Mario: the Once and Future King

While social media might bring together families in the here and now, it takes a video game company like Nintendo to draw families together in the past. Don’t understand that? Yeah, me either but let me try and explain it to both of us.

I grew up on Nintendo. We had a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) back in the late eighties and I played Super Mario Bros more or less 27 hours a day. Mario and me stomped on Koopas, beat up Bowser and saved the princess more times then I really want to get into now, mainly because it’s depressing how much of a loser I was (also: don’t mention to a Gen Xer that in a few years the NES will be 30 years old, unless you want to see that Gen Xer cry). And I wasn’t the only one if the amazing amount of Mario and Nintendo references in all modern media are to be believed. If you don’t believe me, go find a large sewer pipe sticking out of the ground and paint it green. Then sit back and see how many thirtysomethings have someone take a picture of them squatting down on it. When people start coming dressed in overalls, red hats and fake mustaches you can come to my house and apologize for not believing me in the first place.

Of course, Mario is still around and kids today can play with him not only as he saves Princess Peach but while he races go carts, plays a vast number of sports or goes head to head with other Nintendo characters and they beat the crap out of each other. And there are my kids playing with Mario and his brother Luigi, the patron saint of younger siblings all around the world. Of course, the games that the kids play today make the ones I played at their age look…well, crappy.

And thanks to Nintendo, I can show them EXACTLY how crappy. For those of you not in the know, Nintendo’s current gaming console, the Wii, offers you the chance to download old games from their past, including Super Mario Bros, the game that started it all. So now, kids that have fun with Mario moving all around a world filled with everything imaginable, with amazing colors and sounds, get to see what I had as a kid: a big bowl of suck.

Super Mario Bros is a side-scrolling platformer. You can only go forward and are stuck to one path through the level, which is timed. This is the anti-modern game, where you can go to almost any level you want, stay as long as you want and go where you want. The boys thought it was broken the first time they played it.

“Dad, something’s wrong! I can’t go back,” Big Bits told me the first time he played it.

“Yeah, that’s how it was back then,” I told him. He just stared at me for a moment.

“Na-uh,” he finally laughed. It took me a while to convince him otherwise. It also took me a while to convince him that the little, pixelated mess of a character was the same Mario he knew and loved from the nearly 3D animated games he played before.

“Na-uh. It doesn’t even sound like him.” I just shook my head.

“Games didn’t talk back then,” I told. He stared at me some more before coming back with a witty retort.

“Na-uh!”

Yes, son, I was born in the dark ages, count yourself amongst the lucky ones.

The Middle Aged to Oldish Man and The Creek

Kids look to their parents as gods and the Bits are no exceptions. We control when they sleep, when and what they eat, where they go and just about every aspect of their lives. We have god like power over them and for the most part parents like this arrangement (Yes, I realize this will all go out the window when the kids hit puberty but let me bask in the glow of my deity status while I still can). There are times when it comes to bite me in the butt though. Now Big Bits is going to The St. Louis Language Immersion School, he wants to know what things are called in French. My knowledge of French ends at omelette du fromage but when he asks “How do you say this is French?” and I say, “I don’t know” he looks at me for a moment and then laughs, “Yes, you do!” I have one other place where my knowledge is lacking but so far I’ve been able to hide it from him: I know next to nothing about fishing.

This lack of knowledge is not restricted to fishing; there is a lot of things I don’t know about but Big Bits has not asked about how a carburetor works or how a DVD plays a movie so I’ve been in the clear. But he has asked about fishing. And so far, I’ve been able to fake it.

It started last year when Big Bits was deep into “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess,” an amazing video game everyone should play. In it, Link, the hero, finds time while saving the land of Hyrule from slipping into ever lasting darkness to take in some fishing, a hobby Big Bits decided he wanted to try in real life. And here starts our problem.

I’ve been fishing before but it had been almost thirty years so my “skills” were rusty (“Lacking in their entirety” might be a more apt description). Luckily we have relatives who LOVE to fish so off to my sister- and brother-in-law’s we went. Sarah and Chuck took us out to their favorite fishing hole and we set up to fish.

