"Why does Pac-Man have a penis?": My uncomfortable conversation with my 8 year old

Like most boys, when I was a kid I was obsessed with boobs and all I wanted was to actually see a real picture of them.   I remember the first time my dream came true, it wasn’t romantic but it was magical nonetheless.  My great Uncle was doing some renovation on an old house and my grandparents dropped by to see how it was going.  I was about 7 or 8 and while they were talking with my great Uncle, I was walking around the house checking out all the construction and noticed two pictures taped to the wall from a distance.  It was unlike anything I had ever seen, I saw that each picture had a different woman in it and from where I was standing it seemed as if they were lacking clothes.  I quickly took a look around to make sure no one was watching and I ran over to get a closer look.  And like a vision in a dream, I saw that my intuitions were correct:  Not only was there one naked lady posted on the wall but there were two.  I stood there in all of my childish awe and picked my jaw up from the floor.  It was everything a young 8 year old boy dreamed of.  I was amazed at how much different the naked ladies looked than I did and was puzzled as to what the patch of hair was down below and what the heck it was for.  “How the heck do they pee?” was my first thought after getting over the initial shock and awe of the whole thing.  Ahh, but my dream was quickly dashed when my grandmother walked around the corner and found me staring at the wall with my mouth twisted in an unrelenting, confused smile.  “Oh no, get away from there, Dustin!!” she said and quickly grabbed my hand and yanked me away.  I overheard her fussing at her brother and asking him why those pictures were there and his reason and logic seemed reasonable to me.  “Motivation” he said and laughed.  I was told to forget about the things I had seen but it was forever burned into my young psyche (hell, look its 22 years later and I still remember it like it was yesterday).  When I went back to school shortly thereafter, I wanted to put my new found knowledge to paper so I drew a series of crudely, disproportionate pictures of faceless naked ladies on the back of my work.  I didn’t totally think my actions through.  It didn’t occur to me that my teacher might just turn the papers over and see my little attempts at art.  My teacher never said anything to me directly but she did make sure to make a phone call to my mom and sent the pictures home with circles around each offensive image.   It devastated/shocked/disgusted my mom and she explained that I was to never do something like that again.

I say all this because recently the tradition of artistic expression was passed down to my middle child.  A couple of weeks ago I was going through my son’s book bag like a good dad and came across his composition book.  I wasn’t really going to look at it until I noticed the title that he gave the book, “My Mean Teacher” by Kyler Elliott.  My curiosity was tweaked and I opened it up thinking I would see the young rantings of a child complaining about the unfairness of math and spelling.  (He had been telling me a lot lately that his teacher was not fair with math because she kept changing the answers and I had been consistently telling him that math is absolute and answers couldn’t be changed.  He didn’t care about that and insisted that she made up her own math that was contradictory to his own.)  But there were no rants or complaints, but there were a lot of drawings in the first couple of pages.  Most of it was normal kid stuff, dragons and storm troopers, but in the middle of it all was a weird, unmistakable drawing of a naked woman.  I laughed (to myself of course, because I couldn’t let him know that I thought it was kind of funny) and then put on my stern parent face and asked him about it.  Kyler turned about 14 shades of red and initially claimed that he didn’t know what the picture was.  “I dunno, it’s just a person” he said.  “Really?  You have no idea what you’ve drawn?  It just came to you in a vision, huh?  Dude, we both know what this is.”  I said.  He shyly admitted it and I told him that I was going to tear it out of the book, not to do it again, and that I wouldn’t tell his mom.  He looked relieved but I noticed he was still a little hesitant, like maybe he still had something else to say but he didn’t and I put the notebook away.  I did tell my wife but told her that I handled it and not to say anything to him, he was just being a boy and he wouldn’t do it again.

Well fast-forward two weeks to yesterday, my wife was looking for one of her notebooks and I was helping her and I saw a composition book.  I had forgotten that I had put the book up and I picked it up and ruffled through it.  I realized that it wasn’t hers when I saw all the other scribbles in the book but I saw something in the very back that I didn’t see before.  “Holy shit!” I said and my wife came over to see what I was going on about.  The whole backpage was filled with an assortment of drawings of penises.  There were two standalone penises, a picture of a circular smiling figure with a penis, a little man with a huge penis, and a naked lady with a penis.  “Oh my God, is that Pac Man with a dick?” I said.  It immediately reminded me of Jonah Hill in “Superbad” with all of his various drawings of penises.  “Oh God, what do we do?  Why the hell is he drawing all of these penises?  And why does the woman have a dick?!?” my wife asked me like I had some sort of answer.  I tried to come up with a logical answer and told her that perhaps he was just being creative.  (In all reality I didn’t and still don’t have an answer.) 

