Entries Tagged 'being a kid' ↓

As a father, I am really really looking forward to the age where ant farms become appropriate toys. I loved my ant farm as a kid and I can’t wait for the excuse to have one again. For the uninitiated, a typical ant farm consisted of two-panes of glass (or plastic) spaced a couple of centimeters apart which you filled with soil from your yard. You’d go gather up about twenty or thirty ants and jimmy them one-by-one into the ant farm with some food (the instructions suggested sugar water curiously enough). After that, you’d just sit back and let them go to work for about a week, digging tunnels and settling into their new home. That’s when the real fun would begin.

You’d start by collecting another twenty ants from a different anthill. Your next move was really a matter of taste. You could drop all twenty of the rival ants into the ant farm at the same time and watch as both sides fought to the bitter violent death, leaving behind only one or two befuddled sentries. On the other hand, you could drop them in two or three at a time and watch as the colony ganged up and tore them to pieces. Occasionally, one of the intruders would put up a good fight and take down a couple of the ravenous mob (especially if you were lucky enough to find a colony of red ants), but in the end he was still inherently doomed.

This was the way I chose to put my rival ants to work. I’d gradually up the number of intruders over the course of an hour or so, giving my colony plenty of practice against increasingly difficult odds. Then, after I felt that all of my six-legged soldiers had been sufficiently trained up in the art of war, I’d go out and find a huge freakin’ SPIDER. Here’s where the action really got interesting. Unlike ant-on-ant battles, which pretty much always came down to whoever had the bigger army, you never knew how a spider would fare against an entire colony. A spider is obviously big enough and tough enough hold its own against four or five ants at once. And if he positions himself properly the narrowness of the tunnels can actually work to his favor, preventing the ants from swarming him in numbers he can’t handle. But ants are nothing if not coordinated. It all boils down to how fast they can rally a multi-pronged attack, sending flanking units to the surface and attacking him from behind. Once the ants can pin down the intruding monster on both sides, forcing him to split his attention, it’s only a matter of time before they get past his long legs and onto his back. After that, the outcome of the fight is pretty much a foregone conclusion. It’s just a question of how many ants the spider takes with him.

When people think of little boys and ants, they usually conjure up images of us incinerating them with a magnifying glass, or dousing them with gasoline. They really don’t give us enough credit. We came up with way way way more messed up ideas than that. Ant farms gave us a staging ground to recreate the Roman Coliseum! We made countless drones fight for their lives purely for our own amusement. We let swarms of opposing armies slaughter each other just to see who would reign victorious. We put trained fighters into the ring with the equivalent of Bengal tigers just to see how many would die before vanquishing the beast

Now I know what you’re thinking: serial killers in training. But trust me, no mass murderer has ever wasted his time executing insects. They killed cats and dogs and birds and things. Things with faces. Things with personalities. Things you can love, sympathize and identify with. But who ever identified with a freakin’ ant? And I mean a real ant, not that cute puppet thing from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Sure we were messed up. All boys are. But hey, at least we purged our homicidal curiosities on creatures that everyone kills on a daily basis. Is it really so messed up that we got additional entertainment value out of it? And is it really so messed up that I can’t wait to share that simple joy with my kids?

The Girl and I were just chilling out tonight, listening to the Happy Feet soundtrack while we cleaned up her room, when she suddenly says: “This is the one where they don’t beat baby girls.”

That made me stop for a second. I was trying to remember a place in the movie where the penguins beat up the baby penguins. I know there was a part where the dad was worried that he’d drop an egg. But I don’t remember him actually beating one of them.

“When do they beat the babies?” I ask.

“No they don’t beat the baby girls, I said.”

I crinkled up my forehead trying to think what the heck movie she could possibly be talking about when I realized which song was playing. It was Nicole Kidman singing the Prince song, “Kiss.” And that’s when I realized what the first line of the song might sound like to the unfamiliar brain of a three-year-old: “You don’t have to be rich to be my pearl,” becomes:

“You don’t have to beat the baby girls.”

