Forget Square Dancing

We as a society are right in the midst of torpedoing an entire generation of kids. “How?” you might ask as a parent, in an earnest effort to learn what you can do to stop this catastrophe.

Cell phones.

“Cell phones,” you ask, confused. “What’s wrong with my child having a cell phone?”

A lot of things, in my opinion, but that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s the fact that we parents have cell phones that’s the problem. Specifically, cell phones with built-in video cameras.

You see, God gives us finite and imperfect memories for a reason. If we remembered everything, the species would never survive. Parents, you can totally back me up on this one: If you truly remembered what a sleep-deprived hell it was to have a newborn baby, you would never have another kid.

But those foggy, early-morning memories fade away, and pretty soon, along comes another newborn. Suddenly you’re up at three in the morning again thinking, “Wait a minute, I remember this now. This sucked. Why did we do this again?”

And then the third kid comes along and you have the exact same thought. God is sneaky like that.

It’s the same thing with growing up. The only reason we turn out OK is because the memories of all of our failures and painful mistakes fade away. At least, that was the case with my generation. That’s because our parents were not able to instantly record every single moment of our lives with a device they had in their pockets at all times.

For example, I just came from the elementary school year-end talent show. Sons Number One and Two played the piano, and their mom was not able to make it because she and her mom selfishly went gallivanting across three states on a road trip, leaving me here all by myself to manage three boys that do nothing but fight with each other for every minute that they are awake, driving me to the point of insanity each afternoon around three o’clock, making me want to run screaming away from the house, but I don’t, because I am legally responsible for their safety, and if left alone they would devolve into a three-boy Lord of the Flies scenario in less than fifteen minutes, but mostly because I just don’t like to run.

Where was I? Oh, yeah; recording…

Their mother was unable to be at the talent show, so she asked me to video them. No problem. I can do that with my phone. I dutifully recorded their performances and they both did just fine, despite their acute daily allergic reactions to piano practice.

They weren’t amazingly brilliant. They weren’t horribly bad. They were just good. As such, this time the video recording of their performance is not a big deal. “Here you are, son, performing well. Good job.”

The problem is, we record everything. If their mom had not chosen to abandon us here to fend for ourselves while she merrily tours the west coast, she would have still recorded their performances, even though she was there watching it herself. Go figure.

If we record everything, we will end up capturing all of their highlights, and all of their failures, along with all the regular, standard, unexciting, middle-of-the-road efforts. Depending on the parental video editing, kids these days could grow up thinking their childhood was one big victory lap. They will naturally forget the failures, but if we keep showing them the highlight reel, that’s how they’ll remember things.

On the other hand, if we don’t edit, showing them everything, they won’t be able to forget the failures. Neither one of those outcomes is good.

A better example might be square dancing. I was probably in a talent show as a kid, because talent isn’t a strict prerequisite for an elementary school talent show. I don’t really remember, and I can assure you there is no video evidence if I was, which I can also assure you, is undoubtedly a good thing. I know that I square danced, however.

When Son Number One announced in a dejected voice earlier this year that his fourth-grade class was square dancing at P.E., I said, “We did square dancing when I was your age. It was fun.”

Well, of course it wasn’t fun. It was probably horrific and painful. But God erased that memory for me so I could go on to lead a happy and productive life.

Well, the big hoedown day came for my son, and this time, unlike my childhood, all the parents showed up at P.E. to watch their kids square dance. And there I was alongside everyone else, cell phone in hand, recording the whole traumatic event for him.

He was in agony the entire time, being forced by the wicked gym teacher to do-si-do with actual fourth-grade girls, holding their hands and touching them, and having them smile at him. Ick. It was awful, and he will never be able to forget it.

He won’t have the luxury of that memory fading blissfully into the background fog of the elementary school years like I did, because it has been recorded for posterity. How will he ever reassure his children that square dancing will be fun if he has permanent video proof that square dancing is, in fact, awful? What if his kids see the video before they reach the fourth grade?

No good can come from that. The logical end result will be a nationwide fourth-grade revolt, causing a curriculum shift to remove square dancing, resulting in the first generation since the dawn of time to never learn to square dance, followed by the inevitable worldwide decline and eventual disappearance of square dancing altogether.

Hmm… That actually doesn’t sound bad.

