I was a frail, dorky little kid, and I can recall dozens of instances when I threatened to call the cops on guys who were spitting spitwads at me or flicking my ears or making fun of my powder blue corduroys because I wore them long after I had grown out of them and doing so gave me a major camel toe and exposed my mismatched socks up to my calves.

I never actually did call the cops. While I may have been a big-eared, fashion-oblivious dork, I was smart enough to know that if a dispatcher heard someone call about having the word “NERD” written on the outside of his locker with a black Sharpie, the response would probably have been something along the lines of, “Grow up and take it like a man, you pig pussy. Quit crying and go conjugate some verbs or something, NERD!”

I’m happy to report, however, that there has been a shift.

I called the cops this morning.

About this.

“Good morning. Police Department.”

“Good morning. My name is Danny and I’m calling to report a nuisance.”

“Can you describe the nuisance, sir?”

“There are two people parked in cars near my house. They are there every morning at this time, and I believe they are having an affair. We’ve put up with it for several months, but I want them gone before my kids see this dude nailing the broad balls-deep or hear her screaming, ‘YES! OH YES! RIGHT THERE! MOMMY LIKE!’”

“OK, sir. So you believe that these people are having relations?”

“If by ‘relations’ you mean ‘tappin’ that ass,’ then yes, I believe there is tappin’ happening. And if you send one of your pigs over right now, he might get a nice look at her boobies.”

“Can you describe the location and description of the vehicles, sir?”

I did so. And then I gave them my address and phone number. And then I hung up.

When I called Hot Wife to tell her what I’d done, she looked out side and saw a police officer talking to the resident infidels. I imagined him saying, “Sir, please remove your penis from your companion and step out of the vehicle.”

I now believe strongly in the whole “Power of One” thing. Rather than approach the couple personally and ask that they take their bodily fluids elsewhere, I held true to my passive-aggressive nature and made someone else to it. Someone with a gun and a billy club and the authority to hog-tie them like they do with the angry, drugged-out loonies on Cops.

So that’s one small step for decency, one giant leap for my credibility.

And let this be a lesson to you, too. If you leave rude comments, I’ll have you shot. Or perhaps find those powder blue corduroys and make you look at The Mother of All Camel-Toes.

My mother-in-law owns an art gallery, so it’s fitting that her home is adorned with all sorts of interesting paintings and sculptures and uncategorized cool shit. The vast majority of what is displayed in her house is tame and inoffensive, but the painting hanging in the guest bathroom scares the crap out of my children.

The piece to which I’m referring is a two-color rendering of a samurai. His eyes are mean, his posture is aggressive and he wields a long, menacing sword that could probably chop your balls off. It is the kind of gigantic, intimidating sword that I equate with the big, pimped out trucks I see on the freeway from time to time – the kind with tires almost as tall as me and the big, bright fog lights and the loud, modified tailpipe that sounds like God farting. The sword and the elevated truck both elicit the same response from me, which is the desire to approach the owner and say, “Hi. Sorry to hear about your small penis.”

This samurai painting is so scary to my kids that they often refuse to go potty in that bathroom unless Hot Wife or I agree to accompany them. That was the case with my son last night.

Basically, I had to stand there and watch him pee and promise that if the painted samurai were to come to life, I would strike that son of a bitch down with the bottle of liquid soap or the plunger or the 20-year-old bottle of Jean Natte under the sink. I stand on guard for thee, Champ.

As he was finishing his tinkle, my son was overcome by a sudden uncontrollable shiver.

“Does that ever happen to you, daddy?” he asked.

“Does what ever happen to me?”

“Does your body ever shake like that when you go pee-pee?”

“Sure,” I said. “Happens all the time. Do you know what they call that?”

“No. What?”

“It’s called ‘the pee chills.’”

He giggles, which makes me laugh, which makes this one of the most enjoyable moments I can recall having while watching someone else urinate.

About 30 minutes later, my very tired and slightly under-the-weather little girl began to wail hysterically when we said she couldn’t have any of her grandma’s leftover Halloween candy because she’d barely touched her dinner. That wail ultimately evolved into a total, DEFCON 5 spaz – crying and screaming and wildly swinging at people – so we got into the car and started driving home.

The Artist Formerly Known As Barney’s Biggest Fan continued her tantrum as we drove, and her brother began to try to talk her down. He asked if he could hold her hand – “NO!” He asked if she wanted to take a bath when we got home – “NO!” Then, instead of asking her questions, he started telling her a story:

“When I went to the bathroom with daddy tonight, my body did this little shaky thing and daddy said that’s called ‘the pee shells.’ Isn’t that so funny?”

He giggled, which made her giggle, which made Hot Wife and me giggle.

