A 4 Year-Old Asks of Love

There was a recent uproar in the world of ignorance when ESPN, the world-wide leader in Deification & OverDramatizing the Lives of Athletes, briefly broadcast 2 adult men kissing… ON THE MOUTH. In the post-Janet Jackson’s-boob-world!!!

It was a moment in the lives of Michael Sam and his boyfriend, Vito Cammisano. Sam is the first openly-gay collegiate football player, from the University of Missouri, and was the Defensive Player of the Year in the SouthEastern Conference. When Sam was drafted by the St. Louis Rams in the 7th round of the NFL Draft, cameras captured the moment/announcement/phone call from the Rams on TV. In their excitement and happiness, Sam and Cammisano kissed… ON THE MOUTH.

Source: Deadspin.com

And my oldest son, who is 4.75 years old, happened to see it. As did I. It raised my eyebrow, because I immediately wondered how much of an issue this non-issue would become in social media, and then later, the starved-for-content Media. And knowing my son’s inquisitive nature – he once woke up with the question “Where do we go before we’re born?” – I expected him to ask me something about the ON THE MOUTH kiss he just witnessed between two men. My family is very affectionate; we are huggers, squeezers, cuddlers, snugglers, pinchers, and kissers with those whom are comfortable with it. But among the men, we don’t kiss. So I expected a tough question…

So he turns to me and asks, “Dadda, why did those two boys kiss each other?”

And here’s what I said, after my years of living with relationships, learning from loving, and understanding what there is to understand about People and Love…

“Well buddy, those boys love each other.”

And he asks, “Do boys love each other like you and mommy?”

And I can’t extrapolate genetic predisposition or evolutionary precursors of attraction based on brain chemistry and/or the shape of a woman’s hips as a signal of fertility and loin-revving physicality, so in a moment if divine inspiration and minor panic, I told my son this…
“Love is who you like the most.
Most boys like girls. And most girls like boys.
Some boys like boys. And some girls like girls.
But, just be nice to everybody no matter who they like, and be extra nice to who you like.
And if somebody’s not nice to you, then stay away from them.”

He turns to me and says, “Oh! OK,” and then he paused to work this out in his head. Then he gets a big smile on his face and he says... “Well I really like that girl Maggie in my class, she is good at coloring and smells like pancakes.”

And I said “Well that’s great, she tries hard at art, and pancakes are always good. So be nice to everybody, ok?”

“Okay,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hard, but I try to be nice to everybody.”

And I was happy and proud to hear that.
But then he asked me a question I couldn’t answer. He was loading up with a question that even the deepest of thinkers, the most romantic of romancers, those with far more hues than 50 Shades of Grey and people with remixes of Song of Songs could find an answer for in the 271+ years of human history. A question so heavy that sinkhole opened in my brain. My son, not yet 5, asked me…

“So… when do girls start being nice?”

I’d like to address the pre-birth location question now.

June 20, 2014 2

America; The Greatest Idea In The World

This may very well fall into the “Love It Or Leave It!” category for many people, but it is something that is gnawing at me, and has been for almost 2 decades. In the near future I will write up a few entries on the topics of American History, Idealism, Patriotism, Culture, and Future. I am by no means a narrowly-focused Ph.D’er in love with the topics of Social Refurbishment Of The Family Model and/or Societal Economic Impacts On The Middle Class in Pre- and Post-“Oprah!” America. But as a guy with a family and an underwater mortgage and 2 kids to feed and clothe and send into the world with a postiive outlook on life, there’s a growing sense that either SOMETHING is in the air to keep people in financial quicksand (move slowly and you can get out!) so they stick around and feed the Beast that is Bad Government, or it’s always been like this and nothing is in control and this ship is rudderless and why do i even give a shit, because it’ll be over too soon anyway?

So that will be coming along in case anybody cares at all, and it will be very opinionated because I don’t want to research a ton of stuff and also I’ll have some great recipes to share! Thanks for reading!

March 5, 2014 0

A New Set Of Tireds

Just before she lay down her beautiful head to sleep the other night, my wife took the water glass from next to my laptop (I was working on a presentation for the next day around 9:15 that night), sipped from it, and said…

“I’m f***ing tired. The house is always dirty, I’m being disrespected, I hate this house, if I’m not here cleaning I’m off doing a bunch of other stuff just to keep the boys busy or in school, and I’m sick of it.”

