The Blog of Brian Hodges

(from 2005)

Growing up, I had such fond memories of The Little Engine that Could.  But I never noticed just how badly it was written until I started reading it to my own daughter.  First of all, in a thirty-five-page book, the title character isn’t even introduced until page twenty-six.  Bad start.  After that, his only conflict is this little hill.  There’s no struggle, no character arc, and no moment of crisis where it seems like the good little boys and girls on the other side of the mountain might not get their toys.  The train says, “I think I can” a couple times, and then he’s done.

Talk about your go-nowhere plot.  If it only takes him a page and a half to get over that mountain, maybe it wasn’t such a daunting obstacle to begin with.  Beyond that, I don’t feel as though I’ve truly gotten to know this Little Engine.  What were his hopes and dreams?  What demons from his past is he trying to overcome?  Above all, what did he learn from his experience on the mountain?  I guess we’ll never know.

The fact that this book and others like it are regarded as classics just shows you what kind of bleak landscape the pre-Seuss literary world was.  Personally, I blame the Baby Boomers.  (Though, I tend to blame them for most of the bad things in this world.) After thirty years of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, they started looking back on their trite, empty little lives and yearned for some shred of lost innocence to pass on to the next generation.  Then one day in the late seventies, some Madison Avenue yuppie leaned over the mirror on his desk and said, “<<ssssssnort >> Um… wasn’t there a cute story about some little blue train pulling toys?  <<sniff>>”  Next thing you knew, every one of them was trying in vain to save their souls by reading this dreadful mockery of the written word to their Ritalin-filled kids.

Unfortunately, I’m discovering that, with few exceptions, today’s kid books aren’t much better.  Take, for instance, Five Little Ducks, in which a mother duck loses one of her children each day they go out.  Then at the end of the book, the little ducks just come back on their own.  Mother Duck doesn’t have to look for them.  She never seems to show any emotion over their disappearance.  She’s just a docile protagonist who gets saved in the end by an embarrassing use of the deus ex machina device.  The only reason I think this particular book got published in the first place was because, in some messed up way, it teaches kids about subtraction.  But jeez, must we invoke the fear of missing children to demonstrate basic math?

But they’re not all bad.  I can dig The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Even though the title character’s M.O. is somewhat dubious, at least he’s proactive about accomplishing his goal of eating as much as possible.  Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed is fun in a sing-songy way, and although I do take issue with a mama who continually fails to heed her doctor’s advice, the book does illustrate the concept of subtraction under less tragic circumstances than Five Little Ducks.

Not that I even require a book with a traditional story arc.  Our personal favorite is My Many Colored Days by Doctor Seuss, which uses brightly colored paintings and unconnected vignettes to simply give voice and validation to each of our daughter’s emotions.  If only they could all be like the Seuss, man.  Even now, looking at his work objectively without the beer goggles of early childhood, his books are still fun with fresh ideas that make you laugh and, more importantly, make you think.

I know…  They’re only kid’s stories.  And yes, right now The Girl is paying more attention to the pictures and sound of my voice than to the central theme and plot.  But I think we’ve lived under the lie the book publishers have sold us for long enough: the myth that “it doesn’t matter what you read to your kids as long as you’re reading.”

NO, I say.  This is America!  Since when did we allow ourselves to just blindly accept such low standards?  Unless a book is funny, rhymes or has particularly engaging illustrations, then I for one refuse to continue letting some burnt-out ex-hippie in a suit dictate what is good for my daughter just so he can alleviate the guilt over his own wasted life.

I hope you will join me.

(from 2005)

My daughter is almost nine months old.  It’s a great time around our house for several reasons.  The Girl is crawling and trying to talk and is an all around happy and content little kid.  But something else is happening as well.  Something wonderful and disgusting at the same time.  No I’m not talking about the introduction of solid foods and the new and interesting smells it adds to her diapers.  I’m referring to the fact that at some point between six months and a year after your first child is born, you suddenly realize that you are an expert… on everything.

