Thirty Years Ago, We Truly Began To Live

Thirty years ago today, I was too young to remember anything that happened. Had I been more aware, I’m sure that I would have observed merriment and celebration. Thirty years ago today, Pac-Man was released and The Empire Strikes Back hit theaters. The perfect storm.

I wish now that I had been born five years sooner, just to be aware enough of my surrounding to observe the magic happen. One of the greatest, most iconic video games of all time coming out on the same date as the best of the Star Wars movies. Eating power pellets and chasing ghosts and meeting Boba Fett for the first time ever. What a day it must have been.

I’m pretty sure that if I had been more in tune with what was going on that day, I would have pooped myself. Hell, I have to check on how long I took to potty train because I may very well have actually pooped myself that day.

At any rate, I salute you, May 21^st of 1980! During your twenty-four hour span, Abraham Lincoln spoke no words. No new celestial body was touched by human feet. Nobody won a Super Bowl or any other sports championship for that matter.

Nay, two things, each of far more lasting importance happened. It is a day that ought to be celebrated by nerd-dom for the rest of time. It’s not every day that you can be blessed with a brand new distraction to spend hours of unlit time playing. Nor is it every day that the best of six epic movies pisses you off with its ending, only to have you appreciate it more as time goes on.

This was truly a remarkable day in history. Google celebrated it today by making a playable Pac-Man game in its daily logo. This served to distract me for a good twenty minutes from looking up what I’d gone into my office to search for. I still don’t remember what it was I needed to find out at the time, but leave it to Pac-Man to put things in perspective. Whatever it was wasn’t as fun as chomping colorful 8-bit ghosts, so it must not have been that important.

And what can I say about The Empire Strikes Back? How great is a movie when it is the ultimate tease but you still love it? This is a film that gave us immense action. We were wowed by advancing AT-ATs and the wondrous cloud-scape of Bespin, only to have the good guys lose.

Is Lando good or bad?

Vader is Luke’s father??

Han is frozen and kidnapped???

So is Luke a Jedi yet or not????

That’s all we get to see of Boba Fett?! Who the hell is that guy???!!!

This was my first experience as a kid with a non-happy ending to a movie. How I hated this episode. Yet, in the years to come, it would grow on me. The toys I found myself playing with the most were those from Episode V. I came to appreciate the plot development and the fact that not everything will go smoothly for the good guys all the time. Plus, the giant asteroid worm that nearly ate the Millennium Falcon was cool as hell, and not nearly as random as the Ewoks.

Let me just say that if today is your thirtieth birthday, I would start playing the lottery if I were you.

Third Person Thursday (On Friday): Lame New World - Part 1

Sorry our Thursday installment is late. This was originally supposed to be a single post story, but morphed into a four part series. Thus, it took more time to adjust and format than I had originally anticipated. Please enjoy and come back the next two Thursdays to read the rest:

John Huxley’s surprise at waking up in a hospital bed was eased a bit when he saw his wife, Sara, sleeping in the chair beside his bed. When he looked around the room, trying to remember how he got there, he saw cards, letters and pictures covering the walls. When his focus came back to Sara, he couldn’t help but notice that something seemed different about her, but he wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

Nonetheless, her presence made John smile and he opened his mouth to call to her. No words came out. A second try released only a whisper so quiet no words could have been deciphered even if someone awake had been in the room.

When John lifted his arm to try and make some sort of noise that might wake his wife, it felt as if it weighed a ton. He let if fall back to the mattress and noticed then how thin it looked.

Before John could even process this new discovery a nurse entered the room and stared at him like he had an ear growing out of his forehead. He tried to speak to her with the same results as the nurse made her way to his sleeping wife. When she woke, the nurse silently pointed in John’s direction, prompting Sara to sit straight up and look at John with surprise.

John decided not to even attempt speaking again and smiled instead. When this lead to tears from Sara, he found himself wondering what he’d done to upset her.

Within a few short minutes, everything would be made clear to John Huxley. It would be explained to him that he was in a serious car accident that he had not been expected to survive. He would find out that he was taken to Minnesota for treatment once his vital signs had miraculously stabilized. This was far from his home in Toledo. Sara would explain that it was a blessing that she was there to greet him, because she only spent every other weekend with him now. He would soon understand that this was because he had been in a coma for the last six years.

It took several weeks before John could speak and before he could do such simple things like stand on his own. Walking was still quite some time off, but John was actually ahead of schedule in his recovery and his doctor cleared him to go home.

“You can get the rest of your strength back closer to home,” he said.

With this, John and Sara started driving. While their son, William had visited the hospital since John woke up, they had yet to spend real quality time together. The six-year-old boy who John had last played with was now twelve and there was a great deal of catching up to do.

“What does he like?” John asked Sara as she helped him into the passenger seat of their car.

“All kinds of things,” Sara replied and lowered a harness over John that made him feel as if he had just boarded a roller coaster. John thought to himself that his injuries must require all sorts of special modifications to the car and house.

“I want to bring him something,” John said and waited for Sara to enter the driver’s side before saying more. “We used to build with Lego together. Does he still like Lego?”

“Yes, he loves them,” Sara said excitedly and lowered the same kind of harness over herself. “He has Lego sets at home, all over his room. I think they reminded him of you all these years.”

John would have liked to lean over and kiss her then, but the harness over his shoulders restricted such movement. As Sara pulled the car away from the hospital, he decided holding her hand would have to do. He reached over and took her hand from the steering wheel, lacing his fingers between hers.

“I need to keep both hands on the wheel, dear,” Sara said suddenly and put her hand back on the wheel quickly. She nervously checked the rear view mirror.

John thought that driving probably made her nervous since his accident and shrugged it off. “I want to get him a Lego set on the way home,” he said.

“I think he’d like that.”

The drive back to Toledo was long. It was made longer by the fact that Sara refused to drive more than two hours at a time between breaks. When John hinted once that he was eager to get home and maybe she could drive a little longer one stretch, Sara told him, “Studies have shown that it isn’t safe to drive for too long. Giving your eyes some rest and stretching your legs every couple of hours will prevent fatigue and even blood clots.”

John couldn’t complain. After all, though it seemed to him he only took a short nap, he hadn’t been out of the hospital for six years. Taking a bit longer on the road, out in the fresh air seemed like a luxury he ought to enjoy.

At one point, as they drove, John noticed the other cars had the same harnesses where their seatbelts used to be.

“Honey, do all cars have these things now?” he asked, feeling the firm foam on his bright yellow shoulder harness.

“They made them mandatory about three years back.” She stared straight ahead through the windshield with tears in her eyes. “I sometimes wonder if it would have made a difference in your accident.”

Four days later, about two and a half days more than John had anticipated, they reached Toledo. They stopped at a toy store and John bought three Lego sets before they continued on to their home. It was a house John had never been in. As Sara had explained, they needed to downsize a bit to cover his medical expenses and there needed to be no stairs, a precaution he assumed his doctor had recommended.

Still, it was where he would be reunited with his family, so John was pleased to arrive there. He couldn’t wait to see his son’s room and spend some time with him.

William seemed concerned for his father as Sara rolled John into the house on his wheelchair. John noticed and wanted his son, now so much older and more mature than the boy he’d last known, to feel helpful.

“Why don’t you go and relax,” he told Sara, “and let William show me around the house.”

She agreed and went for a walk. “I ought to get a little break from all that driving.”

William proudly showed his father around the house. When the tour lead to William’s room, John noticed he had about a dozen Lego sets on the shelves on his wall. Some of them looked fairly complicated too, and John imagined his son sitting over them at his desk, building meticulously. He was proud.

“Do you remember when we used to build these together?” he asked.

“Yeah, that was so fun,” William said. “Lego sets were way better back then.”

John felt tears well in his eyes as his son said this.

“You know, I bought you some Lego sets on the way home. What do you say we open one up?”

“Sure,” William answered and rolled him into the living room.

“Here, let’s try this one.” John handed William a box with a yellow jet pictured on the outside. He felt a rush of anticipation as he watched his son open one end of the box. But his excitement turned to shock and disappointment as William pulled the jet, fully assembled, from the box.

“Thanks, dad,” William said, not surprised in the least. John thought this odd.

“What the hell?!” John exclaimed.

“I said thanks.”

“Not you,” John explained, snatching the now empty box from his son’s hands. “Why the hell is it already put together?” He lifted the box to his eyes and peered inside. “There aren’t even any instructions!”

“That’s how they come now,” said William. “They all come assembled. It’s a safety thing. They have to come that way.”

“What?! Bring me to your room.”

John was horrified to find out that every one of the Lego models on William’s shelves had come pre-assembled. Legislation had apparently been passed while John lay in his hospital bed. Stray Lego bricks were determined to pose an unnecessary hazard through either swallowing or stepping on. Now, all Lego models had to be assembled and super glued together by a licensed and trained professional.

“I did a few by myself when I was eight, but then I had to get rid of those.”

“You even had to get rid of the ones we did together, didn’t you?”

