I just read this article and now I can’t feed my kids crackers without experiencing crippling guilt. Apparently, “everything we know about obesity and heart disease is wrong.” It feels like we hear that every four months. Medicine has more controversial paradigm shifts than Facebook. It’s frustrating at first, then everyone adjusts, only to have it change again. Eventually, we give up and eat Geno’s Pizza Rolls while staring at our timeline and wondering what day it is.

Because being a hypochondriac comes with an honorary medical degree, I’ll summarize the argument for you. Heart disease is caused predominantly by inflammation of the arteries, not saturated fat and cholesterol as previously preached by everyone ever. What causes inflammation? Oh, basically everything my kids eat.

Apparently, humans aren’t supposed to ingest anything processed. I kind of knew that, but chose to feign ignorance. When we eat foods that didn’t exist in the era of dinosaurs, our bodies become confused, and release squid ink or start cannibalizing themselves or something (I’m paraphrasing).

Here’s an impression of my brain while reading the article. “Insulin, diabetes, cells, blood, sugar, death, blah, confused, insecure, hungry, cookies, jellybeans.”

Lindsay and I discussed it last night, and realized that switching our kids to a “paleolithic diet”, one that’s devoid of processed sugars, grains, and complex carbohydrates, would cause them to  die of starvation far before they developed any inflammation.

I think this is what we’re expected to do. Here’s the scene: Our kids are outside running around, and to make sure they don’t pass out, Lindsay and I supply coconut water and fish. “Guys, it’s snack time! Come on over here and nibble off this giant slab of trout.” That might work if my children were bear cubs, but since they’re human, and fully adjusted to inhaling round puffy things that come in crinkly bags, throwing a fish at them like we’re rewarding a show penguin, isn’t going to fly.

We’re already decently health conscious. We buy all whole-grain snacks, and avoid high fructose corn syrup. Our mac and cheese comes from Whole Foods or Trader Joes. We aren’t feeding them “grape drink” and Cheetos, but we also aren’t encouraging them to forage the local brush for nutrient rich berries. When one of them comes in and says they’re hungry, am I really supposed to hand them a cucumber and expect not to get hit with it? “Oh you’re super hungry? Well, can you hang on while I sharpen a knife and slice off a chunk of raw veal? Sorry buddy, it’s either that or beet skins. You know the rules.” I think instead, I’ll just open a box of something decently healthy, give them a handful, and smile as they go back outside all fueled-up and happy.

You also can’t seriously try to take away sugar. That magical dust that dries up tears? How are we supposed to pass down our legacy of emotional eating if we can’t train our children by giving them lollipops when they’re unhappy? I’m kidding, even though we really do that.

Baby steps, right? For lunch we’ll all have penne with butter, but for dinner we’ll bust out the grilled otter and cauliflower leaves. Actually, I think we’ll just stop buying cookies (I eat most of them anyway.)

I remember watching globs of slimy things under the microscope in high school. A big glob sort of clumsily chased a smaller one. I think they were amoebas or cells or something. I got a D in biology that year. It’s how a 5 year-old’s soccer game must look from 10,000 feet: A jiggling mass, awkwardly chasing its round prey.

Despite being a little too young for the 5-6 soccer league, Silas was eager to join. He seemed to muster some amount of amusement from the practices, but lasted only a brave 20 minutes in the first game before becoming discouraged and claustrophobic enough that he’ll likely never kick anything again. ”I don’t know what’s happening, and everyone is bumping into me,” he said. From what I could see, his assessment was entirely accurate. It looked like rush hour on the Tokyo subway.

We tried to take him back this week, “just to watch,” but despite it being 85 degrees, he hid under my sweatshirt and watched a movie on Lindsay’s phone. I felt like we’d forced a POW to re-visit the jungle shack he’d called home for 5 years. I lifted up his makeshift security blanket every few minutes to blow some fresh air on him. He was sweaty, but adequately shielded from the source of his emotional malaise.

Sitting on our blanket at the sidelines, watching Silas’ ex team, it became clear to me that the theater of kid sports isn’t for the kids; they just run around kicking wildly until someone falls down . This production is for the fathers, many of whom are in need of a clear way to express their paternal support in a masculine way.

This particular game on Saturday featured an English referee and Scottish coach. I had no idea my community was home to so many of the Queen’s people. I think they hide until someone says soccer, then they rip off their regular clothes to expose a superhero football costume. If you tell them to calm down, they turn red, break a pint glass over your head and start chanting.

The Scottish coach yelled at his team, “Someone cover the striker!” He seemed flabbergasted when none of the 4 year-old kids covered the striker. Even the opposing “striker” looked over as if to ask, “Am I the striker?” He frequently barked, “Create space everyone!” and then made dramatic physical gestures of frustration when the players didn’t immediately break into a 3-5-4 Arsenal defense. Kids would often walk off the field to get a drink or hug their moms. To the coach, this created an opportunity to really put the pressure on. “They’re short a player, attack attack.”  I was waiting for him to turn to me and gently say, “You know, in Scotland, kids play soccer inside the womb.”

It all became ridiculous enough that I said sarcastically, and unfortunately loudly enough for more than just my wife to hear, “Wow, it’s almost like this matters.” A few people stared at me blankly for a moment.

One of the dads was lying on his side in what I like to call the Playgirl pose (one leg straight, and the other bent at the knee for full penile exposure.) He was wearing khaki shorts, a polo shirt, and a PGA hat. He never looked up from his Blackberry, but still yelled out generic encouragement. His kid could have walked off into the woods to play with a badger, and he still would have been yelling, “That’s my boy! Score or something, or whatever!”

