Part one is here. The second part is forthcoming.
Archives for December 2007
It Made Me Spit Blood
The first time he hit me in the mouth was a shock. It was a sucker punch. I didn’t see it coming. In school they would have said that it rang my bell and it did. For a moment I wasn’t quite sure where I was or what had happened. I suspect that he hit me another time or two, but I am not really sure.
Maybe that is why I fell. I’d like to say that I took his best shot and laughed it off, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. As I felt my legs go out from under me I reached out, fumbled for something to hold onto. With my right hand I managed to grab onto an arm, or maybe it was a shoulder. I am still not real sure.
But what I do know is that I pulled him down with me. It wasn’t intentional. Just a case of dumb luck but sometimes dumb luck is all that you need because I landed on top of him. And then it was on.
Two guys clutching, scrambling, grabbing and cursing at each other. I didn’t know who he was or why he had hit me. I just knew that I was angry and that the jackass who was responsible was still trying to send me on an unplanned vacation.
Truth is that I am in desperate need of some time off. Too much happening. Too many things going on. Trying to stay in control and realizing that there is only so much you can do. However a trip to a rehab facility is not my idea of a good time so I was most uncooperative.
Adrenaline kicked in and inside my head I could hear Rage Against The Machine singing Bulls on Parade. It is not happy music. It is not the kind of sunshine and rainbows stuff that you sing with your children. This is seek out and destroy. Grab his right arm and dislocate his shoulder so that he can’t hurt you again.
The days of the honorable schoolyard scrum are gone. If there was any doubt in my mind about that his sucker punch took care of it. Back then a guy who threw a sucker punch then faced a severe beating from a group of guys. It just wasn’t done. If you wanted to be a man you acted like a man.
Not that any of this matters. If you force me to defend myself now I will use any and all means at my disposal. It is not melodramatic, it is reality.
It took a good two weeks for those bruises to heal. It is not a lot of fun to spit blood and even less to see it come from other unexpected places. But the physical pain isn’t really the problem. Those scars eventually heal and fade away.
It is the mental and emotional distress that is the issue. The inability to sleep and the lingering unease in unfamiliar environments take a toll upon me and I just don’t know how much longer I can keep it up.
A Different Sort of Children’s Books
Slip Sliding Into The Office
One of the many reasons that I love living in Los Angeles is because of the weather. It suits me. Most of the time I can wander around in a t-shirt and shorts quite comfortably. But every now and then the weather gods decide to punish me. Today was one of those days.
It is raining here in the City of Angels. Thanks to the extra precipitation my morning commute was extended a bit longer than normal and my entrance into my office building more closely resembled rhythmic gymnastics than my ever so exciting sashay.
That is a sad attempt at trying to cover up that I slipped on a wet floor and slid into the lobby. I didn’t fall down as hard as I could have. No one will make any money off of a videotape of me sliding into home. For that matter it was relatively early and I am not sure that anyone noticed. Or if they did the selfish bastards didn’t bother to ask if I was ok.
So I picked myself up and shook off the dust and wandered over to the elevator and waited for it to arrive. As I stood there I took stock of myself and decided that nothing seemed to be permanently damaged. No broken bones and no bruises that I could detect.
Still, when I got to my office I decided that as a precaution I would stretch and then apply one of those sticky heat pads to my lower back.
I wore that sucker for a good three hours and then decided that it was time to remove it. That is when I learned that I have quite a bit of hair on my lower back, or at least I did. If I wasn’t awake before my self inflicted “wax job†woke me up.
And to be honest I have this sneaking suspicion that tomorrow I just might find that I am little bit sore. Sometimes aging is a lot less fun than it should be.
This Is How I Roll
Are You Smarter Than A Rabbi? Part I
The almost seven-year-old hit me with a new series of questions today. I love it. I love his interest in the world around him and how it forces me to constantly think about what I believe and why and how to best explain things to him.
Sometimes the answers to these questions spur new questions or simple spin-offs about the original ones. And let’s not forget how simple comments can lead to all sorts of new stuff.
