Yesterday Has Turned Into Today

My life has become Groundhog Day.

After a restless night’s sleep, I’ve awakened to a day that I know is going to be filled with excitement and anxiety. I know it’s going to be filled with excitement and anxiety because I lived today yesterday. And now, because of rain in St. Louis, I relive yesterday today.

I’ve barely slept. I can’t focus at work. Or at school. My mind can’t make sense of anything that’s not related to baseball. And yet my only real job as it pertains to the game is to sit on the couch and watch it play out before me, and if I’m lucky, hear the iconic radio voice of Eric Nadel tell me that the Texas Rangers are World Series champions.

Every baseball fan dreams of their favorite team winning the World Series. Some fans have been more fortunate than others. Much, much more fortunate. But finally, after thirty-five years of loving the game, I’m waking up to a second consecutive morning in which a possible series deciding Game 6 is scheduled to be played, wishing the day would just hurry up and fast forward to game time. Sadly, I know the minutes are going to pass by at an excruciatingly slow pace, taking their time, refusing to turn into hours. I’m starting to understand the gravity of a word like infinite.

There have been times when being a Texas Rangers fan has been brutal. Each spring would always bring with it a new start. The summers would always bring what seemed like an overkill of heat in an effort to thoroughly melt the hopes of post season play. Doubters called the Rangers the Strangers. To truly love the Rangers you had to truly love the game.

Yet here the Strangers are, thirty-nine years after migrating from Washington, DC, after a miserable showing in last year’s World Series, after losing out in the off season on signing one of the best pitchers in the game, after surviving record breaking heat over the summer, staring down the improbable - two chances to get one more win. One more win to make history. One more win to show the world that one bad decision or error in judgment doesn’t have to define who you are as a leader. One more win to prove that all you’ve ever really wanted to do is play the game and play it right, and if you’re lucky enough, be called World Series champion. One win to prove to everyone who’s given up on you, and more importantly to yourself, that despite having fallen so far down you can actually get back up…and be forgiven.

Before the World Series began I predicted the Texas Rangers to win in seven games (2, 4, 5 & 7). I’m 5-0, yet somehow struggling mightily in my statistics class. If only my professor incorporated WHIP, ERA, and batting average with RISP into her lesson plan. But she doesn’t, so I’m forced to adjust.

I’m not the only one in our family with Red Fever.

Brady keeps asking why the Rangers aren’t playing the Dodgers. I tell him it’s because Daddy isn’t rich enough to buy the Dodgers and turn them into a good team. He says I should work harder to make more money so we can buy them. I tell him that if I work more then I’ll be home even less than I already am now, which means I won’t be able to practice t-ball with him to prepare for the spring season. He says we can practice on the PlayStation. A month shy of turning five and he’s already got all the answers. But as interested as he is in the Los Angeles Dodgers, it’s the Texas Rangers he stays up late rooting for, as if he fully understands the magnitude of what’s happening.

Kacie has a Rangers pillow that she hugs while watching the games, smothering it between her chest and knees on plays that just might go against our boys. She’s not as vocal as Brady and I are, but all you have to do is look at Kacie and watch as her eyes tell the story of what she’s feeling inside. She wants this as badly as we do.

Traci makes me go to the other room to listen to the game on the radio, because the delay between radio and television is significant enough that she doesn’t want me spoiling the play for her by cheering or moaning. Maybe if she looked at the radio like a mini time machine that gives us quick glances into the future we could be in the same room.

And now, because of the rainout, yesterday has turned into today and I face a dilemma: go to my Chicano Literature class tonight or go home and watch the game. By skipping class I’m sure to lose points on my final grade. I suppose the choice will be fitting since this semester we’ve read about the importance of family, the expectations put on you by both family and society, and the choices we make with regards to living up to the hopes and dreams that others have for us or deciding to make a mark on the world by doing something different, something that matters to us.

But there's no deciding in this decision. My choice was made with CJ Wilson's first pitch of the season. If the Texas Rangers are fortunate enough to win the World Series this year, I want to know that I was watching at home with my family when it happened. I want my children to look back twenty years from now and share with their own children their memories of the night in our cramped apartment when dreams finally came true, because maybe this could be their moment to say “I too want to conquer the improbable and achieve the impossible.”

But for now, I wait. Restlessly.

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Sorry, Tina Turner, But We Do Need Another Hero

If you’ve ever seen photos of me as a kid, listened to my mom tell one of her stories, or have heard me talk in my sleep, you know how desperately I want to be a hero, and own a time machine.

If you’ve never done any of those things, well, look at the blog’s title – I’ve put it right out there for you. Okay, maybe not the time machine part. I’m still trying to find a way to incorporate that into a more permanent facet of both the blog and my real life. And while some might argue that the world needs to be saved from me rather than by me, one thing is clear: I can’t save it alone.

Last October I wrote about Pancreatic Cancer and how it took a good family friend from us. I wrote that Pancreatic Cancer has the highest mortality rate among all the cancers yet receives only 2% of federally funded money for cancer research. I asked for your support by donating to The Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer and the Pancreatic Cancer Research Walk.

This is where I again come to you. I’m asking you to become a hero in your own right. If reading my rants and perils of wisdom (yes, I meant perils and not pearls…) and random thoughts has made you laugh, cry, or question my ability to parent, please support me on Sunday, October 23 by donating $5 today. Think of it as a yearly subscription that gives you an all access pass to the anecdotes that are my life. Five bucks is a steal. And well worth it if you ask me.