So we decided that we couldn’t sweep it under the rug and we had to have the “talk” with him.  I promise that there is nothing more uncomfortable than explaining to sex to your kid.  This is one of the parts of parenthood that I would rather pass on to someone else.  When he got home we showed him what we found and asked for a simple explanation.  He said, “I dunno, they’re just a bunch of doodles.” 
“No”, I thought, “they are a bunch of dicks” but I refrained from saying it out loud.  My wife, being a little more brave than me, told him fine and asked him to explain each picture.  She went through each one and each time he replied with exactly what we thought originally.  It was indeed Pac-Man with a penis and the lady was actually a ladyboy.  We went through and explained anatomy, biology, and why he couldn’t draw this type of stuff at his young age but then came the big question.  My wife asked how he even knew what boobs looked like.  He told us that he had seen a painting of a nude woman in the museum when he went to Boston.  “Okay, fine but why did you draw her with a penis?” she asked.  “Well, the painting only showed the top half of her.  I don’t know what the rest of a naked woman looks like.”

Ahh, the joys of parenthood. 

Facebookland: Where Everything is Perfect

I have thought about this for a while and the more I look at it and examine it I know that it has to be true.  In Facebookland you can make and shape your life in any way that you please.  Are you a full time feces inspector at a nursing home?  Not in Facebookland, you are a doctor working on a medicine that cures AIDS and cancer at the same time.  Did you not finish high school?  Not in Facebookland, you graduated Magna Cum-Laude at Harvard with a double major in Corporate Law and Advanced Physics.  Do you live with your mother in a single bedroom trailer and live off of cat food and Natural Light?  Of course not, in Facebookland you live in a high rise condominium on the beach in Miami with your husband the CEO of Microsoft. 
On Facebook and any other social media site you can make your life whatever you want it to be.  You show people only what you want them to see.  You can plaster your profile with fabulous pictures of yourself surrounded by beautiful people in exotic locales riding on jet skis and swimming with dolphins (because of Photoshop).  When Facebook asks for you education information, you can pick from any of the vast list of schools available.  Who is going to check?  Hell, just for kicks I put down that I graduated from Harvard and made up a degree in some bogus field that I am pretty sure doesn't exist.  Has anyone ever heard of Biodynamic Metatechnological Anterior Reverse Anthropolbiolist?  Of course not, but who would question it?  You can make it appear that you are married to the most fabulous, successful, beautiful/handsome person in the world that wakes you up each morning with a shower of $100 bills and passionate lovemaking. 

I know that a lot of this is hyperbole but in some cases I don't feel that I am that far off.  Some people do these things just for the sake of humor and that is fine (because I'm pretty sure everyone knows that I don't live in Hell, Norway and I didn't graduate from Harvard).  I do worry about some people though because I think that they can get lost in their own b.s.  There was a recent study conducted by the American Association of Pediatrics, they found that depression can be triggered not only in teens but in adults when they see nothing but fabulous times being had by their "friends" on social media.  At first I thought that the study was a bunch of crap stirred up to make a news story on a slow day, but then I started to think and examine how it could be possible.  It is the stuff like I talked about above that can drive other people nuts.  If you are lonely, bored, or have nothing going on in your life and you are constantly bombarded with the greatness of other peoples' lives then I could see where some envy could develop.  I have even been guilty a time or two.  When I was layed up in the hospital for a month, I would get on Facebook and see all my friends going to bars or the beach and think, "Dammit, that sounds better than this."  But I think the thing to remember is this:  No one's life is perfect, unless you physically see or talk to these people on a regular basis you are only seeing and hearing what they want you to see and hear. 

I am not saying that everyone lies on social media, as a matter of fact a lot of people use it to air out their problems in life to get advice and support from their friends.  I have done it many times.  It can be extremely therapeautic and helpful to hear words of encouragement from people.  I talk to people on here everyday exchanging ideas, encouragement, congratulations, and debates.  I like to hear honesty from people.  Don't bullshit me about your life or your beliefs.  Don't brag about the "awesomeness of you" that doesn't really exist.  If I wanted to read about a fake fairytale world filled with magical spouses showering you with piles of money and multiple orgasms, I will go and read a romance novel. 

Teaching my kids about bullies and douchebag rich kids

It's coming to that point with my oldest son, Gavin, is having to learn to deal with little douchebag kids that have unclever, snarky, rich-kid, bullsh*t to say to him.  I don't necessarily classify it as bullying because the kid in question hasn't laid a hand on my him but its mostly verbal assualts.  This bothers me on two different levels:  1.)  I consider myself clever and quick witted and would love for him to utilize that gene inside of his little head.  I wish he could come up with some killer put downs to this kid that would just destroy his self confidence and make him question if his birth was a mistake.  2.)  I wish I could just tell them to punch the kid and tell him to shut the f**k up.  I know that neither of these options are very good parenting on my part but its the advice that I want to give.  I have attempted to train him in the art of insults, but I quickly figured out that my insults towards people would probably warrant immediate suspension for Gavin if he used any of them.  If I am angry enough at a person, I tend to find their weakest, most personal area and destroy it.  I have said some horrible things to people in the past, some that I am not proud of and others that still bring a little grin to my face.  So without giving any examples, I told Gavin the same.  I asked him to find any sensitive areas in the kids life that he could point out and ridicule.  It sounds bad but I know the level that he is working with and he won't say anything too horrible.  His insults now consist of "jerk" and "stupid".  I don't know what his nemesis is saying but I am sure that it is not much better than that. 

