Topic for future therapy sessions

Hurry little children
Run this way
I have got a beast at bay
Gnarls Barkley^*

There's a little thing we do at home, mostly after dinner and especially when the kids are antsy. We tell them to run in circles around our house. Our floor pattern is one of those where you can go in a circle from kitchen to foyer to living room to dining room and back to kitchen again. (If it were a Kill Doctor Lucky board, this would be where you pile up cards, but this isn't a post about board games.)

This week we are pet-sitting, so we have extra dogs. One dog is named Tawney, a pleasant small mutt of 11-12 years whose visits we always enjoy. The other Angie, a young energetic Border Collie. She likes to chase things and would prefer to be active 23 hours of a given day. This is not the kind of energy level we expect from our own dogs. We now have to fight with Darkman for space on the couch, and I'm pretty sure Shadow's activity won't change much even after she recovers from ankle surgery.

So, as I was saying, we tell the children to run in circles and burn off some excess energy. We did this a couple nights ago, but now we had Angie to join the chase. As might have been predicted, this did not go over well with our youngest. There was whining and fussing. How did we respond, good parents that we are? We told her to run faster, of course.

"But Angie's chasing me me," we were told.

"Run faster so she doesn't catch you," we responded.

Now let me be clear, this is not a snarling, one step away from mauling, Kujo wannabee dog. Angie wanted to play, which to be honest is what she wants to do all the time (even, say 4 AM). My children have played with her often, and they were certainly in no danger at this point. Yet even so, I could already picture my therapist's office somewhere in my child's future, where she would be recalling this incident....

"...And I'll never forget it. They kept telling me to run... run faster... run, run, run! I don't know why they wanted me to run. The dog was chased me and all they did was tell me to run. And the were laughing. Laughing! How could they be laughing?" At this point my now grown child breaks down. The therapist offers the tissue box, and she circles the word "laughing" in her notes.

Of course, the dogs were sent outside to chase one another or (more likely) bark under the fence at the neighbor's dogs. We explained everything was fine, there was nothing to be afraid of, Angie was just playing, yadda yadda yadda, and all was right with the world again.

Except for the screaming night terrors.

*Yeah, that is two GB quotes in a row, from the same song no less. It's just stuck in my brain....

The sin of time-out

But in the town it was well known
When they got home at night, their fat
And psychopathic wives would thrash them
Within inches of their lives
Pink Floyd

I heard about this from a friend of mine. It's a news story about a church California instructing parents that spanking is God's will. Here are the actual instructions on the church's web site.

Basically, spanking is the only child discipline method created God. Not just any spanking will do, either. You need to use the rod, "flexible stick like a switch." The instructions note that you should never use your hand, a belt, a brush, a cord, or 2x4 (yes, that's on the list of "don't spank with" items). If you "withhold the rod" by, say, putting your child in time-out or speaking to them, you've sinned.

This bothers me on so many levels that it's hard to decide what to say. Here are a few thoughts:

It tells me I'm wrong or sinful because I don't beat my kids, and that I'm ruining them by withholding this punishment. Quotes from the Churh's paster take the rhetoric one step further. "We disagree with time-outs as a family," he says. "That's an attack on spanking." Here he's taking a page from the same-sex marriage debate. Not only is time-out wrong, but it's an attack. By framing the discussion in these terms, he suggests that we are out to get him and the other true believers.

Then there's there's the all to familiar tenant that the bible is the literal and infallible word of God. That's a popular sentiment, and it works great in these instructions. But I'm left wondering how he handles some of the stuff in Leviticus. I'll wager he's on board with killing men who sleep together, but what about eating pork and shellfish? I'll bet those passages don't come up much in these little discussions. Much better to go with the crowd favorites like denying evolution and climate change. In essence, it's simply cherry-picking pasages with little context. It's not just what you think any more, now you can say it's the word of God.

One final thought: in the face of literal interpretation of the Bible, I Googled "bible contradictions" and got plenty of results. I only checked out the first few results, all similar lists of verses that contradict one another in varying degrees. These lists reinforce my opinion that the bible is a mixed bag of ideas with varying degrees of merit. It strikes me that one can find within its pages justification for all manner acts both good and evil.

Teach my children how?