The moral of this story is that teaching your children inappropriate terms and sophomoric colloquialisms is fun for the whole family.

My daughter puked in her bed at 3:00 in the morning.

Do you know what that’s like?

Can you comprehend the horror of being rustled from a deep, narcotic-induced sleep and a dream in which you are invisible, naked and standing in Jessica Beil’s shower eating Pop-Tarts by your wife nudging you and saying, “Danny, wake up. Our daughter just barfed and I need your help cleaning it up”?

Do you know what happens to your stomach when you’ve barely been awake long enough to see in the dark and you walk into your child’s room to discover a pancake-sized dollop of brown chunkiness right next to her pillow?

Do you know how hard it is to strip the sheets of a barf-covered bed with extreme delicacy because you just know that if you touch the puke with even the tiny corner of your fingernail, it will launch from within you a copycat stream of partially digested tacos al carbon, chips, salsa and Bud Light?

Do you know why it’s impossible to help a three-year-old out of her pink, flannel Dora pajamas when they reek of puke juice and the only options are to unbutton the shirt (which would get the contents of another human being’s stomach on your hands) or to pull the shirt off over the child’s head (which would smear regurgitation all over her face and hair)?

I was trying to explain to a friend last week that it is virtually impossible to articulate what a huge life change it is to become a father.

When you’re a bachelor, you could have taken that Jessica Beil dream all the way to its conclusion, which would no doubt result in vivid, spectacular imagery that a guy could use as whack-off fodder for weeks.

When you’re a bachelor, living in the presence of barfing people is voluntary and usually restricted to late nights at some hip nightclub where you’re not allowed in unless your titties are hanging out of whatever loose-fitting shmata you have on or you’re on Entourage or your name is Britney, Paris or Lindsay (in which case you can pass based on two of those three criteria).

Then again, bachelors don’t usually get to have a daughter who wakes up after a rough night, climb into bed with you, hug you around your neck and tell you they’re all better so can they please have some chocolate milk and Cheerios.

Do you know what that’s like?

I was digging through the archives again last night. When I drifted into the really old stuff, I began to see a disheartening pattern.

The following is but a small sampling of excruciatingly long sentences and breathy paragraphs from 2004. Apparently I really, really, REALLY wanted people to notice this blog, so much so that I threw everything that wasn’t nailed down into the soup:

1. "If you want to get gross about it (and if you’re here reading this, you do), here’s what I found embedded in my daughter’s diaper: nine undigested raisins, three whole black beans, a cell phone, the next door neighbor’s cat, 58 cents in change, a Tennessee license plate with up-to-date tags, my wife’s Costco card, a copy of The Watchtower, the 22-pound turkey we were going to make for Thanksgiving, and a man who said his name is Carl and wanted to know how to get back to the San Diego Freeway."

2. "Once those initial targets are neutralized, I’ll call in the cavalry to finish the job. The cavalry in this case is the ammo I bought this afternoon: stool softeners, laxatives, milk of magnesia, high fiber cereals, Metamucil, a plunger, a 100-yard garden hose, a weed whacker, four fence posts, a large blue plastic tarp, a box of steel wool, a mule, a GPS tracking device, three rolls of duct tape and two day laborers I picked up in front of The Home Depot. How do you say “Get down! She’s gonna blow!” in Spanish?"

3. "But lately my metabolism has been significantly more Jew-like. Yesterday, for example, I ate a McDonald’s sausage McGriddle with egg, hash browns, a large Diet Coke, a piece of banana bread, an iced venti decaf soy latte, a can of Chef Boyardee beef raviolis, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, some pretzels, another Diet Coke, some trail mix, a chicken breast, some broccoli, some Ben & Jerry’s Karmel Sutra ice cream and another Diet Coke. I mean could you just fucking barf?"

4. "It occurs to me that each American presidential candidate favorably resembles one of these drugs. They blabber on about how wonderful things would be under their respective administrations – world peace, affordable health care and the public execution of Paris Hilton. And then, just like in the erectile dysfunction commercials, we get to the fine print. Candidate X likes to wear crotchless lace panties and read Harlequin Romance novels. Candidate Y has Irritable Bowel Syndrome and drinks Dewar’s like it’s Aquafina. Candidate Z received an honorable discharge from the Coast Guard because he can't swim and he demanded to wear floaties on his arms while on duty."

5. "But the one area where our roles are most distinctly different is in the way we parent our children when the other is away. When I work late or go out with the boys after work, I am greeted when I get home by two children who have eaten a good dinner with each of the four food groups represented in clockwise order on their Care Bear plates, bathed in a tub filled 16.3 inches high with water not to exceed 84 degrees, had their hair brushed 18 times on the left side and 18 on the right, and have been dressed in clean pajamas that smell (thanks to their father’s aforementioned prowess in the laundry room) of a fresh spring meadow."