Before going out, we bought Big Bits and Little Bits fishing rods, Spiderman for Big and Lightening McQueen for Little (Little Bits didn’t really care about fishing but if Big Bits wants to do something so does Little Bits, even if he has no idea what it is). Armed with their superhero fishing rods, they were ready to do battle with the fish.

First we had to bait the hooks which entailed impaling fairly innocent looking worms on big hooks. I’m generally against this, both as a Buddhist and as a person who doesn’t like things he would describe as “icky-poo.” Luckily Chuck did the impaling so my karma and stomach were feeling good. I helped Big Bits cast out a few times and got him into a good rhythm before helping Little Bits but he had found rocks were near the water and really couldn’t care less about fishing. He had a goal get ALL the rocks into the water and would rather be left alone.

With Big Bits doing well, I grabbed one of the many poles Chuck already had in water and took a cast of my own. The bait hit the water (already passing my wildest dreams for this entire trip) and I started reeling it in. Suddenly, the line got heavy, the pole began to bend and, low and behold, I had caught a fish! A epic struggle only Ernest Hemingway his own drunken self could properly describe began but I shall try to paraphrase: after a fight lasting at least seconds, I wound up with a three inch long fish on the end of my pole.

Big Bits’ eyes just about popped out of his head. I was a better fisherman of not only his uncle but of Link too! We cast the fish back out and let Big Bits reel him in a few times before Uncle Chuck took the fish off the hook (another icky-poo moment) and threw him back in the water. I was elevated to god like status in my child’s eyes and so the rest of the day was great as far as I concerned (no one else caught anything and I didn’t have kill any worms—woot!). We got home later and put the fishing poles in the basement, never to be seen again and my secret shame would be safe from the light of day.

Or so I thought.

Earlier this summer I was puttering around the basement and suddenly found Big Bits standing behind me. He, of course, saw the fishing poles and immediately wanted to go fishing again. With a sigh, I tried to think of a way out. Spotting my tool box nearby, I had an idea: practice. We could tie weights on the end of the line and go in the back yard to practice casting. The chances of catching a fish or having to torture a worm to death were slim, plus if we didn’t use hooks there was also little chance of the kids hooking their ears or eyes. I realized there were still a slight chance of all these things happening (our backyard is a strange place) but I was willing to take a chance.

So moments later the four of us were standing in the backyard (Tiny Bits joined us but mostly to play with the epic weeds growing near the fence) and with washers tied to the end our lines, we practiced casting. What should have been a relaxing afternoon of throwing nearly invisible plastic wire around the lawn became an unending quest to untangle invisible plastic wire from around fence posts, trees limbs and telephone lines. One time we even got the line into a tree on the far end of our neighbor’s yard. While it’s impressive Little Bits could cast a line that long, it was a pain in my rear to get it out of the tree.

So, did that placate Big Bits (Little Bits gave up pretty much the moment he realized there was going to be no body of water nor any rocks to throw into it)? Well, no: he wanted to know where MY fishing pole was and when were WE going to go fishing, as he put it, “With, like, water and stuff.” My fear was growing but not as much as my desire to make my boy happy. So, a day later we were standing in a large department store which shall remain nameless (but really likes the color red. That about hits it right in the bull’s eye) and I found myself buying a rod, reel and small collection of multi-colored, bug shaped lure thingies. So we had the equipment and were ready for some HARD CORE FISHING ACTION (but hopefully without catching any fish)!

My father-in-law grew up in a picturesque valley with a creek running down the middle, large trees and a actual log cabin built back in log cabin times. This place makes Little House on the Prairie look like an abandoned Detroit slum. It’s just a hour or so outside the city and so we go there every few months to chill out. This time we went with my in-laws for a camping adventure…and fishing. We hadn’t even gotten out of the car when the cries of “Can we go to the creek?” were echoing through our car and I could hear similar cries coming from my brother-in-law’s car as my nieces, Niece Bits and Cousin Bits, the 12 and 11 year old dynamic duo are the Bits’ favorite people, were chanting the same thing. So we switched into swim wear, bathed in sun screen and grabbed the billion and one toys, towels and sundries needed to go swimming in a six foot deep creek with five kids. I was hoping to leave my shame in the car but Big Bits shouted as we started walking, “Dad, don’t forget the fishing poles!”

