I quit my gym a few months ago. I tell people I did so because the basketball court, which was the main draw of the place for me, was never maintained. The floor was dusty and warped, the rims were bent, the nets were ripped, the balls were bald and had ceased to bounce. I was paying $35 per month for the privilege to play there and I ultimately decided that much money would be better spent on porn and Pop-Tarts.

All of that is true but the real reason for the termination of my gym membership is that I’m a lazy son of a bitch. The prospect of driving myself all the way to the gym – five miles from the house – and summoning the energy to run up and down the court for two hours became more than burdensome; it was downright hard. And when one’s jump shot goes in with the same frequency one might expect from Queen Elizabeth in high-tops, it behooves one to cut his losses and go home.

But in recent weeks I’ve felt exercise calling me back to the fray. I’m resistant (in not altogether opposed) to the idea of rejoining a gym because the franchise closest to Evans World Headquarters doesn’t have a basketball court. I’ve looked into the option of buying a weight bench so I can lift at home. But none of the strategies my own brain has conjured seem terribly interesting or especially viable to me, not to mention the little matter of Who The Fuck Do I Think I’m Fooling? The last time I lifted anything heavy enough to build muscle mass, I was changing a tire on the side of a freeway.

Despite my pattern of dismal failure in the domain of physical fitness, I’m fortunate enough to have married someone who could kick your ass without putting down her low-fat, hummus-filled pita. After almost 14 years, I finally decided to ask her for help. Because when it comes right down to it, I have no idea whatsoever “working out” is supposed to look like. Hot Wife suggested that any effective workout regimen includes a healthy dose of stretching. Given that there’s only one muscle on my body that gets stretched with any regularity, I asked her to show me what she was talking about – and that may turn out to be the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.

We sat side by side on the living room floor with our legs straight out in front of us. She told me to keep my back straight, reach forward with my arms and touch my toes. Ha! Aha! Aha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaaa! When my reach extended to the tops of my kneecaps, my hamstrings felt as though they’d been set alight. And then this woman, this masochist, this dealer of death stands, walks behind me and puts her hand on my back. Ever so gently, she pushes me further forward – not far but certainly far enough to unleash muscular Armageddon upon the backs of my legs. Turns out I’m not as tough as I thought.

When I regained the ability to stand, Mom Gone Mean continued to instruct me on the various ways one can contort his body in order to stretch various muscles and, as an added bonus, look like a fucking idiot. I all hurts. All of it. She tells me stretching is a great way to squeeze the toxins out of my muscles so they can grow and whatnot, but if this is what it means to be fit I’d frankly prefer to be toxic.

We’re standing now, one foot out in front of ourselves, heel flexed, our other foot underneath us for support. Another hamstring stretch. As I try not to fall down, I become aware that my right quad is shaking – and I’m not talking about normal, shiver-like shaking. It appears as though there is an earthquake happening in there. My muscle fibers are twitching and quivering to the extent that it looks like swells on the ocean.

“Can you see that?” I ask Hot Wife.

“Yeah,” she says. “That’s not normal.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means normal people’s muscles don’t shake like that,” she says. “Your muscles are really, really weak. We have a lot of work to do.”

We’ve been stretching for three consecutive nights now and it’s become quite clear that my wife is trying to rebuild me in her image. She wants me to be a killer. She wants to be able to see my abs because they’re well defined, not because I weigh 90 pounds. When we hug, she wants to feel more than my rib cage.

Do we have to go to all this trouble? Isn’t there some kind of pill I can take? Some sort of hypnosis that programs me to drop and do 50 sit-ups every time someone says a certain word, like “Britney” or “Blog” or “Conjunctivitis”? I’d rather do this passively, without all of the shaking and whatnot.

The problem isn’t that she says it. I want her to say it. I need her to say it.

The problem, if you can even call it that, is it’s all she says anymore. She says it, I say it back, she says it again, I say OK, she goes away for a minute, comes back and says it again.

I’m talking about my daughter.

I’m talking about “I love you.”

God, I know how awful this must sound. How could a father even say such a thing? What kind of heartless bastard goes onto the Internet to tell the whole world his daughter loves him too much?

But you must believe me when I tell you that the child has completely lost her shit. Imagine living with a three-foot Betsy Wetsy doll whose pull-string is jammed. All day long: “Oops. Betsy made a wee-wee. Waaah! Waaah! Change me. Change me before I get a rash.” It’s funny the first five times, maybe even a little endearing. But try living with it all day, every day. I dare you.

The degree of difficulty grows exponentially when I consider all that comes with the phrase. She’s always smiling when she says it. Three-quarters of the time she follows the words with a kiss or a hug. And with increasing frequency she hangs for an extra second or two on the L for extra emphasis: “I lllllllllove you, daddy!”

