The Unbearable: Harm to Children

[Soundtrack for this post: Tom Waits’s Alice]

[Beer for this post: Southern Tier IPA]

Anne and I both get a huge amount of mail from people who want our money. Some of them are nonprofits asking for donations. I assume we get these because we often give money away (sorry, Neal). We get so many of them that I don’t usually feel bad when I toss them in the trash without much more than a quick glance at the return address. But I’ve been hanging on to one that haunts me every time I look at it. It’s from a charity called Smile Train, a nonprofit charity that repairs cleft lips and palates (sometimes called, inappropriately in my opinion, a “harelip”).

I initially kept the Smile Train request for money because the envelope says “Make one gift now and we’ll never ask for another donation again!” I’ve tossed Smile Train pleas before, but that one sentence got me to hang on to it this time (fundraisers take note). And it’s the hanging on to it that has allowed the envelope to work its checkbook loosening magic. For you see, they have pictures of afflicted children on the envelope.

On the front of the envelope, which is right next to me as I write this, is a picture of an infant boy with a unilateral cleft lip and palate. His head is cocked slightly to the right, his eyes are glassy, as if wet with tears, and his expression pleads with you to help him, please for the love of all that is holy help him. It is utterly heartbreaking. I’m tempted to scan it and post the picture here so you can see it and experience the agony that I do every time I look at that poor child, but I won’t because I don’t want to crush your soul and faith in whatever you have faith in. The picture is simply too powerful and might cause you to die of grief, unless you’re a stonehearted monster.

On the back there are three more children, but each has a “before and after” set of photos. You get to see the good work they do there at Smile Train. And that series, after nearly having my heart ripped in half by the image of the dear boy on the front, makes me want to give Smile Train every dollar I have--it makes me want to take out a dozen loans and max out my credit cards so I can give them even more than I have. But after I stanch my tears I get to wondering why. Why them and not most of the other countless charities that want my money?

That’s a good question. I’m not even sure whether there are any benefits to repairing cleft lips and palates other than the cosmetic. It may be that fixing them reduces infections, or speech problems, or whatever, but I don’t know. So part of me thinks, why am I so worried about what may just be a cosmetic problem when there are other charities that feed the starving, inoculate those that need it most, et cetera, et cetera? Is it my own vanity? My own American obsession with physical appearance? I don’t know, but I don’t think it's something so shallow. I do recognize that I assume it will lead to social difficulties, and the extent of those that I imagine may indeed be affected by my American sensibilities, but I think the biggest thing is that it looks like a wound, and I cannot stomach children suffering.

I’d like to think that I always found the suffering of children to be a horror, but I have never been as sensitive to it as I am now that I have my own child. Now whenever I hear stories of a child being kidnapped, abducted and raped, tortured, or whatever, I suffer physical pain. The mere thought of it is almost unbearable.

There was a woman a while back who forgot her infant daughter and left her in the car to, essentially, bake. She was on Oprah talking about the incident years later. All I could think was that if I did that to Carver, I would kill myself immediately. The idea that I killed my son, the thought of how he cried in vain and suffered alone because of my stupidity, I would not be able to take. I’d off myself, guaranteed, by any means. The same goes if he were kidnapped (and kidnapping at an age where the child can’t identify himself or remember his name totally freaks me out even more). I would, seriously, go completely mad.

I was watching a South Park the other day and the boys convinced Butters to fake his death so he could pretend to be a new girl in school and infiltrate the girls’ inner sanctum. They made a life-sized Butters doll and loaded it with pig guts and bacon and such. They placed the doll at the edge of a building and, as his parents were watching, pleading with “him” not to jump, the boys shoved it off and the whole thing exploded in a mess of blood and guts right in front of Butters’s parents. There was a time when I might have been amused, but now all I could think of was Butters’s poor parents and how incredibly messed up the whole thing was.

This issue makes me think about God, or rather whether one or more gods exist.