It’s wonderful because now you know exactly what your child needs and when they need it, and it makes the whole parenting thing seem like less of a chore.  What makes it disgusting is the fact that every other parent on earth has realized the exact same thing.  And out of the goodness of their hearts, they want nothing more than to tell you exactly how you’re doing it wrong.

Everything from the toys you’re buying, to the stroller you’re using, to the number of times per day you’re feeding them.  Of course, Lauren and I are following the Attachment Parenting philosophy, which runs pretty much counter to every modern train of thought in childrearing, so we’ve been especially privileged because everybody is dying to correct us.  We listen and nod and smile painfully as if to say, “I’m humoring you now, but shut up before I stuff this burp rag down your throat.”

We’ve recognized that the only good advice is the kind that’s actually solicited, so we’ve done our best not to proselytize our views unless asked—or provoked.  It’s tough because, like I said, we’re experts now too and we feel compelled to tell everybody just how badly they’re screwing their own kids up.  But we’d like to hang onto at least a few of our friends, so we’re only giving advice to two groups of people: the toy makers and the book publishers.

So over the next couple weeks, I will be dispensing my own brand of parental advice.  That is to say, I will be whining and moaning about everything that’s wrong with the people I’m paying to help entertain and educate my daughter.

Let’s start with toy safety shall we?  The Girl owns a xylophone whose sticks are tied to the base so they don’t get lost.  Unfortunately, the strings are so short that you can’t actually hit the bells at the proper angle to elicit a resonating “ding.”  Apparently this is a safety feature so that the child doesn’t wrap the string around her neck.  But to me this is like selling a car but removing the gas tank for fear of an explosion.  Kind of defeats the purpose of why somebody would buy the thing in the first place doesn’t it?

That’s right, you didn’t misread.  I am in fact saying that there is too much safety in my daughter’s toys.

And I know in this era of frivolous lawsuits, corporations are afraid of getting sued for every child that chokes, vomits or bursts into flames.  That’s why I think Congress needs to pass a “Survival of the Fittest” bill that would exempt the toy companies from any harm done to a kid with stupid parents.  Natural Selection: the parents who let their kids wrap too many ropes around their necks don’t get to see their genes replicated in the next generation.

So I’m not blaming the toy companies per se, although they are inconsistent.  For instance, Allison owns a toy telephone whose chord is too short to actually lift the handset to her ear.  She either has to lean her head all the way to the floor or lift the entire phone off the ground.  Okay fine, strangulation hazard, I get that.  But then the phone has a three-foot string so she can pull it across the floor.  Um… hello!  If you’re going to give my kid a makeshift noose anyway, why not put it where it can actually make the toy functional?

But I digress.  Toy safety is just my pet peeve.  My real beef, which I’ll get into next time, is with the publishers of children’s books.  So listen up over the next couple weeks Penguin Putnam and the rest of you.  I’ll be expecting some changes to be made by my daughter’s next birthday.  If not, I may just lengthen the chord on her phone and send it to your kids as a present.

(from 2004)

Somebody help me wrap my head around this.  Not only were Lauren and I allowed to keep the baby girl we gave birth to seven months ago, but the United States government also gave us permission, in fact encouraged us, to give her a name.  Then without any fanfare or bureaucratic red tape they sent us an official paper certifying that that name, the name we’d picked out, was the name she’d have for the rest of her life.  Nobody questioned us.  Nobody sent a letter saying we had utilized more than the permitted number of letters according to Pennsylvania Code THX: 11-38.  Nobody called to inform us that if we failed to fill out form FU-90 within thirty days, our daughter’s name would automatically be changed to Eunice.  We simply said, “This is the name we want,” and they said, “Fine.  Next!”

