Big Ugly Man Doll

The newly minted 9-yr-old is not in training to be a teenager. She’s in training to be 21.

She insisted that she would take her bath without fuss, if only I would please put several ice cubes into the warm water of the tub when it was full.

“Deal,” says I. In with the water, in with the kid, in with the ice cubes, out with the innocence. For the record, it has been a very long time since I was in 3rd grade. “I take it you’re studying the different properties of water in school, how it can go from a solid to a liquid to a gas all within average temperatures found on Earth?”

“No,” says she, “I like to pretend the bathtub is a big drink, like your margarita. I’m the lime!”

This cannot be healthy. I suppose I’m just glad she doesn’t want salt.

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… To my eldest, who was a good and dutiful child even in utero. We learned early in 1998 that she was there, and that she’d be due in mid-November. The first thing I said was, oh, a Halloween baby!

The midwife induced on Oct 30, around 7 am, because it doesn’t really matter what the FATHER thinks about when babies should be born. Trust me that on the maternaty ward, all soon-to-be fathers are Big, Ugly, Man Dolls.

The baby in question, however, has a LOT to say about when the baby gets born. She held out for 21 hours, and was born around 3 AM on Halloween. To this day, my wife has never quite forgiven me.

Happy Birthday!!!

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Being of a hungry sort, and being in the vicinity of a Vietnamese soup joint (the Pho Bowl), I grabbed a co-worker, named Mr. Gu, and lit out for soup. If you haven’t known the glory that is Pho, imagine a bowl of rice noodles. Fill it with a really good beef broth, piping hot. Put in meat of your choice – my choice is uncooked thin-sliced beef, which cooks in the hot broth as you eat it. Add fresh basil, sprouts, thin-sliced hot peppers, and lime, to your liking. Now dab on some peanut-based duck sauce, and you’re eating well.

Anyway, the point of my note is not to make you hungry. (Actually, it’s to make you jealous.) Regardless of my point, if I have one, which I will neither confirm nor deny, the fact of the matter is that I like to practice my pronunciation of the terms of the Vietnamese dishes when I have this opportunity. So, when our cute young waitress came to take our orders, I told her that I wanted to try to say these things in Vietnamese, and proceeded to butcher the language while pointing at the menu like a chimp. “How’d I do?” I asked her hopefully.

I’d like to point out that this was a cute young waitress of obvious Asian decent, working in a Vietnamese restaurant.

She gave me a big smile. “Oh, I have no idea,” she said, “I was born in Korea, but I was raised Italian.”

Needless to say, Mr. Gu cracked up.

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In the continuing saga of “We’re Doomed”…

The alarm starts the radio this morning and WifeOfTheBigUglyManDoll hits snooze. The secondary alarm walks in and asks for breakfast – the Very Hungry 7-yr-Old would like two slices of leftover pizza. “Sure,” says I, and I get up and fetch his pizza while he fetches a plate. I warm it up in the nuclearwave oven, which is deliberately located 6 feet up and over the stove, so that said 7-yr-old can’t reach it. I hand it to him, he retreats to the table, and I retreat to my blankets.

I missed the next round of snooze with the alarm, but shortly thereafter the Very Hungry 7-Yr-Old returns to the side of my bed. “I’d like two more slices of pizza, please.”

“Mmm. I think maybe one more slice.”

“But I would really like two slices,” he says, as the snooze comes off and the radio grows slowly louder. “Don’t make me play classical music at you,” says I, as WifeOfTheBigUglyManDoll hits snooze again. “One slice.”

The Very Hungry 7-yr-Old climbs up on the bed next to me, looks at my head on the pillow and says, “Two slices and you get to go back to bed.”

“Deal,” says I, as WifeOfTheBigUglyManDoll falls out of bed laughing. Not like I shouldn’t have been up 20 minutes ago anyway, but he CLEARLY knows I don’t want to get up…

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We, by which I refer to myself, the BigUglyManDoll, together with my wife, the WifeOfTheBigUglyManDoll, are doomed. The reason we are doomed seems to change from day to day, but I am certain our doom is no less immanent for all that.

Today’s reason follows a conversation with Number One Daughter, the nearly nine yr old Human Tape Recorder. (Yes, I date myself, but “Human Voice Ripper and MP3 Playback Device” lacks that je ne se qua.) It went as follows:

BUMD: You need to finish your homework.
HTR: But I want to talk about something else.
BUMD: Is it related to school?
HTR: Kind of – we could talk about that “talk to your kids about sex” commercial we saw on TV the other day.
BUMD: Well, um [looks around for WifeOfTheBigUglyManDoll], sure…
HTR: I’m wondering, why did they bother running it at all?
BUMD: What???
HTR: I mean, kids talk about sex all the fucking time.
BUMD: [faceplant]
HTR: [giggles]
BUMD: Please, [looks around for WifeOfTheBigUglyManDoll], don’t use that word.
HTR: [giggles]

Doomed, I tell you. Doomed.

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