I’ve never been a religious person. My parents baptized me to please my paternal grandmother, but we never went to church. I’ve pretty much always been either an agnostic or a borderline atheist, and one of the things that serves as a serious hurdle to me ever thinking otherwise is Dostoevsky’s The Brother’s Karamazov. Dostoevsky was a Christian, and the Brothers was not meant to have the effect that it did on me, but I have a hard time shaking free of Ivan’s skepticism in the chapter typically titled Rebellion. I don’t know if I can believe in a Christian god that allows people to be born with cleft lips and palates and other deformities, but I can easily understand and curse a nature that produces them. That may sound crazy to you, but I've felt that way for a long time, and having a child has only reinforced my position.

“But I've still better things about children. I've collected a great, great deal about Russian children, Alyosha. There was a little girl of five who was hated by her father and mother, ‘most worthy and respectable people, of good education and breeding.’ You see, I must repeat again, it is a peculiar characteristic of many people, this love of torturing children, and children only. To all other types of humanity these torturers behave mildly and benevolently, like cultivated and humane Europeans; but they are very fond of tormenting children, even fond of children themselves in that sense. It’s just their defencelessness that tempts the tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no refuge and no appeal, that sets his vile blood on fire. In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden- the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain, the demon of diseases that follow on vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on.

“This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty- shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and because she didn’t ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor child’s groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can’t even understand what’s done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child’s prayer to dear, kind God’! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! . . .

. . . .

Ivan for a minute was silent, his face became all at once very sad.

“Listen! I took the case of children only to make my case clearer. Of the other tears of humanity with which the earth is soaked from its crust to its centre, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose. I am a bug, and I recognise in all humility that I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, so there is no need to pity them. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level- but that’s only Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it?- I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven’t suffered simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? That’s a question I can’t answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I’ve only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.’ When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child’s torturer, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ but I don’t want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to ‘dear, kind God’! It’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don’t want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don’t want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother’s heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.”

“That’s rebellion,” murmured Alyosha, looking down.

Manhood for Amateurs, Part 2

I saw Michael Chabon last night. He’s touring to support Manhood for Amateurs and spoke at the Chicago Public Library. He read two pieces from the book, answered questions, and then signed books. I had a really nice time. Three notable impressions: (1) the guy can read, and by that I don’t just mean he’s literate, which of course he is, but that he really does a superb job reading his essays, possibly the best I’ve heard live; (2) he’s very funny and charming when answering questions and interacting with the audience; and (3) he’s very attractive in a sort of bookish “cute” way, I can see why the ladies would be into him, and why some gay men really wished he was gay. If he comes to your town, I recommend seeing him.

The Loser’s Club

The first essay in Manhood for Amateurs is called The Loser’s Club (I’d like to avoid spoiling the essays for those who haven’t read them, so I won’t do thorough summaries, but I’ve got to set it up, right?). He writes about the time when he was 10 and started a comic book club, complete with a newsletter that he did the layout for and typed using nothing but a typewriter (he even made columns and sidebars!). He rents a room at a community center and advertises the first meeting. His mom helps him set the room up and then leaves him there. Only one person shows up, a young boy, but he leaves almost immediately after seeing no one but a lone, lonely boy and his newsletters.

Carver and I visited my mom and sister and pretty much the entire maternal side of my family about two months ago. We drove into Neah Bay for Makah Days, my tribe’s annual celebration. As we were looking for a place to park, I saw a pair of kids running a lemonade stand in a very bad location, business wise. I pointed them out and asked my mom if she remembered the time my friends Chad, Sheri, and I set up a lemonade stand at the bottom of our cul-de-sac, which is quite possibly the least trafficked spot in the entire city. In the few hours we sat down there I think we saw one car, which did not stop, and one pedestrian who was nice enough to act excited about the lemonade and suggest he’d come back if he could scrounge up some money. My mom admitted, for the first time, that she hated it when we did “things like that,” admitting that she always knew they’d be horrible failures but also not wanting to be discouraging.

Chabon says that this failed comic book club meeting was when he began to think of himself as a failure, and that no one gets past age 10 without learning that the glory of success is always trumped by the pains of failure, that a criticism is not evened out by a compliment. But when I think about that lemonade stand, I don’t remember ever being disappointed. I don’t remember feeling like we failed. In fact, if memory serves, we actually did it again. Granted, we were under Chabon’s designated failure-recognizing age of 10, so maybe that had something to do with it. I certainly have a fear of failure now, and I’ve had it for a long time.