William took the look that a twelve-year-old boy will tend to take when he knows you’re asking him about something he’s done wrong.

“What are you keeping,” John asked. “Do you still have them?”

“I’m not supposed to,” William said and closed his bedroom door. Then, digging into the back of his closet, he removed an old shoebox. Upon opening the lid, he then had to remove piles of tissue paper before revealing a small Millennium Falcon which he held up to show his father proudly.

“Don’t tell mom,” William said.

“Still have the instructions?”

After William produced the small manual from the bottom of the box, the two frantically broke apart the entire toy. Then they began assembling it all over again. William was frightened that Sara might return home as they built.

“Does she have her phone on her? Call her and see where she’s at,” John suggested.

William looked at his father, astonished. “There’s no cell phones anymore. They said they were causing too many car accidents and giving people brain cancer.”

“Then we’ll just have to build it fast.”

John watched William as they assembled the Falcon together, brick by brick. There was a focus, a joy, an absolute fire in his son’s eyes. Eventually, John started just handing William the pieces he needed and let him build the rest. They finished just in time to high-five and put the finished item back where it had been hidden as they heard Sara enter the house.

“You two causing trouble in there?” She called as she opened the door to William’s room.

John laughed and tussled his son’s hair as Sara entered. “Just spending some father and son time, catching up.”

“I’m glad to see it. Billy missed you,” Sara said. “I’ll get some dinner started.”

“Why don’t we order out, hon?” John suggested. “No need for you to work harder than you need to. Take it easy.”

“That sounds good. What do you have in mind?”

“I’m dying for some fried chicken. Want to get KFC?”

“Oh dear,” Sara sighed. “I forget how many things have changed. Honey, fried chicken was causing cholesterol problems and leading to high rates of obesity in children. They got rid of fast food. There are a few of those restaurants left, but their food is all organic now.”

John stared blankly back at her. He didn’t know what to think and just said, “Maybe pizza then?”

Sara sighed again and shook her head.

“You know what? Just surprise me.” John didn’t want William to see his frustration and figured it was only food. He still had his wife and his son. Those were the important things.

As Sara walked out of the room, John asked William, “Are you playing any sports?”

“No,” William said and hung his head.

“Why not?”

“I can’t. Not until I’m eighteen.”

John sighed. “Is this a law they passed too?”

William nodded. “It was just football at first. Head injuries. Then they banned hockey. Fighting. Then people thought the balls and bats of baseball were too dangerous so they got rid of that. Then it was soccer and basketball mostly because of ankle injuries and people suing the schools and leagues. Now you can’t play any sports until you’re eighteen years old.”

“What do you do in gym class?”

“We ride stationary bikes mostly. Sometimes we get to take walks outside if it’s not too sunny out. They don’t want us getting too much sun.”

“Boy, if you were four years older, I’d have you drive me somewhere we could play some catch.”

“I’d only be sixteen, dad. You have to be twenty-one to drive.”

John laughed out loud. He was amazed. Each time he suggested something enjoyable, there was a restriction that had been put on it while he slept.

“Well maybe you could ride your bike and tow me behind,” he chuckled as he pictured the image.

“I can’t ride a bike until I have a driver’s license.”

John’s laughter stopped immediately. He stared at his son and thought how sad it was that none of this seemed ridiculously excessive to him. He looked around his room again and saw the Lego sets that William had been robbed of the pleasure of building himself. He couldn’t help but notice how devoid the room was of all the things a twelve-year-old ought to have like sports trophies, a football, a Nerf hoop over the door or a mitt sitting in the corner. John looked at the floor and took a deep breath. He decided then what he would do.

“Does your mom still use nail polish?” he asked.

“Yeah,” William answered. “That stuff smells, too. They should make that illegal.”

“I want you to get a bottle of her nail polish remover and hide it here in your room.”

William looked confused. “How come?”

John smiled and called William to come closer with his index finger. Then he whispered in the boy’s ear, “We’re going to build some more Lego when you get home from school tomorrow.”

The look of excitement on William's face was all John needed to be sure he was doing the right thing.

To be continued...

A Chip Off The Old Block

The world’s greatest toy has developed yet another awesome product.

I speak of Lego. And the specific product of which I speak is their new line of board games. If you haven’t seen them yet, go to the Lego link on the left side of this page and check them out. There are at least five different games currently available.

When I learned these games were in the works and to be released, I was a bit skeptical. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. It seemed like an interesting idea, but I wasn’t immediately optimistic that these games would be perfect.

However, there are a select few brands which I patronize on a regular basis. These are companies which I have remained loyal to and whose new products are deemed instantly worth buying without doing research into them. They could release a new crap sandwich and I would get in line to try a bite. Nintendo, Leinenkugel's, Eddie Bauer, Bruce Springsteen and red meat are a few. Any project involving Will Ferrell used to be included on this short list, but then he did Semi-Pro. After back to back success on Step Brothers and Land of the Lost, I was willing to forgive, but now he’s doing this whole Funny Or Die thing on HBO and I want to strangle him for leading me astray. As my wife so eloquently pointed out, “If my only choices are funny or die, I’m going to have to choose die.”

Where was I?

Oh yes, Lego is on that list. If Lego were to release a live of furniture, I would sit on, sleep on, and eat off of surfaces with tiny, uncomfortable, perfectly symmetrically aligned little bumps. Thus, my youngest son received a few of the Lego board games for his recent birthday.

I was not disappointed. The games are classic yet unique. My sons are not quite in control of their jealousy over losing at a game, yet these games were fun enough that they lost and wanted to go right back to playing another round.

Building with the Legos is not necessarily a central theme to every game after initial assembly, but there still is that satisfying process to set the game up. From there, the fully built board gives you hours of fun. And some games, like Creationary (a new spin on Pictionary or charades in which people have to guess what it is you’re building with the given blocks), have building with the Legos as the entire point of the game.

The Lego dice are also a unique feature of the games. Each game includes a die that needs to be assembled. It even has multiple tiles that come with each game so that you can change the way the game is played and tailor it to your specific preferences. It would even seem that you can invent entirely new ways to play each board game if you are creative enough to do so.

So, for any of those wondering, go ahead and purchase the Lego board games for that Lego fanatic of yours. They are sure to be enjoyed by all ages.

A Journey Through Spa(ce &) Time

Although I resisted at first, my wife won a stunning victory versus my manhood several years ago. I’m not talking vasectomy. I still have the option of having another child and choose not to exercise it. I’m not talking lap dog. We have a medium sized dog who cannot fit in a purse by any stretch of the imagination.

The estrogen-eric victory of which I speak is spa time. We went to a spa together several years ago and I’m not afraid to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed it. We’ve been back several times since then and I have usually been the one to push for it.

I have thus far refused to participate in a couple’s manicure or pedicure. I have disgustingly ugly feet and I prefer to keep it that way and I don’t think I’ve trimmed by fingernails with anything other than my teeth in over a decade. I also plan to keep my haircuts between me and the barber rather than go to the salon section of the spa facilities for reasons I’ve explained before (see March 9th post).

Yet my spa experience isn’t as simple as getting a massage and then waiting somewhere for my wife to finish her other services. I find comfort in the robe and sandals and mood lighting in the quiet room. Which aromatherapy scent I choose during my massage is a decision I take seriously. My taste for new age relaxation music has even grown.

There is a fine line being walked.

Still, I willingly admit that spa time is awfully relaxing. When I leave from a day or even weekend away with my wife, I feel rejuvenated. My joints ache less, my muscles are relaxed, my mind is clear. I will even recommend the experience to any manly man who is resisting his wife’s pleas to go with her.

You may think that this makes me less of a man. And you may be right. But hear me out on one point.

Being a man is an art. One of the most fundamental aspects of this craft is sitting on your ass. Men have been honing this skill since the beginning of time. Some of us spend entire careers developing new ass-sitting technology. The inventors of the recliner, the remote control and Monday Night Football, just to name a few. The list goes on. Many men work long, hard hours for years upon years just so they can save up enough money to cash in on all their ass-sitting time at once and do so uninterrupted. This is a fine tradition of manhood know fondly as retirement.

Considering the craftsmanship inherent to sitting on one’s ass, I call myself a pioneer. I am out there researching new and better ways to relax and unwind. Going to the spa is like batting practice. I’m keeping my ass-sitting skills refined so that when my retirement comes around, I’ll know how to relax with the best of them.

So consider me a traitor to the cause if you will. Ostracize me for entering the den of estrogen that is the spa. But when I have my time to sit on my ass, the way I sit down, unbutton my pants and sigh will be the envy of everyone. Just you wait and see.

Everybody Loves Drama

A quick post dedicated to you Marvel comics readers out there.

The Heroic Age is about to begin. This is what the writers at Marvel are calling the new story arc going on throughout the Marvel Universe. The good guys are going to be good guys again. Captain America is alive and no longer on the run. Thor is back in charge of Asgard. Norman Osborn is back in jail where he belongs.

