What I love most about being a dad is the blind allegiance of my children. They seem to view me as some sort of superhero because I’m tall and I’m funny and I’m far less likely to reject their pleas for ice cream than their mom. I enjoy their love and I’ve elected to rely on the notion that ignorance is bliss. I simply don’t have the heart yet to tell them how flawed I am. I’m not quite ready to sit them down and say, “Kids, sometimes daddy pees sitting down. And that’s bad.”

Their heroic impression of me manifested this week with each child’s joy that I would be accompanying them to open houses at their respective schools – on consecutive nights. Here is my not-so-heroic review:

Tuesday: The Champ
He’s a kindergartener now. He’s big-time. So as we walked from the car to his classroom Tuesday night, he said hello to virtually every passer-by and they all smiled and said hello back and seemed to think he was the cat’s ass. I was proud, and perhaps trying a bit too hard to live through him vicariously because when I was in kindergarten the only person who ever thought I was the cat’s ass was me.

The Champ trotted us around his classroom, showing us the little seed he planted in a Dixie cup and the picture he drew of himself on a skateboard (which I knew was bogus because he was upright in the picture and the next time I see him that way on his real skateboard will be the first time). After we’d seen all of his other work and greased his teacher with a twenty and told her there’d be more where that came from if he gets straight A’s, The Champ took us over to his writing journal. Everyone in the class has his own journal and they are free to write in it whatever they want.

As my son began to flip through the pages and show us where he wrote “I like to eat petza [sic],” my attention was drawn to the little girl sitting across the table from him. More specifically, I was interested in her writing journal. Her penmanship was flawless, certainly not reflective of the patience and consistency one would expect from a kindergartener hopped-up on berry-flavored Juicy Juice. I mean, I could actually read what she had written, which was a eye-crossing contrast to my own son’s bona fide hackjob on all 26 letters and a few punctuation symbols. Hot Wife saw me staring at the girl’s writing and leaned in to tell me something:

“Her mother works with her a lot,” she whispered.

There was a little more back and forth about the issue, but I ultimately walked over to the girl’s father, introduced myself and said I’d pay him $5,000 if his daughter would ghostwrite my son’s journal.

Wednesday: The Artist Formerly Known as Barney’s Biggest Fan
According to Hot Wife’s account, our daughter was practically jumping out of her skin with anticipation of my taking her to the annual fatherly beatdown known as PJs and Pops. Me? Not so much.

As I have mentioned ad nauseam in recent posts, I’m a hockey fan and the team for which I root is in the Stanley Cup Finals. The Ducks won the first game. Game two was last night, right in the middle of my daughter’s big night. Calling this a conundrum would be a drastic understatement. I prefer the term “tragedy.” But because it would break my little girl’s heart for me to, for example, pretend that I have a very serious disease that can only be treated by drinking large quantities of draft beer at a sportsbar while watching hockey, I acquiesced. I felt good about it because, as we all know, God invented TiVo because he loves us and wants us to see the Ducks kicked Ottawaaaaaaah’s hineys for the second straight game.

The event at her preschool was actually quite nice. As I had in years past with her brother, I sat with my daughter while her teacher read some books to us and we each made a little picture frame out of popsicle sticks and glued-on doohickeys.

About an hour into the event, all of the dads and their kids moved into the school’s library to watch a strange woman who avoids eye contact at all costs make big bubbles and explain to the kids who this Roy G. Biv character is. Not surprisingly, the preschoolers’ attention span is quite a bit longer than those of their fathers. By the time The Socially Awkward Bubble Lady got to the color indigo, all of the dads in the room had their Blackberries out to check in on the hockey game.

I’m not sure what ever came of the bubbles, but I do know that Sammy Pahlsson scored off the far post with five minutes left and the Ducks are two wins away from The Cup.

Oh, and I had fun with my daughter, too.

The mailbox frowned on us Saturday when we pulled from it a letter sent by our new health insurer. This corporation, which I believe to be the largest health insurance company in the U.S., has insured us for only about three months. I imagined for a moment that the envelope might contain a “Welcome to the fraternity of like six gazillion members covered by our big blue shape” letter. How naïve.

“Dear sir, we’ve received your claim for reimbursement on psychiatry treatment delivered by Dr. Such-and Such. We regret that we are unable to cover these claims because they relate to a condition you had before we became your insurance carrier. Shine on, you crazy diamond. Sincerely, The People Who Don’t Care About You Because You’re Not One Of Our Shareholders.”

I worked for a competitor of The Big Blue Shape for four years and I’m therefore disgustingly familiar with the great lengths to which health insurers go in order NOT to pay for their members’ health care. You may be shocked to learn that such organizations judge the quality of their customer service by how fast they answer the phone and how effective they are at telling members to fuck off the first time so the members don’t need to call back and be told a second time to “fuck the fuck off! Tape an aspirin to it and move on with your life, you big baby.”

While one would like to believe large health care insurers are in business to genuinely help sick people, the simple truth is that they’re just like any other big, publicly traded corporation – they squeeze their membership for as many monthly premium dollars as possible and reject as many claims as possible so they have more money to pass onto shareholders. It’s a machine.

Where I find serious ignorance in this case is that their refusal is linked directly to preventative medicine, which is likely to save them money in the long run. I sought the psychiatry treatment at issue because I genuinely need it. Without it I would sink into depression, which is a one-way ticket to a litany of medical “comorbidities,” including drug and alcohol abuse, heart disease and suicidal ideation. So the message I’m left to infer from their rejection of my preventative health care is that they’d rather see me drop dead than pursue wellness.

And let’s just stop right here to consider the term “pre-existing condition.” Who DOESN’T have one? Who in this country can sign-on with a new insurance carrier and say “I am completely healthy in every possible way”? Look around you. We’re all fat and fair-skinned and wheezy. We all have clogged arteries and hypertension and big, hairy, purple hemorrhoids. It’s The American Way. But for health insurers, The American Way is bad for business.