I disappeared for about an hour Saturday to file a police report about that whole identity theft thing. (By the way, if you’re the fuckshit who borrowed my life last week, I hope you like ass rape because you’re going to get a steady diet it of it from an ill-mannered axe murdered named Butch real soon.) When I got home, my daughter came running at me like a freight train. I picked her up, hugged her and was serenaded by this:

“I lllllove you, daddeeeeee! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! I love you, daddy. I love you around the whole wide world. That’s how much I love you. Mwah! I love you, daddy! Mwah! Mwahmwahmwah! Mwah! I lllllove you, daddy! I love you all the way to Penss…Pencil…Pencilman..

“Pennsylvania?”

“Yeah. Pencilmania. I love you all the way to Pencilmania. Oh! And daddy? Guess what? I lllllllllllllove you! Mwah!”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” I said. “I love you, too.”

“Mwah! I llllllllove you, daddeeeeeeee! Mwah! Mwahmwahmwah! I lllllove you, daddy! Mwah!”

Can you understand my conundrum? It reminds me of those weirdos at the gym, like the hairy Neanderthal on the elliptical trainer next to you. You don't make eye contact with him and you don't dare actually speak to him because you know doing so would make him think you're his new best friend and you couldn't get him to stop talking even if you shoved a yoga mat down his throat. This is not a lot different. If I respond, she'll continue until such time as I can get Barney to call the house and say, "Shut it, kid! Your yapping is making the kid on my show with the hearing aid blind and incontinent."

For those who need the obvious stated, I love this child with the fury of a runaway train. She has stirred emotions in me that defy description. She even told me that she’s going to have a princess party for her next birthday and I’m invited. All of that. She makes my chest explode.

But God! OK! I get it. You love me. A lot. I love you too. In fact, I love you so much that I'm going to give you one more week to chill out before we resort to jaw-wiring.

A few days ago I got a credit card bill for $2200 from a home improvement warehouse store. Seems I went to stores in two different locations – each many miles from Evans World Headquarters – and purchased an upright vacuum, an indoor water cooler, a portable air conditioner, a case of Gatorade and something loosely defined as “cutlery.”

I studied the bill curiously. My name. My address. Looked legit. But I don’t shop at that store, don’t have a credit card for it, and I would never even consider applying for a card that charges 22% interest because I know Hot Wife, Queen of Fiscal Responsibility, would kick my balls into my chest cavity for such a reckless vandalization of our pristine credit score.

I called the customer service number on the bill and was directed to a lovely representative named Rosita.

“I think someone’s trying to fuck with me, Rosita.”

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“Forgive me,” I said. “I curse a lot when I’m…well…I curse a lot. I’m calling because I just got a bill with my name on it for purchases I did not make with a card I don’t have.”

Rosita asked me to confirm my name, address, date of birth, Social Security Number, mother’s maiden name, preference for Gatorade flavors (orange, by a mile) and whether I am now or ever have been a member of the communist party, the Mickey Mouse Club or Weight Watchers. As I responded, I could hear her acrylic fingernails abusing a computer keyboard.

“OK, Mr. Evans,” she said. “In addition to the card about which you’ve called, it appears as though you have made purchases with a credit card from a large warehouse superstore from which one might buy an 18-pack of Chef Boyardee ravioli cans. Also, you applied for and received a car loan.”

“A CAR LOAN?!”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Evans.”

“Rosita, I don’t know to which religious faith you adhere, but I want you to pick that faith’s most precious preciousness and picture it in your head. Can you see it?”

“Yes.”

“OK. Good. Whatever that image is, I swear to it that I did not apply for a car loan. Nor did I spend ‘two large’ on cutlery and Gatorade. You have to believe me. I’ve been the victim of identity theft and we both know it.”

“Please hold, Mr. Evans.”

Suddenly I’m listening to Lawrence Welk’s Greatest Hits (quite an oxymoron there if you ask me). Forty-five seconds elapsed before Rosita returned to the line, and let me tell you: forty-five seconds feels like an eternity when all you have to listen to is the music they use to relax people in the psych ward just before they administer the electric shock treatments.

“Mr. Evans?”

“Hi, Rosita. I missed you.”

“Yes, thank you, sir. We have reviewed our records and closed the accounts in question. We have initiated our own investigation into this matter and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.”

“Thanks, Rosita,” I said. “I appreciate your help. But can I ask you one question?”

“What’s that, sir?”

“What kind of car did I buy?”

“Hmmm. [fingernails clicking again.] It says here you bought a Honda Odyssey.”

“A minivan!? What kind of dumb-ass steals someone’s identity to buy a family car? And you know what else, Rosita? This reflects negatively on ME! I mean if you’re going to steal from me and obliterate my credit, at least have the decency to spend it on something cool, like drugs or hookers or a black market bazooka. But a minivan? God, I feel so used.”

We had a real doozie last night. After a full day of playing and swimming and pushing herself to the limit in the 90-degree SoCal heat, The Artist Formerly Known As Barney’s Biggest Fan absolutely lost her mind. If you have children, you know what this type of tantrum looks like: throat-searing screams, incessant tears and sniffles, spontaneous lethargy, and a single-minded stubbornness that leaves you no choice but to covertly slip into a phone booth and emerge as…“Daddy! Crisis Negotiator Extraordinaire!”