All this is well and good, but it makes me realize something that, frankly, I'm ashamed to admit. I'm going to miss the drama.

I was sucked back in to comic books a few years back when all the craziness began. When the metphorical poop hit the proverbial fan. The Civil War and its madness drew me back in. The Death of Captain America made me want to know more about what was happening to my favorite heroes, having lost one (a don't know what you've got until it's gone moment).

Once I started reading comics again, I was treated to spectacular story lines like Planet Hulk (if you haven't read this series, do so immediately). I even researched backward to see the Avengers Disassembled, then reassembled and read House of M. Since then, I've been finding out people I trusted were really shape-shifting alien Skrulls and seeing the maniacal Norman Osborn placed in charge of global peace. Each new development made me go, "Whaaaaaat?!"

Now, however, it's all going to be the way it's supposed to be. No more Dark Avengers. No more criminals in positions of authority. No more watching heroes fight one another. Things are to be set straight.

I suppose that every now and then, the writers need to hit the reset button. They must look at what insane places the plot has lead them to and say, "Ok, we need to conclude this and start over fresh," and then write it into the story arc.

I understand and look forward to the Heroic Age. But, in the back of my mind, I now understand people's fascination with the Jerry Springer show just a little bit more. It's fun to watch the drama. It's like a train wreck, you can't help but look.

To Boldly Eat What No Man Has Eaten Before

There are a lot of leftovers in my fridge currently. Most of them are recent, but there are a few older items that I noticed as I was sealing the newer ones in some variety of airtight containers and seeking shelf space for them.

I realized that these were all things that I was excited about having a larger portion of. The prospect of reliving the meal I’d enjoyed the next day had made me happy. But, then life swept me up and I found myself looking at the same entrée a few days after I had intended to reheat and eat it.

When this happens, I stare at these items with guilt weighing on my shoulders. I can’t seem to bring myself to eat the newer leftovers while the older ones still sit in reserve, waiting. Yet, I know that these foods may very well be past their prime.

This guilt at wasting food is precisely why I have developed a system for testing possibly expired food. I base this model of investigation loosely upon the scientific method. Very loosely.

Before I get into that, though, you have to realize a few guidelines. First of all, expiration dates on packaged foods are unreliable. Whenever you have a major corporation assigning a numerical value to the freshness of something, you can be sure that they erred on the side of caution. They shaved at least two or three days off the life of that cheese, just to make sure they wouldn’t get sued for food poisoning. This means lunchmeat gets at least a week before any tests need be conducted and milk gets three days past the labeled expiration date.

Also, Chinese take out gets a two weeks. I know they say they don’t use MSG anymore, but come on. In fact, the seedier looking the Chinese restaurant you got the food from, the longer it is likely to remain edible. I do believe I crossed the month threshold before with a box of chicken fried rice. I can’t remember too clearly as the few days surrounding that particular adventure are fuzzy in my memory for some reason.

With those guidelines set, you can begin your food investigation. It all starts with the smell test. If you smell something beside onions immediately opening your refrigerator, find what the smell is generating from and toss it. In fact, if you smell onions when you don’t have any onions in your fridge, follow this same guideline.

Then, of course, you need to conduct a more up close and personal smell test. Take the individual item and take a nice deep whiff, all through your nose. If you don’t wake up on your kitchen floor, it’s safe to move on to the lick test. There are two parts to this. Begin with just the tip of the tongue. If that doesn’t feel like you just touched it to a nine volt battery, move on to stage two which involved getting more than one taste region of your tongue on the food at once. I like to call it, sealing the envelope. At this point, whether or not the food is rancid should become clear. Go ahead and heat that sucker up.

However, this is where I must issue a strict warning. Be sure to clear your schedule for the next several hours. There are all kinds of sneaky bacteria that can still go undetected even through the extensive battery of tests I've designed above. If you must go somewhere, be sure you are in the vicinity of an accessible bathroom where you will feel comfortable spending a great deal of time should the need arise. I usually bring reading material. If an emergency situation should arise, take notes of what you ate and how many days old it was. Keeping a journal is useful. Then you’ll know for next time. These precautions could do wonders future of food expiration research as we know it. That’s how it’s done people. Trial and error. But, should you forget to write this handy information down, at least you’ll be building a tolerance.

I’d like to consider myself a pioneer in this field. I’ve eaten all kinds of things my wife has advised me not to or refused to eat herself. The trick is eating it while she’s out of the house or hiding it in the back of the fridge so she doesn’t detect it before you can get to it. Of course, be careful with this technique. If you forget you hid that pizza behind the beer, you could end up with a disaster on your hands. Again, the journal comes in handy here.

Before concluding this post, I became hungry. So, I heated up the chicken fingers from the other night and the left over bacon I’d cooked my wife for her Mother’s Day breakfast in bed. I even combined the two into a chicken/bacon sandwich and dipped them in the left over ranch dressing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to observe and evaluate my digestive process.

Can You See These Weekly Features From The Moon?

Welcome to our weekly features.

This week's top five is Natural Wonders I've Seen:
5. Changing Leaves: Simple, yet beautiful. Autumn is my favorite season because of this. Despite seeing it every year, the various colors never get old. It makes raking them a little less annoying.

4. Humpback Whales: There's something amazing about seeing a creature larger than the vehicle you drove to the ocean in leaping from the water. Kind of puts things in perspective.

3. The Grand Canyon: So vast and amazing that it looks like it isn't real when you're standing right on the rim of it. I know you may be thinking, "Only ranked three?" to which I say, get your own top five list if you don't like it.

2. Active Volcano: We took a helicopter ride over Kilauea in Hawaii. The lava flow was spectacular and you could feel the heat from it while hundreds of feet above it.

1. Northern Lights: Went most of my life thus far without seeing them, but when I finally did, wow. It's eerie, really. You don't think you're really seeing them at first. There's also some sentimental value I won't go into here, but this was my favorite natural wonder ever.

This week's cool-ass thing you will never own is a summer home on the moon. I don't even think they're even building up there right now because of the economy.

This week's sign you are a nerd is that you want to rush past the regular season in your sports video game so that you can manage all the front office personnel decisions. Even in the video game world, you shy away from human contact.

This week's nemesis is teaser trailers. These things get me all worked up when there's still several months to go until the movie comes out. It's like the Christmas decoration being out before Halloween.

This week's lesson learned is that using a cliche that takes five minutes to explain is counter-productive.

And, this week's Star Wars quote is C3PO's lament after he thinks Luke, Leia, Han and Chewey have been crushed in the trash compactor. I was actually just talking about this scene with someone the other day.

That's all for now. There will be another post later today to make up for Friday's lack of material. Please check back later.

My Heart Grew Three To The Eleventh Power Sizes That Day

When my eldest son was born, my wife and I poured all the love we had, or could ever imagine having, into him. Every giggle, every smile, every waking moment was spent in interaction with him, showing him we loved him. This was especially obvious before the symptoms of sleep deprivation set in.

His presence in our home made our love for one another grow and I, for one, became infinitely more patient. Waking several times each night, never sleeping longer than three hours at a time, and then wiping poop off a tiny baby butt at four in the morning were things I would have avoided at all cost prior to his arrival. Once I saw him, though, these were all things I gladly did.

Before reaching his first birthday, my wife and I learned that we were expecting another baby. We were overjoyed. The big brother conversations started with our first son. We began telling him all the things he and his brother would be to one another. He was such a mellow, laid-back baby that we were certain jealousy would not be an issue.

As the due date drew closer, however, my wife and I began to worry. Not that our first son would rebel or try to off his little brother out of competition for our affection. We began to worry about splitting the love for our family between two children. We held so much love for our first son and we were afraid we’d have to divide that love in half to give each son a portion when the new baby came. Love seemed like a quantifiable resource and we needed to be careful how we allocated it. It was as if a mathematical equation of love existed inside our hearts which would only let us generate a certain amount. Thus, we feared out oldest would get less love and the youngest would never get quite as much as the oldest had originally had. We were afraid we were going to be short-changing them both.

This all seems so silly now, but it’s one of those life lessons that someone could tell you about but that you will never truly comprehend until you’ve experienced it for yourself. Any of us with siblings have heard the line from our parents that they love us all equally and in different ways. Who really buys that at the time, though? Your parents can tell you that, but each of you ends up developing your own theories about who is their favorite. Parents having a favorite seems like an undeniable truth to the universe when you’re a kid.

I guess this was in the back of my head as the time came closer to having two diapers at a time to change. My wife and I talked about it and started to get pretty nervous. Two things happened then. First, our youngest son was born. Instantly, out love doubled. It just happened. I could feel it like I was the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. It grew right inside my chest.

But the second thing to happen was really special.

Two days later, we brought the younger of our two sons home from the hospital. Our oldest was just recovering from a fever. We brought with us French fries for him, one of his favorite foods at the time, and even now. We placed the baby in the bucket (the car seat that is) on top of the dining room table and had our oldest climb up on the chair to get a good look. Immediately, he took a French fry and shoved it in his brand new brother’s face.