I’d consider moving to Canada, but they’re all such homers for their hockey teams that I’d be ridiculed for rooting for the Anaheim Ducks (who beat Ottawaaaaaaaaaaah! last night and are now just three wins from The Stanley Cup) (and the waaaaaah! back there is my response to the crying Ottawa fans complaining that the big, mean Duckies were too physical with them last night and “Mr. Referee Man, please make them stop because it hurts and I almost tore my skirt.”).

But I digress.

When I was in elementary school, my report cards invariably arrived with variations of this sentence in the “Teacher’s Comments” section:

“Danny is a joy to have in class. He’s a bright boy and quite enthusiastic. But Jesus what a lazy fuck! I’d like to see him pay closer attention to detail and go the extra mile on his assignments (especially with his penmanship, because it looks as though he sticks a pencil up his nose and writes by moving his head around). (Also, speaking of that enormous honker, have you thought about getting him rhinoplasty?)”

Lazy. That was my calling card as a kid. “Stop being so lazy, Danny. You’ll never get laid if you’re lazy. Lazy kids grow up to weigh 350 pounds, live in their parents’ garage and die from a botched gastric bypass.”

There is good news and bad to report.

First the bad: I’m 37 years old and I’m still as lazy as a shar-pei on a 115-degree day.

The good news? I’ve learned to embrace my laziness. I’m OK with me. In fact, if I weren’t so lazy I’d pat myself on the back.

Sadly, there are those who aren’t so content with my laziness. My wife, for example. We’ve been sleeping in the same bed for 14 years (no doubt in my mind that my mom just shit her pants over that revelation) and she still hasn’t quite accepted this element of my me-ness. Quite the contrary actually.

Here’s the scary part. I don’t think she even realizes how lazy I am. Probably because I’m too lazy to tell her. But the time has come to reveal the depths of my sloth and indolence – because the first step is admitting that I’m powerless over laziness (which I suppose is kind of a redundancy). So here goes.

Honey, I have a confession to make. When I’m home alone with the kids at night, I don’t bathe them.

That might not sound like a terrible transgression to some of you, but in our house it’s like heckling your pastor during his sermon. It holds that magnitude because – and I don’t think I’m overstating this – our kids live in an omnipresent sheen of filth and yuck. Remember how Pigpen from the Snoopy cartoons always had an impenetrable cloud of dirt and flies surrounding him? Yeah. That.

Just one example before we move on. Our daughter got a little bug examining kit from a birthday party last weekend. The other night I looked into the backyard and saw both kids huddled around something in the grass. I stepped forward for a closer look only to discover that they were pulling roley-poley bugs out of a pile of dogshit so they could look at them under the magnifying glass. So I guess I’ll go ahead and rest my case on the filth factor.

Hot Wife was out last night and there was just so much excitement and…I don’t know…life!... on TV that I completely lost track of time. When I finally came up for air, it was 10 minutes past the kids’ bedtime. Open kimono here: I did consciously think about tossing them into the bath first. But you guys. Let’s be serious. Jordin Em-Effin’ Sparks, homie. I’m only human. So let them skip their bath. I put them in their beds despite the inch-thick layer of crusted mud on the bottoms of their feet and the bright red Kool-Aid moustaches. And I’d rather not even discuss what was under their fingernails.

I don’t know what I was thinking. Perhaps I imagined that those little scrubbing brush dudes from the commercial would scoot into their rooms overnight, shine them up and have them spit-spot by morning.

That’s not what happened.

Hot Wife got home around 10 and our son started to cry shortly thereafter because he has some weird irritation (read: dirt) in his left eye. She went in to check on him and emerged seven or eight minutes later with the scowl of some nightmarish half-woman, half-werewolf creature. Her eyes glowed red and her fingernails spontaneously grew into wolverine claws and she was muttering something about the kids being dirty and showing me my own beating heart before she bites into it.

I won't lie: I was scared. I even thought about running from her, but I was too lazy to get up.

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Ever since I proclaimed myself an Anaheim Ducks fan, DGM readers who cheer for the Detroit Red Wings began to email me on a daily basis. They wrote to tell me the Ducks are "pussies." They said the Ducks would never in a million years beat the Red Wings. Come to think of it, they said exactly the same things Minnesota and Vancouver fans said to me before we eliminated them, too.

Funny, I haven't heard from those people today. Perhaps that has something to do with the Ducks eliminating the Red Wings from the playoffs last night (which, according to some Detroit fans, is a feat achieved only through luck).

Buh-bye now. Give our regards to Hockeytown.

As to the issue of luck, here's what Mitch Albom wrote in this morning's Detroit Free Press:

“And winning is how playoffs are measured. Never mind all that talk about Detroit playing better than Anaheim in this series. Never mind Game 4 (shoulda won) or Game 5 (shoulda won). There is only what you capture and what you lose. And for all the talk about great Detroit effort without a victory, there remained a wait for a great Anaheim effort with a victory. That came Tuesday. Detroit won the final minutes. But Anaheim won all the minutes before it.”

Thanks to the most generous person I know, I was at the game last night -- 12 rows from the bench, right at center ice -- and I what I saw wasn't luck. It was one team (Anaheim) take another team (Detroit) over its knee and, to quote a great DGM commenter, "beating them until the white meat showed."

To those who came in here shit-talking about the Dead Wings, I have only this message for you:

And to those who, like me, know a team of destiny when they see one, I offer this:

The Stanley Cup Finals start Monday. Go Ducks.

I recently had a meeting with Stanley, a client I’ve known for almost a decade. Stanley is an exceptionally nice guy but very much a professional. We’ve talked on a personal level from time to time – about our kids and our mutual business acquaintances – but the tone of our conversation is invariably businesslike and respectful. This, as you know, is not the way I speak in my “normal” life, but I have fun role-playing as a polite, gracious businessman on occasion.

At our most recent meeting, Stanley and I sat across a conference table from one another. His company was preparing to launch a new product and he’d asked me to help him craft the appropriate level of bullshit to make it sound awesome. He provided some source documentation and we discussed it feature by feature. I asked questions. Stanley answered them. Pretty standard meeting behavior.

