| New from the Lego Bionicle Line – Toa Mata Hari! One of the rare female Bionicles, she’s had most of the others, and they’re all in love with her. You can play with her as she plays the guys off against one another! Isn’t she FABULOUS! |
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| American Girl Doll – Sybil! With completely different outfits for Vicky, Peggy Lou, Mary Lucinda, Marcia Lynn, Vanessa Gail, Mike, Nancy Lou Ann, Ruthie, Clara, Helen, Marjorie, and The Blonde. They’d make a ton of money on this one, and it’s the LAST doll you have to buy! |
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| Wii Screw! Put the kids to bed and enjoy the safest sex you’ll EVER have. Remember the plastic sheath you’re supposed to put over the remote? Right. Think Sin City SIMS and you’re close. |
[Picture removed in the interest of taste and decency.] |
| Merrily We Pull Along Duck and Egg Scrambler! Little Johnny can finally help in the kitchen – just put a fresh egg on the duck’s wheels and let him “walk” it for an hour. When the music stops, the egg is ready for cooking – if you haven’t started drinking by then. |
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| Build a Bear. No, yeah, a real goddamn bear. Run! |
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| Shots and Ladders! Get drunk and naked with this new twist on the classic board game. Penalty Shot! |
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| Pre-School Musical! Step into the past with Troysie, Gabby, and the gang as they cry, whine, repeat themselves over and over, and pull each other’s hair… Oh, wait, that’s the real one. Never mind. |
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Big Ugly Man Doll
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Y Chromosome
Archive for January, 2010
Kid’s Toys We WISH They Made
“The Captain, he’s been a-drinkin’, oh!”
30 January, 2010 | Big Ugly Man Doll | No Comment
Music, they say, can soothe the savage beast, and nowhere is this more evident than in the crib and nursery. The fussiest babies – and here I can speak with complete authority – can often be quieted through the calming magic of music. Whether it’s an adult singing to them, a CD played softly, or a lullaby mobile gently spinning a tinkling, twinkling star, music is a nearly universal panacea for the pandemonium of parenthood.
And if that shit doesn’t work, you can turn it up loud enough that you can’t hear the screaming monsters in the back seat. As part of my ongoing public service announcements (which are part of my parole), I offer some advice on choosing music that (A) will keep your kids occupied for more than fifteen seconds and (B) won’t have you reaching for the black-market valium you picked up last week.
The Wiggles. The best part of any kids’ song is that the tune can be adapted in your head to mean something totally different, and the BEST kids’ music is written with the parent’s needs in mind. The Wiggles, an entirely too wholesome act from Down Under, does this pretty well. Such songs as Crunchy Munchy Honey Cakes and Hot Potato remind us that cooking is fun; Dingo Tango and Here Comes A Bear remind us that life can be very, very scary. Then there are the ones that are obviously for grownups:
- Let’s Have A Barbie On The Beach – Why yes, let’s!
- The Captain’s Wavy Walk (“The Captain, he’s been a-drinkin’, oh!”)
- We’re Playing A Trick On The Captain (While He’s Passed Out Drunk)
- We’re Dancing With Wags The Dog (‘nuff said)
- Wake Up Jeff (The Police Are Here!)
And last but never least in any Wiggles countdown: Hey There, Shaky Shaky! (“Hey there! I wanna shake with you!”) Let’s face it, this is a kid’s song based on a bad pickup line in a bar.
There are some more traditional songs that can be adapted to learning lessons as well. Wheels on the Bus is a favorite:
The Baby on the Bus says,
“Waa waa waa,”
“Waa waa waa,”
“Waa waa waa!,”
The Baby on the Bus says,
“Waa waa waa!”
And all the other parents on the Bus give its mommy dirty looks.
And…
The Driver on the Bus says,
“Move to the back,”
“Move to the back,”
“Move to the back!”
The Driver on the Bus says,
“Move to the back!”
And Rosa Parks says, “No.”
But one of the all-time best set of songs for kids and their parents came from a Disney show called Bear in the Big Blue House. The songs have a kind of demented brilliance that’s hard to resist, even long after all my kids have quit watching the show and requesting the music in the car. From the back seat, over the dulcet tones of the Sex Pistols or Barenaked Ladies, we’d hear the imperious request: “Excuse me, Boo Yang please!” I’m still not sure if the Boo was for Bear or Big or Blue, but Yang meant songs, and Boo Yang it was.
