How I Beat Cancer

Last Friday, I took the kids to the Natural History Museum for a return visit to the big exhibit about dinosaurs, a topic that has dominated their conversation for the past few months.

They're at once fascinated and terrified by the huge displays at the museum.  They'll play make-believe with the little T-Rexes and Stegosauruses in the play area for hours, and they'll memorize the facts that I read them from the plaques on the more docile looking dinosaurs; but they won't get within 20 feet of the huge animatronic dinos that grunt, paw at the ground, and grind flesh with their robotic jaws.

The girls raced up and down the stairs and ran laps around the galleries on the upper floors, and later, picked at an overpriced lunch in the museum's café.

It was a lovely outing, except for the fact that I was pretty sure I would be dying shortly afterwards.

On the way to the museum, I had noticed, while making faces at the kids in the rearview mirror, a dark spot on my left earlobe.  It looked kind of like an inkblot.   

Perhaps it's an inkblot, I told myself, with false lightheartedness that only brought attention to my sudden sense of dread.

I looked at it more closely once I had parked, and, since it was slightly raised, determined that it was not an inkblot, but certainly a fast-acting, death-dealing tumor that was at that moment spreading its pernicious tendrils deep into my brain.

I never used to think like that.  Even when I technically had skin cancer (basal cell carcinoma--pretty much the least deadly cancer ever) a number of years ago, I was like, eh, whatever, it's cool, I'll just be better about using sunscreen.

But that was before I had kids.

It was also before I passed a certain age threshold where bad things started happening to my peers.

I know people my age with serious or even terminal illnesses.  The extent of this knowledge is exacerbated by the miracle of the internet, through which I am constantly apprised of the comings and goings of people I haven't seen in twenty years, as well as people I have never even met in real life.  Hell, I know people my age who are dead!

But mostly it was the kids who gave me the dreads.  How would they react when they learned that Daddy was no longer there to take care of them?  What would Mom tell them about where I had gone?  How would they remember me?  Would they remember me?   Would they feel an endless ache for the person who was always with them as they transitioned from wiggling scream-sacks to sentient beings--for the man who contained half of the secrets that could help them understand themselves?  Or would I just become a vague memory, a collection of stories that became less accurate in the telling, and more expedient to their personal narratives?  Would their new daddy be rich and have thick, luxuriant hair?  These questions distracted me from the more immediate mystery of why the fossil of the land-based Ankylosaurus was found in an ancient sea bed with a shark tooth in its side.

I texted this ear-selfie, along with the question "what kind of cancer is this?" to a highly respected doctor in my area, with whom I happen to be sleeping:

Never look too closely at your ear.  It's weird.

    
My wife, who usually responds to any request from family for free medical advice with, "You've got about four months...six months, tops," texted me back: "The brown spot?  I'd need to look at it more closely."

The lack of gallows humor only deepened my anxiety.  Had she not been concerned, she would have surely mocked me for worrying about a little blemish on my ear.  Her answer was very...professional.  As if I were a real patient with a real condition.

I tried to remember the pamphlets that I had received from the dermatologist when I got surgery for what I had jokingly referred to as "face cancer" seven years ago.  What does melanoma look like?  Was that the bumpy, colorless one?  Or the one that looks like a mole?  Or an inkblot?  I could never keep that shit straight.  It was like Poison Oak or Black Widows: it didn't matter how many times I saw the illustrations, the warning signs of the stuff that would fuck me up didn't stick.  One thing I knew, though, was that my occupational history (lifeguard, carpenter, ski instructor), and disdain for sunscreen until age thirty, put me at high risk.

"He's extinct, right?" Maddy asked.

"What?"  I said.

"The Triceratops.  He's extinct, right?"

"Oh.  Yeah.  All the dinosaurs are extinct.  Or, you know, they've kind of...turned into something else.  They don't really live anymore, but we can see still see traces of them in animals that are alive now..."

"I have to pee!" Livvy interrupted.

We raced to the bathroom and, after all the business was done, I rubbed and scratched at my earlobe in the mirror.

"What are you doing, Daddy?"  Maddy said.

"Oh...just...I have this spot on my ear."

"Wash it off, Daddy!" Livvy said.

"Well, I don't think it's gonna come off from washing, sweetie.  It's not that kind of spot."

"You should put water on it and use a washcloth!" she insisted.

"Okay.  Well, I don't think it will work, but sure.  Okay."

I soaked a paper towel and started scrubbing the damned spot.

And damned if it didn't start rubbing off!  My earlobe turned red as I scrubbed, but the spot disappeared.

"Hah," I said.  "You're right, Livvy.  It did come off."

"What was it, Daddy?"  Livvy asked.

