Small children like to get into everything. If there's a drawer full of knives, they're going to find it and try to open it. That's why when my son was 9-months old and he wanted to open the cabinet under the sink where nothing dangerous resides, I didn't think twice about it.
I went on folding clothes on my bed, while my little crawler rifled through towels and toilet paper. Midway through the last stack of clothes, I heard the rustling of paper and turned to see he had gotten into the tampons. So now we have several pictures of a 9-month old sitting on his butt in our bathroom with a tampon in his mouth.
The pictures actually make a nice flip book. The first frame he's torn the tampon open. The second, he's got the package in one hand and the tampon in the other. The third frame and the wrapper's on the floor, while he's pulling the applicator off. This goes on until the final three pictures I took where he's just staring at me wide-eyed with a string hanging out of his mouth.
Before a young child begins crawling, if you're home alone with the child and you have to take a shit, that child is coming with you. It's fairly harmless for the first year or so of this practice. The child can't speak. The child can't walk. They just lie there and wonder about the lights overhead, "Is that magic? They weren't bright a minute ago..."
The initial harm is only to yourself. Memories from long ago repressed in the back of your mind begin to emerge. They were hiding somewhere between pooping in the bath tub and your older sister giving you a bloody nose, but they're peeking their heads out now.
"Hey, I kind of remember being in the bathroom while my mom was taking a shit. I do. Oh man. Weird." And it makes sense. Every once in a while, everyone had to be in the bathroom while their parents shit. And the first time you take your infant in with you, you begin to remember.
Tracing the pattern in the tiles on the bathroom floor. Pretending they were highways with cars on them. Every now and again looking up to tell your mommy that it was stinky. People say that having children makes you closer to your own parents. And in this way, they're right. I can recall spraying Lysol and laughing to cover the scent of my parents' shit. Brutal.
Surely, these memories don't come from those first nine months, though. Likely, they come from right around the age my son is currently: just over two.
I came home from work last week having to use the bathroom. I entered the house, I said hello to my wife, and my son ran around the sofa to give me a hug. I asked him how his day was, and after some pleasantries, I told him to sit with his mother, because daddy has to go potty.
It's 50/50 what his response is going to be when I tell him that. Half the time it's silence, because he's preoccupied with something else. This time it was, "I'm coming!" And tiny footsteps running after me down the hallway.
I really like taking shits. It's peaceful. I read in there. I find solace in the bathroom. Until my son. He's ruined pooping. The kid wants to chat the whole time. And he asks all kinds of uncomfortable questions.
"That's daddy's wiener?"
"Yes. That's daddy's wiener. We don't talk about other people's wieners."
"You're pooping?"
"Yes, daddy's pooping."
"Why?"
"Because I ate hot dogs for lunch."
It's just a cycle of shame and strangeness.
Then he hands me toilet paper and gets mad if I don't "use" it immediately. The only saving grace to him being in the bathroom with me is when he decides that he wants to poop too.
"I need to poop, daddy." He's got a little potty training toilet in our bathroom. He hasn't successfully used it, but sometimes he likes to sit on it and pretend.
I take his pants off. I take his diaper off. He sits on the training toilet and looks at me. He grimaces and pushes. Is he finally going to poop on the toilet? He's really pushing! And he farts.
So close.
After his fart, he looks at me and tells me he needs toilet paper. And he goes into the cabinet under the sink. He pulls out a roll of toilet paper and hands me a piece, before he tears off some for himself. He touches his butt with the toilet paper and puts it in his training toilet.
Then he goes back under the sink. This time he emerges with a tampon.
"Daddy needs a tamp?"
"No, daddy doesn't need a tampon. Let's put that back, please."
"Daddy has a wiener?"
"That's right. Daddy has a wiener, so daddy doesn't need a tampon. Let's put that back."
"I need a tamp." And then I watch in fascination as my 2-year old removes the tampon from its package, lifts up his balls, and pokes himself in the taint with a tampon. He gives it two or three pokes, then takes the toilet paper out of the training toilet and wraps it around the tampon. Finally, he walks around me and throws the tampon in the garbage can.