Songs like Take Time to Smell the Cheese (“Life is so much betta / when you smell the Feta”) and What’s That Smell? could get us miles without hearing them whine. (Although “Smells like breakfast – hey, it’s you!” seemed pretty scary; did that 7-foot-tall bear just tell me I smelled like his breakfast? Run!) Then there are the Welcome to the Blue House, Good Morning, and Goodbye Songs, all delivered in an operatic boom that we still shout at the kids (GOOD MORNING, GOOD MORNING, GOOD MORNING TO EVERYONE!) even though they’re long past wanting to hear it. The song Clean Up the House is great for reminding everyone to help clean (“Let’s take it upstairs!” “Oh, geez, Dad, let’s not…”) and I still remind them to “Brush Brush Bree, Brush Brush Broo!” when going to bed. Mostly out of sheer bloodyminded spite on my part. I had to listen to those songs for hours. They should suffer in turn.
My favorite Boo Yang, though, may have been Shadow’s Lullaby. It’s a great song, lilting, lyrical, and haunting, that describes how safe you are sleeping tonight because the “Shadows are watching over this house.” Yesssssssss, that’s the nice, supernatural stalker image I want running through my head as I try to fall asleep. Can we sleep with all the lights on again, please, at least until I can get Dancing With Wags The Dog back in my head?
And since that was too creepy, we will close with the cautionary tales of They Might Be Giants, who did a kid’s album a few years ago. From the people who brought us Triangle Man and Birdhouse In Your Soul, my kids are bopping to the strains of:
- NO! (which means, and we repeat a LOT in this house, no. And that’s final.)
- I Am Not Your Broom (nor your maid, damn it.)
- Violin(ce) - and don’t think we won’t resort to it if you can’t behave!
- Don’t Cross the Street (into oncoming traffic)
At least from TMBG, we expect it’s going to be weird. My favorite from the NO! album is Where Do They Make Balloons, and is it the same factory that makes condoms?
Music. It’s not just for breakfast anymore.
Twitter Tweens
28 January, 2010 | Big Ugly Man Doll | No Comment
A new parent asked me the other day what they had to look forward to as their little darling grew up. They’d heard of the “terrible twos” and all that, but what about the long view? How are they when they’re 11, like the Human Tape Recorder, or 9, like Number One Son? (They didn’t ask about the Reigning Queen of Pink, presumably because they can see that from where they’re standing.)
I presented my answers with the usual caveat, to wit: there’s “9-yr-old boy” and then there’s Number One Son. Remember, crazy means not having to sweat the details, such as clean underwear, monetary valuations, and most social graces. That said, I can provide (and am happy to detail here as a public service) some details into what life is like living with kids aged 11, 9, and 7.
If you don’t have kids but you’re thinking about it, and you’d like to see what it’s like, the Internet now makes it possible to simulate the, um, experience. Just living with anyone, never mind the ADD types, under the age of 14, is to live in the bottom of a permanent, live-feed twitter well. They’re walking twitter accounts!
First, sign up for a Twitter feed. Second, subscribe to the tweets of every single English-speaking person you can find. Third, for good measure, subscribe to the tweets of at least 5 percent of the non-English speaking world as well. Trust me on this.
OK, got that all set up? Now get a text-to-speech application, set it for automatic, and turn up the volume to just past where it’s comfortable. Now break the knob off the volume control and throw that sucker away – like the lid to bottle of good Scotch, you won’t be needing THAT.
Ho. Ly. Shit. They talk all the time, about everything, and nothing, at FULL VOLUME. I don’t know if it’s because they’re so deaf from listening to each other, or because they’re just trying to be heard over the din. (There’s a reason they learned their ABCs the hard way.)
OK, if you haven’t lost your mind in the first 5 minutes of this exercise, it’s because we haven’t gotten to the hard part yet. The hard part is that it is absolutely a matter of life and death that you pay attention to about 1.5 percent of everything you hear. You will never know WHICH 1.5 percent it is, though, and there are very few cues to tell you when one of the important bits is coming. You’ll need to develop a mental low-level Twitter Tween filter to make sure you hear the word “bleeding” among the “im going to the bathroom oh my god I need to go the bathroom its my turn to play the wii I want the remote can I have another sandwich its my turn I’ll use the upstairs one shut up no you shut up ow now its my turn hey mom she hit him non I didn’t and hes bleeding no I’m not shut up oh my god I have to go the bathroom” montage of sound that assaults you every minute of every day.