Never mind everything I just said. Keep recording your kids. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go figure out how to get his square dancing video to play on the big TV downstairs so we can all watch it tonight.

Maybe a beer first, though. The kids will be home soon.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2015 Marc Schmatjen

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The Bat Rays and the Bees

We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium this past weekend.  We saw trained sea otters perform amazing tricks like swimming in circles and eating fish. We saw huge bluefin tuna swimming at dizzying speeds in order to eat squid. We saw swirling silver clouds of sardines and anchovies eating krill. Basically, everything was eating. Except us. We did not have a spare two hundred dollars to drop on five sandwiches and a bottled water.

I say everything was eating, but that's not entirely true. The bat rays were engaged in another kind of life-sustaining activity. We were at the petting zoo portion of the aquarium, where you can lean over the edge of the shallow pool and pet a bat ray as it swims by you. I was on one side of the exhibit with our two older boys, and my wife and Son Number Three were on the other side. Suddenly, a great commotion arose around them. Thrashing and splashing could be seen from the water in front of them, and the crowd around them erupted in a mixture of oohs and aahs and laughter. All we could see from our side was the splashing.

I half-yelled over the water to my wife, "What's going on over there?"
"Uh... They're wrestling..." (sound of adults in crowd snickering)
"Is that right?" I replied, skeptically.
"Yep. Wrestling. Silly bat rays. C'mon, son, let's go see the otters again."

Since the bat ray petting pool is geared toward kids, I would expect the aquarium to try and limit any hanky panky by the bat rays to the holding tank in the back room. In their defense, however, I would imagine it’s pretty tough to tell the males from the females, given they all look like a squashed cartoon head with wings.

Speaking of inappropriate animal behavior, do you know what else is not geared for kids? Bat orgies, that’s what. The bat ray incident reminded my wife and me of another captive animal nookie situation we encountered a few years ago. I can’t remember if we were at the zoo without our kids (which seems highly unlikely), or if we had just abandoned them to fend for themselves (which seems totally plausible), but somehow my wife and I ended up in the bat exhibit without kids. That turned out to be a good thing. A very good thing.

The crowd in the bat cave was stirred up by something. Nervous laughter, giggling, exclamations of “Oh my!” and “Honey, close your eyes!” greeted us as we made our way to the glass. Inside the bat enclosure we were treated to a sight that still haunts me to this very day. Hundreds of horny little bats were engaged in what can only be described as a Sodom and Gomorrah-type free-for-all. It didn’t seem to matter to the male bats if the freaky winged mammal they were hanging next to had compatible reproductive organs or not. Bats apparently have a “love the one you’re with” mentality.

Bats are scary enough just in general, but what we saw that day cannot be unseen. I felt like I might need therapy afterward, so I don’t even want to imagine the fallout if our kids had been with us. I can tell you that a lot of little bats babies were probably made that day, along with a lot of uncomfortable situations the next day at the bat coffee shop.

“Oh, Jim, look. It’s Dave and Marcie. Let’s go say hi.”

“No! We’re leaving, honey. Don’t make eye contact with them. I don’t want to talk about it.”

I’m just saying, zookeepers of America, a little sign or something at the door would be nice. “Warning, bat orgy season. May not be suitable for children or most adults.”

At least put a coat hanger on the bat cave doorknob to warn a guy.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I realize nature is going to take its course. And, nowhere is that more evident than the sleepy little beach town of San Simeon, California. It is sleepy for most of the year, actually, except when the elephant seals are in town. For reasons known only to these ridiculously large sea mammals, they show up every year on the same beach to breed.

A few years ago, we were visiting the coast, and we were told by some locals, “You must go see the elephant seals. They’re amazing!”

So we went to see them. When we got there and witnessed the scene, my wife and I immediately wondered why the folks that told us to go there didn’t mention what the seals were doing there.

The seals go there to do other seals, if you know what I mean. Seeing two gigantic male elephant seals fight is pretty impressive. Seeing a gigantic male elephant seal “wrestle” with a female elephant seal is also impressive, but in a much different way. Boy, can those things wrestle!

Like the bats, they really aren’t too shy, either. The San Simeon Elephant Seal Voyeuristic Society has even erected, if I can be so bold as to use that term, a nice wooden boardwalk overlooking the breeding beach, with fun facts about the elephant seals.