I had a birthday party when I turned six but didn’t have another until my dad decided to throw one for me when I turned 21. I never wanted to have a party, because I didn’t want it to fail. To this day I’m very unlikely to throw a party or host a dinner because I’m convinced no one will show, and it’ll hurt, it’ll be undeniable evidence that people don’t care about me. Without that evidence I can go on thinking otherwise.

While I have my means of trying to protect myself, flawed as they are, I don’t know what to do when it comes to my son—I certainly don’t want to raise another me. At this point I suppose the best thing to do is what Chabon’s mom did when she rented the room and helped him set up chairs, and as my parents did when they didn’t discourage my lemonade stand. I want him to try, to put himself out there when he’s ready, but I also can’t stand the idea of him getting hurt and becoming jaded, of his dreams being crushed.

My friend Matthew once mentioned to me how during a trip they took with a group of friends his son first experienced another person being consistently very mean to him, and how hard that was to watch. Now that I have a child of my own I know what Matthew meant, and when that day comes for Carver, when someone is cruel to him, it’ll break my heart. Which is why I’m worried about how to deal with his lemonade stand and comic book club aspirations. It’ll break my heart the first time life is cruel to him too.

Advice for Single Men

A surefire way to get attention from interested women:

(1) Borrow an adorable baby, ideally one who can walk and is between 12 and 20 months.

(2) Take the baby to a Paper Source, Jo-Ann’s, Michaels, or any other crafty type store.

(3) Pretend, if necessary, that you really like the baby. Interact with him, speak to him, et cetera, and generally act like a good dad.

(4) Purchase, or at least gather in your cart, things for your “planned” craft project. The artier the better. Have a heartwarming story ready for why you’re doing the specific project, one that does not involve another woman unless that woman is a close blood relative.

This is guaranteed to work.

Notes: (a) Being a happily married man, I can only vouch for this technique’s effectiveness at getting attention, I cannot ensure you that you’ll get laid; and (b) I don’t know how effective this would be if you aren’t incredibly handsome and preternaturally charming.

Manhood for Amateurs

[Soundtrack for this post: Stan Meets Chet and Kill to Get Crimson]

I bought Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs last week. It’s a collection of essays about being a father, husband, and son. I’ve never read anything by Michael Chabon (pronounced, according to him, Shea like the stadium, Bon like Bon Jovi), but I really like the movie Wonder Boys, which was based on one of his novels. I heard him giving an interview on NPR last week and thought the book sounded like something I could learn from and perhaps identify with. [n.1]

I’ve read the first three or four essays and each one has either caused me to think back to my childhood or my experiences as a new father, and they’ve all sparked a desire to write down those experiences and the related stories. So that’s what I plan on doing. As I read through Manhood for Amateurs, I’ll post responses to the essays that cause a spark that leads to ignition.

But before I do that…

I’d like to comment on the back cover of Manhood for Amateurs. It contains “praise for Michael Chabon” in the form of six quotations. Here are excerpts from the first four: (1) “Probably the premier prose stylist—the Updike—of his generation”; (2) “He is one of the best writers of English prose alive” [n.2]; (3) “The best writer of English prose in this country”; and (4) “A prose magician.” My point, in case it isn’t obvious, is that HarperCollins must really like the word prose, or maybe reviewers feel like it is a mandatory buzzword when talking about Chabon. Either way, it’s ridiculous.

The Kingdom of Snow and Ghosts

Before I start with the stuff in the book, I’m going to begin with an essay that Chabon has up on his website (you can find it here). This essay is similar to the stuff in the book and it’s called The Kingdom of Snow and Ghosts. The gist of the essay is that when he was young he had five channels on his TV, received through “rabbit ears,” and he discusses how the change to the present’s hundreds of always-on channels is in some ways a loss for his kids and their peers. He talks about the incredible, in some ways marvelous, boredom that resulted from the dearth of programming options, and how kids will watch anything, no matter how bad, rather than nothing.

This might sound like a typical “kids these days” or “things were better back in the day” type essay, and maybe it is, but I don’t read it that way an that’s not what I want to focus on anyway.