Catch all that? Right. As I typed this, I decided that there must be a more concise word for “mental Twitter Tween filter.” And so there is. The word is headache.
And in case you were thinking about being clever – forget it. I saw you just now, you put the volume control in your pocket instead of throwing it away like I told you. Do you know what happens these days when we try to remind them of their, um, ABCs?
BUMD: “Would you PLEASE stop the incessant noise for one brief, shining, quiet moment?”
Reigning Queen of Pink: “But Daddy, don’t you want your child laughing?”
OH! She’s so good with her stiletto, I didn’t even see the blade – until it was stuck in my chest. They say silence is golden. Maybe I can convince her that silence is really a bright shade of pink. In the meantime, where’d I put that aspirin?
a brief gender gap
24 January, 2010 | admin | No Comment
I’d like to take a moment of your time to discuss a brief gender gap. If you have multiple children of both genders, or if you teach kids under the age of, say, 18, you’re probably already aware of this difference between boys and girls. If you teach kids under the age of 8, you’re probably very, very aware.
SOBUMD has noticed and pointed out to me on any number of occasions that, on any given laundry day, she will see 5 pairs of underwear from the Human Tape Recorder, at least 7 from the Reigning Queen of Pink, and 1 from Number One Son. This solitary pair of boys underwear highlights the brief gap between genders – why won’t boys change their shorts more often?
In the interests of science, I’ve done some investigative research.
BUMD: Son, why don’t you change your shorts?
NOS: Heh heh heh. I don’t like to take them off because I’ve farted in them.
BUMD: So, the longer you wear them, the better they get?
NOS: Heh heh heh. Yessssssssssss!
So, one possible answer may lay in the marinade effect. Other reasons include an unwillingness to expose Johnny to the elements – it’s warm in there! – and simple fact that baths are icky when you’re nine, so why take one?
Youth plays a role. Most guys don’t pay much attention to the state of their underwear until that underwear stands a good chance of being noticed by non-family females. This would include the unlikely possibility of having sex with actual women, and the even more unlikely possibility of having sex with that same woman a second time. (Meaning on a different day, not just, you know, staying naked.) Boys with very clean underwear are hoping that someone will ask them to remove said briefs. Trust me on this; after a few beers “You should SEE how clean my shorts are” starts to sound like a decent opening line to most of us. (It’s not, by the way.)
So I understand the frustration, but I’m in no hurry for the Number One Son to be wanting to change his underwear twice daily. If you knowhuddimean.
Hijacking this post
19 January, 2010 | admin | No Comment
So there we were earlier this school year, driving – again – to school. You wouldn’t think a lot could happen on a drive like this, because it’s not yet 8 in the morning and we’re only driving 5 blocks away. You would be wrong.
For those of you scoring at home, “not yet 8 in the morning” translates to “Number One Son has been up for at least two hours playing games and working himself into a really good crazy. I mean, there’s “just woke up” crazy, which most of us go through to varying degrees, and there’s “ohmygodI’mlate” crazy, and we all know what that’s like. What you may not be familiar with, however, is the “slam down whatever food I can find or open and play video games until everyone else wakes up” crazy, which really gets him chuffed into a solid gonzo some days. An hour later, we’re up and giving him his meds. In the face of a solid windmill-armed dervish, the chances those medications have of kicking in before he goes to school are pretty much the same odds the 3rd Grade pet hamster has in a volcano – to wit, not much.
But once in a while, he finds his coping mechanisms and they work. For a change, it wasn’t Number One Son screaming arterial homicide out the car window for 5 straight blocks – he leveraged his skills in transference and it was the Reigning Queen of Pink doing the shouting. In her defense, when she does it it’s not called shouting, it’s called “addressing her subjects.”
It’s summer, the windows are open, and she sees her friends walking to school. One of these friends is named, believe it or not, Jack. Can you see this coming yet?
At the top of her royal lungs, head halfway out the open window, “HI JACK!!! HI JACK!!!”
You know, we live in the shadow of the nation’s capitol. People really do turn and look when they hear that. Some of them are armed.
We got through the school’s tightened security system and the Stop Sign of Death, and I let them out. She was still talking about having seen Jack walking to school. Number One Son, having successfully transferred the crazy this morning, looked at her as they were getting out of the car and, in true older brother fashion, said the one thing most calculated to infuriate her.
“He didn’t hear you, you know.”
But baby, everyone else did!
