My morning bus was re-routed this morning because NW 85th St. was closed off by a hoard of police and fire vehicles. As we looped around to the north and came back down Greenwood Ave., I could see what appeared to be a garbage truck up on the sidewalk. Judging from the intensity of the pulsating red-and-blues light illuminating the area and from the news helicopter noisily hovering above, I could tell this was no simple fender-bender.

I also knew that, since it involved a garbage truck, a certain four-year-old who lives in my house would be very interested in the story.

I called Amy and told her to open her laptop and find out what was going on. She called back a little while later to report that the garbage truck in question had smashed into a telephone pole and that rescue workers were using the Jaws of Life to free the trapped and injured driver.

As I suspected, Mr. Garbage Boy was fiercely excited by this news and expertly analyzed the photos published on the KIRO-TV web site. He determined that the truck in question belonged to Waste Management; was, in fact, a recycling truck, not a garbage truck; and that it was not our recycling truck because our truck does not have a white cab or white wheels. Ray was relieved, then, that it was not our usual driver (i.e. his hero) involved in the wreck.

Indeed, later in the day, our recycling was picked up normally. Phew.

Oh, and the driver was rescued and is expected to survive.

Friday night, we were driving back from dinner and there was a brief lull in the conversation. After a moment, Ray announced from the backseat:

“Daddy, when you retire, you can do the work of reporting broken street lights to the city.”

The background on this is that we have (or had) a broken street light in front of our house. Before Christmas, I took Ray out and showed him where the utility pole number was, then went back inside and reported it via Seattle City Light’s online problem reporting form. The light now (after 2 months) appears to be fixed, but Ray insists he saw it flickering the other night so I’m not positive.

Ray’s comment drove Amy to hilarious laughter, and greatly amused me for a number of reasons.

First, how incredible is it for a 4-year-old to have a concept of retirement? To understand that in, for him, an astronomical number of years from now, I will no longer go to work and will likely need something to do. Now, he knows that his grandparents are, with one exception, retired, but I don’t think I ever talked with him about the concept or the fact that I (hopefully, at age 55) will join their ranks. Yet, he gets it.

Second, of all the things my son looks up to me for — out of everything that (I hope) he recognizes my adeptness and competence in — the one feat that impressed him enough for him to suggest that I am well-qualified to continue doing it into my autumn years and beyond … was reporting broken street lights.

Later, when I expressed to Amy my concern that Ray might not think I’m good at anything except reporting broken street lights, she pointed out that I’m also very good at building things with Lego. Thanks.

Back in the car, I kept the discussion going for awhile as Amy giggled uncontrollably next to me.

“So, when I’m retired,” I began, “I’ll just wander around the streets and make notes about broken street lights and go home and report them?”

“No,” Ray replied. “You can go around with your pocket computer!”

Of course! That’s far more convenient.

As usual, he has every detail figured out.

According to the LEGO web site January 2008 is the 50th anniversary of the patent filed for LEGO blocks.

Ray got his first “real” (i.e. not Duplo) Lego set for Christmas, and we’ve since added on a couple sets and some open-stock blocks from the LEGO store in Bellevue Mall and eBay. Our latest acquisition was the impressive “LEGO City Harbor” with container ship and functioning crane (just like we have down by the docks.)

My sister and I had copious amounts of Legos when we were kids, and I’m nostalgically enjoying building again with Ray. The crunching/rattling sound the blocks make while one roots through them searching for a tiny piece evokes memories of our Saturday morning Lego play just before hearing our parents scream downstairs at us for making so much noise.

What I find utterly fascinating, however, is his rapid adoption of terminology for the various blocks, and how similar the terms are to the ones my sister and I used. We had “flat red fours,” and “white twos,” and “thin grey eights” and all sorts of shorthands for referring to specific pieces we needed to complete our projects.

When Ray and I first started to build the sets, he closely followed the instructions, which are visual, so we didn’t need to refer to pieces by name. But as he (rather quickly) deviated from the book, he started — almost organically — asking for “ones” and “flat twos” to make whatever it was he was making.

