Archives for January 2012
Pray For Him
She looked at me with tears in her eyes and in a soft voice asked me what we were going to do. I kissed her and said that we weren’t going to do anything because there was no reason to be upset.
Flames shot out of her nostrils and lightning burst from her fingertips. I can’t tell you whether I got out of bed on my own or if I was thrown but I do know for certain that I was standing across the room when I told her to take a deep breath and relax.
“Jack, the fucking condom broke! Are you stupid! I don’t want to be pregnant now!’
“I don’t want to be pregnant now” echoed in my head and I wondered if I was going to become a statistic. It was the summer before my sophomore year of college and I was having a blast. My girlfriend and I were working at a sleepaway camp as were most of my closest friends. Each night after the campers went to bed we would all hang out and then my girlfriend and I would enjoy some time alone.
There was plenty of food, plenty of time with friends and plenty of sex. I thought that it was great and prayed that the summer would never end.
“I don’t see a reason to worry about something that might not happen. How long do we have to wait until you get your period again?”
Two or three weeks later she gave me a huge hug and told me that she her aunt had come to visit and we started breathing again.
++++++
Memories like that make for interesting moments now. I love being a father and am forever blessed but I am so very grateful that I don’t have a twenty-five year old son/daughter now. I wasn’t ready then and even though I would have done my best I know that I am a better father now than I could have been then.
I am not a perfect person or a perfect father but at forty something I have had life experiences that make me far more grounded than I was at 19. It is easy to say that and easy to remember how angry that 19 year-old kid would have been if someone had suggested he couldn’t do it. As my grandfather, may he rest in peace, used to say, “you can’t screw an old head on young shoulders.”
++++++
Last night the children watched President Obama give his State of The Union. I provided color commentary while the president spoke and mentioned how the things that happen now could impact them later. I told the kids that I am angry with our government and angry with much of the country.
I told them I am angry because I don’t think that our government is working hard enough for us. I told them that too many people waste time and energy trying to prove that Democrats/Republicans are bad and not enough time trying to fix the problems that exist. I told them that too many people slept through history/civics and as a result don’t understand how the system works.
The kids asked me what I wanted and I said, “action.” I want people to shut up and work on finding real solutions to the problems we hear them cry about. My son told me that I say the same thing about him and his sister. He is right. I tell them both that I don’t care who started the fight because I am going to end it. That is what I would do here if I could.
I told them that when we find a problem we don’t just cry, we take action.
++++++
“Did you buy new condoms?”
“Why is it my responsibility to buy them? Why don’t you just go on the pill?”
She gave me the look that I had received the day of the broken condom and told me that if I expected to enjoy the same privileges I better go out and buy new condoms. I grabbed the car keys and we headed over to the drug store.
There was an older couple standing just ahead of us in line. The woman stared at the box of condoms and then looked at our hands. When she saw our ringless fingers she made a face. I stared back at her and she told her husband that they should “pray for him.”
We paid for our purchase and walked out to the car. As we passed by I heard them say that President Reagan needed to do something but what I didn’t hear what it was they wanted him to do.
++++++
I hadn’t thought about that moment in years and might not have ever done so again but last night I swear that I saw that couple standing among the crowd. Doesn’t really matter if it was them but I would have liked to have asked them if they did pray that night and if so, what did they pray for.
What Songs Inspire You?
Here are some of the songs that I use to inspire and motivate me to keep writing. There isn’t any particular order here, just sort of including them as I find them. It is a partial list. I may adjust it later or I might not.
Heart and Head
“All the promises we break
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you
You…all I want is…
You…all I want is…
You…all I want is…
You…â€
All I Want Is You- U2
Ten thousand years a boy asked a girl if she would take his hand and let him love her. Ten thousand years ago he kissed her once and wondered how he had ever said I love you to any one else.
He wondered because he had never felt so much love for anyone else. Not for his first love or any other. This was a feeling like no other he had experienced. That scared the boy more than he could articulate, describe or understand.
The girl in the story had no such troubles. She knew what she felt and knew what she wanted. She didn’t need to process or sort through her feelings. Sometimes it frustrated her to see the boy she said was the love of her life be so close and yet so far away.
But she knew that sometimes boys needed more time than girls and she was willing to wait. It was just a matter of time before he realized that no one else could take care of him the way that she could.