I am sure that some people will say, "Oh, you should teach him to ignore it or to turn the other cheek"  People who say that were never picked on once in their life.  "Oh if you are nice to them it will drive them nuts."  Ok that works in only one of two situations which is either in the movies or when you are a little older and not in elementary school, and Gavin is 10 and this isn't any John Hughes movie.  Since I don't see the insult department getting any better for awhile with him and I don't want him to get suspended for knocking the kid's teeth out, I have suggested some things that I did when I got pissed off at someone back in school as well as some things not to do.

As for the not to do's:  The first time I ever remember actually really getting picked on, besides some petty crap in elementary school, was in 7th grade.  It was an awkward year and I remember that I was taller than everyone else except my friend Gammon.  I had these three little shits, Charlie Stirsman, Derrick Wills, and Travis Statzer all making fun of me constantly for about a week.  I don't even remember what it was about, I just remember that they wouldn't shut up and  I couldn't come up with a whole lot to say back.  Finally after lunch on the 5th day, our class was lined up in the hall waiting to go back to class and Statzer, who came up to my belly button at the time, kept jumping around and taunting me.  I told him over and over to shut his tiny mouth up but it just kept going.  In a moment of anger, I turned around in his direction and threw a punch where I thought he was and put my fist through the wall right between his head and Mikey Good.  Silence fell over everyone and was only broken up when my teacher, Mrs. Cain, yelled "Mr. Elliott, what do you think you are doing?"  Stupid 7th grade me said, "Uhh, I put a hole in the wall?!?"  I didn't get time to explain and was marched to the principal's office.  I tried to explain to Ms. Morelock what had been going on and she explained that violence was never the answer and I was ordered to pay $10 to patch up the hole.  I used this story to Gavin and he just thought it was cool that I punched a hole in the wall and kept asking how big it was.  I'm not sure that he got the message that it was the wrong thing, and stupid.

I had no more real problems with anyone throughout middle school, just minor things.  It was then that I realized that I had a perfect outlet to take care of anyone's mouth or problem that was being given to me.  I played football since I was 7 years old and although I was pretty good, a lot of the time I was passive.  I did enough to get the job I was supposed to be doing done.  I blocked my guy or I made the tackle and that was it.  During that same time that I put the hole in the wall, we just so happened to be in football season and all the guys that had been giving me a hard time happened to be fellow teammates.  So that next week I made it a point to punish them everytime I had a chance.  If one of them was running the ball, I pretended that I was Lawrence Taylor and they were a fragile ballet dancer holding a bag of cocaine.  I would hit them with the full force of anger, frustration, and hatred in my body.  It started to feel good to me and from then on out that was how I solved my problems.  I put it out on the football field.
Gavin and Kyler both recently started playing football and I relayed this bit of knowledge to them because Gavin's tormentor just so happens to be on their team.  I explained to him to be cool at school and just nod his head when this little snot ran his mouth and tell him to wait until 4 o'clock to rolls around.

Football, I believe, also helped me in my clever/mean department.  Kids all the way from little league to college talk trash during the game and you have to be able to shoot back something to them even if you are a better player.  A couple of instances during high school, I had been arguing with a guy we all called "Booger" and he was not the best player by any stretch of the imagination.  I would pound him into the ground everytime and he would pop up and say something like, "Is that all you got, you overgrown pussy?"  It perplexed me to no end.  I would line up against him and do it again.  Same result.  It was like watching Rocky getting killed by Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.  Eventually after about a week of this, we shook hands and settled our differences but I learned that I had to really step up my game in the insult department.  So during games in high school, I would make it a point to know something personal about a few players on the other team and make sure to loudly and rudely point it out.  I got pretty good (or bad depending on how you look at it) with it.  I would find the kid who I heard about his father leaving his mother and yell out, "Why doesn't your dad love you anymore?" or tell him "I'm the reason you don't have a father, I'm banging your mom."  I'm not necessarily proud of these things (maybe a little) but it helped me be a better, more fierce player.  I wouldn't do this to anyone on my team but I would still try to seek out and punish anyone that I felt had wronged me.   Oddly enough, with these situations I can remember the actions taken but I can't remember what any of the fights were about.  I told my son this part as well, that these things were so insignifigant in the grand scheme of life that I couldn't even remember what we were fighting about in the first place.
Needless to say, none of this was much comfort to him yet and it won't be until he actually implements these actions.  He went to school today and I reminded him of what we talked about before he left.  However, I am still waiting for a call from school telling me that he has finally gotten into a full scale brawl in lunch or something.   
I'm sure that it will take time for him to learn how to deal with bullies and douchebag rich kids.  We all have our ways of dealing with it and maybe he will find his own.  I will say though that I am holding out on the chance that he has some of my "smartass" in him.