“Here you go, baby, here you go,” he said.

At that moment, our love (and I know I speak for my wife here as well) increased logarithmically. It was probably as close to an out of body experience as I’ve ever had. I learned that day that my sons would inspire me in ways I’d never imagined before. I new that the love I felt for the boys, for my wife, for this big round crazy world in general was not done growing. I knew I had suddenly discovered a well of love and energy that would never run out.

I joke now with my oldest son about this day. I tell him that it was the first and last time he ever shared anything with his little brother. But the truth of it is, I will always feel in his debt for pulling off that moment at just the right time to quell my fears.

Also, I now know that parents around the world who say that they love all their kids equally were not full of crap.

Third Person Thursday: Not A Bad Idea

(Setting: A row of cubicles in a fluorescent bulb lit office. Two co-workers sit back to back in one cubicle opening, typing on their respective computers.)

Hank (turning to Steve): Can’t decide what I want for lunch.

Steve (turning to Hank): How about chicken wings. There’s this new place that opened up I’ve been wanting to try.

H: That’s not a bad idea.

(Steve pauses)

S: So…what does that mean?

H: It means yes, let’s try it.

S: Okay, because you didn’t say yes at first or that it was a good idea, you just said it wasn’t a bad idea.

H: That means it’s a good idea.

S: You should just say it’s a good idea then, not that it’s not a bad idea.

H: Same thing.

S: No it’s not the same thing at all.

H: Sure it is. If it’s not a bad idea, it must be a good idea.

S: It could be a mediocre or average idea. It could even be a fair or lame idea without being a bad idea. That’s a pretty crappy way of saying something is good. That’s like me telling you that you don’t smell like a wet fart today. First of all, that’s far from saying that you smell good, second, it suggests that you usually do smell like a wet fart. To comment that my idea isn’t bad is like saying I usually have terrible ideas, but for once you’re surprised I was able to pull an idea out of my ass that wasn’t as terrible as most of my ideas usually are.

H: You’re reading into this. If I say something is not a bad idea, I mean that it’s a good idea.

S: Then you must have some commitment issues, my friend. No wonder you’ve never dated a girl for more than a month. When they ask you how they look, do you say, they don’t look awful? That’s reassuring. She wants you to say I love you and she gets an, “I don’t hate you.”

H: Take it easy!

S: You’re the one taking it easy! It’s easy to say what things aren’t.

(Steve turns, takes a pencil from his desk and turns back to Hank)

S: This pencil isn’t green. It’s also not a dog or a great white shark. How about not speaking in riddles? What am I trying to navigate my way through the booby trap infested tomb of some ancient king? If it’s good, it’s good. This pencil is yellow. It is used to write. It is made of wood.

H: You need everything spelled out for you, don’t you? Can’t solve any of your own problems. Can’t read between the lines. You want to talk about me not keeping a girlfriend, maybe that’s why Kelly left you. You take everything literally. You can’t pick up on anything that isn’t explicitly said. You must have been a real treat to try and communicate with. What a great conversationalist.

S: Well excuse me for being precise and honest. Maybe if more people communicated the way I do, there would be less confusion. I make no apologies for telling people what I really think and I’d want them to show me the same respect. No pussy footing around and telling me what they don’t think.

H: You want to know what I think? I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re a pain in the ass. I think you rock back and forth on that stupid chair too much and the creaking noise it makes keeps me from getting my work done. And the way you type with only two fingers drives me absolute bat shit! I have never seen anyone type as slowly as you do. It’s no wonder you never have anything ready by deadline. How’s that for precise and honest?

S: Oh, so now we’re talking like one another, huh? Well let me oblige. You aren’t the worst salesman in the world. You don’t bore me to sleep when you insist on talking to me about the entire major league baseball schedule from the previous night. The loud printed ties you wear every damn day don’t blind me. I don’t think the amount of hair gel you use on a daily basis is going to give you brain cancer.

H: Kiss my ass!

S: Go to hell!

(Both men turn back to their own desks suddenly. They sit in silence for several minutes, each one looking over their shoulder at the other several times, but never simultaneously.)

S (Quietly, with his back to Hank): So do you want some chicken wings?

H: Yeah, sure.

S: Should I order a side of blue cheese?

H: I guess that couldn’t hurt.

S: I’m gonna smack you.

I Have An Empty Plastic Water Bottle And I'm Not Afraid To Make You Use It

I learned a valuable lesson from the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie and the original Iron Man. That lesson is to always stay through the end credits. I actually went to see Iron Man a second time with my older brother just to see the secret scene at the end which I’d missed the first time around.

So, when I went to see Iron Man 2 (see previous post for a full review), I knew I was staying to the very end. My sons, however, didn’t realize this.

They stood up to leave and I stayed put. My excitement to see the inevitable scene after the credits was undaunted. I was certain there would be some sort of teaser for what is to come from Marvel.

But while I was glued to my seat in anticipation, my sons were insisting that we leave.

“Daddy, come ooooonnnnn!”

I tried to ignore it at first, because there was no way I was missing this. I thought if I sat with a smile on my face, they would absorb some of my positive energy. When that didn’t work, I said, “Don’t you want to see the extra scene?”

They didn’t care.

“We wanna leeeeeaaaaavvvvveeeee!”

I pondered standing and dragging out the process of gathering items. Maybe if I conceded that we would be leaving soon, they would accept the gesture. Then I thought that would just show weakness. I stayed put and stared at the screen. I was not losing this battle.

Have you ever noticed how long the end credits to a movie are? If you haven’t, I suggest you sit through them with a six and seven year old in your vicinity, whining that they want to leave. When one of them starts doing the pee-pee dance and pulling on your sleeve, it will become painfully obvious how many people it takes to produce a major motion picture. Especially one with considerable CGI. It seems every computer generated character has its own full set of credits. I think they even have personal assistants.

Still, I held fast. I waited in my seat. When the Teamsters and other assorted logos began to scroll upward form the bottom of the screen, I knew the end was in sight. I leaned forward and blocked out the two kids on the verge of tears to my immediate left. Then, the big payoff came.

This is not a spoiler.

I will not tell you what I saw. I will tell you that it was awesome. I will tell you that I gasped audibly in a crowded theater more than once and did a double fist pump into the air with a YES! not caring about how big of a nerd I was revealing myself to be. I will tell you that I had tears in my eyes just like my sons as I finally stood to leave, but that mine were tears of joy. I will strongly advise you to sit through the credits, ladies and gentlemen. You will not be disappointed.

Had both of my sons peed in their pants while I waited to see this final scene, I would have gladly apologized to the usher for their accident. He would have been puzzled, I’m sure, by the unembarrassed smile that remained on my face as I left the puddle of urine behind for him to clean. It would have been worth it.

Spending Some Quality Time With Anthony

Where have I been the last 48 hours? I’m sure this is the question you are all asking. I’m touched by your concern. I’ve been a bit busy with work and commitments related to my sons. But the things that probably put the biggest delay in my blogging over the last two days has been the time I’ve spent with my good friend, Anthony.

You may know him. His last name is Stark. Yes, now you get it, I’m certain. I went to see Iron Man 2 with my wife and kids and every unoccupied moment since has been spent thinking about it. I’ve spent a great deal of time staring out into space and annoying my wife by randomly saying, “Wasn’t it awesome when (fill in any movie scene here),” and, “It’s cool how they have Tony Stark deal with people trying to steal and abuse the technology he’s developed because that has always been a running theme in the comic book.” I know, big nerd.

If you haven’t seen the movie yet, allow me to recommend it. If you were a fan of the first movie, you’ll enjoy this one just as much. While the action has been cranked up from the first installment of the adventures of the leader of Stark Industries, the plot and depth of the characters has not suffered. While I promise not to spoil anything, let me get into a few specifics.

Tony Stark’s inner turmoil was on display. It’s one of the great aspects of the character. Iron Man has always been unique in the Marvel Universe (or in comic book lore in general for that matter) because he’s a regular guy when he’s not in the suit. He possesses a great power in his intellect, yet the threat of that suit and his technology being stolen has always been of great concern. It weighs on his daily.

Robert Downey Jr. did a great job once again at capturing the intelligence yet cockiness and immaturity that has been a Stark trademark since the sixties. The Senate hearing near the film’s beginning was a perfect example of this and Downey rocked it. It was the perfect display of Tony Stark being just as dynamic a character out of the suit as in it. The story also touched on Stark’s struggle with alcohol, another running theme in the comic.

But while those behind the movie and director Jon Favreau may have done well with Stark himself, the addition of the film’s new characters was where I expected the movie to either sink or swim.

James Rhodes, Tony Stark’s long standing military buddy, was played by Don Cheadle this time around. His role included more back and forth than Terrence Howard was allowed. It was done well. It was funny and dramatic at once as he and Downey exchanged banter and arguments in the way real life friends might. Cheadle also got to put on the War Machine suit, see some real action and really kick some ass. Cheadle and War Machine were a definite positive additions to the movie.