CLICK HERE to support Brady

Even Brady is getting in on the act and has become a hero. He goes to work with his mom every day and takes with him an empty yellow NESQUIK container that’s been transformed into a collection jar. When my wife’s co-workers offer to buy him something from the vending machines (which apparently from his stash of cash happens a lot) he simply tells them “No thank you. But you can put your money in here and help me make cancer die.” At four my son understands that being a hero is more than just putting Underoos on the outside of your clothes and trying to fly to school.

I get that there are a ton of worthwhile causes out there – causes that are equally as deserving as this one. There are actually a couple of other causes that are just as important to my family that we find ourselves supporting throughout the year. But today I am only asking your help in supporting one. The fight against Pancreatic Cancer.

Need help pushing the donate button? Fine.

Remember last week when Steve Jobs passed away? It was all you heard about from Facebook friends and real friends and co-workers for like two days, right? Well how many of those people actually knew that he was killed by Pancreatic Cancer? Not many that I communicated with. Now what if each of those people who said or posted something about his death was to have donated $5 to help find a cure? Or what if everyone who currently owns or has ever owned an Apple product donated $5 in Steve Jobs’ memory to help find a cure? Talk about an incredible way to give back to a man who did so much for the technological society as we know it. So why not do it? Today?

I purposefully waited to publish this post, not because I didn’t want to ask for your support, but because I didn’t want to provide you the chance to put off until tomorrow something you can do today. Too many times we keep putting life off until tomorrow, creating an endless loop of things we regret not doing and moments wasted by not living. Now is our chance to prove 1985 Tina Turner wrong. Now is your chance to be another hero, to be like Brady and want to make cancer die.

The walk is October 23^rd. Eleven days to try and make a lifetime’s worth of difference. Will you support me by donating $5 to the Pancreatic Cancer Research Walk?

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Giving Up. Letting Go. Saying Goodbye.

Today I admit defeat.

Okay, maybe not exactly defeat, but it sure feels like it.

You see, after much debate, we’ve sold the Mustang. You know, the one that Kacie and I were supposed to spend the next several years restoring for her 16^th birthday? The same 1966 Mustang that resulted in my starting this blog? Yeah. That one.

Maybe defeat is exactly right.

Before buying the car I’d spent a ton of time weighing the pros and cons of making a decision of this magnitude. I tried to think of everything. I thought I had it all planned out.

But who knew thirteen months ago that our little blue slice of Americana would be possessed.

Perhaps possessed is too strong of a word. Schizophrenic, maybe?

I’ve chronicled its issues with it stopping. At first the car simply wanted no part of the process. The brakes broke. Literally. We had them fixed. A few weeks later, the brakes broke again. Nothing as dramatic as the first time around, by thankfully I’d been babying her (the Mustang) because I could tell something was not right. Perhaps it was payback for my calling her a bitch the first time around. We made up. We both moved on. She ran like a dream.

But towards the beginning of summer her disposition changed. Stopping was no longer an issue. She simply didn’t want to go, or more specifically, start. It was like every day was Monday morning for her.

We replaced the battery. The alternator. The starter. Just as I was ready to break the B Word out on her again, she relented. That lasted less than a week. Three days, to be precise.

The car was always giving Traci fits. In some ways Traci was scared of the car. She knew how finicky our little filly could be, which made her timid. The car sensed this. Every time. We pushed. The car pushed back. Harder. Now that I think about it, the car was acting more like a teenager than something possessed. Having raised five kids, my mom would argue that the two are one and the same. This time the car would start but not keep running. See the correlation between teenager and schizophrenic?

Traci and I had a decision to make: how much more money were we willing to immediately pump into this car without seeing immediate results?

The practicality of owning a classic car was also becoming less and less apparent. It’d been months since Kacie and I worked on the car together. My work and school schedule just hadn’t allowed for it, and there was no end in sight. Our bedroom was turning into a surplus parts warehouse with new parts piling up in different corners, collecting dust.

We grew tired of depending on friends, family, or co-workers for rides to work when the car was out of commission. I was tired of being dropped off at work an hour and a half early and picked up an hour late because I had to wait for Traci to pick me up. Our family’s dream was turning into a nightmare, so we decided to let the car go.

Kacie wouldn’t come outside and tell her goodbye. I asked if she was sad. She said she’d wanted a convertible Mustang anyway. She didn’t look me in the eye when she said it.

Brady came out to say goodbye. He almost cried. Fitting that the two men of the house were the only ones fighting back tears as the new owners were strapping the fifth member of our family down to a trailer – guess she got her very own straight jacket after all– to haul her away.

Again I feel like I’ve failed as a dad. One more thing on a long list of things I either tried to do but couldn’t or did but shouldn’t have.

It’s like when Clark W. Griswold drags the dog to its death, wrecks the family station wagon in the desert, or drops dead Aunt Edna on his brother-in-law’s doorstop during the comedy of errors that is his family’s vacation. Why didn’t he just call it a day and drive back home to Illinois? Did pushing through at all cost make him a better dad? Was that really better than just giving up?

Thinking of this now reminds me of when I posted the question on Twitter last week asking “At what point does giving up not constitute as giving up but as finally realizing you’re outnumbered in a world full of idiots?” I’m not saying that I’m an idiot. Rather it makes me think of a response from a friend that in a nutshell said that sometimes giving up isn’t giving up as much as it is letting go.