Raising children is an incredibly hard and risky business in which no cumulative wisdom is gained: each generation repeats the mistakes the previous one made.
Bill Cosby

Friday morning I was checking to make sure my oldest had her homework folder. I found the cover of her spelling workbook was crumpled and torn. When I asked her what happened, she told me it got that way in her desk. I understood precisely, and imediately I had a vision of those little grammer school desks stuffed with a mess of papers, pencils, and who knows what else, all in complete disarray.

You can probably guess that the desk I envisioned was not my daughter's, but my own desk in grammar school. I couldn't tell you which grade precisely because my desk always looked that way. So did my locker. So, for that matter, does my desk at work now.

You could call this a manifestation the parent's curse Bill Cosby refers to in the classic Himself - we are cursed by parents who wish our children will be just like us. I think it's also something we all privately wish for anyway - a sin of vanity we can't avoid but will come back to haunt us. Either way, we're doomed to see in our children not only our best qualities, but our worst. It's the latter that gets you.

I feel like trying to convice her to be more organized, more outgoing, less nit-picky, or maybe a little neater is an exercise in futility. Nothing parents, teachers, peers, or complete strangers did rid me of these bad habits. Nearly forty (ack!) years later, I still haven't shaken off such tendencies. My garage workbench is still a disaster, my holiday shopping is still last-minute, letting go of an argument is like severing a limb, and I'm still hanging out in the corner of the crowd trying not to make eye contact.

I guess, like everything else with parenting, I shouldn't worry too much. These are the things that make us human, me and her. She's a great kid, they both are, and nothing compares to the joy they bring. A messy desk is a small price to pay for that.

There is no "Joy"

But what part is the joy?
My oldest

This morning we were discussing candy, as Halloween is approaching and there will be a large influx. My daughter asked this question about Almond Joy.

Good question. The answer? There is none. Almond Joy sucks. It's the second worst candy bar in the world. I mean, come on, what does it have to offer? Aside from the almond, what does it have? A thin layer of chocolate that is sub-par at best. Under that, a big glob of shredded coconut whose consistency makes you wonder if you're supposed to eat it or put it between your cheek and gum like chaw. Bleah!

Who on earth came up with that? The only good thing is the almond, which is why it's the second worst candy bar. The same culinary sado-masochists who came up with Almond Joy also created Mounds, a candy bar devoid of any redeeming quality at all.

Things I miss from childhood

You set sail across the sea
Of long past thoughts and memories.
Childhood's end, your fantasies
Merge with harsh realities.
And then as the sail is hoist,
You find your eyes are growing moist.
All the fears never voiced
Say you have to make your final choice.
Childhood's End
by Pink Floyd

Rob at Laughing at the Pieces offered his post on this subject then tagged me. So here goes:

1. The woods behind my neighbor's house.

Many a war game was played there. Many an expeditions were launched. We dug up old farm equipment and hid in the old chicken coops. They were a safe place for us to play in an unsafe manner. Now, the woods are gone, replaced by houses.

2. Climbing trees

There was one you could climb high enough to see the high school, a couple miles away. We built tree houses (plural, because they lacked the structural integrity to last), a rope swing, and the slide for life (a pulley that your rode down a 50' length or rope). There was one time when I jumped down from a tree, and my knee caught me in the face, putting my tooth through my lip. Good times!

3. Vermont

Every year we went there, to the same lean-to in Calvin Coolidge State Forest. They were all named after trees. Ours was Basswood. Such was my family's dedication to this annual vacation that they went when Mom was eight months pregnant with me. Going there each year was like going home. I keep pestering Sharon about going there again. Someday....

4. Gram

My dad's mother came to live with us when we moved to a larger house. I didn't realize how lucky I was to have that, though I do now. Gram always had stories about this and that, so familiar that I took them for granted. And there was her cooking. I don't miss that, to be honest. Having lived through the Depression, she wasted nothing. This made for some, um, interesting dishes. How about a lamb sandwich? No mayonaise for the egg salad? BBQ sauce will do.

5. Atari 2600

Okay, I've got to be honest on this one. I loved that Atari. I did. I wasted countless hours of my life finding the chalice again in Adventure, rolling the score over in Space Invaders and Asteroids, shaving another second off my time in the Indy 500 ice race, etc., etc.

Well, there ya go. Who should I tag next? I will randomly choose from my friends' blogs. Leaving Rob's off, there are six. The result of 1d6 is... six! That means I'm tagging Jeri.

