Not For People Who Live in a Ranch

Why must kids always play on or near the top of the stairs?

Italy vs. Holland vs. Beirut

To describe raising her child with Down Syndrome, Emily Perl Kingsley wrote an inspirational modern fable called "Welcome to Holland" and her conceit is this: when you are expecting a child, it is like preparing for a trip to Italy . . . you buy guidebooks, learn some phrases, anticipate seeing the Colosseum and Michelangelo's David. . . but if you have a child with a disability, the plane lands and the stewardess says, "Welcome to Holland!" and this is quite a surprise, as you were expecting to go to Italy, and all your friends are in Italy, discussing Italian sights and sounds . . . but you will eventually realize that though Holland isn't as flashy as Italy, it has its merits (tulips and Rembrandts) and you simply have to adjust . . . but this metaphor isn't for everyone: I am still plugging away at Andrew Solomon's magnificent and gigantic book Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity and one mother of an autistic child wanted to clarify that for her it's not like this at all, and so she penned a fable for the parents of children with autism and called it "Welcome to Beirut."

Cast Your Vote For the Best Robot

While we were waiting for the check at my favorite local Mexican restaurant, Costa Chica, my son Ian and I had a robot drawing contest, and we were with a large group of people, who nearly unanimously voted for the wrong robot  -- my son's robot -- but I am thinking that everyone was logy from excess of food and drink, and possibly in error . . . so please be serious and remember every vote counts: which is the better robot?

Apples, Trees, Ducks, Llamas, Bop It, etc

My wife and I were watching Girls on Friday night, the kids tucked away in their respective beds, but every so often, from up the stairs, we heard a "Whoo . . . whoo" and then a pause, and then another "whoo," so I lowered the volume on the TV, and then we realized the sounds were coming from my younger son Ian's room -- he was still playing "Bop It," the version where you occasionally have to yell into a little microphone to keep your streak going . . . lately, he's been obsessed with it, he's mastered the expert level where you also have to react to sounds that correspond to each action -- he actually got over one hundred on that level and it moved to some super-advanced level where there are corresponding colors as well as strange sounds and the usual "pull it!" and "twist it!" commands; he now holds all the records on the contraption . . . and it's hard for me to argue with his dedication, because I behaved the same way the other day with the stupid phone app "Llama or Duck" and while this obsessive behavior for simple physical tasks may be an annoying habit, or even pathological if taken too far, it's probably not the worst character trait to possess . . . though Ian will learn soon enough that no one else cares very much how many points you score in Bop-It or Bulls-Eye Ball or darts or corn hole or any of these other minor diversions: it is in your mind alone that you are the victor.

It Did Have Two Holes In It

Phone call from who my son calls "second in command" at his school -- apparently Alex and his buddy found a broken board in the auditorium, and they thought it was really cool because it was "painted black and had two holes in it," and so Alex and his friend concocted a plan: they would smuggle it out of the auditorium and into his locker, so then he could then bring it home (to do God knows what with, even he can't answer that question) and so Alex asked to go to the bathroom, and successfully filched the broken board, but when he tried to stuff it into his locker, he got caught red-handed; his consequences were no recess for the the week, for lying about having to go to the bathroom and taking something that wasn't his . . . and I hope he's learned his lesson, and the next time he sees a really cool broken board with two holes in it, he gets his friend to steal it (although that might not matter, because Alex's accomplice also lost recess for the week).

Seven Reasons Kids Should Watch Rocky

I just watched Rocky with my children, and I highly recommend it for young boys, as the film contains some valuable life-lessons for them:

1) if you stop smoking and run around carrying bricks, you will get back into shape;

2) breaking fingers for a sleazy loan shark will get you nowhere;

3) when you get as old as Mickey, no one will understand what you're saying;

4) turtles can choke on moss;

5) working in a meat packing plant is depressing and may lead to arthritis and alcoholism;

6) it's nice to have a recurring theme song;

7) and finally, even if you don't win, as long as you stay on your feet and get beaten to a brain-damaged bloody pulp, then it's still a moral victory and you should be proud of yourself.

