Ever since Empire Strikes Back I have been aware of the psychological damage that a father can do to his son, and have sought to minimize the damage that I do to mine.
Generally speaking, I spend a lot of time worrying what unintentional lessons he is learning from me—you know, those things that you never realize that you do until you see your kid do them?
Well today I learned that he apparently absorbed one lesson with particular clarity.
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about the problem of irresponsible parenting when we went to see Speed Racer.
The entire post is brilliant and I recommend it highly, but for the sake of our discussion today I will assume that you have already read it, and therefore will only quote part of it
(The post is addressed to two adult women I assume to be the mothers of the children we sat in front of.)
We arrived at the movie theater about 12:50 p.m. for a 12:45 p.m. movie. We didn’t worry too much about it, because we knew there would be previews. When we arrived, we quickly spotted some open seats in the middle of the theater. There were not a whole lot of other people in the theater, but those who were had sat in the same general area, because those are the best seats. Clearly you knew this, because you had sat there yourself.
It wasn’t until we were sitting down that I realized that we were seated in front of several children, but I didn’t think much about it. We could have gone down two rows closer, but that would have been too close. We could have gone two rows back, but that was further than we wanted to go. We sat in open seats at a public theater.
The problem started almost immediately. The children were chattering during the previews, not about the previews, just in general. I let this go, because they are just previews, but I was already concerned. I heard you say “Shut up!” to them at one point. They ignored you, and you dropped it.
They continued to talk during the opening credits. You said nothing.
They continued to talk during the opening scene of the movie. I turned around, put my finger to my lips and said “Shhh” to them. They shushed. I smiled and said “Thank you.”
A few minutes later, another one of them started kicking my son’s seat. One of you stopped him, which I heard and appreciated.
A few minutes later, he started again. You ignored it, or just didn’t realize it. I turned around and said, “Please stop kicking the seat.”
At this point I saw that he was stretched full out on the seat and stretching his legs as far as he could in order to reach the seats in front (this theater provides plenty of leg room). It would have been very hard not to see him. You turned to him and said “Quit it.”
Less than 5 minutes later, one of the other children, the one sitting furthest from you, started to kick the seat next to me, and the one next to her started kicking mine.
This marked the end of my patience. I turned around and said, in a calm but firm voice: “Stop kicking the seats.”
Her eyes grew wide and she pulled back her legs.
(The post goes on to talk about the parent who got defensive that I had corrected her children, and attempted—with absolutely no success—to shift the blame to us for having sat in front of her obnoxious children. But for our purposes today, the above quoted section is sufficient.)
Last week when I was in Indianapolis, The Wife took The Boy to see Wolverine. There were some kids sitting behind The Boy who were kicking his seat. The Wife told me tonight that he turned around and said:
“Please stop kicking the seat.”
That would be awesome enough, but she said he did it in the exact same tone that I had said it, which would be roughly translated as “I ain’t playing and I do not intend to have to repeat myself, and what you have heard is the last bit of polite conversation that I intend to offer.”
Which is pretty good for a not-quite-7 year-old who probably weighs 50 pounds soaking wet if wrapped in a heavy towel.
She said they didn’t make another peep for the entire movie.
(Coda: at the end of the movie, they started to leave and The Wife said to one of them “You don’t want to leave yet, there’s another scene in the credits” and they all sat down. She heard one of them say to the other one “We aren’t allowed to leave yet.”)
I live with awesome people.
I didn’t know @jamield other than the occasional overlap on Tumblr.
I’ve spent some time looking over her Tumblr especially, and thought that perhaps she would have enjoyed this story.
The story starts nine years ago, early spring of 2000. I can’t tell you exactly when but it was after February 1st and before April 15th. My sister and her family were living in Scotland, and my wife and I were trying to decide if we were going to go for a visit.
We couldn’t afford it. There was no way we could afford it. But we had tickets on 48-hour hold with a travel agent. The final hours were running out and we had to call her back to say either yay or nay.
“We have to go. It will never be less expensive than it will be now. If we pay for airline tickets, we’ll have a place to stay.”
There was another reason as well.