“Never go near an elephant seal, especially during breeding season.” Yeah, based on what I’m seeing here, that one didn’t really need to get written down. It’s fairly obvious that I do not want to get in the middle of any of the activities I’m seeing here.

Luckily, the kids were all pretty young at the time, and the “wrestling” up on the beach was explained away, and we could fairly easily divert their attention back to the bloody tusk fights taking place out near the water.

“Why are they fighting, Daddy?”

“To see who gets to… uh…”

“To see who gets to do what?”

“Uh… to see who gets to eat all the food. They’re very hungry. Speaking of food, let’s go get some in another town.”

Son Number One is in the fourth grade now, and the boys are already coming home from school with all sorts of fun “facts” they learn on the playground. I know it’s getting close to the time when I’ll need to start having “the talk” with my boys, but I’d like to put it off for a while longer. And I’d like to have that talk on my own terms. I’m not interested in having any unplanned visual aides to explain. Bat, bat ray, or otherwise.

One thing is for sure. If we are going to keep taking the boys out to view the birds and the bees, I need to have the talk pretty soon, or “wrestling” is going to start taking on a really weird connotation for them.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

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Mr. Mom

We dads have a different way of doing things. I know this because my kids tell me, “That’s not how mommy does it,” about ten times a day now.

The boys will go back to school at the end of August, which is rapidly approaching. At that point, my wife will begin a new teaching job, and I will be in charge of our sons during the day. With my new role as Mr. Mom looming so closely around the corner, I am attempting to learn the ropes while my predecessor is still available for consultations.

For instance, I have always made pancakes on the weekends, but I have never been in charge of regular healthy weekday breakfasts. (My pancakes are cooked in a sea of butter and involve chocolate chips, whipped cream, and about a gallon of syrup. They are basically little artery-hardening diabetes cakes on a plate. But they’re yummy.)

During the weekdays, their mother who can multi-task, takes breakfast orders from them like a short-order cook. I am a man without the multi-tasking chromosome, so I got into trouble right away when asked to make oatmeal and eggs at the same time. I got the microwave oatmeal recipe from my wife, which could not have been easier. One cup of oats, one cup of milk, one minute in the microwave. Too easy.

“This oatmeal is too runny, dad. This isn’t how mom does it.”

“How could it possibly be different? I could not have messed that up.”

“Mommy uses our plastic bowls. That’s different.”

(I used a ceramic bowl. That probably did make a big difference. I don’t think the plastic bowl sucks up as much of the heat, leaving more heat to cook the oatmeal, making it less runny.)

“Plus, mom lets me put in as much brown sugar as I want.”

“Nice try, punk.”

“My eggs are too runny, and his eggs are too hard. How come you didn’t do it like mom does?”

“I was busy dealing with runny oatmeal. Shut up and eat your eggs.”

“Also, mommy lets us have chocolate milk with whipped cream on the top.”

“Yeah, right. Just eat your imperfect eggs and drink your boring white milk.”

After their very unsatisfying breakfast, I said, “Go get dressed.”

“But there are no clothes out. Mommy puts our clothes out for us.”’

“That’s because mommy knows what shirts and shorts fit you, and where they are kept. I have no idea. You guys know which clothes are yours, and you’re old enough to dress yourselves, so get to it.”

I figured my wife was just coddling them too much by setting out their clothes for them, but I decided that might not be entirely true when I saw what Son Number Two ended up wearing. He had picked out a neon green shirt and paired it with orange shorts and white socks pulled up to his knees with sandals. He looked like a cross between Mr. Furley and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

I guess I’ll finally have to learn her closet and drawer system.

Even when I tried to do something as simple as cutting their hair, there was trouble. Cutting our kids’ hair should be foolproof. We go for low to no maintenance when it comes to hair, so my wife uses a number one guard on the clippers and buzz cuts them like shearing a sheep. Somehow, however, I don’t even do that like mommy does.

“This is taking forever. Mommy does it faster. Owwwww! Your way hurts more than mommy’s way.”

“How could I possibly be doing this differently!?!”

So, yesterday when we went to the water park, I may have been a little tired of hearing about “how mommy does it,” because when they started to complain about my sunscreen application methods, I said, “Zip it!”