A year ago, we couldn’t even rent a car without filling out ten extra forms.  How is it we’ve been given absolute power to affect another person’s entire life through a single word and nobody even asked if we wanted the extended warranty?  We could have yelled out Gertrude or Agatha or Princess Blinkybelle for that matter.  And the president of the Bureau of Baby Names wouldn’t have even called a neighboring precinct for verification before slamming down his official government stamp and sealing our daughter’s fate forever.  Does that sound like the Big Brother we all grew up with?

For two years before we even started trying to get pregnant, Lauren and I spent hours upon hours throwing names back and forth.  We had traditional names like Luke and Audrey, trendy names like Madison and Parker, Biblical names like Noah and Isaac and even a few wild cards like Tuesday and Princess Blinkybelle.  Just kidding.  I never liked the name Audrey.  I guess it never occurred to us that we would eventually have to pick one of those names and stick with it.  I mean, when I was a kid and our dog Mitzi wandered off to visit the old man down the street, he always called her Champ.  Years later I named my cat Katie for three months until I found out she was actually a boy, at which point I changed it to Bailey.  That was the beauty of pet names.  They were only as permanent as the situation dictated.

So when we said The Girl’s name to the midwife, I half-expected her to take the same approach my mom did when I wanted to name my dog Skeletor: “Okay, well you just think about that for awhile and get back to me.”  Instead, she wrote it down on her form and six weeks later we had a notarized certificate with The Girl’s name on it.  There was no opportunity to go back and say, “You know what, maybe we should call her Ruth instead.”

But seven months later, with the exception of my in-laws who seem determined to drop unwanted nicknames on her (which is another story for another time), everybody else on earth still calls my daughter by the name Lauren and I picked out.  The one that (and I can’t stress this enough) the government let us pick out…  for-EVER!

Yes I know what you’re going to say.  The Bureau of Name Changes is always at our disposal, and if I’m really that determined to change The Girl’s name to Princess Blinkybelle, they’ll go to the trouble of alerting Family Crisis Intervention for me.

Fortunately for everyone, The Girl has grown into her name.  We look at her and just say, “Of course.”  It gives us confidence as we look forward to our future children, though I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.  I won’t tell you what they are, but each successive name we’ve picked out gets progressively more and more… unique.  I can’t help but wonder if Lauren and I are abusing the absolute power the government has given us.  The rational side of me thinks we should have a system of checks and balances for new parents.  Lauren and I at least had a modicum of discipline, but I know somewhere out there, some future dad is getting an idea from this article and just might name one of his kids (…gasp…) Audrey!

(from 2004)

In the nine months leading up to The Girl’s birth, I was scared to death that we’d have an ugly baby.  Oh don’t act so appalled. You prayed the same prayer I did for good looking kids.  I can’t help it if God tuned you out.  Fortunately my prayers were answered.  Now if I could only figure out the proper etiquette for responding to people who gush over this beautiful kid of mine.  I’m six months into this whole fatherhood thing and I haven’t been able to figure it out.  At the grocery store, in the mall, at the strip club, total strangers are constantly compelled to smile at my daughter, wave at her and tell me just how beautiful she is.  I find myself at least once a day agonizing over how to respond to these well-meaning cheek-pinchers when they squeal, “Oh, look at the baaay-beeeee!”

So far I’ve been dealing with them the same way I’ve always dealt with semi-pretty girls flirting with me: laugh nervously, avoid eye-contact, say something lame.

OLD LADY: “Look at that adorable face!”

ME: “Ha, yeah…”

MIDDLE-AGED MOM: “What a beautiful smile!”

ME: “Ha, yeah…”

REALLY HOT AEROBICS INSTRUCTOR: “I see your daddy’s been working out.”

ME: “Ha, ye–no, well I mean I was, in fact I… Ha, yeah…”

I guess it’s no surprise.  I’ve never been good at accepting compliments even for myself.  I always feel the need to explain them away.