"It was just some caulk with dirt stuck to it," I said.  I realized that, as thoroughly as I had scoured myself after working on a window replacement job the day before, I hadn't gotten every last schmear of polyurethane caulk off of my skin.  I must have brushed my face against the flange of the window I had just installed as I tried to squeeze between the wall and the lemon tree.

"What's caulk?" Maddy asked.

"It's the gooey stuff that Daddy uses sometimes to fill in cracks and holes when he's fixing stuff.  Kind of like glue."  But they had already stopped paying attention.

"You are exti-inct!  You are exti-inct!" they chanted as they ran back toward the dinosaurs.

 



 

My Kids and I made a Crafty Mothers Day Gift from "Dad's Book of Awesome Projects"

I've had this book in my hot little hands for a couple weeks now, just waiting for an opportunity to do one of the projects in it.  Mothers Day was the perfect excuse.

Mike Adamick, author of the blog Cry It Out, contributor to NPR, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Jezebel, etc., etc., and super crafty dude, has a book out called Dad's Book of Awesome Projects.  You should buy it.  I would have, except that he sent me a copy for review because he's that cool.  I would gush about Mike for a couple more paragraphs, but I know it would make him uncomfortable (and I would have to mention that he does stuff like sews jockey silks for his horse-obsessed daughter, which makes me look like a total slacker dad), so I'll get back to the main focus of this blog: me.  Um...and my kids.

So, yeah.  Mothers Day.  I've got a spotty background with it.  I killed it once about nine years ago when I sent my mom a booklet I made of the Billy Collins poem, The Lanyard, along with a lanyard that I had fashioned from a craft kit while sweating and cursing on like the hottest May 5th on record in San Diego.  I've been disappointing her ever since.

I might be setting my wife up for future disappointment in our kids as well, because the project that the twins and I did for Mothers Day is pretty freaking awesome, if I do say so myself.

You know those silhouette pictures you made in kindergarten?  When some grown up shined a slide projector on your face and traced your shadow onto construction paper?  This project, which I found in Mike's book, is a variation on that.  I'll walk you through it.

(Aside: The kids and I were looking through the book, trying to decide what to make for Mom.  I asked what they thought she would like for Mothers Day.  Livvy thought Mom might be into the "circus stilts."

"Hmm..." I said, "I think those are more for kids."

"So we could make them for Kids Day!" Livvy suggested.

Moments later, Maddy became very excited about the birdhouse project in the book.

"That's not really for moms, though," I said.  "It's mostly for birds."

"So we could make it for Birds Day!" she replied.)


Before we got going, we had to buy some supplies.  So we ran down to the most fabulous Ace Hardware store ever, in the gayest part of San Diego.  We needed spray paint mostly, and a couple other things.  The kids, of course, wanted pink paint and sparkly paint, which were both in abundant supply.

We headed home and got to work.  First, I needed to cut a couple pieces of plywood to use as our canvases.  I could have cut them with a circular saw, but it was actually easier and more accurate to roll the ol' table saw out into the alley.

 

I had some birch veneer plywood left over from--believe it or not--the wooden trike project I did for their first Christmas.  I cut it into basically the biggest rectangles I could wring out of the oddly shaped scraps I had (about 9"x11"), and sanded them, with some help from my crew.

  

Then we got busy painting them Pepto-Bismol pink.

Maddy was really into shaking the paint can

While we were out in the alley, I snapped some pictures of the kids (who were being complete punks by that time) against the neighbor's garage door.  Those would become the basis of the stencils I would make.  (Tip from Mike: kids with longer hair look better with ponytails.  I'm glad I knew that.)

  

While we were working on the project, I kept stressing to the kids how important it was that we NOT tell Mom what we were up to.  I quizzed them often to make sure they understood.  "Are you going to tell Mama what we were doing?"  I would ask.  "No...it's a surprise!" they would respond.  "For Mothers Day!"

So what happens as soon as Mom walks in the door?  Livvy says, "Guess what, Mama?  We're making you a secret project for Mothers Day!"

When the kids were in school the next day, I went to the craft store to get the last thing I needed: stencil paper.  Although they seemed to stock every craft item anyone had ever imagined, they were out of the bigger sheets of stencil paper, and only had it in the size of notebook paper, which wouldn't be quite big enough.  I would have to improvise.

Following the directions in the book, I printed out the profile pictures, and then placed the transparent stencil paper over them and cut out the outline of the girls' faces with a razor knife.  I ended up taping two pieces of stencil paper together so that I could fit the kids' entire faces on the stencil.

Even as I was cutting out the stencil, I had this feeling that I was screwing up.  I kind of knew that the stencil was going to be too big for my boards, but I just kept going.  I couldn't be bothered to re-size and re-print the photo, or even go out to the garage and re-measure the boards.  Because I'm an idiot.

I figured I would just wing it.  And they ended up looking kind of like ass.