So, what did I do to respond? What COULD I do?
She was done for the day. She had gotten up pretty early to go workout, raced home to get our kids in the car for preschool and general out-of-house tasks (what non-stay-at-home parents call Life or Work), and they were going a bit nuts the rest of the day. I got an earful when I got home from the kids, after a long day and meeting with a local entertainment comedy talent mastermind. Kids will wear you out. They will grind on you and they will break you down and they are unreasonable under the age of 5 or 19 and will just beat on your brain walls and sometimes you want to tell them to shut their damn mouths and go the fuck to sleep because you are a grown up, sex has been had, you’ve thrown an angry punch, and paid taxes but not enough to really help this flailing society you want to build a wall around to protect them, so go to sleep.

But you cannot do that. I cannot. I’m an adult. I’m nearly 40. I have embraced and accepted all facets of Parenting, which is a much more advanced form of caregiving, and shouldn’t ever be equated to having a pet. [ed. note; Equating child-rearing to pet care is on the same shelf as equating an compound femoral fracture to a sprained finger. It’s minimizing to do so, and you should really not do it, or I will punt your dog right down the frozen aisle of this Trader Joe’s it’s not even supposed to be in.] Because I’m an adult.

And no, you cannot flip out on your kids at the ages of 4 and nearly 2. You look like a complete asshole, first, because the kids don’t fully fathom the rage and the cause. You only scare them, you don’t teach them. And it’s much much much more frustrating than you’d think it may be to tell a kid for the 5th time who knows what you’re saying to put.
on.
the.
monkey.
underwear. Then they cry, and it’s like…

“Why are YOU crying? You did this to yourself! 5 times I’ve asked you to put your monkey underbips on and you keep trying to put your bobo on the gorilla pillow! Put your monkey underpants on, don’t put your business on the monkey!”

As adults, we’re supposed to be in control of things. I’m not. I control very little. I control myself, usually (except I’m a bit of a choc-o-holic, GUILTY!), but sometimes I just have to ask somebody at a grocery store “What’s going on here?” I know what’s going on. They are blind to anything else around them, dead-stopped in the aisle, looking at their phone. I promise you, ma’am, you are NOT about to get a prescient message that has the PowerBall numbers. I can’t always control what happens to me, but I can control whether or not I tell somebody their head is in their ass.

So here’s what I did the other night.
I wrote a note to my wife and left it up on the monitor for her to see in the morning.
This is what it read:

I have a great marriage to a man who loves me and works hard to provide for our family. He doesn’t gamble or drink or tattoo or buy cars and shit we don’t need.
I have 2 great sons who are young and sometimes they are just little kids who don’t know any better while trying to be funny.
I get tired and that’s OK
My house is a house, not a hut, not on fire, and not a pit in a shitty jungle.
I woke up today healthy. This is a good start.
My sons woke up today healthy and with food in their house. This is a good start.
My sons have two parents who love them even if my sons don’t know it yet.
We will be in a new, better-sized house soon and we’ll do it the right way so that we don’t destroy our family financially.
I am a great mom and wife who does what she can to make every day matter to my family.
For all of these things, I am grateful.

Here’s what I did NOT do, after she made her statement of frustration and walked away with my glass of water while I worked on my presentation…

“Hey hon? Hon?
Could I get that water back?”

September 18, 2013 0

Make Time to Take Time

Hey 7 people reading this…

Thank you, first of all, for taking time to read what’s here. My life is so busy lately that the thought of reading, of letting my brain recognize and associate meaning to letter combos, or “WORDS,” seems a task far beyond my schedule. Between work, family, a new-found appreciation for nutrient-based fitness success, and Christmas Time, this blog has been neglected.

I also perform stand-up comedy as a “second career,” though not enough to sustain a household. No, that level of success requires a dichotomous acceptance that in order to be the breadwinner of the family, one must almost never be near one’s family for more than 3 days. The work of stand-up comedy is everything off-stage; travel, radio, travel, waiting, walking around a new city before the show, napping, “writing,” travel, fighting off pneumonia, fighting off boredom-induced alcoholism, and being a spouse and/or parent. The stage-time is actually a break from everything that fuels the performance. All that stuff, the travel and the weird smelling hotels and the club-owners who try and cut your money because they sold 15 fewer tickets than they thought they would, and the knee-jerk bitchy reactions of flight attendants and gas station attendants and Marie Callendar’s late-shift servers… it’s part of the gig. It has nothing to do with ME or YOU, it’s just how that situation happened that time for you because it was your turn to run into the dumped-on attitude of a life-saddened woman in her late-40’s who is trapped between a rock and double-shift on her kid’s birthday weekend. So fuck you and do you want a roll or soup?