AFTER A COMPLIMENT ON A JOB WELL DONE: “Yeah well, just don’t stand directly underneath it.”

AFTER A COMPLIMENT ON MY APPEARANCE: “Yeah well, you don’t have to see me naked.”

Those work great and draw plenty of nice uncomfortable laughs.  But I imagine they would only encourage a call to Child Services from the stranger who’s just told me how bright-eyed and alert my daughter is.

And what about those people who start making ga-ga faces at my daughter while I’m standing right there?  Have you ever been singing along to the radio at a red light, only to realize that the guy in the next car has been staring at you?  I certainly don’t want to make anybody feel that stupid, especially when they’re making my daughter laugh.  So should I look away and pretend I don’t see them and risk looking like a snob?  The only recourse I’ve found is to keep my eyes locked on my daughter and say in that overly excited baby voice, “Hey Little Girl, who’s playing with you?!?  …No seriously, I can’t see.  Who is it?”

On the flight home after Thanksgiving a man in our row spent the entire flight smiling and making “ba-ba-ba” noises at The Girl.  I sat next to the guy for two hours and never once saw his face.

I just keep telling myself these people don’t know me.  Whatever I do, they’ll forget about it ten minutes later.  Of course I’m no better around friends and family, most of whom naturally get a kick out of holding babies.  I’m all for letting them get their fix on The Girl, but again, what exactly is the proper etiquette for pimping out my daughter?  I feel silly asking, “Do you want to hold her?”  Am I so vain as to think that somebody’s life must be incomplete because they haven’t had the privilege of cradling the fruit of my loins?  Then again, I don’t want to not offer and look like one of those anal-retentive parents who get the shakes every time their baby is out of their arms.

Once again, I opt for playing the baby as my poker chip.  If I sense that Darwinian urge from some relative with an unfinished will, I’ll turn to The Girl and ask, “You wanna go see Aunt Tilly?”  The recipient is of course overjoyed and rethinking her decision to get her tubes tied, and I have dodged yet another baby etiquette bullet.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m eating this crap up with a tiny rubber spoon.  I consider every smile, wave and falsetto greeting just another notch on the old Natural Selection bedpost.  But I’m running out of creative ways to navigate these situations that Ms. Manners never covered in her column.  I’d write her a letter, but she probably wouldn’t be able to help anyway.  I mean have you seen her kids?

A couple years ago, armed with three juice boxes and a Ziploc bag full of Cheerios, Lauren and I took our niece to see Piglet’s Big Movie.  It was cute and fun and all.  The only thing that bothered me was that about five minutes from the end, there’s a point where you think Pooh and Piglet are dead!  Seriously, the entire cast cries for like thirty seconds because they assume Pooh and Piglet have just plummeted over a waterfall to their deaths.

I couldn’t believe they would put something that intense and traumatic into a kids movie.  But then I had a conversation with my sister about the movies we loved growing up, and it occurred to me that if kids were traumatized by Pooh and Piglet’s temporary demise, they would get royally screwed up by the things we used to watch.

Take for example Charlottes Web.  What a depressing ninety minutes that was.  A pig who fights to not be slaughtered only to have his best friend die in the end.  Now I know the movie was based on a book so I can’t really blame the filmmakers.  But then again, in E.B. White’s version you didn’t actually see Charlotte die.  It was just kind of understood.  But in the cartoon she sings the saddest most nostalgic song ever, and then on the last note, exhales her terminal breath and wilts.  Cut to a close up of Wilbur crying.  “Charlotte?  Charlotte?  CHARLOTTE!”  Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, all of Charlotte’s children run away!

Dot and the Kangaroo was about a little girl lost in the Australian Outback who is befriended by, you guessed it, a talking Kangaroo.  Kangaroo protects Dot from dingoes, the weather and even a freaky monster called the Bunyip.  When Dot finally finds her way home, she’s eager to introduce Kangaroo to her family.  But by the time she runs back to the forest, Kangaroo has run away.  The entire ending credit sequence shows Kangaroo hopping through the forest while over the soundtrack you hear little Dot crying, “Kangawoo… Kangawoo…  Oh Kangawoo…”  Luckily for my sister and me, our parents didn’t keep a gun or straight razors in the house.