Funny how this whirlwind of thoughts running through my mind brings me to letting go, especially considering the real reason for getting the car in the first place was because I was trying to find a way to hold onto Kacie as long and as hard as I could because I was afraid of letting her go. Not only have I been given a lesson in letting go, now I’m going to have to redesign the blog. Awesome.

Letting go 1, Brad 0

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The More Things Change

I think I’m finally starting to grasp that the more things change, the more they do anything but stay the same.

At 35 I shouldn’t feel too lost in the shuffle that is the technological advancement of society. I Facebook. Some. I tweet. Some. And of course I blog. Some. Yet here I sit before you feeling lost and out of place in a world that’s constantly changing. I’m not sure if I can keep up. I don’t know if I want to keep up.

Last night was my Chicano Literature class. When I tell people I’m taking Chicano Lit they either look at me as if something’s terribly wrong or feel sorry that I’m being forced to take such an awful class. Between you and me, I willingly chose to take the class and to be frank, I really enjoy it. But none of this has anything to do with my point.

What this does have to do with my point was the discussion we were having about becoming a leader/hero – whether or not you’re born to be a leader/hero, can be groomed to be a leader/hero, or just one day wake up and find yourself taking on the role of a leader/hero. This one girl made the comment that “I don’t think as parents you can raise your child to be a hero.”

My reaction? She has clearly never seen Smallville. Jonathan and Martha Kent, in my superior and all-knowing opinion, raised Clark to be a hero. It was his Kryptonian destiny. But then I remembered, just before class this same girl boasted of not having a television because everything she needed could be found on the Internet.

This is a huge problem for me. I could care less that she doesn’t own a TV; I’m more than a little on the fence about having almost everything we want right there at our technological fingertips. Sure, being able to stream a movie from Netflix is all sorts of greatness. Yes, being able to download movies and music to a portable device makes for a more enjoyable road trip, provided you remembered to charge said portable device before leaving the house. Sure you can download a book to yet another portable device so that you have something of substance to read on the plane while flying to Washington, D.C. But where will it end?

I was talking to a friend at work the other day and we were reminiscing of how in the early 80’s renting a video meant having to rent a VCR too. We both remembered how it was such a letdown to get to the video store, find the movie you’d been pestering your parents all week about renting, and then be told by the clerk at the counter that they were all out of VCRs. It makes me sad to think that my children will never know the triumph of scoring the last VCR in stock, riding home in a crowded station wagon with six or seven VHS tapes that are yours and only yours for the next two days, and then being endowed the responsibility that comes with knowing you’re in charge of being kind and rewinding. And now the video store is nearing extinction. I should start a foundation to save them. The video store will be the new Dodo Bird.

Frustratingly too, my kids will never know the defeat that comes with spending hours making the perfect mixed tape only to hear the dreaded “click” of the recorder signaling that the cassette tape has run out of space on Side B two minutes into a four  minute and twenty-three second song and have to start all over. From the beginning. Now they have playlists. Where’s the fun in that?

And don’t get me started on this whole electronic book thing. I for one enjoy the feel of holding a book in my hands and the total control that comes with turning from one page to the next. I love the way that grabbing a hard cover book out of my backpack only to realize that one of its corners was accidently crumpled during the shuffle of my day makes me sad. I relish going to the public library to look for a specific book only to feel the frustration of learning that like Fivel from An American Tail it’s currently floating somewhere out there, overdue and tagged with an unknown return date. I also like the unexpected joy that finding a previous reader’s airline ticket tucked tightly between two pages of the randomly selected library book I ended up settling for brings. This forgotten remnant of a trip to Washington, D.C. momentarily transforms itself from simply being some stranger’s ticket home to the ticket which gives my imagination permission to get lost in the curiosity of how this person spent their time in our nation’s capital. Was it for business? A chance to engage in all of the history the city has to offer? To steal something of unknown significance from the Spy Museum and return it to an underground faction of communist Russia?

I’m afraid my kids will grow up to only know a life in which everything they could ever want is just a mouse-click away and miss out on one of the greatest emotions childhood has to offer: the euphoria that is anticipation – all because the more things change, the more they just stay changed.

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Hello, World. I've Missed You.

I’ve been a horrible blogger lately. And by horrible I mean non-existent, not that my stuff is horrible…because let’s all face it - my stuff is way awesome.

It’s just that I’ve been a funk, and frankly, there has been so much going on the last several weeks that I haven’t been able to concentrate on any one thing at a time.

The first week of August we went to Europe for a eight days. I’d wanted to blog about that but haven’t. Maybe I still will. I probably will. There’s so much to tell but I’m afraid you wouldn’t believe have of what I tell you. It was an adventure.

And it’s not like there hasn’t been enough material at home to hit you with. I mean, I could have told you about the afternoon when Traci and I were in our bedroom having a serious conversation about something that probably wasn’t really that serious to begin with and Kacie comes barging in.

“Don’t you think you should knock?” I asked. “What if your mom and I were procreating in here?”

I was taking a shot in the dark that she wouldn’t know what the word meant.

“Then I probably would have heard a bunch of weird noises and wouldn’t have come in,” she responded.

