Was Your Day This Bad? - A Writing Proposal

I can’t possibly be the only parent who has children who tape underwear to the front door of his house. There are more of you out there. I know there are. I know there are because I know that I am not the only parent who had a three year old son decide to drop his pants to his ankles and water the grass near the traveling Vietnam Wall Memorial in front of dozens of people including many faculty members of the history department at the high school where I taught.


I was so proud.

I know that I am not the only parent who has had a child loudly ask, “Is it time to go home yet?” during that one moment of silence in the middle of our pastor’s sermon.

I know that I am not the only parent who has had a child wondering why he didn’t have a younger brother, which led him to ask at the top of his lungs, “Dad, have you given mom any of your sperm yet?” on a crowded Southwest Airlines flight to Chicago.

I can’t be the only one.

Can I?

I ask because of Charles. Charles is the father of a scout in General Mayhem’s Boy Scout Troop. Charles walked up to me with a big grin at a scout meeting last month. “I almost called you today,” he told me.

“Why?” I asked. Charles never calls me.

“Because I thought I was having a bad day,” he explained. “I knew that if I talked to you my day would get a whole lot better.”

Charles went on to explain that after listening to me share the details of the day my sewer line backed up into my basement while I was teaching a homeschool writing class to a visiting student and simultaneously fighting with my plumber in an effort get him to honor his warranty and re-snake my lateral line, he realized that his tough day wasn’t as bad as he thought it was. That was an appropriate day to teach descriptive writing using words that end in “y,” such as “nasty” and “sh…” The more Charles thought about it he realized that he rarely has a day worse than some of the stories that I have shared with him. Now, every time Charles sees me he asks, “Is my day getting better or worse?” It’s rather annoying, really. He smiles in anticipation as he asks the question, certain that my pain will bring him great pleasure.

The sadist.

This came to mind when I read Papa Bear’s response to my underwear blog. Papa Bear sent me a message telling me that his autistic thirteen year old son decided to drop trou in his front yard and share a full moon with the entire neighborhood. Papa Bear lives on a corner lot, so his son’s lunar adventures were visible in every direction. If you have not read Papa Bear’s blog you should. He writes at Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  The link is on my side bar. (And yes, I share this with his permission.)

I sympathize with good humor and genuine understanding. While reading Papa Bear’s e-mail I realized that we have the making of a very good regular feature titled “Was Your Day This Bad?” Alliteratively, Wednesday would be a good day for this feature, although any day of the week will work. I wrote “we” because it takes a community of readers and writers to make it work. On “Was Your Day This Bad?” we each write a post about the hardest, funniest, most challenging and stress filled day that we’ve had during the previous two weeks, and share/vent on our blogs in the most humorous manner possible. I'm thinking of one post every other week. Maybe if we share the pain we can all laugh with each other rather than at one another.

Oh, who am I kidding? We’ll all be laughing at one another.

Any takers?

If You Give Your Kids Imagination

If you hold a helium balloon by the string and pretend that it is lifting you off the ground, and call to your children to save you before you float through the basement ceiling and off to the stratosphere, they will cling to your legs and pull until you are all a pile of giggling family on the floor.

If you take a package containing a new shirt and tell your seven-year-old son to hold still because there is a fly on his head, and gently whack him on the head with the shirt several times, exclaiming, “Oops, it moved!” each time, your five-year-old daughter will collapse in fits of laughter. The boy will enjoy it, too.

If you pretend that your children weigh roughly the same as an elephant, and “struggle” to pick them off of the floor, pretending to lose your grip and catching them before they fall, they will squeal in delight and beg for the Heavy Game anytime your hands are empty.

If you say, “Get ready, get set, stop!” when your children are lined up for a race, they will groan and smile. If you then say, “Get ready, get set, wait a minute!” they will laugh. On the third attempt to start the race, if you say, “Get ready! Get set! Fart!” they will become a puddle of merriment on the driveway.

And

If you take your young children’s shoes off of their feet, pull off their socks, pretend to smell their feet and exclaim, “HOOOOWEEEEEE, stinky piggies!” while tickling their feet, they will enjoy it so much that when they are older and have really stinky piggies they will still expect you to sniff so that they can chortle.

Except for the 12-year-old with feet the size of an old Buick.

And we are thankful for that small blessing!

You Can Carry The Field Home On Your Pants

Pop! The soft core baseball flew off the tee. Thirty minutes later it completed its journey to the first baseman, who stood crouched-over the entire time, the edge of her glove resting in the dirt, patiently waiting for the arrival of the ball. Charging simply wasn’t an option. In the stands, parents balanced their checkbooks, took power naps, and completed the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, stopping in time to see the batter arrive at first base and begin to pirouette.

Over at third base, Major Havoc dove for the ball. His outstretched body momentarily hovered parallel to the diamond before he returned to earth, sliding half a foot through the dirt. He looked up, grinning, checking to see if anyone noticed his valiant attempt to snag the ball that was 170 feet away, rolling in the opposite direction.

“Good try,” his manager cheered.

Three more hits produced roughly the same results, each one ending in a play at first base and a dive at third, regardless of where the ball traveled.

Some parents are really good parents. They attend their children’s games with camera in hand, snapping pictures, cheering for their children, writing up beautiful stories and posting them on their blog. See The Pirate Mom. Me? I’m packing Major Havoc’s baseball pants in a Ziploc bag and saving them for him. He can use the dirt to make a baseball diamond for his children since he tried so hard to carry Apathy baseball field #4 home with him on his pants.

Later in the game, a young man on the opposing team arrived at first base. His team didn’t have a first base coach. He looked to me, standing behind my second baseman and coaching the fielders, and asked, “Was I fast?”

“Like lightening!” I told him.

He stared at me blankly.

“Really fast!” I continued. “Zip! I could barely see you running you were so fast.”

He stared at me stonily. On the next play he advanced to second base. That’s when I heard him call to his dad, who coaching at third.

“Hey, dad! I ran like lightening! I’m really fast!”

His dad stared at him blankly. "That's good?" he called out, uncertainly.

You just never know the effect you’ll have on a kid.

I spent two dozen nights this summer standing at first base, a coach for the Apathy Sharks T-ball team. If I am proud of anything it is the fact that over the course of 8 weeks we taught a group of ten children how to properly field a ground ball, throw it to the general vicinity of first base, and hit a pitched ball, all while having fun. On Monday night, the last game of our season, none of our players needed to hit off of the tee. The Sharks were blessed with a manager who was relaxed, fun, full of energy, positive, and accepted help and suggestions from the two dads who were willing to step onto the field and assist him. My focus was fielding and throwing. The manager and the other coach worked on hitting, and together we managed to keep the kids busy enough to learn something while minimizing the number of dirt mounds, dirt angels, and dust devils made by the highly distractible players. The parents were positive, cheered loudly, and willingly provided treats at the end of each game.

It was a good season.