Once everyone else was swimming (I’m not a big fan of swimming in natural water; it’s murky and murky water can hide things…things that can hurt you: sharp toothed fish, crawdads, whales…it’s all very frightening) I headed off down the creek to where the water was calm and clear enough you could see the little fish swimming around. Cousin Bits, an avid fisherwoman, came with me with Little Bits’ fishing pole in hand. I cast into the creek (hit the water again!) and let the little, yellow, bug looking lure with it’s sharp, fish catching hook sink into the water and with it any hope my son would not know how much of “a neo maxi zoom dweebie” I really am.

But maybe not. For once again the moment I started reeling in the line my rod bent and I had hooked another fish. Cousin Bits let out a cheer and Big Bits came running. My father-in-law called the four inch, quarter pound wiggler Blue Phil but I thought he looked more like a Green Carl. We let Big Bits take a close look at my trophy fish and then my father-in-law unhooked him and let him go. My son looked up at me with admiration and that’s the best trophy of all.

Don’t make me count to three! No, really, don’t make me…

While I try to be open minded when raising our three young boys and not fall back on out dated parenting tricks just because my parents used it, I still find myself suddenly saying things to the kids that I have no idea where they came from (for intense, after telling Big Bits to go to his bed for being bad, he refused and so I told him “Fine, you go to double bed!” He did as I said and while he napped, I sat downstairs and wondered what the hell “double bed” was supposed to mean). Like counting to three when they are doing something they shouldn’t be. Why do I do that? Why does it effect them so?

It is amazing to see the boys when my hand goes up and I start counting off the numbers. The crying begins and what sounds like: “Holy God, the world is coming to an end, Dad is counting! Stop whatever you’re doing and run to the hills cause Dad is already at two! Kiss your ideas of having a future goodbye because you know what happens if he gets to three…!” starts to spill out of their mouths. At least I think that’s what they’re saying, it mostly sounds like screaming, crying and inarticulate babble to me but they might be using that frequency that only kids can hear (I like to think of the boys as more eloquent than that and if this lets me continue that belief, so be it). But I don’t have to get very far for the screaming to start and the begging to stop to commence; it’s all a bit over the top.

Especially Big Bits; he’s over acting is extreme. He’ll either be the William Shatner of his generation or just the worse Emo Kid off all time (and don’t tell me there won’t be Emo Kids in a few years. The Sixties had Doors fans, the Eighties had the Cure, the Nineties had Nine Inch Nails and girls who took Pearl Jam songs way too seriously; they aren’t always called Emo Kids but there’s always depressed kids obsessed with their own sadness). The falling on the floor, the tears…it is just a bit too much sometimes. “Dude, all I said was it’s Little Bits’ turn to pick a game to play. This isn’t ‘Sophie’s Choice’, now shut it.” I used to chant “Fake cry! Fake cry!” when he started a fit but this made it worse and I learned to shut up.

Speaking of Little Bits…man, he’s good. He might be the star of the “Sophie’s Choice” remake that I’m sure someone is planning right now. His tears fall as big summer rain drops; the kind that sound like hail when they hit your windshield (the rain, not his tears). He can turn on the water works instantly and, instantly, you want them to stop. Which, of course, he does since it’s all an act. Not that you can call him on it, at least in public. You want to look like a bad parent? Tell a child who’s heart is obviously breaking right there in the toy aisle to “Shut it” and you will get looks from other parents that could melt steel.

And Tiny Bits? He only fake cries when he wants something. He hasn’t really grasped that sometimes I want him to stop doing whatever it is he’s doing. He’ll just keep on breaking stuff until I take it from him. He doesn’t seem to mind, there are other things to break in easy reach. He’s only limited by his vast imagination.