Make no mistake, this was a hostage crisis. My screaming four-year-old daughter was holding peace and quiet against their will, and at 9 p.m. on a Wednesday night when mommy and daddy want to watch So You Think You Can Dance, it’s time to call out the big guns to shut this kid up. I began the negotiation with the perpetrator with a series of compulsory tactics – bribery, threats, promises to take her to McDonald’s for lunch if she would please just shut the hell up and go to bed. But none of that worked. Never does.

I have learned over the years that my kids are highly susceptible to humor. It’s kryptonite for their tantrums. Sometimes they even get mad at the fact that my jokes and idiocy have so easily distracted them from their tantrums (tantra?), snarling at me through their laughter. As a hostage negotiator, one must have an entire array of tricks and gags at the ready because one never knows specifically which type of humor works for any given tantrum.

It’s important to know the cause of the meltdown, too. While jumping around the room like a monkey wearing nothing but tighty whities may be the antidote for a tantrum fueled by disappointment, it clearly won’t work for low-blood-sugar tantrums. One must also beware that he doesn’t overextend himself when something as simple as burping the word “ukulele” will suffice.

Last night’s disaster was all about fatigue; she was flatly wiped-out from a long day of whatever four-year-old girls do. So after 15 minutes of errant, miserably executed negotiations, I went right for the sweet spot – her favorite book. And that pained me deeply.

The Artist Formerly Known As Barney’s Biggest Fan has taken quite a shine to a book called Fancy Nancy. The protagonist in the story is a materialistic little brat named Nancy who is so repulsed by her family’s normalcy that she sets out on a campaign to change them to her own liking. I have this horrible feeling that my daughter views this story as a textbook for a future hostile takeover of our household and not as a fictional silliness.

I read Fancy Nancy last night in the goofiest way I could conjure. Way over the top with the pivotal moments in the story, like when Nancy trips while carrying a tray of parfaits (“that’s a fancy word for ice cream sundaes”) and spills the shit all over herself. I looked down at her periodically during the story and saw my daughter trying to stifle laughter. Laughter meant defeat, and she’s not a very good loser. But she couldn’t help it.

The last page of the book is as cheesy as they come. After spending the entire book trying to make mundane words sound fantastical and “fancy”, Nancy’s parents put her to bed. As they turn off the light in her bedroom she tells them “I love you. Because there isn’t a fancier – or better – way to say that.” The end.

[Ed. Note: Baaaarrrrrffffff!]

I read that final page as syrupy and poignantly as a man can. When I read the last line, I tilted my head to the side a little, as if to say “aawwww.” That’s not an expression I normally display and as a result it set my daughter off. She and her brother lost it, laughing as hard as I’ve ever seen them laugh. And THAT, my dear friends, is how you know the hostage has been released.

I started writing this site almost five years ago. Over the years, I’ve gotten to know the collective tendencies of the readers. I can predict with certainty that someone will read this entry and come to the conclusion that I completely mishandled the tantrum situation. “You should have spanked her.” “You should have ignored her.” “You should have sold her for parts.” I have but one simple question for that person: what if George Bush followed the same pattern? What if, instead of rushing to bomb the shit out of some far-off land, he got the head of that state on a videoconference and showed him how to do an arm fart? Or told him the joke about the man from Nantucket? What if that douche nozzle who said he had “a gut feeling” that the US will be attacked this summer kept his fucking trap shut and instead of spewing unfounded bullshit into the microphone chose to recite Bill Murray’s Dalai Lama monologue from “Caddyshack”?

Think about it. The path to peace is not paved with bombs and fear; it’s paved with wet willies and “Yo mama’s so stupid she has to put lipstick on her head just to make up her mind.” Because there's no fancy way to say that, either.

I recently saw a picture of what I looked like in ninth grade and was horrified to see, even after 25 years of perspective and maturity, that I was so obviously a nerd. Short of wearing a pocket protector and my headgear in the photo, it couldn’t have been more apparent. The fact is there wasn’t any particular item on my person that one could point and say, “Yep. Nerd Alert! Evans, Daniel R. is a dweeb. No question about it.” It was the general presentation of ME that told the story.

Don’t misunderstand. I’ve made peace with my inner nerd. It will be with me forever. In fact if my brain were its own man, it would have a three-inch gap between the hem of its pant legs and the top of its shoes. It’s hair would be greasy, its skin stark white, flaky and pocked with whiteheads. I lack the objectivity I’d need to tell you that person is still me, but I’ve chosen to believe that being married to a smokin’ hot babe and having two kids who rock peoples’ worlds is enough to repel any accusation that I’m still a nerd. Coolness by association, I guess.