Or there’s the night Brady and I were having a guy’s night in while the girls were out school shopping. We had both TVs in the living room fired up – one with Big Brother and the other the Rangers game. You all know how Brady feels about baseball, but the kid has totally got a thing for Big Jeff on BB13.

Anyway he’s lying on the floor, head propped up on his hands, in a television induced trance.

“Brady,” I said, “you okay?” I didn’t want his mom coming home and thinking I’d broken him.

“Yep. I’m watching Big Brudder and the Rangers.”

“At the same time?”

“I have two eyes, Daddy. One for each TV.”

Like I said, it’s been anything but dull around our place. And still I haven’t been able to write.

Maybe I’ve just lacked focus. Perhaps I’ve put so much pressure on myself to be consistently good each and every time out that I lose sight of the bigger picture which is that I don’t have to always be perfect but that sometimes something is better than nothing.

That rationale is really hard for me to get behind though. I’m kind of an all or nothing sort of guy, so to put something down on paper simply to be able to say that I’ve “written” and call it a day doesn’t work. But that’s probably why I start so many things and rarely finish anything. It’s the story of my life, really.

And now, as the fall semester has just gotten under way, I’ve begun to snap out of my funk thanks to some unintentional inspiration and in doing so have started the process of writing a new screenplay. That’s right – I don’t have nearly enough busywork on my plate so I’ve undertaken the task of developing characters, plotting out, and writing roughly 90-120 pages of script that will most likely never see the light of day or beread by anyone other than my mom.

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down and seriously tried to hunt and peck one out, but I really think this idea has promise – whatever that means in the land of wannabe screenwriting. I should probably hire someone more qualified than me to write it. Man do I miss the greatness that was John Hughes. That guy could write the crap out of anything.

But lucky for you, my faithful readers, I’m back after a much needed hiatus. I won’t claim to be better than ever. I’m not even going to boast of being better period. And no, I’m not wearing black. If you follow my Facebook page or Twitter (@herlvngroomhero) feed you know the randomness that is my mind has been hard at work lately which means you’re in for a treat.

So tell your family. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Her Living Room Hero has re-opened for business and is ready to start serving up a nice helping of way awesome stuff.

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Eyes Wide Open, Always Dreaming

My four-year-old has it all figured out. When he grows up, he wants to be a cake maker. And play baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

I ask Brady if he prefers one career path over the other. He insists he can do both equally, that he can play baseball during the summer and make cakes during the winter as well as on days the games are cancelled because of rain – or more specifically as he says, “when the whitening detector goes off at the fields and we have to get back in the truck and go home.”

This tells me three things. 1) Brady watches too many cake competitions on The Food Network with his mom. 2) He just might be spending too much time with his older sister at the softball fields. 3) The kid’s got more direction at four then I’ve ever had at any one point in my life.

When I was his age I wanted to be a superhero. More specifically, I wanted to be Superman - so much so that my desire lent itself to becoming one of those stories my mom tells over, and over, and over again. Some cultures refer to stories like these as “lore.”

My mom has two of these non-fictitious tales of lore. You only get one. For now.

When I was five, Underoos were fairly new and gaining tremendous popularity. For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, Underoos are children’s underwear depicting comic book characters, cartoon characters, and even video game characters. Underoos give kids a whole new dimension to “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”

The great thing about Underoos, even now, is that they can be worn as either underwear or outfits all on their own…provided you’re staying home. It’s here I note that Underoos should never be worn on the outside of one’s regular clothes in public, especially when attempting to fly to kindergarten.

My mom had a tendency to let me do really stupid things as kid, not because she didn’t care, but because she wanted to make sure she captured it on film. Since she was a big advocate of accumulating blackmail evidence (which ironically she cannot locate thirty years later…), she let me walk right out the front door and up the street to Eugene Ware Elementary School.

I don’t even want to think about how my life would have turned out had I actually made it to school dressed like that, but at the time it seemed like the most rational thing a boy my age could do. All I knew was that we lived in Small Town, Kansas. There were Superman clothes in my dresser drawers. And I too had (and still do have, actually) the few strands of hair that curled against my forehead just as my hero’s did. There was no logical reason not to believe that I did not have super powers enhanced by the sun.

As a kid I was always dreaming with my eyes open. I used to think that I was the Incredible Hulk - constantly ripping the buttons off my shirts before trying to lift the refrigerator. I believed that any automobile I got into had the potential to jump over creeks like the General Lee. I wanted an alien for my very own that I could put in a basket on the handlebars of my bike and pedal off into the forest and eventually fly into the night sky. I wanted to move from New Jersey to Reseda, California and learn karate from our apartment maintenance man, to be a fighter pilot who got to invert over MiGs only to flip them the bird, to be a Ferrari driving detective, and to discover lost pirate treasure with my very own band of misfits. To this day I still dream of owning a time machine.

Looking back at all of that I can’t help but think that maybe I enjoy writing so much because I’m a dreamer. Perhaps it’s because writing allows me to live the lives of so many different characters, not because their lives are better than mine but because their lives are ones that for better or worse I’d wouldn’t know how to live in the real world. Mostly though I think it’s because I don’t know how to turn my imagination off.

That’s what I want for my kids, to never feel like they have to turn their imaginations off. I want them to imagine greatly. Not to think bigger, but to think brighter, or differently. To not think confined by limits, but to think limitless. I want for them what they want for themselves. If that’s being the best cake making ballplayer to ever put on a Los Angeles Dodgers uniform so be it. I like cake and baseball. And superheroes. And time machines.