Every good superhero movie relies on a good villain. Iron Man 2’s main antagonist was Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash. I must admit, I was a bit turned off by the many tattoos, the thick, cheesy Russian accent and constant need to have a toothpick in his mouth. I’ve never spent any time in prison, but I would think a toothpick would be frowned upon while incarcerated. These hokey bits aside, Rourke displayed Whiplash as a troubled, dark, menacing villain with a self-created axe to grind with Stark and pulled it off. He was no Joker, but he was just as formidable an opponent as Jeff Bridges’ Obidia Stane was in the first movie. Thus, I give Whiplash the thumbs up as well.

There was also the presence of Justin Hammer, played by Sam Rockwell. A more passive villain than Whiplash, Hammer created another competitor looking to steal a bit of Stark Tech from Tony and use it for his own selfish reasons. Rockwell was annoying, but I think that’s just what he was going for. I’ll give him the nod as the weasely secondary villain.

This brings me to one of the things I was very worried about when seeing the previews of this movie: S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel. It was obvious from the trailers that both Nick Fury and Black Widow were to be featured in Iron Man 2. Samuel L. Jackson played a good Fury. You didn’t get a chance to see this in the secret scene after the end credits of the first film, but Jackson did a sound job here. He was the secretive, authoritative, all-knowing leader of a super spy organization that you would hope for. He’s also a dead ringer for the Nick Fury of Marvel’s Ultimates series (an alternate reality version of the Avengers which the recent Marvel movies seem to be borrowing heavily from).

As for Black Widow, I was very concerned about Scarlett Johansson. In my opinion, she’s not a great actress. Pretty sure I’m not alone in thinking that. I was less than excited to have her involved in the movie and with Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts in the same movie I feared Johansson’s acting would seem that much stiffer. I think Favreau may have had similar fears because her need to actually act was kept as a minimum. She spoke very little and the lines she did have called for a stiff delivery. The power of her character resided in her action scenes, which were signature Natasha Romanova (though I think they lost the –a for the film). Favreau must have learned a lesson from the Transformers movies. They let Megan Fox speak way too often. Overall, they did a great job of dropping two important characters for the future of the Marvel movies into this film and I applaud that.

There were also a few Marvel references in the film which were done well. I won’t talk about them here because if you haven’t seen the movie yet, it’ll spoil things. I’ll just tell you that the movie was great. Action, suspense, good characters and sharp story telling. If you enjoyed the first Iron Man, you’ll like part 2. If you didn’t see the first, you can still enjoy this one. It leaves you satisfied, yet looking forward to future editions.

One important piece of advice: If you are a Marvel fan, stay past the end credits. You’ll thank me.

You Made The O Into An A...So What?

My mind has been on technology a lot lately. Maybe it’s because Iron Man 2 is in the back of my mind constantly. Maybe it’s because I’m fascinated by the release of the iPad. Maybe it’s because my desktop computer is becoming obsolete.

Regardless of the reason, I’ve been noticing electronics and gadgets in a different light lately. I’ll see them and think of how they were invented or what the market or world was like at the time of their release. I’ve been pondering how technological advancement seems to progress in great leaps at a time.

We live by candle light and suddenly the light bulb is developed. We communicate by letter and then the radio is invented. As we huddle around the radio, the television is developed. The computer has revolutionized so many day to day processes. The internet, cell phones and mp3 players are things that didn’t exist when I grew up but my kids will probably not be able to fathom their lives without.

These were all groundbreaking inventions, but over the decades, many tweaks and improvements have been made upon them. These adjustments are a natural part of the process of invention. Every now and then, a truly original invention springs forth from a need to improve a useful invention. However, more often, these new features to an existing product should be attributed to the genius of the original product. Let me give an example.

High definition TV. Wow. Awesome. I’m on board. It is great and the picture is clear and I love it, but it’s still television. A thousand years from now, when people look back on the invention of the television, they will just say the television was invented and might mention that it was made better over the years.

Another example is the iPad. I’ve checked it out in the store and it seems really cool and makes technology really accessible. But is it really this new invention that should blow our minds as much as it does? To me, it looks like someone got sick of typing in the wrong letters on their tiny iPhone or iPod touch screens or said, “I can’t watch a decent movie on this tiny freaking screen,” and then said, “Wait a second, we should make it bigger!”

I thought of all this last night when I was at my grandmother’s house. I was in her kitchen and noticed the space saver clock radio hanging beneath her cabinet. These things were such a big deal when they came out. They seemed so revolutionary and high tech. Basically, somebody wanted more counter space and added a couple of brackets to the top of their old clock radio. I remember people being wowed by this when I was a kid, as I was. I looked at it last night and realized how simple it was and how ridiculous all the fuss was.

I think we, meaning the human race, want to give ourselves a little too much credit for what we’ve figured out sometimes. Not every new invention is a game-changer. The iPad is just a middle step between iPod and laptop. The Blu-Ray player is just a better quality movie. The Sham-Wow is pretty absorbent, but how often are you really going to use it? The Snuggie is not going to end world hunger. We wet our pants in excitement over such crap as if we’ve cured cancer, yet we had trouble figuring out the world wasn’t flat and still can’t figure out whether or not margarine is a healthier alternative to butter. Let’s face it, sometimes we, as a species, move forward in leaps and bounds and other times we trip over our mental shoelaces.

So, the next time a product is improved, just give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. We don’t need to run around talking about how amazing it is or how we can’t live without it. At some point, we’re going to stop caring about most of the things we were once ready to kill somebody to possess. They’ll become the 8-track or the pump up gym shoe or the Wacky Wall Walker. Let time be the judge.

We should take a deep breath and resist the urge to pat ourselves on the back so often. Not every new product represents a thrusting into a new era of technology or convenience. Sometimes it’s just a slightly better version of something that already exists and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s progress too. Let’s be willing to embrace our mediocrity without trying to dress it up and tell each other it’s overachievement.

This Week's Amazingly Uncanny, Incredibly Invincible Weekly Features

First of all, Happy Mother's Day! To any moms that may be reading this, you're influence and guidance of your children is more meaningful than you may ever know. Thank you all for loving and caring for your kids. Especially if those kids are me or my sons.

Moving on, Iron Man 2 has officially been released and I'm trying to blind myself to all reviews and outside contact that might result in any kind of information or opinion regarding the movie since I'm going to see it anyway. Hopefully, I'll see it early next week and I can stop covering my ears.

In the meantime, I've decided to make this week's top 5 the top 5 super hero movies. They are all pretty new, and I feel that's because recent develpments in special effects have made the tale of the super hero more accessible.

5. Unbreakable - M. Night Shayamalan's second movie was an understated masterpiece in my mind. The relationship between the father and son upon their realization of the father's abilities is fantastic and displays the fascination that people young and old have with supre heroes.

4. Batman Begins - I'm glad they started this franchise over again, because even though i thought Michael Keaton did a surprisingly decent job as Batman, Joel Schumacher nearly destroyed one of the greatest comic heroes of all time. This particular film did a great job portraying Bruce Wayne as the dark, brooding millionaire he really is and showing us his true background.

3. Iron Man - Not a ton of action in the first film, but when they went to special effects, they were awfully special. Plus, Robert Downey Jr. is a spot on Tony Stark.

2. Spider-Man - This was the first film that I thought used CGI seemlessly. I was amazed when I saw this in the theater and Spidey was swinging between skyscrapers. On top of that, the ending of the first movie did a great job of reminding the viewers that Peter parker's life is not easy.

1. The Dark Knight - I was trying not to rank this first because everyone was so crazy over this movie, but I have to admit Heath Ledger was the best Joker I've seen since Cesar Romero (no disrespect to Jack) and the movie's plot over all more than made up for the fact that I had to watch Maggie Gyllenhaal for the first half of it. Also, is it me, or did Christian Bale amp up the deep scratchiness of his Batman voice for this one?

This week's cool-ass thing you will never own is a functional Iron Man suit. That's probably for the best since you shouldn't be trusted with repulsors anyway.

This week's sign you are a nerd is that you've worn a costume to see a movie. This is multiplied exponentially if the costume wasn;t even one of the characters form the movie you were attending.

This week's nemesis is the law of averages. I know that, over time, lows and highs will even one another out to the expected average, but why do I always pick the players for my fantasy team while they are experiencing the lows.

This week's lesson learned is that running on the field is so not worth any attention you might get. I like to keep my electricity in my socket, thank you very much.

And, last but not least, this week's Star Wars quote is: "If there's a bright center of the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from."

Happy Mother's Day again to all the moms out there. Regular posts resume tomorrow.

Playing Downright-Diddly-Dumb

When I came home from work yesterday evening, I went into the basement to change. Immediately, I saw something hanging from the ceiling. It was one of those stretchy, sticky hands that kids get in the cheap little vending machines that all kids inevitably want to get something from as they exit a restaurant.