E.T. abandons Elliot.  Willy Wonka yells at Charlie.  Amalthea becomes the only unicorn to know regret.  Atreyu’s horse dies and Fantasia is destroyed.  The rats of N.I.M.H. were just plain dark and depressing.  And Luke realizes that the love of his life is actually his sister.  Seriously, was it some kind of massive, collective cocaine withdrawal that inspired Hollywood to depress the crap out of us kids in the seventies and early eighties?

Or were they trying to do us a favor?  Maybe we needed that sense of reality.  Maybe Hollywood knew there were lessons we needed to learn.  People die, endings aren’t always happy, and friends will screw you over the second something better comes along.  It’s probably easier to learn about death by watching a cartoon spider wilt in a barn than by watching Grandma wilt in her bed.  Are we doing our kids a disservice by making every movie unrealistically happy with singing bears, dancing vegetables and big red dogs?  Maybe Pooh and Piglet should have gone over that waterfall.  Maybe Nemo should have stayed lost.  Maybe rather than singing cheerfully alongside Pocahontas’s people, the white men should have stayed true to history and slaughtered them.

Hey, maybe this is the answer to ending school shootings.  Not less violence in movies—more violence.  More depressing, horrifying, make-you-afraid-to-cry-in-front-of-your-friends violence.  Let’s have less vegetables dancing and more spiders wilting.  That’s what me and my friends grew up on, and you know what—none of us ever shot one of our buddies.  We knew what death was.  It wasn’t a glorified spectacle to us.  It was a loyal spider wilting!

Will I let my daughter watch the movies I grew up with?  I may have never killed anybody, but I sure had a lot of nightmares that I apparently never got over.  I don’t know if she should have to deal something as heavy as watching Charlotte wilt or listening to Dot cry for three straight minutes.  Maybe I’ll just edit the last four and a half minutes out of Piglet’s Big Movie then take her out for ice cream to mourn.

(Written in 2004)

I’m one full month into this whole fatherhood business and two things have become quite clear.  First of all, with her bright red hair and big blue eyes, The Girl is just the most precious little thing you’ve ever seen.  I never noticed just how ugly other babies were until now.  Second, Lauren and I are incredibly fortunate that we had a girl.  With two nieces I only have experience with girls and just don’t know what I’d do with a boy.  Teach him to throw a ball?  He’d be wishing he was a girl after all the ribbing he’d get.

Lauren on the other hand is excited because after years of never owning a Barbie, she finally has the ultimate doll to dress and undress all day long.  The Girl owns more outfits than she could ever conceivably wear, and Lauren is determined to squeeze her into every one of them on a daily basis.  I plead with her to please just let our daughter sleep, but all I get in return is, “Look how cute these little sandals are.”  I’m about ready to scold her with some Freudian line about transference when I realize, “Hey, those sandals are pretty stinkin’ cute!  And with that little yellow sundress!  Oh my god, look how ugly that baby next to her is!”

The Girl already has me wrapped around that little finger of hers and man do we look good together.  At a wedding last weekend the photographer stopped what he was doing to snap picture after picture of the two of us during the father-daughter dance.  I think we even stole the bride’s thunder a little.  Sorry Carla.  But as I rocked back and forth to the music, smiling down at my daughter sleeping peacefully in my arms, I couldn’t help but think, “Does every father-daughter dance have to be to this stupid Celine Dion song?”  I didn’t know if Carla picked this schmaltzy stand-by because she couldn’t think of anything better, or if (even more horrifying) Celine Dion actually reminds her of how much she loves her dad?