But all this doesn’t answer the main question: Why does counting to three garner such crazy reactions from my two eldest? My wife and I have never sat them down and told them what would happen when we reach “3.” I’ve never gotten to “3” and immediately broken out the Taser. In fact, I’ve never gotten to “3”, although I’ve had some very long “1s” and “2s.” By the time I get to “2 and a half,” I usually have to stop and hold one of them to calm them down. They still stop what they were doing wrong, so I guess it works but…WTF?

I often wonder what would happen if I did get to the magical “3”. I don’t really know what I would do. I’ve even used that as a threat: “Go ahead and keep this up. Do you want to see what happens when I get to ‘3’? I’m not really sure what will happen but do you want to find out together?” They’ve never taken me up on the offer. Maybe one day…but I hope not, I don’t want to have my bluff called this early. I was hoping to make it at least to their teenage years before I lose total control.

I’m Just Glad It Impresses Somebody

Kids are little tape recorders; they hear something once and they can repeat it ad nauseam. Of course, it would be nice if they would remember the time you quoted David Hume or made a witty and articulate come back to a verbal slight but most of the time they only remember when you broke your foot and stood in the living room swearing for five minutes. And sometimes it isn’t what they say but when they say it that makes it rememberable.

When our eldest boy, Big Bits, was three he had a major crush on our good friend. She is grandma aged, and since both my wife and I have mothers that live many hours away, she became his Nana. Everything she said was like words from God Him(and/or Her)self. One phrase that caught on was “Big and Strong,” as in “eat this so you can grow up Big and Strong” or “Walking around the block will make us Big and Strong.” Soon every other word out of his mouth was “Big and Stong this” or “Big and Stong that.” He usually punctuated saying this with putting his arms up and flexing his biceps. He’s always been a funny kid; “ha-ha” funny not “that boy ain’t right” funny.

Big Bits has always been a Daddy’s Boy and has been my shadow since the time he could walk. I’ve gotten used to this and so when he followed me into the bathroom at a restaurant I didn’t think twice about it. There was an older man washing his hands when we entered but otherwise we were alone. We slipped into a stall (I didn’t need the stall but using the urinal leaves him free to wander off and see what the other men in the bathroom might be up to) and I got down to business.

I should also mention that it took nearly three years for Big Bits to talk but once he got going it was nearly impossible to shut him up. It’s like he has no filter between his eyes and his mouth: he sees it and he has to state it, usually with a running commentary. “Look, a tree. It’s tall. Oh, look, a bird. It’s flying. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy…look, a rock. It’s…a rock” While I was happy that he was finally speaking, I sometimes wondered if there was a way to shut him up.

So there I was, “peeing” for lack of a better term, and Big Bits stood next to me, strangely silent. Finally, as I was getting ready to pack up and go he nearly shouts, “Daddy, you have a Big and Strong penis!” I couldn’t help but guffaw but not as much as the old man washing his hands. I smiled down at Big Bits, patted him on the head and headed out to the sink. There the old man was trying to recover from his laughing fit, which had developed into a coughing jag. I waited for him to calm down and move so I could wash up.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said once he had recovered.

I shrugged before I answered. “That’s OK, I’m just glad it impresses somebody.” We left him still laughing/coughing and red in the face after we washed our hands. I just hope it only looked like he was having heart attack. If not, at least his family will now know he died happy.

I have become Jesus

Kids make their parents feel special. It’s an evolutionary trait that, along with cuteness, allows them to make it past their second birthday. They have no point of reference; you are the smartest/greatest person in their world, therefore the smartest/greatest thing in the world. They can make you feel like Einstein, Brad Pitt and Albert Pujols all in one afternoon. But lately, my boys have been making me feel like Jesus.

Like most kids, my boys tend to hurt themselves a lot. Not cutting themselves, jumping off the roof or voting Republican—just the normal things kids do to damage their bodies. We’ve seen our fair share of scrapped knees, bruises and knocks to the head in our house. Luckily, no one has been permanently damaged but it doesn’t sound like it. The amount of screaming that goes into simply falling down while running through the living room is epic and the speed at which that crying can stop once they feel “healed” can snap your neck. It is these “boo-boos” that has made me feel like the Messiah.

