Why Don't He Write? (Or Read)

There's a scene in the movie Dances With Wolves that always cracks me up. Lt. John J. Dunbar (Kevin Costner) hitches a ride with a crass drayage teamster known as Timmons (Robert Pastorelli) across the untamed prairie land enroute to the frontier outpost Dunbar has requested to be transferred to. It's clear Dunbar's romantic idealism about the wild west and its Native American inhabitants cloud his understanding of the harsher realities that surround him. Dunbar begins to get a sense of this after he and Timmons happen upon a half decayed corpse riddled with arrows. Shocked, Dunbar stands in silence at this unsettling discovery. Timmons, however, leans down over the body, and then breaks out in laughter before joking, "I bet somebody back East's askin' 'Why don't he write?'"

That's me at the moment--the dead guy shot full of arrows--which is my way of explaining why I'm not writing as much (on my blog anyway) now and over the next few weeks. Why? For one, we're in the middle of moving from our apartment to a house (yay), and with me being the only one home, guess who's doing the majority of the packing/unpacking?

Once the move's over with, the girls are off school eating significantly into my goof off time. Then, later in June we will be going on vacation up north where we will also be picking up my boys who will be staying with us for all of July (YAY!). Of course this also means that I will be entertaining five kids for that month while keeping up with other writing assignments and deadlines (plus a few book signings and prep for some speaking engagements). Still, crazy as it will be, I'm really looking forward to the time together with my whole family.

I should say too that the above mentioned reasons will also greatly reduce the amount of time I can spend reading many of the great blogs I otherwise regularly visit. Unfortunately, it's during these slow blog periods when I tend to lose a fraction of regular readers, because they don't think I like them anymore. Not so. I still think you're awesome. Understand, it's nothing personal; it's just family.

However, that all said, I will stay in contact via Twitter, Facebook, etc and will have a number of articles and guest posts coming up over the next several weeks at places like DadCentric, The Good Men Project Magazine, The M3 Summit blog, Houston Family Magazine, and The Tsunammi Mommy, as well as joining a talented bunch of writers at new online men's magazine called Man of the House.Com. Along with this, I'll be having several guests posters posting here and I'll be sharing thoughts on a couple great dad books, Tales From The Trips by John Cave Osborne and Stefan Lanfer's The Faith Of A Child.

So bear with me as we move through the summer together, but above all, thanks to all of you for sticking with me through the year. As always, you humble me.

You can read more such drivel in my book, Sugar Milk: What One Dad Drinks When He Can't Afford Vodka

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Here's Your Sign... To Australia

My blogging buddy and fellow comic geek Justin ran my guest post on his blog Howefitz this past Friday, but I didn't get a chance to make an announcement. The topic is Australia, (no connection to Oceanic Flight 815) which may seem random except that his stepdaughter has been accepted into a program where she can serve as an ambassador to the Land Down Under--and based on my knowledge of that great country, we're going to need a little goodwill to make up for it. You can read about it by clicking here.

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My Urologist Is The Smoke Monster

With the impending finale of LOST only a few hours from its conclusion, I am struggling to find something to fill the void of taking seemingly random occurrences and tying them together in order to solve near impossible mysteries. What’s more, despite the current list of pseudo-replacements already on TV, I’m not convinced these quite measure up to the originality or sophistication surrounding the plight of Oceanic Flight 815’s now iconic cast of characters. This is just my opinion. Others are welcome to disagree, but whatever the case, I am still left without a suitable replacement—or I was anyway, until a recent series of actual events too strange to be ignored took place. My brain is now preoccupied by this new challenge of connecting these enigmatic dots in the hopes of forming a coherent theory as to what’s going on and why I appear to be a central figure.

Here’s what I have to work with. The Friday before last, I was working out at the fitness center when in walked a man who easily could have won a Saddam Hussein look-alike contest. Striking as this was, it’s not that detail that qualified him as unusual in my mind; that would be reserved for the two large, white cockatoos riding on his shoulders. My initial thought was that the man was checking the place out, a notion proved wrong when he launched into series of bench-presses with the birds perched on either end of the weight bar. Interesting.