The “kids will watch anything rather than nothing” thing really hit home for me. When I was young, say 12 and under, I would watch just about anything, even if it pained me. I remember watching Pink Floyd The Wall repeatedly with my sisters in my parent’s bedroom. I was probably seven. My sisters rented it and watched it three times in one day. I hated it. I had no idea what was going on and it bored me into a near coma-like state, yet I watched it with them. I watched it with them three times and bitched and complained the whole time. I could’ve left the room, I could’ve watched the other TV, I could’ve gone outside, I could’ve done countless other things, but I sat there and watched three times over a movie I absolutely loathed. I don’t know why I did it. Maybe it was a desire to try to get into what my older siblings were into. Maybe it was a fascination with the film even though I had no idea what was going on—I still recall the scenes with the children falling into the meat grinder and the bullets on the train tracks. Maybe I just wanted the company.

The same thing happened with the Little House on the Prairie. I hated that show too, but I still watched it. I even briefly got into the Young and the Restless one summer when my sister broke her leg and was more or less bedridden—every day I’d actively go into her room and watch it with her, even though (at least at first) I hated it.

Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I think I agree with Chabon that there was something magical about that boredom, a level of boredom I haven’t felt since.

That’s not to say all I did was watch TV. I feel like a had a pretty idyllic suburban childhood, despite a one or two year period where I had a deep fear of being murdered in my sleep that required therapy (a topic for another post) and more than a few problems in my parent’s marriage that ultimately lead to divorce. I had a tight group of excellent friends, and we spent a great deal of time playing outside, running games of football or baseball at the top of my cul-de-sac, making M80-charged cannons in my backyard, playing hide-and-seek or freeze tag or “swords” or gun fighting. We also spent most summer days and evenings in my pool, sometimes only getting out long enough to eat. I also once built a very elaborate cat trap in my garage, something similar to what you put together in the game Mouse Trap, to catch stray cats that I thought were holing up in the garage. I actually caught a cat, which, considering my trap, bordered on miraculous (now that I think about it, I can’t help but wonder if my parent’s rigged it). We of course also played our fair share of video games, but as with the TV it never seemed like it got in the way of our more active fun.

Now that there is so much more TV programming—and the Internet with its social networking, online video, and all—I can’t help but wonder if it’ll reduce the amount of old fashioned (?) outside fun. When I was young we had cartoons available for an hour or two in the afternoon on weekdays and on Saturday mornings. Now you can watch cartoons whenever you want with the Cartoon Network and the kid specific channels out there, not to mention DVRs.

There’s something to be said for limited opportunities. I remember sitting in my friend Chad’s room when we were probably around seven or eight trying to record songs off of the radio. We’d have a tape in the deck and would sit there and wait for a song we wanted to come on and then we’d hit record. Once Chad was hoping to get a copy of Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust. I wonder how long he waited, how many songs he sat through that he didn’t know and didn’t care about before he got it, if he ever got it. I couldn’t imagine doing that now, and my son will almost surely never know what its like to have that experience. Within seconds he could find a copy on iTunes or even a video for the song on YouTube. My son will never know what it’s like to miss an episode of a TV show and have no way of finding out what happened, only hoping that it will be rerun sometime, most likely months later. He’ll never know what it’s like to stay up late enough to see the channel “sign off” with the Stars and Stripes waving proudly before turning into a wall of static. He’ll never know what it’s like to have to sit through 45 minutes of the inanities of the nightly news to catch his favorite team’s score or, worse, have to wait until the next day’s newspaper.

Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, being able to find out the Dodgers’ score in seconds on ESPN.com, or even “watch” the whole game on GameCast, compared to having to wait for the results in tomorrow’s newspaper, isn’t a huge loss. Of course in many ways it’s a big gain, but it is a change that will certainly have an effect on how he relates to sports and information in general. While I certainly appreciate being able to get my scores with a single click of my touchpad, I think there is absolutely something good lost with the forced waiting and patience, the anticipation, and it’s a loss to be mourned.

