio yet; and B) goofball stuff that I elect to inflict on you - phonecam shots of street trash, mostly.

You've been warned.

Edit, six months later: I didn't take it down in a week.

Envy me / Pity me

Envy me.

The Kid came in and woke me early, as he's done every day this week, but then went on his way without much further input. I might have preferred to sleep until oh I don't know SIX, but given that that wasn't an option, lying in bed reading magazines for an hour while the sun shone in and birds sang loudly wasn't a bad second choice.

Eventually, like the iron filings they are, the monsters all (including the dogs) gravitated to me, and we all stumbled downstairs together at seven. Out onto the deck, where we all (including the dogs) ate cereal and drank orange juice. (The dogs have the Kid to thank for their share of breakfast.) I read the Times while The Boy had a second helping of Organic Cereal In Smug Packaging The breeze blowing o'er the fields across the way reinforced the pastoral setting. The whinny of the horses up the road getting their morning constitutional was interrupted only by the sound of the school buses going by. iTunes served Dave Brubeck followed by Thelonious Monk. I cleared the table, baby-proofed the kitchen and took a hot shower.


Pity me.

While I showered (in general, I prefer a nice, soul-cleansing, womb-returning, wallpaper-loosening three-hour orgy of hot water and suds, which I still observe sometimes on weekends, but this was my usual weekday responsible-parent slip-in-soap-up-rinse-off-roll-on-home), The Kid took a crap in his diaper, then loosened one of its strips, so most of its contents spilled onto the (white) rug in his room. Its other strip remained intact, though, so swung around his ankle like a tetherball as he wandered out of his room, leaving little tidbits; he then used his new weight and proficiency to defeat the baby gate that stands silent, now useless sentry over the door to the office. (The office is, in theory, the one Adult Safe Zone here at Toad Hall.)

To exercise his newfound freedom, he used a brown Sharpie to decorate the Wacom tablet and his own chubby arm. The only document he pulled off the desk was the multi-page contract confirming Her new job, which was awaiting only a signature and a stamp, but is now covered in poopy-foot poop (from stepping in the diaper). He gave the FM transmitter a good enough knock that I am now listening to right-channel-only mono. And did I mention that The Boy also dropped a load in his diaper? Did I mention that he's so old and so big, now, that when he does, what I clean up is roughly the mass and weight of an adult human head?







On the way to school, The Boy asked, "Daddy, what are we doing?" which is one of his usual Zen inscrutables (the most common is "What's that?," while not looking or pointing at anything). Today, though, I had a good answer:

"We're driving fast and playing the radio loud, because that's what you do on a morning when you get poo on your hands."

I mean, it is, right? Isn't it what you'd do?

Call to arms

If anybody (is reading this and) will be in the Hudson Valley the afternoon of Sunday, 10 June, and would like to attend Declan's fourth birthday party, drop me a line. The mare the Moorier, as Othello whispered to his favorite mount.

Fear of the singing rats

On the way into school this morning, I asked the boy what he was going to do today.
Do you think you'll sing today? Yeah. And make shapes.

Do you think you'll have Spanish class? I think we will.

Will it be fun? I have fun. Sometimes I get scared.*

Scared? What are you scared of? Singing.

You're scared of singing? Yeah. And the rats, and also I'm scared of the fires.



That is one hardcore preschool.



*I'm pretty sure, at this point, that "get scared" is a universal euphemism for "not have fun."

Further proof of my influence

The ducklings in Make Way For Ducklings are named Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Oack, Pack and Quack. That's a bit cutesy, but repetition is the spice of life for a three-year-old, so my only bow to silliness is to change Quack's name every time we read it (and we read it a lot). Every time I change it, He points out that I'm doing it wrong.

Today, after I read "Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Oack, Pack and Jehosophat," He said this:

No, Daddy! You're being silly. Now I'm going to kill you, and I'll kill your father.

So: sorry, Dad.

I suspect this is proof of my influence on him

As I crossed through The Play Zone into my office tonight, I heard The Boy exclaim, "I just have to kill somebody and then I can be the winner!"

Credentials

Last night, fishing for change at the pizza parlor, I instead came up with a pocket inventory that's perfect, silent testimony to my status as a stay-at-home, working father:

• A broken toy helicopter,
• two pacifiers and
• an ibuprofen tablet.

Conundra

Rain? Chu wanna talk about rain?

A month ago, I posted a picture taken out the window of my office, intended to highlight how welcoming and bucolic my existence was feeling. The same picture now serves as a welcome reminder (via contrast) that the world was welcoming, bucolic and dry.