Not really the greatest composition

I wasn't sure if they were truly horrible or not, so I texted Mike the picture and asked if I should start over with either bigger boards or a smaller stencil.  He was very polite, but the message was clear: of course you should, dumbass.

The stencil was the hard part, so I chose to just cut some more boards.  I used a scrap of medium-density fiberboard (MDF) this time, because it's much smoother, and the grain in the birch veneer had made the paint look uneven and rough.  So, really, my fucking up the size of the pictures was a blessing in disguise.  The MDF came out purty.

I went ahead and sprayed the sparkly paint over the pink after it had dried a bit.  Naturally, the nozzle stuck in the "spray" position, and I had to wrestle it and poke around in the valve with a nail to get it to slow down.

Just like every time I've done crafts for Mothers Day, I cursed loudly and probably frightened the neighbors.  Soon I had the sparkliest forearm hair this side of Hillcrest Ace Hardware.  It had mostly stopped spraying when I got the cap on it, but about five minutes later I had to hit the deck when I heard the huge POP of the cap blasting off.  I threw the can in the neighbor's dumpster.

Sparlky

Finally, I was ready to actually create the silhouettes.  I should have let the paint dry longer--like for a day or so--but I needed to get it done before my wife got home, because she had the next day off and I wouldn't be able to sneak out and finish it without arousing suspicion.

This part went okay, but I wish I had devised a way to keep the stencils more firmly in place on the boards.  The spray from the paint can blew the stencils up a little bit, so the white paint got underneath and made the outline of the silhouette less sharp in places.  They still look pretty good, but not perfect.

 

So I'm almost through it.  All I have to do now is to get the kids to sign the backs of "their" masterpieces without them freaking out about the fact that I completed the project without their input.

Oh yeah, and then we have to figure out where to hang 11"x13" sparkly pink homemade artwork.  I'm thinking they'll look good in Mom's clinic. 

The Poison Cookies

This is the last thing I said to my girls tonight before they finally fell asleep:

"YOU DON'T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT MONSTERS IN YOUR ROOM!  THE ONLY MONSTER YOU NEED TO WORRY ABOUT IS ME!  DON'T YOU DARE MAKE ME COME IN THERE AGAIN!"

  

That was right after they started screaming when I slammed the door to their bedroom, at the tail end of the five hours of continual torture they inflicted upon me.

You know how you're not supposed to go to bed angry at your spouse?  I guess you're probably not supposed to go to bed angry at your kids either.

Well, I haven't gone to bed yet, so there's still some hope, I guess.

I don't think it was me this time.  I really don't.

Well, it wasn't my preexisting emotional state, anyway.  I had had a pretty good day.  I got stuff done around the house, including about a million loads of laundry, which seemed to have made my wife happy.  I had gotten the house straightened out and the kids fed lunch just in time for our twice-monthly visit from the cleaning ladies.  I tended the garden, fed the animals, and made it to the gym with the kids in tow.  I even managed, with the kids pestering me and the cleaning ladies vacuuming under my feet, to work with an editor on some changes to a forthcoming article I'm pretty stoked about.

But at around 4:30 pm, I fucked up.  Bad.

The kids were playing nicely with each other, running upstairs and downstairs and out the back door onto the deck.  We had talked about going scootering or doing some other wholesome outdoor activity, but I was a little spent, and it seemed like they were getting plenty of exercise.  I figured, you know--snack time, maybe some reading, and then Mom would be home with leftovers she had scored from a drug rep lunch at work.  Then slide right through the bedtime rituals and bam, done.

I thought about the fresh strawberries in the fridge for a snack, but we had been eating them by the pint for the last few weeks.  I glanced at the apples, oranges, and avocados on the counter but was uninspired.  And then I remembered the chocolate-covered graham crackers that Mom had bought on an impulse as a special treat for the kids.  I had been strictly warned against eating any myself, but of course I had ignored the exhortation.

They were strong medicine, these cookies.  They weren't really chocolate-covered graham crackers as much as they were rich milk chocolate bars with a crunchy, graham cracker center.  It was like the Swiss take on a Kit-Kat.  It took all the restraint I could muster to not plow through the whole bag during my midnight raid.

What the hell, I thought.  The kids have been pretty good today, I can't give them the cookies after dinner because the chocolate will jack them up for bedtime, and, most importantly, they might share them with me.

The kids didn't dilly-dally when I announced that they would be having the special cookies for snack time.  And they didn't share with their old man either.

Remember, maybe it was in college, that one girl?  She was really nice and kind of funny and cute?  But after the fourth shot of vodka, to which she was clearly unaccustomed, she became erratic, and then irritable, and then weepy, and then angry, and then weepy again, and then FURIOUS, and everyone was like, whose friend is she again?  Can somebody call her roommate?

