Red Solo Cup

Initially when I agreed to take on the role of Mr. Mom, I may have been lied to about how much work it is to take care of three young boys and one big house. Either that or I was just nodding my head while thinking about baseball. Tough to say.

The bottom line is, after a few weeks at the helm, the ship is taking on water and starting to drift off course.

“Why are you walking there? I just cleaned that!”

“Why are you eating again? I just fed you, and I just cleaned that.”

“Why are you wearing clothes again? I just washed clothes.”

“You want me to bathe them how often?”

“You want me to make them lunch every day? They just come home expecting more food!”

As I adjust to this wiping/rinsing/preparing/feeding/washing/wiping/rinsing endless circle of crumbs and stains, I am looking for places to trim the fat and lean out the engine, if you will. One area I noticed that was an easy place to gain some efficiency was cups. My wife has a kitchen cupboard filled with nothing but plastic children’s drink cups. Foolishly, it’s a low one, so the kids can get their own cups anytime they want. She probably thought this was saving her time by not having to help them get a drink. Boy was she wrong!

The first thing I noticed about my dishwasher loads was the entire top rack was nothing but plastic cups. I did some quick math and realized that each boy was probably using anywhere from 4 to 2000 cups per day, depending on how hot it was outside. To make matters even worse, plastic cups have that annoying habit of never fully drying in the dishwasher, storing little pools of water on their inverted bottoms, and raining it down all over the perfectly dry dishes below if you so much as look at the top rack wrong when you open the door. Why am I having to hand-dry all the dishes after they went through the automatic dry cycle? This is madness. This must end.

Easy solution. Each kid gets one cup with their name on it, and if they want a drink, they need to use their own personal cup. That should put an end to the former practice of filling a new cup with water, taking a sip, then throwing the cup over their shoulder and running away. At least, I assume that’s what they were doing based on the cup usage statistics and the water all over the floor near the refrigerator.

My wife and mother-in-law recently bought me a hard-plastic, insulated “red Solo cup” as a gag gift. It looks just like the famous white-on-the-inside, beer-from-the-tap-at-a-keg-party, 16-ounce red Solo cup, but it is super-sturdy and infinitely reusable. They found it at a big beverage store and thought it was funny, but I loved it. It’s a great cup. It’s insulated so it doesn’t sweat as much as a glass, and when I drink out of it, I feel like I’m at a party, so it puts me in a good mood. I instantly adopted it as my regular daily ice water cup.

When I made the decision to go to a one-cup-only system with the boys, the sturdy red Solo cup was a no-brainer. I immediately bought three more of them, and wrote their names in black Sharpie marker on the sides. I even wrote “Daddy” on mine to avoid ending up with warm milk in it and half-dissolved granola bar chunks stuck to the rim.

The boys adopted the new plan with ease, and even sing Toby Keith’s “Red Solo Cup” song occasionally. When they talk about them, they say, “redsolocup” as one word. Kids are cute. I could see nothing wrong with my new plan… until the other morning.

Grandpa and Grandma were visiting, and Grandpa’s evening drink is bourbon. When I came downstairs in the morning, sitting on the counter next to the refrigerator were four red Solo cups with names written on them in Sharpie, the remains of a 1.75-liter bottle of Jim Beam, a teddy bear, and an empty bag of tortilla chips.

Hmm…

As I was pondering the scene, in stumbles a sleepy-eyed seven-year-old kid in boxer shorts, munching on a tortilla chip, scratching himself, and singing, “Red Solo cup, I fill you up, let’s have a party, let’s have a party…”

I have what appears to be the aftermath of an elementary school frat party in my kitchen. That can’t be good.

As long as we can keep the Child Protective Services Department out of here, we should be OK. One thing is for sure, though; with Mr. Mom at the helm, my boys are going to have no trouble adjusting to life at college.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

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

Back to School

When I was a kid, we didn’t go back to school until after Labor Day. Nowadays here in California, our kids return in August. My boys went back yesterday. I was always opposed to starting school before Labor Day, but only on the grounds of it being different than my childhood. I am just now beginning to understand the thinking behind moving it up.

I have been holding down my post here as the new Mr. Mom since mid-July, and as such, I have been forced to be within a few feet of all three of our boys for every single minute of every waking hour of every single week and weekend day for a whole lot of days in a row. I have to tell you, I might not be cut out for this.

I used to get to leave. Sure, when I did I had to go to an office and work, but still, I got to leave. I never realized how much they fight with each other. It’s not the fighting that I mind so much, it’s the whining about it that annoys me.

(Son in whiny, sniffle-ly voice) “He punched me in the stomach!”

(Other son in whiny defensive voice) “He wouldn’t get off my face!”

(Me in annoyed voice) “You were wrestling with each other for five minutes. What did you think would happen?!? Go read a book. You hardly ever get punched when you’re doing that.”

(Two ultra-whiny voices in stereo) “I don’t want to read!”

(Me in even more annoyed voice) “Then why don’t you move to North Korea.”

“What?”

grumble, grumble

“Can we watch TV instead?”

“No. I want you to be sharper, not duller.”

“Huh?”

“GO FIND A BOOK!!”

I don’t know when they start school in the far northern and far southern regions of California, where the weather is mild in the summer, and frankly I don’t care. Here in the Sacramento region it gets hotter than the hinges of hell in July and August. I would gladly take them outside for an enjoyable activity where we could bond and grow stronger and happier as father and sons, but it’s like the surface of the sun out there. It was 106 degrees a few days ago. That’s just stupid.

The other day, when I simply couldn’t stand being inside the same building as my three sons for another moment, I broke down and took them on a bike ride. Since it was 104 degrees, the plan was to ride to the water park, run around in the refreshing spray for a while, then ride back in our wet clothes, feeling nice and cool. No such luck. We arrived, sweaty and partially cooked, to a dry water park. A little red girl in a swimsuit with heat waves coming off her shoulders informed us that the plumbing was broken.

They should send out a warning signal or something. Son Number Three nearly exploded from the heat on the way back. He’s much blonder than the other two. Son Number One and Two used up all the available swarthy DNA my wife and I had to offer, and all that was left for Number Three was the blond-haired, blue-eyed, translucent-skinned Nordic genes. We usually just hold him upside down by his ankles and dip him into a 55-gallon drum of sunscreen before we leave the house.

