Entries from May 2006 ↓

I really do have a blast playing with my daughter. She’s right at that fun age where she can run around and do things, she has good manual dexterity that allows her to maneuver blocks and other objects with her hands, she’s happy and energetic and full of life and laughs a lot, squeals with delight and jumps up and down clapping her hands at some new game that we just made up. But I swear I must be setting her up for some kind of violent streak in her future.

It’s not intentional. It never is. But somehow all our games end up turning violent. I mean, you know, violent in a cute, piggy-tailed, two-year-old girl kind of way, but violent nonetheless. I think it started around the time she finally figured out how to walk and then soon after, run. We started playing this game that we simply called “DING” where basically I would chase her around the apartment tickling her and yelling (you guessed it), “Ding!” every time I poked her. Well that quickly got boring for me and so I added an extra element to the game: a beach ball. Now instead of just chasing her around, I also chuck a beach ball at the back of her head and body in an attempt to knock her over. The beach ball in question is incredibly light and bounces off her with practically zero force. You could probably throw it at somebody with all your might and they’d barely feel it. I, of course, know this because I’ve thrown it off of The Girl’s head with all my might and she only laughs harder. Really, the only time that thing knocks her over is if she happens to be rounding a corner and I catch her around the legs just right, causing her feet to get tangled in each other and down she goes.

We made up that game about a year ago and we still play it several times a week. And god forbid I should start chasing her empty handed. We’ll get about five seconds into it and she’ll stop, turn around and say, “Beach ball?”

When we play with blocks, we don’t try to build a tower as tall as we can so much as build a tower just tall enough so we can knock it over. Actually, now that I think about it, The Girl is the one who started that one. Though again, it was probably my fault. A couple times she accidentally bumped the tower knocking it over and I exclaimed a big “Whoa!” which made her laugh, and so now the object of the game became to knock the tower as far across the room as possible.

A couple months ago we inherited a box of Matchbox cars and a box of plastic animals. We set the animals up on the coffee table and had about three minutes worth of fun making them walk around, drink water, eat food, climb Couch Pillow Mountain, etc. But then I got bored and honestly I could tell she did too. So it wasn’t long before we pulled out the Matchbox cars and started a new game called (I swear I’m not making this up), “Hit the Pig.” Basically we arrayed all the animals on the table with the pig figurine at the very end. The goal was to run the cars down the gauntlet and knock the pig off the other side. Each run begins with the war cry (again, you guessed it), “Hit the Pig!” Then I… WE send the cars charging down the track with the appropriate VROOM sound effects, and end the run with a resounding PAAAUUUGGHH as the car flies over the cliff and bursts into flames. Whenever we actually accomplish the goal of the game and “Hit the Pig,” we celebrate with a sadistic, “RREEEEEeeee….” as the pig plummets to his death.

Well now we’ve got new toys in the house again. The Girl got a couple Little People playsets for her birthday last weekend. I think I may have lasted a good twenty minutes this time around. I made the mommy push the baby around in the stroller, made the daddy sit at the computer and check his e-mail, put the older sister on the potty and had the little brother open and close the refrigerator a couple dozen times. In the garage I had the mechanic drive the car around to the gas pump and pretend to fill’er up. We made the cars go up the elevator and down the spiral ramp and drive into the oil change area a few times. But it wasn’t long before I had the mommy and daddy jumping off the roof, had the dog getting hit by the tow truck coming through the car wash, and had the baby stroller rolling off the table cliff. We pulled out the infamous Matchbox cars and had them make death defying jumps onto the top level off the garage, careen around the corner with appropriate tire squealing sound effects and then pile up with lots of smashing sounds at the bottom of the ramp.

I know The Girl is entertained because she busts a big old gut every time we sit down (or run around) to play something. But man, am I setting her up for some sick fascination with violence where nothing is fun unless it involves mayhem and destruction? Honestly, I must admit I’m being more than a little melodramatic. While everything I have described is one hundred percent true without the least bit exaggeration, I truly don’t think I’m screwing her up in the least. If anything I think I’m giving her a harmless outlet for the violent impulses that, let’s face it, are present in every single one of us. I’ve always been a believer that kids need to play games that involve pretend killing people and breaking things. It allows obsolete evolutionary impulses to manifest themselves in a way where nobody actually gets hurt. As long as it’s tempered with a responsible adult making sure the kid understands the difference between make believe and real life then they should be just fine. My hope is that The Girl will get out her aggressions on fake plastic people (and pigs) and not turn psycho on the real ones.

Of course that’s all assuming she even makes it to three years old without getting knocked down the stairs during a particularly intense round of DING.