Awkward Dave Returns in the Form of a Duck (or a Llama)

Awkward Dave reared his ugly head last Tuesday, and if it wasn't for my colleague Chantal, things might have gotten really awkward, but she heroically stepped in and saved the day; to understand the situation you need a bit of backstory . . . fifteen minutes before this Awkward Moment of Dave, I was introduced to a very silly game on Kevin's phone, called "Duck or Llama": the game is simple but frustrating, you are shown a picture of a duck, or a picture of a llama, and you must press the appropriate button -- "Duck" or "Llama" -- VERY quickly, or you lose; I was terrible at first but once I got the hang of it, I got quite good and scored sixty correct answers in a row . . . more than double what anyone else got; the pictures get more and more ridiculous and abstract: there are line drawings and close-ups and llamas with sunglasses and duck-butts and rubber ducks and stuffed llamas, and everyone has the same stupid story at the end of their round . . . either, "I was doing really well, and then I mistook a duck for a llama!" or "I was doing really well, and then I mistook a llama for a duck!" and this is the sort of thing that I can get obsessed with, which is why I don't have a video game system in my house, and so when a woman from another department, who runs a committee that I am part of, totally went out of her way and came upstairs to the English office solely to help me sign-up for a workshop at Columbia University, I really, really tried to pay attention to her; she showed me some forms and explained how to fill them out . . . but then, without realizing it, I picked up the phone -- determined to get one hundred correct answers in a row -- and started playing "Duck or Llama," and I guess this nice woman, who totally went out of her way to help me out with this project, made quite a face, but luckily my friend Chantal saw the face, and was a good enough friend to yell at me and tell me to focus, and this was enough to break my obsession with the game and allow me to finish the now rather awkward social interaction with the woman who had gone out of her way to climb the stairs and find me in the English office and help me out.

Sometimes the Apple Falls Horizontally

I am slowly making my way through Andrew Solomon's magnum opus, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity . . . and while everyone likes to comment when the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and the kid acts just like his parents (and my boys certainly fall into this category: I have two little versions of myself running around the house, doing Dave-like things, which can either be exhilarating or extremely frustrating) Solomon has tackled a much wilder event -- when the apple falls "horizontally" instead of vertically; when parents give birth to a child nothing like themselves . . . the book has chapters on Dwarfs, the Deaf, Down Syndrome, Autism, Schizophrenia, Prodigies, Transgender, and more -- and each chapter is nearly the length of a book; Solomon himself is a horizontal child -- he is gay -- and though his parents were accepting of him, they still weren't the same as him, so he writes the book from an unusually personal perspective; I have just finished the chapter on the Deaf, and it made with grapple with an ethical dilemma that I didn't even know existed; when hearing parents have a deaf child, they have to immediately decide if they are going to implant a cochlear implant, which wil give the child an ersatz but workable version of hearing, or instead, immerse him in the culture of the Deaf -- sign language -- or do something in between, with speech therapy . . . and the Deaf community views the implants or the attempt to make a deaf child learn to speak as "the final solution," a way to eradicate Deaf culture, which is apparently rich and thriving . . . some radical Deaf believe that hearing parents with a deaf child should give the child up to the Deaf community, but this strikes me as insanely unrealistic . . . Harlan Lane, a Deaf community advocate, wrote: "the relation of the hearing parent to the young deaf child is a microcosm of the relation of the hearing society to the deaf community; it is paternalistic, medicalizing, and ethnocentric," and so the question becomes -- as technology and medicine and genetic screenings start to eliminate hearing loss -- is the Deaf community something worth saving? . . . and if you think I have the answer to this, then you''re sadly mistaken, as I'm having a hard enough time getting my own children, who have excellent hearing, to listen to a word I say.

A Young Lady Shuts Me Up

I was explaining this pathetic tale to my senior English class -- and I was taking the perspective that I had "accomplished the task given to me," and that my wife should not have been angry that I got a friend to buy the lingerie, but my senior girls weren't buying it: one outspoken and rather clever girl said simply, "If you assign us an essay topic, and we find a really great paper on the topic that someone else wrote, we can't hand it in to you or it's plagiarism . . . you cheated."

My Wife Admits She Erred!