Note 1: About my use of “identify with” [Did I end my sentence with a preposition? So fucking what if I did.]: I initially wrote “relate with” but then wasn’t sure if it should be “relate to.” I did an Internet search, because I was too lazy to get up and get a book, but wasn’t satisfied with the results, [n.1a] so I had to get up and get my copy of Garner’s Modern American Usage. Garner—a man for whom I have a deep respect nearing reverence—calls relate to a “voguish expression,” which in Garner-ese is a damning pronouncement indeed. He links relate to to identify, and under identify he notes that identify in the sense of “to understand sympathetically or intuitively, esp. through experience” is “often disapproved of because when used in that way, identify is a VOGUE WORD—more specifically, a pop-psychology CASUALISM—bearing a nontraditional sense.” OH SNAP! and DAMN! He continues to say that a more conservative writer would simply use understand. But come on, understand doesn’t mean the same thing in this context, and I was too lazy to try to think of a different way to put it, so I went with indentify with. Deal with it.

Note 1a: I often do Internet searches when I’m looking for a quick answer about grammar or usage. The top results given by Google always contain English language forums where “non-native” English speakers discuss grammar, usage, words, et cetera. There are almost certainly all sorts of sample size problems here, but it makes me think that non-native English speakers work a whole lot harder at speaking English properly than most native speakers do.

Note 2: I think that would be better as “one of the best living writers of…” Don’t you? [n.2a]

Note 2a: Sorry, again, for the notes. Anne, I swear I’m not doing it to piss you off. But really, you’ve got to admit that none of this belonged in the main text, but I wanted to mention it, so . . . .

Daycare Update; and One of the Many Reasons I Hate Microsoft

October 15, 2009

Carver,

You've successfully completed your third day of full-time daycare and it seems to be going quite well. You still totally freak when I leave in the morning, but they tell me you calm down quickly. You also have become more comfortable in the brief period I hang out there with you: the first day you clung to me, seemed scared, and took a long time to finally start exploring a little; today you sat on my lap for a minute, but quickly started roaming around and having a good time.

Also, Arlinda, your afternoon teacher, basically told me you were a genius (OK, she just said "very smart" but she said it in an awestruck, I-can't-believe-he's-so-brilliant sort of way that suggested she meant more). She asked me, with great interest and all sincerity, what we "do with you" that has made you so very smart. I wasn't sure how to answer this question, mostly because the real answer is probably something like: "Well, we just kind of let him do whatever he wants, including all sorts of things most people would find frighteningly dangerous. And maybe read him a book or two every now and then." Also, I wasn't sure what she'd think of me if I said the first thing that came to my mind, which was something like: "Well, his mother and I are both, like, wicked smart, so it's only natural that he's awesome."

Arlinda also said that you are a shining example for your peers and that you help them and seem to try to teach them things. So overall I think you're rocking the daycare thing.

Microsoft, O’ How Do I Loathe Thee

Anne has a ThinkPad that runs Windows Vista. She got it not long after Vista came out, so the Vista bombing that seems to be so prevalent hadn’t gotten up to speed, or at least we hadn’t heard much of it. When she ordered it she asked me to look at what she spec’d out and I paused briefly at the operating system selection and thought about suggesting that she go with XP because I had heard a few of the early grumblings about Vista. I am extremely guilty about not voicing my concern at the time because now she has a slow, obnoxious, incredibly annoying $1800 “internet surfing machine” (what she calls it because of the following problem).

Her optical drive has not worked for several months, which means she can’t rip CDs to iTunes, can’t install the copy of MS Office that she’s had sitting here for months, et cetera. Not only has it not worked, Vista no longer recognized the drive. She’s tried a few times to fix it but got frustrated and gave up. So I gave it a shot and—hours later—I got it working again.

In my effort to find and fix the problem, this is what I deduced: (1) the problem most likely occurred one of the trillion times Windows updated itself, something about filters and such; (2) Microsoft blames 3^rd party DVD/CD ripping software for the problem, in some places the finger is pointed directly at iTunes; (3) Microsoft knows what the problem is and will fix it for you, but they’ll only do it if you click on the tool using MS Explorer because the tool doesn’t “recognize” Firefox or any other browser; and (4) the fix they provide for the problem they know about does not work. So, to recap, you’ve lost your optical drive because of Microsoft’s heinous operating system but they blame Apple. They’ll fix it, but only if you use their piece of shit browser. And the fix actually doesn’t fix anything.