Out of politeness, I really try to ignore these sorts of things; however, this becomes infinitely more difficult when such a person steps onto the running machine directly beside you and places his spike-feathered birds on the TV monitor affixed to the treadmill’s console. In fact, I’d dare say it’s damn near impossible, especially when these menacing creatures are staring straight at you as they violently bob up and down a mere eighteen inches from your head. This is when I decided to skip the cool-down portion of my run and casually exit the premises, but not before catching the narrow gaze of the bird’s owner.

The next incident occurred less than a week later during a quick trip to Wal-Mart which is a well-known hotbed of oddity unto itself (kind of like the Dharma Initiative gone wrong). As I was entering the store, a perfectly sane looking woman, pushing a two-seated baby stroller was headed out. There was nothing particularly remarkable about her—mid-twenties, modest dress, well-groomed. Then she swerved directly into my path.

“Do you speak Spanish?” she asked in a tone that would’ve made me feel criminal if I actually did hable the Español.

“Uh, no. Can I—“

“I need a ride home!”

All at once something struck me as not right. The boldness in her demand combined with the absence of such amicable qualifiers as, “Pardon me, sir,” and, “You might think me crazy for asking this, but,” caused me to invent a spontaneous, yet plausible excuse as to why I could not ferry her off to only God knows where. The resulting expression on her face made me think I had denied her a wallet full of money (not that I had one on me), rather than refusing to assist her in a time of need. Strange.

This brings me to the “phone call,” which was anything but ordinary. Before getting into the specifics, however, I need to take you back to my high profile vasectomy in December. I’m not sure whether it was due to the lingering embarrassment suffered from the lengthy peek my urologist’s young female assistants were afforded by my man parts, or simply the indignity suffered from shuffling with my head hung low like a neutered dog through an attentive waiting room, but whatever the reason, I was long overdue in returning for my follow up.

At the insistence of my wife, I finally scheduled the required visit in order to drop off what the young lady (one of the two mentioned earlier) referred to in a hushed, cryptic voice as “the package.” “The package” as it turns out proved to be wee bit more difficult for me to produce than I had expected, an issue that may or may not have been influenced by the distracting litany of errands I had on tap for the day, the foremost of which included picking out a present for my stepdaughter’s upcoming birthday.

Somehow, despite the obstacle, I managed to come through, and soon I was headed to the drop off point. The exchange went smoothly with neither the assistant nor myself making eye contact in the handoff, although this is also when I noticed that bag containing “the package” was emblazoned with the logo for a new medication meant to help men with lower than normal levels of testosterone. But whatever, I just needed a green light from the doctor and all would be forgotten (until my next and final visit anyway).

By the time I got back home, the office was already calling with the results—and here’s the part where it gets weird. A female voice on the other end of the receiver passed along the following instructions—and I quote: “The doctor wants you to ejaculate as much as possible for the next month before seeing him again.” Yes, that’s exactly what she said, and I’m betting your reaction's the same as mine—it’s a code for something. Intriguing.

No one in their right mind would ever utter such a sentence and actually mean it. How else could that young lady have delivered such a message and done so with a straight face, which is more than I can say for my wife who laughed for a full twenty minutes after I relayed the news to her.

Still, I’m convinced there’s some sort of tie-in to the earlier mentioned incidents. The evidence pointing to this is overwhelming. And I haven’t even mentioned the errant Beanie Baby polar bear found in the girls’ bedroom, or the hostile band of people know as the “whoevers” inhabiting the other side of the apartment complex, or stranger still, the unexplained gravitational force that sucks silverware and food clean off the kitchen table and down onto the floor underneath.

Since “the phone call,” though, I’ve been working my brain into knots trying to piece together the clues, and I’ve arrived at a few theories. The guy at the gym? He’s a former Saddam Hussein body double who escaped to the U.S. and now works as a hit man hired to keep me away from learning the truth. (Come on. White cockatoos? That’s a dead giveaway). As far as the lady who approached me at Wal-Mart, my guess is that she recognized me because we knew each other in some alternate, sideways dimension; the babies in her stroller, however, I am quite sure are not hers, and she’s only raising them until their mother can be found in the jungle where she was last seen.

Admittedly, it was the secret message in “the phone call” that baffled me the longest. After hours of over thinking, it dawned on me how simple the explanation was. Ejaculate for a month before returning to see the doctor? Obviously this is the timetable for when the seamen in the submarine would be returning to the island a month from now. Of course! This all became clear to me once I realized the true identity of my urologist. Yeah, he’s the smoke monster.