It started with our eldest, Big Bits. He was just getting to perfect the whole walking thing and when he would fall down, he would come screaming up to me and show me his “wound” and I would have to kiss it to get the yelling and carrying on to calm down. This seemed to happen nearly hourly. But, to be honest, it got old; I’m nearly six and a half feet tall and when he would stub his toe he expected me to bend down and kiss his foot. Yeah, that ain’t happening, kid. Plus we had our second child, Little Bits, when Big Bits was two years old and then I didn’t have the time or patience to put up with this malarkey so I took to kissing my fingers and then touching his wounds. This worked, both for him and me.

So Little Bits grew up seeing that if you fell down, Daddy kissed his own fingers and touched your owie and the world was a better place. He’s a second child and therefore learned to roll with the punches; he’s definitely the most chilled out of our kids. But when we had our third, Tiny Bits, I didn’t have the time for even that. Three kids of my own—and by that time I was babysitting our Godchild, Borrowed Bits—running through the house, all of them falling down all the time, I was happy to have time to breathe, let along play “kissy-kissy” with “boo-boos” left and right. Something had to change.

And something did: I became the Lord Christ.

It was Tiny Bits fault. He has been walking for several months but doesn’t have what you would call world class balance. Falling was a way of life for him. And although he falls down on all of his body, it is always his head that he grabs after getting up and says, “Owwwww…” He has gotten to the point where he doesn’t even cry; he just put his hand on the side of his head and comes to find me. The time when he made me divine I was working hard to get the dishes done before we had to go pick up Big Bits from school so that I could start on dinner as soon as we got back. I still had to empty and refill the dishwasher, make sure Little Bits, Borrowed Bits and Tiny Bits were dressed and shoed and I was running late. I was in a rush.

I heard Tiny Bits running from the living room to the kitchen (no matter how many times I try to convince him that running really is too advanced for him he won’t listen). His footfalls are my soundtrack lately. “Thump…thump…thump…bang!” I waited for the required three seconds and then came his call, “Owww…” I rolled my eyes and kept filling the dishwasher and soon enough he came into the kitchen, holding his head. “Owwww…”I saw him out of the corner of my eye and without thinking just held out my hand and grazed the top of his head as I dropped a plate into the dishwasher and went to grab another. I realized I hadn’t kissed my hand first (a capital offense to our older boys) and I went to correct my error but he was no where to be seen. I went to the hall and saw him running back into the living room, all filled with giggles and 18 month old happiness.

I looked down at my hand, almost for the first time. I had healed with a barely a touch. I didn’t need the medicine/magic of a Daddy Kiss. I didn’t need a bandage or major medical insurance. I could heal the sick with my touch. I was one with God/The Universe/Flying Spaghetti Monster (fill in your deity/non-deity of choice)!

I had to rethink my god-like status a few moments later when I realized that Tiny Bits and Borrowed Bits had both dropped major stinkies and we were really running late now. I grabbed babies, diapers and wipes and got down to work. Something tells me a god could have finished this job faster and better than I did. I guess an almost god’s work is never done.

Wind experiments and a spray can of cheese, and thus a love of science begins

I’ve always been a scientist at heart. From a very early age I was fascinated with space and biology and just about anything I could get my hands on. Carl Sagan and Nikola Tesla were my Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky. My days were like the TV show “Mythbusters” only with less explosions. And after the last few weeks, I can see my boys are well on their way to follow in my footsteps.

The first time I saw this scientific inclination was just after the recent 40 days and nights of rain. The sun was out, the windows were down and the car filled with cut-grass-scented air. On the highway, wind buffeted us violently, but we were all so happy to see the sun again no one cared. My two oldest boys were in the very back of our station wagon, watching the world speed away from them. The air flowing into the car circulates wildly in the back, and the boys love it: their hair flies this way and that and they giggle as we travel. So much better than the bickering I hear when the windows are up and they’re bored.