I continued on my way and pretended not to see it.

After convincing my sons that they needed to get their shoes on so I could run a few errands with them, my eldest said, “Hold on a second,” and ran downstairs. After a minute or two, he returned with the same sticky hand I’d just seen on the ceiling and returned it to it’s storage receptacle.

The question of how he managed to reach up to the ceiling and remove the sticky hand burned inside of me. I imagined a Tom & Jerry-esque tower of toys and boxes stacked precariously on top of one another and my son standing on one tip toe as the structure teetered beneath him, plucking the object from the ceiling just before it all collapsed.

Yet, still, I remained silent and acted as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

I’ve realized that choosing the right moments to conduct a full-scale interrogation of your children and the right moments to play dumb and keep your mouth shut is a challenge. It’s one I’d like to think I’m learning more about.

When my boys were toddlers, playing on the jungle gym at the park, I tended to follow them around. I was prepared to catch them when they stepped backward off a ledge and snatch them from the back of their collar before they ran full speed into the pole form the swing set as they looked behind them. As they grew up, my wife helped me break that habit. There was a point where the constant shouting of, “Careful,” and, “Watch where you’re going,” became white noise to my kids and the only thing that was going to make them realize certain behavior was dangerous was a scraped knee or a bump on the head.

Making the right choice at the right time in these situations is an art form. Speak up too often and you may bolster a rebel spirit you’ll come to regret later. Stay silent too often and the lack of support and guidance could be damaging. I’ve come to believe that your status as a cool and understanding parent who still commands respect and values discipline or an overprotective control freak can be established pretty early on.

So, I’m trying to be the laid back dad who lets them slide, but who they know better be listened to when he does decide to speak up. I’m not sure that’s how I come across, but that’s the image I’m going for.

I probably seem more like Ned Flanders, imposing my strict values in a high voiced, non threatening manner. In fact, I ought to stop letting them watch The Simpsons or I see a new nickname on my horizon.

No Thanks, Captain Picard, I'll Read It Myself

During a recent visit to the bookstore, my wife and I found ourselves in the audio book section. There were an awful lot of books available in this format. The one I was most impressed with was a Stephen King novel. Not because the story looked good (I must admit I didn’t even read the synopsis and cannot now remember its title) but because it filled thirty CDs.

I know there are also audio books available for download on iTunes. This would make a lot more sense to me. I know if you’re going to listen to them in the car, the CDs are just fine, but are you really going to pull out the old CD Walkman and listen to one of these some other time? Do you not own an iPod or some other digital media device?

On top of it, most of these books seemed to deal with being powerful and influential in business. The first piece of advice on the CD version of one of these is probably: “Go buy an iPod because you look like a cheap, out of date loser sitting there with a CD player in your lap.”

Despite the overwhelming variety available, the audio book movement was never something I could get on board with. One reason is that I don’t think I could listen to the same person’s voice long enough to hear them read me a book. Even if it were someone cool like James Earl Jones, I think I’d get sick of it. Then Star Wars would be ruined for me too. Also, I would half expect them to change their voices for the different characters as if they were one of my parents reading me a bedtime story as a toddler. Or, worse, if the reader did perform multiple voices, I’d feel like I was listening to Little Orphan Annie or hearing the slow paced satire of the smoosh-faced Garrison Keillor.

Perhaps a better reason I never bought an audio book, however, is because I like seeing the words on the page. It works better for me. I remember what I read because I scanned the words with my own eyes as I said them in my head. If there was a line I liked or even one that confused me, I could go back and reread it immediately. I can place my own emphasis and inflection on the dialogue and add my own imagination to the voices of the characters. All of this is lost if the book is read to me by Patrick Stewart.

There exists a third reason that I can’t quite justify, but exists nonetheless. I like holding what I’m reading in my hand and turning the pages manually. Maybe it’s just a comfort thing and what I’m used to, but the ability to dog-ear a corner or scribble a note in a margin carries a certain magic with it. I’ve noticed that I read more intently when I’m holding a paper product in my hand.

Newspapers have made me realize this. I understand that they are all dying with the prevalence of the internet and stories being at our fingertips instantly. I know you can pull out your phone, skim the headlines and, with one touch, read the rest of any story you choose from just about any newspaper around the globe. Still, I read less of the paper that way. I used to get one of the local papers delivered. I would flip though it and read nearly half the articles. I saw the headline and there was the text right beneath it, so my eyes took me there.

On the internet, it just isn’t the same for me for some reason. I certainly know how simple and fast it is to get the rest of the article on my screen, but now I just read the headline and move on. If I said I read one full story for every twenty headlines, it would be an overstatement.

I wonder if the new tablet readers will change this. I don’t currently use any of them, but they seem pretty popular. Perhaps I’ll start reading the newspaper the old way on a Kindle, Nook or iPad despite the fact that every single one of those names annoys the crap out of me. Maybe this will be the way my children are most comfortable reading within a few years. I’m not sure where technology will take us or if it’s even more environmentally responsible to go this route (which I’ll wager it is).

I will tell you one thing, though. The people who designed these products all tried to make it seem like there is a real book in your hands and you’re turning real pages. There must be something to that.

Third Person Thursday - Stan & The Beanstalk

Today's third person feature is a fictional short story.

“Look, dad! They grew!”

“Wow,” Stanley responded to his excited six-year-old, Peter. He couldn’t manage to muster up anywhere near the excitement Peter had. In fact, he was annoyed. He was trying to read the paper before he had to leave for work.

Stanley was actually disappointed by how well the kidney beans Peter was holding in front of his face were growing. When Peter had brought them home from school in their clear plastic cup, he thought they’d be dead and off his hands within a few days. They had already extended their hair-like roots down and around the bottom of the cup. Now, well over a week later, the stalks reached skyward nearly a foot and were as thick as number two pencils. The leaves that were once withered looking had unfolded and were a deep green.

Stanley looked at the plant and cringed on the inside. It sat in the sun near the window, where Peter so responsibly made sure he placed it each day right after moistening the paper towel that was balled up inside the plastic cup.

“Maybe we should move it to a bigger cup,” Peter suggested, “but a clear one so I can still see the roots.”

“We’ll see,” Stanley said. “Now go get your book bag or we’re both going to be late.”

Peter grabbed his bag as instructed and stepped onto the front porch. Once he was out of sight, Stanley reached over and moved the bean stalks to a spot in the shade. Then he followed Peter out the door and drove him to school.

Stanley enjoyed being at work. He married Carol when he’d gotten her pregnant and took his current job to pay the bills. But, at least he was left alone there. People didn’t see him as a husband and a father. He was a dedicated salesman when he was there. A top ranking salesman.

He had started taking his wedding ring off when he was in the office and nobody seemed to notice. He didn’t talk family at work and he wondered sometimes if anyone there really even knew he was married. Stanley found that liberating.

On top of it, there was a new girl working in customer service who seemed to be giving him the eye. He hadn’t thought much of it at first but as the days went on, she started engaging him in conversation, twirling her hair in her fingers as she did so. Stanley was impressed with himself.

Work became an even more welcome escape now. He started passing his down time at work planning the details of keeping an extra-marital relationship secret from Carol instead of playing solitaire on his computer.

Upon returning home that evening, Stanley was met in the living room by his wife.

“Your son has to show you something,” Carol said quietly.

Immediately, Stanley remembered the bean stalks. He hoped he would be telling his son that he did a great job and learned a lot from growing them, but they were obviously not doing as well now and he needed to just throw them out.

“Is that daddy?” Peter shouted as he rushed down the stairs. This prompted Stanley to think that Peter was taking the wilting of his bean stalks quite well.

“Come see, daddy,” Peter said, taking Stanley by the hand and leading him to the kitchen and pointing to the bay windowsill.

Stanley was shocked to see the stalks had doubled in size. When placed on the floor, they were up to Peter’s waist and the stalks were as thick as the training pencils Peter had been using in preschool now.

Stanley stood with his mouth opened.

“Now they have a lot more room,” Peter said.

Stanley took notice that the roots were spread along the bottom of the thick glass bowl he liked to eat his potato chips out of when he watched baseball. He reasoned that his wife must have shifted them to the new home and placed them back into the sunlight when she returned home. Meanwhile, Peter was still staring at him, waiting for his reaction.

“That is…” Stanley began, trying to find an adjective quickly so as not to disappoint Peter, but also wanting to choose one he didn’t choke on as it came out. “… really something.”

Peter ran back to the toys he’d been playing with in his room as Stanley stared at the flourishing plant. It admitted freely to himself that Peter’s little Earth Day project gave him the creeps. He was disgusted by the human hair-like roots wrapping around themselves and twisting along the bottom of the bowl. The leaves reminded him of the weeds that liked to grow along his garage, detaching from their roots so easily as he tried to pull them and growing anew within days. And the speed with which it grew just wasn’t natural. There was something about the plant that seemed altogether unholy.