* * *

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Bullies

I was talking to my oldest son, Noah, on the phone the other night when he changed the subject with, ”Hey, Dad, guess you didn’t hear the news.” Indeed I had not, and knowing my son, whatever he was about to share with me could range from his completing a new level on a video game, to a little known fact concerning the history of Chechnya.

“A kid in my class brought a knife to school today,” he said with a surprising amount of nonchalance.

What?! This was not what I was expecting to hear, and the ensuing details were even more disconcerting.

“Yup. Had it in the bathroom and was going to use it on another fifth grader in our class,” Noah continued. “He’s going to be suspended for life, and probably getting arrested for attempted murder.”

“Did you know him,” I asked, the alarm in my voice evident.

“Yeah. Sits next to me in class. Not a nice guy.”

“Let me talk to your mom.”

To say that I was concerned would’ve been an understatement. However, as I said before, I also know my son. Where voids exist between the facts of a particular incident, Noah fills these gaps in using the full resources of his logic and imagination. If a boy brings a weapon to school it only stands to reason that, as a known bully, his intent is to use it, the end result of which would mean suspension and hard time in the big house. This is why I suppressed my initial reaction of freaking out until after hearing the adult version of the same incident, and like so many times before, this proved to be a sound course of action.

Turns out the situation, although still serious, wasn’t quite as bad. Yes, a boy in Noah’s class had been caught carrying a knife—a pocketknife to be more exact. The reason was unclear, but apparently he was showing it off to some other kids while in the restroom, and they smartly told a teacher. Once the details were sorted out, the principal notified parents. Hearing this calmed my immediate concerns, but it also raised new ones, specifically about my son's future.

It didn’t bother me that Noah’s account contained a little more commentary. He’s on a major crime-solving kick at the moments, so playing detective and theorizing as to motive and intent would’ve been too hard to resist. No, what worries me is that my son has become a target for bullies like this kid.

Noah is special. I realize every parent feels that way about their own children, but what I’m referring to here is my son’s issues with ADD. Along with all the lack of focus and the disorganization, Noah tends to daydream which is further enhanced by his medication, sending him into periods of deep concentration on whatever topic interests him that moment. This can last all day, and rather than play with the other kids at recess, he will spend the time walking around the playground alone in his thoughts.

When he does interact with his classmates, Noah will ramble on, unaware of the social cues indicating a person has stopped listening. What’s more, the things he likes to talk about are usually outside the realm of what eleven year-olds are into these day. (I wasn’t kidding about the details of Chechnian history. One teacher relayed to me how Noah held up class because he wanted to know how the New York Stock Exchange worked.) This sort of behavior tends to make him stick out, and not in a good way as far as some kids see it. Already there have been problems.

One boy has been antagonizing Noah for most of the year to the point my son was even seeing the school councilor about how to deal with things. I wasn’t even made aware of this until his mother mentioned it to me after Noah got into a fist-fight with another bully during a school trip. Fed up with the constant harassment, Noah finally hauled off and let the punk have it. To the teacher and principal, the circumstances were clear, and Noah didn’t get in trouble. His mother and I, although not proponents of fighting, also agreed that because he repeatedly had asked for help, Noah did the right thing in standing up for himself.

Bullies abound. The consequences of their cruelty now make national headlines. Victims who feel trapped in extreme cases commit suicide or shoot classmates to escape. Tragic as this is, I never paid the issue much attention beyond extending a brief moment of sympathy for those involved. Things are different now.

This fall Noah will start middle school where the bullies are larger, meaner and seemingly even more bereft of a conscious. Picturing him pitted against such circumstances triggers an anger in me from knowing what little control I have over the situation. No longer is my son the little boy who liked to wear my Army gear around and sit in my lap while I read him stories. His innocence was still intact back then in a world that was safer, and one where I could protect him.

Yet, the reality of me protecting him was only a mirage, a brief few years lasting just long enough to convince my brain that it would always be that way even though my heart was telling me otherwise. Now I have no choice but to listen to that voice. Now I have to believe it when it says for me to put my faith in those lessons I’ve taught Noah about what’s good in this life, why some people are the way they are, how to avoid them if possible, and when’s the right time to throw a solid right hook. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to hear that voice over the taunts of a harsh world

This post brought to you by Dad-Blogs and their weekly edition of Fatherhood Friday.

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