My immediate reaction is that my wife and I need to stop bringing this kid into the bathroom with us before things get out of control. Upon further consideration, I have to smile. Because he bit me and broke my glasses today. Someday he's going to bring his child into the bathroom with him. And when he does, that doozy of a memory will be waiting for him.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Friday, October 2, 2015
Portrait of the Artist as a Fucking Asshole
The first time I heard Dillinger Four was when I was 18. I'd just gone to college and was trying to adapt to an anxiety disorder that had started peaking its head out six months earlier. I was at a place in my life where conversations with other people terrified me to the point where I wouldn't call to order pizza, and if my family members or friends asked me to read out loud something as simple as a menu at a restaurant, I would have a panic attack.
Now, that song is mostly about scenes and music, but the only lyrics I could make out were, "Is this the way things should be or just a feast of crumbs?" (And the direct question of "Who the fuck are you?" Like you are inherently right? What the fuck do you know? I see things. I have an opinion. My voice counts.)
I was hooked.
I remember going out to the record store in Madison and buying their second album, Versus God. And for a kid who went to Catholic school and still had my superstitions, fears, and sense of sacrilege, buying an album with that name was not easy. But I bought it. And I listened. And I was sold on every chorus. I was a sucker for every chord. But as addictive as every song was, I found myself challenged by every word. (Which is all the more wild considering that's my least favorite album.)
"We act like we didn't know. Then kids shoot kids a community defies its role. And of course it's everyone's fault except anyone we might know." Holy shit! Someone is writing a song and saying things that I am thinking. But articulating them better than I ever could. "Family values are a value most can't afford"? Wow. I didn't grow up wealthy, but I definitely grew up privileged, loved, and had nothing real to complain about. And now I'm considering how fortunate I have been!
I dig deeper and deeper.
It's like someone saying, "Fuck your bullshit religion." But also somehow telling parables like a modern day Jesus Christ.
And then after a couple years of being hooked, I realize they're not rock stars. These are just dudes who work and happen to play music. And I go to their shows and realize I'm not the only one who's hooked. I'm not the only one singing along to every lyric. And I realize that despite my inability to have a conversation with anyone I haven't known for more than 10 years, I am not alone. I am not crazy. (Well, I may be crazy. But hey, I'm not alone.)
And I know that because of four guys from Minneapolis who challenge me in every song to be a better person, to look closer at the world around me, and to not ever let myself off the hook and go with the crowd.
Towers fall. Rabble is roused. Wars are started. And while everyone is rising up and waving flags with Bruce Springsteen, I'm thinking, "Wait. This President is the same dipshit he was last week. Why does everyone think he's great now?"
I'll say this. For years I probably got over excited about criticizing myself. I probably got a little too hard on myself about not doing enough. A little too combative with people whose opinions I didn't agree with. A little too radical? Maybe. My wife told her parents when we started dating that she didn't think it would go anywhere, because I was too radical. I probably got a little too cynical about work and money. And it's definitely a little embarrassing to say, but I wouldn't be who I am today if it weren't for this tiny little band from Minneapolis that no one has heard of.
They haven't played a show in Chicago in some time, but I just finished seeing them at the Double Door. And as I'm sweating on strangers, smiling ear to ear, and singing along with people I've never met to "Minimum Wage Is a Gateway Drug," I am both overjoyed and reminded of my cynicism.
Because in a perfect world, that song doesn't exist. And if there isn't a problem in this country, several hundred people don't show up to celebrate that someone is expressing that point of view in song. In a perfect world, every song is bubblegum. America is the good guy. The actions of corporations and governments are not subject to criticism. In a perfect world, Dillinger Four doesn't exist.
And in that world, I am less happy because of it.
Adjusting to that left me living completely and totally in my head. There were lots and lots of inputs: music, movies, things other people said, but there was no interaction. For those six months (and the next several years), I observed but never commented.
In hindsight, the inputs coming in from the world were pretty wild. Columbine was still on the national consciousness. It had not yet become an every day occurrence that someone went on a shooting spree. And perhaps most formative, 9/11 was either weeks after or weeks before I heard my first Dillinger Four song.