6. "On a normal day, I’d be at work at this hour. But today I took it upon myself to be sick (near death, if you must know) so that I could spend some time away from the chaos and screaming and rampant discombobulation that permeates every nook and cranny of my office right now. I am so catastrophically sick, in fact, that the only reliable course back to wellness is a strict dose of coffee, a matinee, a trip to the gym, strolling through a bookstore, writing, shopping for new basketball shoes and NOT working for 24 hours. (I’m not a doctor, but I play one on the internet.)"

Deep below the huggie, kissie, hand-holdie exterior Hot Wife and I display in public, there is a razor-sharp competitive edge to our marriage. I want to win every fight. I want to find everything that’s lost and fix everything that’s broken before she does. I want to be right 100 percent of the time. Unrealistic? Perhaps. But when you’re married to a woman who blends the finer parts of Mother Theresa, Supernanny, and that hot, buffed-out, broccoli-eating, female trainer on The Biggest Loser, you have to find ways to get your shots in wherever you can.

Hot Wife says she doesn’t feel the same way about this competitive dynamic in our marriage (perhaps that’s because she always wins). And there is nothing more infuriating and belittling than competing against someone who doesn’t think she’s competing. In truth, I don’t believe her when she says she isn’t trying to compete with me. This is a tactic employed by the most arrogant of competitors, a positioning subterfuge intended to show one’s opponent that she is so supremely confident in her ability to win that the husband she’s up against fails even to appear on her radar. It’s a head game. And I see right through it.

Believe me when I tell you that I never win. I never learn to keep my trap shut. I repeatedly challenge Hot Wife and I am repeatedly smacked down, humiliated and confronted with the cold, hard reality: she’s better than me. At everything. Aerobics. Wheel of Fortune. Farting. All of it.

Last weekend, we were at a retreat in Malibu with some friends. Saturday afternoon, the organizer of the retreat alerted us that a 60-foot-high rock-climbing wall was available to be scaled by anyone interested in risking his life for no good reason. I have never attempted anything even close to this, in part because I’m a big pussy and also because I like heights about as much as I like getting a prostate massage with a lobster claw.

That afternoon, we moseyed down to the rock wall and craned our necks all the way up to see the top.

“You gonna do it?” Hot Wife asked.

“Yeah. You?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

And so began the competition.

I went first, believing without doubt that with my height and long reach, I could scale the wall deftly and quickly. At first, that actually was the case.

I moved swiftly, carrying on despite the incessant badgering of my “friends” at the base of the wall who were yelling up to me to grab hold of the rocks with my humongous nostrils.

At about this time, my fingers began to ache, shake and weaken. My momentum stalled. I carried on, climbing to about 57 feet, but despite four or five attempts to regain a grip on the next stone, my tank ran dry. I could see the bell at the top. It was so close, taunting me, but still out of my reach. I tried not to quit, telling myself I’d never hear the end of it from Hot Wife, especially if she made it to the top. But my body wouldn’t let me continue. I repelled down, just three feet from the summit.

When I reached solid ground, I saw Hot Wife all strapped up and ready to begin her ascent. I gave her a high-five, a quick kiss and told her to get up there and ring that bell. I genuinely want her to do so, but a little part of me was hoping she got no higher than 56 feet.

(Jesus. What am I thinking? That last sentence may as well have been, “Honey, I wish not to have sex with you ever again.”)

Ten minutes or so later, she rung the bell.

[More photos here]

But the humiliation doesn’t end there.

Sunday morning, I woke up with the sensation that a steamroller had run over me during the night. My fingers and forearms were so sore as to be immobile and lifeless. My left hamstring felt as though it had shot at close range with an elephant gun. Worst of all, my pride was severely injured – bleeding profusely and bruised with a grim prognosis. I rolled out of bed with a moan.

“Damn,” I said to Hot Wife. “My body feels like shit. Are you sore at all?”

She took a very quick inventory of herself and naturally said, “No. Not really.”

“You’re kidding. Your forearms don’t hurt? Your hamstrings? Nothing?”

“No, Danny. I’m completely serious. I feel fine.”

I’m not fond of speaking in platitudes and hyperbole, but I’m certain that this was the worst moment of my life. Beyond merely surpassing me on the wall despite being a foot shorter, she feels fine the next morning while I can barely function.

Next time I’ll just save myself the effort and humiliation and have her kick me in the nuts with a steel-toed boot.

Today, almost five months since the day we met him and initiated Project Lovebomb, Mike is coming home from Iraq.

His 10-day trip back to Angel and their precious daughter, Olivia, begins today when he climbs aboard a helicopter and waves goodbye to Basra. By Mike’s estimation, he will be onboard an airplane headed for American soil on Jan. 31.