There’s something about bubble wrap isn’t there? It’s such a great stress reliever. I mean it’s not as therapeutic as other things like sex, drugs or breaking stuff. On the other hand, as far as cost goes, it’s way cheaper than any of those alternatives. If you work in an office that routinely gets UPS or FedEx shipments, it’s pretty much a guarantee that there will be sheets and sheets of this free stress relief kicking around in the vicinity of the mailroom.

And I’ll admit, I partake in the ‘wrap as much as the next guy. I find it’s good for about thirty seconds of mindless entertainment, though I approach it differently than most people. I actually don’t derive pleasure from the dull popping noise each bubble makes as you squeeze it. My enjoyment is a bit more subtle. I like to gently squeeze the bubble with the thumb and forefinger on each hand until a second bubble starts to form on it. You know what I’m talking about? It kind of grows off the main bubble like a pimple. The plastic starts stretching out until the slightly cloudy material becomes perfectly clear and then it pops. And that pop, my friend, is ten times more satisfying than if you’d just gone at the main bubble like a seventeen-year-old who’s just seen his first boob. The sound is a little bit higher pitched, like the sound of a cap gun, and it signifies that you applied just the right amount of pressure. Too much pressure and the main bubble pops with is signature dull snap. Too little pressure and the clear pimple you’ve formed just kind of fizzles out anticlimactically with no sound at all. But executed precisely, that pimple cracks open with a satisfying BIH-TZ.

But even a sound as gratifying as that will, again, only entertain me for about thirty seconds before I go off in search of hookers, heroin and old computer monitors to break. I’m kidding of course… old computer monitors have mercury in them which poisons the environment. Of course, there are some people in this world who view bubble wrap as some kind of metaphysical Rubix Cube. They concentrate on those bumpy pieces of plastic so intently that you’d swear they were trying to discern the secrets of the universe from the broken capsules. And they truly would spend all day popping these things if you gave them the opportunity and a Staples giftcard.

There was a girl I worked with at a production company in New York a few years back who had just such a fascination. And one day she got the motherload. A huge shipment of tapes came in the mail, and protecting this cargo was a ten-foot-long, three-foot-wide virtual throw rug of bubble wrap. And this chick went… to… town on the thing, alternating between popping a series of individual bubbles to twisting a large handful into a fast sequence of firecracker snaps. And mind you, she was the receptionist in our office. In the waiting room where she was conducting this occupational therapy were producers, a casting director and multiple actors preparing for an audition. But she just kept popping, cheerfully oblivious of the entire room staring at her in sawed off amazement.

A couple months ago, I was working late and ordered delivery from a sandwich shop down the road. When the delivery guy got there, he spotted a rather large sheet of bubble wrap sitting on the table. After handing me my food, he said, “Oh wow, bubble wrap!” then picked it up and started popping the bubbles. Okay, no problem. I went into the next room to get the petty cash to, figuring he would get his therapy in, then leave after I paid him. Well as I handed him the money, he didn’t even reach out his hand to accept it. He just kept right on popping.

And then he said (and I swear to you this is verbatim and not at all embellished), “You gotta give me a few minutes man. I love this stuff. I had a sheet of this at my house last week and I spent like two hours popping it.”

I laughed and said, “Oh, there you go,” which is what I always say when I either don’t care about what somebody is saying or think they’re a complete freak but don’t want to say so. In this case, obviously, both situations applied. So I went over to my dinner, unwrapped my meatball sub, took the straw out of its paper and stuck it in my soda, took a drink, took a bite, took another drink and finally said, “Dude, you can take that with you if you want.”

You’d swear I’d just offered him one of the expensive computers I was busy prepping. His face lit up and he gushed, “Really? Oh wow thanks man, that’s awesome.” He grabbed his tip and walked back to his car, popping with the utmost concentration the entire way. I locked the door behind me then went looking for things to break.

I know we’re several months off for this, but I was thinking the other day about just how dumb Halloween is when you have a kid who is too young to go trick-or-treating. The last two years, people have asked me, “So what is The Girl going as this year?”

For some reason, my response floors them, “Uh, nothing.”

What’s the point really? It’s hard enough getting her to wear a hat, nevermind a mask, a pair of angel wings, or a set of bunny ears. She hates it when we wash her face, so why would we aggravate the task by smearing on hard-to-remove makeup? She’s too young to get the concept of trick-or-treating, and to be honest, we’re trying to keep her away from candy for as long as possible anyway, so why would we bring her around the neighborhood filling a bag with it?