I eventually found a thread on an online forum and modified the registry myself. Presto fix-o.

October 13, 2009

Carver,

Today is your first day in full-time, regular daycare. It’s a hard day for me, and probably is for you too. Up until now you have spent a handful of days in “backup” daycare, but aside from those few days you’ve spent everyday with your mom or me. You also spend many of your weekday afternoons with your “G-Ma,” who takes you to the park and gives you baths and you generally clearly love. Your G-Ma’s willingness to watch you most afternoons (and it seems to be more of a legitimate happiness than a mere willingness) has been quite possibly a literal lifesaver for me.

Unfortunately, or so I feel, I seem to need more help than your G-Ma’s tremendously generous and extremely appreciated assistance. So your mother and I have decided to send you to full-time daycare. Ultimately, I believe that this is in your best interest. But it’s still hard.

One of the reasons we decided to put you in regular daycare is that we think you’ve reached the age where you should make some friends and socialize with other babies. In your experiences in backup daycare and at the park you really seem to enjoy hanging out with other kids. We think you’ll like having some regular buddies to play with.

Another reason we’re doing this is that I simply don’t seem to have what it takes to be a top-notch stay-at-home parent. This makes me sad and makes me feel like a failure. I truly believe that your new teachers, professional child care providers, will do a better job at interacting with you regularly and feeding you well-balanced meals and all sorts of other things that I think you need. I wish I was better at this for you, I really do, but it’s become clear that I am not. I think the daycare is the best place for you right now.

My goal for myself now is to figure out what I’m doing, both professionally and generally, to try to sort out my life and attain some personal happiness. I’m drifting now, and it isn’t good. My goal is for you too, for I feel like in the end it is in your best interest to have a happy father, a father in whom you can be confident, a father you can be happy about having. It’s my goal for us.

This morning, as we were getting ready to go, I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth as you were standing there just outside the doorway, happy. You turned and noticed something out of my view; you ran to it and came running back with a ball in your hand. You held that ball up and cackled with absolute glee. You tossed the ball toward me, still laughing and smiling, and I thought about how you were the greatest, happiest, most awesome baby ever to have lived. It was a lovely thought, but it was immediately followed by a concern that perhaps daycare will have a negative effect on you, that you won’t like it and will become an unhappy baby—i.e., that my failure to be able to care for you every day will hurt you into losing your joy. I hope that’s not the case, I have faith that it won’t be the case—if I didn’t truly think that you’d be fine I wouldn’t be doing this—but it still worries me and makes me sad. Perhaps I could take some solace in the fact that in the time you’ve stayed home with me you have been a very happy and very capable baby, ahead of the curve on nearly every mark. But I don’t, because I love you and I don’t see the value in consoling myself; my only concern is what’s best for you.

The few times you’ve been in backup daycare you’ve totally freaked out when you realized that I was leaving you there. As soon as we arrived you’d hang on tight and hold yourself as close to me as you could, clutching with more strength than I knew you had, looking suspiciously at the daycare ladies (they’re always ladies). When I left you’d scream and sob and chase after me—it was heartbreaking every time. I don’t understand your baby brain enough to know what you felt this morning, but I hope you know that I did it because I love you—that at some point you’ll know that I only did it because I love you, that I love you more than anything and everything combined, and I only did it because I think it’s the best thing for you.

Papa

Love/Hate: Carlos Santana

Why I love Santana

My first concert ever was Santana at the Universal Amphitheater just outside of Los Angeles. I was seven or eight years old. I went with my friend Chad and his parents. At that point I could recognize Black Magic Woman or Oye Como Va, but I didn’t know much more than that about Santana.

I had a very good time at the show—it was very exciting. But there are only two memories from that show that have survived the test of time. In no particular order:

Santana, in case you’re weird and don’t know, is a talented guitar player—he can play a mean solo. Memory number one is Chad’s dad, immediately parroted by Chad and me, yelling something along the lines of “Blow up your amp!” Chad and I later noticed smoke rising from the neck of Carlos’s guitar. I cannot effectively relay the excitement we felt upon seeing this smoke, as we elbowed each other and marveled about how Santana’s guitar playing was so awesome and fierce that his guitar was smoldering and about to combust. To say I was somewhat let down when I realized that Santana simply stored his lit cigarettes between the strings of his guitar’s headstock would be an understatement.