Number One’s tire went flat halfway home. I briefly considered leaving him and saving the other two. My wife would understand that there was nothing I could do, right? After reconsidering, we stuck together and walked our bikes back, just making it to our door as our shoes began to melt. Son Number Three had stopped sweating, which is a bad sign, so we all took emergency cold baths and showers while drinking ice water. Close call.

So, what did the boys want to do after we had all cooled off and returned to the proper color? They wanted to set up a lemonade stand. Are you kidding me? We just narrowly escaped that furnace, and you want to go back? Look out at our street, son. Look through those heat waves coming off the asphalt and tell me what you see. You know what you see? Nothing. Nobody. Nada. Everyone is indoors. If I let you sit out there trying to sell lemonade, you will die long before the first customer happens by in their air-conditioned vehicle. And if by chance someone is dumb enough to be outside right now, do you know what they don’t want? They don’t want to buy a shot glass-sized Dixie cup of hot lemonade from a red, flaming kid with heat stroke. Go find a book.

Not only is summer too hot, it is also too long. I’m fine with school getting out at the beginning of June, but we don’t need ten weeks to “rest.” Now that I am Mr. Mom, I fully support an early start, and suggest that next year we have a nice four-week break and send them back right after the Fourth of July.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

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

Fishing

I took my boys fishing this weekend. It wasn’t the first time, but it might be the last. It finally occurred to me why it’s traditionally the grandfather who takes the kids fishing.

I'm their dad. I'm the one that had to pry them out of bed with a crowbar before the sun came up. I'm the one who had to hear them complain about their pants being the wrong ones, and how disappointing it was that we didn’t have the right kind of breakfast cereal. I'm the one who had to hear them griping in the car and fighting with each other. I was already sick of hearing from them before we even got to the lake. Now we're going to commence with a sport that can frustrate even the most patient of men? And we're asking single digit-aged boys to do it? None of my kids have even a measurable ounce of patience, and two out of the three have the attention spans of a gnat on crack. The other one – the one that can really concentrate – has the attention span of a clean and sober gnat.

I’m really not even sure why we take kids fishing in the first place. It is completely unnatural. Here, kid, hold this long, flexible, whippy pole with this amazing spinning contraption that has the inviting crank handle attached to it. Now just sit there keeping the rod perfectly still and don’t turn the handle. You might as well give them bottle rockets stuck in an ice cream sundae, hand them spoons and a book of matches, and expect absolutely nothing to happen.

I would cast it out, hand them the pole, and say, “Just leave it out there,” then turn around to help one of their brothers with his pole. Before I got two steps away I would hear, “Dad, it’s back. I need more bait and I need you to cast it.”

I finally just gave up because I couldn’t think of any other ways of saying, “Stop reeling it in. Leave it alone.” I even tried Spanish in case they were bilingual and didn’t tell us.

Worse than the constant re-baiting and re-casting is dealing with the headstrong boy who is determined to cast the rod himself. I think hell might be a place where you are constantly baiting and casting rods for two small boys who can’t physically stop themselves from reeling, even under threat of death, in between unsnarling a rat’s nest of fishing line from a reel being operated by a boy who does not yet possess the motor skills, coordination, or willingness to even tie his own shoes. As all three boys complain that fishing is no fun. In the hot sun. With bugs.

At one point, my son handed me a pole that had a knotted ball of fishing line the size of a bath sponge hanging under the reel. He had actually managed to lodge some of the line back up inside the reel, but from the bottom, so it was disappearing up into the microscopic circular gap between the stationary part and the spinning part. I don’t even know how that is possible. When I asked him, “Why didn’t you stop long before it looked like this?” he answered, “I was trying to fix it.”

Added to all that, we had casting over each other’s lines, leaving the cap off the salmon eggs and spilling half the jar into the dirt and grass, walking in front of each other and snarling one boy’s fishing line around the other boy’s pole and neck, and my personal favorite, having a boy trip over the pole that I happen to be baiting, and yanking the small, barbed hook deep into my index finger. A pair of pliers and a few curse words later, and I had about had it.

The grandpas tend to handle that kind of stuff better. They didn’t start out annoyed, so they can take more of it in stride. They are older and more patient, and invariably wiser.

For instance, they bring the right kind of bait.

I was fed up with the whining, and all the mechanics of baiting, casting, and unsnarling, but mostly I was fed up with not catching anything. Needing a little break, I made a short trip down to the general store and bought a Styrofoam cup of worms. We made the switch from salmon eggs to worms, and almost could not keep the fish off the hooks after that. I made the first cast out, and had a fish on before I could even hand the pole to my son. The day improved drastically from there.

Sure, I still had to do a lot of baiting, casting, and unsnarling, but it turns out it’s not as bad when the kids aren’t complaining while you’re doing it. Apparently, it’s the catching fish part that is fun for the kids. Who knew? I always thought it was the sitting in a lawn chair drinking beer part that made fishing fun, but now that I think about it, kids don’t get to do that, so actually catching fish really improves their mood.

Grandpas already know all that, because they went through all this already. Grandpas are smart, and they have more free time. They do recon ahead of time, when they get to sit in the lawn chair and drink beer, and figure out which bait works. Then they take the kids and actually catch fish.

Genius.

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!

The Mamarazzi

You have heard of the paparazzi; the annoying in-your-face camera jockeys who follow celebrities around hoping to get a picture of them they can sell to People magazine. I recently watched the documentary, $ellebrity, with the Jennifers (both Aniston and Lopez), and every A-list star interviewed in the movie had some pretty crazy stories about the lengths these Hollywood parasites will go to snap a photo. I have mixed feelings about the complaints from the stars, though. On the one hand, if you wanted to be famous, you have to deal with the whole package, good and bad. On the other hand, the stories about invasion of privacy were pretty wild.

One group that hasn’t been given a voice in all this camera controversy is the children. I’m not talking about the children of celebrities, mind you, I’m talking about my own kids. They are mercilessly stalked by a different, but equally insidious group, the mamarazzi. The mamarazzi is well-armed with expensive cameras, detailed insider knowledge on when and where their targets will be, and a cold, ruthless willingness to stop any activity dead in its tracks at the first sign of fun to take a picture. Our children have never played for a period of longer than five minutes without having their picture taken.