Not to mention the Hat
18 January, 2010 | admin | No Comment
The hat that believed in Santa:
…and the rest of the collection:
(thanks to docstrange for the title inspiration)
the advantages of obliviousness and selective hearing
17 January, 2010 | admin | No Comment
So there I was, washing the dishes, when the Human Tape Recorder walks up to me; all of 4 years old at the time. “Daddy,” she says, “I need Cheerios.”
OK, we can do this. I dried my hands and gave her a fistfull of Cheerios. She thanked me and runs back to the bathroom, where she had been in the first place. I turned back to the sink and the dishes, contemplating the joys of Selective Hearing.
Because what she REALLY said was, “Daddy, I need *more* Cheerios for my duck.”
But I didn’t hear all of that, because deep down I knew that I didn’t want to know anything about what had happened to the *first* set of Cheerios.
And I didn’t want to know anything AT ALL about a duck.
Someone’s Getting Married in the Morning
15 January, 2010 | admin | No Comment
Yesterday the kids learned a new song about a girl named Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black, with silver buttons, buttons, buttons, all down her back, back, back. Now obviously this Goth chick’s father owns a line of trucks, and she’s in formal black because he’s dead, or getting re-married, or maybe because she’s just full-on emo Goth and it’s a Thursday.
I, of course, was honor-bound to share with them the original song about Mary Mack, which concerns the impending arranged nuptials between the singer and the subject, to wit: Mary Mack’s Father’s Making Mary Mack Marry Me, And My Father’s Making Me Marry Mary Mack.
This is about when these obstreperous and uncultured children sprang on me their twisted favorite, compliments of YouTube, which has an animated yellow cartoon face singing “Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in” and here the image inverts to negative and the voiceover yells “PURPLE!”, which is over course the FUNNIEST THING IN THE WORLD if you are less than 10 years old and your medication has worn off.
So this morning, despite my protestations, it was decided that we needed to review what we’d learned yesterday and headed back to YouTube for another round of 4 seconds of Mary Mack shouting purple, to which I was, of course, honor-bound to counter with another round of Mary Mack’s Father’s Making Mary Etc. This lead to a conversation in the car ride to school during which the Reigning Queen of Pink decided that she would never marry her brother. Number One Son explained to her that she couldn’t even if she had wanted to, since (1) you’re not allowed to marry your brother or sister, and (2) her brother was him, and he’d be damned if he’d marry her.
This quickly devolved.
By the time I got these loons to the school, which – to be clear – is only 4 blocks from the house, Mary Mack’s father was wearing purple buttons all down *his* back, presumably in a tight corset, and the Reigning Queen of Pink was marrying Mary Mack, having established that girls can marry girls and boys can marry boys, as long as they’re not siblings. I think we concluded firmly that Mary Mack (Mack, Mack) was all dressed in black (black, black) with silver buttons because her father was marrying her ex-boyfriend, Jack Jack Jack.
I’m sure their teachers wonder what the hell goes on at our house.
Post-Holiday Letter Thoughts
12 January, 2010 | admin | 2 Comments
The holidays are over, 2010 is here, and we’re typing this year. Let’s start with… The Holidays: A Brief Review.
Now believe it or not, and I’ve been known to lie, but this holiday saga starts at a Borders Bookstore, with a boatload of books and no coupons. Now everybody knows the thing to do with Borders is to print the Coupon Of The Day from the website before you go. I hadn’t known I was going to Borders, which actually happens to me a lot during the holidays, so I have no Coupon Of The Day, but – ah ha! – I have my trusty hat. I may not believe in Santa Claus, but I believe in my hat.
So I find the things I’m buying, walk to the checkout counter, and wait my turn. Once “I Can Help You Down Here” calls me, we begin.
I Can Help You Down Here: “Did you find everything OK?”
Big Ugly Man Doll: “Yes, thanks!”
I Can Help You Down Here: “Do you have a Borders Rewards Card?”
Big Ugly Man Doll: “Ah, I don’t have it with me, but would you mind looking it up under my wife’s email address?”
We do that, and I mention that in addition to being the one to set up the Borders card, she’s also the one who’s going to kill me dead when I get home, because I forgot to print out the coupon – ah well.
I Can Help You Down Here: “Oh. Hmm, well, you know *I* have a coupon…”
Big Ugly Man Doll: “Oh, would you, thank you so much, I really appreciate it!”
He scans his coupon, saving my life and least $15 bucks, and then he says it: “I like your hat, by the way!”