I know it was after February 1st because that was the day that our first pregnancy ended, prematurely, at 22 weeks. The dates of travel that we had tentatively scheduled would have us out of the country for what had been the due date in the early days of summer.
“Avoidance” gets a bad rap, but you know, some days it really is the best available option.
We both wanted to be gone, and we both knew it was, financially, a horrible decision. I can’t remember which one of us finally said it:
“We’re going.”
I called the travel agent and left a message telling her that we wanted the tickets. No sooner had I hung up the phone than I felt a pit in my stomach, and yet relief. My only real concern was that the travel agent would get the message before the tickets expired.
The phone rang. “That must be her!” I thought.
It wasn’t.
It was our accountant.
Now before you get your undergarments in a bunch, “Ooooooh, Mr. Fancy Pants has an accountant?” I won’t explain, but trust me, it’s a requirement. My dad was an accountant for 33 years and even he declined to try to tackle our taxes.
He said, “I have good news and bad news.”
(Aside: if you are a doctor, a mechanic, or an accountant, never start a conversation with that sentence. Ever.)
Perhaps he heard me begin to hyperventilate, because he continued: “The bad news is that you are having way too much withheld from your paycheck. The good news is that you’re getting [dollar amount almost identical to the cost of the airline tickets] back from your tax return. I’ll send you the paperwork, you ought to have the money in a few weeks.”
It was the first time in days? weeks? month? that I remember feeling anything might resemble “joy”… or maybe “hope”… or maybe it wasn’t even that much—maybe it was just a deeper and truer smile in my soul.
The trip was everything we could have hoped for. With the “extra” money we hadn’t expected, we took a few more trips while we where there to London and Dublin (short flights from Glasgow). We ate wonderful food and took in all the sights our eyes and feet could manage.
Not that there isn’t plenty to see in the USA, of course. A few years later we took our son to the west coast. We went to California, Oregan, and Washington. We stayed with friends we had never met in real life before, but who we had known via email. They opened their houses and their lives to us. It was a trip we’ll never forget.
Jamie clearly “got” this. She obviously loved to travel, but more than that you can sense the adventure in her words, it was how she approached life. I daresay she lived a lot more life than some people who get twice as many years.
Today was a good day to grieve for her. For her close friends and especially family, I know that grief will only grow in the days to come before the eventual ebb and flow returns. But eventually everyone who was touched by her life will honor her memory more by how they choose to life.
If you can get on a plane, go for it. If the trip requires a passport, all the better. If you have a car, find a new place to take it. If you have a bike, find some new hills or a different path.
If all you have is where you live and your own two feet, take the spirit of adventure and let it show you things that your eyes have taken for granted.
Add some life to your life. She’d love that.
Finally, just let me add a word of thanks for everyone who has shared a bit of themselves after this loss. I didn’t know her, I wish I had, but it’s been remarkable to see and hear what her circle of friends have had to say about her. I wish you all peace and comfort in the midst of your grief.
She was awoken much too early by the almost 7 year old boy she let sleep in her bed last night because he wanted to have a “sleep-over,” which meant that the too early morning came after a night of being kicked by a child who moves so frequently and violently in his sleep that his parents often joke about padding the walls and floor of his bedroom, and doubt that they will ever let him sleep on a bed more than six inches off the floor.
That same boy sang with other children during the church service. His was the voice which sang at twice the volume of all the others; not because of a special gift for musicality, but because of the natural volume he has acquired through the genetic pairing of his two boisterous parents. Still, the sound of his song as he loudly proclaimed “I love you, Mom” left her eyes a little glassy. In a mother’s eyes, enthusiasm trumps skill every time.
Her fancy Mother’s Day lunch was eaten at Wendy’s, because that’s where he wanted to go. When she arrived and found her husband’s “meal” had been prepared incorrectly, she ordered the same thing, but ordered the way he wanted it, and she took his instead. Was it what she wanted? She never said, but she implied that it was, in all likelihood for his benefit.
They arrived home and the child sent her on a hunt for her Mother’s Day card, a single sheet of paper he had colored at school and folded in half. That, along with a plant in a vase he had decorated at school, was her gift.
