The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Family

Life With a First Grader

Sometimes I am given vivid reminders of how in some respects the technology my parents and I grew up with is far more similar than that of my children and I.

Here are snippets from a recent conversation with the young lord of the manor.

Son: Dad, did you go to school?
Jack: What do you think?

Son: Grandpa said that you did.
Jack: Grandpa is right.

Son: You lived with grandpa and grandma?
Jack: I did. You have seen the room that I grew up in.

Son: Did it always have a television in it?
Jack: Nope.

Son: What about a computer. You had a computer didn’t you. What kind was it?
Jack: I didn’t have a computer.

Son: How did you work?
Jack: With a pencil and paper.

Son: I get it. Grandpa had the computer.
Jack: No. We didn’t get a computer until I was much older than you are now.

Son: How did grandpa work?
Jack: With a pen and paper.

Son: He didn’t type?
Jack: No, he did. He used a Smith-Corona typewriter. For a while I did too.

Son: Were you poor?
Jack: No, people didn’t have home computers.

Son: What about your phone. Did you check your email on your phone?
Jack: No. We didn’t have cell phones.

Son: So you were poor.
Jack: No. People didn’t have cell phones then.

Son:What about shoes? Did people have shoes then?
Jack: Yes. We had shoes. I always bought the pair that made me run fast.

Son: Hey! I do that too. We match.
Jack: We do.

Son: Dad?
Jack: Yes.

Son: I still think that grandpa should have bought you a computer. That wasn’t nice.
Jack: He was nice, but when I was your age they didn’t make computers for people to use at home.

Son: Are you sure that you remember? You are kind of old.
Jack: Thanks, I appreciate that. Yes, I remember. We definitely did not have a computer.

Son: That must have been hard for you because you love the computer.
Jack: Nope. Since I had never used one I didn’t miss it. We’ll talk about this later. Get some sleep.

You Can Call Me Soccer Dad or Coach

This coming Fall the big boy is going to play another season of soccer. So once again you will be able to call me Soccer Dad. No, I am not this Soccer Dad. Those would be mighty big shoes to fill.

No, this year I am just an ordinary suburban father who is tasked with taking a group of seven year old boys and turning them into lean, mean, fighting machines. I rather expect that this experience should make good blog fodder.

And how sad am I that I look at everything I do and wonder if it is worth blogging about. Ok, that is an exaggeration, I don’t get that obsessive about this, but it is not hyperbole to say that I think about blogging a lot. But this a topic for a different post.

For now we’ll focus on the coaching. More on this later.

Some Assembly Required Part II

Last December I wrote a post about the joys of assembling toys. It easily could have included a bit about Ikea and their ilk. You haven’t lived until you have tried to follow Olaf’s instructions on how to build something that resembles the piece in the showroom.

I can remember more than one time in which I made plans to fly to Sweden to kick Olaf’s Scandinavian ass. On a side note to the dear troll who is currently hiding here, that was an exaggeration. Or maybe it wasn’t, maybe I believe that the Three Billy Goat’s Gruff is a true story. Still, I digress.

The impetus for this post is a birthday gift my daughter received for her birthday. A Dora the Explorer bicycle. It is not the first time that I have had to put a bike together. I know my way around them and I know how to work with tools. I won’t claim to be a master craftsman. A Jack of All Trades is an appropriate description.

So you would think that assembling a small bicycle should be relatively easy. No, no, no. Not this time. This time some jackass had the bright idea of taking the directions and playing with them. The illustrations were so blurry they were useless and the text made as much sense as the following sentence: I truck you backwards ass monkey in love with short man.

I take that back, that last sentence is easier to understand than the instructions. It took a while to get through it, but after a while I figured out that 97w69578905y30 means that they are discussing part x and that it was supposed to go into 9875896t7402 or part y. It really shouldn’t be this hard to build it.

That is 45 minutes of my life I am not going to get back. Not quite as bad as being at a Barry Manilow concert and certainly less painful than setting foot in cleveland or detroit. But, good G-d man. What the hell is wrong with these people. Go take out your perverse pleasures with someone else who appreciates it.

In the meantime the daughter still considers dear old dad to be a hero, which is pretty damn cool. Now if I can wipe her memory clean of all the colorful language I used today just might be close to perfect.

Explaining Death to Children

One of the earliest posts I wrote is called Death- My Son Asked Me Not to Die. It is a short post about a discussion my son and I had about death in general, as well as our own mortality. It was a little odd reading it again.

Odd because I remember the discussion that prompted my writing about it like it was yesterday. It is only three years ago, but my son has grown so much in that time it feels like it was much longer ago.

It is not unexpected or surprising to see this growth. He is an elementary school student now and is exposed to more than just his own family. He sees our losses and hears stories about the deaths of his friends loved ones too.

He understands that all creatures have a lifespan. I am not sure how complete or comprehensive that understanding is, but it is there. In just a few days we’re going to have another discussion with him about death.