That didn’t mean that he didn’t make her crazy because he did. He was a master at annoying her and he knew it. Normally that would have been the kiss of death for him except she couldn’t stay angry at him. It was uncanny how easily he charmed her.
He knew how to press all of her buttons and he knew how to make her feel simply….wonderful. It was infuriating not to be able to stay angry with him.\
But how can you stay angry with someone who knows how to open your heart with a word and whose presence soothes your soul. You cannot and you don’t.
At least that is what you think and what you feel- but sometimes things happen.
“If I could
Baby I’d give you my world
Open up
Everything’s waiting for you
You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day
You can go your own way
go your own wayâ€
Go Your Own Way- Fleetwood Mac
They say that hindsight is twenty-twenty but whether that is true or not remains in the eyes of the beholder. Really it all comes back to perspective and the man who had been the boy readily admitted that he didn’t have as much of that as he wished.
The girl and the boy who had loved each other with passion and promises never to let go had moved on and let go of that which had kept them together. The faith they held in each other had been tested and they had failed the test.
When push came to pull and pull came to shove they had fallen. Fingers that had been intertwined and hands that had been held were no more.
Time passed and the man wondered and wandered where it was he would bereft of the rock that had kept him centered. Slowly he crafted a witches brew of sadness, frustration and anger not recognizing that every drink was a poison that hurt his spirit and harmed his soul.
She was gone and though he had chased after her she had refused to listen. His heart told him that she wasn’t really gone and that her silence was her defense. It argued against letting go and told him to give it time.
But his head called his heart a fool and named him weak and worthless. It deemed him a dupe, a chump and a silly knave who needed to get his priorities straight.
Time passed and the war between heart and head continued. Heart swore that some nights under cover of darkness she would come looking for him. It said that if he closed his eyes and held still he would see her come looking for him.
Head laughed at this but heart cursed and swore again that it was true. “She loves us still. Remember she told us that she would never be the first to say I love you. This is the same. She is waiting for us to contact her.â€
Head laughed again and told heart that he was a bigger fool than he thought.
Later on in the quiet of the evening as the lights went out and the world went dark heart and head heard soft singing. As they drifted off to sleep head conceded that maybe there was something more to what heart said, but when daylight came head pretended that he had never admitted that perhaps heart was right.
How To Deal With Mean Girls & Mean Moms
The mean girls are back again and so are their mothers. We have a history, the mean girls, their mothers and I. They don’t like me and I don’t like them. If I had my druthers we wouldn’t have to interact at all and things would go more smoothly but that isn’t the case.
The fly in the ointment lies in their involvement at my children’s school and my refusal to let them run the show. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the situation let me provide some background
The PTA at my childrens’ school is fantastic. The parents are very involved and that is important to me because I believe that a good school requires parental support. You need more than the teachers to push the children. It really does take a village to raise/educate our kids and we are lucky to have found a good one.
However we have a collection of stay-at-home mothers who have their own beliefs on how things should operate and who should be running them. Most of the moms are great and I really appreciate their time because the work they do helps my children as well as their own.
Unfortunately this includes a group of women who think that being called a bitch is a compliment and that is how they operate. If you are not part of their inner circle they have no problem treating you like their servant.
Well dear reader, your friendly, neighborhood curmudgeon Jack doesn’t cotton to that kind of approach or treatment. I don’t play their reindeer games and we have banged heads on multiple occasions. That is because I have been lucky enough to have had employment that allows me to show up at school during the day and have been privileged to be a chaperone on field trips.
They don’t like it. They don’t like it because when they send out emails assigning tasks to people I click on reply all and suggest that sometimes we should do things differently. They don’t like it because I’ll write back and say it is ridiculous to spend a ton of cash on a parent social and remind them that we need to be more inclusive.
I am not bothered by saying that some things are too much money. I don’t have the same bank account as some of them and I don’t care. I have enough command of the language to play their game of “let’s make people wonder if they have just been insulted” but I rarely do that with them because it is more fun to be direct.
My daughter and her friends tell me that the daughters of these mothers are nasty. To quote the dark haired beauty, “they make alliances against people.” On a side note, I am impressed that she knew how to use the word properly.