Dinner, at least, was a nicer fare: a well-cooked steak at her favorite place. She offered to drive because she gets a headache if she tries to read in the car and she knew her husband would enjoy some time playing with his phone during the thirty minute drive. She listened with patience and interest as her son described—in far more detail than anyone cared to hear—his latest toy collection: which figures he had acquired and each of their strange names (which she valiantly tries to remember), which he still needed, what “powers” they possessed, how they worked together, who was good, who was evil. If, by some chance, she and her husband managed a few sentences about grown-up matters, the boy simply put himself on hold until they paused again, and then started up right where he had left off.
They ended the evening watching a few shows they had recorded on the TiVo. She worked a crossword puzzle on the computer. Since it was a special day, she decided to let the boy stay up late, even on a school night. When it was time for bed, she brushed his teeth and turned on his night-light.
Which caused him to cry, because he had wanted to turn on his nightlight.
He had not, of course, told her this before she flicked the dreadful switch, which she does nearly every night as she prepares him for bed. His father weakly suggested that the boy turn the light off and then turn it back on again, but even he knew this would not sooth the boy’s overtired feelings, which were hurt as only a small and sometimes unreasonable child’s feelings can be, and no amount of logic, reason, or discussion of any kind would help.
His father tried to console him, stroked his head and kissed it, even rubbed his back, which he normally loved. But to no avail.
No, the only comfort for him would be that his mother would lie down next to him in his blue race-car bed, as she has on so many other nights. She would stay with him until he fell asleep. While his father wished that the boy would learn to fall asleep on his own, she knew that sometimes a boy simply needs his mother.
So ends another fifteen hour day as a mother. In many ways it is not unlike countless other days she has spent in the nearly seven years since his birth. She would understand if you thought this was a terrible day, perhaps even an unfair day, where she gave so much of herself, especially on a day which was supposed to honor her. But she knows who she is, her identity has not been lost. If she spends her day thinking more about them than herself it is not because she “has” to, but because she wants to, she has chosen to. If these expectations were laid upon one who was unwilling, they would rightly be called a burden. She does not think of them that way. She knows that these two men would not deny her anything; that they would, without hesitation, offer their full strength and ability to any request she made of them. She knows she is loved.
In a way that perhaps only makes sense to herself and others in situations like hers, she will consider this to have been a good day, maybe even a great day. She kissed her husband goodnight and thanked him for a wonderful day.
When he eventually drifts off to sleep, his last thought will be that the true “wonder” of this day, and every other day, is her.
“Life Begins”
Not just his, but mine… ours.
Perhaps the best picture ever.
(Picture taken in 2002. Happy Mother’s Day to the best wife and mom anyone could hope for.)
[video]
1.) Your bathroom, with the door closed.
I have a friend, who we will call “A”.
“A” switched to a Mac after hearing me love mine, and loved it. I would routinely get text messages or emails talking about how much easier it was, etc.
“A” came over when I first purchased my iPhone and couldn’t wait to see it, and had talked about wanting to get one.
When the iPhone 3G was scheduled to come out, I was thinking of selling my original iPhone to replace it with a new one, and I wondered if “A” would be interested in buying it.
Here’s how the conversation went:
Me: “Hey, if I upgrade my iPhone I may be looking to sell mine. Would you be interested?”
A: “Sure, probably. Let me know.”
Me: “OK, will do.”
A: “I have a question for you.”
Me: “OK”
A: “If I get killed over in Iraq, will you be the one to tell my parents? I don’t want them getting the news from some Army representative.”
Did I mention that “A” is in the army? That’s probably an important thing to know.
Also important to know: I’ve never met A’s parents, and they live in Texas and I live up north.
But I don’t know if anyone has ever asked you that particular question before, but if they do, there’s no way to say “no” (not that I wanted to, except for a) the discomfort in the idea and b) did I mention I’d never met them before?)
If that isn’t the most awkward conversation I’ve ever had, it’s pretty close.
So. What’s yours?