Nothing ought to grow that quickly, Stanley thought and then got the notion that the plant was mocking him, much the way he’d begun to feel about those weeds along the garage. How were they growing, anyway? They were coming up between the cracks in the concrete.

As he stared suspiciously at the bean stalks, Stanley began to feel ridiculous. This anger at a plant was silly. He was becoming upset with something that, while technically alive, was as close to an inanimate object as you could get. It became obvious to Stanley that his anger should be aimed at Carol for moving the stalks back into the sunlight and into a new container. His favorite chip bowl at that. He even found himself growing angry with his son for bringing the damn thing home in the first place.

But, just as she seemed a step ahead of him on every other household disagreement, Carol appeared behind him and kissed him neck.

“I think it’s so sweet that you let him use your bowl,” she said and passed through the room.

“Yeah,” Stanley said in defeat. He knew that was how she communicated. She did what she wanted, used his property in whatever manner she saw fit and then acted afterward as if the whole thing had been his idea. But what could he do? It was already done and she knew it. He had to just go with the program and save face.

Yet as Stanley left the room to go take a much needed shower, he gave one last glare to the stalks. He realized then that, despite the irrationality of it, he hated them.

…

Weekends were sacred to Stanley. Especially during this time of year. There was the yard work, which was about the only exercise he got these days, and there was day baseball.

To top things off, this particular Saturday saw Peter and Carol heading off to a birthday party for one of Peter’s classmates. That would give Stanley a four hour window of uninterrupted sports viewing pleasure.

As Stanley passed through the kitchen, he noticed the ever-growing bean stalks. He reckoned they were nearly as tall as Peter now. However, he wasn’t going to let that ruin his day. Not even the fact that he needed to find an inferior bowl to hold his chips could sour Stanley’s mood today.

He watched with a smile as Peter poured a little water into the bowl to keep the paper towels wet, then he walked Peter to the car and helped him get buckled in before his mother drove off. Stanley waved after them as they headed to the party. Then he checked his watch. Twenty minutes to first pitch. He had a little time to watch the pre-game show.

Stanley hopped up the stairs of the front porch like his son would after school. He even snatched his baseball cap off the hook near the coat rack and cheerily placed it onto his own head. He then headed to the kitchen to pour his traditional bag of chips into a bowl.

When he got into the kitchen, Stanley was surprised to see that Peter’s bean stalk bowl was resting inside of the other bowl he had set aside for his chips. He could have sworn Peter left the bean stalks on the bay windowsill where he always had put them. Stanley even thought back to watching Peter freshen the water in the paper towels.

“Must not have been paying attention,” Stanley said out loud to himself. He removed his old favorite bowl from the one he intended to use and thought to himself that he would likely never eat out of the bowl where the roots were now tangling ever again.

After rinsing the new bowl out, he quickly dumped his chips into it and headed down to the big screen in the basement.

Stanley was overjoyed. He was drinking beer before noon. He spoke his opinions out loud to the commentators on the pre-game show. When the game started, he barked orders to the player as if he were the manager. He had no fear of his wife or son thinking he was crazy for shouting at the television. He felt uninhibited.

By the seventh inning of the first game, he had run out of chips. Stanley stood and raised his arms above his head.

“Stretch,” he yawned and made his way up the stairs.

Stanley took another beer from the fridge. He had the top off and was taking his first long sip before he had even closed the door. As he turned to look out the window, he spit most of his mouthful of beer out in a cartoonish spray.

Stanley couldn’t even see out of the bay window in his kitchen. The entire view was blocked by the leaves from Peter’s bean stalks. Stanley swore there hadn’t been that many leaves just an hour or two ago, when he last saw the thing. But as he took another sip from his beer bottle and looked at it sideways, he convinced himself that they must have been there and just unfolded while he was downstairs.

“Freaky,” he mumbled then broke into, “Take me out to the baaaaallgame,” as he shrugged and made his way back to the basement.

When the first game was over, Stanley sat and scratched himself. He had half an hour until the next game started and he was out of beer. He had only had two, but hadn’t checked his beer stash prior to the start of the game. He reasoned he had time to go grab another six pack and be back before the second game.

Stanley jogged up the stairs and just as he exited the kitchen after passing through, he stopped. He thought he’d seen something from the corner of his eye. He turned around and poked his head around the doorway.

Stanley hadn’t been imagining it. There lay a long, green, thin stalk across the kitchen counter, like a tentacle. Stanley shuddered. He must not have noticed that because he was distracted by the leaves last time, he figured.

As he walked to his car, Stanley thought he might accidentally knock that thing on the floor when he returned home. Even if it cost him his favorite bowl, it would be worth it to get rid of that thing.

“It’s just a freakin’ science experiment,” he said to himself and drove off to get his beer.

By the time Stanley got back to the house, the new stalk had leaves everywhere. In fact, most of the kitchen counter was now covered in bean stalks and they all had little leaf buds sprouting all over them. Stanley stood in the kitchen doorway, dumbfounded.

“When Peter gets home, you’re gone,” Stanley spoke to the plant. “I’ll let him see you, then you’re out.”

Then he made his way through the kitchen, keeping his back to the wall that wasn’t becoming overgrown by vegetation. A few times, Stanley stopped to look at parts of the plant that he swore he saw move.

Upon reaching the basement, he saw the second game was about to begin. He shook all the other thoughts from his head and sat in his easy chair, his new six pack of beer on the floor beside him.

As the game went on, Stanley consumed beer after beer. He shouted at the television, jumped up from his seat and even applauded a home run. He found himself wondering what it would be like to be a bachelor again, watching games anytime he felt like it.

Before he knew it, Stanley was down to his last beer. The empty bottles sat on the floor beside the cardboard box he’d once carried them in.

Upstairs, Stanley heard a banging sound and figured it was about time for his wife and son to return home.

“Fun time’s over,” he said to himself. He stood to head up the stairs and realized the beer had more of an effect on him than he had thought.

Stanley made his way up the stairs slowly. He braced himself against the walls of the stairway. He didn’t even notice the leaves and vine-like stalks that grew along the ceiling above him. On his way through the kitchen, he watched his feet carefully and upon entering the living room was surprised to see nobody there.

A glance out the front window confirmed his wife’s car wasn’t parked out front yet. Stanley began wondering if he was going crazy. He would have sworn that he had heard something upstairs.

Stanley’s thoughts turned to the final beer he had downstairs. Without the ball and chain home yet, he had time to finish that last brew, he thought. Besides, he was sure to catch hell for being half in the bag in front of the kid, might as well live it up while he could.

When he turned to head back to his easy chair in the basement, he tripped over something. Stanley fell flat on his face. He saw stars and his vision grew fuzzy. As he rolled onto his back, he realized it felt as if there was something wrapped around his ankle. He picked his leg up to look and saw something that looked like a green rope around it.

Suddenly, Stanley felt his arms pulled to his sides. It looked through the haze in his eyes like the green rope was now around his body as well. He also felt his breathing become more difficult.

The last thing Stanley saw was what he thought to be a thick, green leaf cover his face. Then, everything went black.

My Thumbs Get Plenty Of Exercise

My brother and I were discussing the details of online, multiplayer gaming the other night over my grill. We were trying to determine when time in our schedules would allow us to play Modern Warfare 2 on a weekly basis. We spoke of renewing Xbox Live memberships and discussed who else we ought to try and recruit. I reckoned my brother-in-law would be willing and we might be able to get his cousin in on the action as well. I was pretty excited about the opportunity for some male bonding and commented that it would be nice to get a group together for some mutual fun.

My father had been listening in and walked over. He proposed another idea.

“How about golf?” he asked.

I hesitated, thinking it was unusual that my father would be interested in playing something online with us. Then I thought maybe he was just suggesting something for my brother and I to play.

“I don’t think we all have golf games,” I responded.

My father looked at me with disappointment in his eyes. It was a level of disappointment I had not seen since waking him up at one o’clock in the morning to tell him I’d smacked his car into the guard rail and that I’d need to be borrowing his other car to get to work the next morning.

Apparently, my father had meant real golf. Yeah, like getting outside in the fresh air and playing eighteen holes by swinging real clubs, not a Wii remote. That kind of golf.

As someone who enjoys the outdoors and was fairly athletic at one point in his life, I felt a bit embarrassed. I tried to cover that embarrassment up by saying I would definitely be interested and that I’m sure we could get a foursome together some time in the near future. Still, I couldn’t believe that the thought of golf led me first to the dark coolness of my basement, playing a video game rather than the sunshine and lush green of a real course.

Is this what I had become? Would I rather play sports digitally than physically? Was I on the verge of converting my basement to a multi-console Mecca of virtual sports? Would I simultaneously pursue Super Bowl, World Series and Stanley Cup titles and juggle my front office and rosters while my ass slowly increased in size until it filled all of the double-wide easy chair meant for my wife and I to sit together in?