A little dose of today's news: Palin, Anthony, and Netflix

I didn’t have a broad subject to write on today but every day our ever constant news flow provided me with a few stories that I thought were at least worthy enough to comment on. 

A new book is coming out about my beloved Sarah Palin by Joe McGinniss which makes claims that she has snorted cocaine off of an oil drum and had an affair with former NBA star Glen Rice (which he confirmed).  She and her husband are of course denying this but really those are two oddly specific claims to be making.  Simply stating that she had done cocaine is one thing but stating that she had snorted it off of a 55 gallon oil drum is another.  Perhaps that is her issue:  She is doing the wrong drugs.  Cocaine makes you erratic, high strung, and slowly eats away at your brain.  If she had been smoking pot all along it would’ve gave us a much different Palin.  She could’ve shown up wearing her flowery sundress to the GOP and told everyone that they just needed to “chill”.  She wouldn’t have been so quick to stick her nose in every new controversy that came along.  She would been much more introspective and not bothered with having her face and her sound bites available for everyone to see and scrutinize.  But the cocaine probably explains all the kids she crapped out.  I’m sure her husband couldn’t keep up.  She was probably so insatiable that he didn’t even have time to put on the condom.  Every time she scored an 8 ball of blow her husband knew that in 9 months they would have another idiot kid.  As far as the affair with the NBA player goes, I love the image of the whole thing.  Little, tiny conservative Sarah Palin getting down with a 6’8 black NBA baller is hilarious.  Which makes me hope that perhaps they will do a sequel to the porno spoof “Nailin’ Palin” where it shows a younger Palin look alike with Scarface-type mounds of coke surrounding her while she is in a 1 on 5 orgy with the LA Lakers.

Everyone’s favorite sweetheart-baby-killing-mom is back in the news today and as expected is being ordered to pay some restitution.  After multiple, relentless sessions of lying to police, Casey Anthony is being ordered to pay back almost $100,000 to the state of Florida for making them search for the dead child that she hid.  This sounds better than it is though because prosecutors were asking that she pay $517,000 for the full costs of the investigation.  Which makes me think, “Really???  Just $517,000 for the entire 2 ½ year investigation?”  It’s hard to believe that was all they spent on her.   If you watched Nancy Grace or any other talking head during this whole ordeal, you would think it was some multi-million dollar investigation going on.  I wonder if anyone else besides me is looking at this number and thinking that if perhaps a bit more was spent they could’ve actually convicted her.  Because really that seems like a small figure when you look at man hours alone.  Or is Florida really that cheap that they have numerous detectives working on this case for 2 ½ years almost non-stop that it only cost that?  Are Florida police being paid the same as McDonald’s workers?  I do think that this could have a silver lining for Anthony though.  Sure she has to pay out $100 grand but she could work it into the new reality show she is sure to get.  How else will she pay this back?  I see that she has one of three options available to her in paying this back.  One, she does the reality/talk TV show with O.J Simpson (via satellite) called “Getting Away with Murder” where they give hindsight advice to convicted killers and critique what they did wrong in getting caught.  Two, she makes the bestselling sex tape in history which she would because let’s face it:  We all like to see famous people naked.  Or three, she can start stripping and open her own escort service in Florida.  I think she could make some serious money on that one.  Disgruntled cops and angry parents could watch acquire her services and they would pay her to let them beat her senseless.  In reality she could incorporate all three options kind of like Kim Kardashian did.  She would be getting dirty with an angry Orlando detective while he pays extra to let him videotape it.  Afterwards both she and the cop decide to sell the tape to Vivid and pretend to be appalled when it was released.  Everyone in America sees the dirty romp on the film and pretends to be offended but keeps on watching anyway.  Then Ryan Seacrest and E! decide to offer her a reality/talk show with OJ.  She then becomes everyone’s favorite/most hated TV star and gets endorsement deals from Duct tape and Hefty trash bags.  No more money problems for Casey, and she would gain a new best friend in Kim Kardashian in the process.  Tell me that you can’t see all of this happening.

Netflix is losing customers presumably over the recent “price hike” that they implemented a few months ago.  I say “price hike” with some hesitation though.  Its $8 more per month to watch all of the movies and TV shows that you can cram into your life.  I want to know the backwards logic of the people complaining about this.  It costs $8-$10 per ticket to go to the movies plus the gas it takes to get there, the tub of butter with popcorn sprinkled in it, and a 108 oz. Coke to wash it down.  It costs $1 per night per DVD to rent through RedBox, which on the surface sounds good but no one ever returns their movies on time.  You rent the newest Jennifer Aniston formulaic love fest at RedBox on Friday night to watch with your wife.  You get home and your friends call you and want to come over.  Your friends hate Jennifer Aniston and bring over the new Jackass movie to watch instead.  The next day when it comes time to return it your wife says, “Oh but honey we didn’t get to watch it.  Let’s keep it for tonight and just bring it back tomorrow.  It’s just a dollar per night.”  You agree and you end up watching it with her two days later because plans kept getting changed and it’s only $1 per night.  By the 5^th day, you aren’t even thinking of the movie because:  1) it was a pretty forgettable Aniston movie and 2) your kid took and put it up in the drawer.  Well 20 days later RedBox charges you $25 for some horrible movie that you will never, ever watch again.  So, where is the logic in dropping a service that allows you to save a buttload of money and watch all the crappy Jennifer Aniston movies you desire? 