The first song I heard was called "Our Science Is Tight" on a compilation CD. It was track #1 on that CD. Aside from being an incredibly catchy song with three vocalists with three distinct voices singing in some perfect balance of unison sections and trade off lines, it also had clear and provocative lyrics. At least the chorus was easy to understand:
WHO THE FUCK ARE YOUHere I am, living entirely in my head, at an age when most people are trying to make sense of the world. At a time that the world (or at least the country) is unabashedly trying to make sense of itself. And every piece of pop culture, art, music, film, etc., tells me either, "Things are great," or "Things are terrible," And here's a song that isn't just a good song, but is putting the question to me: "Does what you see make sense to you?"
WHERE DID YOU COME FROM
IS THIS THE WAY THINGS SHOULD BE
OR JUST A FEAST OF CRUMBS
Now, that song is mostly about scenes and music, but the only lyrics I could make out were, "Is this the way things should be or just a feast of crumbs?" (And the direct question of "Who the fuck are you?" Like you are inherently right? What the fuck do you know? I see things. I have an opinion. My voice counts.)
I was hooked.
I remember going out to the record store in Madison and buying their second album, Versus God. And for a kid who went to Catholic school and still had my superstitions, fears, and sense of sacrilege, buying an album with that name was not easy. But I bought it. And I listened. And I was sold on every chorus. I was a sucker for every chord. But as addictive as every song was, I found myself challenged by every word. (Which is all the more wild considering that's my least favorite album.)
"We act like we didn't know. Then kids shoot kids a community defies its role. And of course it's everyone's fault except anyone we might know." Holy shit! Someone is writing a song and saying things that I am thinking. But articulating them better than I ever could. "Family values are a value most can't afford"? Wow. I didn't grow up wealthy, but I definitely grew up privileged, loved, and had nothing real to complain about. And now I'm considering how fortunate I have been!
I dig deeper and deeper.
"Ignorance, intolerance abounding, how could this be a part of any greater plan?"
"Sunday school at age 9, I thought I was on the winning team. Because I wanted to see it, I wanted to need it. It was 9 years of holy shit and I believed it."They lambaste Catholicism. They express what's in my head about the conflict between what I was raised to believe and what I feel based on what I see. And then in the next song they paint a picture of someone society might consider a degenerate, but who actually just doesn't have a job.
It's like someone saying, "Fuck your bullshit religion." But also somehow telling parables like a modern day Jesus Christ.
And then after a couple years of being hooked, I realize they're not rock stars. These are just dudes who work and happen to play music. And I go to their shows and realize I'm not the only one who's hooked. I'm not the only one singing along to every lyric. And I realize that despite my inability to have a conversation with anyone I haven't known for more than 10 years, I am not alone. I am not crazy. (Well, I may be crazy. But hey, I'm not alone.)
And I know that because of four guys from Minneapolis who challenge me in every song to be a better person, to look closer at the world around me, and to not ever let myself off the hook and go with the crowd.
Towers fall. Rabble is roused. Wars are started. And while everyone is rising up and waving flags with Bruce Springsteen, I'm thinking, "Wait. This President is the same dipshit he was last week. Why does everyone think he's great now?"
I'll say this. For years I probably got over excited about criticizing myself. I probably got a little too hard on myself about not doing enough. A little too combative with people whose opinions I didn't agree with. A little too radical? Maybe. My wife told her parents when we started dating that she didn't think it would go anywhere, because I was too radical. I probably got a little too cynical about work and money. And it's definitely a little embarrassing to say, but I wouldn't be who I am today if it weren't for this tiny little band from Minneapolis that no one has heard of.
They haven't played a show in Chicago in some time, but I just finished seeing them at the Double Door. And as I'm sweating on strangers, smiling ear to ear, and singing along with people I've never met to "Minimum Wage Is a Gateway Drug," I am both overjoyed and reminded of my cynicism.
Because in a perfect world, that song doesn't exist. And if there isn't a problem in this country, several hundred people don't show up to celebrate that someone is expressing that point of view in song. In a perfect world, every song is bubblegum. America is the good guy. The actions of corporations and governments are not subject to criticism. In a perfect world, Dillinger Four doesn't exist.
And in that world, I am less happy because of it.
Friday, January 16, 2015
Things That Go Bump In The Night
My son is now approaching 16 months of life. (The second sentence of any piece of writing is generally not a good place for an aside, but I can't resist. I can't wait for him to hit two years so I can stop referring to his age in months. People always ask, "So when are you gonna stop giving his age in months?" in a really shitty voice. And the answer is two years. Then you get into half years. He's two. Two and a half. Three. Three and a half. Then at five, it's just years. Those are the rules. Because that's kind of how development works. [Based on my observations.])