A snippet from Mike’s e-mail:

“Just thought I’d take a minute to say thank you to everyone for all the packages, e-mails, thoughts, prayers and love that has come my way the last six months… Thank you for everything you guys have done over the past six months; you have made the time go by as quickly as it can and have made many a happy mail day for us=) As Ang put it on one of her posts: you guys rock!!!”

Hard to disagree with that.

The level of respect, compassion and admiration I feel for Mike – and the other men and women in Iraq, especially those who gave their limbs and their lives – is beyond quantification. I hesitate to call him a hero because that word seems to have been weakened and commercialized through such frequent use. Perhaps there is no appropriate word to put to it, but perhaps none is needed. We know where he’s been. We know what he’s done. We know what he’s been through.

And as proud as we are of Mike, his family, and all military families who endure the months and years of hellish turmoil while their loved ones are in harm’s way, we must also turn our thoughts to those who will soon confront that same emotional torture.

Last week, an additional 20,000 troops were committed to the quagmire in Iraq. That means 20,000 stories like Mike’s, and not all will end with the triumphant return he will experience next week. This weekend, I read the obituary of a soldier from our neighborhood: a 21-year-old kid who was killed with three of his fellow soldiers when an improvised explosive device exploded near their Humvee. My thoughts are with his family today, too.

To the readers of Dad Gone Mad, you have restored my faith in humanity. Your collective efforts and generosity have shown great character and compassion, and I will be eternally grateful to have been a part of this project and a witness to your outpouring of love.

To Mike, Angel and Olivia, thank you for letting us be part of your lives. As much as this project may have helped you, it has given all of us in DGMland far more. It has provided us an outlet for our love and support, and a means by which to articulate our patriotism, regardless of our personal perspectives on the conflict or the politics behind it. Mike’s safe return is a gift to all of us.

Finally, a personal anecdote. Hot Wife and I recently took the kids to tour the USS Midway, a decommissioned aircraft carrier now docked in San Diego. It’s an enormous ship, five football fields long and several stories tall – a clear representation of the might and sophistication of the United States military. As we walked back to our car, we encountered a man who told us he had driven all the way from Omaha to see the ship – the same one upon which he served during Vietnam. It was the first time he’d laid his eyes on the Midway in 40 years.

I could feel his pride. He looked at the ship and talked about it the way a man talks about his son. For 40 years, he held the memory of what he had done for his country in some tucked-away corner of his heart. But seeing the Midway again seemed to open that shadowed, silent place and bathe it in sunlight. He was giddy, regaling us with stories about the ship and its glory and the missions he’d flown from its flight deck. I can’t recall having seen a more genuine manifestation of pride in all my life.

It is my sincere hope that Mike will be able to look back on his tour in Basra with the same sense of pride and accomplishment. No matter the circumstances of his mission, he served his country. He made personal sacrifices. He was there.

And we will be forever grateful.

For reasons even I can’t comprehend, I have spent some time over the last several weeks going through the archives of this web site. The exercise has been exceptionally difficult for me. Reading my own writing is like listening to a recording of my own voice: I think I sound like a fast-talking, high-pitched, nasally pansy.

A confession: I don’t spend a ton of time on the stuff I write here. I generally squirt these posts out in 15-20 minutes, a fact clearly manifested in the stunning frequency with which I a) misspell or completely forget to write certain words, b) write “two” or “to” instead of “too”, and c) retreat to the lowest-hanging fruit on the blog-writing tree: cursing and feces. If it’s true that “you are what you write,” I am a flaming pile of shit screaming “cocksucker” at every passer-by.

I was sitting with my computer in my lap at Starbucks last night. I had my iPod on, pegged at a volume that could feasibly have caused my ears to bleed if I didn’t have all of that wax to filter the sound. I was reading posts from early 2005 – a period where virtually every entry had something to do with bodily fluids emanating from either my children or myself. And this was a season of a significant growth in DGM readership! Perhaps I should go back to those roots. Perhaps I’ll write something descriptive about anus.

This hasn’t always been my approach to writing. I can recall a moment in 1993 when I was about to have a story published in a reputable magazine (and by reputable I mean there were no ads for erotic Asian massage or phone sex with husky Russian women). I stayed up until 2 a.m. for two weeks straight, polishing every word, trying to add some element of pith and ethos to a story that, at its core, was about as interesting as club soda.

The piece was about a local sports radio host who at the time was climbing the radio ladder and becoming something of a national celebrity. The day the story was put on newsstands, this radio host mentioned it – and me – on the air. I recorded it, believing that Sports Illustrated would certainly be calling at any moment and this recording would be a constant reminder of the exact moment when my trajectory toward Pulitzers and unfathomable wealth was launched. Kind of like the way restaurants frame the first dollar they ever made.