When we got to item six, which seemed to be rather complex, Stanley said, “That’s where I think you can help us the most. We need a writer who can turn all this gobbledy-gook into plain English.” As he spoke the last part of the sentence, he smiled at me.

Then he winked.

At least I think he did. Do you ever have those moments where your eyes play tricks on you? Like when you see a huge pair of bare breasts in your peripheral vision only to discover when you turn your head that it’s just a poster for two eggs sunnyside-up at Denny’s? Happens to me all the time, and that’s why I was able to convince myself that Stanley’s wink wasn’t really a wink.

Until he did it again.

I felt a strange kind of rage about it. I can’t recall ever having been winked at, even by one of the many, many sassy little coeds who flirted with me in college. I’m sure winking at people was quite a persuasive instrument back in the day, but in my interpretation throwing a wink at someone nowadays is a good way to get your underwear rammed down your throat – WHILE YOUR WEARING THEM!

Stanley kept talking. “…so this has to reflect our commitment to sma—“

I interrupt. “Did you just wink at me?”

“What?”

“You winked at me, Stanley. You were paying me a complement and you winked at me.”

“I did?”

“Yeah. You did. And I’m a happily married man so I’d appreciate if you’d stop trying to hit on me.”

“Pffft!” Stanley says. “Don’t flatter yourself, pal. No one’s trying to hit on you.”

“So you claim!” I shout. “What other purpose could a wink possibly serve when you’re throwing it across a conference table to another man?”

“Perhaps I was trying to show you that I respect your capabilities as a writer!”

“In that case a handshake would have sufficed,” I say. “And don’t make the mistake of thinking my ‘capabilities as a writer’ mirror my ‘capabilities as a powerbottom.’”

Stanley appears flummoxed. Irate. Practically homicidal really. I presume this means the meeting is over. I pick up my papers and head for the door. But as I reach for the handle, I turn and look at Stanley.

“I’ll have a first draft to you next week,” I say. And then I winked at him.

[Since it involves work, this entry is also posted at King of the Cubicle.]

True or False?
Our collective fascination with celebrities is a way of distracting ourselves from our own lives. We want to know every detail of the lives of famous, troubled men and women because it’s our way of convincing ourselves that somebody out there is a bigger mess than we are.

My answer: true.

Like virtually everyone else, I check the usual sites to find out who in Hollywood was caught on film this weekend snorting coke or cavorting braless at the mall or was back in rehab. As evidenced by my contributions to Snarkywood, it’s something I pay attention to and like to discuss and find to be an easy target for tearing people apart. But as time has gone on, my feelings have changed. And I think I know why.

In my previous life as a sportswriter, I was in a position to meet and talk to some famous people. Michael Jordan. Tiger Words. And so on. Though I was still young and naïve enough be star-struck around people I’d only seen on television before, I became more and more aware over time that what we see on TV or the web is a mere sliver of the truth. Off camera, they’re us. They have children. They get depressed and anxious and irritable. They struggle with life in the same ways you and I do. Fame is not immunity.

At some point between sportswriting and today, I became mature enough to identify my own fallibility. I realized that when life becomes difficult or scary, I have a tendency to seek out distractions – something to take my mind away from the fear and depression and frustration. I don’t think I’m the only one who does that. As a matter of fact, I think just about all of us do it. Celebrities included.

So while the ever-expanding A-list of troubled young women struggle (in public) with their own lives and addictions and personal demons, we spend our days watching them do it and judging them for the way they handle themselves. Because it’s easy – far easier than turning our attention to ourselves and dealing with our lives and our addictions and our personal demons. If we saw in ourselves the sad, ugly, inconsistent behaviors we see in Britney and Lindsay and Paris, we'd have to confront our own weaknesses. And that’s hard. Really hard. Too hard.

If I honestly gave two shits about Paris Hilton, I’d have to borrow them both. And when I see people like Perez Hilton posting pictures of people just so he can call them ugly, it occurs to me that it’s gone too far. We’re all ugly. We’re all flawed and broken in some way. And watching someone else fall apart won’t change that.

I've "resigned" from Snarkywood. I've deleted my bookmarks for the celebrity sites. I've made a conscious decision to ignore the bloodlust for daily images and analysis of the comings and goings of celebrities. I've got my own imperfections to look after, and that's plenty.

My memories of middle school are a distant blur of blue corduroys, forgotten locker combinations and unrequited love for my seventh grade social studies teacher. But I also recall that there were three assistant principals, one of whom was tasked with busting the bad kids. We were all scared of this man despite his diminutive 5-foot-8 frame, his top-notch muffin top and his involuntarily bald head. We all knew to stay out of his way because he was The Enforcer.

I had dinner last night with my buddy Matt, who is the assistant principal/Enforcer at a middle school not far from here. Finally, after 25 years of wonderment, Matt detailed what Enforcing looks like from the other point of view. He regaled me with stories about kids coming to school with a large Ziplock bag containing 50 pirated porn DVDs, each individually wrapped, with the intention of selling them to his classmates. One man’s “resourcefulness” is another man’s “malfeasance.”

Matt also told me about a boy he’d busted just days ago when a box-cutter was found in his backpack. In that same backpack, the security personnel found a box of cigarettes, which I suppose is not terribly unusual anymore. But what certainly WAS unusual is that this tough, rebellious kid, who was ultimately expelled because of the box-cutter, was smoking Virginia Slims! For the carcinogenically unenlightened, that’s a cigarette about the width and length of a juice box straw. The brand is marketed heavily toward the soccer mom demographic and is disrespectfully referred to as Vagina Slims by the male crowd. To say that such a cigarette is in contrast to this kid’s villainous behavior is to say the late Jerry Falwell was not a fan of the Teletubbies.

When I’d heard enough of Matt’s bullshit, I excused myself and went outside where the kids were running around like monkeys hopped-up on Red Bull. I saw my son shooting baskets and I walked over to play with him. He wanted to see me shoot the ball and I dutifully displayed my gift for shooting airballs.