Meanwhile, in stark relief to the coach and the BBD (BlackBerry dad), I was rolling my eyes, and occasionally checking that my kid didn’t get heatstroke in his poorly ventilated cotton tent. A few times, I lifted the flap to checked on him without even looking away from my iPhone. I wanted to see how many “likes” I was getting on my article in support of extended breast feeding.  My advice? Stop resisting, and let fatherhood emasculate you. Trust me, it’s the easiest way to be dad enough.

There are too many issues related to the recent Time Magazine cover for me to address them all. Is the photo incendiary? Yes. Did the boy have a choice about whether to be in the photo? Probably, but I doubt he understood it. Do kids really stand on chairs to nurse? Who cares, but I kind of hope so, because it’s hilarious. Are you a bad mother if you don’t breast feed your child? No. Is attachment parenting better than other kinds of parenting? No, it’s just different. Will I buy Time Magazine? No, I will steal it. Do I enjoy breasts? Yes. Do I like heavy metal music? You bet. Does that have anything to do with anything? No it does not.

I was breastfed as a baby. Honestly, I feel squirmy even typing “breast.”  Twelve years after I stopped nursing, breasts became boobs, and then in high school they became tits (and a plethora of other names), and now, as a husband and father, they’re back to breasts. I’ve come full circle. I see them as a means of nourishing children, and as sexual objects. I’m not sure how I feel about that. The fact that I sexualize the one piece of female anatomy from which I once fed, makes me feel grotesquely simple.  I think that feeling is at the heart of why people are uncomfortable with the recent image on the cover of Time Magazine.

There are plenty of reasons people have strong knee-jerk reactions to seeing a 3 or 4-year-old boy sucking on his mother’s breast, the most prominent of them is a general feeling that it’s “wrong” or “weird.” When you ask someone what they mean by that, their most common answer is, “Well, it just doesn’t seem right.”

Think about how you might feel if, instead of a boy, the cover showed that same mother breast feeding a 3-year-old girl standing on a chair. It’s different, isn’t it? The sensationalization of the photo isn’t only based in its ridiculous composition, but also on the gender of the child. If you haven’t already, consider the possibility that one of the reasons people find the idea so unsettling is because a boy of that age sucking on his mother’s breast looks and feels sexual.

I understand that we don’t often see pictures of “big kids” nursing.  I even do a joke in my stand-up that children should stop breast feeding when they start wearing shoes and jeans. Watching my child nurse while in his halloween costume was surreal. My wife feeding what appeared to be a limp Bob the Builder puppet was funny, sweet, and yes a little weird, but not gross or wrong. And it certainly wasn’t even remotely sexual. We aren’t really sexual beings until after puberty (don’t get all Freud on me here). And no, I’m not saying that kids should be allowed to nurse until they sprout an underarm hair. I’m simply pointing out that if you feel the photograph is vaguely sexual — and I think many do, whether they’re willing to admit it or not — you’re dead wrong. If you extract the misguided sense that the kid is old enough to enjoy a breast as if it were a boob, suddenly all those unexplainable feelings about it being wrong or gross, float out into the ether where they belong.

Any age we might come up with as a cutoff for breast feeding is completely arbitrary. Should a kid drive a Camaro to his mom’s house to nurse? Of course not. But should a child be weaned merely because it can walk, talk, eat solids, or change the wallpaper on your iPhone? The gut reaction is yes, but why? Is it because, as a culture, we associate sexual maturity with appearance? If the boy in the photo had been naked except for a diaper, would it have generated the same reaction? How about a tuxedo? Boxers and a wife beater? How about if he was wearing a top hat and a monocle? A fake beard? Holding a gun? Smoking a cigar? What if he was naked and had an erection? The last one is harder to read than the others, isn’t it? That’s odd, given it’s the only one of them that’s natural (and no, erections aren’t always sexual).

Let’s remember that the child is 3. Don’t forget how litte 3 year olds are. It’s why the photographer had him stand on a chair. Otherwise, he’d be sucking his mother’s knee. And that, of course, would be funny and silly, and totally ok, because the knee isn’t something that becomes a sexual object later in the boy’s life. But but but, maybe if he sucks on his mom’s knee, he’ll develop some kinky attraction to knees, and one of his girlfriends might publish a story in Cosmo called “The Knee Sucker.” oh my God, the horror.

It’s puritanical, and all based on highly subjective feelings. There are simply no facts (that I’m aware of) that show nursing after a certain age is bad for a kid.  Since it’s such a personal thing, maybe we should just leave it up to the mother and child to decide what’s best. Women are already fighting enough battles over what they’re allowed to do with their bodies. Let’s not add another one.

It’s easy, and sort of fun, to pretend like fake poop is real — for about a day.  It’s been months now, and both of my kids still put it on my leg or head, and expect me to act like I think it’s real. My “Ewwwwww, poop!” reaction has gone from being mildly convincing to having all the enthusiasm of a Walgreens employee asking someone if they want a rewards card. I’m close to making a sign that reads “What? Oh yea … ewwwwww, poop” that I can hold up while not even turning my head away from my morning toast.

A few nights ago, during what I can only assume was a mild stroke, Lindsay said,  ”Silas, you could bring your fake poop to show & tell at school!” It was, of course, the best idea he’d every heard. As they basked in a moment of shared excitement about this terrible plan, I stared, confused, waiting for one of them to tell me they were kidding. Lindsay assured me that she honestly believed Silas’ plastic pile of feces would be a hit. She even questioned my sense of fun for thinking otherwise, “Oh, come on. Everyone will totally think that’s funny.”

I tried to explain to them that show & tell is about bringing something to school that you’re proud of — an item that represents your home life and means something special to you. Bringing fake poop tells everyone that your mom and dad sit around on inflatable chairs watching arena football in matching Beavis shirts while you eat cat food with your hands. I remember being horrified when a kid in my elementary school brought an iguana for show & tell, and you know what? I later found out that his parents were drug dealers, so this opinion isn’t fueled only by social paranoia.