That's what both of my children turned into after eating these cookies.  As I tried to fold laundry, they stamped around in the water they had poured into a large puddle on the deck, and then tracked it inside, onto the freshly-mopped floor.  Then they stomped around in the freshly-scoured bathtub with their filthy, wet feet.

I used to worry that losing my temper and yelling at the kids would emotionally scar them; but now I just worry that it's completely ineffectual.

I yelled at them from upstairs, and then ran downstairs to continue yelling at them from close range when the initial yelling didn't have any effect.  When my back was turned, they filled the bathroom sink with soapy water and slung it around the bathroom, and laughed in my face as I yelled and hid the handsoap from them.

As I cleaned up the mess in the bathroom, they tore the living room couch apart and used the cushions as a slide, a trampoline, and a "pile of rocks."

Mom came home, dropped off the food she had brought from work, and then headed out to her crossfit class.

At dinner, one kid wouldn't keep her hand out of her milk glass.  The other refused to eat with the fork I had given her because she didn't like the color, and instead shoveled rice into her face (and down her dress, onto the floor, etc.) with her hands.  All I could think to do was withhold the food until they calmed down.  Forks were thrown.  Threats were hurled, and ignored.

Somehow, we got through dinner without a visit from CPS.  Mom returned and helped with bedtime preparation, but then took off to pick up provisions at Target.

Bedtime can be tricky under the best circumstances, but, now that the poison cookies had turned the twins into volatile middle-school students with the self-expression skills of toddlers, I didn't know what to expect.

I should have expected the worst, because that's what I got.  Maddy has started doing this thing where, every time the cleaning ladies come, she won't sleep under the covers of her bed because she doesn't want to mess up the smooth bedspread and hospital corners that Lupe and Company have created.  It's a problem.  And tonight, Livvy started playing the same game.  Add to that their demands that Daddy take turns lying in bed with them, and you've got a recipe for an unstable trained chimp turning on his masters.

"Sleep with me, Daddy!"

"No, Daddy!  Sleep with ME!"

"Not on top of the covers, Daddy!  YOU MESSED UP MY BED!  BLAAAAAAHHHH!  SMOOTH IT OUT DADDY!  SMOOTH IT OUT!

"IT'S MY TURN, DADDY!  SLEEP WITH ME, DADDY!  No, Daddy!  Get under the covers.  AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHH!  YOU MESSED UP MY BED!  SMOOTH IT OUT!  SMOOTH IT OUT!"

"I have to go to the bathroom."

"I need water."

"I can't find my ballerina doll's shoeswaaaAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"

This continued for twenty minutes, until finally:

"THAT'S IT!  I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE!  I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT YOUR BLANKETS AND DOLLS AND LOVIES AND CRAP!  GO TO SLEEP!  GOOD NIGHT!"

 

[Exits bedroom, slams door.]

Then came the wailing about being scared of monsters, the rejoinder from Dad, more wailing, sobbing, snuffling, and at last, slumber.

I'm not actually mad at my kids.  I went into their room and kissed their cheeks as they slept, just as peacefully as a couple passed-out drunks in a boxcar.  I'm disappointed in my poor judgement this afternoon, and my terrible attempts at damage control.  But I've forgiven myself, and I have high hopes for tomorrow.  Especially since the kids will be in school all day.  
            

Grumpy Dad Is No Match For Children's Imagination

The T-Rex couldn't stand up, so the kids made him a special shoe out of a potty watch

Last month, I wrote a piece for the New York Times' parenting blog, in which I took a big dump on the Easter Bunny.  I've written a few things like that, where I've explained my reasons for not participating (or trying not to, anyway) in mainstream traditions or activities that most people think of as harmless fun: Santa Claus, princess-worship, television, etc.  On paper, I suppose this makes me sound like a grumpy scrooge who hates joy.  Not so!  In fact, I've been told that, when my friends plan parties or wild excursions, they often say, "Hey--we should invite Hinds!  He likes pleasure!" Because I do.

It can be difficult to write about "opting out" without sounding like a holier-than-thou scold passing judgement on other parents who opt in.  I try to make it clear that I'm simply explaining why some of these things are troubling to me, and not casting aspersions on people who accept them with little or no questioning.  It's not really my concern whether other parents play Santa Claus or not.  The reason I've written about these "issues" is that they come up.  People ask what Santa brought, or if the kids are excited about the Easter Bunny visiting, or if Cinderella is coming to their birthday party; and so I have to think about how to respond.  As long as I have to formulate a response, I figure I might as well write it down. 

However, as you can imagine, my efforts are not always interpreted in the way I mean them to be.  Many of the commenters on the Easter Bunny piece, for instance, even those who agreed that there is no benefit in going to great lengths to perpetuate a silly myth only to have your child eventually discover it has been a hoax all along, suggested that I was tone-deaf and condescending.  Fair enough.  I was a little flippant.  I could have been more sensitive to people who hold the Easter Bunny and other deceptions traditions dear.