Heh. Not nearly as much as I do. That hat has paid for itself by now, just in people being nice to me. I don’t know why, but it works.
OK, I lied about not believing in Santa Claus. Otherwise how would all those presents get into my stocking while I’m asleep?
Our saga continues with the Actual Christmas morning. SOBUMD and I had impressed upon the three lunatic children that, in the spirit of the True Meaning of Christmas (TMC)™, even better than the gifts of gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh that we’re certain they *were* going to get for us, would be letting us sleep past 7am in the friggin’ morning. Practicing my MBAness, I told them to consider 8am to be their stretch goal.
So, Santa must have done his breaking and entering gig, because when I woke up there were all sorts for things under that tree. I woke, of course, to the sound of three VERY anxious lunatic children walking into our room at exactly three minutes after 7am. So much for the stretch goal – no bonuses for them, although the Human Tape Recorder did get the coffee started.
This was followed by a calm and joyful recitation of the blessings we’d enjoyed over the past year, with each child opening and appreciating one present at a time, taking turns, and contemplating the TMC™.
Yeah, right – maybe when monkeys in elf suits fly out of Santa’s red velvet butt. This was actually followed by a 20-minute orgy of destruction and wrapping paper, bows flying so thick at one point that I could hardly see to unwrap SOBUMD, for which I got whacked upside the head and shoulders. I still maintain that we could have been hard at work conceiving a fourth child and the first three wouldn’t have noticed us.
We hastily dressed and headed to my parents house, for another, slightly more ordered, 20-minute orgy of destruction and wrapping paper. The Clever Grandpa had received, from someone in his office, a bottle of an interesting medicinal beverage called “Chivas Regal.” With all the adults volunteering to test this beverage, the bottle lasted almost 25 minutes. This was followed by a Christmas Day dinner that couldn’t be beat, which may in itself have constituted the TMC™. Having eaten everything but the tree, we came home, filled with love, wonder, cookies, and beef. Also Scotch.
The Holidays continued the day after Christmas, which dawned bright and early with a trip to Pennsylvania, by which I mean we got on the road two hours late, in the rain. The car was loaded, packed with twelve pairs of underwear, eleven well-wrapped presents, ten allergy-safe foods for the Queen of Pink, nine hours of music for the three hour ride, eight overnight bags for the five of us, seven days worth of medication, six winter jackets, five butts in seats, four sets of snacks, three lunatic children, two American Girl Dolls, and a spare tire under all that crap.
You can see where this is going, can’t you? Can’t you?
Right. We’d been driving in the rain for all of 20 minutes when we hit the Pothole of Doom (PoD) at about 65 miles per hour in the left lane with the driver’s side tire. It took another 35-40 seconds to roll on the rim past the other 14 cars who had ALSO succumbed to the PoD and get the van onto the shoulder, by which time smoke was pouring out of the 3 inch square flap of rubber hanging from what had been the sidewall of the front left tire.
It’s interesting what you notice when time slows down and every second counts. As I fought the van, rim-riding my way over to the shoulder, I did a constant check of the mirrors for anything else that might be coming at us. As I watched in the rear-view, I saw a gray-green Mini Cooper vanish into the PoD, lights-first and whole cloth. I guess we were lucky.
Having never needed to access the spare tire before, I proceeded the only way I could imagine – move all the things on top of it to be, instead, on top of the three lunatic children, who were remarkably calm given the sheer volume of things being piled on them. I fought my way to the nut that opens the hatch that holds the tire, and commenced unscrewing the nut. After spinning for a few minutes, I realized that it was just spinning, not screwing – we were screwed, it must be stripped. (I’d’ve rather had that the other way around, even in the rain.) I walked 14 cars back to talk to the guy with the tow truck, to see if he carried spare tires around with him. No. I walked back up the 14 cars to mine, where I noticed a full-sized spare tire under my car, where my screwing had lowered it.
At that moment, even my hat believed in Santa Claus.
I spoke not a word, but went straight to my work! I jacked up the van and it rose with a jerk. More rapid than eagles I changed out that tire, though the strain was enough that I thought I’d expire. I was covered in muck from my head to my foot, and my clothes were all tarnished with oil and soot, but laying my finger aside of my nose, I yelled, “Christmas is ON!” and up the highway we rose.
The road crews were on site paving over the Mini Cooper before we left. I hope they got the people out of the car first – speaks volumes for the sunroof as a safety feature.