Don’t Waste Your Time
One of the fathers told me that it is a waste of time to get involved here and I understand what he is saying but I disagree. I am tired of listening to the scuttlebutt about these women and tired of the complaints. It is just another form of bullying.
If they were men I could invite them to come play basketball with us and then just throw a lot of elbows but that is frowned upon. I was also told that I am not supposed to suggest that the mean moms have husbands who have been emasculated and that is not good form to suggest that they earn their keep at home based upon the amount of time they spend on their backs.
But to me a bully is a bully is a bully and the way to stop a bully is to hit them back. For the sake of my trolls let me clarify that I am not suggesting that these women be hit by me or any man. If a woman wanted to hit them I would ask that they let me know in advance so that I might sell tickets. 😉
Ultimately I see this as a teaching moment for my children. I want them to understand that sometimes we take a stand for things we believe in. I want them to recognize that when people don’t take a stand bad things can happen. I want them to understand that it is not a badge of honor to call yourself an ‘asshole’ or a ‘bitch.’
Life’s too short.
I Told You She Is A Bitch
“I told you she is a bitch” is not the kind of thing I expect to hear my children say to each other. It is not because they never swear because they do.
In fact because I am a better father than you are they have gained a very colorful vocabulary. They aren’t walking around talking about Ironing Icicles in Iceland like my friend Kaarina did on her blog today, but they come up with pretty good alternatives.
Nor are they taking advantage of any of the fantastic words I have shared here with you. You won’t hear them say someone is a poltroon or a flibbertigibbet. Nor will they appreciate words like raconteur, scaturient or defalcate.
Since they are 11 and 7.5 I suppose that I can forgive them for not knowing these words that dear old dad sometimes uses. What can I say, I like words and I like language.
Still, none of those things prepared me to hear my son say “I told you she is a bitch” to his sister.
+++++
I suppose that the reason it surprised me was because he used the word in a more sophisticated manner than I would have expected. Â I wasn’t the only one to be surprised that day because when I made eye contact with them they started bobbing and weaving.
“Dad, it is not what you think. You didn’t hear a bad word.” I nodded my head and responded, “you may approach the bench.” The dark haired beauty took issue with that and told me to stop screwing around because we clearly don’t have any benches inside the house.
I looked at her and said that one day she would make her husband very happy. Got to give her credit because she told me that there was no need for sarcasm. The really frightening part about that was how I thought I heard my mother’s voice coming from her, but I digress.
“Honey, it is an expression. It is something that judges sometimes say to lawyers.” She really liked that and for the next two minutes every time her brother tried to speak she yelled, “I object!”
+++++
I have no one to blame but myself for that. Too many hours of Marx Brothers movies while they were in utero and beyond has made it clear that we are going to share a long life of wonderful antics, cracks and comments.
“Dad, I want to tell you what really happened but I keep getting cut off.” I hate to admit this but I couldn’t help but interrupt then. “Monster, you were blessed in that department. The mohel only cut you once. One day you and your wife will thank me for that.”
“Ooh, I hate girls and I am not getting married.”
“I used to hate girls too and then something happened.”
“What happened. Did you get hit in the head.”
See, we are all comedians in this family.
“Nope, but I wish that I had. I could use an excuse. Anyway, speak quickly or your sister will step in and she speaks faster than both of us.”
“Dad, Lizzie is a female dog. That means that she is a bitch. I can call her bitch because when I call her a bitch no one can say that I used a bad word because she really is a bitch.”
That last exchange is more proof that he is mine, not that I ever questioned it. He has my hands and my feet. I should add that I kept a straight face for that last exchange but I wanted to smile because he did a nice job of working bitch into his speech.
My daughter nodded her head. “I didn’t know that bitch isn’t always a bad word and Jack Jr. helped teach me something. See, I learned something new today.”
One day these children of mine are going to do something amazing and or get away with all sorts of stuff. I think that they are already smarter than I am, but I still have a few tricks up my sleeve. Got to find a way to keep them at bay for a little bit longer.
That is part of why I didn’t tell them about the Hall and Oates Song “Rich Girl.” Or rather I didn’t tell them because when I was a kid I got in trouble for singing “She is a bitch girl.” That wasn’t me screwing around, I really thought that is what they were singing.
Thus spaketh Jack, The Dad Blogger and writer extraordinaire. 😉