The world, 14 March:







The same world, 16 April:






When I called Her to tell her what I was seeing, the message that I left concluded with the words: "On balance, it looks as though we suddenly live a quarter mile from a good-sized lake. ...Which, I guess, we do." A neighbor across the way mentions that whatever portion of the crop was already in the ground is likely lost – drowned. Too Much Of A Good Thing Will Kill You always seemed to me a somewhat abstract maxim, but it seems there is a lot of stunted non-corn out there that would agree with it (and yes, I know, at least one stunted non-person who would agree as well).

The doctor confirms, on the occasion of the Second-Birthday Doctor's Visit (timed within a day or two of the party, as if to make sure they learn Into Each Life A Little Rain Must Fall – eat cake, but then get a shot!) that The Kid is in the fiftieth percentile for height (34 in), fiftieth percentile for weight (27 lbs), and fiftieth percentile forhead size (didn't ask). His superhero identity is Median Lad. His hip-hop name is C-Midd. But particularly after a doctor's visit, it kills me that it's the fifth consecutive day that it's too wet to go to a playground. Not that he even needs it that much – The Kid's favorite playground game is Hang From Daddy – but both of them have been penned up for enough of the last six months that it seems cruel and unusual to explain that though the sky is blue and full of puffy accumulated cumulus, it's too sodden to do anything but sit with noses pressed against the window. So we went to McDonald's, which stinkt.

I want to make clear that it didn't stink because of the food. McDonald's food (and I'm talking, by extension, about Burger King, Wendy's et c. – the McD's terminology comes most naturally because the Chain Burger Hut With Indoor Playground near me is an actual McDonald's) is junk food, but unless this is your first day in the Northern Hemisphere, you knew that already. (And yes, I know that you can order a salad there. Why would you? Why didn't you go over to Salad King?) At least at the McDonald's where I ate today, they've gotten pretty straightforward about the nutritional information. I thought I recalled that if you wanted to know what the food was made from, you could ask for, and the irritated staff personnel would spend three minutes producing the card on which was printed (in four-point type) that your Big Mac was made of a quarter-pound of beef and one cow's worth of fat. Not no longer! My plastic tray had a paper coverlet, and the paper coverlet had nutritional information (which we should, fairly, call "nutritional" information) printed on it. Clear, legible, and plain. It reminded me of a column (Frank Rich? Ben Stein? Malcolm Gladwell) a few months ago pointing out that whatever Enron did that was illegal, whatever they did that was unethical, the one thing they really didn't do was obfuscate; the people who eventually found them out, starting with Bethany McLean right down to the prosecutors, did it by reading their unreadable reports, and the footers, and footers to footers, that no one reads because who can read that stuff? That's what still appeals to my inner libertarian about McDonald's: sure, they sell you a pound of crap, but it comes in a paper wrapper on which is printed, in ten-point sans-serif, A Pound Of Crap. My French fries, and everybody's, had a box on the side with the total fat grams printed on it. Know what I did while I read it? Finished my French fries.

And yet still, it stinkt, and this is why: it stinkt because I'm what you call a worst-case-scenario thinker; this is a type of pessimist distinctly different from a glass-half-empty thinker (we go to the same conventions, but attend different panels). To understand what my brain puts me through, think of me as an Advanced Worrywart. If you ever come out to the house and find you're running fifteen minutes late, know that as sure as I know that gravity works and water's wet, I know that you're wrapped around a tree, drifting in and out of consciousness as you use your last breaths to sing along with "Do Ya," still blaring from the speakers of your wrecked vehicle. Typical voicemail I once left Her, just because I couldn't reach her (not even late, right, just didn't pick up the cell): "You're still buckled lifelessly into your seat, head dangling from your snapped neck, as the upside-down car spins slowly in place on the center lane of the [NYS] throughway; the boys are crying and traffic is flying around you in every direction. Call me."

Why, no, I don't get invited to parties.

So that's why it stinkt. Because if you were an aspiring pederast and kidnaper (and I'm not saying you are, or even that I think that they're around every corner; mentally, I don't live in a 1950s America, but I probably live in the late-70s America where I grew up, where kids can walk unescorted to each other's houses [well, not my kids, I'm a WCST. Just, you know, theoretical kids]), wouldn't you end up at a McDonald's Playplace? I've only been to Chuck E. Fargin' Cheese once, and the exit-door sentry there bends over to ask a three-year-old, "Is this Mommy?" At McDonald's, as you might expect, the rule of egress seems to be You Can Only Take as Many Kids As Fit In Your Trunk.