An empty shopping bag was in the back of the car with them, and the wind caught it, showing us all exactly how wildly the air was flowing. It whipped around the boys, faster and faster until it wrapped itself around one of their seat belts. This caused them to erupt with laughter, grab the bag and send it flying. Again and again they got the bag into the air until the poor bag finally escaped their torture and jumped into the back seat, hiding down under my chair.

The collective sigh that signaled all the fun in the world was dead echoed through the car until Big Bits, our 6-year-old, grabbed some paper from his backpack and sent it into the air. It flew about too, not quite as crazily as the bag but it was still fun. Someone in Big Bit’s kindergarten class had recently taught him about paper airplanes, which of course he loved (what kid doesn’t?), but he still wasn’t 100 percent sure about how to fold paper into an airplane shape. That didn’t stop him from randomly folding paper and seeing if it flew any better. This met with varying degrees of success. Little Bits, who will enthusiastically tell you he’s 4 if you give him half a second, did his big brother one better and just wadded up the paper into a ball. This didn’t work at all.

But that didn’t stop him in the least. Everything in their reach was tossed into the air, from toy cars to their shoes. Little Bits held his teddy bear up in the air several times, each time dropping it to see if his little friend would fly around the car. I think the little bear’s arms and legs wiggling in the wind gave him hope he might just take flight. I knew the observation stage had ended and they were ready for more advanced tests when they found an empty chip bag, and it flew around nearly as well as the shopping bag. And they started preparing for future funding requests when Big Bits said, “Dad, can we stop for some chips? I’m really hungry.”

This wasn’t the only time their minds have shown signs of scientific curiosity. One day at the store I happened to see a can of spray cheese, that cheese-like “food” substance that comes in a can and is easily spread on crackers. I remembered liking it when I was a kid, so why not spread the joy to the next generation?

I took it home and let each of the kids have some on a cracker. Tiny Bits, our 18-month-old, took the first one and although none actually made it into his mouth, he did have fun with it (took me forever to get it out of his hair). Little Bits took one, barely licked it and politely put it back on the table. I don’t know if he’s the smartest one of us, but he might have the best taste.

To Big Bits, this was a revelation, a whole new world of flavor opened up before him. “I like slimy cheese!” he shouted several times. I had to cut him off before he made himself sick. It was time for bed anyway. As he was brushing his teeth, staring at his reflection in the mirror, he suddenly turned to me.

“Dad, slimy cheese causes freckles.” I stopped getting Tiny Bits dressed and just stared at him.

“What?!” The incredulous “What?!” is said a lot around our house.

“Well, I like slimy cheese and Little Bits doesn’t.”

“Yup,” I agreed.

“And I have freckles and Little Bits doesn’t.” I couldn’t argue with him on this one, at least this close to bed time. I would have liked to sit him down and explain the truth but when our roommate told him she liked slimy cheese too (and, of course, she has freckles as well) that gave him all the proof he needed. Seeing was believing.

I’m going to keep encouraging their apparent love of science and maybe one of them will be the next Einstein or Hawking. Or, if we’re really lucky, the next generation of Mythbusters.

Originally published on Stltoday.com

Boys will fight over anything, even an imaginary ball

You never know when major life events will happen to you. One moment you are trying to wrangle the family into the car for an outing and the next moment you are standing there, dumbfounded, experiencing something you know you will remember forever. Just this weekend I had one of those moments.

It was a beautiful Saturday and after endless weeks of rain we were all champing at the bit to get out of the house. We spent the morning down at the local cafe, eating a hearty breakfast and wasting time with friends. The kids had spent time at the park, running and jumping and expending most of the calories they had eaten at breakfast. This always does one of two things to them: wears them out so all they want to do is lie on the couch and stare at the TV or winds them up to a pitched frenzy whose energy is only equaled by supernovas. There is no rhyme or reason to this, and trying to predict how they will react to “park time” is a fool’s errand. I knew my best bet was to throw them into the car for a quick trip across town. If they’re turning into zombies the car ride will put them to sleep, and if they’re running wild they could run around the mall or a big box store out in the county.

