The Blog of Brian Hodges

…one in which cash and calories mattered not, I would be perpetually almost out of pie.

On a recent Saturday night, Lauren was at work and I let Allison stay up late with me on the couch.  As we watched the Graham Norton Show on BBC America, Allison took note of their English accents and wondered why they “sounded funny.”

I told her that the people on this show were from England so even though they speak the same language as us, they speak it with an English accent.  “That’s why they talked different than us in Mary Poppins too, because they were from England.”

“Right,” Allison said, processing it all. “They must sound that way because they’re from the future.”

Love that kid.

Can we talk penises for a minute?

Part of being the husband of a midwife means you’re pretty much piped in to every conceivable controversial issue that is in any way related to pregnancy, childbirth and parenting.  C-sections, homebirth, vaccines, co-sleeping, breast-feeding, best hemp strollers for hippies and of course, the pros and cons (mostly cons) of circumcision.  In the past seven years, beginning when we got pregnant with our first child who, at the time, might have been a boy, I swear I have talked more about foreskin than all the other years of my life combined.  So I feel fully qualified to get a few things off my chest right now.

For starters, can we just lay this on the table right off the bat: FORESKINS ARE WEIRD!!!

I say this, mind you, as the circumcised father of two uncircumcised sons.  That’s right we didn’t do it because, as I said, I married a midwife, and we’re about love and peace, not mutilation and being horrible wicked parents… at least that’s what the mommy blogs say.  And I fully accept that my narrow-minded appraisal of that floppy stuff on the tip of my sons’ winkies has everything to do with the fact that for the first twenty-eight years of my life, my only model for what a penis was“supposed to” look like was my own.  Sure sure, here and there, in the locker room for example, you couldn’t help but catch sight of other “examples.”  But either I was hanging out in predominantly Jewish gyms or else I just never looked closely enough to know for sure whether somebody, ya know, was or wasn’t.

I knew there was such a thing as circumcision, I wasn’t completely sheltered, but for the life of me, I just couldn’t wrap my mind around what an extra bit of skin would even look like.  In later years I guess I could have Googled the answer but, honestly, I didn’t care enough to risk someone walking up behind me while a penis was in close-up on my desktop.  My very first glimpse of an uncircumcised penis came the day my first son was born… and even then, you couldn’t really tell that anything was different because everything on an infant is always so wrinkled and out of proportion anyway.  It was only about a year later when the thing started retracting that I sat up and yelped, “Whoa, crap, is it SUPPOSED to do that?”

That’s right, I said it: my three-year-old’s penis creeps me the crap right out!

It’s not his fault, it’s just that, not ever having had access to the covered version myself, I have no idea how to advise him on such issues as, oh say, the relative strength and elasticity of his extra half-inch.  So when he starts yanking it back and forth in the bathtub, as little boys (and let’s face it, fully-grown men) are wont to do, I can only cringe because it sure as hell looks like he is less than a millimeter away from injuring himself in a way that I am frankly not drunk enough to deal with without freaking out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know all the benefits of leaving your boy’s integrity in tact.  It makes intimate passion in later years something like a thousand times better.  Cutting it off supposedly impedes the early bonding process, which, hooked into the attachment parenting vibe is like totally unacceptable, man.  So whatever, I get it.  I’d never go back and change the decision we made. Go Team Foreskin!  Though when we were in the early days of the first pregnancy, I did ask an unabashedly loose friend, who had seen her fair share of junk over the years, whether she preferred one kind over the other.  I blame that damn Seinfeld episode where Elaine says the uncut have “no face, no personality.”  Not to worry though, my worldly friend assured me, she herself had been enjoying both flavors equally.  For years.  And if you can’t rely on the opinion of the promiscuous in situations like this, what can you rely on?