Now my question is this: Is it weird that The Girl understood that as a completely innocuous line?

I saw a Humvee in the parking lot of Whole Foods today. Weird.

I realized today that I don’t really like most Christmas music and haven’t since I was a kid. Actually I realized that a few years ago, but I figured out WHY today. As a kid, Christmas music is fun mostly because you’re always the one singing it. But as you get older, you’re forced to listen to Bing Crosby sing it. And if you don’t particularly like Bing Crosby, well… it doesn’t do much for your like of the music in general.

My daughter came out with a very profound statement the other day: “I was two on the day I turned three.”

I used to buy milk two or more gallons at a time. Then I read some stuff that said milk wasn’t as good for you as everyone thought. These days I buy vinegar two or more gallons at a time. I’m not saying the one is a natural byproduct of the other, but there you are.

I never realized just how insanely fun it can be to throw one tiny cat onto the back of another.

I don’t think I will ever reach a point in my life where I am too mature to laugh at a really fat kid falling down.

For years I’ve told people the story of a childhood friend who peed on an electric fence as if it were something that happened to me personally. Somehow a story like that is just funnier in the first person.

I don’t care if she’s only fifteen; hot is hot and show me the law that says it’s illegal to leer.

I like to think I’m fairly open-minded when it comes to strange foods, but I still cannot wrap my mind around tofu.

Little kids’ bodies are so ridiculously disproportionate it’s almost a marvel they aren’t defective. Look at one of them when they raise their arms up high.  The fingers barely clear their scalp for crying out loud!

The thing I really miss about my Geo is playing “Merge Chicken” against people in Mercedes SUV’s.

I have no idea how I used to eat Ramen noodles in such large quantities.

I somehow can’t bring myself to feel sympathy for anyone who loses an hour and a half’s worth of work because they forgot to save.

I never realized that I hadn’t seen a single red hot dog since leaving Maine until about a year ago when I read on Wikipedia that red hot dogs are actually a Maine “thing.”

I likewise never realized that I hadn’t seen a single whoopie pie since leaving Maine until somebody told me that Maine is apparently the whoopie pie capital of the world.

Britney Spears is hot. Her music is catchy. And everyone just needs to lay off.

At any given hour on any given day I would bet a minor sum of money that I could find at least one Law & Order or CSI incarnation on TV.

I still don’t know, nor care, what the top news story of the day is.

I saw a Humvee in the parking lot of Whole Foods today. Still weird.

I received this email forward from an older relative. Even though I can appreciate where the writer is coming from, and even tend to agree with a lot of its sentiment, for some reason it just hacked me off. It’s a typical “Our generation is better than the new generation” tirade, which acknowledges all the things that made the previous generation great, but fails to recognize all the things they did to screw it up for those of us who followed. So just to set the record straight, here is the original email in its entirety with my comments in bold italics.

======================================

Those Born 1930-1979!

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930′s 40′s, 50′s, 60′s and 70′s !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.

Yes and I’m sure many of you are still dealing with health problems and your own addictions to the same substances to this day as a result.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

Of course, the oceans weren’t nearly as polluted back then as they were now thanks to you, so mercury contamination in tuna wasn’t as much of a concern back then.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

Look around at the gluttony of TV ads for designer pills intended to take care of everything from chronic asthma to irritable bowl syndrome to erectile dysfunction. Look at all the fun new forms of cancer you’re getting that your parents never had to deal with. Looks like all that lead-based paint and other chemicals you’ve been introducing into every product on the market had some unexpected long-term effects.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

Mind you, this was during a time when all your parents had to navigate were 45m.p.h. rural two lane roads where you encountered maybe ten other cars on your way to work. There were two intersections and one blinking light in town. Unless your parents were particularly idiotic drivers, the only chance they had of getting into an accident was if a deer jumped in front of them.