Another thread of criticism I've gotten from the anti-Princess, anti-Easter Bunny, and anti-Santa Claus pieces is that, given my obsession with telling my kids the truth, I must not allow them to read or watch any fictional stories, and the poor children are bound to grow up reading nothing but encyclopedias and newspapers.  Never mind that, in all of those pieces, I anticipated that assumption and preemptively mentioned that my kids spend hours every day interacting with fictional characters.  And the fact that they know these characters and stories aren't "in real life" doesn't do anything to make them less exciting.  I think this criticism is based on equal parts jumping to conclusions and poor reading comprehension.   

Like anybody, I often second-guess myself on matters of parenting philosophy.  I sometimes worry a little bit that there might be a social cost to my kids for my sticking to my (largely inconsequential) guns.  Thankfully, though, the kids they are growing up around come from all kinds of different backgrounds, so there's not really a "norm" to adhere to.  So far, anyway.

Despite any nagging self-doubt, the one thing that I've heard from critics of my tradition-bashing parenting style that I'm absolutely not worried about, is that I'm denying them the kind of fantasy that is vital for developing their imaginations.  This is clearly not the case.  These kids of mine have imaginations that run at full-throttle all day long, every day.

I'm not going to take credit for their creativity.  Or, more precisely, I shouldn't take credit for their creativity, even though I do sometimes.  Because honestly, I think it's nigh impossible to quash a four-year-old's imagination, unless maybe you keep her in a sensory deprivation tank or leave her in front of a TV all day.  Abstaining from telling them that mythical creatures really exist hardly seems dangerous to the fertile, feral brains and souls of children.  In fact, if anything, imposing the official Santa or Easter Bunny or Princess or Fairy myth (or your own version of it) would seem more likely to limit their imaginations than telling them that it's just a story.  If you say, for instance, that Santa is real, and he comes on Christmas Eve, and he wears a red suit, etc., etc., etc., the kids are not participating very much.  You might be using your imagination, but the kids are just listening.  Anyway, that's neither here nor there, because I'm pretty sure that hearing a fictional story and thinking that it's true won't have enough effect on a kid's imagination that we should worry about it one way or another.

I did not mean for this to be a rebuttal against responses to things I wrote ages ago, but rather another one of the boring parent-blogging posts I had promised to resume churning out.  I really just wanted to brag about the hilarious and clever things my kids have been saying, and that made me think about how their imaginations, like those of most kids their age, are definitely intact.

For example.  Here's a conversation I had with Maddy, during a week when both the kids had been reading and talking about space almost non-stop.

Maddy: When I grow up, I'm going to live on Saturn!

Me: [actually sad] But...that's too far away.  I'll miss you.

Maddy:  That's okay.  You can come too.

Me: What about Mommy?

Maddy:  Yeah, Mommy can come too.  And Livvy.  And Stella.  We'll have to have a spaceship.

Me:  Yes.  I can see how that would be handy.

Maddy:  Maybe we should have two spaceships.  In case you and Mommy need to go to different planets.

Me:  Why would we need to do that?

Maddy:  Maybe Mommy could make pizza on Mars.

Me:  Pizza?

Maddy: Yeah, because of all the volcanoes.

Me:  Ah...of course.  And then where would I go?

Maddy:  To Jupiter!  To get ice cream!

Here's Maddy, dressed up like a "Pu-Ku head."  She later morphs into a baby Iguanodon.  They've been really into dinosaurs lately.






And here are Maddy and Livvy using their Lalaloopsy dolls and My Little Ponies to stage an epic battle between an Iguanadon and a scorpion.  If you're not lucky enough to have dinosaur-obsessed children in your home, you may not know that Iguanodons had bones that protruded from their wrists like deadly thumb-bayonets.  They are thought to have used these to fight other dinos.

Buy This Book: Guide to Baby Sleep Positions! It's Funny!

My wife and I didn't co-sleep with our kids.  Not much, anyway.  Not when we could avoid it.  And now my friends Charlie and Andy, from How To Be A Dad, have a hilarious book out that makes me glad that we never committed to co-sleeping.  It's called The Guide to Baby Sleep Positions, and it's available from Amazon and a bunch of other places.  Check out their website for more details.

This book, like most of their website, is not intended to be taken seriously, so don't be put off.  It's a parody.  A spoof.  In fact, if you're on Facebook or Pinterest, you've almost surely seen these "instructional diagrams" of horribly uncomfortable co-sleeping positions like "H is for Hell" and "Jazz Hands." These diagrams have been shared (with and without attribution) kerjillions of times, translated into other languages, and adopted as religious texts in remote areas of Central Asia and Southern California.