Listening to Bachmann & HPV: Only one can cause retardation.

I was reading one of the more recent articles about the "Upright Republican Brigade" yesterday that was talking about the debate between Perry and Bachmann that talked about one of the crazy lady's newest stances.  I didn't watch the debate, to be honest, because I really can't watch either party anymore.  It just frustrates me too bad.  The article talked about Bachmann taking a stab at Perry signing an executive order to have all girls entering 6th grade to get an HPV vaccine.  I thought to myself before reading on, "What is the big deal there?" but then I remembered who we were dealing with so I was hard pressed to read on.  Bachmann has her panties in a bunch because Perry thought it was a good idea to vaccinate girls against one of the most rampant STDs and leading cause in cervical cancer in a 2007 order.  She stated all the expected uber-conservative crap like it promotes sex to underage girls and it being a violation of civil liberties but then she said something so retarded that there was really no other words for it.  She stated that it can cause mental retardation and that there were no second chances for these girls once they get it.  What??  Really??  Before I did any research on my own I knew that this statement was a wildly inaccurate.

I expected the "promoting underage sex" thing because that is the first thing out of any of their mouths whenever anything having to do with sex is brought up.  Here it is people:  Kids, teens, or adults are going to have sex when they want to have sex.  You can give them all the information on why not to or what precautions one has to take and none of it matters because the day that little Susie decides she is going to let Bobby deflower her it’s going to happen.  Do these people really think that by giving girls a shot that could potentially save their cervixes they are going to turn on the horny switch and go on a Madonna-scaled-guy-banging bender?  Please, if any of the girls went out and had sex after the shot it was because they already wanted to.

As far as the violation of civil liberties goes, yeah I can kind of understand that because people don’t like the government telling them what to do.  But it’s not like Perry was ordering them all to get standardized female circumcision, he was addressing an actual public health problem that could be potentially avoided with a vaccine.   I have a feeling though that there would be an uproar if any political figure were to issue a mandate that stated all citizens were required to breathe air.  Bachmann would be on Fox News shouting, “Who does this Senator think he is?  It is my choice whether I breathe air or not.  I am urging all of my constituents to get a medical procedure to install gills on the side of their heads so they do not have to follow this cruel and brutal government mandate.  We will take to the lakes and streams if we have to, but we will not be forced into breathing.  And as we all know breathing air can cause Down’s syndrome and syphilis.”   You may laugh, but really can’t you just hear her saying something like that?  It’s really not that far-fetched.

Now we can get to my favorite part, the part where she states without any proven medical evidence to back her up that these vaccines cause Mental Retardation.  I actually lol’d on myself when I read that the first time.  I had zero evidence in front of me but I do have a brain.  I did do some research just to make sure and as a consensus doctors say the biggest side effect is some mild initial pain and possibly a mild fever in 20% of the patients.  I didn’t find this on some Dr. Oz site; I found this on the CDC website available for one and all to read.  It was a pretty reckless claim to make and just about as ridiculous as the above paragraph stating that air will cause syphilis and Down’s syndrome.  If her claim was true, we would’ve heard about it by now.  The CDC reports that roughly 35 million of these vaccines have been given and ZERO reports of mental retardation have been reported.  Sadly though, some people will not do any research.  They will blindly follow a crazy woman married to a closeted (and obvious) gay man who carries on clinics to rid people of homosexuality.  These same people will start to use her argument as fact and it will become some sort of cause to rally around.  Bachmann claims that she made this statement based on meeting a mother in Florida (really reliable) whose daughter had gotten the vaccine and turned into a retarded person.  She met ONE woman who made a claim that she didn’t even look into and made this bold of a statement for the world to read and know about?  That seems pretty dangerous to me.  She did try to make a semi-valid point about the whole HPV ordeal though.  She pointed out that Perry had received donations in the past from Merck, the company that made the vaccine, and that is why he mandated this proclamation.  The problem with that statement was the donations made from Merck were pretty small in terms of corporate donations at about $20,000 and under.  If a Senator or any politician could be bought for that little don’t you think we would be doing it on a daily basis?  That would be a pretty big ask on Merck’s part, “Hey, we will give you 20 grand if you will issue a statewide mandate in one of the largest states in the country to get our vaccine.”  See that just seems silly. 