One of the odd things about being tall is the way children react when they see me. The majority are completely intimidated by my height or awash in awe, as if they’ve seen a giant. I always try to smile at them, as if to let them know that I’m big but very gentle and friendly. Sometimes that works, but sometimes it makes matters worse. My guess is that any reflection of actual emotion implies that I might also display great anger. I am The Angry Giant and I won’t think twice about picking up a tiny child between my thumb and index finger and swallowing him like a Cheerio.

But there are also occasions with chinless, big-nosed profile mitigates any fear a kid might feel. They just laugh, which is the best possible outcome.

Matt has a young son named Jake. I think he’s five. I’ve met and seen Jake plenty of times, but I’ve never really had the chance to talk to him and find out what he’s all about. I do know that what’s great about Jake, besides his perfect little-kid voice, is that his daddy is also quite tall. Big guys don’t scare him.

But last night as I was embarrassing myself on the basketball court, Jake walked up to me and just stood there, craning his neck to be able to see my face. I looked down at him and saw a familiar look on his face. He seemed to be in awe, staring up at me and studying my eyes.

I looked down and smiled at Jake. He continued to stare and did not smile back. But after about 10 silent seconds, he spoke.

He said, “You look like a pelican.”

When I put my daughter to bed last night, I hit the lights and lay next to her for a few minutes. We talked to each other, whispering, about what she’d done at school that day and which of her classmates doesn’t play nice and sundry other meaningful issues in the life of a four-year-old.

As she began to fade towards sleep and struggled to keep her eyelids open, she put her soft, small right hand on my cheek. As she did so, her eyelids flew open.

“What are deez, daddy?” she asked.

“What are what?”

“Deez,” she said. “Deez scratchy things.”

“Those are called whiskers.”

“What are dey for?”

“Well, they’re not really ‘for’ anything,” I said. “Lots of daddies have them on their bodies. They grow on their own, just like hair and fingernails.”

“And dat’s why you have to shave all da time, right daddy?”

“That’s right, honey,” I said. “You’re very smart.”

A few quiet seconds passed. I enjoy this time with her so much. All of the screaming and distraction is gone and I get to be with her as she drifts off to sleep. It’s one of my favorite things about being a dad – just to be with her at her most peaceful, precious, beautiful moments.

When I thought she was asleep, I sat up and began to walk toward the door. Halfway there, she called out to me.

“Daddy?”

“What, sweetheart?” I whispered.

“Mommies don’t have whiskers, right?”

I chuckled quietly.

“Sometimes they do,” I said.

“But mommy doesn’t have whiskers, right daddy?”

“Right. But maybe we’ll go to the mall this weekend and look at all the ladies with mustaches.”

“OK,” she said. “G’night, daddy.”

“G’night, big girl.”

Neighbor Jimbo called me at 3:00 Tuesday afternoon and, after prodding me about who my best friend is and who always takes care of me when there’s a big game, he offered me a free ticket to the Anaheim Ducks/Detroit Red Wings hockey game that night. It was a playoff game, and an important one at that. Given that I have developed a reputation as someone who will ignore work, family, personal responsibility, sex, nourishment, nuclear war and DEFCON 1 colorectal emergencies if there’s a hockey game on TV, I put Jimbo’s offer on par with an opportunity to go naked hot-tubbing with Hot Wife, Jessica Biel and an industrial-sized bottle of baby oil.

We got to the rink a full hour before gametime, and we spent that entire time getting completely stoked and moderately shitfaced. Huge, huge game for the Ducks. After beating Detroit in overtime Sunday night, all 18,000 of us in the arena expected a game for the ages.

But that’s not quite how it played out.

6:05 p.m. – Puck drops. Game on. Heckling commences.

6:11 p.m. – After the Red Wings’ goalie awkwardly deflects a shot on goal, I shout to him that he should knock the puck down with his skirt.

6:20 p.m. – Detroit scores. I assume this means my Ducks are awake now and that they will now kick their game into a higher gear. I mean, they have to, right?

6:22 p.m. – Detroit scores again. I scream nine consecutive obscenities into the stupid orange washcloths they handed out to each fan. I presume these hankies are meant to be waved in the air when the Ducks score, but seeing as how we haven’t even come close to scoring yet, I use it as a profanity receptacle.

6:27 p.m. – First period ends and every man with a ticket on the 400 level (read: nosebleeds) is in line at the same bathroom. We chat. “Lotta game left,” one guy says. “Yeah, we’ll turn it around in the second period,” says another. I say, “Hurry up! I have to pee like an incontinent rhino.”

6:32 p.m. – I sell a kidney for a cup of unnecessarily foamy MGD.

6:38 p.m. – Second period starts. Ducks look like shit. Sloppy passes, stupid penalties. We need a spark. I stand up, cup my hands around my mouth and shout, “HIT SOMEBODY!” The woman in front of me asks me to please stop spitting on her nachos.

6:44 p.m. – Detroit scores again. And it’s that douchebag Todd Bertuzzi – same guy who got suspended a couple years ago for almost breaking another player’s neck. Talk about adding insult to injury. Red Wings up, 3-0.

6:45 p.m. – What the fuck?! Another Red Wings goal and my orange hanky takes another profanity-laced tongue-lashing. Something about someone’s mother and a hockey stick and no lube. Fans begin to head for the exit. I convince myself that this isn’t happening. Because it can’t be. We’re seven wins away from the Stanley Cup and the Ducks are playing like a bunch of disorganized pantywaists? No way. I start to scan the crowd for Ashton Kutcher.

6:51 p.m. – Two of our players converge on one of the Red Wings and absolutely demolish him into the boards. Looked like a clean hit from up here. He’s down. He’s bleeding from the head. Oh, look! The referee just called a five-minute penalty and kicked one of our players out of the game. Lovely. Ashton, seriously, you can come out now. I’m done being Punk’d.

7:02 p.m. – Jimbo and I decide that our respective blood-alcohol levels are dangerously low. “Hi, can I have two MGDs please?” “Certainly, sir. I’ll just need to see some ID and remove one testicle from each of you.”