Let’s just say, without incriminating anyone, that at this point I knew what marijuana was and what it smelled like. There was a ridiculous amount of marijuana smoking going on at this Santana show. Memory number two is this: As we’re enjoying the show, Chad and I notice this gargantuan joint making its way around the row in front of us. This was an absolutely colossal joint, like the one from that scene in Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke. It was the size of a medium banana, both in length and girth (without the curve). So this joint is getting passed around. Eventually it makes its way to the lady sitting next to me. She takes a hit and then—keep in mind I’m seven or eight years old—gives it to me. I’m dumbfounded, so I give it to Chad. This is the image that will stay with me for as long as I exist: tiny little Chad in his denim jacket with the Corvette patch, holding this massive joint—his fingers don’t make it all the way around the monster J—looking at me with this “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?” look on his face. Then…then Chad tries to pass it to his MOM, who is horrified and probably had a mental seizure right then. Chad ends up giving it back to me, and I give it back to the lady next to me.

I will forever treasure my first concert experience. Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Grothe.

Why I Hate Santana

He unleashed Rob Thomas’s “Smooth” on the world, which became arguably the most popular song in Billboard charting history. I loathe Smooth. Mood, moon, cool, and groove, do not rhyme with smooth. Maybe they’re assonant rhymes, but I hate it nonetheless.

Heard and Seen

A Completely Unexpected Follow-up

I was in a fast food burger joint filling my drink when I overheard the end of what was a very brief job interview. I first noticed the applicant when I walked by her a few minutes earlier, but I didn’t know she was an applicant at the time. I silently noted that she had a red bandana around her head and a solid red jacket—it was conspicuous enough for me to think that she was mildly “flamed up” [n.1]. I found her decision to sport the rag a little odd when I realized she was interviewing for a job. Anyway. Here’s the end of the interview:

Bossman: So, who do you know that works here?

Applicant: [Pointing at a box on her application] That, uh, that right there.

Bossman: I don’t have anyone who works here by that name.

Applicant: Oh, I thought that said emergency contact.

Bossman: No, why’d you come here? Someone, you know someone here?

Applicant: Oh, oh. I know Linda, uh, uh…

Bossman: Johnson, Linda Johnson? [n.2]

Applicant: Yeah, yeah.

Bossman: [Very severely and seriously] Don’t ever mention that, tell anyone that. [All severity instantly gone] So, I’d like to take a chance with you. What’s your availability?

A Blown Assumption

At the burger joint I’m sitting next to a man and a woman of similar age (30ish) and apparent social standing who are dining together. As the man tears open their shared bag of french fries he says, “Big ol’ bag-o-fries! Get ready for some artery hardenin’…” At which point I think, oh, a little awkward attempt at ice-braking humor, they’re probably on a first date [n.3], and just as I’m finishing the thought he finishes his sentence with “…ass blowin’ action.” At which point I was pretty sure they weren’t on a first date.

Sword Play

On my way out of my barbershop [n.4] I see four boys (10ish) playing with approximately 5' sections of PVC pipe. Each with their own. They are obviously “sword” fighting [n.5]. It immediately made me think back to when I used to play the exact same game with my friends, though we had the good sense to do it in my backyard, not out in public where everyone could see what dorks we were [n.6] [n.7]. I was flooded with warm and happy nostalgia. I couldn’t believe that when I was a kid that I ever desired to be older (I did). I realized, perhaps for the first time, that my severe “the grass is always greener…” outlook has been with me for a long, long time.

n.1: I know what that means 'cause I’m cool like that. I'm not sure, though, if one can be "mildly" flamed up.

n.2: The name has been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty alike.

n.3: Trust me, it really seemed like it was a first date, though I admit the location was odd. But, hey, I took my first-date-ever to a Burger King.

n.4 State Street Barbers on Webster. Ask for Dana.

n.5 The cute, innocent young-kid kind, not the dorktastic older teen and adult kind.

n.6 Perhaps they are victims of tiny city yards.

n.7 Sorry for all of the notes. I’m currently reading two David Foster Wallace books.