Anyway, I bought five copies of it because those cheap bastards didn't send me one for review.  That's why I'm passive-aggressively promoting their book late on a Friday afternoon two weeks after it came out.  I got so many copies, despite being butthurt about having to pay out of my pocket, because I honestly think they'll make great baby shower gifts.  Who wants a boring, serious book about breastfeeding, sign language, or cognitive development?  Nobody, that's who.  People need a good laugh during those bleak months following the birth of their children.

So go ahead.  Buy it.  Buy a bunch of them.

Full disclosure: despite my dropping all kinds of hints like rubbing my thumb and index finger together while holding my wallet open, I have received no compensation for this post.

  

Men Should Celebrate Their Genitalia Too!

By the time I turned twenty, I realized that being a rock star would require more dedication (okay--and talent) than I could muster, and that being a full-time carpenter was no walk in the park either.  I was getting paid well, but spending most of my money on gas so I could drive all over the DC Metro Area in my 1978 Plymouth Fury 440 Police Interceptor (9mpg Hwy/7City) for work and band practice.  Any money left over after paying for my 60-gallon-per-week habit went toward auto parts, insurance, moving violations, court costs, and bar tabs.  I kept crashing cars too, which got expensive.  I wasn't even paying for rent or groceries, and I was running a huge deficit.  I'd like to say that I finally broke down and went to college to slake a lifelong thirst for knowledge that I could no longer ignore, but the truth is I just couldn't afford not to.  I needed to go someplace where I could be a pedestrian.

So I lit out for my ancestral home state of Montana, where they had to let me attend the university in Missoula because I was a resident (based on the criterion of having written my grandparents' address on the application) and I had graduated high school (barely).  

For a number of reasons, I turned out to be a pretty good college student.  I realized that it took far fewer hours of studying to get on the Dean's List than it had taken hours of working to keep my gas tank filled.  And I learned that college towns are the best places in the world if you love going to bars on your bicycle.

I also saw a lot of things I did not expect once I got to Missoula.  I thought I was pretty worldly, having been hanging out alternately with harcore DC punk scenesters, and redneck Virginia construction workers.  Violence?  Sure, saw some of that.  Drinking?  Check.  Drugs?  Yup.  Bizarre, horrifying, sexually explicit performance art?  Well, one of my buddies from high school had just formed a band called GWAR, with whom my own band sometimes played, so...yeah.
 

But nothing had prepared me for what I witnessed at, of all places, a "sporting event."

"Maggotfest" is a "festival style rugby tournament" that's been held annually in Missoula since 1977.  By 1988, when I was a student at University of Montana, it had become an institution.  On the week leading up to Maggotfest, bars lay in extra stocks of liquor and beer, couches all over town are opened up to visiting players, and, at least when I was there, it seemed like a lot of the ladies were wearing their Levis 501's a little tighter and their patchouli-scented cleavage a little deeper.

When I rode my bike out to the pitch in the middle of the afternoon to see what all the fuss was about, I found myself in an atmosphere not completely unlike a GWAR performance.  There was profanity, outlandish costumes, nudity, and a real danger of being spattered with bodily fluids.  Only, at Maggotfest, this all took place in broad daylight, with parents and children walking around.  And, unlike the synthetic blood and semen spewed by the gallon at GWAR shows, the fluids at Maggotfest were the genuine article.
  

I strolled past a circle of people that had formed around a petite, attractive young lady with long blonde hair, who was guzzling from a beer bong with a 4-can capacity.  After she had drained the funnel, she began to spin like a whirling dervish.  She continued to do so as the contents of her stomach left her body through her mouth, creating an agribusiness-grade vomit sprinkler that drenched anyone within a 20-foot radius.
  

After narrowly avoiding the puke-shower, I squeezed into another group that had gathered around an old school bus with the logo of a rugby team from some town up in Saskatchewan with a name like Dog Leg or Moose Bone spray-painted on its flank.

"Step right up, ladies and gentlemen," called out a huckster from atop the dilapidated bus.  "Step right up and see the world famous Flying Zamboni brothers astound you with their impressions, contortions, and concoctions!  You won't believe your eyes!  Two of the seven wonders of the world, right here, right now!"

The two burly, bearded men who shared the stage with this impresario removed their robes to reveal their matching outfits, which consisted of rugby jerseys, socks, and sneakers.  The men began stretching out, as if in preparation for a match: first their quadriceps, then their hamstrings, followed by their shoulders.  And then they began stretching their flaccid penises penes penii dicks to the limits of their plasticity.  Once they were properly warmed up, the show began.

"For their first impression, " hollered the impresario, "The Zamboni Brothers will perform...'The Pretzel'!"

At this, the men interlocked their tallywhackers as if they were the intertwined arms of newlyweds drinking their first champagne toast as spouses.  They grabbed the loose ends of their respective dongs and pulled them taut, creating a passable fleshly representation of the type of pretzel you might pick up from a kiosk at the mall, minus the salt crystals.