7:16 p.m. – They show a shot on the Jumbotron of a woman in the crowd with an extraordinarily low-cut blouse and inappropriately exposed breasts the size of an Ikea. She gets the loudest cheer of the night.

7:48 p.m. – Detroit scores again, but who really gives a whip? We suck. We probably couldn’t have played worse even if Jimbo and I laced ‘em up and skated out there ourselves. We might give up a lot of goals but at least I could entertain the crowd with some arm farts and knock-knock jokes.

8:30 p.m. – We exit the building and begin the long walk back to the parking lot. As we schlep down Katella, some fuckhead Wings fan drives by in a truck and yells, “Ducks suck!” I shout back, “Red Wings swallow!”

He’s starting to tell lies.

He took his lunch out of the fridge last Friday, examined it, decided he didn’t like what his mother had packed and tossed the whole thing in the trash. When he got to school, he told his teacher that his mom had forgotten to make his lunch and convinced her to give him money for pizza from the cafeteria. Resourceful? Yes. Creative? Obviously. Honest? Negatory.

Yesterday he somehow got his hands on the Super Glue and started to play with it while no one was looking. He squirted a small dab onto the back of an envelope, told his little sister it was water and convinced her to touch it. Stickiness ensued. Deliciously dastardly? Clearly. The kind of trick a big brother is supposed to play on his little sister? Totally. Truthful? Nope.

When I got home from work last night, Hot Wife and I sat him down and explained to him that liars are assholes and once there was a boy who cried “wolf!” when there was no wolf in sight so the townspeople left him out in the forest and then a real wolf showed up and ate the boy. Then we told him that it’s important to tell the truth because there’s this new law called Sarbanes-Oxley that lets the government kill people who lie by attaching jumper cables to their testicles and shocking them until they catch fire and you don’t really want to go out like that do you, son?

Trying to be constructive and educational with our discipline, we told him that if he ever lies again he will have to write a letter (writing practice) to the person he lied to and articulate why he lied and that he was sorry (personal responsibility). He will also have to perform community service (doing daddy’s chores) around the house, starting with scooping up Rusty’s poop (negative reinforcement) from the backyard with his toothbrush (nothing constructive about that part, but it sounded sufficiently harsh).

He was remarkably unaffected by this revelation. I recognized his stoicism because it was the shit I tried to pull when my parents busted me. You try to look contrite and sorry on the outside when inside you’re thinking, “That’s IT?! I could write letters and scoop dogshit with one hand tied behind my back. These guys are serious pushovers.”

I saw right through his act and recognized our error. We weren’t hitting him where it hurt. There was no suffering involved in our discipline. He didn’t feel the burn. And since we have elected not to beat our children for anything short of involuntary manslaughter, I felt the need to (figuratively) hit him where it would hurt most.

“…and there will be no television tonight,” I said.

With that, our tough, stoic, big shot son completely lost his shit. He put his head down on the table and began to cry at a level somewhere north of severe disappointment and just south of hysteria. That’s my idea of feeling the burn. Television is to our son is what a holy bible is to a room at the Marriot – it’s always there, omnipresent, reliable. TV is oxygen to him. Despite the fact that it was 7 p.m., only about 90 minutes from his bedtime, the idea of living even that long without it was devastating to him.

Which is exactly what I was shooting for.

The following sentence is horrible and wrong and possibly a deal-breaker for many of you, but I have to say it: sometimes punishing my children is kind of fun. I don’t know if this propensity for lying is simply an expected developmental stage or a serious flaw in his character, but putting his brain back in check was entertaining to me because it’s important. It was fun in the same way teaching him not to swing at pitches above his nipples is fun. We were parenting him, teaching him a specific right-from-wrong behavior. We’re helping him learn. And if we can’t take some joy in knowing we’re teaching our children to be good people, what’s the point of having kids in the first place?

I know you’re not idiots and I’m sure you can also see that taking TV away from him made me feel a little powerful, which also contributed to the fun factor because I don’t feel too powerful in that house most nights. But in a household where television rules and what’s on that television is almost always primary-colored, kid-focused programming, it’s nice to take the power back, if only for a few hours. If that makes me a terrible parent and a selfish asshole, fine. I’ve been called worse.

I believe in freedom and liberty and all of that other patriotic bullshit, but lately I’ve found that giving people the power to make their own choices sometimes creates serious inconvenience for me. In fact, I sometimes imagine that I’m sitting around the table with the dudes who wrote the Declaration of Independence. We’re discussing the merits of freedom and I dream that when we get to the part about inalienable rights I wave my little feathered quill in the air and say, “Yo! You guys! I think we should put a clause in here about all the shitheads who talk on their cell phones while driving. They should not be free to do that because it really pisses-off other drivers. You pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down, Hancock?”

I’ve mentioned before that it consistently takes as much as 45 minutes to travel the 12 miles between my office and Evans World Headquarters. Much of that can be attributed to the insane volume of cars on the road. But there’s no doubt in my mind that speeds (or lack thereof) are significantly reduced because every motherfucker on the road is on the phone and therefore oblivious to the notion that there are a whole shitload of us behind them on the verge of mania and looking for something in our cars to hurl at them when – if! – we get close enough to see the blinking blue LED on their Bluetooth headset.

Since I have learned through years of corporate ass-kissing and middle management that one should never present a problem without an accompanying solution, I propose that I be permitted to modify my CR-V with the same accessories as the car from the old arcade game called “Spy Hunter.” Specifically, my little Honda would be equipped with machine guns, missiles, and the tools needed to emit smoke screens and oil slicks.

Thereafter, I will patrol the freeways in search of people who talk on cell phones while driving. When I find an offender, I will blow his punk ass to smithereens, thereby removing the blockage from the road in the same way angioplasty removes blockage from the veins and arteries, letting blood flow freely.

I also propose that I be empowered to time-shift back to this morning when that whore in the blue Lumina cut me off without even looking to see that I was occupying the space into which she wanted to move. When that occurs, rather than pulling up alongside said whore to could call her a stupid-ass bitchwhore through my passenger-side window, I will simply fire a Tomahawk into her tailpipe.