Call me Uncle Pennybags

Advance token to nearest Railroad and pay owner Twice the Rental to which he is entitled.
Chance card in Monopoly

That phrase signaled the end of the game for my daughter this past weekend. It was anyone's game until then. In order to come up with the $400 rent, she had to sell off all her houses and mortgage two of her last three properties. I did the only appropriate thing for a loving father to do at this point: I danced around laughing and shouting, "IN YOUR FACE! IN YOUR FACE!"

That's a joke! Geeez! What do you take me for?

Actually, I said she played a good game, told her it was bad luck, and noted that had I hit her houses first, it would have gone the other way (which it would have). Of course, I did still take her money and build two more houses on Boardwalk and Park Place, just to make sure. And I said, "Sorry honey," right before I asked for the $1400 rent that officially bankrupted her. For the record, she's won several games of Monopoly in the past.

Sharon had taken my younger daughter to a birthday party in hell, I mean Chuck E. Cheese. My oldest and I were home, and I asked what she wanted to do. It was hot out, and she'd already ridden her new bike for an hour, so she asked if we could play a game. First we played Stratego. She picked that, I swear. Then (and I am not making this up) she asked if we could play Risk. I said that would probably take too long to play, so she suggested Monopoly, which we did. We both had a really good time playing games. I'm psyched that she has my love of board games.

After the game, we headed up to the school where she rode her new bike around the parking lot while I flew a kite. A nice finish to a great afternoon.

Little bits of joy

Lovely to know the warmth
You're smile can bring to me
I want to tell you but the words you do not know
The Moody Blues

I had this wonderful little moment yesterday afternoon that has stuck with me, so I'll share it here.

With spring comes the annual shoring up of the deck. Our deck is losing its battle with weather and decay. Each year, I patch and shore it up, trying to eek one more year out of the thing. There this "privacy screen" thing on one side; a sort of wall to keep the neighbors from seeing what we do, or maybe to keep people on the deck from looking in the nearby bathroom window. It gets shorter each year as I remove boards to replace the rotting floor of the deck. This year I was also underneath, adding some additional lumber to the rotting joists. Looks like the deck has one more summer left in it.

That wasn't the wonderful moment, mind you. The underside of a rotting deck is a less than pleasant location. Late in the day everyone had gone in. Sharon was cooking. Knowing my older dauther, she was reading Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. My youngest came back out, though. She took up her lawnmower and started around the yard (getting the places Mommy missed, I'd later find out).

For a couple minutes I just laid under the deck watching her wander around the yard. She stopped for a minute to rock on a see-saw toy. Then it was back to mowing. You hear a lot about the importance of "unscheduled time" for kids. This was why. She wasn't bored or lazy. She was outside on her own, with no planned activity, just having a great time making things up as she went. It was a joy to watch.
Eventually she noticed me under the deck, and I got to join the fun. I found out we were playing hide-n-seek. She took off for a few minutes, then came back to tell me she'd found where I was hiding. She found my hiding spot five times.

The deck was a royal pain. My back (backside, to be precise) is killing me from shimmeying around on the rocks underneath the deck. But that's not what I'm thinking about. I'm still watching my daughter get the places Mommy missed.

Who is this kid teaching my child?

Sharon and I attended Back to School Night last week.

It was Tuesday, when what was left of Jeane. We arrived about 10 minutes early and the place was jammed. There was no parking to be found; we ended up three blocks away. We had umbrellas, but they were little use in horizontal rain and the inch of water on the sidewalk. By the time we got there, we were drenched.

We made our way to the auditorium to listen to the opening presentation. The principal gave a very nice speech and proceeded to introduce the faculty. They announced my daughter's teacher and she stood up. Seeing her, I immediately thought to myself, "what is she, like twelve?" As everyone applauded, Sharon turned to me and said, "what is she, like twelve?"

We made our way to the classroom. Actually it's not a room, but a partitioned space in the geodesic domed building that is my daughters school. Geodesic domes were big in the sixties, I guess. I think it was supposed to promote a more open and flexible education space or something. Actually it's just noisy. But I digress.

In fact, the teacher is really nice, and my daughter likes her. She explained her class and the curriculum, and I think my daughter's in a good class. She's also been teaching at the school for five years. And, okay, she doesn't really look twelve.

But I'll bet they still ask her for ID.