Hey folks. Sorry no new blogs in a week or two. But, every month I have a new blog posting featured over on “DadBloggers.” This month’s is titled, “Christmas through the eyes of an adult” and should show up on or around January 1st.
Check it out HERE!
I really enjoy shopping for CareerMom for Christmas. Inevitably, I end up in a women’s clothing store, preferably in the um…underwear section, where all men (according to the women employees apparently) come when they are clueless and lost as to what to purchase for their wives or girlfriend for the holidays.
The same goes for stores that sell beauty products. It’s always the same scenario:
Me…opening the door jingling the cutesy little bells hanging on the handle. I stop for a moment to look around and gather my bearings:
“OK, underwear and jammies on the right…jeans and knit tops on the left.” I start walking in either direction only to be accosted by a female employee:
“Hello sir, you look utterly lost. May I help you?”
“No thank you,” I say, “I’m good.”
“Great! I’m going to stand over here and pretend to be busy. Just let me know when you figure out that you’re completely in over your head and I’ll come over and rescue you.”
“Will do,” I say, not really meaning it, but knowing that if I do ask a question, I will only further prove to her my ineptness at picking out a gift on my own.
So, I walk around the store striking my most manly poses possible, lest some loitering lady mistake me for a gay man shopping for himself. As I stop to ponder the comfort and coverage afforded by the latest panty, I feel a rush of wind and a different female employee suddenly appears under the guise of folding some garment that has apparently up and disarrayed itself.
“Sir, do you need a woman to show you what a woman likes?” she asks.
I respond with, “No thank you. She’s straight.”
“I’m sorry sir, what did you say?” she quips; not quite trusting her ears.
I say, “I said, No thank you I’m great,” and then I depart the panty island and head over to another section of the store where there are currently no employees. What I really wanted to do was pick up the garment and check it out, but not with HER watching. What kind of perv would she think I was then anyway?
So, it generally goes on like this…I walk around and pretend like I know what I’m doing so as to not draw any attention to myself at all. Then, as I check out, the register lady unerringly tries to dazzle me with soap-math:
“Sir, these are $7.99 a piece or three for $25. Would you like me to get you a couple more?”
Quickly, I try to figure out, “Ok, $7.99…no round that up to $8 and it’ll be easier. What’s 25 divided by 8? 3? They’re $3 a piece if I get 3? Wait…that can’t be right…”
….”sir, do you want to get three for $25?”
“Um, just a sec, lemme think…”
….”sir, there are people waiting…”
“Ok fine, I’ll take three,” I say quickly not wanting to hold up the line of angry, albeit apparently perfectly adept female shoppers. I think to myself that surely I can pawn these extra items off on someone else as an original gift idea.
So, if you get a thong or some bath suds from me, you’ll know where they came from and why I gave such a strange, and slightly disturbing gift to a female family member.
I think most parents come into parenting with a “Parenting Philosophy.” It is probably a mix of things that their parents did with them, as well as some personal observation tweaks on parenting skills they have gleamed by watching the successes and failures of other parents.
I am no different. My parenting philosophy goes something like this:
I am your father first, and your best friend second (or maybe 5th or 6th after your real friends and your mother)
I ate vegetables and so can you. If you don’t eat them tonight, when you get hungry enough, you WILL eat them
After the approximate age of 3, you’re old enough to clean up most of your own messes and get your own toys and blankets from wherever in the house you’ve left them. I’m not your maid
When you’ve tuned out my threats of taking away your favorite toys, a spanking usually will do the trick
Just because we have kids, it doesn’t mean the house should look like a pigsty
You can entertain yourself sometimes
anything else that I make up along the way
The problem with a philosophy, is that it’s just that—a philosophy. A philosophy is “a system of principles for guidance in practical affairs” (thank you Dictionary.com). The quick among you will see the fallacy at work here—the fact that a philosophy comprises principles. And what is a principle exactly, but a, “personal or specific basis of conduct or management.”
Plainly put, a philosophy consists of a bunch of generally unproven beliefs. Which means then, that a philosophy is not proven and therefore seldom holds true in the real world.
Take last night. I met Careermom and the boys out for dinner at the local binge-n’-purge. Things went well for the first 20 minutes as our oldest contented himself with coloring the little menu thingy and our youngest donned a bib and commenced to eat pretty much whatever we put in front of him. But then all that wore off and we were left with, “I’m ready to go home” whining from our oldest and, “Hey, let’s see how many times I can make mommy and daddy pick this up off the floor” from our youngest.
Once dinner was over, I volunteered to take our youngest home while Careermom and my oldest went shopping for a last-minute Christmas gift for her Administrative Assistant at work who had made a point of telling Careermom as she walked out the door that, “I have a Christmas gift for you tomorrow.”
When we got home, I put our youngest on the floor with some plastic containers to play while I washed up bottles and generally cleaned up. Well, he didn’t like that and he decided to cry.
Now, I had two choices here. I could A) Stand by my philosophies and let him entertain himself (or continue to cry) while I cleaned, or I could B) Pick him up, leave the mess and keep him happy.
Have I mentioned I’m stubborn? Well, I am so I stuck by my philosophy and treated myself to pretty much a nonstop 40-minute cry-fest because once he got started, nothing would stop him. It finally got close enough to bedtime, so I bathed him, put his jammies on and put him to bed.
God Bless the quietness!
But I’m at an impasse here because I don’t think he “learned” anything, which is really the whole point of sticking to your philosophy when things go south. So I’m not sure I won anything here and I’m sure that the next time the situation arises, it’ll play out similarly.
The only question that remains is, “How strong is my resolve?” I don’t know the answer to that, but what I do know for sure is that I will be tested; Oh yes, I will be tested still.
There are certain movies that I like to watch at particular times of the year because of the memories they evoke. Dead Poets Society is one that I like to watch as summer turns to fall and even though I grew up in Alabama where there wasn’t much color during this transitional time, I have always felt that Vermont in the fall was how it was supposed to be and so each year I harken back to that memory; that feeling.
Recently, I rented “A River Runs through it.” You’ll remember this as the tragic story of two brothers who grew up in Montana, raised by their minister father (Tom Skerritt) and whose lives were forever changed by their love of fly fishing. I hadn’t seen this movie in many years, but felt prompted to watch it again because of my recent re-introduction to fly fishing and because I remember that it too had some wonderful Montana scenery in it.
As I sat watching A River Runs through It, I was struck by the similarities between the two brothers in the movies, and my own sons. The older brother was the brown-headed, thinker; shy though easily moved to action when convincingly appealed to. The younger brother (played by Pitt), was his brother’s counter—energetic, quick to action and not shy. It was the younger brother who inevitably pulled his older brother into questionable situations, for which they shared the punishment equally.
And once again, the relationship between these brothers just felt right. My own brother and I never saw eye to eye…we never shared a love of anything at all; but, these brothers had a bond that I hope my own boys develop. I want each of them to be his brother’s counter. For my oldest, his younger brother will be his spontaneity, and for my younger son, his older brother will be his caution. My hope for them is that they will bring a balance to each other’s lives and I hope that relationship endures for as long as they live.
Some may feel it’s silly to put so much emotion into a movie, but why not? Movies and books represent the perfection of our lives without all of the peripheral events that get in the way of the perfection. They are scrubbed, edited and colorized to represent the best that life can be and that’s what I want for my boys; the best. And if they want to fly fish with their dad when he gets old, well…that will just about be my perfection.
MLI playing video games
MLE - Mr. Grab-tastic