I think I’m the right man for the job because I am not a vengeful person. I have life in perspective and it is neither my wish nor my intention to use my weapons preemptively. Conversely, it is my intention to protect and serve, engaging only when someone pisses me off. I think that’s quite a responsible outlook. Wouldn’t you agree?

[Ed. Note: The following is mostly a true story. My brain tells me that it’s the kind of minformation that shouldn’t be shared with an audience. But this site is a reflection of my life and my experiences, and I’m sharing it because it relates specifically to Dad Gone Mad. Per the written request of the other party involved, some specific information will remain confidential.]

[Ed. Note P.S.: I presume this story will further re-enforce then undeniable truth that I am an unbridled narcissist of the highest caliber and that I would rather have sex with myself than anyone else on the planet because no mortal being could be more beautiful inside and out than I. Please keep a bucket nearby in the event of a spontaneous need to puke your guts out.]

From time to time, I’m contacted by people who have seen Dad Gone Mad and think the irreverent, profane, innuendo-laden gibberish written here would be a nice fit for their own site or publication. I’ve accepted a few of these offers gleefully. I’ve summarily rejected a few, too. But I must say I’ve never heard anything quite like the scenario presented yesterday.

I got an extremely friendly and highly complimentary e-mail from a representative of a well-known print publication. She made it known that she is currently directing the build-out of a new and potentially very cool web site. Better still, she mentioned that she thought my writing style (or lack thereof) would be perfect for the site. They were willing to exchange real dollars for my contributions. I was intrigued, so I called her to discuss it further.

My first impression was overwhelmingly positive. She had such a non-threatening, easy-going way of speaking. She was professional and respectful. It was the kind of coolness one never expects from a mover or shaker in a position of power. There was no salesmanship, no marketing double-speak, no air of superiority whatsoever. I liked her.

She described the opportunity more granularly, detailing how she imagined making my writing a prominent presence on the site. She was clear that they were interested not merely in my writing, but also in attracting the readers of Dad Gone Mad to the new site. Not hard to understand. It’s a business, and readership generates income.

The conversation was open, direct and amicable. And after we’d gotten to know each other a bit, she presented the specifics of the offer:

1) I would submit a predetermined number of posts per week.

2) My readers would no doubt flock to the new site, too (because I would, as I have before, elicit compliance through incessant whoring).

3) They would pay me.

Sounds bitchen, doesn’t it? I’d be a fool not to accept it.

Oh, wait! Forgot one small detail:

4) I would shut down Dad Gone Mad.

“What the…?” I said (paraphrasing). “Where did that come from?”

She politely explained the desire for hardcore exclusivity. Fumbling with my words amid the smoke and shrapnel in my brain, I dithered some long-winded response laden with “uhs” and “ums” and extended pauses. Somewhere in that hazmat spill of articulated stupidity I was able to enunciate the words “that’s not going to happen.”

It’s funny. Until yesterday, the thought of ever again being without this outlet never entered my mind. I have presumed all along that I’ll show up here with dirty words and self-congratulatory missives in perpetuity until such time decades from now when my octogenarian wife and grown-up kids decide my feeding tube should be cut off, at which point I’ll write my swan song blog entry, which will read like this: “…and I took a big shit on it! DGM out! Zzzzzzzzzzzz...”

It may be an error in tact or image to admit this in writing, but this site means a lot to me. I feel attached to it. I brings me joy and pride and ego strokes and income and creative freedom. I choose to believe that there is a benefit of some kind for you, too. Good, meaningful things have sprung from this patch of technological soil.

Given that, the notion of Dad Gone Mad fading to black strikes me as absurd.

P.S. -- I saw this yesterday.

Radiohead and Sigur Ros. It has long since been established that these are the “it” bands. Failure to conform to the rule that one must have his life forever altered by their music results in immediate deletion of his name from The List Of People Who Are Cool. Believe me, I’ve tried to like these bands. I’ve purchased one Radiohead CD and just this weekend downloaded two Sigur Ros songs. But I just can’t do it. Their music makes me tired and bored. And they’re songs are so damn LONG. You could listen to the entire Beatles catalog and take a nap before a single Sigur Ros song ends. With all due respect, I’ll stick with the Beastie Boys.

Jessica Alba. If you listen to any other member of my peer group, she is the sexiest thing since crotchless panties. Personally, I don’t get the hysteria. Sure, she’s pretty. But she’s no Hot Wife.

(Quick digression to say if that line doesn’t get me a free pass to watch the hockey game Friday night, I’ll be shocked.)

(Hi, honey.)

Writing a book. One word: therapy. I’ve run up against a brick wall so many times that I’ve consulted a therapist to tell me why my brain goes into lockdown every time I sit down to write The Book. As near as I can decipher, the reason is that I’m doing it wrong. My therapy assignment for this week is to draw – not write – the steps I think I need to take to get the fucking book written. Drawing 1: A stick figure passed out on the ground and clutching a half-empty bottle of Southern Comfort to his chest. Drawing 2: A drunk stick figure plagiarizing someone else’s book. Drawing 3: A desperate, drunk stick figure performing sexual favors for the author from whom he plagiarized so the author won’t report him to the plagiarism police.

Those heinous ads above the DGM masthead. I have no idea how much money they bring in but I’m not sure any sum is worth those full-color eyesores. Unless I get a check large enough to buy the entire Pacific Ocean, they’ll be going bye-bye soon.

Tamales and artichokes (but not together) (because that would be all kinds of nasty). Hot Wife has taught the kids to love these foods. If I learned to like them, imagine the peace and harmony at the dinner table. But my palate, the evil warlord of all things mouth, simply refuses to comply. I may stage a coup.

Lost. Never seen it. Not really interested. But I’d like to be.

Martinis. I try one every year or so and every time, as my esophagus melts into my stomach, I wonder why so many people are so in love with something that tastes like diesel fuel.

