Category Archives: Parental Guidance

Parental Guidance

Fixing a Glaring Omission

While I was busy trying to immortalize the majesty of Steampipe Alley, I made another video discovery: a bunch of digital camera movies I’d totally forgotten about. All the clips were less than a minute, and came from when my daughter was only a few months old. Grasping at her toes. Shoving toys into her mouth. Flailing wildly in a vain attempt to control her limbs. All of the small triumphs of a tiny life.

Watching these moments, they felt like yesterday to me, and yet, they feel like forever ago. I felt almost crushed by the weight of time, by how much she’s grown since then, and by the realization of how quickly she’ll grow up from how big she is already.

I was also somewhat shamed to realize that I rarely talk about her on this site. And when I do, it’s usually to bitch about how hard parenting is, or to rail against some rude jerk I encountered while out in the world with her.

That’s because I try to be funny on this here site. Whether or not I succeed is another story, but that’s my intent. The sad fact is, frustration and anger are funny, while happiness isn’t. That’s why most comedians are such well-adjusted people.

Tolstoy famously said all happy families are alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I don’t think that’s entirely true. But I do think every person’s notion of happiness is so deep and profound that it becomes un-profound to the larger world. Within the universe of you, it means everything, but to everyone else, it means nothing.

That may be why I don’t write about my daughter on this site very often. Because she makes me happy in a way that defies words. Happy doesn’t do it justice. It’s the closest word there is, and it’s still light years away from what I feel. Trying to describe how she makes me feel would be like trying to describe my own brain: I’ve never seen it, and I never will see it. I just know it’s there and it makes me alive.

She makes me feel happy in a way I haven’t felt when I was a child, that feeling of pure, unadulterated joy unbroken by any worries or fears. It’s a rare feeling, especially for me. I’ve never been able to turn off my What Now alarm for too long, even when I was a kid. It is extremely difficult for me to forget about Life and have fun. But being goofy with my daughter brings me to someplace childlike and wonderful, and it happens so easily I can hardly believe it.

doitforher.pngIt kills me to drop her off at day care each morning, kiss her goodbye, and spend the whole day without her. A minute doesn’t go by that I don’t think about her, about walking in the front door and seeing her and being silly with her. Sometimes I think of myself as Homer in that one flashback Simpsons episode, when he arranges pictures of Maggie around his de-motivational plaque so that DON’T FORGET: YOU’RE HERE FOREVER reads DO IT FOR HER.

The sad fact of my life/schedule is that I see her at her worst parts of the day: early in the morning, when she fights to stay asleep (like Daddy, she is not a morning person), and at night, when she can be just as cranky. Not to mention all the stupid Life Things I have to do that get in the way of playing with her. I live for the weekends, when I get to spend hours with her and enjoy her in all her wide-eyed, curious, and crazed glory.

I could recount a million little things she’s said and done that warmed my soul, but they wouldn’t mean anything to you. However, I would like to share one little story with you, with a preface:

One of the hardest things to learn as a new parent is that your kid won’t love you the way you love them. They can’t. Babies are Pure Id. They are nothing but Need and Want. They will get mad at you and yell at you and hit you when you dare to deny them their every whim, or don’t yield to it fast enough for their fancy. You can’t take it personally. All you can do is love them and hope they learn to love by osmosis.

So I’ve come to expect low returns on my investment of affection. But one day a few months ago, I was playing with my daughter on our bed. Jumping around, hiding under the covers, just being silly. All of a sudden, in the middle of all of the goofiness, she stopped and fixed me with this quizzical, serious look.

“I like you, Daddy!” she said, as if she had just realized or decided this. Up to that moment, I’d never heard her say “I like [anything]”. I almost burst into tears. It meant so much more to me than hearing her repeat I love you, because it was so real and genuine. It wasn’t rote, something I forced on her through repetition. It was a conclusion she’d come to, one she felt she must declare. “I like you, too!” I said, and gave her a huge hug.