Today we’re driving on multi-laned highways with heavy merges, multiple exits to left and right, hundreds of signs pointing this way and that so that you’re never quite sure if you’re heading in the right direction or not. Not to mention the fact that we’re trying to run this gauntlet with about a thousand other cars, all going the same 65m.p.h. So forgive us if we’re a little more worried about what might happen to our children if we ended up in the middle of a ten-car pileup.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

Again, back then you actually had roads that weren’t jammed with other cars, and nice soft grass to ride on. But you’ve paved over everything since then, meaning we’re riding our bikes on asphalt. So yeah, we want a little more protection for our head in case we wipe out on yet another of your oil stained parking lots.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Great, and maybe if you hadn’t gone and polluted the water supply we’d be drinking from the hose too.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

This seems a bit disingenuous. Somehow I doubt that the “cootie” argument began with our generation.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren’t overweight because :

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING !

We’d be outside playing too, except for the fact that you bulldozed the baseball diamond to put up luxury condominiums, you tore down the YMCA to build a WalMart and you drained the swimming hole to put in yet another massive parking lot for yet another massive strip mall (which you won’t allow us to skateboard on). You’ve kind of taken away all our outdoor places to go. We’d ride our bikes there, but again, refer to the previous bit about those roads that you made entirely unsafe for us to be riding on.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

Chances are you were playing at or near one of your friend’s houses with at least one parent or trusted neighbor keeping a loose watch on everything. Today, our neighbors are strangers and both parents need to work just to keep up in this two-income trap that you managed to set for us.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

Do you really expect us to believe that you’re going to allow us to race a handmade go-kart down your hill? You won’t even let us SKATEBOARD on all those nice big parking lots you built.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD’s, no surround-sound or CD’s, no cell phones, no personal computer’s, no Internet or chat rooms…….

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

Your friends lived across the street. Our friends live ten miles across town via one of those multi-laned highways we mentioned earlier. You know what we find when we go outside? Traffic.

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

Those trees were in the backyards of your own houses. But since you’ve created a housing race encouraged by zero-interest loans you’ve priced us out of our own neighborhoods. We live in crammed-together suburbs and apartment complexes where the only trees are owned by somebody else who puts a fence around the thing so that we risk impaling our testicles more than breaking our teeth should we fall out.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

Okay, but then YOU yelled at US for swallowing gum. Which way do you want it?

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

AGAIN, you had your own backyards to do that stuff in. Our downstairs neighbors tend to call the police when they see us holding a gun in our common back yard.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Yet again, your friends were a two-minute walk across the street. You’ve destroyed the idea of a town center so all our friends are scattered across a thirty-mile radius. We need phones and email if we’re ever going to talk to them outside of school.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

Because you still had parks and public pools and something called “recess”, it probably wasn’t such a big deal if you didn’t make the team. You had other things to keep you active. But since you’ve graciously ELIMINATED all these things for us, maybe we don’t mind creating a few extra Little League teams so that more of our kids have the opportunity to do something other than play those X-Boxes and Playstations you mocked just a couple paragraphs ago.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

Okay fine, I’m with you on this one.

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

It has also produced some of the most soulless, narcissistic, toy-hoarding, money grubbing greedy generations ever to grace this earth. People who gave up on the idea of making the world a better place once they realized that they could drive a BMW , own a condo and go on a cruise every year… Just sayin’.

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

It’s also been an explosion of land, water and air pollution as you search for easier and cheaper ways to mass-produce all those innovations of yours.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And you dealt with it by selling out the idealism of your youth in favor of stock options, middle-management positions and items that sell for thirty-nine cents less at WalMart even though it put some of your friends out of business. Quite frankly, I’m not impressed with what you did with all that freedom, success and responsibility.

If YOU are one of them . . CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good

Okay, excuse me but YOU PEOPLE are the ones IN CHARGE of the government right now!!! YOU are the ones who made these rules and regulations. If you don’t like the way the world has gone, you have nobody to blame but your own self-righteous SELF.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.