Talk radio. For a sports fan there are few sanctuaries that can compete with listening to some unathletic hack rail on Johnny Jock-itch for flipping-off the crowd after his team lost the championship. But at its core, talk radio is 10 sporadic minutes of entertainment squished into 50 minutes of commercials for male enhancement, shady funding organizations and the station’s other talk shows. Such whores! They remind me of myself.

King of the Cubicle. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Fiction. The last novel I read was The Davinci Code. For some reason, I’m powerless to suspend my disbelief long enough to accept that Sue-Ellen Soggybritches meets her long-lost sister while they’re both waiting in line to use the bathroom at Wal-Mart, which is out of order because another female customer clogged it when she pooped out nine balloons full of smuggled heroin just a half-hour earlier – and the heroin-shitter is the sisters’ mother! I’d rather read something real.

Saving money. The whole “let’s set up a budget and follow it so we can retire somewhere magical, like Kansas” routine is a serious burr in my ass. Because we’re trying to save, I have to think twice about over-tipping the dancers at the titty bar so they’ll pay attention to me. Do you know how hard it is to get noticed at Captain Cream’s when you’re only throwing one dollar on the stage and drinking domestic light beer? Is this China? It feels like China.

For several months, my daughter has had a rather unusual rasp in her voice. She sounds like a truck driver or a late night radio personality who smokes three packs of unfiltered Marlboros between Freebird and Shine On You Crazy Diamond. For the first few weeks of this change in her voice, Hot Wife and I personally diagnosed it as the effect of her penchant for screaming and yelling (mostly at her brother). But just to be sure, we took her to the doctor a couple of weeks ago for a more reliable evaluation.

The doctor wasn’t so sure it was nothing. He examined her as thoroughly as is possible in a standard examination room, but to be completely sure it wasn’t something significant, he said he’d need to conduct a “procedure” that necessitated putting her under general anesthesia and sticking a tube down her throat. That happened yesterday.

We were asked to bring The Artist Formerly Known As Barney’s Biggest Fan to the outpatient surgery center by 6:00 a.m. As we pulled into the empty, dimly lit parking structure, it struck me that the last time we were on this floor at this facility, nine years ago, was when our first pregnancy miscarried. To state the obvious, that memory rocked me to my core.

Still, the experience with our daughter was surprisingly non-threatening at the outset. She had her cozy Cinderella pajamas on as we sat on her hospital bed and watched Sesame Street. She played with her teddy bear. She was happy. Her doctor came in and joked with her. She laughed. And then, with a nurse occupying our daughter’s attention with the silly oxygen mask, the doctor turned to Hot Wife and me. He began detailing what would occur during the “procedure.” He would be looking at her vocal chords. He would be taking pictures of them. And he said he would be looking for cysts or polyps or tumors – TUMORS! – that might be affecting her speech.

Shortly thereafter, an attendant came into the room, put the side rails up on her hospital bed and began to wheel her down the hall to the operating room. And my daughter began to cry. She wanted us. She needed us. She was scared to be separated from us. But we couldn’t come with her, and that was excruciating for all three of us. Hot Wife’s eyes welled up.

We retreated to the waiting room and tried to pass the time reading two-month-old issues of Sports Illustrated, but I couldn’t concentrate. I kept hearing the word “tumor” in my head. I kept conjuring morbid, terrifying doomsday scenarios about her never being able to speak again, about her in pain, about her life in danger. I’ve never known this sense of overwhelming helplessness. I’ve never felt so exposed. I’ve never felt so frightened. No fear could ever be more crippling than the fear for one’s child.

After 40 minutes or so, the doctor emerged with a relaxed smile on his face. He said everything had gone well and he produced pictures of our daughter’s vocal chords. No visible bumps or cysts, just some mild swelling in one area, which he said will probably go away on its own as she grows older. As he spoke, I could physically feel the relief. My shoulders relaxed. The tightness in my chest disappeared. My little girl is fine.

A few minutes later, we were allowed to see her in the recovery room. She was asleep and wearing a transparent oxygen mask. There were electrodes and tubes all over her, and the monitor above her pinged and beeped as they tracked her heart rate, her respiration and her oxygen saturation level. That was hard to see.

As I sat there watching her sleep, my thoughts drifted to people like Kelly – parents who have had to endure this kind of hardship more frequently and more severely than we have. As frightening and awful as our morning had been, it was an outpatient procedure that lasted less than an hour and involved no cutting or bleeding. Her life was never truly in danger. Others aren’t so fortunate. At the children’s hospital across the street, kids suffer. Sometimes they die. Their parents are shattered. I sometimes here people joke about the various levels of hell, and I suppose what her experienced yesterday was the first level – awful and frightening, but far from the deeper levels endured by parents of sick or injured boys and girls who can’t be certain that their children will survive treatment.

The mere thought of seeing my own child in such pain and peril is more than I can bear. Even a brief whiff of that emotional hell is enough to obliterate the way I’ve looked at life and fatherhood and the nonsensical prioritization of work vs. family. There is so much trivial nonsense that doesn't matter.

After about 10 minutes, my little girl woke up. She saw us smiling at her and smoothing the blonde hair on her head, and she smiled back. She sat up and began to fuss about the IV in her arm and the big electrode stickers on her chest – and I took that as a phenomenal sign. She asked for the green popsicle the doctor said she could have when she woke up.

We were home by noon, and my daughter was back to her old self. We had a pillow fight. We wrestled. And at one point she threw her little arms around my neck and said, “I LOVE you, daddy.”

We are very fortunate indeed.

The podcast from my appearance on Sirius Satellite Radio last month has been posted to the Be Happy, Dammit website.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

The audio of the discussion is smoother and far more tolerable than the way it sounded in my head that morning, which ostensibly means it doesn't sound like global thermonuclear war. Which is nice.

You'll agree that Bill Brazell from Federated Media deserves enormous credit for lobbing me softball questions about my own writing. Wasn't expecting those questions, but they definitely improved my ability to speak intelligibly (given that it was 5:40 a.m. in California). Thanks, Bill.

You'll probably also agree that when I'm asked about the presence of television in my life and the lives of my children, I fold like a slice of thin-crust pizza. Here's the real, unabridged answer to the question: my kids watch TV all day, every day, unless I kick them out so I can watch my shows.

