'Well mannered and nice'

You don't realize how cripplingly ignorant casual onlookers are until you are a parent.

I have had less than a decade of experience with this 'rearing my young' thing, but I...

I should have used a different sentence there. Wipe whatever imagery you have in your brain right now.

I have been a parent since before we had to remove our shoes to fly in an airplane. In that short period of time I've realized that the average not me-or-my-wife person thinks my kids are:

"So well mannered and nice."

It's a compliment. I want my kids to allow me to be in public with my head held high, preferably on my own neck.

When you have your firstborn you take them everywhere you can to show off that yes, you could produce another human. The novelty wears off when the people talking on cellphones give you the dirty look because your child is shrieking in the store aisle.

Eventually you realize that bringing your kids along is like combining both you and your spouse's worst days and then putting that attitude in a package one third your size. And the only place where that mindset would be welcome is in a mob beating or political debate.

Consequently I have laboured to train my children to be considerate and good. And this is where the dichotomy lies, everyone believes I'm a success except for my wife and I.

For instance, last week my older daughter was musing out loud in the next room. You might think my concern was the fact she had begun to talk to herself, but that was until I heard this gem:

"How do I make Daddy die?
Mommy murdered?"

She proceeded to finish her thoughts. Apparently she was toying with alliteration, choosing pleasant word matches for herself and her sister and trying to impress Edgar Allan Poe with the others. Can I sleep soundly at night? Developmental psychology says 'no'.

Ok, if they aren't nice, maybe they are polite, right? Tonight we had a fun game of 'Dora the Explorer UNO'. It's like crazy eights with 50% wild cards.

So in a moment of cunning wit I lean over to my wife and say 'pull this'.

It was my finger. I belched as only a proud father of two can. Then two fingers shot across the table towards my wife begging for them to be pulled.

My older daughter proceeded to chug-alug her peppermint tea in a vain attempt to provide the required ammunition for the proper gaseous rumbling of the esophagus. My younger daughter reduced her IQ by 3 points straining so hard to pass wind that her face turned a deep shade of fuchsia.

That stopped the game for the next 5 minutes while they tried to one-up each other with bodily noises.

I really believe my children are generally well mannered and nice. Kind of like the 'little girl with the little curl', but I would change the rhyme to this:

There was a little girl
with a little curl
right on the fore edge of her scalp

And when she was good
she was very good indeed
but when she is mad call for help!

Chrismas - Doing stuff as a family

Christmas. It's a pagan holiday commandeered by Christians to celebrate the Birth of Jesus which by many guesses actually happened in May.

Yuletide. It's a season, but not defined by climate. It has a spirit, but yet it isn't alive.

As a token of the darkest month of the year we murder conifer trees and place their slowly decaying carcasses in our living rooms. Then we place the boon of gifts underneath carefully wrapped so to maximally torment each other with anticipation.

We overeat, we overdrink, and we sing in public. We wear costumes and redecorate our houses in a perverse competition of garishness.

And for some macabre reason the most masochistic of us begin this habit in November to spend 1/12th of the year in celebration.

But when you ask people about this strange occurrence, they reply the same answer to the questions "what is it for" and "what do you hate the most about it": Family.

And it is because you are family that you do things like attend school Christmas assemblies.

It is quite the phenomenon of taking time off work to sit in the gym, craning one's neck to see their child 'perform' as part of their class.

For those without children, there is a good reason you haven't joined this subculture as a spectator yet: no one pays to see these things. The only reason you go is to see your children or the children of someone you love enough to do this for.

It's not that they are bad per se, but they are meant for a captive audience of parents perched on child sized chairs, frantically trying to camcord around the people in front of them.

Last week I got to see a smaller version. My younger daughter went to a local farm where they put on a nativity scene. In an odd twist of fate she was picked to be an angel. They wore the costumes over their parkas. They looked more like a pack of hunchback ghosts.

'Mary' found out how tricky it is holding baby Jesus with mits on. The messiah child was only dropped on his head twice.

This week the assembly had my older daughter singing novelty Christmas songs. She practiced so much that I can't remember the original words to 'Winter Wonderland'.

We also noticed that she is getting embarrassed by her parents already. She hid behind an over sized Santa hat which had what could only be assumed were muttonchops that hung down to her neck. It was like a 'Fathers of Confederation' Christmas special

Christmas: Yours will not be perfect, but neither is your family. Love it anyway.

