The Book of Dads
Page 6
I splashed on warm water and lathered up. Remember, I’m just after the scrotum, no more. The lathering up was no problem at all. Plenty of lather. I took razor in hand, and was trying to remember if a razor was supposed to go against the grain or with, and then thinking which way the grain would be, when in wandered my three-year-old son.
“What you doing, Daddy?”
“Oh, just getting ready to go to the doctor.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to shave, and I need some privacy.”
“Why?”
“I just do. I’ll be out in a minute.”
He walked out.
So. Now. I reached down and sort of stretched the skin like I used to when shaving my face with a razor, and started in, but a major problem was that I couldn’t see down there…down under. I bent over some, shifted to the left a little more. Oops. Almost lost my balance.
“What about a handheld mirror?” I thought. But everything would be backward. But it was backward when I shaved my face, wasn’t it? In this present case, though, I’d be looking down into the mirror at something hanging from above, and also, it would be backward, a reflection. My mind flashed to that phrase, “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” Or was it “larger than they really are”?
I decided to forgo the mirror and proceed by feel. Slowly. I shaved a swath.
I wondered: If I stood and bent way over…could I see better? But I am not flexible. My wife can flatten her hands on the floor while standing. My wife…would she be willing to…?
“Honey?” I called.
“Yes.”
“…Nothing.”
“How’s it going?” she asked. “It’s almost time to leave.” She was not reluctant for me to get on with this procedure.
“Oh, it’s going fine.”
And the procedure did go fine. But I’m going to miss having babies—the great fun part of it all.
WHAT I CAN OFFER
NEAL POLLACK
When it comes to stuff that dads are traditionally supposed to impart to their sons, I’m a little lacking. I don’t camp or fish, and I can’t tie knots. Though I can tell the difference between a knife and a gun, I don’t know how to use either of them. Maybe, in a serious emergency, I could change a tire, but I wouldn’t count on me for instruction. My son isn’t ever going to catch me working on an engine block. The only way he’ll see me covered with grease is if I’m cooking bacon. It’s hard for me even to light a candle without burning myself. And if I didn’t learn how to ride a bike myself until I was sixteen, how am I supposed to teach my kid?
Even when it comes to book learning, I feel deficient. Thinking about fatherhood, my mind often turns to John Adams and John Quincy, because I’m a nerd. I remember reading an Adams essay where he instructs John Quincy to read Terence, “for the excellence of his morals.” Adams also taught his children the basics of farming and animal husbandry. Well, good for John Quincy, who became a master statesman and a competent gentleman farmer, but I’ve never read Terence, and I don’t know my way around a barn. I spend half my workday in my basement getting stoned and looking at porn with my zipper undone. I have no morals. My reading experience may be vast, but I’m not about to start giving my six-year-old son comparative literature tutorials about Jim Thompson and Patricia Highsmith. He’s still reading the Frog and Toad books.
I share my troubles with a lot of postindustrial, media-age dads, who’ve spent their entire careers developing software or looking at spreadsheets, doing Web design or starting worthless Internet companies, or, in my case, working as a hack freelance writer for nearly two decades. We’re not dumb (or at least some of us aren’t), and we have some very specific skills, but they’re not exactly skills that traditionally get passed down to children. What, then, does the contemporary dad, weak-minded and culturally neutered, have to offer his kids?
The following isn’t a comprehensive list. Actually, it’s not a list at all. Instead, consider the examples below as rudimentary guideposts for dads raising kids in a senseless world ruled by geeks. For that, we’re all supremely qualified.
Let’s begin with media literacy, by which I mean, “Exposing our kids to stuff that we like.” From an early age, my child has lived in a media whirlwind, and I hate most of the crap our corporate masters have offered him. A steady diet of Baby Einstein, Dora, the Wiggles, Laurie Berkner, Blue’s Clues, and, later on, Ben 10, would starve any brain. You wouldn’t give your child Pepsi in a bottle, so why would you expose him or her to Power Rangers: Ninja Force?
Over the years, I’ve exposed my child to, among many other things, the following: The Muppet Show, Animaniacs, The Tick, all three Flanimals books by Ricky Gervais, Tintin, Asterix, Wallace and Gromit, The Electric Company, the Captain Underpants series, and The Hoboken Chicken Emergency by the then-called D. Manus Pinkwater. We’ve done comparative Superman viewing, from the Richard Donner movies to the Max Fleischer cartoon to the excellent Bruce Timm cartoons from the 1990s. We’ve engaged in Batman studies, but to a lesser extent, because some of the Dark Knight’s iterations are still a little violent for the boy. I’ve explained to him why Challenge of the Super Friends, though definitely full of kitsch value, is far inferior to the “Legion of Doom” season of Justice League Unlimited, in quality of animation, depth of character, and plotting. I think he understands. At least he says he does.
I’ve done my best to impart a sense of ridiculousness to my son in his Fortress of Dorkitude. Mostly, this has worked. I showed him three-quarters of season 4 of The Simpsons, regarded by connoisseurs of such things as the best, and he now often says stuff to me like “I call the big one Bitey” or “Dad, it’s funny when Homer has a toilet plunger stuck to his head.” That’s when I activate the lesson in humor appreciation and comic timing.