Bill and Karen Salmansohn reference a couple of Dad Gone Mad posts during the conversation. Specifically the entries about my son's literacy, our snail infestation and my own viewpoint of how this interview went.

In the fourth inning of my son’s baseball game last night, a guy named Steve came into our dugout. The boys were playing defense and I was seated on a big bucket of baseballs on the field, my back against the chain link fence the separates the dugout from the field.

“Coach?” Steve said.

“Yeah,” I said, not turning my head away from the game because I didn’t want to miss the sight of another player standing at third base picking his nose as a ground ball rolled past him and into left field.

“Coach, I’m Steve Somethingorother. I’m the field security supervisor for the league. I need you and your assistant coaches to be inside the dugout when your team is on defense.”

“What? Why?”

“Because that’s the rule, Coach. Please pull your coaches off the field.”

“OK,” I said (with no intention whatsoever of complying with his stupid rule). “I’ll do it after the next batter.”

Steve then walked into the parking lot. I presumed he was leaving the premises, which motivated me to complete ignore his request. I chose to do so because a) I live my life passive-aggressively, b) I didn’t feel like getting up, and most important of all, c) the rule is ridiculous. The boys are six years old! They still need to be reminded where left field is and to which base the ball should be thrown to record an out, and occasionally to "wake the fuck up!" because they’re not paying attention and the ball is sitting at their feet and the runner is halfway to third base already.

Two batters later, with the assistant coaches and me still on the field, Steve returned. And he was pissed.

“Coach!” he barked. “I thought I asked you to get your coaches off the field!”

“You certainly did, sir! And I’m ignoring the request because your rule is bullshit. Why is it OK for us to be on the field when the boys are hitting – with an aluminum bat! – and yet prohibited from doing so when they’re holding nothing but a pleather glove in one hand and their wieners in the other? It’s absurd.”

“I don’t make the rules, Coach, I just enforce ‘em,” Steve says, undermining his own credibility. “This is a rule handed down by Little League Baseball and you signed a document at the beginning of the season saying you’d follow it.”

“Well I’ve changed my mind, Steve,” I said, now yelling a bit. “And now that I know you’re just a goon out here to enforce rules without contributing any rational interpretation, I’ll ask you to please leave our dugout. There are a lot of other fields here, and surely some kid on some other team is breaking another rule. Look! Over there! That kid’s cup is way too big. Arrest his ass.”

“Look, this rule is for your own safety, Coach,” Steve retorts. “If one of these kids hits a hard line-drive and it hits you or one of your assistant coaches in the face, the league is liable.”

“You just proved my point for me, Steve! Have you seen this team play? The next line-drive we hit will be our first of the season. Most of these boys can barely hit it past the pitcher’s mound. There is a better chance of a fluorescent purple albatross flying out of my ass than there is of me being hit with a batted ball. Now shove off, little rain cloud.”

I would like to have continued my diatribe against Steve, but I couldn’t.

Because the other team’s shortstop drilled me in the ear with a foul ball.

***********THURSDAY LINKS**********

Kelly, the mother of this child, is a Dad Gone Mad reader. If you have the means to make a donation, I know it would be sincerely appreciated.

King of the Cubicle is running a series on disturbing corporate vernacular. At the end of the day, you should swing on by and say hello.

Mother's Day is next weekend! To help the mom in your life celebrate in style, I'll pay the shipping and handling on all Hot Wife t-shirts purchased between now and May 12 and all Dad Gone Mad t-shirts purchased between now and Father's Day. Come on! All the cool people wear one.

Evans World Headquarters sits in the middle of a street with eight houses, four on each side. As I have mentioned before, it’s quite a tight-knit neighborhood. Everyone knows everyone else and we are each keenly aware of the lifestyles and behaviors of our neighbors. We know who has guns. We know which newspapers our neighbors read and we have all made judgments about one another as a result. And much to our collective horror and chagrin, we know who likes to walk around his house naked with the curtains drawn.

At least half of the houses on our street are inhabited by families the average person would describe as “religious.” They are faithful, respectable parishioners who have never tried to convert me and are as comfortable sharing their beliefs and religious insights with me as I am stealing beers from their fridge. They’ve invited us to church choir concerts and church carnivals. We’ve mourned together. We’ve celebrated together. We have a comfortable, religiously diverse universe of our own.

As “religious” people often do, we each adorn our houses with important symbols from our respective faiths – a cross, a mezuzah, a framed pencil sketch of Jesus. I consider myself an open-minded person and I don’t feel put off by any of it. But this morning I saw something that gave me pause (and by “gave me pause” I mean it freaked me the hell out).

As I drove out to work, I noticed that one of our “religious” neighbors had a new chrome frame around his rear license plate. It was early and I hadn’t had my coffee yet, so the writing on the frame was a bit blurry. But on the top I could make out that it was a quote from Exodus, verse something or other. On the bottom, according to my blurred vision, it said this:

“The Lord is My Boner.”

It didn’t quite register until I’d turned the corner and exited the neighborhood. But when I did finally put together the presence of “Lord” and “Boner” in the same biblical verse, I wondered for a moment if there was something my “religious” neighbors were hiding from me. I think I remember seeing something like this in Eyes Wide Shut.

Having worked at The Museum of Tolerance in my early 20s, I am hip to the fact that God means many things to people. He/It is a Shepard and a light and a source of strength. But I have never heard anyone refer to him as one’s erection, and I’d be lying if I said this revelation didn’t cause me a tinge of dyspeptic weirdness and simultaneously a flood of Jewish pride (because I have never once heard anyone wearing a kippah say a single word about God’s genitals).

It will be dark when I get home tonight but I’m still going to make a special effort to walk over to my neighbor’s car and confirm that what I think I saw this morning is legit. I’m hoping with all my heart that I misread it. But if I didn’t – if the Lord is actually my neighbor’s boner – I’m moving my family to Siberia, where we will eat whale blubber and live in a house made of ice.