I suspect that if hunger, thirst, and fatigue were perfectly mixed, I could be on fire and one of my kids might still ask me for milk. “I can’t do that right now, I’m on fire.” “But I want milk! Pleeeeasssse?” “Ok, Ok, I’ll get the milk and THEN extinguish myself.”
It makes no sense, but it’s the only way our species can survive. It’s as if my love for them was soldered onto my brain like hunger and fatigue. “Did you just try to poke my eye out? Continue…
Holy shit, DO NOT break a glass in my house. You’d get less of a reaction from my wife if you set yourself on fire. Yesterday, I dropped a small ceramic ramekin (I am not ashamed of knowing what a ramekin is) which broke into a few pieces on the kitchen counter. Lindsay dashed into the room as if she’d heard a pregnant woman was trying to move a chair, or my father was poised to drop an orange peel into the garbage disposal. Continue…
Five years ago, I could shower whenever I wanted. Nothing was stopping me from turning the dial to that bullshit “massage” setting and standing under its annoyingly weak pulse for an hour at 2pm on a Saturday.
It’s much better now that our boys are older, but when one of them was 2 and the other an infant, taking a shower was an event that had to be scheduled and announced. Specifics about its length, and the inclusion of other bathroom activities had to be communicated. Continue…
I was thirteen years old when I told airport security my dad had a gun. Had it been post 9/11, we might have missed our international flight while a powdery latex glove attached to a GED recipient searched my father’s cavities.
He’d accepted a year-long teaching position in Florence, Italy. We invited my best friend “S.P.” to come with us; an offer he accepted with a vigor that stunned his parents into providing their blessing. I understand it seems odd for a thirteen year-old to up and leave for Europe with his friend’s parents. Continue…
I peed my pants at a gymnastics training facility yesterday. I didn’t pee my pants so much as I peed into my pants. Maybe that’s not a clear enough distinction. I didn’t have my pants on when I peed into them. Well, I guess, technically, I did have them on, but they were down at my ankles. This sounds terrible. I was in the bathroom of the gymnastics facility sitting on the toilet with my pants down around my ankles. On Sundays, they turn it into a kid’s play Mecca for 2 hours. Continue…