First, though, I’d have to clean out the car. My poor car is a largeish station wagon, but it’s filled with car seats and there isn’t much room in it other than the front passenger seat. It gets filled with diaper bags, jackets, empty chip bags and bottles of soda. This is not a big deal during the week when it’s just me, but my wife has no place to sit and it seems weird to have her follow us in her car when we go on family trips. So as I carried junk into the house, my wife stayed out on the sidewalk to let the kids play in the sun. Tiny Bits, our 18-month-old, found a stick and was going around blessing and/or whacking every plant he could get close to. Maybe he thinks he’s a wizard and the stick is a wand; who knows — he was happy and that’s all that matters. Our other two boys — 6-year-old Big Bits and 4-year-old Little Bits-decided the thousand and one toys we have in the house (and the several in the car) were unnecessary and were playing Invisible Football.

Invisible Football is a simple game: you take an invisible football and “throw” it to your brother, who “catches” it and then begins to run down the sidewalk, avoiding “tacklers” until they come to the “end zone” where they score a touchdown and “spike the ball.” It’s actually fun to watch and appears to be fun to play. Regardless, they were having fun and staying out of my way as I hauled miscellaneous debris into the house.

I was coming out of the front door for the last time when I heard screaming. I could see Little Bits standing a few doors down, crying. Big Bits was throwing a tantrum. Tiny Bits was happily whacking away at a hosta in our front yard. My wife was trying very hard not to laugh at something.

“What happened?” I asked as I came up to them.

“MOMMY IS SO MEAN!” Big Bits told me.

“Big Bits is … hogging the ball,” my wife tried to say through giggles. “I told him he had to share the ball and he threw a fit.”

“It’s not fair!” Big Bits told me. I was confused.

“Can’t they both have a ‘ball’?” I asked. My wife just shrugged.

“I tried and Little Bits said he wanted the one Big Bits has,” she told me. I just shook my head.

“OK, Big Bits, give Little Bits the ball. It’s only fair,” I told him. Big Bits wasn’t happy, but he seemed to see he had been out voted.

Then the most surreal thing I had ever seen took place.

“You aren’t my best friend anymore!” he said as he bent down, “picked” up the “ball” and “threw” it to his brother before stomping off into the car. Little Bits “watched” the “ball” go over his head and turned to run to where it “landed,” “picked” it up and brought it back to us, now happy enough to stop crying. My wife and I got all the kids into the car and stopped before getting in to look at one another.

“Did that just happen?” I asked.

“Yes, our sons just fought over an imaginary football,” she answered before we both broke out in laughter.

At least they have good imaginations. Now, to see if a good imagination helps them in life or just drives me insane.

Originally published on Stltoday.com

Getting kids to help with yardwork … what’s the worst that can happen?

Earlier this year we had a tree fall down in our back yard, and there it sat, killing my grass and being an embarrassment to our entire family. Well, by “grass” I mean the motley menagerie of crab grass, vines and vicious weeds that has taken over our back yard and by “embarrassment” I mean embarrassment.  It was cold, and I didn’t feel like freezing to death to chop it up and drag it to the yard waste Dumpsters in the alley. And although this isn’t something I look forward to — hanging out in the yard, fighting off pollen and bugs, getting sweaty and sunburned — I would have help: my two oldest boys.

Because they are small and not particularly strong, I figured I could get them to pick up the infinite amount of tiny sticks on the ground while I took care of the big limbs of the tree. All they would have to do is pick up armloads of sticks and take them to the Dumpster right behind our house. What’s the worst thing that could happen?

“What’s the worst thing that could happen?” is something I used to say ironically in situations where it was obvious everything could go wrong. Now I’m a parent, and this is a phrase that goes through my head multiple times a day, and I treat it very seriously.

First: At 6 and 4 years old, my boys see all things long, slender things as swords, so I knew I would have to watch them closely for fencing competitions to break out.

Second: Some of the sticks are sharp and what does every mom say almost constantly: “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.” The boys would have to be out of my sight for almost three seconds to go from the yard to the Dumpster. That’s 2.9 seconds longer than it would take to poke out all four of their eyes.

Third: I’ve been in situations like this, and I know exactly how this was going to go.