Dancing with the ...

As a married man I don't get to enjoy the pursuits of courting much anymore. Not saying I ever did. It always felt as fake as an email from a Nigerian dictator just trying to make ends meet.

And for me the worst part was dancing. I'm unsure where we as a species decided that this was a good means for selecting mates, but I'm upset by the idea. Darwin would say that I shouldn't reproduce, and that I dance like a lemur being attacked by army ants.

I don't have rhythm. Any. I am incapable of understanding tempo, any piano piece I play follows a tantric motion akin to learning to parallel park with a standard transmission. I once shortened the choreographer's life by a few months by attempted to dance in a circle and clap on cue.

So in a mating way I proved tremendously ineffective. Thankfully in religious circles dancing isn't the main way to meet girls, it's Bible studies. And so my roving intellect and low light conditions helped me there.

My wife and I are happily enough and sufficiently married to do things like social dancing. We attempted this first while engaged. We took ballroom dancing, which I related more to steering with a flat. We both have strong tendencies to lead, she is limited by walking backwards, I have no other excuse than sheer incapability.

After that debacle we didn't try dancing lessons again. That leaves the two other times that we as a married couple will dance: Weddings and Christmas parties. Last week we were at a Christmas party and we actually danced. Together.

Slow dances don't count, and neither does the polka. They're too easy to fake. I love the polka because it involves cardio ability and I have the morbid game of "see how fast we can cross directly through the dance floor".

Then on request I had my moment. The DJ played "Gonna make you sweat" and I pulled out my repertoire of 90's moves. I danced like an unholy trinity of M.C. Hammer, Vanilla Ice and Chandler from Friends. And I had fun.

I did notice that scanning the crowd that was still sitting, most of them seemed to stare at me. And not in a "Hubba Hubba" way, more in a "Good lord does he know he looks like that?" way.

So when you try to woo the opposite sex with your grooving moves, or worse, try to impress your spouse, do remember: you look like a fool, so be a confident one. And have fun. She'll like that no matter how much she protests for you to get off the floor.

Oh, and never refer to your dance partner as a horse with a palsy.

Hearing voices

Once in a while there is a nagging voice that tells me things. If it is my wife I ignore it at my peril.

Other little voices that pester me are my children. I can't easily ignore them due to their volume approaching that of a Pneumatic hammer and when they use phrases like "whoops", "I didn't mean to", "It's ok, I'll just get a towel" and "Holy SH*#!".

But the voice that I can successfully ignore is that one that predicts the future.

This week I had some traveling to do. My accommodations were transient apartments which in theme are like a well maintained hostel.

I had an evening without chores. No cleaning, programming, or re-applying children to their beds ad-nauseum. And so I started watching a movie.

I used my laptop since I could plug in my headphones. As I did the little voice said "You'll regret this. Something will happen that requires you to listen and you won't be able to hear." I dismissed the paranoid nanny in my head and began watching.

Half an hour into the movie I heard stomping feet. Nothing new to hostel-style living spaces. Then I heard shouting. That only made me glad I had my headphones in. Then I heard the fire alarm.

Have you ever noticed that we tend to stop and look with imbecilic expressions at emergency warnings. Instead of driving us into action we assume the posture that is found in Pompeii ruins. I can only expect that if we could see those faces better they would call out to us "Huh?" from across the centuries.

Realizing this wasn't a drill I jumped into my shoes and walked to the exit. This was when the announcement "Fire in apartment 1" was given. Great, I'm in apartment 2 and this is how I die.

I checked the door and it wasn't hot. I could then make my way down the hall and outside. I was greeted by -30 degree centigrade air. I stood outside the front entrance waiting for the others to arrive. No one did.

It then occurred to me that I was in jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers and holding a laptop. No parka. No wallet. I am a geek even in emergencies.

I realized that I would probably be the only one with firefighting training, and that there were probably people still inside. With no visible signs of fire or smoke I made my way cautiously inside and called for the others. They responded that the fire was a stove top burn and was put out.

My lesson in all this. It's probably better to be paranoid weirdo than ignore that quiet voice. And step 1 in an emergency is 'Don't look stupid'

Crime, Punishment and Disease

This past Friday was Feline Retribution day at our house. As punishment for causing undue familial grief the cat's punishment was a visit to the vet.