We do have some context for this: Ray’s Snap Electronics kit refers to the length of the “wires” by the number of snaps they have. So we do have some experience talking in terms of “threes” and “fours” while assembling a project. But still, his adoption of a consistent naming convention for these new toys was almost immediate and extremely detailed.

And, in case you’re wondering, it took approximately five seconds after the container ship was done for it to become, in Ray’s words, a “garbage boat, just like they have in Venice.”

The set even has a little Lego garbage can. He loves his new toy!

My parents tell this story about me when I was probably four or five. One day, John the Hippie who lived next door was out in his backyard trying to repair a blown bicycle tube on his 10-speed. I went over there to “help” as I enjoyed talking to John the Hippie and he seemed to enjoy chatting with me. After I watched him struggling with trying to cram the tube under the tire, I suggested that maybe he take the tire off, put the tube inside, then put the whole thing on the wheel. This seemingly obvious solution hadn’t occurred to John the Hippie, so he beamed about the whole thing to my parents and the story lives on in family lore.

The other day, I was putting up new wall sconces in our living room (check them out) and Ray was helping. I had removed the old ones and was starting to screw the new brackets to the wiring box, but the new screws were too big for the 75-year-old non-standard wiring box holes. I let out a small grunt of frustration and thought: “Great. Now I have to replace the wiring boxes.” Images of former home “improvement” projects I have attempted flashed before my eyes. I envisioned that, before I was done with this, there would be a four foot hole to the outside above our fireplace and we’d just have to move.

Ray heard my grunt and asked: “Daddy, why ‘Ugh!’?” So I explained the predicament.

Ray just shrugged and said: “I guess we’ll just have to use the old screws.”

You know, the ones that I had just removed two minutes earlier? Those screws? The ones that fit?

I climbed down and gave Ray a big hug and thanked him for his suggestion. The sconces were up within minutes, and I didn’t even electrocute myself.

I am well pleased with my son, but, of course, this all means that his dad is no smarter than a hippie.

Here is Ray’s new favorite song, Tom Waits’ “What’s He Building in There?”

OK, so it’s borderline (or maybe wholly) inappropriate for a four-year-old, but he requests it and he doesn’t seem at all disturbed by it. Today he called it “a funny song” so maybe he gets the humor.

Amy went to a fund-raising auction at Ray’s school last night. It was apparently quite a scene. She won a color consultation and six hours of professional painting services, so it looks like our bedroom will finally be getting painted. Other items we had our eyes on, such as mosaic paving stones made by the middle schoolers, went for multiple thousands of dollars. Where the hell do these people get that kind of money?

Anyway, more importantly, she gathered some more intelligence on Ray’s status at the school. Specifically, she learned:

That the female director of the school and a female teacher (who is not his) have argued over who Ray likes more
That one of Ray’s female classmates considers him her “best friend”
That another female classmate has named one of her stuffed animals “Ray”

Yes sir, that’s my boy!

Last week, at a leadership workshop, I got up in front of a room full of people to discuss my “leadership journey.” I related one point I was trying to make to the experience of watching Ray being born, and I couldn’t even get through the damn sentence before I started blubbering. Whenever I even think about seeing him for the first time, I get all…. well, you know.

Then today, I found this, which is billed as “the most popular medical animation on the Internet” by a site called “Street Anatomy.”

This is not making me cry so much as it’s causing me to squirm around in discomfort. And I don’t even have one of those vagina things!

Mad props all over again to Amy.

Amy and I never got married because we’re all counter-cultural and stuff. But, six years ago tomorrow, we held a “commitment celebration” with family and friends in Capitola, CA. Our friend Adele says that doing so made us “honorary lesbians.”

And so, October 6 is the closest thing we have to an anniversary (though we also celebrate “First Date,” which I’ve previously written about here and here.)

According to various sources, the “traditional” gifts for the 6th anniversary are iron and sugar.