My son is now approaching 16 months of life. There are a lot of interesting things about 16 months. My son has a way now of pointing to objects or pictures and grunting. He's asking me to tell him the word for what it is. And I'll tell him.
We sit with a book that has four animals on it: one on the top of the left page, one on the bottom of the left page, one on the top right, and one bottom right.
He points and grunts.
"Goat." I say.
"Yup." He points bottom left.
"Sheep."
"Yup." Back to the goat.
"Goat." He points bottom right.
"Lamb." He points top right.
"Pig."
"Yup." Back to the goat.
"Goat."
I know absolutely nothing about childhood development. But I imagine that what's going on over the course of the five minutes where he points at four pictures 10 times is that he's trying to nail these words down.
Imagine you know absolutely nothing about a language. You just hear noises all day from strange beings. One day you realize that some of those sounds the strange beings are making have meaning. You begin to wonder if every sound they make means something. At 16 months, I believe my son has developed some understanding of a trial-and-error scientific method.
"If I make my da-da identify a picture with a sound 10 times, I can be sure that the sound he is saying is the name of the object in that picture." He thinks without words.
This is fascinating simply in that it's fascinating. But it's also fascinating, because I have the power to totally fuck with this child's development. If every time he points to a picture I say a different word, he will be stupid.
He points to the goat.
"Goat." I say.
He points to the pig.
"Pig." I say.
He points to the goat.
"Horse." He points to the goat again.
"Donkey."
What the fuck?! And like that I have thrown off his theory. His theory is based on the assumption that I love him and want him to learn.
But if I'm a sick twist (and to be sure, in some ways I am), I could tell him untrue things, or perpetually shift truths about what I tell him. And in so doing, scar him for life.
(Editorial note: I don't.)
But that's just a way I could, if I were perverted in some way, intentionally scar him for life. The other really interesting thing about fatherhood is that there are myriad ways in which I am probably unintentionally scarring him for life.
For instance, I believe we all develop some amount of fear of the dark in our lives. Maybe this is instinctive. Primal. A fear of being watched. God knows I have it.
I still to this day can be taking a shower, washing my hair, closing my eyes because there's too much soap in them, and all it takes is me picturing someone outside of the shower. I picture that. I picture that I'm being watched. I picture that someone has crept in and is standing on the other side of the shower door ready to pounce.
"This isn't real," I tell myself. But it doesn't matter. It's enough for me to hurriedly rinse the soap out of my eyes and check. I'm 32 years old. Jesus. But it happens. Not all the time. But sometimes.
Or I can remember a time when I was really sick in college. Throwing up. Shitting my brains out. I had a crazy fever. Sweating through the night and waking up freezing, drenched in my bed. Drinking water just to release it minutes later through mouth or asshole. Gross. I know.
At the worst of it, I woke up freezing, soaking wet from a vivid nightmare wherein an evil presence had entered my bedroom. It was standing over me in this nightmare.
I sprang up in bed, my eyes wide open.
I looked across the room. By the door I saw an outline of a figure. I rubbed my eyes.
"I'm imagining things. This isn't real." But then it moves towards me. Scared the shit out of me.
I know now there was nothing there. But I was so tripped out from dehydration, being sick, nightmares, and the Tylenol PM, that I really thought something was there.
It took reaching out and trying to punch it to convince myself there was no presence. And I fell back asleep telling myself that nothing was in my room but me. Terrified.
My son is 16 months old.
Literally every day up until around when he turned one, either my wife, myself, or both of us, have gone into his bedroom before we've gone to bed to look at him.
He's fucking adorable. We're nerds. What can I say.
This practice has lessened of late. But we still do it more often than not.
And every once in a while, when we go in there, he's in a light sleep. He senses our presence. He lifts up his head. And as he's doing it, we hide in his room so he can't see us or we scurry like rats out of his room as he's turning to look.
Last night, we opened his door at 11 PM and took three steps in. After three steps, his head sprung up, and before he could turn to face it, we bolted out the door and closed it.
My son is being watched. There is a presence in the dark. There are things that go bump in the night. Those things are his parents being morons, tripping over blocks and turning off the hallway lights.