Don’t think by reading this that I am in any way a big supporter of Perry either.  He is a mild, little less nutty version of Bachmann.  He is crazy about the whole gay marriage thing too and he jogs with a gun.  Being as staunchly against gay marriage as he is it does raise that question to me as to why he is.  My theory has long been that anytime a politician gets behind something stupid like banning gay marriage or outlawing marijuana that they have some sort of hidden reason.  Usually with the anti-gay rants it comes down to the fact they are self-hating homosexuals themselves or in Bachmann’s case she is married to a self-hating homosexual.  With the marijuana hatred it comes down to the fact that they are not getting paid to endorse it, instead they are being paid to be against it.  The whole political system (and I believe I have said this before but it’s ok) is like a giant auction with special interests on sale.  No politician actually believes in all the things that they stand behind, but they do believe in money.  If GLAAD were to cut a check for $10 million to Rick Perry this morning, he would be in the streets wearing a rainbow vest and assless chaps celebrating gay rights this afternoon.  None of it matters; all of them are full of it.  I used to consider myself a hardline liberal, but even that is B.S. anymore.  They all change their minds and back out of promises once they find out there is no money to be gained.  Why else do you think that tobacco is still legal?  A product that kills countless thousands each year, (I believe it is something like 1 every 6 minutes) stays on the market because tobacco corporations are paying off politicians every day.  So don’t take this as some giant liberal stance from me (although I technically still feel the way liberals are supposed to feel) but rather a funny observation on the ludicrousness of the political system.   

Grumpy Parenting (Part 2)

I talked about this the other day with how different the kids are and their unique little quirks and I got a couple of people asking me, "Well what about discipline?  They wouldn't act that way if I had em."  Oh yeah, I dare you.  Nay, I challenge anyone that thinks that they could make these kids not only listen to them but to also follow any sort of instruction that they are given.  Just like the uniqueness of our kids strange little quirky attitudes and behaviors we have to try to implement different punishments.  I'm not saying any of them work but we try.  Usually the punishements that we give either end of back firing or just do zero good. 

Like most little boys, mine like to fight and wrestle and stomp and scream.  It's a natural thing.  But I am waiting for the day when I walk into one of their rooms and see Asher (the 4 year old) standing over a tied up Kyler (the 8 year old) and beating him like a man.  The one thing that these boys share, besides some DNA, is their love of beating each other senseless.  We probably break up 3 or 4 minor altercations a day between different combinations of the three of them.  Its usually something light like screaming and pushing each other or the occasional head lock but it almost always stems from play fighting to begin with.  We have told them countless times to knock it off but it never actually will.  So we have tried a couple of different approaches to the problem.  First, we thought that since they were always fighting and wrestling in their room but being loud enough to resonate around the entire house that perhaps they should fight right in front of us in the living room.  Yeah, thats right parent sanctioned elementary school age Fight Club.  We explained that we were so tired of on-off fighting all day that perhaps they could just get it all out of their systems and wrestle it out in the living room under our supervision and our rules.  They thought we were insane, "Really?!?  You're really just going to let us fight?"  Yep, so we layed out the rules just like Brad Pitt and Ed Norton:

1. You do not tell grandparents
2. You do not tell grandparents
3. No kicking
4. No biting
5. No hitting each other in the private sector
6. Fights will go on as long as necessary.  You will fight until you are ready to stop fighting and realize that its stupid.
7. After the fight, there will be no more fighting.

Pretty solid rules, right?  Well, we did this routine 3 or 4 times after an entire weekend of nothing but them arguing, yelling, pushing, and hitting.  Keep in mind this is just the two larger kids, I think if they had their chance they would put Asher through the floor.  So, it would begin with them basically doing all of this awkward grappling around the floor and grunting and giggling at each other.  Neither of them really knew what to do, it wasn't like UFC or anything but after a few minutes either Katie or I would call it off when it seemed just too silly.  The boys would be in agreement that they wouldn't fight anymore but as they would walk away I would hear, "Yeah well, I'm pretty sure that I won."  "Oh no you didn't I won.  I kicked your butt"  "NOOOO!!!  I did!!"  "AHHHHHH"  So they wound up arguing again but they would make sure to keep their hands off each other.  So Parent Sanctioned Elementary Age Fight Club was only 50% effective. 

Our second attempt at creativity was a method my mom used on  my sisters, everytime they spent the day arguing she would make them hold hands on the couch for 30 minutes.  I thought the idea was silly at the time but when nothing else was working one day, I thought "Why not?"  So I called the boys in and said that I had had enough and I had a new punishment for them.  I always like other peoples ideas but I don't like wholeheartedly stealing them without giving it my own twist.  Once again, they thought I was out of  my mind and protested.  I won since I am the parent.  After locking hands together on the couch, they looked down with their anger faces.  "No, no" I said, "you have to look into each other's eyes and give one another compliments for the next 5 minutes."  More protesting came forth.  Kyler said, "I can't think of enough things to fill a minute up."  Gavin said, "I have nothing nice to say to him."  So I calmly explained that they could sit there holding hands until they figure it out and once the compliments started I would start the 5 minutes.  Watching them try to concoct nice things to say to each other was like watching a movie critic trying to say something good about an Adam Sandler flick. 