And so it came to pass in those days that the Family of the BUMD arrived in Bethlehem, albeit the one in Pennsylvania. We saw wonderful family and had another Christmas Dinner that couldn’t be beat, which had of course been preceded by the obligatory 20-minute orgy of destruction and wrapping paper.
We decided to leave around 2 pm, by which SOBUMD meant “immediately following breakfast,” which proves that women are right about everything. This is proved by the fact that, had we left at 2pm, we would likely not be home yet. As it was, she noticed while gassing up the vehicle, that the driver’s side REAR tire, which had also known the joys of the PoD, had a bulge the size of an ostrich in the sidewall. Not an ostrich egg, a whole ostrich. That we made it all the way up the highway is proof of the TMC™, but I wasn’t going to rely on the TMC™ to get us home. I drove as if on eggshells (ok, ostrich-egg shells, if you must) to the nearest Sears, where George and Allen were happy to help us pick out four new tires and put them on.
The three lunatic children were again remarkably well mannered, I think because we took them out of the car before piling things on top of them this time. We got the car back in a mechanic’s hour, by which I mean three hours, and drove straight to the McDonald’s drive through. The three lunatic children wanted happy meals, I wanted some nuggets, and SOBUMD wanted the car to stop billowing smoke out of the front. We got some food and went back to Allen, who was happy to put the lid back on the coolant container and announce that it was just coolant and water burning off, and didn’t it smell nice? We let him sniff it for a few minutes until it stopped billowing, then continued the drive home.
Were you aware that the combined High School Musical soundtracks have a total of 36 songs and can be played back-to-back-to-back in only 2 hours, 7 minutes, and 28 seconds? No? That’s what got us to Delaware. Grit, determination, and duct tape got us to Maryland, where Number One Son politely waited until we were almost to the rest stop to puke. It was only the TMC™ that got us the rest of the way home, a mere nine hours after we’d left.
From there – the Race To New Year!
There is no joy like the joy of working between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, because between the people who have scheduled vacations, the people who have decided to take vacations at the last minute, the people who really were planning on coming in but something came up, and the people who are just too hung over to make it in today, the office is basically a full on dance party, except with better parking. And so, arming myself with the above answer to the inevitable “how was Christmas” question, I went to work the following morning.
Being in dance party mode, the idea that I could meet SOBUMD, the three lunatic children, and my father for lunch at the local pizza chain and still be back to the office in time for a 2pm pick-up meeting we’d scheduled in the hallway didn’t seem out of the ordinary. Included in this lunch outing was to be a trip to “Grandpa’s Office To See The Man-Eating Fern.”
The local pizza chain being local, we all met there with our respective cars, and had a dance party lunch that couldn’t be beat – or so we thought. Near the end of the lunch, the 11-yr-old Human Tape Recorder excused herself to the restroom, where she would still be to this day had SOBUMD not gone in after her 10 minutes later. Meanwhile, Grandpa, the Queen of Pink, Number One Son, and myself have paid and processed out, and wait calmly in the lobby until SOBUMD calls from the can to tell us to proceed with them – the eldest is screaming on her hands and knees, and in no shape to leave the comfort of the stall.
What follows is a montage of cold walks, quick car rides, man-eating ferns (only one victim was ever known to survive), and increasingly hysterical updates from the can-phone. The determination was made to leave the younger two of the three lunatic children with Grandpa for a few moments while I went to the stall for a first-hand assessment. This plan was executed with near-military precision, Grandpa having been a Colonel and Number One Son having noticed the proximity of a “Game-Stop” store. As I headed stall-ward, they headed store-ward, Number One Son having explained to Grandpa that he was the proud owner of a gift card good at the Game Stop.
Number One Son, of course, was blissfully unconcerned about the state of his older sister and the state of said gift card, which was of course safe and warm in his room, rather than on his person. Crazy means not having to sweat the details.
Arriving at the stall, the hat was enough to grant even the ugliest of BUMDs access to the ladies room. What followed was a hasty conference:
SOBUMD: I don’t know what to do with her.
BUMD: I don’t know what to do with her either.
HTR: Aaaaaahg!
Pizza Joint Manger: I call ambulance now?
Us: Um, sure.