This morning my son got out his book.
He pointed to the goat.
"Horse."
My son is now approaching 16 months of life. There are a lot of interesting things about 16 months. My son has a way now of pointing to objects or pictures and grunting. He's asking me to tell him the word for what it is. And I'll tell him.
We sit with a book that has four animals on it: one on the top of the left page, one on the bottom of the left page, one on the top right, and one bottom right.
He points and grunts.
"Goat." I say.
"Yup." He points bottom left.
"Sheep."
"Yup." Back to the goat.
"Goat." He points bottom right.
"Lamb." He points top right.
"Pig."
"Yup." Back to the goat.
"Goat."
I know absolutely nothing about childhood development. But I imagine that what's going on over the course of the five minutes where he points at four pictures 10 times is that he's trying to nail these words down.
Imagine you know absolutely nothing about a language. You just hear noises all day from strange beings. One day you realize that some of those sounds the strange beings are making have meaning. You begin to wonder if every sound they make means something. At 16 months, I believe my son has developed some understanding of a trial-and-error scientific method.
"If I make my da-da identify a picture with a sound 10 times, I can be sure that the sound he is saying is the name of the object in that picture." He thinks without words.
This is fascinating simply in that it's fascinating. But it's also fascinating, because I have the power to totally fuck with this child's development. If every time he points to a picture I say a different word, he will be stupid.
He points to the goat.
"Goat." I say.
He points to the pig.
"Pig." I say.
He points to the goat.
"Horse." He points to the goat again.
"Donkey."
What the fuck?! And like that I have thrown off his theory. His theory is based on the assumption that I love him and want him to learn.
But if I'm a sick twist (and to be sure, in some ways I am), I could tell him untrue things, or perpetually shift truths about what I tell him. And in so doing, scar him for life.
(Editorial note: I don't.)
But that's just a way I could, if I were perverted in some way, intentionally scar him for life. The other really interesting thing about fatherhood is that there are myriad ways in which I am probably unintentionally scarring him for life.
For instance, I believe we all develop some amount of fear of the dark in our lives. Maybe this is instinctive. Primal. A fear of being watched. God knows I have it.
I still to this day can be taking a shower, washing my hair, closing my eyes because there's too much soap in them, and all it takes is me picturing someone outside of the shower. I picture that. I picture that I'm being watched. I picture that someone has crept in and is standing on the other side of the shower door ready to pounce.
"This isn't real," I tell myself. But it doesn't matter. It's enough for me to hurriedly rinse the soap out of my eyes and check. I'm 32 years old. Jesus. But it happens. Not all the time. But sometimes.
Or I can remember a time when I was really sick in college. Throwing up. Shitting my brains out. I had a crazy fever. Sweating through the night and waking up freezing, drenched in my bed. Drinking water just to release it minutes later through mouth or asshole. Gross. I know.
At the worst of it, I woke up freezing, soaking wet from a vivid nightmare wherein an evil presence had entered my bedroom. It was standing over me in this nightmare.
I sprang up in bed, my eyes wide open.
I looked across the room. By the door I saw an outline of a figure. I rubbed my eyes.
"I'm imagining things. This isn't real." But then it moves towards me. Scared the shit out of me.
I know now there was nothing there. But I was so tripped out from dehydration, being sick, nightmares, and the Tylenol PM, that I really thought something was there.
It took reaching out and trying to punch it to convince myself there was no presence. And I fell back asleep telling myself that nothing was in my room but me. Terrified.
My son is 16 months old.
Literally every day up until around when he turned one, either my wife, myself, or both of us, have gone into his bedroom before we've gone to bed to look at him.
He's fucking adorable. We're nerds. What can I say.
This practice has lessened of late. But we still do it more often than not.
And every once in a while, when we go in there, he's in a light sleep. He senses our presence. He lifts up his head. And as he's doing it, we hide in his room so he can't see us or we scurry like rats out of his room as he's turning to look.
Last night, we opened his door at 11 PM and took three steps in. After three steps, his head sprung up, and before he could turn to face it, we bolted out the door and closed it.
My son is being watched. There is a presence in the dark. There are things that go bump in the night. Those things are his parents being morons, tripping over blocks and turning off the hallway lights.
This morning my son got out his book.
He pointed to the goat.
"Horse."
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