Either way I decided that things would be different for me and my daughter.  I hope I’ll have the grace and composure to deal with her dating and getting married, but by-god we will not be forced to dance to “Because You Loved Me” or any thing else so generic.  Not that there’s anything wrong with “Daddy’s Little Girl” or “Butterfly Kisses”, but I’m a writer for crying out loud!  People expect me to be you know, like original and stuff.

I started making a mental catalogue of every song I knew the lyrics to.  Songs I could turn into lullabies.  My plan was to embed a few select songs into my daughter’s subconscious so that by the time she’s old enough to talk she’ll start asking for them by name.  Then in twenty or thirty years when we step onto the floor for our special dance, she will have requested that special song that her daddy always used to sing to her.  And as I shed a few token tears over letting my little girl go, inside I’ll be smiling at my own maniacal genius.

The real issue now is which songs to pick.  Each one must fit two simple criteria.  They must be slow enough for a father-daughter dance.  “Mr. Jones” makes a great lullaby when I sing it, but the Counting Crows’ version doesn’t exactly give it a bittersweet beat.  And most importantly, the song must be in my range.  It does neither of us any good if The Girl hates a song because her dad could never hit the high notes.

Every night at bedtime I plant new seeds.  I have some specific songs in mind, but I’m keeping her options open: Collin Raye, Alison Krauss, Blues Traveler, The Grateful Dead, Kid Rock…  One of these artists could be serenading us at The Girl’s wedding.  And I just know everyone will be looking at us saying “Oh, how precious.”

Of course deep down, as they look at The Girl in her wedding dress, what they’ll really be thinking is, “I never realized just how ugly my own daughter is.”

The first time I saw Grease, the summer after third grade, I wanted to walk like Danny Zuko. He just had this… swagger, with all this up-and-down arm motion, as though the bones from his heel to his shoulder were fused together. So, I practiced. Yes, I actually practiced walking. Swing the leg up, lift the shoulder, and bring them back down… It was an exhausting routine. John Travolta must have trained for months for that role! I tried to get my friends to join me, but they hadn’t seen the movie and didn’t realize just how cool I was trying to make them. Wiped out, I too gave up after a week.

By fifth grade—right around the time we all started thinking girls were pretty rad—I had become obsessed with how I looked while walking. I’d be playing outfield in kickball (nobody would let me near a base), then have to come in when it was our turn to kick. I’d start running then quickly realize that it made me look too excited. So I’d downshift, walking casually as if to say, “Hey I’m walking, but I don’t care.” Suddenly I’d be critiquing how my feet and legs were moving in conjunction with the rest of my body. Bend your knees more. Should my arms be swinging? No, keep them still. But then I’ll look too stiff. This can’t look right can it? I decided that maybe running was, in fact, the lesser of two evils.

It got worse as I got older. By seventh grade, for whatever reason, my heels stopped touching the ground when I walked. The middle of my foot would hit, then I’d roll up onto the ball and keep on going. No big deal really, except that it caused my head to bob up and down enough that others began to imitate. I couldn’t even blame it on some really cool sports injury or terminal illness. The closest I’d ever come to a bona fide limp was the time I stubbed my toe on a teammate’s foot during a pee-wee basketball game.

I was already short and skinny with bad skin. I couldn’t let this be yet another trigger for adolescent ridicule. By eighth grade, I was once again practicing how I walked. It was a conscious effort, keeping my eyes on my feet and watching their progress as I talked myself through. Heel to toe. Bend the knee and swing it forward. And again, heel to toe… Some people think that walking with the head down indicates a lack of self-confidence. Well, sometimes it just indicates an inspection of motor skills.

With determination, I eventually broke myself of that toe-walking stigma, gliding gracefully through the halls, my head showcasing only the smallest, most natural hint of bounce. Of course, there were times when I was concentrating so much on my heel-to-toeing that I didn’t actually watch where I was walking and ended up bumping into open lockers.