Silas’ pre-school isn’t some crunchy kiddo get-together taught by a soft-spoken man named “Brand” who might get “super psyched” about Silas’ special dung replica and spend 5 minutes teaching the youngsters about the miracle of digestion. His school is in a church (though not religious) and has two female teachers in their 50′s who have to look after 22 maniac kids, each of whom would be bouncing off the walls if Silas brought fake shit to school. The energy created by that many 4 year-olds seeing plastic poop for the first time would undoubtedly fuel a classroom riot.

I imagine his poor teachers yelling “Everyone, stop throwing Silas’ poop! He brought it from home and it’s special to him because it was a gift from his father! Jesse and Christopher, give Silas’ poop back to him right now!”

I better stop fantasizing about this before I become so enamored with the idea of it actually happening that I change my mind, and let him bring it.

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.

It’s not that she’s particularly attached to this specific ramekin. In fact, she suffers from an undiagnosed psychological disorder that causes her intense mental discomfort if she touches unglazed pottery (a hundred times worse than fingernails on a chalkboard, she says.) That should have made the ramekin’s demise a nonevent,  but unfortunately, her manic fear of broken glass trumps her aversion to kiln-fired clay.

Even the faintest sound of a dish mishap sets her off. ”What was that? Did something break?  NO ONE MOVE!”  Our kids stop, frozen in place, if only to witness  their mother’s werewolf-like transformation from fun-loving delight, to grizzled homicide detective. When arriving on the scene, she’ll often ask, “So, what am I looking at here? Do we have an approximate shatter radius?” She seals off the perimeter and starts barking orders,  ”Jason, you get the vacuum and broom. Silas, I need 4 paper towels, a dustpan, tweezers, and two tubes of cherry Chapstick, and I DON’T HAVE TIME TO TELL YOU WHY!”

Apparently, as a teenager, she’d heard an urban myth about a young man who ingested a small bit of glass and suffered severe lacerations to his intestines. I suspect she was on acid, sitting around a campfire with friends, when she heard this ghost story, because it’s weaved into her psyche tighter than her memory of being attacked by a muskrat (true). Now, 25 years later, she’s mortified that a similar injury will happen to one of our children (glass, not muskrat).

I try to explain to her that, not only is it exceedingly difficult to accidentally eat glass, but also, if swallowing a little bit of it really did that much damage, people would be dropping dead all over the place and glass possession would be a felony. She thought I was being naive and reminded me that there’s a good reason glass is called “the silent killer.” (It’s not)

There’s really nothing I can say to calm her.

“I vacuumed the entire downstairs, mopped and waxed the floors, washed all our clothes and shaved the children, so we should be all set.”

“Ummmmmm, hardly. What about the closets and the steps? Did you vacuum the inside of the CLOSETS!??!?? Plus, there are still probably tiny particles floating in the air. I can totally smell glass in the air.”

The good thing about all this is I know that if I’m ever having a heart attack, all I have to do is throw a mug against the wall and she’ll come running.

I never had a sibling so I can’t speak from experience, but I’ve heard enough stories to know that brothers do heinous things to each other. Most of them revolve around an older brother forcing a younger one to do something disgusting: drink spit, eat the contents of an ashtray, or allow for his mouth to be farted upon (“farted upon” is so grotesquely proper). I guess that’s just how boys express love. I’m sure my sons will do similarly hilarious things that I’ll laugh about with them when their mom’s not in the room. All that’s probably a decade away though, and who knows whether I’ll still think “hostage farts” are funny when I’m 50. I certainly hope I will.

At 2 and 4 years-old neither of them is wicked enough to force the other into a situation where they might contract E-coli. All they can do now is annoy the shit out of each other. Arlo is a little too young to play with Silas and Silas isn’t quite old enough to understand that playing with Arlo requires patience, a high pain threshold and a flexible definition of ownership.

Arlo wants to play with Silas, badly. Unfortunately, he communicates that desire by drawing on him or putting his foot in his food. I try to explain to Silas  that Arlo only does these things because he wants  to “play”, but eventually feel as if I’m explaining to a 12 year-old girl why all the boys pull her hair. I guess because young people don’t know how to ask for things or express themselves directly, they just abuse each other in hopes that, by some stroke of social magic, their message of peace and togetherness will shine through.

My boys play together sometimes, but it’s usually centered on one of them chasing the other, and ends quickly and abruptly when one snags their sock on a nail, or breaks a mysterious rule that was made up on the spot. We try to encourage them to do more things together, but that, of course, only makes things weird for everyone. “Why don’t you guys go outside and play soccer together!?!?!?!” is met with confused stares from both of them that say, “Have you not been paying attention AT ALL?”

Maybe if we were bad parents and left them alone in the house while we went to the bar, they would be forced to grow closer. Unfortunately, we have to consider the legal ramifications of such a controversial experiment.

My 2 year-old has soft teeth. Not suede-coated or malleable, just a little soft… for teeth. He can still chew, smile, and inflict puncture wounds on his parents. In those ways he’s normal — just a perfectly normal tyke who’s a little more prone to cavities, but can still enjoy a fist full of Cheerios with a forearm chaser.

Sure, we do that whole tooth brushing nonsense, and he fights it despite how much we try to turn it into a dance party by using a talking DJ Lance toothbrush. Inevitably, though, my wife ends up force-brushing our kid’s teeth. He’ll probably grow-up to have the opposite of an oral fixation, whatever that is. At least he won’t be a smoker.

Out first attempt to “get the owies out of his mouth” was a miserable failure of over-confidence . You can read about that here.  It took me three months to build up enough mental energy to try again. I figured after the first calamity, my boy’s ample defenses would be triggered by any word starting with “den.” I was right. He hated the idea of going back. Pathetically, he tried to convince me his teeth were fine. “Eeee… no owies! Eee?” “E” stands for “See.” That chant was the soundtrack of our drive to the appointment. Just the two of us jamming to “E, no owies… E, E, no owies,” in a  rhythm identical to the “be aggressive, be be aggressive” song of the 1988 Delaware Hayes Pacers cheerleading squad.