Brave? BRAVE??? Are these the same “brave” people who spit, cursed and threw blood at the soldiers who returned from Vietnam in the late 60’s? Yes, your generation turned out a few gems, but so does every generation… ours included.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?

No, it makes me want to strangle all you sell outs from the older generation for ruining it for us. God willing we’ll do a better job with it for OUR children.

It’s amazing how ten minutes in kid world can become a microcosm for life in general and, if you look hard enough, a fast forward glimpse into what these little rugrats have in store for you. Lauren and I recently took the kids down to the pool for an afternoon and The Girl made fast friends with a little boy who was there with his mom. At three years old, The Girl has pretty much grown used to always being the youngest kid in a group, but this boy was only two and it was obvious from the first moment that he was in love and would follow her anywhere. She must have sensed this too, because within minutes she began testing his loyalties.

Standing on the side, the two of them would talk for a second, then The Girl would spontaneously announce, “I’m going over there,” and run to the other side of the pool. The little boy would have a moment’s hesitation where he looked at his mom in the water, then at my daughter beckoning him from twenty feet away. Then, making the hard decision, he would run, with many looks back, to The Girl. His mom and I would swim our way over to the two chatting kids just in time to hear The Girl announce that she was going back over there now, and run in the direction from whence we had all just arrived, forcing the little boy into another hard decision.

Personally, I didn’t mind shadowing my daughter all over the pool—that’s why we had come down here after all—but it was apparent that this boy’s mom was tired and really didn’t feel like swimming back and forth just to follow her son while he followed a girl. We learned earlier that she’d just had another baby six weeks earlier and this was one of the first times she’d been out of the house. But it was apparent her little boy was indeed prepared to follow our little girl no matter how many times she ran away from him. And the more The Girl scurried away, the less he looked to his mom for approval before pursuing. Sensing the mom’s lack of energy, I suggested to my daughter that we stay in one spot. Not to be deterred, she immediately changed tactics and began subtly taunting her newfound friend.

“How old are you?” she asked, knowing full well what the answer would be since she’d asked the same question a half dozen times already. It took the younger boy a few seconds to formulate his words and position his fingers into the correct number of digits. “I…two!” She immediately shot back, “Oh well I’m three!” After about the tenth round of this exchange with The Girl asserting her numeric superiority, the boy actually started lying to sound better. “I…tree!” he said. The Girl, knowing better (and knowing full well what she was doing I might add) mocked, “You’re not three! You’re two! I’m three!”

The mom, trying to keep her part in this whole thing as jovial and non-confrontational as possible, stuck up for her son with a lame, “Oh he’ll be three in a few months, won’t you buddy.” The Girl considered this for a moment, then looked at the boy and decided to taunt him another way. “That’s my daddy,” she said, pointing to me. “Your daddy’s not here.”

My stomach dropped. In five minutes time, she’d progressed from a coy little game of cat and mouse, to throwing veiled insults at the boy, to throwing veiled insults at his family. I was honestly rendered speechless. I couldn’t see scolding her over this. It was a perfectly normal three-year-old conversation topic after all, and she wasn’t blatantly mocking this kid by any stretch. But I knew better. We all did by this point. This wasn’t a casual observation on The Girl’s part. It was a well-calculated dig, hidden behind the mask of innocence. The boy’s mom once again spoke up in defense, “His daddy is at home watching his baby sister so mommy could go to the pool.” I jumped on this and rallied to the mom’s side, “Oh see, they have a baby just like us. His daddy is home with the baby.”

The Girl, already bored with this new line of dialogue, changed tactics again. “I wanna jump, Daddy!” She shooed the little boy away with a flip of her hand then leapt three feet off the edge of the pool into my waiting arms. She looked back at her newfound puppy dog with a look that said, “See what I just did.” Earlier, before she and this boy became fast friends, he too had been attempting this stunt… only he didn’t so much jump into his mom’s arms as lean out until he was in contact with her hands before falling the rest of the way. I’m fairly certain The Girl saw this and remembered it. Now, off the boy’s look of hesitation, she threw her arms around my neck, laid her head on my chest and said in a loud clear voice, “I love you, Daddy.”

