Post-graduate education for preschoolers

Today, instead of writing some wandering rant or sarcastic childish commentary, or just transcribing my kids' strange conversations, I need to sort through a little something here.

Please indulge me while I wrap my head around the fact that I just packed some kid's lunch. For school. Where he'll be all day today, like a real person.

He'll even get there on a bus, by himself, and though he may look as ridiculous with his color-coded nametag, backpack sticker, and strange visor as I did with the grotesque cowboy totebag my mom made my brothers and I carry (but not my sister, years later...), he will have reached the point at which the bounty of day-to-day memories in my own life began, 23 years ago.*

I'm starting to think that, despite all the evidence my spotty memory and helpful cloud of denial can provide, my girlfriend and I just might be parents. Of actual children. And I'm pretty sure I'm getting some flashes that there was a wedding in there somewhere, too.**

This means we may not in fact be college dorm roommates who got matched up with a couple of unbelievably needy, dependent midgets by the university housing authority. Someone will soon be coming into our apartment, holding us accountable for our shamefully disorganized, impromptu lifestyle, emboldened by third-party education outside the cult walls.

As well he should. It's about time someone did.

Good luck, kid.

---

* What this means for me, I'm not sure, but it doesn't really matter. I just don't want to screw this up for him.

** Coming up on six years ago, I'm told.

A blessed St. Squarepants' Day be upon you

So here we are again on this holiday beloved by young children and alcoholics with equal vigor.

I just wanted to share that yesterday, my 4-year-old son D- asked my mom, "How come we all wear green on Spongebob Day?"

She had no idea where on Earth this came from, until I pointed out that even in my limited knowledge of the world of Spongebob Squarepants, I know that his best friend is named Patrick.

So in that distinct way that only a child's brain works, patching knowledge gaps with basically anything that springs to mind before moving on to the next thought, we have christened a new holiday.

I'm sure Nickelodeon will be as pleased as Hallmark about this development, but I just want to know how he even knows this fact to connect it, since he has only watched the show twice in his life, 2 years ago.

Maybe Nickelodeon had leprechauns put something insidious in those Spongebob Band-Aids of his...

The finest in casual dining

A couple of days ago, the kids and I took a jaunt down to the massive outdoor mall* near our house, which meant that we got to bite into a juicy cross section of what passes for Americana these days.

Among the stores we passed was a Chili's**, which caught D-'s eye immediately. He said, "Hey look, there's that 'rons-traunt' we went to that time." I acknowledged this and praised him as usual for his good memory, since it was quite awhile ago. He stared at the window as we (happily) passed it by, and his brain began to slowly warp itself before he continued with a second thought. I was all over it two words in-- I don't know why I'm so tuned into his brain patterns most of the time, but I just knew exactly what he was thinking.

D-: Remember we went there that time 'cause Momma's friend works there, and she...

Me: Nope, that was a different place.

D-: No! It was that place right there! We went there and Momma's friend...

Me: You're right that it's the same kind of place, but it's a different restaurant, from a different company.

D-: No it was that place! We went there that time and Momma's friend gave us cookies and they sang Happy Birthday to you!

Me: I promise you, that was a Bennigan's. This is a Chili's. They're pretty much exactly the same restaurant, with the same kind of food, but they have slightly different decorations on the walls. They're from two different companies, and they have two different names, but I can see how you could get confused.

He walked on in silence, since my Imperious Kung Fu is much stronger for the time being, but it was clear from his posture that he still believed he was right, just like I would. As I caught him gazing innocently off in the direction of the Outback Steakhouse, rather than go through this all over again, I immediately veered off the sidewalk to instead cut through the parking lot in the general direction of a big box store whose name willfully escapes me.

Who says America doesn't have any culture?

---

* Not to be confused with the other massive outdoor mall also in our town but another mile farther away in a different direction.

** I had to quickly double-check that it wasn't actually an Applebee's, Ruby Tuesday, Chotchkee's, Flingers, Fuddruckers, Uncle Moe's Family Feedbag, TGI Friday's, or one of the others.

Ay, there's the rub

I haven't been sleeping much lately, due to the many balls (work, the kids, writing, blogging*, relaxing) I've put in the air for myself to juggle, so I figure I'm about at the end of some kind of cycle wherein I'll have to crash for hours upon hours for a few days. The signs of this are numerous, such as falling asleep sitting up, feeling like I have cotton behind my eyes, and wishing my wife a good day at work before heading off to bed.

But a pretty definitive sign came just yesterday, which was a day I got to sleep in after getting to bed by 3, making a nice one-two punch in my favor. I woke up a little bit at 8 when J- got up with M-, then I immediately returned to a state somewhere just above death** for the next few hours.

Around 11:30, J- burst into the room in a rush to grab some clothes while getting the kids ready. Given that 1) she'd been up for several hours, 2) it was pretty bright in our room, and 3) she had a lot of things going on all at once, I think tip-toeing did not rate much consideration at the time. So naturally my brain cast off on its reluctant ascent to the surface, but just before it could get there, my body must have jumped the gun by moving in some significant way. I suspect this because J- began pelting me with a lot of information-laden slings and arrows all at once... something about my parents being on their way over to take the kids down to my aunt and uncle's house for the afternoon, and her needing to look more presentable in order to hand them off, along with various other tangential details.