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More Than Just a Game

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: My mom taught me how to play baseball. She taught me how to throw. How to hit. How to catch.

When I was a teenager she made fun of my batting stance. She said I shook my butt too much.

My mom loved to watch me run. She loved to watch me steal bases and chase down fly balls. She said I was the fastest kid in the world. On some days I was.

But as much as my mom taught me about how to play the game, it was my dad who taught me to love the game. To respect it because it was more than just a game.

He learned to love this game from his dad. My papa learned from his. It’s one of those cycles in our family that’s almost genetic.

My dad’s a New York Yankees fan. He has an entire bedroom in his house devoted to them. There’s a Yankees toothbrush that accompanies him when he travels. A license plate that sets his car apart from every other car in Tulsa. He’s a fanatic when it comes to Yankees baseball. I am not.

On paper, the Texas Rangers are my team. I do not have a toothbrush to denote this when I travel.

When my dad lived in Detroit back in the late Eighties and early Nineties, I would spend two months of the summer with him. On average we’d attend ten to fifteen baseball games a year. One summer he gave me the option of driving to Cleveland, Cincinnati, or Chicago to catch a baseball game over the extended 4^th of July weekend. I asked if we could just stay in Detroit. The Rangers were coming to town for a four game road series with the Tigers. We went to all four.

Now, when I say “on paper” I mean that the Rangers may be who I root for, bleed for, and cry for, but they don’t have my heart. Instead they only get a piece of it because I’ve learned that in thirty-five years of baseball I can’t give my heart to just one team. It belongs to the game itself.

Baseball’s always imperfect, except for those rare occasions when it actually is. It’s a game that boys play with the hopes of one day playing as men, and a game that men who wish they were still boys play because fully growing up is something they want no part of.

This past weekend I was in New York City with my dad. He had just turned sixty the weekend before, and to celebrate we took a quick trip to Gotham, and more specifically, to Yankees Stadium for three games.  My dad was finally going to be able to see his favorite team in its own house. More importantly, the fates had aligned to put us in a position to see his favorite player, Derek Jeter, become the first New York Yankee to ever reach the elusive milestone of 3,000 hits in a career.

Within minutes of settling into our hotel room Thursday night, I’d learned via ESPN that a fan had fallen from the stands during the Rangers home game earlier that night and died. At that time I didn’t know the whole story, but without being asked my memory confirmed that this was the third time a fan had fallen from the stands in Arlington.

Friday finally came, and because I wanted the people of New York City to know it was I and not them that was a fan of the greatest team in all of baseball I wore my red Michael Young t-shirt with the number ten in white on the back and a blue ball cap with a red ‘T’ stitched on the front. My attire gave everyone license to stop me and inquire of the previous night’s tragedy of which I had very limited knowledge of.

I responded the same way every time. “Yeah, I saw that on ESPN. It’s the third time since 1994 that someone’s fallen from the stands like that.”

This continued all day and into the early evening as we waited in the rain outside Yankee Stadium. I still knew none of the facts. It seemed the people I spoke with really didn’t either, but they wanted to talk about it right up until 5:30PM EST when those of us hiding under ponchos received word that the game was postponed and began heading back to where we came from. An hour later my life changed forever.

We took the subway from The Bronx back to our hotel in Manhattan. While changing out of my wet clothes, Scott Pelley informed me during the “CBS Evening News” exactly what had happened the night before. It was worse than I could have ever imagined.

He reported of how a man from Brownwood, Texas had driven several hours to take his six-year-old son to his first Texas Rangers game. Pelley talked of how this man wanted to share first hand with his son his own love for the greatest game on Earth. How the man had reached over the left field fence to catch a ball that Josh Hamilton had thrown into the stands for the man’s son. And how the man lost his balance and fell over the railing, landing on his head twenty feet below. Pelley said that the man could be heard pleading to anyone listening to take care of his son. The words were devastating, but the photos were heartbreaking. One photo showed the man reaching for the ball while another a strange woman holding his son, protecting the boy from seeing the horror below.

I sat on the edge of the bed, and fought with everything inside of me to hold back the tears. I didn’t want my dad to see how much this was affecting me, especially on his special weekend. It was a battle I couldn’t win.

On the subway back to The Bronx the next day I found myself thinking about this little boy that I’d never meet. I wondered if he’d ever go to another baseball game again. I wondered if he’d grow up and blame the game I loved so much for taking his father from him. I thought of all the games my own dad and I had attended together, and the baseballs we’d collected in that time. I thought of how many games I’d taken Kacie to. How I’d yet to take Brady because I wanted to wait for him to actually understand the game, to remember it, unlike Kacie who was less than three months old when she attended her first.

I couldn’t help but to feel guilty for getting to experience something so incredible with my dad. Moments of joy were overtaken at times by moments of extreme sadness. I found myself wishing I could give up my shot at witnessing baseball history with my dad if it meant bringing back this little boy his. Baseball was now more than just a game.