We are, however, enjoying a brief respite from the constant stopping and posing, because my wife’s incredibly expensive Nikon digital camera stopped working the other day. I am of the opinion that if you spend a mortgage payment on a camera, it should be simple to use, but the people at Nikon disagree. One day it just started taking black-screen pictures, as if the lens cap was on, and none of the 32,000 menu settings seem to fix it. (Yes, we did check to see that the lens cap was not on, and yes, we are currently accepting any technical advice you have to offer.)

When the incredibly expensive Nikon camera was working as advertised, my wife was almost out of control. It may have just worn out from overuse, actually. We haven’t left the house since it stopped working, because in her words, “What’s the point?” This confirmed my earlier suspicion that she was taking the kids on outings merely for the photo ops. I got suspicious when she kept saying, “We’re going on location,” instead of, “We’re going to the lake.”

“Mom, can we go to the park?”

“Why? The camera’s still broken.”

“What?”

“Never mind. See if your dad will take you.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like that fact that our kids’ childhoods are being documented. We already have more pictures of Son Number Three than my parents and all their friends combined ever took of us kids growing up. Between the limitations of film cameras and the fact that I was the third child, my parents have exactly eight pictures of me. The problem now is, with the large memory cards and the fast shutter speeds, we have too many pictures. My wife will get home from a family get-together and upload the memory card to Shutterfly, then send the family an e-mail saying that the 457 pictures of our picnic are available for viewing. Even on fast-mode slideshow, looking at the pictures actually takes longer than the picnic did. I think that defies the laws of space and time, but I’m here to tell you it’s true.

If we could somehow print out all the pictures my wife ever took, and turn them into a giant flip book, you could actually watch our kids grow up in real time.

The good news in all this is the mamarazzi might actually be breeding a more thick-skinned future celebrity when it comes to tolerance for cameras. I know, as far as my boys go, God forbid, if one of them ever becomes a celebrity, he will wonder why the paparazzi aren’t taking very many pictures.

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!

Pro Gluten

I am pro gluten. I just wanted to come out and set the record straight once and for all. I am not ashamed of my love for gluten, although, I must be honest, I don’t really know what it tastes like, or even what it is. Even though I don’t know what gluten is, I know for a fact that I love it. When I was a kid (actually, up until about two years ago) no one had even heard of gluten. That means everything that I ate was probably chock-full of gluten, and I loved everything I ate. Also, I think gluten may come from wheat, and I am definitely pro wheat, since wheat is a very important ingredient in beer. There is probably tons of gluten in beer, so gluten is obviously delicious!

There has been a lot of conflicting “data” over the years on what we should and should not eat. Take eggs for example. (I almost wrote eggs-ample, but I didn’t know if you would find it as humorous as I do. Probably not. Anyway…) Eggs have been alternately bad and good for us at least twenty times over my lifetime. Since I love eggs, I always bet on the come line and kept eating them, hoping they would end up being good for me. We are currently in an “eggs are good for you” cycle, so I’m feeling pretty good about my decision. In fact, I think eggs are now being listed as “superfoods” that you should eat every day.

“Superfood” is a new term, like gluten, designed, I guess, to really hammer home the idea that you are eating all the wrong things. It seems like there is a new superfood or a new thing you should never eat again coming out about once a week now.

Carbohydrates, which I think is another word for gluten, used to be an integral part of the food pyramid that they showed me in grade school. The pyramid has now been replaced by a pie chart, and carbs may or may not be good for you. They were bad for a while, but I think they are moderately back in favor, as long as your pie chart remains gluten-free. I’ll bet gluten-free pie sucks.

Fats are a mystery as well. Trans fats, which are unsaturated fats, are bad. However, saturated fats are even worse. But somehow, omega-3 fish oil fats are the messiah of proper nutrition. If omega-3 is a fat, it has to be either saturated or unsaturated, since those seem to be the two choices, so how can it be good? And how does omega-3, which apparently does everything from curing arthritis to making you smarter, affect my bad LDL cholesterol and my good HDL cholesterol? And if cholesterol in any form is bad in food, how do I have “good” cholesterol in my body. I’m made up of food!

I’m not sure where bacon fat fits in there, but since I am now supposed to be eating eggs every day, I must conclude that bacon fat is super-healthy, since it is impossible to eat eggs without bacon.

Speaking of breakfast, I also want to come out as being pro lactose. Lactose is another one of those things that no one had ever heard of until it was about to kill us all, and again, I don’t really have any idea what it is, but I know it’s found in dairy products, which are delicious. I know I am pro lactose, because I am also pro fresh milk, which makes me anti homogenization. I had milk fresh out of the cow once and it was the best thing I’ve ever tasted, besides beer. (We were having dinner at a friend’s family dairy farm, and he got the milk out of the giant stainless steel holding tank. We did not drink it directly from the cow. That would be weird.)

Breakfast is now supposed to include dark berries and Greek yogurt. I originally thought Greek yogurt was just regular yogurt that couldn’t pay its bills, but it turns out it’s really just yogurt that has been strained three times instead of two. That extra straining apparently really ramps up the probiotics, which are the very best thing you can put in your body. That confuses me, since antibiotics cure diseases, so they must be great for you. How can probiotics and antibiotics both be good for you?

The dark berries provide you with antioxidants, which are also the very best thing you can put in your body, besides probiotics and omega-3 fat. Antioxidants eliminate free radicals, which are obviously bad, even though being free and being radical are widely regarded as good qualities.

Today’s smart breakfast is a healthy balance of the following: Whole-grain bran, acai berries, blueberries, sardines, kale, walnuts, pomegranate juice, sweet potatoes, quinoa, lentils, kefir, Greek yogurt, steel-cut oatmeal, and stone ground whole wheat bread. And, obviously, bacon and eggs. That should take care of de-oxidizing any free radical biotics (pro or anti), and minimize the LDL levels in your non-lactose, de-gluten-ized fiber, both soluble and dietary.