Fish tanks, various rideable plastic trucks, and standing cardboard cut-outs of Disney characters occupied the waiting room. Arlo told them all emphatically that the owies in his mouth were gone, but Goofy just stared at him and kept smiling. I told Minnie about the earthquake in Haiti, and she smiled at that too. Does nothing upset cardboard?

After 10 minutes of unsuccessful distraction, they called for Arlo. It’s cute, and completely ridiculous that they call the kid’s name, as if he’s there by himself of his own volition. We were guided back to a room to meet with the magical pediatric dentist, Dr. Howie. Dr. Howie is an ex deadhead (and perhaps current deadhead) who uses some mysterious Vulcan mind-grip to disarm any  fear in his young patients. The precise mechanism by which this works is unclear, but I’m sure  his small cherubic face, and confident, yet playful demeanor could convince a feral cat to get on a ferris wheel.

He had two cavities in need of a “drill and fill,” as Dr. Howie cheerfully referred to it. He let Arlo hold all the “super cool” instruments, and reminded him of the tokens he would get to use in the toy machine afterwards.  I could see the fear in my little boy’s eyes, and even some tears, but he didn’t cry or resist. He had summoned a stoicism that put even his nervous father at ease.

I sat knee to knee with Dr. Howie, which was, admittedly, just the right amount of dude intimacy I needed at that moment. We laid Arlo on his back with his head on Howie’s lap and the rest of his body on mine. He affixed a giant blue dental tent that covered nearly all of Arlo’s face, except for one tooth and his eyes. Because I though the colorful medieval torture device might freak-out my boy, I began singing the ABC’s to keep him calm.  Since it appeared to be working, Dr. Howie joined in, as did the hygienist, and then some random lady who might not have even worked there. We all sang it, joyfully, over and over again. Eventually, I realized the song was being used more as a distraction for the uneasy  grown-ups than for easing the shifty-eyed, wide-mouthed toddler

When it was over, I said to Arlo, “All done!” He seemed surprised, and began chanting, “All done, all done.” I imagine he felt like I did on the last day of high school. As you might imagine,”All done, all done, all all all done” was the soundtrack to our drive home.

It’s been a few months, and he still refers to Dr. Howie. I don’t know if it’s  because the traumatic experience was burned into his brain forever, or if he just misses that magical hippy man.

Now it’s my turn to visit the dentist, and I kind of wish Dr. Howie saw adult patients.

A few months ago, I found myself in the VIP area backstage at The Jimmy Kimmel Show. If you need to know what that’s like, imagine a room full of people pretending not to care that Huey Lewis is casually hanging out with them.

I don’t think anyone of my generation is necessarily happy that so much Huey Lewis and The News music infested their brains like a virus in the 80′s. But it’s there now, forever, and being in the vicinity of the man who manufactured that neurotoxin called “I Need a New Drug,” is comforting and familiar, like drinking Busch Light on a porch swing while your parents are out of town.

Apparently, life is not about being comfortable or safe. The security guards announced that we were all invited to the theater to watch the band for that evening’s show, “Die Antwoord.” The stage had two turntables, manned by a DJ  in a red leisure suit wearing what appeared to be an albino gorilla mask. It’s also possible that his face was simply covered in dozens of heinous scars. I wasn’t close enough to tell.

He was joined by another terrifying man wearing an identical red suit who looked emaciated and redneck-y enough that he might pull out a gun at any moment. He moved around the stage aggressively, and in a style I can only describe as “Meth-Mouth Karate Dance Machine.” Needing a little security, I quickly scanned the room for Huey — nothing. I was totally alone.

These two red nightmares were joined by a very strange and tiny person dressed in a gold hooded track suit with white hair, and black eyeballs. I briefly considered the possibility that it might be a 10-year-old boy with Progeria (advanced aging disease), the bizarreness of which set off my flight instinct. What kind of evil maniacs would abduct a sick child and force it to front their band?

On top of the DJ’s chest thumping beat, the miniature golden being began chanting, “I fink you’re freaky and I like you a lot.” Its unblinking soul-less eyes gazed flatly into the slack-jawed crowd. I was frozen, and  paranoid that I’d been summoned to a human sacrifice. The ritual, I thought, could begin at any moment. The music would stop. Everyone would turn to look at me as I began levitating and moving toward the stage where the ape-faced man would wield a mighty beheading sword as  the night-eyed alien sucked out my brains with the sheer force of her emptiness.

Then the beat took a strange turn and slowed significantly. It was the skinny meth ninja’s turn at the mic. He stripped off his red jacket, revealing a cadaverously pale torso smattered with homemade tattoos.  Despite my emotional discomfort,  I started to lose myself in the song. My head bobbed up and down, and though my heart was still trying to climb out of my throat, I knew it was from excitement, and not from the fear of being offered up to pagan Gods by drugged-out zombie aliens. I closed my eyes for the first time, and mouthed the chant, “I fink you’re freaky and I like you a lot.”

When I opened them, I saw that the tiny being had removed its golden suit, revealing itself to be a disturbingly attractive miniature woman.  With the cameras off, they did one more song, just for the studio audience.

I returned home that evening in a daze and unable to explain what I’d seen. I found some Die Antwoord clips on YouTube and played them for Lindsay. We played them over and over again. And then we played them some more. We stayed up late, searching for more and more clips. We haven’t stopped listening to Die Antwoord for 3 months. Silas and Arlo walk around singing, “I fink you’re freaky and I like you a lot”, which is not at all appropriate for a young child.

When you’re first exposed to a new drug, your response is fear, and that fear stays with you even after the first time you try it. Then you slowly come around, and before you know it you’re addicted. I encourage you to watch this video …  then watch it again … and then watch it a third time … then check yourself into rehab.