That settled it. Even at two years old this kid knew that to impress a girl and steal her away from the man in her life, he couldn’t just match what she had done. He had to do it three times bigger and five times more dangerous. Just behind the ledge where The Girl had jumped was a slightly higher ledge. Just behind that was a brick wall about two feet high. The little boy, who not ten minutes earlier had been afraid to jump from the ledge two inches above the water, was gearing up for a stunt that was certain to impress the little redhead he was quickly falling in love with… if he didn’t split his head open in the process. Fortunately I, Lauren and the boy’s mom all had the good sense to stop him before he took a flying leap off Blind Man’s Bluff. One of us made up some lame but plausible excuse that would allow us to separate the kids before The Girl could convince him to elope with her.

Boy oh boy. She looks so harmless, but apparently my daughter has the potential to be that girl the other moms view as a “bad influence.” She speaks well. She’s sweet and courteous. She has a soft porcelain face that absolutely cries, “Innocence!” But let us not forget that fiery red hair and the temper that comes along with it. This kid is smart, shrewd, calculating. She’ll learn how to wrap people around her finger and use them to her liking. I only pray she uses them for good and not for evil. I don’t want to field phone calls from angry parents over why their son missed curfew and ended up in jail over a dare. I really don’t ever want to think of my daughter as being that proverbial “Madonna/Whore” package.

It does give me hope that when the boy and his mom finally left the pool, The Girl watched him go, forlornly waving goodbye, and spent the next two hours sadly asking, “Where the boy go? Where the boy go?” She really did love him. She just didn’t know how to express it. Maybe we’ll just keep her away from the pool for awhile.

(deep SIGH)

First they took away dodgeball, saying it was too violent. Then a couple of kids fell off the see-saw and monkey bars, so away they went. Next the tall metal slides were replaced by short plastic corkscrews that don’t give you any speed. Before long somebody said that even swings were too dangerous for playground play. Now just when you thought parents and schools couldn’t get any more ridiculous and wussified than they already are, you know what some school board in Attleboro, Massachusetts decided this week? Apparently the game of Tag is no longer an appropriate game. Tag! I mean… TAG for crying out loud! Claiming “Recess is a time when accidents happen,” the Willette Elementary School has deemed one of the most basic, elemental and pure games of childhood as too rough and dangerous for kids to play. What’s even more amazing is that there’s nothing amazing about this decision. Schools all over the country have been taking similar measures for years. In 2002 a Santa Monica school banned the game saying that it “creates self esteem issues among slower and weaker children.”

I just don’t even know what to say about this decision that isn’t already self-evident to anyone who grew up in any previous generation, though I think George Carlin said it best: “Grownups are taking all the fun out of being a kid just to save a few thousand lives. It’s pathetic.”

Every generation fears the one that comes after it. Our grandparents were horrified by the rock-n-roll our parents listened to. Our parents were horrified by the brain-numbing MTV programming we watched. It’s expected. You think your parents are prudes and you wish your kids would be into the “wholesome” things you liked. But now that my generation is stepping into the parental roles a new and disturbing trend is happening. We’re actually saying that all the things we loved about being a kid are no longer good and valid forms of entertainment. Instead, we claim they’re damaging to the body and psyche of our frail little children. But the more I think about it, the deeper I think it goes. Parents aren’t vilifying things that are dangerous. What they’re really trying to forbid is any activity that kids can do without their direct supervision.

I never made that leap of logic until I read that soccer is now the number one youth sport in America. And what immediately occurred to me was that the article left out one key word from the declaration: soccer is the number one organized youth sport in America. Whenever you see American kids playing soccer, it’s almost without exception a structured, organized event with official teams, coaches, referees, and booster moms selling refreshments and car magnets. You almost never see a group of four or ten unsupervised kids trying to kick a ball through a makeshift goal. That’s what kids all over the world do, but not in America. Here, the sport that kids engage in most, irrespective of adult supervision, is basketball. Kids don’t need an organized group of parents to play basketball. As long as they have a ball, a net and a hard surface they’ll shoot hoops for hours. But since there’s no way to poll every pickup game on every cracked asphalt court in the country, soccer is the sport that wins the most popular title.