Simple enough, although I do see one problem that is certainly looming in our future. Since gluten comes from wheat, and chickens eat a lot of wheat, our precious superfood eggs may not be entirely gluten-free. Just like the pregnant mother is not supposed to smoke or drink, the chicken surely must be passing some amount of gluten to the egg.

Our chickens may be free-range, but until they are fed a gluten-free diet, eggs may need to get back on the “bad for you” list for a while.

I guess we can all just substitute a few more slices of bacon to make up the difference.

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!

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!

Technical Difficulties

I am finally figuring out what it takes to be a full-time writer and author, and it is causing some technical difficulties here at Just a Smidge. For starters, in order to write full-time, by definition you have to quit your day job. I took care of that on Monday. That, however, leads to other issues.

The main goal behind quitting your job is to access more free time, but the drawback is a distinct lack of money. With a substantial, or in this case, total lack of income, you naturally start looking for ways to cut expenses. Since electricity and hot water cost a lot of money, those are easy places to start. Those turn out to be a catch-22, though, because when you turn off the air conditioner to save on the electric bill, you sweat more. You would naturally take a shower to combat that problem, but since you are trying to save money on hot water as well, that’s not an option. I tried to take a cold shower, but it made me jump so much when I stepped in that I slipped and fell backwards into the bathroom, cracking my head on the sink. That led to some expensive medical bills, so the whole shower thing really turned out to be a net loser. No more showering, I guess.

Since I always used to shave in the shower, I am now forced to grow a beard. I am also thinking of taking up smoking in an attempt to mask my growing body odor problem caused by the lack of showering. This would explain the look of the standard male professional writer. Bearded men smoking pipes and wearing tweed jackets. At this point I can only assume that the tweed jacket is meant to cover up the pit stains caused by the lack of A/C. Tweed probably also holds the odor-masking pipe smoke smell better than other fabrics would. I need to go find a good tweed jacket at a thrift store.

On top of all those other issues, my computer died on me on Sunday night, and needed to go to the Geeks at Best Buy. They told me it needed a new falange valve installed on the McGruder pump. At least that’s what I think they said. So, I am typing on an old spare computer, on an unfamiliar, outdated version of Microsoft Word. It’s really disconcerting. The menu items are in the wrong place and the text seems smaller. I can’t live like this. I wish that valve would hurry here from Malaysia.

My computer dying the day before I was quitting my job to become a professional writer and author was a little disconcerting. What was God trying to tell me? That I shouldn’t go for it, or that I should, but I should only write with paper and pencil? Neither of those two possibilities seemed logical, so I chose to not see it as a sign, but simply an inconvenient coincidence.

Also, when I had a day job, I used to write this column really early in the morning, before the sun came up, or really late at night, after the sun went down. I am now writing smack in the middle of the day, which is odd for me. I was always at work during the day, so I have no idea if I’m funny during the daylight hours or not. I guess that remains to be seen. The upside is, I am saving a little more on electricity since I no longer need the light on in my office. Bonus!

As you can tell, I’m dealing with a lot of issues during the first phase of this transition, so I hope you will bear with me until I get all the kinks worked out. And at least in the near future, if you see me on the street wearing a tweed jacket and smoking a pipe, I would steer clear if I were you. I’m getting pretty ripe.

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!

The Preschool Report Card

When Son Number Three “graduated” from preschool this year, we received a report card. I was not expecting a report card, but apparently they take preschool pretty seriously these days. My wife told me that our other two boys got report cards just like this one from this same preschool, but I don’t believe her. Anyway, it’s July and I just got around to actually reading it. It was a hoot!

First, a little background: Son Number Three is the one that broke his femur at three years old and was in a full-body Spica cast for 44 days. My wife and I are convinced that he went just a little bit crazy when he was cooped up in his personal fiberglass prison for so long. He also had his adenoids removed earlier this year. I’m not sure what adenoids are, but I do know they make you snore, so we were all happy to see them go. Between the leg and the adenoids, however, he has been under heavy sedation twice, and we’re pretty sure that has added a little to his mental instability. Basically, he’s a wild little nutball.

Inside the preschool report card packet we received a nicely (carefully) worded cover letter from his teacher (keeper), Lauren.

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Schmatjen,

Your son is such a pleasure to have in class. He brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm to our class and is always eager to participate in classroom activities. He has a great sense of humor and easily brings a smile to everyone’s face.

Translation from his father, who knows him all too well:

To the parents of insane asylum inmate # 25,

Your son is in my class, and since you are paying for him to be here, we felt compelled to say something nice. He has far too much energy, and a wild, unrestrained look in his eyes that I guess could be called eagerness to participate, but will probably one day be called psychosis. He laughs constantly, and at inappropriate times, which we will call a sense of humor, and we simply have to smile and laugh with him, otherwise we would cry.

Some of his favorite activities are outdoor play, building in the block area, and working at the writing center. He really enjoys spending his time building and creating and role playing with friends. He is always excited about learning new things.

Translation:

We put him outside as much as possible for obvious reasons. He spends a lot of his indoor time building towers out of blocks so he will have something to tackle and knock down, because we don’t let him tackle the other inmates. He also enjoys scribbling wildly on paper and the desks and the chairs. When he is not knocking down his own blocks, he enjoys knocking down other kids’ blocks, pretending he is the wrecking ball and they are the unfortunate building owners whose structures have been condemned. He is always far too excited.

He is caring, bright, and charismatic and is truly a joy to be around. I look forward to watching his continued growth throughout the rest of the year.

Translation:

We saw him hug a teddy bear once, instead of punching it, so we’ll throw in “caring” as a description of your child. He is smart in that scary way that evil scientists are smart, and “charismatic” is the nicest possible term we can use to describe the wild, manic look in his eyes. He is fun to be around for the first two to three minutes of my incredibly long and underpaid day, and I am really looking forward to this school year being over.

Along with this obviously tuition-influenced cover letter full of niceties was his report card. Their grading system is a little different than what I am used to. I am a fan of the A-F grading system. It makes sense to me.

A – Right where you should be, kid.

B – OK, but we need to focus a little bit more.

C – I know they say this is average, but we’re not shooting for average, kid. Step it up.

D – Are you kidding? Did you even go to class? Are you on drugs? Pee in this cup.

F – Better learn a trade skill, kid. You’re going to need it.