But enough about me. The real fun started when I started to sift through the pages of my junior high school yearbook to see if there was anyone in there I could still remember. Seems I’d forgotten a lot of their names but glancing at a few of those faces flooded my mind with memories, most of them unpleasant. I didn’t have very many friends in junior high. And by “not very many” I mean none. In a sea of jocks and stoners and cute cheerleaders with quickly developing breasts, there wasn’t much popularity left over for an 80-pound Jewish kid with an overbite and an inordinately large nose. But somehow that was OK with me because, as I suppose my writing career implies, I was all about people watching. I saw everything, new all of the gossip and could predict with rather impressive accuracy exactly when Mary Jane Fancypants was finally going to let Bobby Popular stick his hand up her shirt. I was Perez Hilton before Perez Hilton existed, with the single notable difference that I was too timid to tell the world what I knew. Oh, and I didn’t have pink hair.

As I went on safari through that yearbook, I was struck by the way my perspective on everyone else had changed while my recollection of myself was unchanged. The guys who used to intimidate me and play keep away with my Cheetos now seem quite fallible – and by that I mean if their 14-year-old selves were standing right here right now I feel confident that I’d be able to kick their asses. And the hotties? Not that hot. I tried to imagine them with 25 years of life on their faces and came away with the general assessment that they were each wrecked and spent, the kind of women you see at the supermarket buying three plastic jugs of cheap whiskey and four cartons of Kools with food stamps.

What if I could go back? What if I could transport myself back to 1984 and take with me everything I know, everything I’ve seen, everything I believe? I choose to believe I’d rock their worlds. I’d be so smart and worldly and confident that they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves. I’d tell the star athlete that I was pretty sure he was going to blow out his ACL during his junior year in high school and end up working construction in the 909. I’d tell the cheerleaders that the jocks only want to get into their pants and unless they wanted to lose their virginity in the back of a 1979 Toyota Supra behind the Vons market on Cochran Street, they should rethink cavorting around town with the aforementioned construction worker. And I’d tell the stoners not to bogart.

But what would I say to me? The 14-year-old me awash in loneliness and fear and confusion. The me who invariably chose to stand in the shadows and felt content with mediocrity because the risk of trying and failing was too frightening to think about. I’d like to believe I would chew myself out, tell myself to break out of this unnecessary self-hatred before it got away from me and became the baseline for my entire youth.

But I know myself too well to think I’d actually say those things. I’d probably just give myself a hug and tell me everything would be OK.

Here’s how you know when you’re completely hosed:

When you arrive home after an especially disgusting day at the office, two whiny, clingy, catastrophically tired children greet you at the door. They grab hold and hang on you like a wet towel on a hook. When you finally unlatch their superheroic kung-fu grasps from your legs, you walk over to kiss your wife. As soon as your lips separate from hers, she says, “Don’t forget I’m going out tonight, honey. You’ll have the kids to yourself.”

See? Hosed.

A smart man would have run for his life. A man with even a shred of inclination toward self-preservation would have negotiated some sort of mutual understanding with his wife – an agreement that a personally offensive requirement such as this would need to be properly “appreciated” upon her return. But I am neither smart nor a particularly strong negotiator. I silently acquiesced because for some stupid reason I still feel an obligation to be a father – even in times when all I want is a beer and the remote control – because I just can’t get past the fact that I love those kids with the white hot fury of 7,000 suns. And lemme tell you, it’s a real inconvenience sometimes.

She left. She got into her minivan and drove away, abandoning me there with Marty McWhineypants and his lovely assistant, Sally Snottybottom. They kvetched all night. Daddyiwantsomegrapes. Daddycanyoureadthistome. Daddycanwehavedessert. Daddydaddydaddy. And when I sat on the floor and played Legos with them, it was never enough. The airplane wasn’t big enough. The monkey’s leg fell off. The house had no windows. “Fix it, daddy!”

By bathtime I was cooked. I hadn’t eaten dinner, hadn’t checked my email, hadn’t done a thing for myself. And still: the whining. The first three times I asked them to get undressed the response was this:

“__________.”

The fourth time was different. I didn’t ask.

“GUYS! LISTEN! I WANT YOU TO GO INTO YOUR ROOMS, TAKE YOUR CLOTHES OFF AND MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM IN 30 SECONDS. GO. NOW.”

My tone was sufficiently assholish to motivate action. Forty-five seconds later they were butt-naked, freshly pee-peed and standing under a running shower.

I left them there for a moment. I needed 30 seconds of peace – enough time to throw together a PB&J and fire up the computer. I began to wonder to myself how stay-at-home parents endure this all day. How do they stay sane? How do they—

Hold it.

It’s too quiet.

It shouldn’t be this quiet. This can’t be good.

I set down my sandwich and stormed back to the bathroom, all the while girding myself for the carnage I knew I’d see when I got there. “If they’re drawing on the shower door with my shaving cream again, they can forget about ever seeing the sun again.”

When I got to the bathroom, I looked inside and saw something that rocked me to my core.

He was washing her hair.

I stopped, backed up a step and watched in silence. They didn’t know I was there.