About a year later, while I was still earning $18,000 a year covering high school sports in the middle of the Mojave Desert and waiting for that call from SI, I found a yellowed copy of that magazine. I opened it and read my story and was horrified. It was clear to me that the reason the radio host had mentioned the piece on the air was because it was a major “puff piece,” known in the newsroom as “a blowjob.” I couldn’t have so one-sidedly sung this dude’s praises better even if I was his mother. And so began my highly skeptical posture toward my own writing. I never read my own stuff because I’m afraid of what I might find with retrospect, as I had done in this case.

(In truth, the guy was a major asshat. He ultimately did achieve national significant notoriety – based largely on my article, no doubt – but is listeners grew tired of his on-air arrogance and bravado. Haven’t heard his name in quite a while.)

Fast-forward 13 years to last night at Starbucks. I haven’t changed. I still can’t stand the sound of my own recorded voice, and on the rare occasion that I read what I’ve written, my nose scrunches up and my toes curl up in my shoes.

But as long as you people keep reading and commenting and telling me this nonsense makes you shoot hot coffee out of your nose, I’ll keep humiliating myself and shredding my dignity to pieces.

I had the revelation a couple of years ago that I can no longer watch MTV. It’s not that there was anything wrong with the programming, but I had clearly aged beyond the station’s target demographic. I don’t think like a 21-year-old kid anymore.

Nonetheless, I do check back once in a while to get a peek at the new trends and subject matter because you never know when you’re going to end up in a jail cell with an 18-year-old and knowing the characters on The Real World may be the only thing standing between you and ass rape.

By some stroke of catastrophic misfortune, Hot Wife and I found ourselves watching the My Super Sweet Sixteen marathon on MTV last weekend. For the uninitiated, each episode of the show follows a spoiled rotten 16-year-old girl as she plans for and attends a Sweet Sixteen party that makes the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana look like a backyard barbecue.

It was during this marathon when I finally realized that I have become an old man.

I know this because I was shocked – as in “appalled” – by what I was watching. That NEVER happens to me. I’m 36 years old, still relatively young and open-minded. But it’s abundantly clear that I have lost touch anything remotely resembling coolness or hipness or keeping it real.

When did it become acceptable for a 16-year-old girl to wear – IN PUBLIC – a $3,000 gown with a neckline that plunges so low that anyone in the room can practically see what the girl had for lunch?

When did it become OK for girls to invite rappers to perform at their Sweet Sixteens so that all of their pimple-flecked, brace-faced little friends could bask in the glow of lyrics celebrating bitches and hos and loose women “bobbin’ on my knob”?

When did men with way too much money start buying their bitchy, bossy, bratty little daughters a new Lexus and a diamond-studded Rolex when they’re only 16? Back in the day, Wondersis and I learned how to drive on a shit-brown Ford Granada with torn vinyl upholstery and puke-stained floor mats. I didn’t get my first new car until I was almost 30.

I have a daughter. She’s three. When she turns 16 (in 2019), I’ll give her a big hug, a kiss on the cheek and possibly the key to my 1999 Honda CR-V. We’ll have cake. Maybe we’ll all go out for sushi.

Conversely, I will NOT spend $60,000 to rent a big house for one night so she can enjoy her Sweet Sixteen. I will NOT shell out six figures so she can invite a man with shiny silver teeth to rap about licking expensive champagne off of the areolas of a promiscuous bee-yotch. And she WILL wear a sweater. A turtleneck sweater. And possibly a chastity belt.

Does this attitude make me a fuddy-duddy? Probably.

Is this the stereotypical, over-bearing father routine to which I swore I’d never fall victim? Clearly.

Is my youthful resiliency and tolerance getting smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror? Yep.

I grew up in an area dominated by white people. I remember a couple of black kids in my school, but none who had any interest in talking to me about my headgear or The Go-Gos or the level of joy I got from learning how to say “Go shit in the ocean” in Hebrew. It feels strange to say now, but I was completely ignorant of the racial disharmony in the country, the lingering hangover of the civil rights movement and the fact that there were still some places in America where blacks and whites had different drinking fountains.

In my younger years, all I knew about black history was what I had been told in school. Martin Luther King. Rosa Parks. The same rote, placatory basics we all learned in public school. There was never any context or passion or implication that what had happened (and was still happening) to those people was “bad.”

When I was around 11, a black family moved into the two-story house across the street. For years, I watched them from afar, hoping to see some glimmer of something, anything that would indicate to me that they were, in whatever way, different from us. I saw nothing. The dad went to work in the morning and came home at night. They shopped at the Alpha Beta supermarket like everyone else in the neighborhood. They watched TV. Same as us.