My request:
VistaPrint would like to offer me a free rubber stamp. Which is to say, I am now talking suggestions on what my rubber stamp should say. source
gathered a number of responses (shown in order they were received)
smartgoat: STAMPED
mikemorrow: Folks in my office are big fans of a big “WTF” stamp…
Notactuallyme: I have one that says “Fuck it - I don’t have time to read this shit”
AminoSC: Wheresgeorge.com ? :)
secretsquirrel: “LOL” or, if there’s enough type, “boneriffic”. Or “HAM”. Or “NUDE”. Or “NUTSACK”.
jamietie: I’ve always wanted one that said “REJECTED”
mikemorrow: Perhaps: “I HOPE YOUR NOT MAD”
teribits: Your productivity still greatly exceeds that of the pole.
mayjah: TLDR
thestoryofb: NSFW
tbridge: How about, “Thanks, Bitches!”
SmartAsshat: THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY STAMPED
SmartAsshat: AS USALLY
secretsquirrel: “PWNED”
LidMo: Douche. (Not you. The Stamp.)
eoporto: STAMPED.
lisarahmat: I AM IRON MAN
squibble: My other stamp is a mushroom.
biorhythmist: TRAMP
luckyshirt: This is my stamp. There are many like it, but this one just stamped this. or YO DAWG WE HEARD THIS STAMP IS TOO SMALL TO DO THIS JOKE.
awryone: My other stamp is a ballpoint.
texburgher: UNMARKED
kariedwards: “If this stamp is found, please return to: (your address here)”
Yayaa: I LOVE HOBOS
Wallaceh: “Tramp”
MikeTRose: “God is my Facebook friend”
ohmyseven: I have one that says “WTF?”
steelopus: I think your rubber stamp should say “RUBBER STAMP.”
toldorknown: DO NOT STAMP
Tony_D: It’s just a formality.
liabo: confidential’d
itsbynnereel: I HOPE YOUR NOT MAD.
ungraceful: This is my stamp. There are many like it, but this one’s mine. My stamp, without me, is useless. Without my stamp, I am useless.
HemiRT5pt7: I think a rubberstamp that said ‘Fuck It’ would be put to good use
benjibot: How about “RUBBER STAMP!”
kyleridolfo: I prefer this one: http://tinyurl.com/cjujrs
fraserspeirs : Surely “FIND HIM AND KILL HIM”? http://www.flickr.com/photos/deane_crilley/2296453868/
biorhythmist : “★”
BrilliantOrange: THE BIRD IS THE WORD
I have to say, I’m surprised no one made a rubber=condom joke.
I know which one gave me the biggest laugh, but what’s your favorite?
The button-fly was invented by someone clearly not on either the producer or consumer sides of the blowjay industry. — @biorhythmist
I haven’t worn button-fly jeans in a long time, but back in college, they were pretty much all I owned. I hadn’t thought about them in years until I saw the above message.
Scene: dorm room, freshman year. Me and new lady-friend are, fully clothed, on the bed, “getting acquainted”. Things are going along OK until she starts asking questions.
Her: “Are you OK?”
Me: “Yeah” (translation: “Actually no, but I’d rather not tell you what’s wrong for fear it will break the mood, which I would really rather not do.”)
Her: “Ok.”
(few minutes later)
Her: “Seriously, what’s wrong?”
Me: “It’s nothing.” (translation: “Ow ow ow ow ow don’t care don’t care don’t care”)
Her: “Tell me, or I’m leaving”
Me: “It’s not a big deal, it’s just… you’re… kind of… grinding my buttons into me…. there”
Her: “…”
Me: “It’s not a big deal…” (please don’t leave) “I just need to…” (less talking, more kissing… oh crap, what was I saying? Did I just say something? I think I started to say something, she’s looking at me like she’s waiting for me to say something. SAY SOMETHING!)
Me: “I, um…”
Her: “Well why don’t you just take them off?”
If you had given me 1,000 sheets of paper and asked to write my guesses for what she would say, I never would have come up with that one. I won’t finish telling the rest of the story, just trust me that it had a happy ending.
What’s much funnier is that several years later I saw this video of Kevin Smith talking about the first time he had sex with his wife, which went much worse and ended much better. Sort of.
It’s in 2 parts (YouTube), both parts are about 9 minutes long, although the first clip starts about 1m35s into it. There’s some “strong language” (the so-called “F word”) so avoid this at work if that’s a problem.