I thought I was doing a great job with the sunscreen. I even remembered to reapply on all three of them at lunchtime, without being reminded. This morning when they woke up, however, their faces told a different story. Apparently I don’t do it like mommy does, and I really should, since I neglected to get any sunscreen directly under their eyes. All three of them woke up with dark red sunburned semi-circles under their eyes. They looked like they had joined Fight Club in the middle of the night.

Whoops.

Speaking of first aid, the other day Son Number Three got a splinter in his thumb from our gigantic redwood play structure. I took the reins on the splinter removal, which is traditionally mommy’s territory, and dug it out for him with a sewing needle. (He had to show me where the sewing needles were.) He was wailing and crying, and after it was out (I did a great job by the way, just like mommy does it), he said, “This is one of my worst days ever.”

“Dude, this is a splinter. You broke your femur in half on that play structure.”

“I know, that’s why I said it was one of my worst days. This is like my fourth worst day ever.”

At five years old, I think at least three of his four worst days ever involve the play structure in some form or another, and I remember thinking I wouldn’t be surprised if he takes an interest in playing with matches pretty soon and “accidentally” burns that thing to the ground.

Well, we are visiting my wife’s family this week, and her grandpa smokes a pipe. Yesterday, Number Three showed great interest in how his Bic lighter worked. Now, his great grandpa is 95 years old, so back in his day, every five-year-old probably had a gun, a knife, and a pack of matches as standard issue, so he was happy to show the young lad how to operate the lighter, and Number Three was listening very intently.

Sunburns and hopelessly uncoordinated outfits are one thing, but if that play structure “accidentally” burns down on my watch, I don’t think she’s going to forgive me.

I’d better go through his luggage when we leave and make sure he’s not trying to bring a lighter home.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Soap, Part II

Our boys have started to take showers on their own. Up until now, we had been giving them baths. The decision to move to the shower was spurred mostly by the fact that all three of them don’t fit in the bathtub together anymore, and giving three individual baths really cuts into my TV time.

I still have to give Boy Number Three baths, but it was about time the older two started pulling their own weight in the personal hygiene department. Plus, we really wanted to see if the shower in their bathroom actually worked. We have lived in our current house for almost three years now, and up until this week, no one had ever used it. When I finally got the handle to turn, after the loud clanging noise subsided, water actually came out of the showerhead, so we were good to go.

After the Body Wash Incident of Early 2011 (See “Soap,” posted February 2, 2011) my wife has been sure to keep me stocked with plenty of good old-fashioned bar soap. Since my wife has inexplicably stuck with the body wash, and the kid’s baths get done with baby shampoo, up until now, our bar soap had been used only by me. So, this week was Boy Number One and Two’s first experience trying to wash themselves with a big bar of soap. Witnessing that slippery learning curve instantly flooded me with childhood memories of soap. I had a strange upbringing, soap-wise.

My dad was a pilot for Delta Airlines. In the early days of his career, with a wife at home raising three small kids, he would always bring the little bars of unopened hotel soap and the small bottles of shampoo home from his trips to help with the household budget. His flight schedule usually had him gone multiple days at a time, so he collected a lot of soap. So much so, that we never ran out. As the years went by, the Hilton/Marriott/Ramada soap harvesting never stopped. I showered with a tiny, fits-in-the-palm-of-your-hand bar of soap from my very first shower until I was 18 years old. (Actually, I showered with a different one every other day. They don’t last very long.) As a result, I never had any early childhood regular-sized soap training.

I vividly remember the first time I used a real bar of soap. I was at least 6 or 7 years old, and we were staying with my grandparents while my parents went on a week’s vacation. I stepped into the unfamiliar shower and was immediately transfixed by the GIGANTIC bar of BRIGHT GREEN soap. (The hotel soap was white, tan, or the occasional exciting off-pink.) This was Irish Spring, and it smelled AMAZING. (The hotel soap smelled like almonds, talc, or nothing.) This giant, magical, colorful, brick-sized bar of cleanliness filled the entire shower with some heavenly, yet previously unknown fragrance. Apparently – based on the TV commercials of the 1970s -- it was supposed to remind me of the wonderful smell of a lush green Irish glade near a waterfall where I was walking hand-in-hand with a bonny lass in a turtleneck sweater, but since I had never done that, I didn’t recognize the smell. To me it just smelled strong and wonderfully different.