This is tough. Let’s take iron first. Amy doesn’t need an anvil. She doesn’t play golf or press clothing. She already has free weights (“pumping iron”). She doesn’t need an IBM mainframe. We already have a skillet.

Sugar is easy. Amy likes her sweets. I bought her a bar of dark chocolate last night, so I figure I might be covered on that front.

Then it occurred to me: I can kill two birds with one stone and get her the perfect gift — something she likes and that combines both iron and sugar in one convenient package:

Continue reading "Iron and Sugar" »

When I was in sixth grade, my best friend, Ed, discovered a strange book on the shelves of our school’s library — Fungus the Bogeyman.

Fungus is a graphic novel (aka comic book) by Raymond Briggs that depicts the life and existential angst of a Bogeyman named Fungus, who dwells beneath the earth in Bogeydom with his wife, Mildew, and his son, Mould. Bogeys prefer dank, wet, filthy things and their main job is venturing to the surface to scare humans via making things go “bump” in the night, rattling doorknobs, or popping out from behind trees. Left to themselves, however, they are quiet, gentle creatures with a rich culture and history that the book describes in vivid detail.

Ed and I poured over the book and its detailed drawings and humorous descriptions of Bogey life. We could scarcely believe that a school library would stock such a book as it appeared to have very little educational value and was chock full of disgusting grossness and frank topics such as Bogey anatomy (the females have three breasts) and their various unsanitary habits.

But underlying the book’s attempts to make the reader squeamish, there is a touching story of one Bogey’s attempt to make sense of his life.

I bought a copy of my own a few years ago, and showed it to Ray a while ago but it was way too advanced for him. We recently started reading it together again, however, and he loves it. He doesn’t seem at all bothered by the scenes showing a Bogeyman creeping into people’s houses; he takes it all in stride. He’s even taken to pretending to being a Bogey and likes to make scary noises and tries to frighten me and Amy.

I didn’t appreciate this back in sixth grade, but in re-reading the book to my child I am pleased by the total and complete lack of any supernatural or religious content. Here we are dealing with a Bogey on the verge of losing his way in life, who is seeking the answers to the great answers of where he came from, why he does what he does, and what does it all mean. Given the rich and detailed mythology Briggs builds for his Bogeys, it would have been easy to construct a theology for them that would neatly wrap everything up, but he does not do so. Fungus seeks answers not via believing in imaginary sky-fathers or the promise of a glorious life after death, but in the simple pleasures of poetry, a good glass of slime, and the enjoyment of poking sleeping humans with his Bogey-stick. And, importantly, he does not find concrete answers in the end … not because he’s looking in the wrong places, but because concrete answers are not easy to come by and may not even exist.

In looking stuff up for this post, I learned that there was a live-action movie version of Fungus the Bogeyman made a few years ago, The reviews I’ve seen are lukewarm at best, but I stuck it in my Netflix queue anyway.

As part of Daddy Weekend Care, I took Ray to Emerald Downs today, as per his request.

I’ll begin by stating that, in my opinion, come Monday morning the to-do list of the nearest glue factory (the “to-glue list”?) should read: Clever Ridge, On the Ave, and Follow Your Shot. Those horses are apparently well past their prime and need to “retire.” And for the $14 I wasted betting on them, I deserve at least a free pint of mucilage.

Apart from souring my relationship with Lady Luck, I enjoyed my time today with the boy, and I think he had fun, too.

It was a lovely day, if a bit too warm, and Mt. Rainer loomed on the horizon.

(Click to enlarge)

Ray made friends with Ed, the Family-Friendly Emerald Downs Mascot. It’s never too early to introduce the young ones to gambling!

(Click to enlarge)

My favorite part of the whole track experience is the bugler. I have to wonder, though, how sick and tired does this guy get of the 33-note “Call to the Post”? And how often does he screw it up? Not this time (following a nice intro).

Amy’s about to leave town for a few days to attend her cousin’s wedding in California. It’ll just be us boys for the long weekend.