And that suits the parents of my generation just fine for some reason. They can’t stand the idea that their kids could be having any kind of fun that they didn’t personally orchestrate and supervise. And that’s why things like playground equipment and unstructured games like tag and dodgeball are going away. “Safety” and “self-esteem” are just easy scapegoats for the real truth: today’s parents are scared that their kids (gasp) might not need them.

I don’t know where all this insecurity originated and why it seems to be unique to parents my age. Is it that we wish our own parents would have spent more time playing with us that we feel compelled to make sure our kids never spend a joyful minute outside our presence? Is it the reports of kids getting stolen out of their own yards that make us too scared to let them leave our watch for any reason whatsoever? What is it that makes games like soccer, where dozens of kids can be supervised all at once, more preferable to games like tag where kids can supervise themselves? Why on earth is our generation unique in vilifying ourselves by vilifying the things we used to love? And where will it end? How much of our children’s lives will we attempt to structuralize with no thought given to what we’re depriving them of?

I always felt inferior to my friends in elementary school because I could never sweat adequately. We all played sports, and sweating was considered a sign of athleticism and studliness. I’m not sure why really. I guess we needed something to separate the men from the boys and we were all too short to slam-dunk. We’d be outside playing basketball in late March and already the other guys’ faces looked like glasses of iced tea on a hot day. They’d pivot, flipping their heads to the side, and the sweat would fling in all directions. Awesome. Meanwhile, I’d be playing Little League in the dead heat of July and my brow would just be starting to dampen—and I was a catcher.

I’ll never forget the day I finally became a man. I was at basketball camp in the sweltering hundred-percent humidity of August with about a hundred other boys. We were being coached by a dozen middle-aged men who had never forgiven themselves for missing that final shot at the buzzer twenty years earlier, and they were serving out their self-imposed penance by making the rest of us run laps to the point of stroke. After about my hundredth suicide sprint of the afternoon, I was hunched over trying to convince myself that the backboard was not in fact melting, when I felt what I thought was a fly crawling down my face. I waved my hand at it, but it didn’t fly away. Despite the fact that my heart was beating hard enough to pop the blisters on my feet, I smiled letting the solitary bead roll all the way down to my jaw, refusing to wipe it away. I came in first on every training circuit they threw at us that afternoon.

Any of a thousand childhood clichés could have been thrown at me that afternoon: “be careful what you wish for enjoy it while it lasts don’t be in such a hurry to grow up if you keep doing that it’ll make you go blind…” How I long for the days when I couldn’t muster up enough sweat to warrant even a Kleenex. Now I find myself soaking through jeans and multiple t-shirts on any given day in February. It doesn’t take much. All I have to do is walk to the car in the morning and realize I forgot my cell phone. Halfway up the six steps to my apartment and the entire area beneath my backpack is already sticking to my skin.

Five years ago I thought baby powder was something you only used on, you know… babies. These days I have to walk around like Pigpen’s twin brother just to absorb enough moisture to prevent yellow belly button stains from forming on my shirt. It seems pointless to take even lukewarm showers anymore. Standing in a room with that much humidity pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the day. Towels become useless. Undershirts only provide a temporary shield. I stand in front of the fan for fifteen minutes in the vain hope that the Law of Evaporation will somehow combat the Law of the Sweaty Sweatball. And that law states: The volume of sweat emitted shall be directly proportional to the energy expressed attempting to remain dry.