During the course of the weekend we reveled in watching Derek Jeter become an elite part of baseball history on Saturday and cheered as CC Sabathia threw a shutout on Sunday, yet all the while I kept finding myself re-living an entire lifetime of baseball. I remembered my mom hitting me in the face with a baseball when I was five and telling me that if I’d kept my glove up it wouldn’t have happened. I remembered my dad telling me of how he’d snuck into the 1985 World Series and watched the Kansas City Royals claim their only title in franchise history. I remembered shopping in 1998 for just the right baseball glove to buy for my first child, not knowing if it’d be a boy or a girl. I remembered how Traci’s mom used to tell me that if I wasn’t careful I’d force baseball on my kids to the point that they’d grow up to not even like the game. I’d defended myself by saying that I didn’t care if they never played on a team or watched the game, but that all I would ever want from them was that they would humor their old man every now and then and play a game of catch in the back yard.

Even as I write this, I find myself hoping that Cooper Stone’s mom is in some ways like my mom. I hope that as she starts the process of merging the life she once knew with the reality she’s now forced to live that she will continue to teach her son how to play baseball. That she teaches him how to throw. How to hit. How to catch. Maybe even how to shake his butt a little too much when he’s batting.

But more than anything, I hope that this little boy who will forever have a place in many of our hearts will one day learn to see past the unimaginable pain he may feel when looking onto a baseball field and love the greatest game on Earth as much as his dad must have.

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Fodder of the Year

Father’s Day was very uneventful, which is exactly the way I like it.

I have a hard time celebrating holidays that to me hold little or no sentimental value. Translation for all of you cynics out there: Yes, I’m tired of getting busted for not putting thought into “holidays” that roll around each year at the same time only to become a repeat offender (great album by Richard Marx) in the crappy husband category because the kids and I haven’t done jack squat for Traci until the day of. There. I said it. Happy?

But how about a honest show of hands: Who really wants to wait in line for over an hour at Outback Steakhouse on the day they open five hours early so that everyone can celebrate Mum? Not me.

Adversely, I don’t want to suffer outside in a hundred degree heat while waiting to celebrate my alleged greatness over a Bloomin’ Onion either. All I really want is some extra time with my kids, the couch, and the Playstation and we can call it good. And a slice of chocolate chip cookie with icing on it from Great American Cookie wouldn’t hurt either.

So yes, my Father’s Day was what some might deem boring. Dull. Lackluster. Nothing special to the casual onlooker.

I call my dad. Brady asks to talk. I wait through seven or eight rings and hand Brady the phone when I finally hear my dad’s voice.

“Happy Fodder’s Day, Papaw.”

I should note that while I’ve made this grand declaration about not wanting a big deal made of the day, Brady has just told his Papaw something he hasn’t even told me yet, and it’s already one in the afternoon.

“Um, we’re going to the grocery store. And to get somefing for my daddy that I can’t talk about.”

A cookie. I hope it’s a nice big cookie with an excess of chocolate icing. And milk – we’re almost out.

“I also swam in my nana and my papa’s pool yesterday wiffout my fwoaties. Okay, well, love you. Bye, Papaw.” He hands the phone back to me and jumps off the couch.

While translating for my dad, I hear the front door lock behind my family as they embark on their clandestine mission. Dad and I spend the next twenty minutes or so catching up and talking baseball before saying goodbye to spend our respective Fathers’ Days relaxing on our respective couches.

Somewhere between the fourth and sixth innings of my second PS3 baseball game, the troops return, weighed down by a rainbow assortment of blue, red, and green reusable grocery bags, two Sunday papers complete with coupons for a story I’ll share with you at a later date, and freshly made cookies from the greatest sliced cookie store ever.

“We brought you sumpfing,” Brady taunts as he stands in front of me, blocking the television as I try unsuccessfully to hit a wicked curve ball that bounces a couple of feet in front of home plate.

I push him to the side, just in time to strike out. I don’t acknowledge the shopping sack full of sliced cookies. The kid shouldn’t think I’m that easy, which for the record I am.

“Are you out or in?” he inquires of my player’s status. At four he’s still learning the finer points of baseball while simultaneously finding a way to put his own spin on it.

“Out.” No thanks to you.

“What team are you?”

“The Texas Rangers.”

“Again? You should be the Pigeons.”

I give him a confused, yet curious look as to why he’d suggest I should be a professional baseball team called The Pigeons. Before I can ask, something in the kitchen distracts him and he steps out of my line of sight to investigate. It’s then I see my opponent’s mascot on the TV screen. A brown and orange bird.

 “They’re not pigeons, Brady. They’re Orioles,” Kacie says, in her best know-it-all big sister voice.

“From Baltimore,” I finish.

We share a glance. I’m satisfied in knowing that my love of baseball has effortlessly passed itself on to her. She’s good to go with the knowledge that for now she’s still smarter than her little brother.

“Oh. Well you should make a team and call it the Pigeons. That would be cool.” He retreats to the kitchen with the bag full of cookies.

The banter between the three of us is nothing out of the norm for a Sunday afternoon – or any day for that matter - and serves as a reminder that I don’t need one day out of 365 for my kids to show me that they love me.

My little contributions to society have been brainwashed to love me every day (a little less when I’m grounding them), not because I’m Daddy, and certainly not because they think it’s funny that I put up such a fight in resisting their advances in renaming me “Dad” but instead because I truly am that awesome. But mostly, they love me on days like Father’s Day because buying me a cookie slice means that by default they too get cookie slices.

How’s that for Fodder of the Year? And I didn’t even have to leave the living room.

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My Kids Are Smarter (Mouthed) Than Yours

My kids are like robots. They’re smarter, faster, and more functional than I am.