Apparently, my wife has NOT been reading my blog, or she would have remembered this rule to live by . . . but instead of obeying my wisdom, she chose NOT to pack winter boots and clothing for our trip to Norfolk last weekend -- and so she spent the entire trip clutching my arm, trying not to slip on the inch of ice on the ground, which was made all the more treacherous because she was wearing cute, light-weight multicolored treadless running shoes (she also didn't pack a water-proof snow jacket or heavy gloves . . . I hope she has learned her lesson . . . and though I will admit that she looked beautiful in her wedding attire, that's no excuse for not bringing practical clothing and footwear in case of emergency).

That's Really Incredible!

Last Monday, while eating a delicious slice of porcetta (a meal that a friend of ours only prepares on Martin Luther King Day, because she has to buy the meat on Sunday and it takes a day to prepare) I reminisced with the hostess about watching classic reality TV, namely Real People and That's Incredible! . . .  and we are both dog owners, and so we were remembering the incredible tales of lost dogs who travelled cross-country to find their families and other such epic canine heroics . . . and now I have my own story to add to these fantastic tales; my dog has never touched a book and our house is full of books -- he chews on shoes and shin-guards and mittens -- but never literature, yet the other day, when I arrived home, I found one book in the middle of the room, completely eaten and destroyed, and he selected this book from a pile of books, but for some strange and incredible and miraculous reason, he selected a very particular book (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk) and the salient point about this book is it is the first book I've ever checked out from my school library -- my friend Kevin got them to order some new books that we wanted to read, and when we went down to check them out, the librarians were so happy to see us . . . they told us we didn't visit them often enough, were hoping that this was the start of a long-lasting relationship -- and my dog must have gotten some strange scent from this book from a new place, and so he selected it from among other library books, books we own, magazines, borrowed books, and used books, and tore it up; now I have to go back to the library with my tail between my legs, and use the lamest excuse in the world: my dog ate my book . . . and I know I'll put this off until the end of the year, but if I don't clear my library account, then I don't get my year end paycheck, so I'll keep you all posted on what happens.

How Much Campanology Can You Tolerate in a Novel?

I was enjoying Dorothy Sayers' classic mystery The Nine Tailors . . . but eventually all the campanology got to be too much for me and I quit reading it . . . I have only so much tolerance for information about "the casting and ringing of bells."

Coaching Trick

If you stick smelly, damp, and dirty soccer pinnies in the dryer for a bit, then they seem clean (or they seem clean to seven year old kids).

Shocking News in the World of Traffic!

I saw someone on Route 1 start to do the infamous "drive in reverse on the shoulder of a busy highway because I missed my exit and I am too lazy to proceed to the nearest U-turn" maneuver and then actually stop mid-move -- I am assuming they had a sudden epiphany and realized how stupid and unnecessarily dangerous this particular vehicular move is  -- and the car merged back onto the highway, do do a legal U-turn somewhere down the road, I assume.

Another Great Free Idea

Usually, my wife folds my laundry -- though I tell her this is unnecessary -- so this time, when she finished the load, I took the basket and threw all the clothes on our bed, and then I was able to grab the socks and t-shirts and sweat pants and other stuff that doesn't need to be folded and put them directly into drawers, and then I put the shirts and pants on hangers . . .  and so avoided any intermediate folding stage for those as well . . . but the problem with this method is that you have to do it right when the laundry gets done, and I don't know about your house, but in my house, nobody likes to put away clean laundry; even my wife -- who is perfect in all other regards -- has trouble completing this task in a timely manner.