From there, they moved on to the more difficult "Baby Elephant Being Born," which required them to turn their backs to the audience, bend over, and pull their wieners and their scrotums scrota scrotaea balls out from between their legs so they would peek out from under their butts, like tiny elephants with penis trunks and testicle ears.

Playing to a largely receptive audience, they ran through an impressive repertoire, including tricks with names like "The Crossbow," "Night Train," "Mount Rushmore," and "We Are the World."  And for the grand finale, the MC recounted to the rapt audience the origin myth of the Zamboni Brothers.

"What you might not know about the Zamboni Brothers," he said, "is that, when they were born, they were actually conjoined twins.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Mikey and Tony were born as Siamese twins, joined at...the penis.

"They were not expected to live long in this condition, and if it were not for the skill and precision of a certain fearless surgeon, perhaps these two fine young men would not be standing here before you today.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen, we are lucky enough to have with us today, that very surgeon who first operated on the Zamboni boys so many years ago.  That brave man who defied the odds, risking the lives of these fine lads, as well as his own reputation, in order to give them a normal childhood."  He paused, letting crowd soak up the dramatic implications.

And then he bellowed: "For it is I, Dr. Pudcutter, who performed the lifesaving operation that allowed them the rich, full, existences they are enjoying today!"  The crowd burst into applause.

"And for our final number," he went on,  "I will be re-enacting that surgery right now!"

The Zamboni Brothers then approached each other on center stage, and, by some intricate, and probably copyrighted, manipulation of foreskins, managed to attach their schlongs one to the other in such a way that their hands were free to wave to their fans.

Meanwhile, Dr. Pudcutter had produced a large kitchen knife and was "sterilizing" it with a bottle of warm Molson.

The good doctor raised the knife up above his head, and, with one swift motion, brought it down between the two men, who pulled apart just in time to give the illusion of the knife having bisected their shared wang, rendering them distinct humans with their own sovereign pricks.

The crowd went wild, and I drifted away, lost in thought, to witness further debauchery, performance, and sports.

So what's the point of this story?  Just this: As I wandered away from that rusty bus, my young head was spinning with questions and ideas.  Questions about sexuality, sports, art, and Canadians.  But also the gut feeling that there was a deeper meaning to this performance than just light entertainment.

When my friend, fellow dad blogger, and nicest guy you could ever meet, Jim Higley, asked me to be a part of the "Man Up Monday" campaign for his "Single Jingles" testicular cancer awareness foundation by writing a post that may or may not relate to the health of men's undercarriages, this is the story that immediately came to mind.  It took over 25 years, but finally, the message was revealed.  The Zamboni Brothers were presenting a critique of the taboo surrounding men's nether parts.  To protect our junk, their performance suggested, we must not oppress it with shame, but rather expose it and celebrate it!  Well.  Maybe not literally "expose."  And maybe not literally "celebrate."  But you know, talk about it.  Especially to our sons, who may be reluctant to discuss abnormalities or changes in their testicles because of embarrassment.  Testicular cancer is the #1 cancer in young men, and it's also highly survivable.  But to survive it, you have to detect it early, and to detect it, you have to know what to look for.  So talk to your son.  About his balls.  But I'm not sure you want to bring up rugby.
 

It's Man UP Monday! 

I'm proud to be a member of the Single Jingles Man UP Monday BLOGGING TEAM!

Today, I'm doing my part to spread an important message about Testicular Cancer. 

Did you know that Testicular Cancer is the #1 cancer in young men ages 15 to 35? 

Did you know that Testicular Cancer is highly survivable is detected early?

Did you know that young men should be doing a monthly self-exam?

What can you do?

Stop by the Single Jingles website for more information on Testicular Cancer

Request a FREE shower card with self-exam instructions - it just might save a young man in your life!

And if you're feeling just a little AWKWARD about this conversation, check out this video from some parents who feel the exact same way!

Back To Basic Dad Blogging

So I've been doing this thing lately, you may have noticed, where I only write when I have an opinion or think I can contribute something to a conversation about an issue.  Something that might get published on an elitist East Coast establishment website, for instance.

That's all well and good, but it's not really why I started Beta Dad.* 

After some soul-searching, I've decided to get back to my dad blogging roots.  It's gonna be just like when Rick Rubin produced that ZZ Top album and made them sound like a dirty, misogynistic, blues-boogie band again.  Except in my case,  I'll be posting adorable pictures and videos of my 3.75-year-old children, and cute little stories that no one could care about except for maybe grandparents and mom bloggers.

Let's start with the video:

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Crazy Shit Livvy (Butterbean) Says

This kid has been killing lately with the comedy jokes, and with the embarrassing her dad in public.  Here are a few examples:

***

I tried to explain to her that "sharing" doesn't mean "snatching whatever you want out of your sister's hands."  I went on with a little lecture about how you can't just demand someone share with you and then steal their stuff.  