The preschool’s grading system was a three letter scale, and they were deemed “skill levels,” not grades. M is for mastering (the highest skill level), D is for developing, and B is for beginning.

Again, presumably since we are paying them and they want our continued business, they gave him mostly M’s. Laughably, they gave him no B’s, but there were faint glimmers of truth in the few D’s that were spread around the report card:

Skill: Engages in cooperative play

Rating: D

Teacher’s note: Encouraging to participate in group activities

Translation: By “encouraging,” I mean we have to yell “Stop that!” a lot. When it comes to play of any kind, he does not have a cooperative bone in his body. He is aggressive, grabby, and loud. This is presumably due to his congenital big brother disorder. (The other teachers around here remember them very well.)

Skill: Recognizes emotions in others

Rating: M

Teacher’s note: He is very caring/comforting with friends

Translation: We do not want the school to get a reputation of producing sociopaths, so we put this on all the report cards for plausible deniability. Your son is obviously a whackadoo.

Skill: Identifies and discriminates time relationships: day/night, today/tomorrow, before/after

Rating: D

Teacher’s note: Blank

Translation: I left this blank because I just didn’t know what to say. He has never gotten this right, ever. He has absolutely no concept of time and space. It’s to the point when we hear him say, “today,” we don’t even try to correct him anymore. We just figure out if he really meant yesterday, tomorrow, last week, or next week, and just go with it.

Skill: Attends and participates in circle time without disrupting other children

Rating: D

Teacher’s note: Blank

Translation: I left this blank because I don’t like to lie on paper. If there was a rating lower than a B on this scale, we should have given it to him. He has never been within 30 feet of another child without disrupting them in some way or another.

Skill: Sustained attention span for a wide variety of activities

Rating: D

Teacher’s note: Blank

Translation: I was simply laughing too hard to write anything legibly.

Besides the coercive, fraud-laced report card, the folder also contained five or six sheets of paper that Son Number Three had filled out over the course of the school year. There were some letter and number writing and identification sheets that caused us to really question if Kindergarten is in the cards for this kid, and some fantastic examples of cutting shapes out with scissors, and scribbling on those cutouts. We still can’t believe they were brave and/or foolish enough to ever give him scissors.

The last page in the folder was a crayon drawing entitled “Self Portrait.” It was a green stick figure with a giant head, and his right stick-arm was stuck straight out to his side. Hovering over the arm was a smaller green stick figure. The teacher had written underneath the drawing, “Me and my daddy. He’s holding me.”

I take it all back. You’re the best kid in the whole world.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

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Freedom from Hashtags

I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t #understand #Twitter.

I understand Facebook. It makes sense to me. See what your friends are up to by reading their posts and looking at their pictures. Visit links to videos or articles that they recommend.

Here’s a typical Facebook post:

Text reading “Today at the beach,” under which are pictures of their day at the beach. Simple.

What #doesntmakesense to me is #Twitter. #Whatisup with the #weirdlooking #URL links? I am #afraidtoclick on anything that looks like “de/6ghrt.fde.” How am I supposed to #knowwherethatgoes?

Here’s an actual #Twitter #tweet that showed up for me:

#airing Peter Gabriel - Big Time (via @brystelmy) srmdp.me/6h08Ddd

Huh? I think someone likes a #song, or is playing a #song right now. I think. Maybe.

And #whatisup with the #hashtags? I understand that they were originally meant to mark a word for searching, and they are still used for that. If I search for a specific term, any tweet with that term hashtaged will show up in my search. So you are hashtagging things to get other people to find your tweets. What I don’t understand is why you are hoping that a complete stranger will read that you loved the #waffles you just ate, and that they were #soyummy. Are you secretly hoping that all the people on Twitter who like #waffles will get together and form a #welovewafflesgroup?

The whole thing seems completely random to me. For instance, Twitter just suggested that I check out #biosnackysprouts. I don’t know what that means, and I am ultimately sure that I never expressed any interest in it, whatever it may be.

It wouldn't be so bad if people were just hashtagging single terms as a search tool like it was intended, but now they are inserting the punch line to their witty posts in a hashtagged, no-space word string, so I have to try and figure out what #idontlikespiders or #ilovesundayfunday means.

To make matters worse, I’m now seeing hashtags on Instagram photos. I’m not even 100% sure what Instagram is, but I do know it didn’t need hashtags. To make matters even worse, people are also starting to put them in their Facebook posts. Facebook has jumped on the hashtag search capability bandwagon, which I do not approve of one bit.

Hashtag if you must, but I still maintain that you just end up looking like a really bad speller.

So, #tomorrow on the #fourthofjuly #julyfourth #4^th #4thofjuly #independenceday, when you #celebrate #celebratefreedom #celebrateyourfreedom, please take a moment to consider freeing yourself from hashtags.

It would really go a long way to making the world a better place.

Now, go #kissasoldier!

#Thanks! #Happyindependencedayeverybody!

#Seeyousoon,

#-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

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The 'Wildlife' of Discovery Kingdom

We were able to use our “free” tickets to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom this past weekend. I say “free” because my wife won four tickets, which didn’t include parking, and we also needed an additional ticket in order to get the whole family in. We didn’t feel like it would be fair -- or even legal -- to make one of the boys stay home, so we drained the checking account and headed for Vallejo.

When I was growing up, Six Flags was called Marine World Africa USA. I guess they felt like they needed to change the name when they started adding more roller coasters, or more flags. It’s now like a combination of Disneyland and SeaWorld, but with more Oakland Raiders fans, so it’s classier.

It’s really a great place. The roller coasters are world-class. Every one of them is guaranteed to loosen your bowels and help you find Jesus. And the animal shows are amazing. For the most part.

Right inside the gate, our boys were holding parrots on their arms, and in true modern theme park fashion, we were offered the chance to buy pictures of our adorable boys holding the large colorful birds for $2000 each. We opted for the cell phone pictures with the park photographer’s head in the foreground blocking half the shot.

We bypassed the snack shack selling $15 sodas (Free refills all day! Come for the rides, stay for the diabetes!), and headed straight for the attractions.

We saw tigers.

We saw lions. (They were all sleeping, but still lions.)

We saw giraffes.

We rode massive, thrilling roller coasters.