He spoke softly to her. He told her it was time to rinse (a step he knows she hates) and instructed her to turn her back to the water. He helped her bend her head back to let the water cascade down the back of her head. He positioned his right hand on her back for support and his left hand vertically at her hairline to prevent the spray from going into her eyes.

I felt a tear run down my right cheek. My chest wanted to explode. How do they do this? How do they become so special? And how do I forget that they have this incredible capacity to love each other?

Fatherhood plays tricks on you. It sets you up to pound your chest and raise your voice and demand compliance from your children. You learn to presume guilt. And then, without warning, it pulls the rug out from under your anger, leaving you out of breath in a blubbering state of gratitude.

I love that about it.

It didn’t take long to identify a villain. It was the guy in the front row – the one with an unfamiliar accent and a bald head. The one who raised his hand and asked our traffic school instructor, a former cop named Fred, to confirm his belief that someone in need of a policeman should simply call the nearest donut shop.

And so began a grizzly, excruciating eight-house day during which I learned once and for all that everyone in the whole world (except for you and me) is a fucking idiot. To support that contention, I offer a sampling of balls-to-the-wall stupidity put on display by my traffic school classmates Saturday:

• When informed by Fred that an estimated one in every 13 cars on the road has a handgun on board, Stupid Question Guy in the front row said, “I doubt it. Listen, whatever is said here stays here, so everyone raise your hand if you have a gun in your car.” We were sitting in a courtroom, as was a deputy sheriff.

• While discussing the difference between a motor cop and a patrol cop, Stupid Question Guy raised his hand and asked, “Is it true that if you need a policeman in an emergency you should call the nearest donut shop?”

• “Can a pregnant woman drive in the carpool lane?”

• Question: “What causes traffic accidents?” Answer from the back of the room: “Cars.”

• Question: “Can two drinks impair your driving?” Answer from Stupid Question Guy: “Depends how you’re holding them.”

• While Fred was detailing the various physical factors that can contribute to accidents, he mentioned color blindness as a possibility. He then said that such impairment is not often a problem because we all know that a standard traffic light has a red light on top, a yellow light in the middle and a green light on the bottom. Some stoner near the back wall asks, “What if you’re dyslexic?”

As the collective dipshittedness of the gathered offenders began to evolve, I couldn’t help but wisecrack about it to the guy behind me – the one with emanating the stank of unbrushed teeth and the tragically worn Birkenstocks that smelled like the feet of a dead rhino. I have to tell you that the humor was switched on Saturday; I was cracking myself up. But this stinky bastard barely cracked a smile, which ultimately motivated me to say to him, “Look, dude. We’re gonna be here all day and it’ll be a lot easier for both of us if you laugh at my jokes and agree that each is a pearl of comedic brilliance.”

He never came around but I think I know why. There was a woman sitting at the end of his row – late 30s, blond, moderately attractive in her low-cut sun dress and Lisa Loeb reading glasses. Throughout the day this woman inadvertently entertained the men nearby by masturbating virtually every part of her body except the part one normally associates with masturbation. Her shoulders, her thighs, her feet, her scalp. All day.

But even a self-massaging woman couldn’t distract me from the issues. On one side of the room was an instructor who began his eight-hour ego bomb with this nugget: “If there’s one thing you remember from this class today let it be this: never, ever get into a head-on collision. You won’t survive it.”

And on the other side of the room was a gathering of some of the dimmest minds this side of The White House, each of whom was searching for some loophole in common sense, some hole in reality that would let them break the laws of traffic and/or physics. To wit:

“If a cop pulls you over for speeding and you tell him it’s a street you’ve never driven on before, will you still get a ticket?”

I left the courtroom that day with only one question. Is there such a thing as felony ignorance?

“Goodnight, big girl. I love you.”

“Daddy?”

“Hmm?”

“What does that mean?”

“What does ‘I love you’ mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I suppose it means you’re very special to me.”

“What else?”

“Umm… It means you make me happy and proud. And it means being your daddy is the best thing in the whole wide world. Even better than ice cream.”

“Oh.”

“Do you understand now why I say that to you all the time?”

“I fink so.”

“Good. We can talk more about it in the morning if you want to.”

“OK. G’night, daddy.”

“Sweet dreams.”

“Daddy?”

“What, honey?”

“I love you, too.”

Don’t be alarmed, but I’d say there’s a very strong chance that my head is going to explode this Saturday.

Traffic school.

Just the words themselves make me want to take a rusty old spork to my eyeballs, if only to give myself something else to think about. Something other than the fact that I’ll have to sit in a court room for eight hours listening to some hack articulate the importance of wearing a seatbelt and keeping your hands at ten o’clock and two o’clock on the steering wheel and sir? Sir? There’s no sleeping in traffic school.

Had I committed a more legitimate moving violation, a misdeed that endangered the public or one that could be interpreted as a bonehead move, I suppose I would be a hair less embittered about my sentence. But God bless America for its even-handed system of justice. I’ll get to spend my Saturday with the speeders and the illegal left-turners and the red-light-runners because I had the nerve – the audacity! – to clip a reflector bump with my right rear tire. Talk about a hardened criminal.