We had a dry run the week before when I misunderstood the date of the appointment. At that time my wife tried to cram the over sized mini-panther into the cat carrier. She decreed it was impossible and that we needed a new one.

Opposites attract. My wife is an attractive pessimist. I am an attractive optimist. Together we made attractive but inwardly conflicted children. I naturally assumed that the love of my life had written off something without giving it the fair try that my superior intellect could.

So after baiting the plastic air hole equipped breadbox with cat food I tried to lure, coherse, force and drop the unwilling participant in. Many scratches later I realized that the nature of cramming an angry, pudgy ball of fur and claws into a container that easily was 2 inches smaller than her rotund circumference was an exercise in imbecility.

We ended up doing what we did last time, we jammed the cat in a laundry basket and put another one on top. To prove that we were really all that white trash and a bag of pork rinds, we sealed the deal and the laundry carriers with twist ties and elastic bands.

In order to teach my older daughter a lesson about squeamishness I took her along. She apparently overreacted to her sister having a nosebleed so in my enlightened parenting style I brought her along in hopes that some animal would be in the waiting room with some sort of open wound or general trauma. She also gets a of Brownie badge for this, I'm still not sure how medical torture of animals works into that.

We arrived with our trailer park portable animal house. I was mortified to be seen in public like that, and was only briefly re-assured when a man leaned over to his wife and remarked 'That's a good idea'.

So the cat had her shots, and a checkup, and then we were given the licensing option. Pay $20 annually for the privilege of keeping this mildly mobile furniture destroyer, or have an RFID tag inserted in her for $50 and pay no tax ever.

Needless to say I now have a cyber-cat, which is uber-cool. They even showed us that it worked by running a scanner over her back. I nearly asked if there was an option of free post-secondary if I got the older child done at the same time, but the other criteria was the cat had to be fixed first.

On the way home we discussed the trip. Our cat is 16 pounds, which at 11 years old is overweight. The main danger is that she is a candidate for feline diabetes and that she can't properly lick her arse. I can identify with both myself.

My older daughter was discussing diabetes and she understood the general concept of it. Genetic predisposition, overall poor diet, not enough exercise, overweight, etc. Then she conjectured:
"Hey, I could give my Webkinz diabetes!"

In the care taking of the online creature one has the choice of healthy snack or treat and exercise or rest, each with the game encouraging the better alternative.

I, a man in his thirties, now want a Webkinz too. Christmas is coming, hint hint.

Square Evidence

Human beings are a fascinating freak of nature.

We are the only carbon bound beings (to our knowledge) that are self aware. For example, pigs don't sweat too much about the methane they are producing causing global warming. I'd be surprised if the average hog even realized it passed gas.

By the way, to satisfy my pedantic sense of snobbery I would like to point out that pigs don't sweat. I know there is the maxim "to sweat like a pig". That idiom is idiocy. That is why they wallow, so they don't die of heat exhaustion. That and to set themselves apart from the average political lobbyist.

I'm afraid to admit how fun that was to point out to you.

Nevertheless I digress. It is a special capability for us meatbags to understand that we are. And we are blindingly confronted by this when we are alone. This is healthy because at a impressionable age we are taught that self-discovery is not a communal activity or spectator sport.

It must be that the distractions of our boring everyday lives keep us from peering too deep into the proverbial umbilical stump.

I was away on a business trip this week. I was in a community with a population being little more than 2^8.

I returned to my accommodations where someone asked if I wanted to watch TV. I honestly didn't. Not at all. Presented with dozens of channels to choose from I found one show that I wanted to see and it was over. (It was "Good Eats" on the food network).

And that was when I discovered again how I am so lucky to be married, and to have so many understanding friends. I tuned in Baroque music on the satellite receiver then downloaded and started to read "Pride and Prejudice".

As thrilling as the NHL or Desperate Housewives or Heroes is, I couldn't be bothered. I was happier chilling 1770's style. When I wasn't doing that I was reading programming documentation and whimsically desiring to recompile a kernel for the fun of it. It's like missing your last surgery recovery time.

Thus ends my short report on what I learned on my last business trip. It was that I need to keep those I love very happy because I have more chance of a pig sweating than finding others to accept, nay appreciate my eccentricities.