I suppose I can only blame myself for making such awesome offspring. Sure my wife helped, but only in areas where it really matters - like kindness, empathy, and unselfishness. All of the other useless attributes they get from me. Like wit. Sense of humor. And killer good looks.

As I watch my little rascals go about their day-to-day lives, it’s become increasingly apparent that their smart mouths are going to land one (probably both) of them in the clink. Jury’s still out if it’ll be a normal jail in the states for sassing off to a cop during a routine traffic stop or a prison in some third world country while participating in Doctors Without Borders. I should probably teach them how to play dominos just in case.

There’s really not a day that goes by where one of my children doesn’t impress me somehow, not because of their grades or charity or willingness to cuddle with Daddy despite having better things to do, but because of just how much they are like their old man. The quick witted things that come out of their mouths makes me all teary eyed and proud to be a parent. A mentor.

It’s like the wheels are always in motion with these two, as if they’re just waiting for Traci or myself to slip up and leave the door wide open for them to respond with some off-the-cuff remark. So when the wheels do come off it shouldn’t really come as a surprise, yet it always does.

Because of this, I’ve come up with a list of five outlandish things each of them has said in recent weeks that only substantiates my point and furthers the fact that I have the smartest (mouthed) kids in the world. I’ve held nothing back. For you to know me, you have to know them. Not some cutesy painted image of them wearing pastels on a lazy spring day, but the real them. The unplugged them. The them I have to put up with on a daily basis.

Here you go. Don’t be jealous.

1)      Brady: Daddy, step on that ant and squish it. Then it will be dead. Like my mommy’s grandma.

2)      Kacie: One day I’m going to move away to college. Then get married. Okay, maybe not married, but I’m still going away to college. Which means I won’t be here every day when you get home from work. Try not to cry. Especially right now, Dad. Sheesh.

3)      Brady: I can’t wait to watch that Yogi the Bear movie! I love him. And Owie.

Traci: Owie?

Brady: Yogi the Bear’s friend.

Me: You mean Boo Boo?

Brady: That’s what I said. Owie.

4)      Kacie: Can we not talk about penises?

Me: Your brother started it. Not me.

Kacie: He’s four. You haven’t been four in a long time. Like decades.

Me: If he wants to ask me about his penis then we’ll talk about his penis.

Kacie: Dad! Please! I don’t want to hear, talk, or think about penises.

Me: Remember that. Until you graduate college. Then maybe not until you’ve secured a good job for yourself. But at least graduate college first. Then you can think about penises all you want.

Kacie: If you mention that word again I’m going to talk about Justin Bieber until you beg me to stop.

5)      Brady: Daddy, you and my mommy have to make a baby.

Me: No, no we don’t.

Brady: Yes. You have to. You can create one.

Me: And how are we going to create one?

Brady: I have paper and Crayons. You can use them.

It’s hard to do anything that resembles actual parenting when your children are always spouting off crap like this, especially when they’re saying it while you’re trying to dole out punishments. I mean, how is one supposed to be taken seriously as a parent when the phrase “Go to your room!” can’t even be uttered with a straight face? I smile. They smile. I laugh. They laugh. I send them across the room to their mother so that she can succeed where I failed. It’s a vicious cycle that only perpetuates the notion that sometimes my parenting skills are downright anemic.

It’s all good in the Parent Hood though. Their daily shtick means that I get to write down anything I want regarding their antics and then share said antics with the world. If it embarrasses them then maybe it’ll teach them to be nicer to Daddy and occasionally allow (or at least pretend to allow) me to have the upper hand in all of this. Fair trade if you ask me.

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My Life Has Come to This

I’ve been informed that today is National Bike to Work Day.

As many of you know, I wrote in March about how I was thinking of riding a bike to and from work several days a week in an attempt to save money at the pump and get fit. Can I just say that the very notion of my riding a bike to work might have been the singled dopiest idea I’d ever come up with in thirty-five years of dreaming up stupid ideas?

I arrived at this conclusion one afternoon while sitting at a stoplight on the way home from work. As I waited for the stoplight to favor me, I saw a man and woman riding unicycles across the intersection of Proposed Bike Route #4.  Yes, I said unicycles.  You know…the bikes that don’t have handlebars or a second wheel? Stupid, I know.

Both people were struggling to cross before the light turned against them. I found myself hoping they’d fail, that traffic would bear down on them quickly, forcing the couple to jump ship just in time to watch their stupidcycles get crushed beneath a semi. Harsh? Yes, but these characters were invading my bike route – the route that I’d spent weeks researching and travelling and timing and adjusting and travelling all over again. Proposed Bike Route #4 was not theirs.

No such luck.

Upon my arrival home that day, I decided to give the bike another shot. It didn’t reciprocate. The bike hates my guts. So I humbly come to you to say that there will be no riding one to work any day, let alone on a day when the rest of the nation has decided to make a mockery out of me.

Instead I’m compelled to tell you that my life has come to this: Walking on the treadmill with cellophane wrapped around my belly after an intense P90X workout. Yes, I feel like Sunday’s leftover pork roast when I hit the gym, but it was either this or Skinnygirl Margaritas. I went with the option I felt would dock me the least points on my steadily declining Man Card. The jury is still out.

*Please insert jokes in the comment section below. Ridicule from the usual members of the Peanut Gallery gladly accepted, but I’d like to hear from some of my newer readers. Winner will receive nothing but my utmost respect. And contempt.*

**Kacie, this does not apply to you as I am restricting your commenting privileges. Love, Daddy.**

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Teen of My Heart

My daughter has betrayed me. Again.