Then I tried to pick it up and use it. Now, big bars of soap are hard to handle for any six-year-old, but to a lad that had previously only worked with soap the size of a bite-size candy bar, this slimy behemoth was almost totally unmanageable. I must have dropped it, picked it up, and dropped it again a hundred times. The racket coming from the shower got so loud, my grandma came in to check on me, but I was so embarrassed about not being able to work the soap, I told her that everything was just fine, and that I obviously didn’t need any help. She left unconvinced.

After a half-hour of soap hockey, I finally ended up attempting to soap myself up while holding onto the massive slippery green bar with two hands at once. That is a pretty difficult maneuver, and I'm not sure how clean I actually got myself that day. Marginal hygienic success aside, it was one of the most memorable days of my childhood, so taken was I by the giant, fragrant green soap.

If asked to come up with the defining TV characters of their childhood, most guys my age would probably list the likes of Superman, The Fonz, Mean Joe Green, Bo and Luke Duke, etc.

I’m guessing very few would list an actor from a soap commercial. To my list, however, I must include the guy in the snappy turtleneck and sport coat, standing in the field, cutting the bar of Irish Spring open with his pocket knife. When I saw that commercial as a kid, I thought to myself, “Yeah, I was that guy for a day. Fresh and (insert wolf-whistle here), clean as a whistle!”

But alas, that one shower was the extent of my Irish Spring glory as a child. My parents came back from vacation, and it was small soap business as usual again.

There was, however, one major up-side to growing up with miniature soap. As kids, we never had our mouths “washed out with soap,” a la Ralphie in A Christmas Story, sitting with the bar of Lifebuoy in his mouth. My mom was probably afraid we’d accidentally swallow the hotel soap.

My boys won’t be so lucky. I’ve got plenty of full-size bars of Irish Spring. I love that stuff!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen

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I Have a Dream - A Father's Version

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. It is a Father’s Dream.

I have a dream that one day I will be able to sleep in. That one day I will not be woken by the sound of a wooden kitchen spoon banging on my door at 5:30 am.

I have a dream that I will one day be able to wear a shirt for more than ten minutes without getting baby spit-up on it.

I have a dream that one day I will not have to watch four effeminate Australians dance poorly and sing about fruit salad and a big red car. That one day I can stop having to sing along with the four effeminate Australians.

I have a dream that my three little boys will one day be able to play with someone else’s children without someone going to time out or the emergency room.

I have a dream that my children will someday get up in the middle of the night, go pee, and go right back to bed without waking me up to tell me about it.

I have a dream that someday soon I will be able to walk through my own house barefoot in the dark without fear of plastic dinosaur puncture wounds.

I have a dream that I will no longer have to count to three. That someday I will only need to get to two.

I have a dream that someday I will stop finding two-week-old fruit snacks in the leather seats. That I will quit having to vacuum pulverized goldfish crackers out of the floor mats.

I have a dream that one day I will remove my last car seat, never having to contort myself to install it in another car again.

I have a dream that one day my children will travel with only one suitcase each, and they will carry that suitcase themselves. That one day they will not require 32 tons of accessories per child.

I have a dream that some day soon I will be able to stand at my toilet and pee without having a little boy come up behind me and try to stick his head between my legs because he thinks it’s funny.

I have a dream that one day I will be able to open my own cupboards freely, without first having to Houdini a child-proof plastic locking device. That one day we may be able to have breakables below the five foot line.

I have a dream that someday soon I will be able to set my drink down on the coffee table without a care in the world. That someone somewhere would produce a reliable stain repellant for carpet.

I have a dream that one day I will no longer have to play the “Identify the Foul Smell and its Source” game. That one day, I will no longer stockpile poop-filled diapers in my laundry room until the “odor reducing” container is full enough to go to the trash.

I have a dream that the day will come when I will no longer find any long-forgotten sippy-cups of curdled milk underneath my couch.

I have a dream that I will once again be able to eat my whole meal at a restaurant without once uttering the words “inside voice,” or, “Please don’t stab your brother with your fork.”

I have a dream that someday what is on my plate will cease to be much more desirable than what is on his plate. That his green things will stop being “yucky” while mine are “yummy.”

I have a dream that one Saturday morning in the future my boys will be able to run into my room and jump on me in bed without one of them kicking me in the goodies.

And when this happens, I will sing:

Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Because our boys will be growing up and done with all those annoying childhood problems. Teenagers are easier, right?

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2008 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of “My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh,” Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!