The last time Amy went away (for yet another cousin’s wedding last year) I took Ray to Emerald Downs, the horse race track just south of Seattle. He was surprisingly excited about going, but when we got there, I realized I might not have thoroughly prepped him for the experience.

“When do I get to ride a horse?” he asked as we strolled through the paddock.

Uh-oh! Major disappointment followed. But, soon after came acceptance, and we ended up having a nice time. But I hardly expected him to keep the horse race track on his list of favorites.

Nevertheless, when I asked him what he wanted to do when Mommy was gone, the first thing out of his mouth was “Go to the horse race track.” We hadn’t really talked about it in the intervening year, but now, apparently, betting on the ponies is forever associated with Mommy going out of town.

Other fun activities planned for Boy’s Weekend Out is: the Bite of Seattle and the Mariners/Tigers game on Sunday. Ray also mentioned wanting to go bowling and playing pool (though he remembered it only as “that game with the sticks that you and grandpa Doug played at your work.”)

So: the track, a ballgame, a bowling alley, and a poolhall. If only he were older, I could add a trip to the casino and a strip club to the agenda and complete his corruption!

Yesterday morning, as I lounged in bed, I was greeted by a smiling boy and loving partner who bore gifts: the lovely card you see to the right and a vase of beautiful flowers from our garden. Ray wrote the letters on the card himself (with minimal help from Amy). His penmanship is better than mine!

Following the receipt of my gifts, we headed to the Steelhead Diner at Pike Place Market. Loyal Readers will recall that this was our intended destination for Mother’s Day before Ray started vomiting all over the sidewalks of downtown Seattle (see Happy Mother's Day). Well, we finally made it with no regurgitation incidents, and enjoyed a delicious brunch at the neatly-appointed cafe.

Once again, a nice, low-key, and memorable Father’s Day.

Our Mother’s Day 2007, from 5:30 am - 10:15 am:

5:30-7:45 — Ray calls us in to his room five times to deal with one or more of the following issues:

1. Help him pull his covers back over his head
2. Help him find Peaches, his stuffed emperor penguin
3. Help him find Plum, his stuffed baby penguin
4. Help him blow his nose

7:45 — Ray wakes up. Mama and Daddy are not exactly ready to face the day.

8:00 — Ray is sent to his room to calm down after an anger episode. Crying ensues.

8:30 — Ray slams the bathroom door. Daddy opens it to ask him to close it again properly. The door bonks Ray on the head in the process. Crying ensues.

8:50 — After considering Ray’s snotty nose and the fact that he has spent 75% of the last hour crying for one reason or another, an executive decision to cancel our Mother’s Day brunch reservations is made. Crying (and disappointment among the adults) ensues.

9:30 — Ray declares that he still wants to go downtown and he seems relatively settled down. The family prepares to embark. Amy realizes she left her purse at the bar we went to last night. The bar doesn’t open until 3:00 pm so we’ll have no closure on that until later. Damn Spaten Optimator!

10:00 — As we drive down 2nd Ave toward Pike Place Market, Ray declares he has a stomach ache.

10:05 — We find the Best Parking Space Ever. Things are looking up. Amy declares: “That’s the first good thing that’s happened all day.”

10:10 — While we walk up 1st Ave, Ray stops, clutches his belly, and spews vomit all over the sidewalk. Three times.

10:15 — The family, defeated, heads home.

As anyone who has ever spent time with my three-year-old son Ray knows, his raison d’être is waste management. I’ve written before about his love of garbage trucks, but he is surprisingly well-versed in the recyclability of various materials, and he is quick (and loud) to chide you should you carelessly toss a scrap of paper into the garbage. We recently received a mailer from the Seattle Public Utilities that explained what can be recycled and what can’t and which had pictorial representations of the various materials. We couldn’t tear him away from it.

Lately, he’s been studying the numerical codes that identify the type of plastics objects are made from, and he can tell you with reasonable accuracy whether or not an object can be recycled. He can’t (yet) tell you if something is polyethylene terephthalate or polyvinyl chloride, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.