You’re welcome, and I’m sorry. I’m also sending this message via the postal service to Huey Lewis (he doesn’t use computers).

I think one of my son’s  pre-school classmates is disseminating misinformation about how to properly use the term “fair”. It would seem this child’s dangerous manifesto might read,

Comrades,

Should you be the least bit unhappy or disappointed with a situation, might I suggest saying, ‘Hey, that’s not fair.’ This concise and powerful phrase will render your parents powerless, and free your shackled happiness, allowing you to have everything your heart desires and win any contest you enter.

One of the most unfair things I can do is score a goal against my kid in soccer. I try hard to let him win, but sometimes  he’s busy gazing at a bird and the ball just rolls slowly through his legs. He says, “Hey, that’s not fair!” and when I say, “Hmm, so it’s only fair if you score a goal on me?” he becomes defensive and confused, like a Creationist who’s been confronted with data.

He also considers it unfair if I find him too quickly in a game of hide and seek. Well kid, when you’re hiding on top of the dining room table and we accidentally make eye contact, it’s kind of hard for either of us to pretend like I don’t know where you are. What wouldn’t be fair is if I let you think that hopping on a table and placing a small leaf on your back is acceptable camouflage.

I’m not the kind of dad who’s going to show him how to trap and skin a raccoon,  but I do feel a  duty to teach him the proper way to hide from the authorities. I mean, what if he’s wrongly accused of a crime and when the police knock on his door,  he simply stands behind a fern? That’s all on me, and those cops will laugh and say, “What have we here? Looks like someone had an overly supportive hide and seek partner as a kid. Cuff him.”

Life isn’t fair. That’s how I want to answer him, but he’s too young to accept that the universe is in a constant state of entropy and unexplainably ridiculous things happen all the time. For instance,  the show “Reba” was on the air for six seasons, and as much as I want to say, “That’s not fair,” my emails to the head of programming at The WB keep getting bounced back.

I guess it’s time for me to teach him the correct phrase for expressing these types of frustration: This is bullshit.

Non drinkers need to stop hiding behind NA beers disguised as regular beers. Here are a few suggestions for some more honest options. I know I would drink them with pride.

1. Visitation Amber — What do you want more? Alcohol or weekends with your kids?

2. Colt 86 — Keep the malt. Eighty-six the liquor.

3. Let it Go — Face it,  booze was never going to make your father come home.

4. Coors Clear — Tap the Rockies, not the babysitter.

5. Lead Foot Lager — You can totally drink me in your car!

6. PGA Lite — Hey Steve, haven’t you broken enough putters?

7. Parole Porter — Yes, your cousin is a total dick, but it’s not worth going back to jail over.

8. Trust — Isn’t it time you had your wife’s?

9. NotBud — All the taste, none of the fun …. I mean REGRETS. Seriously, I really did mean regrets.

I woke up this morning unable to turn my head to the right. With the exception of mandatory prostate exams, nothing says “Hey world, I’m 40!” more than turning your entire torso in situations where a simple neck twist would suffice.

If you’re a high school football player or young rodeo star who can’t move his neck, there’s a certain badge of courage there: you survived a tough hit, or were thrown from an ornery bronco. It’s not only youthful, it’s masculine. You were engaged in an activity that tested the limits of your body, and although you failed, at least you were attempting to be awesome. There’s integrity and honor in that. In other words, making a clockwise turn at the hips to address a woman next to you in line at Target might be somewhat sexy if you’re 19 and wearing a cowboy hat, but at 40 it simply indicates that you should consider stretching before reaching for things.

That’s how I did it — at least I think that’s how (strike one — cause of injury unclear). I was in bed  on my stomach (strike two — injury occurred while lying down), and simply extended my arm to cuddle with my iPhone (strike three — an iPhone is very lightweight). That’s when a shooting pain traveled from the base of my skull to my shoulder blade. I froze, in hopes that remaining motionless for a few moments might encourage my muscles  to reconsider.  After a few minutes, I attempted to lift my head, but apparently someone had driven a railroad spike through my neck. Hurray! Today I’ll be Frankenstein, and I’m supposed to be “the helper dad” at my kid’s preschool.

Few things are more frightening to children than a 6’6″ man with limited movement. It’s a survival instinct; their monkey brains know that a beast is more dangerous when it’s injured. Of course, that’s not true of humans, but evolution is a slow process, and my condition is going to trigger these kids’ flight instincts just like an angry bleeding mastodon might have their great great great great great great grandfathers. I have to leave in 45 minutes and I have a visible IcyHot pad on my neck. Keep me in your thoughts.

He’s 2.5 years old and clearly has dreams at night. Sometimes he wakes frightened; other times he laughs in his sleep. I have no idea what he’s dreaming about, but I can guess.

1. He’s stuffing his diaper with a dozen iPhones.
2. He’s on a sinking raft in a bathtub full of melted cheese.
3. He goes out into the backyard where he sees someone on his favorite swing. He knows it’s his brother but he looks like his grandfather. He yells, “BooBoo,” but his grandfather says, “No, I’m Silas. Your brother.” Then the grass opens up and swallows him.
4. He makes friends with a hilarious chicken.
5. His bed is a giant iPad.
6. He’s  in a play but doesn’t know his lines. (I’m just assuming everyone has this dream)
7. We live inside a Whole Foods, but only half of it looks like Whole Foods. The other half is an Apple Store that has a river running through it with giant floating red buttons made of marshmallows that you can ride on and eat.
8. He’s driving a car while screaming, “I’m totally driving this car!”
9. He’s peeing in the cats’ litter box. (He made this dream into a reality not too long ago.)
10. He’s forced to listen to a continuous loop of his mother saying “I’ll be right back.”
11. He’s naked and running down the middle of the street while people laugh at him *

*Note: This is a dream, not a nightmare.