I used the can-phone to let the dance party in the office know that I was going to miss the 2pm pick-up meeting, then went back to Grandpa and the Increasingly Expensive Children. It is an unwritten law of nature that the longer you keep someone under the age of 10 in a videogame store, the more it will cost you to leave. By dint of a balanced combination of reminders about the TMC™, threats concerning the man-eating fern (seeing IS believing!), and moderate capitulation, we were able to remove them from the store for less than the price of lunch.
With the impending ambulance, we were about to have too many children, too many cars, and not enough adults. The Grandpa, being wonderful and clever, solved one of the problems in a trice by declaring that he would simply take the younger two of the three lunatic children with him to his house, right then, and executed this plan with, again, near-military precision. This left SOBUMD and the HTR in the ambulance and me following in my car. Removing the HTR from the stall was a study in human behavior; there is nothing like the removal of a fellow diner by paramedics, into a waiting ambulance, to get people to say “Check please.”
I will digress for a moment to mention that both the staff of the pizza joint (it was an Uno’s) and the paramedics were courteous, professional, and helpful – not easy in the face of a moaning 11-yr-old girl.
At the local Emergency Room, for those of you counting at home, we now had two drivers and one car, the other car maintaining its position next to the pizza joint. While the local bonestaff wheeled the HTR in for X-rays, I called the dance party to coordinate with the Best Boss Ever. The BBE drove up to the ER, met me there in the Shared Infection Area, and drove me back to the remaining car at the pizza joint. By the time I got back to the ER, the bonestaff had decided that the HTR probably had a mild stomach virus on top of being completely “blocked” – which turns out to be a nice way of saying that she was full of shit.
For this, we needed an X-ray? I could have told them that. Along with some medicines to move things along, we moved out of there, the ladies in their car and I in mine. I followed them home long enough to change clothes, then went back out into the night to pick up some Magic Movement Medicine along with the younger two of the three lunatic children, still hanging with Grandpa and Grandma. Number One Son wanted to go home before I had my coat off, the Queen of Pink wanted to stay through 2010, and the wonderful and clever grandparents were highly amused. We should note here that Number One Son has been known to mention to people that he’d like to go home, even when sitting in his own living room. As noted, crazy means not having to sweat the details.
I got the younger two of the three lunatic children home with the new medicine and noticed that we still had two days to go in 2009.
There being no joy etc., I went back to the dance party the next day, armed now with a story about pizzas and ambulances, which I related to all and sundry. During this time, a consensus was building concerning the disposition of New Year’s Eve; usually we retire to “Grandma and Grandpa’s house in the Woods” in West Virginia, along with said grandparents, the Aunt, and Her Boyfriend. In this case, however, a perfect storm was brewing: The Grandma had a cold and couldn’t talk, the Aunt had twisted her ankle walking across her own bedroom, of course the HTR was tethered to the can, and the weather outside was frightful, with a call for freezing rain Thursday morning. Discretion being the better part of valor, we agreed to meet the New Year in our respective houses. This decision was no sooner made than another pick-up meeting was scheduled for the dance party on New Year’s Eve, freezing rain notwithstanding. Since I wasn’t going to West Virginia, there was no reason to decline, so I didn’t. Donning a coat and tie on a freezing morning in the rain seemed a fitting end to the whole of 2009.
Happiness was seeing this past year in my rear-view mirror as I returned that afternoon from the dance party of my office, to have a New Year’s Eve Dinner that couldn’t be beat, stay up to watch the ball drop, and call MY grandmother, the Queen Mother of Pink, to yell Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit and hang up on the stroke of midnight. It never works; she always yells it first because she knows it’s me.
I was under strict orders from the HTR to wake her up for midnight so she could have a thimble of Champagne and watch the ball drop. As usual, she was unrousable, so I turned off her light and closed her door. Noticing the lights on for Number One Son, I found him awake and reading a book. “Would you like to come downstairs with me and mommy and watch the ball drop and midnight and have a thimble of Champagne for New Years?”
“Well, sure, OK.”
With that kind of enthusiasm, the new year HAD to be better than the last, right? We poured him a thimble of a Champagne, listened to the animatronic head of Dick Clark, and watched the ball drop. Number One Son was uninterested in the bubbly and disappointed in the proceedings: “When do they detonate it?” He’d thought I’d said “watch the bomb drop.” He would never have left his bed for a ball, new year or no.
The wonderful and clever grandparents came to our house for a New Year’s Day dinner that couldn’t be beat, and everyone went home safe and happy, even Number One Son.
The Big Ugly Man Doll is back, with wishes for the kind of 2010 that makes you say “Huh?” at least once or twice a week.