Next week we’ll send off another member of the family. It is going to be time to say goodbye to our dog. The time and date have been set. The moment I dread is approaching. The big fellow is failing. Every time I see him I hug and smell him because I know that soon I can’t.

It kills me to see him like this. He has so many little issues and the vet says that there really isn’t anything that can be done to improve his quality of life. It is old age. So the decision was made that it is not fair to let him go on this way. It has raised all sorts of issues in my head, but that is a different post.

Now I am busy trying to determine how to let the kids know. I want to prepare them, but I don’t really want to tell them all of the details. They are too young for that. But I can’t not say something. I don’t want them to be frightened and I feel badly because they love the big guy as much as the rest of us.

I feel badly because each time I see my friend I feel guilty about his situation. And I feel badly because I know that the children will be hurt. At the same time they need to learn this lesson. They need to learn about lifetimes and to understand that death is not to be feared. We shouldn’t run forward to meet it early, but we shouldn’t be so fearful of it either.

In the time that has passed between the first post and now there have been many other discussions of death. Many of those conversations stick out. I remember the time that my son asked me what I would do if someone killed him or his sister.

He told me that if that happened I should kill whomever killed them. Part of me smiled because I saw how protective he is of his little sister. When I am not there he’ll do what he can to stand in for me.

Part of me cried because it is so sad that he knows that these things can happen. The children should be able to grow up without worrying about such things.

It was a relatively short conversation because I don’t want him worrying about this kind of stuff. I reminded him that his parents and extended family will always protect him. I told him again and again that I loved him.

When he asked me why I said it three times I said that it was because I never want him to forget it. He smiled and hugged me. For a moment we stood there and time stood still.

And now here I am, a bit choked up about all of this. If I close my eyes I can hear my daughter’s laughter. She loves to chase the dog. She giggles as she runs. Her smile lights up her face. It is an image that is dear to me.

But it doesn’t give me the answers I am searching for. It is not going to make it any easier to say goodbye or to explain death. But, that is part of being a parent. I’ll figure it out and I’ll make sure that the kids still feel safe and loved.

And that is all I have to say about this….for now.

Should Childbirth Be Legislated

On my tour of the blogosphere I came across some posts that were less than complimentary about these people. One of them said that childbirth should be legislated. More on that in a moment.

Arkansas couple welcomes 17th child

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—It’s a girl—again—for the Duggars. Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar welcomed their 17th child, and seventh daughter, into the world Thursday.

Apparently the Duggars are more well known than I would have guessed. Discovery Health has a website devoted to them where you can learn all sorts of stuff about the family such as the mother for a total of 10.5 years of her life.

I have to admit that I have a hard time with the idea of 17 children in one family. Certainly it is not my place to tell people how to live, but there are some valid concerns about having such a large family. In my mind the two biggest are financial and emotional support.

The Discovery site says that the Duggars are debt free. That is great, but it doesn’t really answer a lot of questions. Some of those are going to be lifestyle questions and as a result they are subjective.

For example, I don’t know what kind of vacations they take or even if they go on any. I don’t know how they clothe their children. I don’t wear designer clothes and could care less, but that is important to some people.

But I have to wonder about their education. Are they all going to public school? How are they going to cover college fees? What about their health care?

Still to me there is a bigger question than these, how can the parents find time to spend with the kids. There are only so many hours in the day and many of those are taken by work/school responsibilities.

Now I am not in favor of legislating how many children a family can have. That is one of those decisions that should be left to the couple, but there does come a point where I can’t help but wonder if people are really pushing the envelope a bit.

What do you think?

73 Years Of Marriage

Today marks my grandparent’s 73rd wedding anniversary. They are both 93 and g-d willing are on track for hitting 100. In the interim we have, rather I have big plans for them.

I am trying to convince my grandfather to start training for the 100 yard dash. The idea is that in two years we’ll do a world tour in which we will promote him as the fastest 95 year-old man in the world.

It will also coincide with their 75th wedding anniversary so we’ll plan a big bash to celebrate that as well. My grandfather agreed to this provided that he can still walk. As an extra incentive I told him that I would personally see that anyone who was at their wedding attends the party for their 75th anniversary party.

This made my grandfather laugh hard enough that his dentures flew out, which in turn made him laugh even harder. Once he stopped laughing he told me that everyone is dead which either makes me a cheap bastard or a very good businessman.

Then he got very serious and told me how happy he was to have seen me become a father and that he hoped that one day I could become a great-grandfather, even though I could never be as great as he is. At this point I reminded him that when I was five he promised me a pony and that 33 years later I was still waiting.

At this point my son walked in and spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out what happened to my horse and why his great grandfather told him that Elmer had taken care of the pony.

All in all it was a fine day and I was pleased to celebrate with them, especially my grandmother who in many ways was the backbone that kept things going.

And in case you wonder what the secret to surviving 73 years of marriage is my grandmother has an answer. If you want to be married that long you have to take it one day at a time, or you can listen to my grandfather who says that it helps if one of the spouses is deaf.

All I know is that I cannot conceive of them as anything but a team. Seventy-three years, wow.

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