Let’s be honest, parents who dress up their one-year-old up for Halloween are doing it for themselves way more than for their kid. They do it so they can take that one adorable picture which they can show to all the other parents at Mommy and Me and while they chuckle one of those phony my-kid-is-better-than-your-kid chuckles.

“Oh look how sweet. Broderick went as a Hobbit this year.”

Nevermind the fact that Broderick probably screamed for thirty minutes while his mom tried to force him into that costume. Nevermind the fact that he got bored after the first two houses and fell asleep on Dad’s shoulder as he carried him from house to house. Nevermind the fact that if Mister “my parents used my name in a vain attempt to show everybody just how simultaneously creative and trendy they could be” Broderick had actually ever SEEN Lord of the Rings at two years old, he would be waking up with night terrors until he was thirty-seven. I’m sure little Broderick would have been just as happy wearing a bowl on his head all night while dumping Cheerios into his plastic pumpkin. But that doesn’t make for good photography does it?

I’ve never really bought into the whole stupid parent thing of taking your kid somewhere and pretending it’ll be so much fun for them, when really, it’s all about rounding out that photo album that you bought at your last Pretentious Memories scrapbooking party. Do you think there’s a two-year-old on earth who really truly gives a crap about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny? At BEST they don’t care. More often they’re full fledged terrified because the giant baby eating rabbit from their dreams has finally manifested in the flesh. As far as I’m concerned, any activity where a parent finds themselves saying, “Honey stop screaming, Mommy’s trying to take your picture,” you might want to rethink your motivation for doing it.

Like taking your kids to Disney World. Oh we all have such a warm place in our heart for Disney World. And as soon as we become parents, we build it up in our minds just how perfect it will be. The kids will get to see Mickey Mouse. They’ll squeal with glee on all the rides. They’ll giggle whenever their ice-cream cone accidentally bumps their nose and mom and dad have to kiss it off.

YEAH RIGHT!

As far as I’m concerned Disney World is a disaster waiting to happen for any family who brings in a kid less than ten years old. After all, you’ve just shelled out enough money to pay for a really high-end television and now you have to get your money’s worth. But of course your kid is too scared to go on ninety percent of the rides. So you wait an hour in line just to ride thirty seconds on the lame flying Dumbo’s only to spend the entire time hovering along the ground because your kid freaks out whenever you press the button to make the elephant go up. Finally, by the end of the ride you’re shouting at your five-year-old, “We waited in line for an hour because you wanted to ride the Dumbo and now we are going up in the air! So stop screaming and wave to Mommy!”

It’s a hundred degrees out. Water costs five dollars per eight-ounce bottle. The line to see Mickey Mouse somehow corresponds exactly to the capacity of a young child’s bladder. And forget about kissing the ice-cream off your kid’s nose. If you’ve ever been to Disney World you’ve seen at least one crying toddler holding an empty waffle cone, standing next to a splattered chocolate scoop, and a red-faced parent screaming into their child’s face, “Look what you did! Didn’t I tell you to hang onto this?!? I did, didn’t I! Well that’s just great! Ten dollars right down the (bleep)ing drain!” It’s truly a special moment when you see somebody inducing childhood neurosis over a chocolate dip.

For your money and relative aggravation you’d be better off shelling out sixty bucks a night at the Musty Fart Motel off Interstate 4 and spending the entire week using the in ground pool. It may have no diving board, no slide, no flotation devices and no pool toys, but you’ll never hear a five-year-old say, “I’m bored,” or “I want to go home.” He’ll spend five hours just jumping off the side into the shallow end over and over again, squealing, “Okay everybody watch!” before each jump. Get him a five-dollar pair of goggles and you’ve just bought him a bonus three hours of entertainment. He’ll put those things on and examine every square inch of that pool and never fuss for a moment. The only thing you have to do is act like you give a crap for six seconds when he wants to show you how long he can hold his breath. It really is the perfect vacation. Seriously, how can anybody get mad at the motel pool? The only tears that are ever shed happen when water goes up somebody’s nose. But thirty seconds later, they’ve already shaken it off and are begging you to watch their cannon ball again.

The Girl is going to be two-and-a-half this Halloween and no, we will not be dressing her up. Maybe we’ll put a dress on her and say, “Look, you’re Maggie,” a girl at daycare who wears dresses every day. For Halloween, we’ll likely do what we do on any other day. Take her to the park, let her swing on the swings, climb the rock wall and slide down the slide, unencumbered by some ridiculously bulky costume that only frustrates her and gets in the way. We’ll go home, have dinner and let her have some chocolate milk before bed—which is as close to candy as I want her having right now.