Summer’s the worst, though not because of the higher temperatures. Apparently it’s also a really fun time for people I know to get married. That means getting all dressed up in pants, long-sleeve shirts and jackets at a time when light colors (read: “colors that cannot conceal armpit stains”) are in style. All I can do is try to stand perfectly still so that there is always a good half-inch between my skin and any fabric. I finally started driving to weddings in just my boxer shorts with the A/C on full blast. I get dressed in the parking lot then refuse to sit down in my khaki pants all day long.

I don’t get it. I thought only fat people had this problem. I’ve been trying to get up to my target weight since puberty—which began, coincidentally, that summer at basketball camp. And the worst part is that it’s now become a hereditary issue. My one-year-old daughter is a fit and trim twenty pounds and already she sweats when she eats. Her beautiful shiny red hair becomes a brown matted mess an hour after her bath. Poor kid. I really hope this makes her the envy of all her friends in sixth-grade, but somehow I don’t think girls have the same priorities as boys.

Has anybody else from my generation noticed how the classic story “The Three Little Pigs” has been changed to become more “accessible” and “kid friendly”? Everybody remembers the basic story structure. There are three brother pigs who go off to build houses. Two of the pigs are lazy and build their houses out of straw and sticks respectively. But the third little pig is an industrious forward thinker. He knows there are wolves out there who would try to eat him, so he builds a strong house out of bricks. Well lo and behold, along comes the Big Bad Wolf who proceeds to “huff and puff and blow the house down” on the first two pigs. But the third little pig’s brick house is too strong and the wolf is foiled. Exactly how the wolf is foiled has evolved over the years.

First of all, in older versions of the story, the Wolf actually eats the first two pigs. I don’t think there is a version around anymore where this grisly turn of events still takes place. Generally speaking, straw-pig and stick-pig run to the house of their better-prepared brother. This specific rewriting doesn’t bother me all that much. I know the original intent of that particular plot line was to reinforce a Christian work ethic in kids by implying: “Don’t be idle and lazy or you’ll DIE!” But it’s hard to enjoy good lighthearted literature if two such lovable characters experience such a gruesome death. So I’m cool with that kind of creative license taking.

What bothers me is how history has tried to rewrite the ultimate fate of the Big Bad Wolf. Again, in the versions I always read, the Wolf died at the end of the story. After failing to blow down the brick house, he comes down the chimney where the little pig (or pigs depending on the version) have put a kettle of boiling water into the fireplace. The Wolf lands in the water and is boiled to death. Again, depending on the version, his death goes down in one of two ways. Either a) the little pig(s) cook the wolf and eat him or b) (the more palatable version) the wolf simply boils away into non-existence. Either way, the wolf gets his comeuppance and the little pigs are freed from his reign of terror.

Well, that is not how it happens today. In every modern version, the Wolf slides down the chimney, burns his bottom on the boiling water then runs into the woods, never to bother the little pigs again.

(((I guess I should acknowledge the caveat that this isn’t necessarily a new way of telling the tale. The popular Disney version of the story includes this kid-friendly non-violent ending—and that cartoon came out in 1933. But as of the early 80′s, when I was growing up, there were still plenty of printed versions of the story that included the wolf’s boiling demise.)))

I know we’re trying to save our children’s frail psyche’s by eliminating all mention of death and violence in their stories, but I must state for the record that I HATE this version of “The Three Little Pigs” with its non-violent climax. From a purely storytelling point of view, there is nothing satisfying about the Wolf escaping with just wounded pride and a sore bottom. I mean he just spent the better part of the story doing everything he could do to kill and devour three helpless oinkers whose worst sin was being a little lazy. Why shouldn’t the Big Bad Wolf die at the end? Do the rewriters really expect us to believe that this Wolf is just going to sit around moping in the woods and never bother the pigs again? Please! As soon as his butt heals, he’ll be back, and with a vengeance. Knowing he can’t penetrate the house, he’ll just wait patiently outside, knowing that these pigs are going to have to come out eventually. No, in order to have full closure on this story, the wolf has to die… or at least be subdued in some way. Maybe the pigs could tie him up and send him to Abu Dhabi or something. (and pat yourself on the back if you caught the Garfield reference).