We saw a walrus show where a 3000-pound walrus the size of a pickup truck harrumphed its way up onto land, waddled over, and kissed its trainer.

We saw an elephant demonstration where the elephants were rolling on the ground, sitting up like begging dogs, and lifting 300-pound logs with their trunks.

Then we went to the dolphin show, and sat down close to the water in “the splash zone.” Son Number Two was incredibly lucky and was one of only two kids picked out of the crowd to go and help the trainers during the show. The dolphins were shoving the trainers out of the water fifteen feet into the air and doing backflips. One trainer rode a dolphin like a surfboard, and another rode two at the same time like a chariot. Son Number Two really wanted to ride one also, but apparently that maneuver is reserved for the highly-trained adults in wetsuits. He did get to give them commands, feed them fish, pet them on the noses, and get royally soaked by their splashing tails. He was on cloud nine, and he and his brothers all decided they wanted to be dolphin trainers when they grow up.

Just when we thought the day couldn’t get any more exciting, we went to the Wildlife Theater Show. We were right.

The Wildlife Theater Show started out pretty well, I guess. A pig went trotting past us down the front aisle as a parrot came out and announced that the show was about to begin. Then the human announcer arrived. He was a little too animated for my taste, but he was tolerable. Next, one of the trainers walked out with a two-toed sloth draped over her like she was holding a small child. That was pretty cool.

Then they brought out a skunk. OK...

Then a North American porcupine. Alright, that’s pretty neat.

Then a white-nosed coati on a leash. A coati sort of looks like a raccoon and an aardvark had a high speed collision. He climbed up a wooden pole.

Then a bobcat on a leash. The bobcat just walked around.

Then they brought out a house cat. On a leash. Hmm…

The house cat jumped from a post onto the wooden pole. Wow, it has claws. So did my grandpa’s cat. Hmm… A house cat. In the Wildlife Theater. OK.

Then they got back on track and brought out a serval on a leash. A serval is a spotted and striped African cat that sort of looks like a cheetah mated with a house cat on stilts. It jumped eight feet straight up in the air to snag a fuzzy toy off an overhanging pole. Pretty impressive hops for a cat on a leash.

Then they brought out a milk snake. It was not on a leash.

For the grand finale of this incredible, fifteen-minute show that inexplicably included a house cat, they brought out…another house cat.

This was a completely different house cat than the first one, they assured us. This one also had claws and was able to climb the wooden pole while on a leash. And then, as if that was not enough entertainment to blow our minds, they told us the second house cat’s incredible back-story. He was from two towns over. They got him when he was young.

Wow, Six Flags, you really outdid yourself here at the Wildlife Theater. I’m glad we hit some of the other highlights prior to this, or we may have been too exhausted from all the excitement to continue on the rest of the day.

House cats? Really? If you are willing to try and wow me with house cats, I have a few other cost-cutting measures you might want to consider.

For instance, on our walk through the park we saw a few "roaring rapids"-type white water adventure rides. Maybe you should ixnay those and have the park-goers just stand in a line while one of your employees sprays them down with a garden hose.

You could also just replace all the roller coasters with a low-speed minivan ride to the Walmart to buy socks. Flash Pass holders could get to ride shotgun.

Instead of the big, impressive dolphin show, we could all just go up to a small glass bowl and look at a goldfish. The lucky spectators chosen from the crowd could get to feed it a tiny pinch of fish flakes.

Tigers and lions? Too expensive to feed. You could go with little barky Chihuahua dogs and maybe a well-trained lab rat or two. The nice white ones, though. Not the giant, menacing black rats. No sense in scaring the children. And the elephants could easily be replaced by cows. Their poop is smaller and they eat less. Maybe even Texas longhorns if you wanted to get crazy. And you could always oust the giraffes in favor of the far easier to handle, guinea pig. Throw in a few old Labrador retrievers and you’re in business.

Also, if the six flags are getting too much for you to maintain, don’t be afraid to ratchet that number down. One Flag Discovery Kingdom still has a nice ring to it.

House cats aside, we really did have a fantastic day, and at the end of the “Wildlife” Theater Show, guess what animal all three of my boys waited in line to pet?

The house cat. Go figure.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

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

Whittling

We went camping this past weekend with two other families. All three families have only boys, so our campsite consisted of six sleep-deprived parents and eight single-digit-age, wild and excited boys. So we gave them all knives.

Two of the brothers had received their very own Swiss Army-style pocket knives from the Yosemite gift shop on their last camping trip, so they brought them along. This led to all the other boys clamoring to have a turn with the knives. Not wanting anyone grabbing for a fast moving blade, in the interest of safety, us dads dug through our camping gear and gave them each their own pocket knife, and taught them the manly art of whittling.

It went something like this:

“Dad, can I use your pocket knife?”

“Sure son.”

(Glare from wife)

“Hey, son, if that knife gets dull, you can use one of the daggers your mom is staring at me with.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Here, check this out. This kind of single-blade knife is cool, because if you put your index finger on this little lever and flick your wrist like this… bam, like a switchblade.”

(Icier, dagger-ier glare from wife)

“Never do that, though. Sorry, honey.”

As is so often the case, the fatherly approach to this type of situation differed slightly from the motherly approach. We dads thought the proper approach was to give our sons detailed instructions on proper knife safety and whittling technique, make sure the first aid kits were fully stocked, then sit back and watch them learn by doing.

As near as I could tell, the mothers’ approach was to attempt to keep them away from all sharp objects until they turn 25.

The dads finally won out, once we promised to take an active role in the refereeing of all knife-related activities, and soon all the boys were happily seated in their camp chairs around the fire pit, whittling like mad. We did, however, run into a few unexpected issues that we never got fully worked out.

For starters, we couldn’t get them to keep their elbows resting on their knees, allowing them to whittle straight out away from themselves. They kept leaning back and bringing the work closer to them and higher, ending up with the stick up by their face and the knife whipping rapidly past the tip of their nose.

They would also get easily distracted, but would continue to whittle, while their eyes wandered off to something more interesting beyond the fire pit. We kept having to say, “Either stop whittling or watch what you’re doing.” Again, the learn-by-doing method would have taught this quite a bit faster, but I guess the moms wanted to save the Band-Aids in case of a bear attack or something.