“You’re right, son,” I say. “It is. But can you tell me why?”
“Because he’s not supposed to,” says the boy.
“Good enough,” I say.
Sometimes I’ve jumped in too eagerly, like when I tried to show him The Naked Gun before his fifth birthday. But I realized my mistake early on, and shut down the video before the scene with the full-body condom. Still, I’m watching the calendar for the day it’s appropriate for me to show him Airplane! And it’s almost time for him to be able to watch Top Secret! I have so much to teach, and he has so much to learn.
About a month before Elijah turned six, we had a few dead hours on a Saturday. Regina refused to step away from the computer. She’d fallen into a heated argument with some totally misguided commenters on Daily Kos. The burden of weekend enrichment fell to me.
“Son,” I said to Elijah, “I want to introduce you to one of my favorite movies.”
“What is it?” he said.
“It’s very funny. The movie is called Young Frankenstein.”
“Are there monsters?”
“One monster.”
“Is he scary?”
“No, he’s funny.”
“Why’s the movie called Young Frankenstein then?”
“Because the doctor in the movie is the grandson of…Tell you what. Let’s watch the movie, and then you’ll learn.”
So we watched. I had to turn down the sound only once. When Gene Wilder knees Liam Dunn in the nuts, he curses too much for six-year-old ears. Other than that, Elijah got most of the jokes. After the movie, we recapped.
“Hah hah!” he said. “Igor said ‘walk this way,’ and then Young Frankenstein had to take the cane and he walked that way.”
“Yep,” I said.
“And then the pretty girl said ‘do you want to go for a roll in the hay’ and she started rolling around, singing ‘roll, roll, roll in ze hay!’”
“Uh huh.”
“But then why did the horses make noise every time anyone said ‘Frau Blücher’?”
“Because ‘Blücher’ is the German word for ‘glue.’”
“Why?”
“It just is.”
“Oh, right. They used to make the hooves of dead horses into glue.”
“Glue is made out of horses?”
“It used to be.”
“So that’s why the horses are afraid.”
“Right.”
“You know what my favorite part was?”
“Do tell.”
“When the monster was on the seesaw with the little girl and her parents were running around worried about not being able to find her, and then the monster sat down on the seesaw and she flew up into the air through the window into her bed, and she was there when her parents came upstairs.”
“Yes.”
“That was so silly.”
“Yes.”
“Daddy? Why was the monster rolling around on the woman and grunting?”
“Because he likes her,” I said.
Some lessons will have to wait until Elijah’s eight.
We’re also expected to teach our kids about religion. But my commitment to my boyhood religion doesn’t go much beyond a love of Mel Brooks. As Jon Stewart says, “I’m Jewish because of the delicious snacks.” It also doesn’t help that I’m beyond skeptical, and leaning toward resentful, when it comes to some of religion’s most dubious claims. Any intimation that man once walked with dinosaurs is met with a subtle fusillade of secular propaganda in the form of comic books about the theory of evolution. I must steel Elijah in case he ever stumbles upon a den of creationist thinking.
At the same time, while I don’t care if my son ends up being atheist, it’s never good form to raise a kid atheist. Kids need to believe in something.
Recently at the dinner table, Elijah asked, “Dad, do you believe in God?”
“Not really,” I said.
“I don’t either.”
“OK.”
“What do you believe in?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I believe in angels.”
“Whatever.”
But even if I don’t teach my child Jewish theology, I think it’s important that he learn something about his cultural background. I’m determined that Elijah will grow up appreciating the delicious snacks. One recent late September morning, I woke up to an e-mail from my mom, featuring a little backdoor Jewish New Year guilt. To be fair, she also wanted to let me know how much she was enjoying American Wife, which I’d given her for her birthday. Here’s what Mom said:
Happy New Year. I know this doesn’t mean much to you, but the combination of school starting, my birthday, and Rosh Hashanah has always been the start of a new year for me. I wish I could capture and explain how special this time of year was when I was growing up.
Yes, yes, I know. Things were so much better in New Jersey in the 1950s. As soon as I closed the e-mail, I did an abashed Google search for “shofar.” A wise acquaintance of mine has said that a Jew need fulfill only one true requirement on Rosh Hashanah: he or she must hear the call of the ram’s horn. Not surprisingly, there were lots of videos of shofar playing on YouTube.
Elijah woke up at 8:15. There was no school that day because of “teacher training,” which was good, because the kids needed a break after nearly two weeks of rigorous study. He came down into my basement, where I was sampling shofar videos. I decided this was a perfect time for a little low-level Jewish education.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Good morning,” he said. “Can I watch a show?”
“Sure,” I said. “But first, come over here. I want to play something for you.”
“What?” he said, suspiciously. He sensed that I was about to delay his SpongeBob fix for something ostensibly edifying.
“Well, you know how the Jewish calendar is different than the regular calendar?”