Gavin:  Uhhh, you are good at math.
Kyler:  Umm, you are ok playing the Wii
Gavin:  Uhh, you are nice to some people.
Kyler:  Well, I'm nicer than you.
Gavin:  Well, I did get the math award that you didn't
Kyler:  Well, you're not all that good at Wii, I was lying.
Gavin & Kyler:  Blah, blah, blah, I hate you!!

It started that way each time but I would have to steer them back into actual heartfelt compliments which was like steering a herd of blind cattle through a maze of jagged rocks.  Often when implementing this form of punishement, the five minutes could easily turn into 30 minutes of hand holding anger-bliss.  Which in turn took out time of the day and wound up making them angrier than they started.  Sure, they would back off of each other for a little while but in no time it went right back to normal. 

Grounding the kids from TV is another one of those famous punishments but I will say that it is perhaps a larger punishment for the parents.  When the kids have no option to go watch TV, that makes them wedge their heads even more firmly in my butt.  I got bombarded with constant, "I'm bored theres nothing to do."  I try to give them reading and such to do but they don't care, they want to make sure they take away whatever I am doing.  If I am quietly enjoying a football game on TV while they are grounded, I can guarantee that they will come in the room at least 27 times with randomly generated questions to ask.  The questions will not have any relevancy to anything that is going on either, they are completely random like:  How long can a fish live on land?  How big is the world's largest hamburger?  When was the first time you ever pooped?  Can a dog and a cat get married and have little pittens or kuppies?  When am I ungrounded?  That last one, that is the one that is never random, it is always a guarantee in their question arsenal.  We can tell them the exact day each time they ask and an hour or two will pass and they will ask again.  I think they are trying to confuse us because sometimes they will say that I said a different day the last time they asked.  "No, I didn't" I'll say.  "Yeah, dad you did.  You said we are ungrounded on Friday, not Saturday.  Remember???  Come on that means we only have one more day, remember???"  They will keep at me like this and I'll always have to ask my wife because I am now too confused as to which day they are actually ungrounded.  They don't bother asking her because they know that mommy never forgets but daddy is easily confused and passive. 

So these are the "punishments" that we inflict mutually, and it never works.  It is a nonstop cycle of beatings and screaming.  I want one of those imported English Nannies to come here and see how she could do.  Oh well until then we have the comfort of knowing that the good people at Pfizer are busy making more anti-psychotic meds for parents.

Grumpy Parenting (Part 1)

I am a father of three boys.  I love them all and there is nothing in this world I wouldn't do for them.  Ok, having gotten that out of the way:  My God parenting is hard.  With three kids I get to deal with three separate personalities, three sets of different problems, three different standards of discipline, and three mouths that never, ever stop telling me stuff.  One would think that since they all came from my loins that the personalities would be similar, like me.  I enjoy peace and quiet, I like to sit down be quiet and watch football or a movie, I can read by myself and be perfectly happy, and my kids share none of these same things with me or with each other.  They do everything with the volume at 11 and with total disregard to whatever my wife and I are doing. I am pretty sure they all like me to some point but I question it when my head is buried in my hands and I have a headache the size of Courtney Love's liver.  As with many things in my life, I like to document it, compartmentalize it, and look at ways to improve it or at least deal with it at a manageable level.

The Three Personalities:  Or What it was probably like living with Sybil

Gavin is the oldest, he just turned 10.  He is about as close to me in the personality department as any of them but that’s still not saying a lot.  He likes to have quiet moments and at times likes to be left alone but both of these occur at the frequency of the Full Moon.  He desires attention, constant, incessant, unflinching attention.  Everything he asks or states to anyone within listening distance is followed up with the phrase, “Right dad?” or “Right mom?”  I think “Well if you knew it was right then why are you asking me?”  He is loud and boisterous as is physically possible.  But yet he is so super sensitive.  When I was a kid, I knew that joking around and busting your buddies’ balls was part of it.  I got pissed a few times and lost my temper when kids would give me a hard time but Gavin takes everything super personal.  Every time another kid says anything to him that is the least bit sideways he gets really emotional and pissed off.  He’ll get off the bus and I can see immediately that he is mad because his face is all flared up and he is huffing dramatically and I think “Ok, someone said they don’t like him or they don’t want to be his friend.”  Sure enough he gets in the CrapMobile (my loving name for my 2000 Explorer which I would like to see one day set on fire) and says, “Dad, I don’t want to talk about why I am mad.  But I am really mad; just tell them to leave me alone.”  This is the first thing out his mouth, or there is this one, “I hate Kyler, he’s the biggest jerk in the world.”  Then I get to start the process of decoding what is bothering him for the day.  Getting clear and concise information from a ten year old makes me understand why they use torture to extract information from terrorists at Guantanamo.  It’s almost impossible.  We go round and round while his story changes to who wronged him and how for the day with constant interruptions from his brother Kyler.  Kyler usually spends this time making sure that he can either insult Gavin or make him feel stupid, it’s part of his life’s work.  Like I said Gavin is usually pissed about some fat older kid picking on him or not being his friend.  I almost always have the same advice for him, “All of these kids are idiots.  It doesn’t matter what any of them think of you or what they say because they are morons.”  Followed up with me telling him to quit being so sensitive to every time another kid farts in his direction.  So to sum it up for Gavin, he is a hyper-sensitive, attention-starved, loud, occasional quiet kid.