Arlo is WAY into socks. Like it might be a problem how much he’s digging socks right now. His desires are very specific and each pair must be unique.  His go-to combination lately is a long blue one, coupled with an ankle-length red one. He then spends the rest of the day taking them off and putting them back on.

It’s the type of oddly specific, habitual behavior that gets in the way of succeeding at a job. No one can be a hopeless slave to his sock ritual AND an attentive bartender. Luckily, at 2.5 years old,  he doesn’t have any other responsibilities, and can therefore pursue his footwear proclivities free from the judgmental whispering of gossipy co-workers.

This all coincides with his obsession over where he gets dressed (we’re in a big clothes phase, apparently.) Each morning he wakes with new ideas about which article of clothing should be applied on which specific square foot of which specific room. He runs and stands in one place, then changes his mind, becoming completely confident that the new spot is THE SPOT to put on his shirt, only to suddenly decide that the small slice of floor between the subwoofer and sofa is clearly superior.

Since, as parents, we are socially obligated, if not legally required, to dress our children, one of us ends up hunched over, holding open a tiny pair of pants while chasing a naked cackling toddler. It’s comical the first ten times.

I’m afraid we’ve become the loyal but defeated servants of a madman.

“Ok, is THIS where you want to put on your pants, My Lord? I see. Ok then,  I’ll just follow you to the basement in hopes that perhaps it might be a more suitable location? Very well.

My Lord, is the basement to your liking? Shall I put on your shirt here? No? Well then, I must say, My Lord, that I am becoming increasingly frustrated with your inability to ….. I’m sorry My Lord, it is not my place to be frustrated with you.

Please stop crying. Would you like to put on your shirt in the kitchen? Oh dear, I see that due to my lack of manners, you’ve decided that you would prefer not to get dressed at all today. I’m sorry it’s come to this, My Lord. Shall I fetch you some kind of cookie?”

It was the largest beet I’d ever seen. They’re listed as “challenging” in the juicing book, which I believe is code for “NO!!!!!” After 20 minutes of prepping, washing, and liquefying pears, carrots, apples and a shrunken mummy head on which Whole Foods placed a sticker that read “beet”,  I had a half-full pitcher of purple liquid that I would clearly have to pour down my gullet at great speed — this was not the kind of juice I wanted to taste.

I drank the liter in around 15 seconds. Two pears, three apples, five carrots, and a hairy Wookie testicle. At first I experienced a disconcerting fullness, which quickly shifted to panic as my body considered eviction. I imagined a little Asian man inside my stomach shaking his fist and yelling, “No no, this too much!”

I paced around the kitchen considering whether to assist my body by purging, or to tough it out in hopes that a lease agreement might be reached.  But my brow and palms were damp, and my lips quivering. Whether it was a reaction to the nature bomb I planted in my GI tract, or pre-barf anxiety, I couldn’t tell.

Fifteen years ago, I might have been obsessively taking my pulse after mixing Jim Beam with Percocet. Now, at 40, that same panic is fueled by a fear that I’d drank too many root vegetables. How California of me.

I didn’t trust my mind or my body, so I sequestered myself in the small downstairs bathroom, where I continued to pace: one step, turn around, one step, turn around. I was a caged animal. My choices were limited, and I was tired of waiting.

I planted myself over the toilet as if preparing to peer down a well. I thought that, perhaps, the mere act of subjugating my pride might encourage my body to put a rush on its plans. But the old girl was tired, and wasn’t up to the challenge. I tried to jump-start her, but she just wasn’t interested. I knew something was going to happen, but it wasn’t to be forced. I would have to wait until she was ready, and I respected her wishes. Good things come to those who wait.

Instead of horrifying you with the details of the next thirty minutes, let me  remind you that beets are nature’s strongest dye. The Mayans first used them to color their moccasins for the spring killing season (totally made that up.) If it weren’t for google, I would have gone to the emergency room  to tell an unsympathetic doctor that I might have crapped-out my spleen.

On a positive note, if anyone wants a tie dye shirt, send me a white one knotted-up and I’d be happy to pee on it for you. Just provide return postage.

Fortunately, Lindsay and I are usually obsessed with separate things. I’ll be on a vision quest to boost our wifi signal while she compulsively searches the internet for symptoms of feline dehydration. Separate, but equal. It’s just safer that way. When our obsessions converge, like they did recently over 90′s rock posters, we enter a frightening state of mutual hypnosis. The children were screaming for food as their mom and dad swatted them away while huddled around a laptop arguing over which Built to Spill poster was cooler.

During the mid to late 90′s, Lindsay owned a rock club in Seattle called The Breakroom. It’s where we met. She was my bartender, pool foe and unwitting therapist. With both of us now over 40, and our relationship on the brink of celebrating its 14th year, we were suddenly captured by a wistfulness for the era when PJ Harvey was fueling our Pabst Blue Ribbon binges.

With the resourcefulness of broke addicts, we purchased a lithograph of every poster we could find containing a mention of The Breakroom (check out this one advertising an Elliot Smith show). After shooting all six posters into our veins, we each moved on to poster art from shows featuring our favorite bands, regardless of venue. Lindsay went upstairs to “the big computer”, while I stayed downstairs with the laptop. Meanwhile, our young boys could have escaped to get neck tattoos under a highway overpass. Who cares, mommy and daddy are busy outrunning middle age by commemorating their shared past.

We were emailing each other links of different pieces and occasionally yelling, “The Pixies one I just sent you is awesome! Can I please buy it?” Luckily, these were all prints, and topped-out at around $50, but with us each clicking around faster than a Christian mother inspecting her son’s browser history, we were poised to blow a grand in no time.