These days, I can walk with my eyes forward and my head held high. The heel-to-toe concept is second nature. Of course, lingering pubescent trauma doesn’t go away that easily. Every time—and I do mean every time—I’m walking near a pretty girl, I become maniacally aware of the movement of my feet, legs, ankles and knees. If it’s just her, me and a whole lot of ground to cover—like that long walk to and from the reception desk—my eyes instantly drop to my feet, positive I’m tip-toeing, my head bobbing like a buoy with each step. So, I readjust. Now I’m certain I’ve overcorrected and am probably walking like Donnie Hubbard, that goofy, special-ed kid from high school whose head never broke the X-plane even while he was running. I double- and triple-check, perfecting each step until I veer into and trip over the magazine rack. My only recourse at that point is to tuck my chin into my chest, walk faster, and get away before she calls the cops.

So ladies, if we ever cross paths on the street or in the lobby, please don’t mind me. I’m not avoiding eye contact. I just think I walk like a dork.

In second grade, we were asked to draw a picture and write a paragraph describing what we wanted to be when we grew up. There were your standards: teachers, doctors, firemen. A couple ambitious kids drew a robotics engineer and President of the United States. I freaked my teacher mildly out when I said I wanted to be a “Spy.” I drew myself in army fatigues and war paint with guns and ammo strapped to every inch of my body. I had a bow and arrow slung over my shoulder and throwing stars tucked into the cuffs of my pants (because I was also, apparently, part Ninja).

According to my paragraph, I wanted to be a spy because “you get to sneak into enemy forts and shoot people with guns and blow up buildings with bombs and exploding arrows.” It’s probably not surprising that I had recently seen Rambo for the first time. A kid pulling a stunt like this today would probably get a three-day suspension. I didn’t even get a talking-to, just my mom asking me why I didn’t want to be an astronaut anymore.

I used to make my Star Wars figures spar on the sides of cliffs (a.k.a.: arm of the couch) in an effort to throw each other into the lava (a.k.a.: carpet) below. My Masters of the Universe and Transformers play-sessions always involved mass brawls to the death with plenty of clashing swords and laser fire. My sister and I invented a game appropriately named Spies, which was basically hide-and-seek with guns. While we had toy guns in the house, my weapon of choice was always the vacuum cleaner hose extension. Tucked into my armpit, make a loud TTFF-TTFF-TTFF-TTFF noise and I had myself a powerful little machine gun.

I’ve never seriously thought about killing anybody for real, never owned a real gun, never even gotten into a fist-fight. Pretend violence always stayed pretend for me, though my parents were wise to not buy me the BB gun I wanted for Christmas. Better that I stuck to squirt guns and sawed off broomsticks because I managed to get out of childhood without harming myself or others. Though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still occasionally draw down with my .357 remote control making rapid PAUGH-PAUGH-PAUGH sounds as I execute imaginary opponents… or perhaps rouge communist agents.

I have never understood why people say that children are fearless. I was scared of everything as a kid. Mostly zombies. Though I was also afraid of the dark, the woods, getting lost and loud noises amongst other things… though these were really just extensions, symptoms really, of my fear of zombies. Face it, when you’re that small, the world is full of things that can seriously kill you and eat your guts… stupid Thriller music video. Most kid fears you eventually realize were silly in the first place. Others you ultimately have to tackle head-on.

The first fear I can ever remember facing was an old hunters lookout in the woods behind my house. Erected by the previous owners, the lookout was a simple four-legged structure with a fifteen-foot ladder leading up to a partially enclosed platform. Built many years earlier, the wood had started to rot and blacken, and it was hiding in just enough shadow to resemble an evil haunted tower. Every time I saw it, I shivered, feeling like there must be zombies looking out at me from the gloom, just waiting for me to come closer.