This lurking through the blinds continued until my teen years. One day, I heard a basketball bouncing outside. I looked out my window and saw the youngest son from the black family across the street shooting baskets. He was older than me, maybe 17 or 18. But I’d never really had anyone to shoot hoops with, and the opportunity to fill that void seemed too exciting to stifle. So I walked over, feeling something like fear, but closer to nervous anticipation.

“Hi,” the boy said. “What’s your name?”

“Danny,” I said. “I live across the street.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen you over there. You’ve got a pretty nice jump shot. My name’s Mike.” Then he passed me the ball and motioned toward the basket with his head. And we just started playing. Just like normal.

Many years later, in the summer after I graduated from college, a buddy of mine got me a summer job as a docent manager at a place in Beverly Hills called The Museum of Tolerance. It was a remarkable experience, a place that stirred things in me that I haven’t felt since. I wept. I became enraged. I sought in myself and from others a way to understand – in an intellectual way – why racism and anti-Semitism happen. What are we so fucking scared of? Never did find it.

There were two areas of the museum that I can still vividly remember, 13 years since I left that job to become a sportswriter. One was a true-to-life recreation of the gas chamber at Auschwitz. It was dark and dank and concrete from wall to wall. I lost count of how many people wept and buried their head in their hands in there. Every 10 minutes or so, another group of 25 people would walk in and come face-to-face with a level of evil worse than their imaginations had ever let them conjure.

The other soul-shaking display at MOT was a video wall that rotated black and white film and still images of the civil rights movement. People being sprayed with firehoses. People bereaved and losing hope. Snippets of speeches by King and Gov. George Wallace and JFK. I sometimes stationed myself by that exhibit and watched the loop two or three times. I came into my job at the museum as a new college graduate with myriad pie-in-the-sky ideas about what kind of person I could become and what I could do to make my own life into a “success.” A year later, I left that gig with a drastically changed perspective on the world and how it operates. I still consider that year an awakening.

Today is the day some politicians designated as a time to remember the life of Martin Luther King. I plan to commemorate this day by listening to the words of a song called “Shed a Little Light.” I heard James Taylor (whom I once heard John Mayer describe as “the blueprint”) sing it on a PBS tribute a few months ago, and I was genuinely moved by its eloquence and perfectly accurate articulation of the physical and emotional responses I attach to the subject of race. I’m not a terribly religious person, but this feels like a prayer to me:

Oh, let us turn our thoughts today
To Martin Luther King
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women
Living on the earth
Ties of hope and love
Sister and brotherhood

That we are bound together
In our desire to see the world become
A place in which our children
Can grow free and strong

We are bound together
By the task that stands before us
And the road that lies ahead
We are bound and we are bound

There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist
There is a hunger in the center of the chest
There is a passage through the darkness and the mist
And though the body sleeps the heart will never rest

My sister told me today that her kids have taken a shine to the word “weenieballs.” In fact, they were recently serenading the shoppers at her local Trader Joe’s with chants and interpretive dances. “Weenieballs! Hey everyone! Weenieballs! Zippity-dooo!”

At Evans World Headquarters, the same predicament centers around the word “nuts.”

Several weeks ago, The Champ and I were watching a hockey game when a goalie took a wicked slapshot right in the crotch. For men, there is an immediate and visceral reaction to such a scene. We know all know roughly how it feels. We pinch our knees together, put both hands over our junk and exclaim “Ooooooohhhh!” We know – check that: we feel— that while the goalie may have been wearing a cup, there is no layer of plastic thick enough to prevent a frozen, solid rubber disc flying at 100 em-pee-aiytch from hurting when it catches you in the meat and potatoes.

“What happened, daddy?” The Champ asked.

“That puck hit him right in the nuts,” I said.

Well my six-year-old thought that was just the funniest thing ever spoken. He laughed hard and long and had to wipe the tears from his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. I laughed at his laughing, having forgotten what it’s like to hear a term like that for the first time. Our stomachs hurt from the laughter. It was one of those beautiful father-son moments, like teaching him how to throw a curveball or why he should hold the door open like a gentleman or why strippers become strippers because they didn’t get enough attention from their daddies when they were little and they think shaking their big fake titties in drunk guys’ faces will bring them the love they wanted from their daddies. You know, the basics.

That night, The Champ was butt naked and about to join his sister in the bathtub. As he stepped in to the tub, he cupped his hands around his privates and said this to her: “Watch out for my nuts.”

And just like her brother had hours before, my three-year-old daughter flipped her head back and started to laugh hysterically.

