get that out of your mouth

final post

I've been looking for a fitting send-off for this little written experiment.

One presented itself last night.

Me: "What have you got in your mouth?"

My 4-year old: "A bottle cap."

Me: "Get that out of your mouth!"

My 4-year old: "I don't want to."

Me: "I know you don't want to, but I'm watching you."

My 4-year old: "Dad, could you please not look at me for a few minutes?

Godspeed.

Carry on.

tactile sensation

A conversation of deep and powerful hideousness, as relayed to me by my wife.

Wife: Honey, I think we should wash your blanky.

4-year old: Is that because I got pooh on it?

Wife: Huh?  

4-year old: It's okay Mom, I washed it off myself yesterday.

truth, narrowly averted

We pretty much suck as parents.

Last night my son's second tooth fell out.

He placed it carefully in an envelope 

with the following words painstakingly written on the outside;

"To the tooth faree frum me."

We tucked it under his pillow.

And he flopped down on it, intoxicated by the idea of new found riches.

Seven AM rolls around.

Oh no.

I nudge my wife, 

"For the love of God woman! We didn't put any money under his pillow!"

She scrambles up, grabs a dollar, and sneaks into his room.

Too late.

He is sitting up, staring at the forgotten envelope.

Tears.

Sadness.

Wailing.

My wife slides the dollar under his pillow while he moans.

My son then joins me in bed and I immediately begin a complete and total

re-envisioning of how the tooth fairy operates.

"The envelope must not have been under the pillow and she got confused."

"Maybe that half-eaten granola bar stuck to your sheets freaked her out."

"You rolled over and scared her?"

"She doesn't take teeth from kids who don't brush long enough?"

Hmm.

My wife asks him if he really looked under his pillow good.

Of course he didn't, he can't find his shoes when they are on his feet.

He runs back and gropes about until he finds the tardy bill.

As he is doing this, I tear a little hole in his envelope 

and extract the corn nibblet that is his tooth.

I ask him if he is sure the tooth is still in the envelope.

He tears it open to reveal...nothing.

Mystery solved.

The tooth fairy obviously was so weighed down by her tooth-collecting last night

she had to leave the envelope and just take the tooth.

He smiles.

All is right in make believe child gifting character land.

Then he says, "hey, last time she gave me five bucks, why only a dollar?"

 

More tears.

More sadness.

More wailing.

Somewhere, a small fairy sprinkles fairy dust and cackles at my fate.

the punisher

My four-year old is a punisher.

He punishes those who do him wrong.

Or plan on doing him wrong.

Or at some point in far distance, may do him wrong.

His standard punishment is the roundhouse punch.

Very little needs to occur in order for his fist to raise in the air

and descend in a small but surprisingly effective arc.

His justice is swift and without mercy.

I was punched this morning for giving him cereal instead of oatmeal.

It's easy to laugh off until you realize this will quite possibly be how he solves

most of life's problems.

Forever.

It also makes taking him to a restaurant for breakfast a dicey proposition.

Punches just scratch the surface of the punisher's tools.

His most devastating attacks are emotional.

When he gets in trouble, he will find something of his that has emotional value 

and then threaten to throw it away or destroy it.

Many times I have rescued a new pair of pajamas or toy or book from the garbage

as he weeps beside it.

It's brutally effective.

Way more brilliant than trying to ruin something belonging to my wife or me.

On the bright side, If he is smart enough to come up with this tactic, 

I do believe great things await him.

sands of time

My family and I have spent the last two weeks at the shore.

Needless to say, I have spent much time in my board shorts and flip flops.

The other day, my four year old looked down at my legs and said, "Dad, you don't have any hair on your bottom legs."

I looked down too, even though I knew what he was referring to.

The hair loss on my lower calf that comes from wearing socks for forty years.

I remember being disturbed by my father's hairless sock line when I was a kid.

Years of conformity, rubbing away until our legs are smooth as tumbled river stone.

I gazed at my boys beach tanned legs, and whispered a small prayer 

carried out to sea by the waves. 

"Lads, may you find life's work that doesn't demand you wear socks on a daily basis."

rocks, glass houses

We have a fabulous liquor store near us.

Due to it's fabulousness, it's usually very crowded during peak booze buying hours.

So, I have started shopping there when it first opens.

At 8 AM.

No lines.

No bumping into neglected carts.

No pushing and shoving in the scotch aisle.

Heaven.

The only thing I have to contend with are the female alcoholics buying their day's worth of vodka.

They also shop for liquor at 8 AM.