I decided then and there not to allow that to happen. I would get my still only single-XL ass out and get some exercise. I needed to get onto a real course. And for those of you who don’t think golfing is exercise, let me assure you that while, yes, we do rent carts, hitting a ball 100-plus times in a day is a workout. No, I don’t care that I just revealed how pathetic my average score is.

Immediately, I began thinking about how often I would be able to sneak off to the driving range and get a few buckets in. If I was committed to doing this, I wanted to be the one who could make fun of everybody else’s drive while mine sat in the middle of the fairway 200 yards off the tee. I can dream anyway.

Then I started thinking I could even take the boys with me while my wife is at work. They’ve been to the driving range before. We have kids’ clubs that they share and enjoy taking a few whacks. It would make sure that I didn’t let them slip into the lazy, assume-you-meant-video-game-sports mode that I had obviously let myself descend into.

I continued to cook my red meat over the smoldering embers in the bottom of my Weber. I was proud of the commitment I’d just made to a healthier lifestyle and the example it would set for my young sons. Just then, I looked over to see my seven-year-old, wrapped in his Snuggie, sitting down in the middle of the trampoline, playing his DS. The glow from its screen lit his concentrating little face in the coming darkness of nightfall.

“That thing is meant to be jumped on, you know!” I shouted at him.

A New Poll

I apologize that there was no post yesterday. It’s the first time since beginning this blog that I haven’t posted at least a few lines of my increasingly inane ramblings. To make up for that, there will be two, count ‘em, two posts today.

This post, today’s first, deals with our new poll. I’ve been thinking long and hard about what question I want to ask of all my loyal readers. Yes, both of you. I wanted the question to be something that dealt with the real issues of today’s world while still having a hint of nostalgia to it. That, after all, is one of the many running themes of this blog. How does one reconcile the experiences of their youth with the rapidly changing world around us? How do we, as adults, face the challenges of parenthood while remaining young at heart ourselves? Didn’t know this blog was so deep, did you?

Anyway, I pondered all this as I listened to my iPod and cut my grass yesterday. As I bent down to empty the bag, I noticed something. It was one of the largest bugs of its particular species that I had ever seen. It was on its back, its legs writhing around in the air. Helpful as I am to all of Earth’s creatures, I reached down and gave it a little poke with my gloved finger, causing it to curl up into a ball. When it uncurled, it was back on its feet again and crawled away, back into the grass that I had obviously just propelled it from with my lawnmower.

By now you can probably picture the bug of which I speak. As I looked at it, I realized that I know this bug by two names. When I grew up, I called it a pill bug. My sons, however, call it a roly-poly, which has led me to begin calling it that as well. However, when not speaking to my sons about one of these insects, my mind instinctively returns to the term, pill bug.

While I don’t think using this terminology leaves me all by my lonesome, I do believe I am in the minority here. But, I’d like to make sure. So, please, answer the poll in the left hand column. Is the bug you see there a pill bug or a roly-poly? I’d like to know what you think.

Together, we can find a solution to life’s most difficult questions.

Seymour's Less Famous Brother, Burrhus Frederic

People are motivated by different things. Some people are motivated by money, some by prestige. Some are self motivated while others need their marching orders handed down from an authority figure.

Motivation influences behavior. So says famed psychologist B.F. Skinner and I just so happen to agree with him, as does most of the world. Need a quick B.F. Skinner update? Just search for him on Wikipedia and you’ll find your answers. Thinking about the work of Dr. Skinner today led me to realize that my behavior is influenced less by positive reinforcement than it is by negative reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement is all well and good for self motivated people. If you make your bed, your mom will let you have a cookie. If you get a job, you will make money. If you work hard, you will get a promotion and make more money. If you keep your reputation pristine, you could run for office some day.

When it comes to someone who is, by their nature, lazy, negative reinforcement seems to work better. A lazy person doesn’t care about the cookie and, while they might need money, they won’t necessarily work hard enough to make more of it. The lazy person’s world revolves around different motivational factors. If you make your bed, your mom won’t yell at you. If you get a job, your mom won’t take away your video games. If you mind your own business and obey the law, you won’t go to jail.

The nature of negative reinforcement is that one tends to avoid the bad rather than pursue the good. Sadly, I’m beginning to believe I fit into this category.

I’ve been off work for a while recently, yet fortunate enough to collect my paychecks. For a while, the free time was liberating. I started writing more, this blog as an example, and enjoyed spending time with my family. However, I would start to take this free time for granted. I knew I wasn’t getting paid to write, so I would publish posts that weren’t my best. I started getting bored more easily. The prospect of going back to work was not pressing so my motivation wasn’t as fiery. I was still getting paid and could stay up all night if I chose to as long as I met a few minimum standards. Get the kids to school, feed them, don’t blow up the house. Not the most inspirational of tales, I know.

Recently, I went back to work. I now have to perform this job that I really don’t like day to day in order to collect a paycheck. Yet, negative reinforcement will keep me doing it. Not because I see money or social acceptance as a positive light at the end of the tunnel or cheese at the end of the maze. It’s because I see the electric shock of living in my parents’ basement and taking a job at GameStop where I will surely become like the guy who sells me video games, a bit too eager to converse with every single customer because he longs for human contact.

But there is an extra level of negative reinforcement at work here. Maybe if I write more, write better, I could do something else for a living. Maybe if I go back to school in my spare time, I could get a job I like better. I am more inspired during my free time, even though I now suddenly have less of it. I want to squeeze more out of that free time than I was previously because I have the motivation of escaping the Hell that is my job. I’m seeking to avoid the daily spray of water to the nose.

I think I’m going to market a new line of inspirational posters. It will feature the negative results of failing to heed my inspiring advice. Instead of the pole-vaulter or the mountain climber achieving spectacular feats, I will print a picture of someone in jail with the caption: Go Back To School. There could be a man sleeping in a cardboard box with the text beneath: Don’t Piss Off Your Boss. Maybe there could even be one with a depressed looking man sitting in a cramped cubicle with tears in his eyes that simply reads: Follow Your Dreams.

Sweet! Weekly Features Are Back

Sunday means it's weekly features time!

This week's top five is little league candy:

5. Flying Saucers - These things were basically communion hosts (let's all share a big laugh, Catholics) with sprinkles on the inside, it was more about the experience of eating them than it was the taste.

4. Big League Chew - Nothing like taking an innocent childhood experience like chewing bubble gum and making it more like chewing tobacco. If only Joe the Camel had been on the package, then it would have been irresistable.

3. Lemonheads - I don't know about you, but once that sweet outer layer was gone and the sour stuff on the inside kicked in, I usually had to stop whatever I was doing and concentrate on not sucking my own face inside out.

2. Laffy Taffy - No bite-size pieces here. I'm talking about the foot long, two by four bars of the stuff. The hard part was eating it fast enough so that the summer sun didn't make it melt and wilt in your hand.

1. Swedish Fish - The best part was making the poor kid working the stand count out a hundred of them when you coughed up a dollar.

This week's cool-ass thing you will never own is a roller coaster. A real, most of the passengers screaming and holding their hands up coaster.

This week's sign you are a nerd is that you can write out the value of Pi past five decimal places. You're either doing way to much geometry in your spare time of you are way to anal about the results of the unavoidable geometry you're doing.

This week's nemesis is the charcoal smoke that makes me look like I'm crying while I try to grill up some red meat. While it's true that the deliciousness of red meat has brought me to tears before, the smoke is very uncomfortable.

This week's lesson learned is that you should probably but the trampoline safety fence up and follow all the safety guidelines. Once you turn around to discover a kid on the ground crying who, seconds before, was on the trampoline, you'll get my drift.

For the Star Wars quote of the week, I went back to my old friend Ben Kenobi. "In my experience, there's no such thing as luck.

Regular posts resume tomorrow. Happy May.

Four Is The New One

Episode IV is victorious! America has spoken!

I guess the result of my little poll isn’t the consensus of the nation, but it’s the majority opinion of as much of the nation as I care to hear an opinion from. As long as the very few people regularly reading this blog agree with me that Episode IV is the first Star Wars movie you should show to your kids, I’m pleased with the outcome. After all, I wasn’t really trying to see what everyone thought, just prove I was right.

But seriously, folks, thank you to those who voted. I still believe starting with Episode IV is the way to go, but I can see how some people may want to start at the chronological beginning of the whole story. I’m actually surprised by how one-sided the voting was.

I have several potential pieces half-written, but was unable to complete a single one to my satisfaction and it has now become quite late. Thus, in order to spare you from my over-tired ramblings, I will keep this post short. I spent a lot of time outside with my boys today and the fresh air has me worn out. I will get back to my well-rested ramblings tomorrow.

A new poll is also imminent, so please be on the lookout for it. Those of you who are already following the blog on Facebook will no doubt be receiving constant reminders about it in your news feed. Please don’t de-friend the blog over it.

So, again, from all of me here at Transformer Generation Dad, thank you for reading and voting on the poll. Please keep coming back and tell your friends to check out the site. If you could start with your cool, powerful, influential friends first, I would really appreciate it.