Since then, the word “nuts” has become The Official Word of Evans World Headquarters. The kids go out of their ways to say it, often completely out of context. Hot Wife and I want to nip this in the bud and delete the word from our children’s respective vocabularies, but we’re too busy laughing at the sweet little profanities coming from their mouths. We are rendered defenseless. We are weak. We are soft.

One morning not so long ago, The Artist Formerly Known As Barney’s Biggest Fan came into the living room with her shirt turned inside out and the top of her head sticking through the neck. “Look at me, daddy,” she said.

I looked. “Pfft!” I said. “You’re nuts. Do you know that? You’re just a big nutty nut.”

She didn’t think that was very funny. She ran to her mother and complained that I was calling her a testicle.

Since this has been declared De-Lurking Week, and since I have nothing interesting to say today, I'm asking you to step out of the shadows and let us know you're out there. Leave a comment. Tell us your name.

In other news, the Hot Wife t-shirts you've all been asking for are in the early stages of development. Hoping to have them before the end of the month.

We were in San Diego this weekend for my nephew’s second birthday party. Rather than just driving down for the day – which would have equated to three hours on the road on one Sunday, which in turn would have equated to total fucking misery because on the list of Things Our Kids Like, long car rides falls somewhere between brushing their teeth and getting a tetanus shot – we decided to make a little vacation out of it. Call it self-preservation.

When we got to our hotel Saturday afternoon, we decided to schlep down to a nature center in Chula Vista, which is fewer than 15 miles from the Mexican border. On the shuttle from the parking lot to the nature center, The Champ began speaking to an adorable little girl about his age. Her name was Katrina, and I can tell you without equivocation that she was the smartest, most articulate six-year-old I have ever met. She was a repeat visitor to the nature center and she began to regale my son with descriptions of the fascinating things he was about to see: sea turtles and sharks and little bat rays that you can actually touch, “but you have to wash your hands first so the rays don’t get your germs.”

The Champ and Katrina became fast friends. They ran around the nature center with great enthusiasm. They were inseparable. It was very cute. For a while.

My feelings about the relationship began to change near the bald eagle exhibit. I began to feel leery about my son’s complete ignorance in the glow of Katrina’s beyond-her-years brilliance. He had heard her blabber on about what she knew about every animal in the center for an hour, and it was clear that he was overwhelmed by what she knew.

“The bald eagle’s vision is so incredible that it can see a rodent from two miles away,” Katrina said.

“Oh,” The Champ responded. “I like spaghetti.”

I decided that my son needed to be defended against this sly, adorable genius who knew everything about everything.

“Hey, Katrina,” I said. “You’re pretty smart, huh?”

“I guess so,” she said. “I get all Os on my report card.”

“OK, what’s the square root of nine?”

“Huh?”

“Come on. A girl as smart as you must know the square root of nine. It’s simple math.”

“I don’t know what a squareoot is. We’re doing our timses in my math class.”

“Oh,” I said. “I see. So maybe you’re not as smart as you think you are. What’s the capital of New York?”

“That’s easy. Albany.”

“Wrong! The capital of New York is New York City!” I winked at The Champ, as if to tell him we’d gotten her.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I think it’s Albany.”

“Nope,” I said, turning to Hot Wife. “Honey, what’s the capital of New York.”
“Albany,” she said. “Why?”

“What is it with you people?” I said. “Did you go to Dumb-Ass Elementary or something? The capital of New York is New York City. I’ve been there. I know I’m right.”

Katrina turned to her grandmother. She summoned grandma to bend down so she could whisper into her ear. Then her grandmother whispered back into Katrina’s ear. Katrina nodded in agreement, then turned to address me.

“My grandma says it’s better to be perceived a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

“What? What in the world does that mean?”

“It means you need to shut the fuck up, sir.”

Notwithstanding the fact that I possess a clear bias, I am now moderately positive that my son is a superhero.

The evidence is mostly circumstantial, but when viewed in its stunning entirety, it’s obvious that the boy has certain superhuman powers. He can do things I can’t do. He can do things you can’t do. He is Superdude.

His powers are not at all like those one would normally associate with superhumanityousness. He can’t fly or stop bullets with his eyeball or hear what the neighbors three doors down are saying. But he is fearless and confident and insightful. When you’re six, that’s plenty. By the time he’s my age, he’ll almost certainly be able to see through women’s shirts and bras (and let me just tell you that for a 36-year-old man, there could be no better power).

For Hanukkah, we gave him a four-hour lesson at the nearby skateboard park. He is not good on a skateboard (and by “not good” I mean he looks like he’s having a grand mal when all he’s doing is trying to stay on the board), but he was overjoyed by the notion of actually getting in there with the big dudes and going down the ramps and half-pipes. When he finally got into the skateboard park yesterday, he completely blew off the lesson and just went for it. He fell a lot and he has a big bruise on his right hip, but the kid didn’t even care. All he knows is that he took on the monster ramp and walked away with a sweet wound to prove it.