I’ve been to traffic school once before and I’m here to tell you it’s a soul-sucking nightmare. If offered the chance to attend one of these all-day borefests or be kicked in the nuts with a steel-toed boot, I’d take door number two faster than you can say “mirror, signal, blindspot.” Don’t we have a right to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment in this country? And doesn’t an entire day of drunk driving statistics and stories about car wrecks that resulted in death and dismemberment violate that right? “Fuck this, you honor! I’m being disenfranchised up in this muhfuckuh!”*

My only shred of optimism or wisp of hope for survival is derived from the microscopic possibility that I’ll be able to sneak a pen and paper into the room. (I’m considering tucking a moleskin notebook into the back of my underwear, covering it with my shirt and walking into the building as normal. If anyone stops me to question my conspicuously stiff posture, I’ll tell him I’m wearing a scoliosis brace and I’ll thank him to shove his disgusting bias against the handicapped up his tailpipe.) If I can get the notebook in, I have no doubt that a flood a kick-ass blog fodder will rain down from all angles.

If I’m unsuccessful? Reference the first sentence of this entry.

*I stole this phrase from someone but I have no idea who. Credit to the original author, whoever you are.

I’m a morning person. Always have been. Most days I’m up and at ‘em before 6 a.m., and by 7 I’ve already showered, shaved, shat, brushed, read the sports page and, on a great day, eaten at least one frosted strawberry Pop-Tart (not toasted) (because toasting a Pop-Tart and destroying its artificially organic splendor is tantamount to turning a convertible Ferrari into a station wagon) (or talking about health care on parenting blog).

My allegiance to the morning is partly because it’s the only part of day when I can have some time to myself. I need that time and I’m protective of it. If you mess with it, I'll cut you. No distractions, no serious obligations, no outside influences. It’s just me, my appetite, my newspaper, and occasionally the token, big-breasted weather-girl-slash-cock-tease on the local Fox affiliate – the one to whom my friends not-so-adoringly refer as “Sparkletits.”

Naturally, the kids have ruined everything. Specifically our son. Over the course of his first seven years on earth, that kid has studied my sleep patterns to the degree that he knows exactly what time I will awaken the next morning and he purposely sets his own body clock to wake up one minute before me. I roll out of bed and rub the eye boogers from my eyes, and the moment my vision unfucks itself I see him.

“Hi daddy!” he says in a voice way too chipper for 5:30 a.m. “Can we go to Starbucks together?”

Starbucks. That’s what gets him out of bed so early. One morning a couple of years ago, the first time he obliterated my private morning time by waking up early, I decided we’d go to Starbucks and have some father-son time. I bought him chocolate milk and a chocolate donut (a revelation that didn’t sit well with his mother) (“You bought him WHAT?! Well in about 30 minutes, when he has a sugar crash and is lying on the floor screaming about not wanting to wear underwear, he’s all yours, Mr. Chocolate Man. Good luck with that.”).

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t absolutely love that morning. He sat in my lap and we read the sports page together and all of the women in Starbucks looked at us and smiled about how cute we were together. But the lingering disaster from that fateful morning is that it set a precedent in the boy’s mind, and he now believes he must wake up early EVERY MORNING so as not to miss another opportunity to scarf mass quantities of chocolate wonderment. I’ve created a monster and he looks just like me.

Long story short, I’m fucked. And so is he. I’m trapped in the middle of The Perfect Storm in my own home. If I DO take him to Starbucks, Hot Wife gives me that disapproving glare that says, “You just blew any chance of nookie in the near future, bucko.” If I DON’T take him to Starbucks, he cries until the rest of the house is awake, at which point they all hate my guts because they were right in the middle of a great dream about a) Paul Newman, b) Barney, or on an especially desperate night, c) me.

What sits before me is, in my entirely narcissistic opinion, worse than Sophie’s Choice. “I cannot choose! I cannot choose!”

So I’ve started sleeping in.

I saw Sicko this weekend and I have known since I walked out of the theater that I would have to write something about it. Think what you want about Michael Moore and his political leanings, but if you see the movie I think you’ll agree that the facts he presents are neither conservatively nor liberally slanted. The film identifies and illuminates a catastrophic health care system in the U.S., a system wherein large insurers make medical decision based not on the health of their members but on the wealth of their shareholders. It’s disgusting, especially when contrasted against the efficient, exclusively patient-focused health care systems in other countries -- Canada, the UK, France, even Cuba.

I’ve had a lingering feeling of outrage for the two days since I saw Sicko. I believe it’s a result of the comparisons I’ve made between this film and a documentary I recently watched, The War Tapes. In the latter film, three American National Guardsmen were armed with helmet-mounted cameras as they deployed to Iraq. These cameras captured the day-to-day hell of the war – the fear, the outrage, the despair. It’s quite a moving film, both in the heroism reflected by the soldiers and in the clearly evident greed of the American government and the companies from which they personally profit. A story on the front page of the Los Angeles Times last week reported that there are currently more contractors on the ground in Iraq than there are servicemen. I suppose nothing more than that needs to be said.