I know I’m overreacting, and I know it’s just a kid’s story, but come on now, let’s give that Wolf what he’s got coming!

You know what TV show I used to love as a kid? American Gladiators. What an awesome show that was. To a ten-year-old boy, that show was like gym class for superheroes. I mean you had dodgeball, except the balls in this case were fired at you from a high speed canon while you shot back with crossbows and rocket launchers. There was a rock wall with the added element of a really big guy chasing you, trying to yank you off. You had an obstacle course, though it was more like a mythological gauntlet full of smoke, flashing lights and giants trying to knock you down.

I wonder if that show would impress kids these days, what with the gluttony of fast-paced action-filled cartoons and kid shows they already have at their disposal. But when the most exciting shows were Growing Pains and Muppet Babies, American Gladiators was like a forbidden look into the hidden lives of action stars or something. The fact that it came on late on a Saturday night, right after Saturday Night Live where I lived, only added to the allure that you were somehow breaking the rules and seeing things that only grownups were meant to see.

As kids who played sports, my friends and I would often talk about wanting to go on American Gladiators. To be honest, I don’t even know what kind of prizes the winner of each show received. For us, it wasn’t about winning, it was about competing. But really it was about playing. Hardcore, meat and muscle, violence-for-fun playing. Running inside a giant metal sphere and bashing into your opponents in an effort to score points. Walloping a guy twice your size with a big foam jousting stick, trying to knock him off his ten-foot pedestal. How freakin’ awesome would it have been just to be allowed inside that auditorium and be given the chance to compete in any of those games.

I read in TV Guide one time the qualifications needed to be considered as a contestant for American Gladiators. I don’t remember them all, but I do know you had to be able to do something like thirty chin-ups in a minute. That was crazy. Even at my strongest I’ve only been able to do ten of those things. I’m sure other qualifications were you had to be able to run a mile in less than five minutes, you had to lift a certain amount of weight with your legs and arms. Stuff like that. Stuff that only somebody at the very peak of physical strength and fitness had any hope of accomplishing.

I wish they’d bring back competition shows like that. Shows where you actually had to have, not just talent, but extreme talent to compete. What an awesome bar that gave us to shoot for. To get onto American Gladiators you had to aim high and work hard. These days, most of the competitions shows you see on TV require no other qualifications than not being a convicted felon. Survivor, Big Brother, The Amazing Race. Anybody can, in theory, appear on those shows. The only thing that increases your odds of being chosen isn’t superior strength or talent, but above average looks and a quirky personality. I guess that appeals more to people these days. The average viewer can watch these shows and actually picture themselves on that screen competing as they are, without any new skills or improvement. Hell, William Hung taught us that you didn’t even have to be a good singer to succeed on American Idol.

Is this all a sign of where we’re headed as a country? As a civilization? As a species? The bar used to be high. Impossibly high no doubt. None of us were ever going to attain the superiority required to appear on American Gladiators. But in the end, was that really such a bad thing? It gave us something shoot for and even when we didn’t hit that mark, we landed higher than we would have had we shot for something lower. These days, there’s no mark to shoot for. The message competition shows send out today is, “Just be yourself… your regular, stupid, talentless self, and you too could be a star.” If this trend continues, the human race is doomed. Evolution cannot progress if we aren’t constantly challenged in our daily lives.

I hate Reality TV. I refuse to watch any of it. But I promise all you TV executives out there, if you were to bring back American Gladiators, I would watch. But it’s got to be the real thing. The standards have to remain high. Contestants actually need to be able to pass a physical test to compete. And for the love of God, if I don’t see ugly people in the mix along with the hotties, I’ll tune you out forever. Because strong people with talent come at all levels of beauty.

Bring back American Gladiators. The future of the world depends on it.

1/5/09: Ironically, since I wrote this, NBC did come out with a new version of American Gladiators. And to this day I still haven’t seen it thus proving that I have no conviction in anything I say but prefer to just be a whiny little man.  

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.