"That's not fair," I said.  

"It's fair for me," she replied.

***

We regularly have to negotiate with the kids about how to manage their screen-time, which we try to keep to about half an hour per day.  They often watch an episode of Backyardigans or Wonder Pets while they eat breakfast; but one morning they were talking about their plans to watch a movie (Cinderella or Tinkerbell no doubt, because those are the only ones they've been able to watch all the way through without getting scared).  They had apparently been discussing this before they got out of bed.  I told them that I had to go somewhere that night and Mom would be taking care of them, so they would have to ask her.  But in any case, I told them, they couldn't watch a show in the morning AND a movie at night.  They decided that the morning show was more important, and so I turned it on.  

Afterward, Livvy started talking again about watching a movie later.  I reminded her that she had chosen to watch the morning show instead.  Her solution?  "Well...you can just tell Mommy that we didn't watch already today."  Then, with a satisfied nod, "Yeah."

***

Speaking of watching, my wife went away to a week-long conference (I was hoping for harrowing, blogworthy tales of single-parenting, but it was really pretty uneventful).  The cruelest thing Mom did in leaving us alone was to take the iPad with her.  We have a laptop and a desktop, but the iPad is the most convenient way to watch video (we don't have the tee vee).  Because I couldn't be bothered to move the laptop to the breakfast table, the girls ate with nothing more than music and conversation for entertainment.

Livvy complained about it a little bit one morning, took a couple bites of her cereal, sighed, and then said, "This is ASTOUNDINGLY boring."  No idea where she picked up that five-dollar adverb.

***

Livvy's also got her dark side.  She's been interested in death lately, although we haven't talked about what it means because I'm afraid to.  She experiments with the language of death, and I just listen.  She doesn't seem to know the word "kill," but she knows "dead" and "die."  She just doesn't always know which word to use where.  

"Did you dead that fly, Daddy?" she'll ask.  Or, referring to an illustration in the book Matilda, where the mean headmistress is laid out in a puddle of water next to a student, "He deaded her, Daddy.  That boy deaded Miss Crunchbull with water."  

I was eavesdropping on her the other day while she played pretend, giving voices to a pair of stuffed animals.  "What happened to your friend," she had a mouse asking a bunny, "did she die?"

Nailed it.

***

In addition to being pretty good at bringing the funny, she also really projects her voice. We had to go to the doctor's office recently, and we ended up having to wait for about twenty minutes.  

It was a full waiting room, but everyone sat staring silently at their cell phones.  Livvy had questions though.  And comments.  There was a TV in the waiting room that showed little videos about wellness and scenes of happy patients and medical staff.  A montage of babies came on, which of course inspired Livvy to ask, at a robust volume, where babies come from and how they get out of where they come from.  This made the other patients in the waiting room giggle, but it was pretty easy for me to change the subject.  

After a quiet moment during which I read something on my phone like all the other zombies, she held her finger up to my nose and told me to smell it.  Like an idiot, I did.

"Ewwwww,"  I said.  "Were you rubbing your stinky foot or something?"  

"No," she answered.  "I was digging in my booty!"  

"Why?" I asked in horror.  

"Because it itches!"  

"Well, stop doing that," I suggested.  

"But what am I supposed to do, Daddy?  What do you do when your booty itches?  What do you do when your booty itches, Daddy?"  She went on with this line of questioning for some time.  

When the embarrassment from that episode had subsided, she started staring intently at a woman sitting next to us.  She was a middle-aged African-American woman, with kind of a pageboy hairstyle: It was straightened, and curled under all around the edges, forming a hairtube perimeter that pushed the whole structure away from her face, instead of allowing it to hang.  Livvy stared for a good thirty seconds before finally saying, "Why does her hair look like a mushroom?"  All I could do was shrug my shoulders apologetically and shake my head.  Luckily, the lady with the mushroom-hair thought it was hilarious.

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Crazy Art Maddy (Cobra) Makes

Maddy is very verbal and hilarious too.  But her comedy doesn't really translate as well into prose.  She does a lot of interpretive dance and makes up words like "Hoo-koo."

Where she does express herself in a blog-friendly medium, however, is in her visual art.

Spaceship with our entire family on board, including the dog. You might recognize some planets from our solar system, or one very similar to ours, in the background.  I drew the flames, because I was ordered to.

 

  

The ocean, with fish and a boat on which no boys are allowed

  

She drew this one, of our family, at school.  Notice that all of us have nipples and belly-buttons (on the same latitude, oddly).  I asked what the line between Daddy's legs was, and she replied, "A Hoo-koo!" 

This was more like performance art. After the twice-monthly visit from our cleaning lady, Maddy didn't want to mess up her professionally made bed.  So she slept on the pillow like this.  All night long.

  

  

*Okay, it kind of is