We’ve had a major renovation that we’ve needed to do at work for years.
Here’s enough detail to understand the situation:
Things have gotten so bad that we’re really risking turning people away unless we do something.
What had been done 20 years ago by a couple of college kids (and never really worked well, adequately, but not well) needed to be replaced.
We got a bid from a company that specializes in the type of work we need to have done, a company we’ve worked with before, and a company which has done extensive work for another organization in our area. All their work has been first class. (The first job they did came in early and under the estimate.)
This bid was approximately $22,000 including installation.
Some on the board wanted to do it right away, others wanted to see if we could get some kind of a grant, some didn’t see why it needed to be done (i.e. they didn’t see the need, even if they knew some others might seen the need).
With roughly $400,000 in the bank, we decided to go ahead and make the purchase.
Then the chair of the budget committee refused to sign the contract until we had talked about the contract at another board meeting, since all we had done was vote to accept the bid and he wanted us to vote to accept the contract even though there was no substantial difference between the bid and the contract.
So we wasted another 30 minutes rehashing the entire thing which amounted to nothing more than a few more opportunities to restate the “I don’t think we ought to spend the money” position with the rest of us sitting there thinking “I don’t want to spend it either, but it needs to be done and we’ve deferred it so long that pieces of the old system are completely defunct.”
So the work actually began today, and is supposed to be done Friday.
A delivery man from the local rental center arrived this morning around 9:30 with a one-man lift (cherrypicker) which had been ordered by the contracting company.
They weren’t yet on-site (no big deal, they’re coming from a distance).
The secretary signed for the delivery, and I showed him where I thought would be a good spot to leave it.
No big deal, right?
Except that this afternoon our treasurer arrived with the invoice for the delivery/rental of the lift and shoved in my face.
“Who’s going to invoice this? Who signed for it? Is anyone have oversight of this?”
He continued to rant (not quite yelling but talking very loudly) while I tried to read it.
“This was a sucker contract, it’s open ended, we never should have signed that thing!”
One might assume that he was in the “We don’t need to spend the money” camp.
Finally I said, “I don’t think there’s any need to get aggressive about this, I’ve only had it for 30 seconds, and I’m trying to figure out who should sign for it.” (Meaning “who should sign the voucher for it” not “who should have signed for delivery”.)
Secretary: “Well, I signed for it. Should I not have done that?”
(Note: both the treasurer and I were in the secretary’s office when the delivery man came, and no one made any objection at the time.)
Him, to her: “I wouldn’t go around signing for things without knowing who is going to pay for them!”
Because really, it was only vital to all of the work they did on site all day, we should have turned the delivery man away.
Him, to me: “I’ve spent all day on this! I’ve had it for longer than 30 seconds!”
Me: “I said that I have only had it for 30 seconds. I don’t know if this is our responsibility to pay or if it was part of the contract.”
Him: “Well, I don’t know either.” [went on to rant more about the contract]
Me: “Let me call David [who has worked with this company before, coordinated the bid, and knows more about the job than all of the rest of us combined times two] and see if he has a copy of the contract.”
Him: “I have that. I have a copy of the contract.”
At which point he went to his desk, pulled out a file folder, looked at the contract, and announced, still in an angry tone of voice: “Lift rental…. it’s in the contract. This contract is too vague, it’s all specifications.”
Me: “It’s in the contract that they will pay for the lift rental?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “…” (I had plenty to say, but I was holding my tongue.)
Me: “OK, so that settles that, right?”
I don’t think he said anything else. He was flipping through the contract and not making eye contact.
I put the invoice down on the secretary’s desk and went back to my office.
Remember the total bill for the project? $22,000?
Would you like to know how much the lift delivery/rental fee was?
$150.
A hundred and fifty fucking dollars.
Otherwise known as 0.68% of the bill.
And for this you are getting in my face?
For 0.68%?
Not only that, but 0.68% which was already included in the contract that you claim is “too vague” but a) had the specific answer to the question that you asked and b) you hadn’t bothered to look at?
Note: A sign of emotional maturity would have been apologizing for overreacting and being wrong and kind of a jerk about it. However, no apology was forthcoming.