The cumulative affect of seeing these two documentaries within the same week has left me with a feeling with which I’m not familiar. I’m ashamed of my country. This is not the first time I’ve seen or read or thought things in the US were ugly or unfair, but it’s the first time I can recall feeling uncomfortable with what I see. What are we doing? Where is our leadership? How has it come to this? And how do we get back to doing right by our citizens instead of denying them health care and sending them off to get killed on the basis of money?

I read this story this morning. The Associated Press reports that our war is costing us $12 billion per month and that since September 11 we have spent $610 billion on war-related pursuits. That figure does not include the loss of nearly 3,600 American lives nor the unquantifiable cost incurred by the friends and families of these men and women.

Twelve billion dollars a month.

Juxtapose that with Moore’s contention that there are 50 million Americans without health insurance – and that even those who ARE insured aren’t guaranteed care because the treatment they need may be an excessive drain on the insurer’s profit.

In my mind, there is only one logical deduction from that equation, and it’s this: we are a country that has an easier time sending our citizens to die than we do keeping our citizens alive and well. Is that an oversimplification? Probably. But one has to wonder.

As I said, this is an issue that defies political affiliations. It’s a matter of right versus wrong.

I’ll put it in a personal context. Aside from our mortgage, health insurance is our top household expense. I was recently been denied coverage for prescription medications because my insurer claimed I had a pre-existing condition. (Who cares when it began to exist? I need help and your job is to help me.) When our daughter had an outpatient procedure to find out if she had a tumor on her vocal chords, our carrier responded with a letter saying such a procedure is not covered by our plan, thereby sticking us with an invoice that had a comma in the “amount due” box. I wrote them back and told them to fuck right off.

I know I’m not alone in my thinking. What are your health insurance horror stories? How has the bullshit system impacted your life and the lives of your loved ones?

The thing about summer that really chaps my ass is that sometimes I have to take my shirt off in front of other people. Because if you really want to humiliate yourself, there’s nothing quite like exposing your practically non-existent pecs and the vanilla-ice-cream-white skin on top of them to a crowd of people who – if they’re like everyone else in front of whom I’ve disrobed – will henceforth refer to me as “Powder.”

You know that old line about not judging someone by the way they look because it’s what’s inside that matters? That line of bull (which I think we can all agree is patently false) (because everyone knows that even if you’re a Nobel Lauriat and the genius who invented the cure for morning breath, you’re still a loser if you’re not built like Adonis and can’t crush an unopened Heineken keg can with your butt cheeks) was invented for people like me. My six-foot-three frame carries only 175 pounds, which, for you visual thinkers out there, looks quite a bit like a chicken wing after you’ve gnarled the meat off of it. Then imagine wrapping that wing in the thin, translucent “moist towelette” they give you to wipe the buffalo sauce from your fingers. Now look at that thing. Just look at it. Because what you have is a true-to-life, one-thousandth scale replica of me, Powder. Hi. Nice to see ya.

We spent the 4th with some friends. Those friends have a pool. An outdoor pool. I have two children. They love to swim. But one of them isn’t old enough to do much more than sit on the steps and splash. That means I have to go into the pool with her, which in turn means I had to remove my shirt out in the sun where God and everyone can have a front row seat for the revelation of my chest and torso. “Oh my God, Julie, LOOK! His nipples are uneven!”

(And let’s not even talk about my calves – or my lack thereof. I have the exact polar opposite of “cankles.” I have “tibiakles,” so named because it’s skin on bone.)

Perhaps you’re bored with this blog entry. Perhaps all this blabbering about body image sounds like a simple psychosis I’ve invented because I don’t love myself. That’s horseshit. It’s real. I’m not the only one who’s noticed, and I can prove that to you.

Late yesterday afternoon, when the sun was starting to set, I was standing in the kitchen with our hostess and another female friend. Before sat this incredible spread of gourmet cheeses and fruit and salsa and barbecued meats. It was insane. I was leaning on the counter, chatting with these women and nibbling a handful of green grapes.

“You sure you don’t want more to eat, Danny?” one of them asked.

“Yeah, like maybe some more of this grilled chicken or this enormous brick of swiss cheese?” the other asked.

I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed but I could see what they were getting at. (Correction for The Grammar Police: I could that at which they were getting.)

“Are you guys trying to fatten me up?” I said.

“Yeah,” one said.

“A little,” said the other.

“Why? What’s wrong with me? Am I THAT skinny?”

“Yes,” they said in unison.

Our hostess hands me a paper plate practically bowing in the middle from the weight of the food it holds: chips, guacamole, steak, cheese, macaroni salad, and on and on and on. I felt like a pig being force-fed so I’d be nice a plump for Christmas dinner.