“No.”
“There are different months and it moves in different cycles. Tonight starts the Jewish New Year, called Rosh Hashanah.”
“OK.”
“And to ring in the New Year, someone blows a ram’s horn at temple.”
“Why?”
“For many ancient reasons. Anyway, I have a video of someone blowing a horn here. Do you want to see it?”
“OK.”
He came over and snuggled. I called up a video of a cantor at a congregation in Skokie, Illinois. I chose it because the cantor was wearing what Elijah would probably consider a funny hat, and also because it was only two and a half minutes long. The tikiyah call went out, and the first bleat escaped the horn. Elijah smiled at the funny sound. He liked the second blow, too. But by the time we got a minute and a half in, he was looking bored.
“What do you think?” I said. “Do you like it?”
“Good,” he said. “It’s a little loud.”
I turned it down.
“Check it out,” I said. “In about a minute, he’s going to blow for a really long time.”
He blew for a really short time.
“Is that the long blow?” Elijah asked.
“No.”
“Is that?”
“No. Be patient.”
Finally, the long blow came. Elijah listened patiently, then got out of my lap. He went over to my big blue armchair and sat down.
“So there you go,” I said.
“OK,” he said.
“I wanted to ask you a question.”
He sighed. “What now, Daddy?”
“Do you know what happens to a Jewish boy when he turns thirteen or fourteen?”
“He grows a beard.”
“Well, maybe a little, but more importantly, he has something called a Bar Mitzvah, where he leads a service in Hebrew.”
“But I don’t speak Hebrew.”
“I know, but you go to school to learn it.”
“I speak English mostly.”
“Yes, but you will learn Hebrew, and then we’ll have a Bar Mitzvah. We’ve decided to do it in a country called Israel. Which is the Jewish homeland.”
“Why do it there?” he asked.
“Because it will be cool and meaningful.”
“I think Jojo and I will go pretty crazy in Israel.”
“We’re not taking Jojo to Israel for your Bar Mitzvah.”
“Why not?”
“For many reasons, most of them financial. We’ll take Grandma and Opa and maybe your aunt and uncle and cousins.”
“OK,” he said. “Can I go watch a show now?”
“Sure,” I said. “Happy New Year.”
“OK,” he said.
With that, I’d pretty much assured myself a spot in the Book of Life for another year.
A father is supposed to teach his kids the difference between right and wrong. But we rarely get to play Atticus Finch. Mostly, our lessons involve making banal statements like “it’s wrong to swallow gum” or “that was very nice of you to share your Stormtrooper with Dexter.” Like Raymond Carver’s baker, we mostly have to deal with small good things, or, conversely, small bad things.
For instance, one summer afternoon, I picked Elijah up from day camp. I took him to the packing store because I had to send something via UPS. Elijah liked going to the packing store, since unlike many such stores, it has a toy aisle. I sat him down there and went about my business a few aisles away; I couldn’t see him, but he didn’t seem to be making a lot of noise, so I assumed that all was copacetic. When I was done, I went to the aisle. He sat on the floor, surrounded by all manner of plastic balls and rubber dinosaurs.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
He bounced a ball.
“Look, Daddy,” he said. “This one lights up!”
“That’s great,” I said. “Now clean up this mess.”
“Why?” he said.
“Because you made it.”
“I broke one of the toys and water came out and some stuff got wet.”
“You did what?”
I looked around to see if anyone had heard. My voice lowered to a whisper. I moved
closer to him to inspect the trouble. He’d taken one of those plastic cannoli-shaped things that slides in and out. I feared that it was full of some sort of horrible liquid poison now infecting the rest of the toy aisle. The cannoli itself sagged, half-deflated, like something that isn’t appropriate to metaphorize in this space.
Then I saw the wrapping, indicating that the toy had, in fact, contained water.
Wait. Why was the wrapping open?
“Did you open the wrapping?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You can’t do that. If you do that, then you have to buy it.”
“But I don’t want to buy it,” he said.
I looked around. No one had noticed. Elijah had cleaned up his toy mess. We could have walked out of there and no one would ever have known of our guilt.
But I decided to take the moral path. We went to the counter.
“Um,” I said. “One of your toys got broken.”
I held up the limp plastic inside-out cannoli.
“Oh,” said the counter guy. “No big deal.”
“We’re going to pay for it anyway,” I said. “That’s the right lesson to teach, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. I bent down to Elijah. “If you break something that’s not your property,” I said, “you have to buy it.” I turned to the counter guy. “How much do I owe you?”
“Two bucks,” he said.
“Oh, thank God,” I said. I hate it when doing the right thing costs more than five bucks. I gave the counter guy the money and tossed the limp cannoli in the trash can.
“Why’d you do that?” Elijah whined.
“Because it’s broken.”
“Why’d you buy it if it’s broken?”
“Because you broke it.”
“But I didn’t mean to break it.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But you have to take responsibility for your actions.”
“OK,” he said.
When we got home, I told Regina what had happened.
“He only gets to play with one toy at a time at that store,” she said.