As he grows older, my son is not going to be able to rely much on me I’m afraid.  I can barely help him with his business now while everything is still normal and healthy looking, and where the worst problem I ever have to deal with is gritting my teeth as I help him remove a piece off fuzz that has somehow become, ya know, adhered.  But the minute he starts coming to me with smegma issues I swear to God and Ina May Gaskin I will slice him off with a c-section knife that was sterilized in Similac.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that, in addition to being the World’s Greatest Dad (and I’ve got the mug to prove it), I also qualify for the role of World’s Funnest Uncle**.  But as one comedian put it, there is a very thin line between “fun uncle” and “creepy uncle”… or words to that effect.  And few things define that line quite like a little game I played last night called, “Flapdoodle.”

Flapdoodle, according to its Amazon production description, is “a totally silly game for kids and families. Use your creativity and imagination to answer crazy questions and do silly stunts.” For each of these questions and stunts, you get to move forward a certain number of spaces.  List three things from the ocean that you would NEVER want on your sandwich (seaweed, algae and, let’s face it, oil) and you move ahead one space.  Use the back of a chair like a steering wheel and pretend you’re a motorcycle for 60 seconds, and congratulations, you just bumped up three spaces.

Now I’d say 95% of these questions and stunts would place any adult male safely into the category of “fun uncle.”  For instance, “In a rockstar voice, repeat the words WET RAIN and DRY LEAVES until the timer runs out.”  Perfect opportunity to elicit some giggles from my ten- and six-year-old nieces with my AC/DC and Metallica impressions.  Or how about pretending your two big toes are named Gus and Earl and you need to make them have a conversation about potato chips.  Fun Uncle GOLD.  But wait, then we get this card: “Close your eyes and have all the players line up in front of you.  Identify each player using only your sense of smell.”

(AGH! AGH! AGH!)

(WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!)

I’m sorry, but if my female niece, who stands perched precisely on the threshold of puberty and adolescence, goes home and tells her mom that “Uncle Brian was smelling me,” I’m guessing there won’t be any more sleepovers at the Hodges house.

Still, barring a couple cards that, while most definitely cute and harmless when played exclusively amongst 6- to 12-year-old girls, but which are borderline we-may-have-to-send-Dateline-to-check-out-this-guy’s-computer-history once you get a 30-year-old involved, it really is a fun game.

Especially for kids with the world’s funnest uncle.

**Excluding, of course, any and all uncles under the age of thirty who drive a convertible and are still in the amusing early stages of full blown alcoholism.

Jesse clearly has trouble with his hearing since, ya know, we have to tell him like ten times to go put on his pajamas and yet thirty minutes later he’s still just finally getting around to taking his socks off.  Yet somehow that boy’s ears can hone in on the precise frequency of a Mellow Yellow bottle opening on the other side of the house and it sets him off running: “Daddy, c’I haf some SO-DA???”  Wonder if that’s some kind of selective X-Man superpower?

I should come clean right off the bat.  I freakin’ LOVE Miley Cyrus.  I think her music is catchy.  I think her TV show is pretty damn hilarious.  I think she’s a cute kid and, if her performance a few weeks back on Dancing with the Stars is anything to go by, she’s going to be a smokin’ hot woman.  So I’m clearly coming from a bit of a biased standpoint here, but…

I can’t help but crack up at people who make fun of Miley Cyrus.  Well, let me clarify.  I kind of get people busting on her for her silly personal life trials, her controversial photo shoots, and that Twitter rap she did which embarrassed even ME vicariously.  But when it comes to her MUSIC, what is there to make fun of?  First of all, you’d really have to be made of stone not to AT LEAST tap your foot to the bubblegum pop beats of at least some of her songs.  (I’m looking at you “Ice Cream Freeze“).  But beyond that, guess what grownups, THESE SONGS AREN’T INTENDED FOR YOU!  Not sure if you’ve noticed, but Miley tends to get most of her airplay on a little station called Radio Disney.  Her target market is tweenage girls who are still too young to have discovered how to be musically pretentious.  So to mock and belittle the “overproduced, mindlessly peppy” music (which, by the way is earning her MILLIONS) is kind of like that loser sixth grader who made fun of Kindergartners for watching “Mister Roger’s Neighborhood.”  Of COURSE you think it’s stupid.  It’s intended for people HALF YOUR AGE!!!