The other day, he saw a recycling symbol on a cardboard box, and after a short pause he asked me: “Why do they put recycling symbols on cardboard when all cardboard can be recycled.”

I’m not positive if it’s true that you can recycle all cardboard; nevertheless, I found his level of logic pretty astonishing.

I told him it was just to remind people to recycle cardboard, and he seemed satisfied with that.

At this rate, he’s going to be smarter than me when he turns five.

Funny, when Amy and I chose to not get married, we didn’t get the press coverage that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are getting.

Maybe it’s that our names don’t lend themselves to “Brangelina”-esque mash-ups.

That, and, you know, we’re not famous celebrities.

Yet.

Three years ago this very minute I was witness to the most amazing event I can imagine. Despite months of anticipation and countless hours of preparation and research, my intellect was overwhelmed and I was swept with a wave of pure joy and awe. I confronted the sublime — a boundlessness and enormity that escapes all attempts to represent or explain it — and I wept stronger and longer than at any time in my adult life. My life changed forever as I watched part of myself spring forth into being. I was in the presence of the most beautiful and wonderful thing in the world.

And it was covered in blood and mucous.

Happy birthday, little boy.

In Montessori schools, kids rarely are pulled out of the program unless the family moves, and they attend from the age of three through middle school, so that pretty much means we’ll be dealing with the same sets of parents for the next eleven years. We’ve had a few group get-togethers with other families recently, and I’ve tried my best to make good first impressions and not set things off on the wrong foot with anyone.

During our last picnic, I had to take Ray to the bathroom. After he took care of his business, I took care of mine, and as I went to zip myself back up, the zipper pull on my pants fell off into my hand. The zipper was still down, mind you.

My mind raced with all the things I’d be expected to do throughout the rest of the picnic. Squatting, sitting, playing, bending over, holding a toddler … all activities designed to cause maximum gaping in the crotch area of my pants. Great.

Luckily I had on a longish shirt that mostly covered the affected region, but I was self-conscious for the rest of the event, and Ray couldn’t figure out why I wouldn’t lift him up over my head. Hopefully, no one noticed and I won’t have to spend the next eleven years known as the father who exposed himself to his son’s entire class.

There is a long and honorable tradition of fathers introducing their sons to immorality and vice in the absence of a mother’s protective embrace. From Bill Cosby nutritionally damaging his kids with chocolate cake for breakfast, to the almost archetypal father-son trip to the brothel on the latter’s eighteenth birthday, paternal corruption has a long and storied past.

In the footsteps of those who walked before me, today I led my son into his first den of vice — the horserace track.

Continue reading "Old-Fashioned Father-Son Bonding" »

Amy’s away for the weekend attending her cousin’s wedding. This is the first time since he was born that Ray has spent a night without mama. We had a delicious meal together at Ray’s Cafe, and I just got back from tucking him in. So far, he is silent and, I hope, on his way to restful slumber.

I just hope he sleeps through the noise from the party that starts up in 15 minutes. Wooooooooooooo!!!

Ray starts school in less than a month. He’s been such a mama’s boy for his three years, that Amy and I are concerned about how he’s going to adapt. She has carefully explained to him that (a) she’s not going to be there, and (b) he goes to school every day that daddy goes to work. He seems OK with it in theory; we’ll see what happens when we abandon him in a room with 24 other kids. To be honest, I think it’ll be harder on me and Amy. Even as I type this, I can’t imagine myself dropping him off and then leaving, even if he’s not screaming and struggling against restraints to get to me.

Amy’s talked to a few other parents of older kids about their experiences, and things seem to be all over the map. For one boy, there was a lot of crying and clinginess for a week; for another, that sort of thing lasted all year. Amy — quick to assume that any troublesome character traits in Ray originate from my genes — asked me if I remembered any stories about how I acted on my first day of school. I had to plead ignorance. I remember wailing hysterically before getting on the bus to first grade for the first time, but only because I thought my mom was going to come too. I don’t think I had a problem with going to preschool or kindergarten before that, but I don’t recall hearing anything one way or the other.