I feel a need to jump in here to state that because the kids are so effective at waking everyone up when their days begin, and because J- and I take turns at getting up with them, neither of us is usually technically asleep, or at least not very deeply, in the late morning when we get to "sleep in". I think she was expecting to find me lounging there in denial, or even reading a book. But of course I wasn't even capable of dreaming of reading a book. I was probably dreaming of sleeping and dreaming some more, in an infinite chain of simple pleasure.

So since as you know, my body was in no state to let go of sleep lightly, and since I knew nothing of these impromptu plans and was still struggling to emerge from my typically-millisecond-long trip through that zone in which I forget that I even have kids, I think it's understandable that I was a touch overwhelmed even after a full minute of coming-to, much like a character in one of those many body-switching movies Hollywood has churned out.***

Like any practical person, as I tried to make sense of this unfamiliar data stream, I began at the beginning. I did my best to open my eyes and, before gaining focus on what would be her incredulous face, I asked for the basic piece of information I lacked for gaining a foothold on everything else:

"What day is it?"

---

* The blogging ball is shining nicely, though, as usual-- this post marks my 200th.

** That state somewhere just above death? Possibly North Dakota. Stay tuned tomorrow for an elaboration of this theory.

*** E.g. The Family Man, Freaky Friday, Mr. Destiny... the list goes on and on.

A conversation with D-: Party every day

Here's a little conversation I had with my 4-year-old son D-, wherein he spontaneously recalled a summer picnic thrown two years ago by the company I used to work for:

D-: Remember at [old company's name] there was a party, and there was a stick, and a bag* of candy that you could hit with the stick, and all the candy would come out?

Me: Yeah.

D-: We should go back there and hit that bag of candy with the stick, so we can eat some more of that candy.

Me: I don't think it's still there, bud-- that was a long time ago. Plus, that's a long way away**, back in Maine. Remember how long it took us to drive out here to Illinois?

D-: Yeah. But we should go there.


* This word was apparently selected for lack of a better one-- though they certainly don't have many Mexicans in Northern Maine outside of broccoli harvesting season, it was indeed a genuine piñata.

** It's also a long way away in the sense that the company as we knew it no longer exists, thanks to the people put in charge by the corporation that bought it.

Five years later.

It may seem as unbelievable to you as it does to me, but it has been five years since the U.S. invaded Iraq. Whatever you may think of that and everything that goes with it, today didn't seem like a day to post about something else.

Let's just hope everyone involved on every side can suddenly grow up and figure this all out, so both Americans (and other nations' troops) and Iraqis can get out of harms' way as soon as possible.

Here's hoping five things, one for each year: 1) the non-Iraqi extremists and troublemakers leave the country soon; 2) the people can pick up the pieces of their lives shortly after; 3) an independent and genuine government comes to power, without undue influence of self-interested Americans and their massive permanent military bases; 4) the full truth is eventually revealed about why and how our troops were sent there; and 5) all those responsible for crimes against our nation, its ideals, and humanity at large will be held accountable and punished like any common felon.

And most of all, here's to the nearly 4,000 American soldiers, hundreds of "coalition" soldiers, and the tragically uncounted hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives, as well as all those injured, as a result of this horrifically unplanned invasion.

Let's do better in the future, for ourselves, our children, and all the people who share this world with us.

Keeper of the minutiae

Apparently I now have to stop talking about D- as if he's not in the room, because he's officially Not Oblivious To Anything anymore. I've tried not to do this for a long time now, but I slip into it every so often, mostly because we all do it so much with M-.

Last night, I was telling a story about how the other day, I had D- feed M- while I was making D-'s lunch, but I couldn't remember what food it was that he was feeding her. So I just moved past that detail, talking about the two of them as if they were chimpanzees picking nits off each other, when all of a sudden D-, sounding for all the world like an actual person, said "Mac and cheese... it was mac and cheese."

The fact that he remembers this insignificant detail regarding maybe 3 minutes of his life most of a week later (which in kid-years is probably about a month) tells me that he is destined to be blessed and cursed with a memory like mine. I am tormented by at least hundreds of millions of pointless tidbits from my life and others', along with plot lines to movies and shows I don't even like, lyrics to songs I hate, and useless trivia about people who annoy me.

And given that, I figure it won't be long before he gets that bored look in his eyes whenever I open my mouth, until he can correct me, point by point, out of a sense of compulsive duty as much as disdain for my inferiority. At least for now, his tone just indicates he's glad to help.

As for me, the source of his burden, the only thing that lets me forget things is a lack of sleep, though having endured this for so many years now, I have found that I rely on my traditionally complete retention for so many things, that by comparison I now think I know what Alzheimer's must feel like.

In particular, I currently remember less about my life in the past 4 years (coincidence? I think not) than would a 22nd-century D student after skimming a 1-page summary of my entire life just before a quiz on historical figures who failed to live up to their potential. Why I would even be on such a quiz, I'm not sure, but let's just say I invented a unique kind of food on a stick, then died tragically in a comical, insomnia-related accident. Any suggestions?