Sometimes, I ran away. Other times, I went to that end of the yard just to look at it and prove how brave I was. Occasionally I even yelled, “I’m not afraid of you!” though I made sure never to cross the tree-line. Not until I was five years old did I decide that enough was enough. I was not afraid. Zombies were not real. And I was going to prove it by climbing the tower.

Oh, how it scowled at me that day. I only hesitated for a second before plunging into that part of the woods for the first time. I covered the fifty feet to the tower in seconds, not giving myself the chance to reconsider. I refused to even look up at it lest I lose my nerve—or lest a zombie actually be glaring down at me. I took a deep breath and started up, but only got one foot onto the ladder before the old dead wood snapped under the weight of my little body. The sound was like a gunshot in my ear. First I screamed. Then, I ran. Then I ran faster. It was the first time I had ever faced a fear. And the fear had won. At least nothing chased me out of the woods. I still had all of my soul and most of my entrails. It really could have gone at lot worse.

Ever had somebody walk in on you while you were sitting on the toilet? Isn’t that embarrassing? Doesn’t your face just turn bright red? I’ll bet you get really mad at the person don’t you? Well guess what. I got no sympathy for you, bub. You have obviously never taken the time to learn proper toilet privacy defenses. It’s your own fault that somebody saw you doing number two.

I grew up in a house where the only doors that locked were the main entrances. The bedrooms didn’t lock. Neither did the bathroom. In fact, the bathroom door didn’t even shut tight. All it took was a cat’s paw to push the thing open. I had a father and a younger sister who were not prone to knocking before entering a room. But in spite of all these perils working against me, not one person in almost thirty years of potty training has caught me making pee pees or poo poos.

The key to bathroom privacy is to develop bat-like radar senses. A keen ear allows one to assess threats and formulate a defense. I’ve never taken an official poll, but I daresay that in ninety-five percent of all toilet-walk-in-ons, the victim never even knew the violator was there. I always listened for footsteps as they came down the hallway, trying to judge by their speed and intensity if this was a parent rushing to relieve a full bladder or merely a sibling pretending to be a pony.

As soon as human sounds came within a certain perimeter (I used ten feet as my safe distance), the next phase, subterfuge, began. I had to let anybody within earshot know that I was in there without actually shouting, “I’m taking a crap!” I was trying to avoid embarrassment after all. Sniffling, clearing my throat, rattling the pages on my magazine were all valid diversionary tactics.

Still many came close to crossing the fence-line. But I never allowed them one foot across the threshold before turning them back. Those who ignored my more subtle warnings were routed by a direct and forceful “Hey!” as they opened the door.

These days I’m like a man who grew up in a bathroom on the Gaza Strip—always aware of my environment, anticipating attacks and cutting them off before they occur. No latch on a men’s room stall? No problem. As soon as somebody enters the room, I augment my magazine rattling by sticking out my right leg as a doorstop. An army with a battering ram couldn’t invade my private time.

My bathroom motto is, “If you’re not prepared, then you deserve to be invaded.” At the same time, I’m sensitive to the fact that we live in a relatively soft and danger-free society where people don’t generally have to worry about protecting themselves. That’s why when I walk into a men’s room, I always check for feet under the stall. Even if I don’t see any, I gingerly tap on the door as I slowly slowly slowly push it open. I’m like the British Army during the Revolution, wearing bright red and pounding on the drums as I march toward a secret fort.

And yet there have been times when the gate has opened, and I find myself looking some middle-aged guy right in the face. And he’s just looking back at me, surprised! I guess maybe he thought it was God on the other side of the door. Why else wouldn’t he have at least said, “Somebody in here”?

I of course instinctively say, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and shut the door. But then I get mad at myself. After all, why should I be sorry? That’s like one of the bulls in Madrid apologizing to the dope in the red hat. Did he not think the bull would run directly at him?

It’s a dangerous world out there, people and the sanctuary of your bathroom won’t shield you from it. So take it from me, be prepared, protect yourself, and for God’s sake, wash your hands.