The kids would also regularly get up and walk around the inner perimeter of the campfire chair circle. It turns out that seven-year-old whittlers have little to no awareness of their surroundings, and neither do five-year-old walkers while in a campfire chair ring of whittlers. Most of our time was spent yelling, “Stop walking! Watch the knife! Be careful! Don’t stab your brother!” etc.

We had to make sure that the whittling remained the standard “sharpen the end of the stick,” or “get all the bark off the stick,” because some of the other things they came up with were not optimal. I found Son Number One with the stick pressed against the top of his knee, sawing a notch all the way around the stick with the knife blade. He was almost through when I stopped him. “Let’s try not to test out dad’s tourniquet skills on this trip, OK buddy? Besides, your mommy would faint and hit her head on a rock. We don’t want that.”

The next day Son Number One and Two both decided that they wanted to make miniature canoes out of ¾” diameter sticks that were 6” long. I just couldn’t see the interior of the mini canoe getting hollowed out very safely, and I figured our first aid kit would probably fall a little short if we had to attend to a knife sticking all the way through a hand. “Why don’t we just stick with ‘standard whittling’ instead, OK?”

For the boys, almost as exciting as being allowed to whittle was the prospect of simply having the knife with them in their pockets. My boys kept asking me if they could take the knives with them into the woods.

“No.”

“Aw, dad. Why not?”

“Because you are not allowed to whittle unsupervised, or more than 50 feet from the first aid kit, and whittling is all you're allowed to use the knife for. Why do you want it?”

“For bears.”

“If you see a bear, I would like you to call to me, instead of trying to take it on with a 2-1/2” dull blade… Unless we tied the knife to the end of a long sturdy stick…”

(Icy dagger glare from wife)

“Never do that, though. Sorry, honey.”

It was a fun weekend. The boys started to learn a new skill, and they all lived to tell about it. As a side bonus, the activity of whittling did serve to slightly lessen the requests to throw another pine cone on the fire, although wanting to throw the other guy’s whittling stick in the fire did result in a few near knife fights.

Even though their mothers refuse to believe it, they were in far more danger after the whittling than during, from running around with the sharp, smooth sticks they made. Our knives were pretty dull.

All in all, it was a successful trip. We came home with all eight boys with the same number of holes in their bodies as they arrived with, and by the end of the weekend they had successfully whittled hundreds of sticks, which was fun for them. They had also successfully whittled their mothers’ nerves down to sharp, raw edges.

Thankfully, we don’t whittle at 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!

Summer Reading

We are officially on summer break. By “we,” I of course mean everyone at my house except me. The first day of summer, my three boys looked at me as I was getting ready to leave the house in the morning and asked, “Where are you going?”

“Work.”

“Oh… You don’t get summer, too?”

“Shut up.”

I’m not bitter.

In preparation for a three-month period of not being able to get away from the boys, my wife went to our local library and picked up information on their summer reading program for kids. Apparently the public library system is trying to keep kids interested in stuff like books and reading, so they are offering an incentive program. You set a reading goal of a number of books to read, and you get to come into the library and pick up a prize when you reach your half-way point, and again when you reach the full goal.

Son Number Two, who will be going into the second grade next year, heard the word “prizes,” and was immediately on board. If there is ever something to win, whether it be a prize, a trophy, or just bragging rights, he is interested. Their last day of school was on Thursday, and they were released from the hellish prison of elementary school just after noon. When I arrived home around 5:30 P.M., he was very excited to inform me that he had already read eight books.

“No, buddy, you can’t count ones you read during the school year. It has to be books you read during the summer.”

“I know. I have read eight books today, since after school. I’m on nine right now.”

“They have to be real books. Not picture books.”

“I know,” he said. “I read these.”

He hands me a stack of books. They weren’t exactly Moby Dick, but they weren’t Go, Dog. Go! either. He had read five Disney Winnie the Pooh adventures, two Magic Tree House chapter books, and Dolphin Tale, which was so good, they made it into a movie. (Actually, I think in this case, the movie was made into this book, but either way, the movie starred the handsome, roguishly charming, and multi-talented Harry Connick Jr., so you know it was good. Oh, and Morgan Freeman, too.)

“Wow, dude. That’s a lot of books to read in five hours.”

“Yeah, my goal is twenty books, so I’m trying to get to the halfway point so I can get my first prize.”

“It’s called a ‘summer reading program,’ dude, not a ‘the day school gets out reading program.’”

“Huh?”

“I think you should take a break now.”

“OK, I just need to read this one and one more, then I’ll be done. Can we go get my prize tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow is the actual first day of summer. They won’t be ready for you.”

“What!?!”

“Don’t worry, buddy. Mommy can take you in a couple of days.”

Well, that was last Thursday. In an effort to slow his pace a little, we told him he was only allowed to read long chapter books for the other ten. We went to a baseball game on Saturday, and he sat in the stands and read. My wife took the boys to the pool to swim with their friends, and he laid under her chair and read, until she had to almost throw him into the pool.

As of yesterday, five days after school got out, he was at 19. He has put us in a strange spot, parenting-wise. On the one hand, we are thrilled that he loves to read. On the other hand, we really don’t know if he loves to read, or if he just loves prizes, and would be eating live goldfish, or swimming naked to Alcatraz, if that happened to be what the library’s summer prize program entailed. On the one hand, we are thrilled to see him set a goal and work hard to achieve it. On the other hand, we have considered moving his goal from 20 books up to 2,000 in an effort to make it a “summer” program.  

We don’t want to tell him to stop reading, because that seems wrong from a good parental advice standpoint. We have to do something, though, because if we don’t, he will literally read all summer. I think we’re going to have to put him on a strict schedule, and try to balance out his activities. This is mostly a selfish thing on my part, because one of my main concerns is that he will get too smart, too fast.

He is already reading the Hardy Boys mysteries, and the Encyclopedia Brown series. At his pace, I’m really kind of worried that he will run through all of those and then graduate to the Sherlock Holmes collection. What’s next, John Grisham novels? I’m going to have to try and balance this out somehow. “Dumb it down,” if you will. I think I’ll make a rule that for every chapter of a book he reads, he has to spend at least ten minutes in the backyard banging a stick against a tree, or digging a hole with a spoon.