And I don't expect any different! It's not Ronald's responsibility to act in loco parentis. But the largish hamster tubes that my sons crawl through at McDonald's are extensive and opaque, which means that while I am smiling, waving and encouraging my happy sons, I am aging one hour per minute, enjoying the dry mouth and erratic heartbeat that accompany, for me, a family visit to the Playplace. If these greasy entrepreneurs sold beta-blockers over the counter to stabilize blood pressure, they could have an extra few bucks from me (along with the Lipitor that will be sold in packets along with French fries once Pfizer loses the patent).

__-__-__-__-_-_-_-_----_-_-_-_-__-__-__-__-__

El Perro Negro was adopted from the North Shore Animal League, but El Perro Blanco was adopted, two years earlier, from the ASPCA on the Upper East Side. I assume the following practice is national (though I don't know): he has an RFID chip implanted subdermally, somewhere between his shoulder blades. When the right person waves the right wand over it, it reads, let's say, 2-9-7-4-21-13-2-4-15-7, just like your work ID does. And when the right person at the ASPCA types 2-9-7-4-21-13-2-4-15-7 into the Poochifier™ database, they get my name and address. So if the worst (dog) thing occurs – if I manage to be in Fresno when I lose the dog, and his tags come off of him, and he forgets how to bark our phone number – there's still a chance that he'll get back to me, so long as the ASPCA (or someone who knows them) is involved. This is a good use of technology. So here's the interesting question, the question that no one has never really answered for me:

Why don't I have a subdermal chip implanted in The Boy's wrist? A passive call-and-response chip, that spits out 2-9-7-4-21-13-2-2-15-25 when scanned? And it goes into his wrist (if my insurance plan covers it, or I want to pay for it) at his 6-month pediatrician's visit, and he has the legal right to have it removed without my consent when he turns, what, fifteen? And for the intervening time, if the worst (boy) thing occurs, the cops stopping cars on Amber Alert have scanners, and no response (or wrong response) means thanks, drive on. And if some pervert is doing an Elizabeth Smart, it surely makes it much less likely that it'll work, with the irregular pardon-me-sir-won't-take-a-moment sidewalk scans – nu? I know that the ACLU would get this kicked into all kinds of positions, and I know that he causeth all, both small and great, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads, and I even get the slippery-slope aspects that say that it's part of a world we don't want. But as an isolated ethical question – as an actual discussion about causing my kid some pain, of violating his civil liberties (and skin), and the statistical likelihood of his kidnap and recovery – I still don't know what I think. What do you think?

That's the one I've been carrying around for a long time. The one that just occurred to me today was also pup-related. Both in our last Manhattan apartment and here in Toad Hall, our home security has been provided by Woof, Inc. Both of our dogs were rescues, and bark like professionals, but I always wanted to know what they would do to an actual intruder. They aren't trained at this, after all, and nothing assures me that they wouldn't bark while he approached the house, then snarl and bark as he jimmied the lock, then howl, snarl and bark ferociously while he opened the door, then like back for belly rubs. This is the kind of thing you can't test, however, without a person they don't know who's willing to be the intruder, and everyone I know is made of meat. And if all goes well, of course, there should be damage, so I can understand not volunteering for that duty.

I found myself wondering today, though, as I actually had the moment – as I checked the restroom, then checked the side exits, then called more loudly and more sternly, then he finally emerged from the enclosed twisty slide (is there a more adult word for a twisty slide? I've never called it anything but a twisty slide) and explained that he was crawling up it and got stuck – I found myself wondering, has any of our instruction stuck with him? When the stranger offered him candy, would he say "You aren't my mommy or daddy," or would he say "Do you have Twizzlers?" I found myself wondering, why not find an adult I trust implicitly, like a brother, have Robin or Jason come out from the city, no association with me at all, then have me go off and chase The Kid for a moment so that said adult can offer The Boy a lollipop and a ride in his car? (But then stop short of, you know, the actual ride in his car. I don't think Jason or Robin has a car. They could offer a ride on a bike.) Ethically, I'd be in the pink. The only person who got misled is The Boy, and it's because I want to measure his survival skills. But doesn't it feel sort of scummy? I mean, doesn't it? To hire a child abuser impersonator to lure your kid away from a playground? Does this happen?

Another way years of varied professional experience fail to prepare one for this job

I've paid my rent over the years with several types of human interaction. I've hired and managed staffs of seventeen-year-olds at New York video stores. I've managed build crews of interns and demi-professionals at regional theaters around the northeast. I've managed part-time drivers and freelance technicians in the city. Each of these oddball assignments gives one a different perspective on the ups and downs of going to work.


In none of those capacities has any subordinate ever looked me in the eye and apologized because he carefully lowered himself off of the toilet so he could poop on the floor. I guess it just never came up.


Crying doodoo plush toy courtesy of the rather good Burgerlog poop shop.