Today, she’s made me happy for three full years. It feels like yesterday, and it feels like forever, in the best way.

daddy+maddy

Parental Guidance, The Funny

The Long Lost Works of Salvador Dali, Coloring Book Edition

A few weeks ago, The Wife, The Baby, and I visited a friend in Bushwick for a BBQ. About three minutes into this lovely summer event, The Baby made it known that she would not be satisfied with the selection of toys we’d brought with us. So The Wife went off to a local dollar store to get some crayons and a coloring book.

coloring_book_cover.jpgBut she didn’t just come back with a coloring book. Oh no. She came back with a goldmine of surrealistic art treasures. She came back with one of the straight-up weirdest things I have ever set eyes on. And it was a mere 99 cents, shoved between expired Tuna Helper and off-brand Malta.

Why was it so weird? The ultra-cheap production is a factor. “Cheap” is actually charitable for the care and attention that went into this publication. Needless to say, none of the art is very good. It was obviously cobbled together from various sources, with little regard for aesthetic unity or copyright issues. Many images have been blown up a thousand times, so the borders are way too thick and pixelated.

But that’s not why this thing is so bizarre. Oh no, that doesn’t even scratch the surface. If David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Werner Herzog collaborated on a coloring book, it wouldn’t look one-tenth as weird/disturbing as this thing.

Context is key. Keep in mind, this is meant to be a coloring book for children. That’s what makes it so insane. At least I assume it’s a coloring book. There is no text in this book except for what you see there on the cover. I’m not even sure what language this is. Italian? Romanian? Esperanto?

I hoped to investigate the origins of this weird, weird thing, but I can’t figure out who published it because it has no ISBN. The only publishing info is a bar code and a note that says MADE IN CHINA (which means it’s probably made of ground-up plastic pellets and lead paint). But it might as well say MADE ON NEPTUNE, because I can’t imagine a human mind putting this thing together. I just can’t!

Why? Oh, you’ll see. Don’t worry, you’ll see.

Continue reading The Long Lost Works of Salvador Dali, Coloring Book Edition →

Parental Guidance

I Don’t Know Much About Art, But I Know What I Hate

The tweeting of bigplastichead alerted me to the blog Tiny Art Director. The site’s author (professional illustrator Bill Zeman) draws things he’s told to draw by his four-year-old daughter. She then critiques them as only a four-year-old girl can. Which is to say, in extremely harsh terms that make no attempt to salve her father’s feelings.

Because not even a professional illustrator can perfectly match the insane, wondrous visions that swirl around in a little kid’s head. And to a four-year-old, the reasonable response to this is to go ape-shit and erase the drawing your dad made for you at your request.

Reading this site, I alternated between delight and horror. Many of the posts were extremely funny, but a lot of them hit a little too close to home. I’ve had my 2-year-old yell at me NO, DADDY, NO! for simply looking at her when she doesn’t want me to, or scream at the top of her lungs because a DVD she wants to watch isn’t loading fast enough. “I’m sorry honey, I’ll have to speak to those bad men at Sony for not making DVD players that can be activated at the speed of a toddler’s whims.”

So to me, this site serves as a preview of what I can expect when my daughter reaches the full height of her powers of expression and snap judgment. And doesn’t like my drawing of a plane made out of poop.

Louis CK has a routine wherein he talks about the difference between little boys and little girls. To wit: Boys break things and do horribly destructive things, but they do it just to do it. It’s not personal. A boy will jump up and down on your bed and bust the boxspring, or throw all the good flatware in the microwave for a half-hour, but he won’t do it to hurt your feelings. He’s just being a jerk.

Girls, on the other hand (says Louie), will do stuff to destroy your soul. The example he gives: his older daughter broke her doll by accident, snapped the head right off. So she insisted that he break her sister’s doll in order to bring about some demented childlike sense of justice. IF I CAN’T HAVE AN INTACT DOLLY, NO ONE SHALL!

Yup, the rest of my life is gonna be FUN. Good thing I’ve lost all my hair already.