I’ve made the mistake of getting the boys to “help” in cleaning the house and to call the experience “frustrating” is laughably naive. You would think getting people to help you clean up one room of a house would make it go faster. This is not the case, at least with my little ones. Every toy has to be examined and played with. Which wouldn’t be bad as they would, ultimately, get the toys all picked up and I would be free to sweep, dust and organize all the things in the house that are out of place. But although they pick up the toy and examine it, they tend to just throw it back on the ground when they come to another toy; getting the toys into a toy chest or even just a bucket or box takes hours and the end of which I still have to clean up after them.

The best I could hope for was for all the sticks to be simply moved around the yard; the worst, having two newly blind children. So  I entered the yard alone, leaving the boys to hang out in the front yard with my wife, pulling weeds and preparing the yard for planting. Maybe she’ll be able to get them excited about lawn care. Or maybe I’ll go to the front yard at the end of the day and they would have pulled up all “the green things” and the front of our house will look as barren as our back yard. Either way, I’m sure they’ll have fun.

Originally published on stltoday.com

Want to stop a child in his tracks? Use the Dad Voice

In the Great Parent/Child War, fathers are given very few weapons (Moms have all kinds of weapons and go into battle ready for anything … at least they seem to). We are thrown into battle with our bundles of joy with little or no knowledge, few real skills and an overpowering fear our every move will result in permanent damage to the child. We think we know what we’re doing but no matter how many little siblings we had or kids we’ve babysat, we are still naked and alone against the great forces of babyhood. Luckily for us dads out there, the weapon we do have is a powerful one; one kids all over the world are powerless against: the Dad Voice.

The Dad Voice is something only fathers have. Mothers don’t have it and even nonfather men can’t seem to get the right inflection to pull off the Dad Voice, a perfect combination of righteous rage and incredulity that tells children immediately they have been caught doing something they shouldn’t be. It doesn’t have to be a shout — it works better when it is said in a voice that is just a little louder than your normal speaking voice — but it can make a kid change his behavior faster than screaming at him all day long could ever do.

I can still remember the first time I used the voice. Big Bits, our now 6-year-old, was just 18 months or so and we were sitting on the couch after cleaning the living room. I left for the kitchen to get a celebratory snack and when I came back a moment later he had climbed off the couch and was digging into his box of wooden blocks, throwing them over his shoulder one at a time and making a giant mess. I stopped at the couch and couldn’t believe my eyes: there was my Little Buddy wrecking our just cleaned room. “What are you doing?!” I said in a voice that made me jump a little and made my poor child spring up, turn around and start crying, wooden block still in hand. I felt so bad I picked him up and we snuggled on the couch for a bit before we went back to work cleaning up his mess.

This voice works on all kids, not just your own. Our middle child goes to a cooperative preschool where I’m the teacher helper once a month. Mostly this involves herding the kids around the preschool and providing the snack for the day. I also help police the children during gym and one day I spied a child going to every kid in the class and pushing them down. Without thinking about it, I invoked the Dad Voice, and he stopped in mid push and spun his head around so fast I thought he might have whiplash. We locked eyes from across the gym and, without another word,  he knew exactly what he had done wrong and stopped. He also gave me a wide berth for the rest of the day.

And the “kids” don’t have to be young either. Or even see you. A friend and I went to the movies this winter to see the latest sci-fi/action epic (quick review: meh). As the theater filled, several teenagers took seats in the very front and started talking loudly. I didn’t care as the only thing on the screen was commercials but as the film started they only got louder. Out came my Dad Voice, a bit louder than I would use with my own boys, but these kids were older and needed more “intense” help to correct their behavior. One “SHUT UP!” was all it took to get the kids to settle down and enjoy the film like they were real human beings. My friend congratulated me on my Dad Voice, and the people next to us even shook my hand after the movie was over. To be fair, the people who shook my hand were  —  how do I put this gently? — “weirdos” but it was nice to see others appreciated my Dad Voice as well.

The Dad Voice: Don’t leave home without it. And it’s best to have it at home as well.

Originally published on stltoday.com