The rest of my life, which is really where Life happens, has been kind of weird. We, meaning all of us not just my household or family… WE all get a bit of drama from time to time. Workplace gossip. Neighborhood police activity. Diarrhea at work that involves the police. Legal marijuana. Same-sex marriages. Kids getting sick. Co-worker’s kids getting sick at the same time every Thursday (just before Happy Hour, really Marcia?).
Drama happens. Shit happens. And the more I live the more I see that the Happening of Shit is “part of the gig.”

I truly believe this statement, which I thought up a few years ago:
Madness takes root in the absence of solitude, and flourishes in the abundance of it.

If we don’t take time for ourselves, we’ll lose ourselves to everything else. We become just part of the scenery instead of allowing ourselves to enjoy it and interact with it. But if we stay separated for too long from it, if we don’t take time to be part of the rest of the world that is Life and People, and build friendships and actively love each other and our communities, then we float the river to CrazyTown pretty comfortably.

If you’re feeling lonely or alone, call a friend, get a beer, get coffee, go volunteer, see a comedy show, SOMETHING. Get out of your own head.
And if you’re around people so much that you can’t remember the sound of your own thoughts then get away for at least 24 hours. No phone, no computer. Maybe some good movies or audiobooks or a something to let your mind do some traveling without your thoughts mucking up the trip.

As 2012 comes to a close, I hope for myself to progress in all the important areas of my life, even if it’s small steps. A little less bodyfat, a little more time with my kids, a little closer to a professional certification, a bit more in the retirement accounts, more time with my wife, more time with my friends. You know…. Make Shit Happen.

Or Shit Will Happen To You.

December 24, 2012 0

A Sandwich Too Small

George Carlin once said a lot of dirty stuff you want to scream at people writing checks at a grocery store. He also said “Women are crazy and men are stupid. But women are crazy because men are stupid.” Something like that. I often see little bits & pieces, graphics here and there taking digs at how dumb or helpless men are.

I won’t defend all men. I can’t. A lot of men are dickheads. A lot of men are also great people. Some are incredibly normal and unnervingly personable with no explicit personality issues. Some guys are complete sociopaths and should have died in a Jeep rollover a long time ago and had their organs go to save worthy lives. Some guys, however, are good Men.

They have to get up and go to work every day to keep the lights on and bills paid for their family. They do it with a song in their heart, even if somedays that song is “Necrophobic” by Slayer. And they do it because they love their family. On the way to work they burn an hour in the car. On the way home they burn 75minutes and have to go to the store to get something for dinner because the loves of his life are at home, tired, sick and haven’t had the energy to get dinner together. When he gets home he realizes he’s on patrol to get the kids bathed and in bed while his wife zones out on exhaustion and a chest cold she got from their daughter’s last play date.

Oh wait, shit… he has to iron some shirts for work, too. And fold the laundry and get another load going so the kids have stuff to wear for the rest of the week. It’s only Tuesday. The days run together. Gotta get a sitter for Saturday night, too, so he can take his wife out for anything, even for just two hours of face time. Did the bills get paid? Better check the online bill payer. Get that handled. Kid’s lunches for tomorrow, check. Kids bathed and in bed, check. Shirts ironed, check.

Oh look… it’s 11:40pm. Everybody is asleep except him, who was also up before everybody else today. And everybody is asleep. At home, in their beds, safe, and resting. A good day. Done.

And that’s part of the gig for the moment. Handling a lot of shit. And keeping schedules together. And working and making money and trying to keep Life from digging her heels in and being a bitch, instead of a dance partner.

He made the mortgage payment, car payment, insurance premium, kid’s lunches, doctor’s appointments, and read a couple stories to the kids. He didn’t put together some wet-panty plaque to post on Pinterest about how hard life is. He didn’t make a snarky Facebook update about how he’s running the show. And no, he didn’t make a sandwich.

Maybe tomorrow he’ll treat himself to a meal combo under $5 somewhere.

June 8, 2012 0

Tag: love