Today, without first asking for my permission, Kacie has entered the world of teenagerdom – or teenager dumb. Either or. And both, really.

This is where, for the next six years, she’s made the commitment to make my life hell. By enlisting in the not-so-clandestine organization T.E.E.N. she’s accepted a seven year mission to push limits to the extreme and force her mother and me to create new limits where there once were none.

I know nothing about raising a teenage girl. I was barely coping with being a parent in general, when I just had “kids.” It was okay before because I knew what it was like to be a kid – mainly because I still am one. I was finally getting it down. Coming into my own.

But this is different.

I don’t speak Period or Feminine Hygiene Product or ­­­Miniskirts & High Heels. I don’t know what it’s like to have your heart broken by some boy who’s decided just eighteen hours after the world’s longest makeout session at a party you didn’t even have permission to be at in the first place that he likes your best friend better than he does you.

I can’t ask my mom for advice. Yes, she raised five kids (three of which were girls), but she’d be zero help. Her only response would be: “Remember when I told you this day would come? Well, it’s here and I’m not even going to pretend to feel sorry for you.”

Surely there’s a support group out there to help walk me through this. Like a Craigslist for dads. Maybe Dadslist? Mydaughterbrokemyheart.com? Suckstobeme.org?

When I looked at her this morning it was like a stranger was staring back at me, smiling, waiting for me to make the first move even though she’d already made it. All I could do was kiss her on the head and tell her to have a good day and then quickly bail before the floodgates opened and my mascara started to smear.

But at some point in the next few hours I have to go home and face her. No matter how hard I may try to pretend today like nothing’s changed, everything’s changed. I’ll learn to be okay with it. Eventually. Just not today.

Kacie – I love you. You’re more than anything I could have hoped for and better than anything I’ll ever deserve. But you’re grounded.

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Taking Back Television

This is where, if I were a real man, I’d say that my wife is right. But I’m not and to be quite honest am perfectly okay with that.

She’s been pestering me to get rid of some (all) of the TVs in our possession, or at the very least dumb down our cable subscription. I’ve said it before -- that’s just a horrible idea on so many levels. But as farfetched as her drastic measures come off, I’m thinking there’s a solution somewhere within the madness that could work if it means my regaining control of the remote.

My recent epiphany stems from two separate instances yesterday that made me realize I watch, or at least hear, too many children’s television shows on a daily basis. These shows all have catchy tunes that get stuck in your head like a bad song from the 90’s. And because the shows and even the commercials are played on what seems like a continuous loop, it’s easy to find yourself repeating lines of dialogue (or shouting them when Swiper is swiping) in unison with your kid without even realizing you’re doing it.

I submit for the defense:

Instance One

A friend and I are at work discussing possible lunch options. He’s been begging me to go out to eat with him. By begging, I mean giving me a hard time because of the diet I’ve been on for the last three weeks and my decision to punt foods that helped put me in my current dietary predicament. It’s become part of our daily shtick.

He suggests burgers. Ice cream. Tasty chicken tenders, fries, and sweet tea from Raising Cane’s (which I would absolutely love to say yes to but am putting off for a few more weeks). Burritos de Freebirds. I say no to all. He rolls his eyes, displeased in my new lifestyle choices and how they now affect him.

He turns back to his computer and pouts. And by pouts, I mean drops the subject and gets back to work because he really had no intention of going out for lunch anyways because he’d brought his. I decide to turn the table and get his hopes up for an hour-long jailbreak from the office.

Me: What about Ming-Ming.

David: Huh?

Me: For lunch.

David: Ming-Ming?

Me: The Asian restaurant by Target??

David: (confused) You mean NewNew???

Me: Oh, right. Ming Ming is the duck on Wonder Pets…

Instance Two

Last night I’m taking my final Short Fiction test of the semester. For the life of me I cannot remember several answers to what should be some pretty easy questions. My mind was beyond blank.

There was one question in particular that asked about David Barthelme’s short story “The School” and what kind of animal walked into the classroom at the end which caused the kids to go crazy. Sounds simple enough, right? Nope. All I could come up with was a dinosaur. Why a dinosaur, you ask? I was picturing the story as it played out in my head, which turns out really wasn’t the story by David Barthelme at all but instead an episode of Dino Dan.

The culprit is Nick Jr., which is always on at our house. And while it’s a pretty good influence on my kid as far as television is concerned, I’d really like Brady to watch a little more in the way of classic cartoons and a little less pre-school entertainment while I’m around. I mean, a 35-year-old man singing the theme song for Scooby Doo out in public is a little less creepy than one singing “We had a great day. It was a super way, to spend some time together” from the Fresh Beat Band.

Something has to be done while I still have a tiny bit of dignity left.

My proposal? Not to take television away from the kids but to take it back period. Ground Brady from television just long enough that he moves on to kid shows that are more age appropriate for me to openly enjoy and publicly reference. Make him read instead. Sure, he’s only four but there’s no reason to think he can’t teach himself how to read. I mean, the boy already knows ‘hat’ and ‘cat’ and ‘dog.’ This way, should he be able to pick up on a word like ‘superfluous’ somewhere between Dr. Seuss and Ernest Hemingway, making me look like a genius.

You’re welcome, dear.

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