You’ll recall that in an earlier post I recounted his curiosity about body parts and whether they ever stop growing. I did my best to answer his questions without providing too much information. He doesn’t always need to know how to build a watch, sometimes it is enough to just tell him the time.
Anyhoo, today we revisited a topic that I think is important. How to pee in a public restroom. As alluded to in previous posts there is an art to this and since most preschool teachers are female it is not being passed along as well as it should be. This really should be a separate post, but in the interest of space I’ll try to condense it.
It seems that some people teach the boys to pull their pants well below their groin. It makes sense as if the rookies will often inadvertently urinate on their clothes. However, they will eventually be in a public restroom where it is not smart for little boys or big boys for that matter to stand at a urinal with their pal in their hand and their pants around their ankles.
I have spent a lot of time explaining to my son why he needs to learn how to take care of his business in a fashion that doesn’t require following the aforementioned ritual. Earlier today I learned that he has paid attention to our discussions about this as well as the one from the earlier post.
While running errands he told me that he needed to make a stop so off we went. I drank three cups of coffee so the timing was good for me too. Once inside we waited for a free urinal. He went first.
Son: Dad, It worked.
Dad: What worked?
Son: I peed with just one hand.
Dad: That is good.
Son: I can do it with no hands. Want to see?
Dad: You shouldn’t do it that way. You might pee all over everything.
Son: I know. I wanted to see if you remembered.
Dad: What if I had forgotten.
Son: I would have reminded you.
Dad: That is good.
Son: Can girls sit and pee in a urinal?
Dad: They could, but I don’t think that they’d like it.
Son: They must be so jealous that they don’t have a penis. (His words, not mine.)
Dad: You might be right.
Son: I am going to tell mom that you said she wishes she had a penis.
Dad: I’d rather you don’t.
Son: Why?
Dad: Because I didn’t say that.
Son: Why didn’t G-d give girls a penis?
Dad: That is a good question. I’ll have to think about it for a moment.
Son: Do you think that the rabbi would know?
Dad: I think that I can give you an answer that is just as good as the rabbi.
Son: Are you smarter than a rabbi?
Dad: Well it depends on what we are talking about. Different people know different things.
Son: Yeah, and you know more about a penis than the rabbi does.
Dad: Not always. Do you remember what a mohel does?
Son: Is the man that cuts your penis in half?
Dad: He doesn’t cut your penis in half.
Son: If your penis kept growing forever it wouldn’t matter if he did.
Dad: That is true, but we know that doesn’t happen.
Son: I still want to know if you are smarter than a rabbi?
Dad: Why do you want to know?
Son: Because I already know that you are stronger than the rabbi. You could beat him up.
Dad: Why would I want to do that.
Son: Well when I was a baby he might have cut off all of my penis and then I’d be like a girl. Could that really happen?
Dad: No, that wouldn’t happen. And for what it is worth your mohel is a urologist. That means he is a doctor who is an expert on penises. He did your cousin’s bris. Do you remember?
Son: Yes. His mommy kept crying.
Dad: She didn’t cry the whole time.
Son: She is your little sister, right?
Dad: Yes, she is.
Son: Did you make her cry?
Dad: When?
Son: When you were kids. Sometimes I make my sister cry.
Dad: No, I didn’t make her cry and you shouldn’t make your sister cry either. (Ok, so I stretched the truth a little. It is a shalom bayit thing.)
Son: Dad, when you peed it was really noisy.
Dad: I guess that I really had to go.
Son: Remember I told you that it would be better if our penises were bigger because we wouldn’t have to stand so close to the urinal.
Dad: I remember.
Son: When you pee that hard you can splash yourself.
Dad: Did I? (looking down and not seeing any spots on my pants.)
Son: No, but that guy in the black suit did.
Dad: It is not nice to point.
Son: He looks like the rabbi. Do you think that you are smarter than him?
Dad: I think that we need to finish washing our hands so that we can finish running our errands.
Stay tuned for part two.