On New Year’s Day, he somehow weaseled his way into the home of my in-laws’ neighbor and played Xbox with someone he barely knows for three hours. The neighbor became so enamored with Superdude that she invited him to stay for dinner. A free meal? With a stranger? Just for being charming? If that’s not a superpower, then my name is Mortimer H. Finklestein and I make snot sculptures for a living.

I suppose I should also mention that Superdude has wicked-awesome (some may say superhuman) (and by “some” I mean me) t-ball skills, as well. He hits the shit out of the ball, he’ll put his face in front of a ground ball if he has to, and he has an absolute CANNON of an arm. I haven’t tested it yet, but I do believe that if one of his throws hit you in the chest, it would blast right through your solar plexus and fly out of your back. And then you could walk around town saying, “See this hole in my chest? Superdude gave me that. Wanna touch it?”

Of course, superhuman powers are a double-edged sword. In addition to the aforementioned gifts, Superdude is also an out-of-this-world whiner. A lot of kids wouldn’t have the stamina and intestinal fortitude to complain about not having lunch at McDonald’s with the vigor that he can – as if being denied a Happy Meal with that shitty orange drink was tantamount to being told that the Power Rangers are all women and they all want to know if they can kiss him.

I have always felt that if work were a person, meetings would be the hemorrhoids. For me, meetings are excruciating, especially when they fall into the category of “business development” (or “biz dev” as we like to call it because we're all so fucking hip and edgy). I’ve said this before, but most meetings are merely an opportunity for people to pound their own chests and attempt to one-up the others in the room. One dude takes out his cock and slams it onto the table and says, “I have an enormous cock and my opinion is therefore extremely valuable.” Then the guy across the table takes out his cock and slams it onto the table and says, “Uh, I beg to differ. As you can plainly see, my mammoth cock dwarfs your wee little pea-shooter and you must therefore bow down and worship my humongous mammothness.” And so on.

Last week I sat through a six-hour meeting. I’m certain that I don’t possess even half of the writing chops one would need to adequately describe how excruciating it was, but imagine being hit in the mouth by an aluminum baseball bat on a cold day. That would approximate the first hour, and then it went downhill from there. By the final hour, I felt like the Vietnamese sniper chick from Full Metal Jacket who, after being mortally wounded by American soldiers, lies prostrate on the ground and wheezes, “Shoot…me…Shoot…me…” For six hours, I barely spoke. I just sat there and tried to maintain alertness by imaging how I would disembowel everyone else in the room.

I also documented my private hell with a non-linear stream-of-consciousness-style journal. Here are some excerpts:

“God how I wish I could punch you in the neck right now. I can smell your Aqua Velva from here. I bet you’d go down easy.”

“I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier. I love that line but I have no fucking clue what it means. But I guess when you’re called The Killers, nobody’s going to challenge you for singing weird shit because, as the name implies, they’d bust a cap in yo ass. The reward isn’t worth the risk. Better to ask, like, Neil Sedaka what his songs mean. He’s old and crotchety and there’s absolutely no threat of retaliatory violence. But I don’t know any of his songs, so fuck that. [Note: ask mom what Neil Sedaka sings.]”

“Lady, you really shouldn’t be eating that brownie and all of those chips. I’m sure these chairs have some kind of load limit, and you’re teetering dangerously on the edge. You’re about two Doritos from extreme embarrassment.”

“The next time someone says ‘essentially’, I’m crackin’ skulls.”

“This dude is using all of the familiar tricks to dissuade us from the fact that he knows exactly bupkiss about what he’s talking about. Wait. He knows bupkiss about that which he is talking. About. Bupkiss is what he knows about that which about he is talking. I wonder if this pen penetrates skin. Would anyone notice if I stabbed myself in the eyes right now?”

“Maybe what they mean is that having soul makes you a soldier but they have some kind of special power that let’s them harness their soul without the violence and whatnot. Or you know what? It’s probably some kind of dick reference. Like the soul is the penis and the soldiers are the balls, but maybe one of them had a nut removed because of a tragic weed-whacker accident and since he only has one ball now he thinks he’s not a soldier. Yep. That’s gotta be it. He’s a uniball. Definitely.”

“HE SAID IT! That cocksucker just said ‘essentially.’ What did I fucking tell you about saying that word again? You are so dead right now, dude. I’m killing you in my mind. I’m reaching into your chest and grabbing your kidneys (are your kidneys in your chest or are they like over here?) and I’m singing ‘I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier’ while I’m doing it. But if you can tell me what the hell that means, you can essentially have your kidneys back.”