You cannot tell if these poor trembling souls are 30 or 60.

The other day I caught myself feeling superior when

one of them laid out 10 mini bar bottles of Smirnoff to be wrung up.

Look at that I thought, it's 8 in the morning and she is buying that.

Then, I looked down at my cart of booze.

Scotch.

Gin.

Bourbon

Red wine.

White wine.

Beer.

8 AM.

My smug grin abandoned me.

And I lined up behind her with my head held a little lower.

down the rabbit hole

Many things cause my eyebrow to raise.

Still more cause me to visibly wince.

And then there are the things that need to be cleansed from the very dregs of my soul

lest they fester there and spread blackness.

My pale hippy fifty something neighbor.

Coke bottle glasses askew.

Long, stringy ponytail flapping back and forth like a Medusean snake.

Wearing only a faded purple t-shirt and bath slippers as she goes out to retrieve her mail.

Most likely bills and junk mail for COD fantasy knife collections.

I pull my boys away from the window.

We all stare at each other in silent horror.

The silence is actually a cry. 

A scream.

We have born witness.

The silence is broken by my oldest.

Him: "Dad, why doesn't she have any pants on?"

 

Me: "Hey, lets all go get some popsicles, huh?

Them: "Yeah!"

God bless popsicles.

birth of a confidence artist

An ancient rite is performed on my living room floor.

The complete and total fleecing of a younger brother by the eldest.

My charlatan firstborn lays their Pokemon cards out.

And in the span of a few minutes, hornswoggles every good Pokemon card 

out of his brother's deck and into his own.

I, do not know what makes a good Pokemon card. 

Because it is a game a game only idiot savants can understand.

Which is why my two children love it.

However, I intercede on my youngest's behalf.

His shifty, carnie brother whines that I am upsetting the natural order of things.

I tell him to zip his grifter pie-hole and give his brother back the "mutant turtle 

with a tree growing out of it's shell" card.

My oldest, oddly, immediately complies, a little smirk flashes across his face.

I sigh. 

It is a look that can only mean, "when you're gone, I'm going to wipe him out."

World, I apologize now for the reign of terror I fear he will one day unleash.

Beware of him trying to sell you something on late night cable in 15 years.

the truly slippery nature of play-dates

Ahh play-dates.

They used to be called... actually they weren't called anything 

you just said, " hey, does your kid want to come over and play?"

But that was too many words and didn't sound important enough.

So, the modern play-date was created.

Play-dates sound very structured, but funny things can happen on them.

Like the one my four-year old had today with two little girls.

There's a lot to explore in a home that isn't yours.

Drawers for instance.

He pretty much knows what's in our drawers.

Other people's drawers however are still areas of mystery that must be investigated.

And that's what he did.

At some point during his play-date, the mother of the home whose drawers were virgin territory, waltzed into her bedroom to find my son and the girls covered in Astroglide.

A personal lubricant and moisturizer recommended by 4 out of 5 stay-at-home moms.

All play-dates must end my friends, and so did this one.

But I'm guessing we'll probably have her girls over for a play-date in the next day or so, while she runs a quick errand to Fascinations, the global sex emporium that's as ubiquitous as the Gap these days.

fitful kingdom

Location: The Mattress King

Participants: My wife, my three-year old, oily Mattress King salesman.

Overview: It was time to plunk down many dollars on a new mattress.

My son and wife bravely ventured to The Mattress King, where used car salesmen

and high-risk mortgage lenders go to die. 

The floor room looked like a a package of peppermint Chiclets had exploded.

Gleaming white rectangles everywhere.

Truly the home of The Mattress King. 

A benevolent sire who only wanted a good night's sleep for his bleary-eyed subjects.

Of course, every court is ruled by slithering sycophants who only look out for their own

personal interests and this hall was no exception.

The Mattress King salesman slid over to my wife and child and proceeded to point out 

the pros and more pros of the Temperpedic sleep system.

According to him, you can no longer buy a mattress, you must buy a "sleep system."

Subtle cajoling, tender manipulation, the man was a master of the dark art of persuasion.

My son, off-handedly mentioned he needed to go the bathroom.

But the web had been cast and the salesman would let no subjects escape.

A few more minutes of back and forth passed, then my wife looked around 

and found my son no longer at her side. 

He had marched right out of the Mattress King and was staring back through the large plate glass showroom window. He waved, then pulled down his pants and proceeded to urinate all over the window.

Take that Mattress King. 

Uhm, and we'll be taking your finest mattress pad too.