It’s still not clear how many posters we bought. The deluge of Paypal receipts in my email was too daunting to organize. We’ve received about 10 so far, and fear that more are on their way. Now we’ll just have to take out a second mortgage to get them all framed. I only request that we do this one first, because it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ll be arguing for it to be placed prominently.

My kids love to fake cry now, which is great because clearly there isn’t enough pointless weeping around here. Last night during dinner — which is really more of a floor decorating ritual  – my 2 and 4 year-old were having a fun time practicing how they might react if I took away a harmonica or collapsed the trampoline.  They would each cry, then look at each other and laugh hysterically. Lindsay joined them, and suddenly I was sitting at a table with three bi-polar maniacs.

They say families that play together stay together and  we all know that aphorisms are more likely to be true if they rhyme, so I joined in. I was determined to deliver the highest quality fake cry possible. Generally, men don’t weep very well. When we really let go, it’s a pathetic gasping and heaving that sounds more like we’re vomiting regrets than having a tender emotional moment. I have 3 speeds of sadness: not sad, slightly teary, or completely heaving. My wife has hundreds of speeds, each of which is uniquely intimidating. She was using one on the tamer end of the scale —  a harmless whimpering aimed at having a comedic effect.

I’m unable to conjure tears on command, so, having only one other sadness gear, I had no choice but to go with full-on blubbery heaving. And I nailed it. As my family was having a nice time pretending to cry and then laughing about it, I cut in with an “I just found out my girlfriend is cheating on me” wail. It was my moment to shine, and I seized the shit out of it.

I was in my own world, emotionally connected to my scene, and also slightly deafened by my own voice. While I was gasping for air, choking, and screaming “why!”, I failed to notice that everyone else had fallen silent and was staring at me. My children have never seen me sob. In fact, I’m not even certain my wife has. It’s something men do privately in their cars with a double cheese burger and biggie fries in their lap.

I had made a fun situation scary and serious, like the jackass friend who swings too hard during a pillow fight. What began as a game, quickly turned into, “What the hell is daddy doing?” After Lindsay told me to stop, I collected myself, and proudly proclaimed, “That is how I cry.” Once my children stopped quivering, and I took Lindsay’s advice to stop screaming “why?”, we all cried and laughed together.

I still feel slightly awkward, not because I over-commited to the crying game, but because our neighbors were in their yard and probably heard us…on Easter no less. There’s a brown Dodge Neon in front of our house, which I can only assume is social services. We’ll be in hiding until fall.

I’m not sure my 2 year-old son understands that gouging my eyes out will prevent me from seeing. “Don’t grab daddy’s face” only elicits a diabolical cackle until finally I cover myself like I’m trying to survive a falcon attack. I should probably get a canvas ski mask to wear during his prime striking hours of 7 to 9pm.

It’s cute that he thinks I’m indestructible, but no one likes having their mouth pried open. Are we playing, or practicing Civil War dentistry? Probably a little of both. I have to keep my mouth closed, or he’ll reach down my throat like a pelican feeding its young. Given the condition of his hands by 8pm, I may as well be getting my uvula massaged by a gloveless bridge troll.

He’s getting stronger, and heavier too, which makes his attacks all the more vicious. If I’m lying on my back, he’ll often jump up in the air, go into the tuck position, and land knees first on my stomach. I can’t remember which professional wrestler in the 80′s used that as his finishing move, but I recall him using it with great success.  Last night he caught me unprepared, and I don’t know if this is possible, but I  might have pulled my liver. I should know better than to rest in such a vulnerable position. At 6’6″ I make an all-too-tempting landing strip. I should just learn to be comfortable in a defensive Judo stance 24 hours a day.

There’s definitely some remorse when he causes an injury. He’ll give me a long sweet hug, but as soon as we break our embrace, he goes for the eyes again, like the sympathy was one big “psych.” That’s what I call dirty boxing, and I won’t tolerate it in my gym.

All of this is hilarious to him. It’s the funniest thing he’s ever done in his short life. The more I “oof” and “ack” and “Jesus Christ, get the hell off me, you spaz,” the more he’s encouraged. My involuntary expressions of malaise are his standing ovation.

Though I fear for my skin and internal organs, the kid is fuckin’ adorable. He’s my first choice for “people I would let excavate my throat,” and “if you had to pick someone to accidentally give you a spleenectomy, who would it be?” He wins both of those categories hands down. He’s my favorite abuser. Maybe I should teach him how to scratch my ears for me; because parenting is about always finding a way to say “yes.” Or maybe not, I clearly have no idea.

My wife’s suspicion of technology has expanded to include GPS. It’s in her DNA; my mother in law recently emailed us an article about people getting dumber because of navigation systems. To paraphrase: maps are great and anything with a battery is full of demonic trickery aimed at turning humans against nature, truth, family, spirit and wholesomeness.

Their public skepticism of technology  is a smokescreen used to distract family and friends from the indefensible reality that they trust themselves more than a computer.

That’s the principal difference between my wife and me, and it’s the foundation of why our marriage works. She thinks nothing will be done right unless she does it herself, and I think the only way things can be done correctly is if I’m not involved.  She wants to be in charge and I’m desperate not to be.

But my life boss isn’t around all the time to tell me when to turn left or how not to tailgate a tractor-trailer. In those lonely and confusing times, I rely on technology to keep me alive and on schedule. As much as I appreciate her zeal for wearing the decision pants, I would find it soothing if she had even a shred of faith in satellites, algorithms, historical trends, and silicon processors that do a billion calculations every nanosecond. To me, computers are only wrong when you ask them dumb questions. My wife believes computers are wrong because she has trouble trusting anything that doesn’t cry.

I generally drive on car trips because it’s the only masculine thing I’m allowed to do anymore, save carrying luggage. Unfortunately, that permission was only granted because I’m a sissy who gets nauseous unless he’s behind the wheel.