There IS a Correct Answer to this Question

So Tuesday night at dinner, my eight year old son Alex posed this question to my wife: "Would you rather be bigger or smaller?" and my wife said, "Smaller, of course, women always want to be smaller," and then Alex said, "No, really small, like six inches, or really big, like fifty feet," and then my wife answered the question -- and she gave the wrong answer . . . so take a moment and decide which is the correct answer, and then I'll explain why one answer is correct and the other is not . . . okay, so now you've weighed the pros and cons and you're ready to see how well you've done on this very short quiz -- and, because it is only one question, you will either pass or fail; my wife said she would rather be fifty feet tall, and her reason was, "if you're six inches tall, you might get eaten by a dog," and while I can't deny that, there are many more difficulties to overcome if you are very large: mental, social and physical obstacles that could pose some real problems . . . you would have a hard time finding shelter, especially when it's very hot or very cold (my wife said, "You'd build some kind of shed for me," but judging by how long it took for me to build this shed, she'd probably die of hypothermia before I finished) and you would have a hard time hanging out with family and friends -- you'd be isolated and alienated and alone (even if you were famous) -- and you wouldn't be able to read a book or watch TV or see a movie or go to a party or attend class . . . and everything you did would be very public . . . where would you go to the bathroom? and if you got sick, it would take an incredible amount of medicine to make you well, and you'd have to eat an insane amount each day, and though you'd probably receive fashion endorsement money, it would still be very difficult to manufacture clothes for you . . . but if you were small, you could subsist on very little food and water, and as my friend Eric noted, "you'd only need to buy one bottle of bourbon and it would last the rest of your life," and though you would be reliant on people, you'd be so adorable that people would love to take you places and hang out with you and carry you around . . . you're life would be strange, but not horrible, as you'd still be able to do many of the same things you did before -- you could shrink the font on a Kindle and read a book (you could jump on the screen to turn the page) and a YouTube video on a phone would be like a big screen TV . . . and so I asked my students this question, and many of them got it wrong at first, but then they were generally convinced by these arguments to switch to the small size: did you get the answer correct?

Super Bowl XLVII: The Harbaugh Bowl or The Harbor Bowl?

Everyone and their brother has taken note of the fact that the upcoming Super Bowl is the first time siblings have met each other as opposing head coaches, but John and Jim Harbaugh are not the only noteworthy coincidence of Super Bowl XLVII . . . even more improbably, both participating teams hail from a city with a fantastic harbor: according to Wikipedia, The Port of San Francisco is "one of the three great natural harbors in the world" and, if you believe the much venerated Urban Land Institute, then the Inner Harbor of Baltimore is "the model for post-industrial waterfront redevelopment around the world" . . . and not only that, but the name "Harbaugh" sounds a lot like the word "harbor" . . . and so I will deem this a minor miracle, as you couldn't make this stuff up if you tried (and I wonder if Dwayne Nelson could use the harbor statistics in his foolproof NFL betting system).

I Am Not a Man

Instead of watching the Baltimore/New England NFL championship game on Sunday, my wife and I engaged in a marathon of the HBO comedy Girls . . . and the show is awesome: clever, funny, and prescient in the same way as this excellent and disturbing (if you're a guy) non-fiction book.

Dogs vs. Geese

I hate the park by my house right now -- it's muddy and full of goose-shit -- and the only way to solve the problem (without resorting to violence . . . and I will admit that violent thoughts about these geese cross my mind all the time) is to allow dogs free roam of the park, as the only thing that these geese are afraid of are dogs . . . but this might lead to a park full of dog-shit, or even worse, a headline like this: Wild Dogs Kill Four in Mexico City Park . . . so maybe I should stop complaining and just deal with the goose-shit.

You vs. Speransky

It's often surprising what can generate a good discussion in English class: last week I had the kids read a short passage from War and Peace -- which sounds like the kiss of death for getting kids engaged -- and the passage is fairly abstract, it's about master rhetorician Speransky, who "would never even think of acknowledging the idea that we all have thoughts beyond our power to express them" and I then had the kids compare their persuasive ability to that of Speransky, on a scale of 1-10, with Speransky being a ten, and explain why . . . and this led to a surprisingly lively discussion . . . it's good to think about how well you can express yourself, and how well you can influence others with words, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm not very persuasive at all -- my credibility is suspect (earlier that day when someone was wondering about the difference between dandruff and dry scalp, I proclaimed: "Dandruff is dry scalp! Dry scalp is just a euphemism for people who don't want to say they have dandruff!" and I'm not sure why I claimed this, as I know nothing about either topic, and it turned out that I was completely wrong -- dandruff is caused by a bacterial infection . . . but I have a horrible habit of arguing any side of a topic -- even if I'm not passionate about it, and then I'm quick to concede that I'm wrong and often easily persuaded to the other side and I also have trouble remembering specific examples, and I'm not capable of generating a whole lot of emotion, like those teachers who can tell a class that they are "very disappointed in them and know they can do better" . . . I tried this and the kids just laughed at me . . . so I don't think I would be a very good politician . . . and, of course, when I needed persuade my students to donate money for poor children, I couldn't motivate my kids with words, I had to use this gimmick . . . and I'm also easily distracted, and apt to digress onto longwinded tangents).