If we don’t do something like that, he’ll be on to The Count of Monte Cristo and A Tale of Two Cities in no time. Based on the furious book-devouring capacity he has already demonstrated, he will have read everything by the time he is 14 years old. I am well aware that when my boys are in their teens they will be convinced that they know everything, but I am not at all interested in trying to raise a teenage boy who actually does. This must be stopped!

My wife and my parents helped out the other day in distracting him, by taking all the boys on a summer field trip to an insect museum. Not only did this help by providing a four-hour window where he was unable to read, but it shed a hopeful light on our situation. He was allowed to spend some of his money in the gift shop at the end of the day, and what did my highly-educated, well-read seven-year-old son purchase? A three-inch-long piece of transparent hard candy with a scorpion encased inside. He’s currently sucking on the candy, trying to get down to the scorpion, so he can eat it.

Maybe there is hope. Maybe he’s not all that smart after all.

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!

A Romantic Nook

We’re on fire over here at Casa de Smidge this week. Two days ago my wife called me, very excited, saying, “Good news! I won four tickets to Six Flags!”

My immediate thought was, “There’s five of us.” I kept it to myself for the moment.

Then she said, “The kids are out of school at the end of this week. You should take a day off work!”

“A day off? What’s wrong with the weekend?” I inquired.

“Do you have any idea how crowded it will be on the weekend?”

Well, yes, things are usually more crowded on the weekends, because people like me have jobs.

“How did you win tickets to Six Flags, anyway?”

“A radio contest online.”

A radio contest online? Is that what you do all day while I’m at work? I kept that one to myself as well.

“Anyway,” she said, “we’ll talk and figure out when we can go. I’m excited we get to go for free!”

Hmm… free. Funny you mentioned free, because from the moment this conversation began, all I could hear was money being sucked out of my wallet.

For starters, we need another ticket. I looked up prices online, and a general admission cost $59.99. Then there is a $25 parking fee, gas to get there and back, $17 hamburgers and $9 sodas, and $20 pictures of us screaming – some joyfully, some in abject terror -- as we drop off the precipice of death on the roller coaster du jour.

All that, plus I need to miss a day of work and burn one of my precious vacation days that I like to use to avoid meetings? Free is starting to sound like it’s going to cost me just under $650. While I was on the Six Flags website looking up ticket prices, I noticed there was a “jobs” section. Maybe I can work there for the day while my family goes on the rides to try and defray some of the expenses that are coming with all this free stuff. Oh well.

Then, today at elementary school, our winning streak continued. Son Number One was the lucky second grade super reader to win a grand prize in the super reader grand prize giveaway. This is their last week of school, and apparently they have abandoned math and English in favor of talent shows, costume contests, and prize giveaways. It was announced to the entire school over the PA system that he had won a Nook e-reader. He called to tell me all about it.

“Dad, I won a Nook at school with my golden ticket!”

My immediate thought, besides a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tangent, was, “A Nook. OK, that shouldn’t cost too much to own. E-books are cheap.”

“Great, buddy! That’s really cool. You are one lucky dude. Is it color or black and white?”

“Huh? It’s real you know.”

“Yes, I figured it was a real one. I was asking about the screen… Never mind. I’ll see it when I get home. Congratulations, that’s really neat!”

When I got home, the new Nook was out of the box and charging up. I already had a Nook account, so I connected to our WiFi and logged in. When his new Nook synced up with my account, my son already had two books in his library; The Tree of Death, and Other Hilarious Stories, by yours truly, and Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen.

Hmm… I don’t remember downloading Pride and Prejudice. It must have been free. My book is written in family-friendly language and will be just fine for him if he decides he needs a laugh, but I’m not entirely sure about Pride and Prejudice. Let’s face facts, though. He may be a super reader, but he’s eight years old. I doubt he’d get past Jane Austen’s first page.

It was when I went to the Nook’s home screen that I noticed the obvious problem; namely the fact that this device is connected to the internet. There, on the bottom of the screen, was the “What to read next” section, showing us four helpful choices from the Barnes & Noble Top 100, complete with vibrant pictures of the book covers.

Silver Linings Playbook – OK. No big deal there.

The 1^st Victim – No graphic cover art, but I’m not in love with the title. (Said the guy whose humor book is called The Tree of Death…)

Possession – This is what stopped me in my tracks. My eight-year-old’s new Nook has a picture of a topless woman with her back turned to us, holding a cluster of grapes, and showing a lot of side boob. Not good.

Beauty From Pain – Another topless women, this time lying in bed, partially covered by a sheet, holding a glass of wine, and showing a lot of leg. Not much better than side boob and grapes.

Hmm… This is not optimal. This reminds me of when I got my wife her first Kindle. As a joke, while I was setting it up, I downloaded a free “adult western novella,” called In the Marshall’s Arms, complete with the sweaty, shirtless cowboy on the cover, so it would be the first thing she saw. She said, “Very funny,” and erased it. The only problem with my little joke was, from then on, the only thing that pops up on my Amazon suggestions list are questionable books featuring sweaty, shirtless cowboys.

Now, I can’t imagine that Amazon has shared my supposed love of western-themed erotica with Barnes & Noble. That seems unlikely, given their competitive relationship. So I have to conclude that either the B&N 100 is mostly smut, or somehow, Pride and Prejudice triggers “romance novels” to show up in your feed.

I guess it doesn’t matter too much why it is happening. Since it is happening, I need to figure out a way to keep the Nook from delivering topless women to my eight-year-old, or he’ll never get to even see, let alone use, the cool prize he won.

There doesn’t seem to be any parental control features on the Nook, so I may have to simply download a bunch of children’s books and then disconnect the WiFi. The only problem is, I already logged in once. These things have a tendency to remember stuff like that and do it on their own. If I can’t get it figured out, I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to tell him.

“Sorry, son. Unfortunately, the e-reader from school is a porn machine, so I bought you a Kobo instead.”

Hopefully it won’t come to that. Maybe I can distract him by telling him there was a mix up, and he really won a trip to Six Flags.

Then I could sell the Nook to pay for the fifth ticket.

That might just work.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2013 Marc Schmatjen

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