So please, for the love of your own dignity, if you’re over the age of 25, leave Miley alone. LEAVE HER ALONE!!!

When you’re over at your aunt and uncle’s house, it is impolite to pull down your pants and pee all over the floor.

For several years, I thought Obi Wan Kenobi was describing the destruction of Alderaan as “millions of OYSTERS crying out in terror and suddenly silenced.”  For those three of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, the real word is supposed to be “voices.”

Now, what’s weirder to me, weirder than the fact that I actually misheard this line for, near on 20 years, is that for all those 20 years, I never questioned the sanity of that line.  I guess i just pictured kind of an Alice in Wonderland scene with the Walrus and the Carpenter.  Either way, I never really found this line weird.  I guess I simply trusted implicitly in the genius of George Lucas.  I think the first time I realized what the real line in that scene, was somewhere around the second prequel.  I suddenly realized that George Lucas was, in fact, fallible.  And suddenly that line hit me with the full insanity that it rightfully deserved all those years.

So, thanks, I guess, Jar-Jar.

Last night, Allison and I finally sat down to wrap the presents we got for Lauren, Jesse and Max. I’m thinking she was a little bit punchy from a combination of being up late, a few extra Christmas cookies, plus the fact that I finally gave her carte blanche to work the tape dispenser. Either way, at one point she broke into a spontaneous rendition of Wham’s “Last Christmas.”

“How do you even know that song?” I asked, fairly positive that it didn’t exist in our iTunes Christmas shuffle.

“They play it on the bus,” she said before launching into another chorus.

Last Christmas… I gave you my heart.
The very next day… you gave it away.
Next year… I’m gonna give it to somebody special.

At which point she stopped singing, looked at me and said, “I know who that is.”

Assuming she meant she knew who sang the song I asked, “Oh yeah, who?”

“God and Jesus.”

That stopped me for a second. George Michael has been called a lot of things, but I imagine Lord and Creator of the universe is not one of them.

“God and Jesus sing this?” I asked.

“No, that’s who she’s going to give her heart to,” Allison clarified. (Apparently they play the Taylor Swift version on the bus) “Because God and Jesus are really special.”

That stopped me a second longer.

Applying what she understood about life, love and the world to this cheesy Christmas song, Allison knew that no matter how fickle other people could be with their affections, God and Jesus would never take her love for granted.

You all know the place I’ve recently come to regarding religion, but how can you argue with a faith like that? In churches all over America, Christians talk about having a childlike faith in God. But very few of them ever come to the place where Allison already is, where the only thing that matters is that God loves you and you love Him… no questions, no qualifying conditions, and no eternity of torture if you mess something up.

I was rendered speechless for the barest of instants before saying through a slightly tighter throat, “You’re right Allison. They are special. I think that is who she gave her heart to.”

No matter what your faith this Christmas, whether your reason for the season is Jesus, family or tradition, I hope you all experience this simple joy of loving and being loved. Whether it’s a spouse, a child, a close friend or an invisible man in the sky, I hope you all have somebody special to give your heart to, somebody who will keep it close to their own and never give it away.

Merry Christmas and Peace on Earth.

Allison and I have been reading “The Tale of Despereaux” before bed for the last few nights. First off, it’s an amazing book so far. I find I’M getting to the ends of chapters and saying to Allison, “You wanna read just one more?”

But the name of the human Princess in this book’s name is Pea. Which, when you’re reading visually, is a very cute name. Princess Pea. You can almost picture her, a tiny little girl, dressed in green, maybe sitting on a royal chair that looks like a pod. But when you’re reading it out loud to a kid who can’t really follow along with the words, she’s just hearing it phonetically, so she can’t keep a straight face every time an exchange happens like this:

“Her name,” said Despereaux, “is Pee.”
“What?”
“The person who loves me. Her name is Pee.”
“Nevermind her name. Did you allow her to touch you?”
“Yes sir,” said Despereaux, “I let Pee touch me. It felt good.”