“Here,” she said, dropping a plastic fork in my back pocket. “Why don’t you take this plate and…I don’t know…go sit in the sun for a few hours.”

“But I’m –“

“No arguing, Powder. Just go.”

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you'll recall that I went to a convention called South By Southwest (SXSW) in March. While there I spoke on a panel about parent blogging with four of the sharpest, coolest, hippest and most intelligent writers and editors on the Web:

* Amy Storch, who writes Amalah.
* Tracey Gaughran-Perez, who writes Sweetney.
* Asha Dornfest, who writes and edits Parent Hacks.
* Marrit Ingman, our moderator, who writes for The Austin Chronicle, is a published author and writes a blog called Baldo.

Finally -- FINALLY! -- the fine folks at SXSW have seen fit to post the podcast of our panel. CLICK HERE to listen.

1) The absolutely PATHETIC smattering of applause after we are all introduced.
2) The way Amy says the word "blogs" with her goofy East Coast accent makes it sound as though she might simultaneously be vomiting. "Blaahgs."
3) The unexplainable deepness of my voice. I sound like James Earl Jones with a frog in his throat.
4) Asha's plainly audible genius.
5) Tracey's admission that she quit some corporate blogging gigs because they wouldn't letter her curse.
6) Marrit's insightful questioning and her controlled voice. It's a miracle that she was able to maintain composure while the rest of us could actually feel our heads swelling with "I'm an Internet Celebrity" Syndrome.
7) The tone of self-importance in my voice. It sounds as though I was talking about looming political instability in the Scandinavian countries and not, as it turns out, the deification habits of my offspring.

Summer swept in like a blast furnace this weekend and sent people scurrying for conditioned air like rats when the lights are turned on. The prospect of spending an entire Saturday flipping the channels at Evans World Headquarters didn’t feel particularly appealing, so I made the executive decision that we’d all go to the movies. Given that we are a family of Pixar junkies, choosing which movie to see wasn’t a problem.

After we spent THIRTY FUCKING DOLLARS for four tickets to the first matinee of the day, we settled into the comfy stadium seating with our popcorn and Diet Coke in hand and prepared to be dazzled. Which we were. As always. Who would have believed that a rat in the kitchen could ever be so appealing and appetizing?

About two-thirds into the movie, right when the rat was facing the ominous conundrum of maintaining his allegiance to his family versus retreating to live in the sewer with his family, I felt the familiar tap on my leg.

“Daddy,” he said. “I have to go potty.”

It never fails. Never! I don’t mind that the child has to pee but we’ll definitely have to work on more appropriate timing. Why can’t he do it during the opening credits? Why can’t he remember to bring an empty Aquafina bottle into the theater so he can empty his bladder into it without missing any of the movie? (Oh like you’ve never done that? Puh-leeze.)

So we go. I tell him we have to hurry because there hasn’t been a sex scene yet and I’ll be damned if I’m going to shell-out THIRTY FUCKING DOLLARS without seeing some nudity – animated or otherwise. I don’t believe the child heard my instructions because he has to stop at every movie poster along the way and tell me how bad he wants to see the film. “Yeahyeahyeah. OK. Fine. I’ll take you to see the Transformers movie even though it will probably scare the piss out of you. And hey! Speaking of piss out of you…MOVE YOUR ASS!”

Because they are communist assholes who rape their customers, this particular theater didn’t have a urinal in their men’s room low enough for a six-year-old to access, so The Champ went into the first stall and latched the door shut. And there I stood, waiting, trying to miracle the pee out of him as fast as possible using mind bullets and whatnot. When a man is in the same building where cartoon boobs could be on a screen the size of Poughkeepsie in an adjoining room, he will do whatever it takes to get there to see it, including a humiliating attempt to will his son to pee faster.

After a moment, I hear the snap on his shorts clink against the porcelain bowl behind the stall door. I interpret that as good news. He’s done. He’s just zipping up.

Wrong.

“Daddy,” he said, his voice echoing against the tile walls and metal stall separators. “I have to go poop.”

He may as well have told me he didn’t want me to be his daddy anymore. That’s how bad it hurt. That’s the kind of crushing blow it was. I became angry.

“No!” I said. “Absolutely not. You may not poo. Do you understand me? You pinch that thing off right now and hold it in until the movie’s over!”

“Too late,” he said through a mighty grunt. And then I heard a plop.

“Son of a…” I fumed.

And then I subconsciously started to channel Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer.

“I’m warning you, you do that again and you are in big trouble. (Plop) Don’t…Hey! Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare do that. You hear me? Hold it right there! You make another doodie and you are in very, very, VERY big trouble. Don’t you dare do anymore doodie. Pinch it off right now. I am not going to say it again. I am NOT going to say it AGAIN!”

Plop.

There’s a lot more to the story, but it’s probably a little too gory to share with you. Suffice it to say that the movie we saw yesterday will forever be known in our house as “Ratapooie.”