However, I did have a problem with graduate school.

Continue reading "School Days" »

Amy and I have often discussed the fact that neither of us truly feels “grown up” — whatever that means. Yesterday, when I took Ray to the playground to meet other kids from his school (and their parents), for example, I felt much more at ease with the other 3- and 4-year-olds than I did their mamas and dadas. The other parents seemed like parents to me in ways that I don’t seem like one myself. I pitched whiffle balls to Ray and another little boy while the other grown-ups watched from the sidelines, and I preferred that.

I’m not sure what it is I feel I should seem like. I don’t feel unqualified in anything I do. I don’t feel undeserving. I certainly don’t lack for responsibility. I have a wonderful child and a beautiful partner, have owned two homes, earn a good salary, supervise eight staff, manage a multi-million dollar budget, have lived in four cities, have traveled to six foreign countries, have been married and divorced, and have graying hair on my temples. What could be more grown-up than that?

I tell myself that it’s good to feel this way … that I have not lost touch with my inner kid. Yet every time I write the mortgage check or think about Ray’s impending school days, there’s a part of it that seems like it’s happening to someone else — or that I’m doing all of it for someone else … just filling in until the big person gets back.

Objectively, I look at all I’ve done and all I have going for me and I realize how silly I am being. I know that I’m trying to measure up to some standard or template that either doesn’t really exist or is undesirable. Yet, the script for the role of Adult Man outlines the character traits pretty clearly and I frequently feel as if I’m not right for the part — that the critics will be merciless.

Tom Waits’ song “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” provided the title of this post; here’s the video from YouTube.

I’ve written before about how we arrived at Raymond’s name. We wanted something classical but not currently (or likely to be) popular.

There’s always the concern, however, that you’ll inadvertantly tap into some baby-naming Zeitgeist and pick a name that becomes fashionable. That’s what happened with “Amy” and “Jennifer” in the 1970’s and what’s going on with “Emma” and, inexplicably, “Madison” now. But we didn’t want to try to go with an unusual name — like some of iVillage’s helpful “Name Trends” suggestons such as “Canyon,” “Japheth,” and “Brayden” — even though there was a risk that a classic like “Raymond” might catch on.

According to the Baby Name Wizard’s NameVoyager, I don’t think we’re in danger of that. “Raymond’s” popularity peaked in the 1920’s where it was as high as 15th, but it’s steadily declined since then: 17th in the 30’s, 23rd in the 40’s, 38th in the 50’s, 45th in the 60’s, 61st in the 70’s, 75th in the 80’s, 118th in the 90’s, and a healthy 188th in 2003 when he was born. Just two years later, “Raymond” was clinging precariously to the top 200 coming in at number 200.

Of the 75 kids in the three primary classes at Ray’s new Montessori school, he is the only Raymond. Let’s take a look at some other names.

Continue reading "What’s In a Name?" »

Ray has a world map placemat. A couple months ago, he pointed at a tiny speck in the Pacific Ocean and asked “What that leeetle tiny thing is?” I explained it was the island of Bora Bora, words that delighted him to no end.

After that night, we didn’t speak of Bora Bora, or anything on the placemat, again for a long time. Then, one night last week, he pointed to the same spot again and said: “Daddy, say that funny place again.”

“Bora Bora?” I asked. Peals of laughter followed.

Seizing on his interest — as well as his uncanny ability to locate the same island again in the midst of all of French Polynesia, Micronesia, and the other South Pacific islands — I sat him down in front of the computer and we looked up Bora Bora on Wikipedia. After reading about the island’s long history (settled in the 4th century!) and looking at photos of Mount Otemanu and the water bungalows built on stilts over the lagoon, Ray declared “I want to go to Bora Bora.”

But with airfare from Seattle to Tahiti currently running in the $1,200 per passenger range, I think we’ll stick to domestic vacations for a while.

Bora Bora sure does look pretty, though. Check out the webcam.