I should be clear, I don’t make any decisions while driving. I’m more of an automaton awaiting the input of my commander. Our car has a navigation system, but the minister of travel insists on simultaneously studying google maps, which she still calls “Mapquest” to either confirm or refute the turn by turn instructions provided by the AMAZING COMPUTER in our car.

GPS: “In a quarter-mile, turn left.”

Lindsay: “You’re gonna turn left up here in a bit.”

Me: “Yea, thanks, the GPS designed by genius MIT graduates just told me the same thing.

Lindsay: “Oh, I see — it’s taking you on a different route. Not quite as direct as the one here on mapquest. That’s weird, I wonder why it did that.”

Me: “Probably a complicated algorithm based on distance, speed limits, and historical traffic patterns going back for decades.”

Lindsay: “Hmmm, seems sort of out of the way, but whatever.”

GPS: “Turn left.”

Lindsay: “Left Left Left!”

Me: “Do I turn left? Because I’m getting mixed signals here.”

At one point this winter, Lindsay was using her “mapquest” while my dad was in the backseat studying some navigation app he got for free with the purchase of his phone. All three of us were getting different directions to the same place. Pirates trying to sail to uncharted land in the 16th century had less trouble agreeing on a route.

Now, at the beginning of a trip, I force everyone to decide which GPS we’re using, and make them turn off all other “apps” and “mapquests”, like a suburban mom collecting her kid’s phones before a nice family dinner. “No texting at the table! We’re having beans and wieners!”

My only issue with my GPS is that it’s too specific. I don’t need to be told what to do every 15 feet. “Stay left, then stay left, and then take the exit right.” WHAT? oh, you’re telling me not to take the next two exits. “Get in the left lane, and then stay right.” What? You want me to stay in the right part of the left lane? Why are you micromanaging the shit out of me here, Samantha? That’s honestly her name.

“In 500 feet, merge right, then stay left.”  Thanks, Sam, you’re just as confusing as the rest of the women in my life.

Our town in New Jersey is small enough that the mayor often comes to events wearing a windbreaker. I think mayors should only be seen in suits, but understand that people want their politicians to be “folksy” these days. As a result, we had an elected official with bedhead kick-off the annual Easter egg hunt.

Egg hunt is a misleading term. A hunt suggests that the eggs are hidden (or, more accurately, fleeing a predator). No one should hunt an egg; they don’t move on their own, and are pathetically defenseless. Anyone who comes to an Easter egg hunt in full camouflage is either hilarious, or going home in a straight jacket.  I understand, though, that “egg find” doesn’t have much zing.

What we attended on Sunday was an egg pick-up. That sounds more like community service than jolly holiday fun. The outfield of a baseball diamond was covered with 400 plastic eggs, a scene, which from space, probably looked like an immense sheet of cold medicine. An army of toddlers gathered on the starting line, waiting for William Wallace to scream something about freedom. From a distance, it appeared that one of them  had a bayonet, and another a canon, but upon closer examination, they were each just holding imaginative baskets (we live in an “artistic” community).

The mayor yawned, blew his whistle, and the field  succumbed to a screaming human vacuum that cleared the eggs in less than two minutes. And that was the end; it was a snappy harvest this year. Our boys came away with around eight eggs each. Only Silas had a proper basket. Poor Arlo was forced to settle with a stretchy nylon purse of his mother’s, which I held for him by its frilly ribbon.

“Would anyone like a beautiful pastel egg from my dainty satchel? They have Tootsie Rolls in them!” Being a man is so emasculating.

The hunt was supposed to be the day’s activity. The answer to “Ugh, what the hell are we doing on Sunday?” was, “Well, there’s the egg hunt.” I’m not sure why we thought an egg pick-up would take a whole day; by 1:07pm we had nothing left to do.

Luckily, the neighbors were hosting a family reunion which we crashed. The mayor, I hope, was taking a long spring nap.

My kids are filthy this time of year. The soundtrack to late March is the spring-loaded creaking and slamming of our purple wooden screen door, smattered with shouts of “take off your shoes when you’re inside!” Instead of reapplying footwear 25 times a day, the boys eventually go barefoot, thereby commencing their seasonal transition into muddy-footed swamp children.

My youngest, Arlo (2), is particularly careless (as he should be) when it comes to appearing as if he’s a member of civilized society. He’s had a runny nose — since birth it seems — and his compulsion for wiping it with his right forearm sleeve creates a paper mache cheek pad by 2pm. Add that to his brown, paw-like feet, and we’re all simultaneously imagining a cute little fairy tale orphan.

In order to avoid a visit from social services, the formerly sporadic bathing schedule has turned into a nightly ritual, which is a bit more hands-on than I would like. My adorable offspring will only ease himself into the warm bubbly abyss if I join him. Apparently he likes being forced into a small corner of the tub while my gigantic 6’6″ frame collapses into a 4’5″ oversized sink like a fetal pig stuffed into a beaker during biology lab.

My wife wanted to come in to look, but I’d locked the door. It’s simply too pathetic looking. Picture two small boys in the tub together– very cute. Now mentally take out Silas (40 inches and 36 pounds) and add me (80 inches, 200 pounds) –not cute. In fact, it looks like a child is being held hostage by an animatronic birch tree.

Our tub isn’t even big enough for the water to fully cover me, as if the laws of physics are trying to help identify my problem areas. I try to sit up so as to cover my unmentionables with bubbles, but there seems to be a unique slope to the tub which forces my body to slide onto it’s back. I need some kind of harness that holds me in place. It’s the only time I’ve ever thought, “Wow, I’d rather be in a papasan chair right now.”

I do enjoy the time, though. Any physical discomfort is offset by the emotional wellbeing created by the tight quarters. Add Arlo’s giddiness about his giant goofy-limbed daddy being wet just like him, and the whole thing is worth it. Now, I just need to sell a project so we can put in a “family sized” tub.