Next, we have Kyler he is eight.  Kyler has my sensibility of being a smartass.  He really enjoys making others feel stupid and making sure that he is absolutely right about everything.  So maybe he is a little closer to what I was as a kid after all.  I think its okay for the kids to be a little snarky but if they are going to do it I want them to at least be funny and/or witty about it.  Being able to shoot back at people with clever little quips is a good defense mechanism; it’s like a verbal punch.  However, neither of them really possesses the ability of a good comeback and the smartassedness (new word) of Kyler makes me want to throw myself on the nearest pile of used hypodermic needles.  He has something to say about absolutely everything.  I can tell them to quiet down when I’m on the phone and he will continue to jump around making monkey sounds while screaming “You didn’t say please!!!”  He has a big problem with being correct, even if he has no idea what he is talking about and he presents every argument in his favor with "I'm just sayin."   He can ask me to explain something like, how come it rains?  I will start to explain evaporation and water accumulation and Kyler will interrupt with his own theory like “Isn’t rain really just God crying?”  I’ll tell him no and keep explaining, and he’ll say, “Well it could be God’s tears you don’t know that.  I'm just sayin'”  Again I’ll tell him no and to let me finish.  I might get another word or two out explaining the science of raining and he’ll tell me, “'I'm just sayin, I think that the scientists might have  it wrong because they don’t believe in God and so they don’t realize that rain is really God crying”  “No, no, no” I say, “that is not it.  It’s all about condensation and evaporation and all of that crap.  Its proven, it’s in your science book.”  I can go home and Google it and show him diagrams and everything showing how it works, and I will still get the, “Well, maybe, I'm just sayin.”  It is like this with every single subject, he asks you but he already has his answer in his head no matter what.  You can pile all the data in front of him and it simply will not matter.  Jesus himself could fly down to Earth, take him by the hand, and explain the same rain concept to him and Kyler would say, “Well have you ever thought it was perhaps your dad’s tears?  I'm just sayin.”

Asher is the little one, he is four and quite possibly the hardest one of all.  To his credit though, he has had delays in speech and other things but he is smart and funny as can be.  He can also be a smaller scaled version of the Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker.  He thrives on mayhem around the house.  From the moment his eyes open in the morning, he is running in 5^th gear all the way.  He has figured out how to climb onto every appliance in the house and throw things from it.  I found him on top of the refrigerator one day and he threw an entire box of cereal at me.  He is like the honey badger….he doesn’t give a shit.  He, like Gavin, needs the constant attention as well which is a little more understandable since he is four but his is an extreme case.  When it is just me and him at the house, I cannot do anything alone or get anything done.  He follows me into the bathroom and will sit there until I am finished.  He will stand outside of the shower curtain while I am showering.  He’s everywhere.  If I were to go crawling on my knees through a pit of broken glass and rubbing alcohol, he would insist on following me.  He also has a big deal with sleeping, which I think is part of the whole attention thing or maybe his love of mayhem.  He will stay awake until 5 am if he knows that it will keep me from being comfortable.  Yeah, that’s the other thing; he HATES other people being comfortable.  Just last night I was tired as hell and wanted nothing more than to lay down and go to sleep.  Asher refused.  I put him in bed, he screamed and hopped up.  I put him back and shut the door, he screamed and ran out of the room and found me.  I took him back again and I hid this time, he got up screaming and ran out the front door when he couldn’t find me.  I tried sitting in the recliner and rocking him to sleep and he was literally slapping himself to stay awake.  I didn’t get him to sleep until 2:30 in the morning and to make sure there would be no comfort in the morning he woke up at 6:15 and hasn’t slowed down yet.  He is the Terminator of Toddlers.  He requires no sleep, little food, and he will not stop until he has gotten all of your attention and ensured your total discomfort.

I know that probably all of these things about the kids are typical but even though I have been a parent for 10 years now I still feel like I don’t know what I am doing.  At times I just want to shoot giant elephant tranquilizers into them and watch them sleep.

A non-preachy 9/11 story: My day in Atlanta

I know that right now the internet is flooded with 9/11 stories, conspiracy theories, clips, and controversies but I still felt compelled to write about it anyway.  I have never put down in writing what it was like that day for me.  No, nothing amazing happened and I wasn’t directly affected by the loss of a loved one.  Nope, for me 9/11 made me look like an asshole. 

On September 10^th 2001, I was sitting in my parents house in Lawrenceville, GA and arguing about politics with them.  I loved to argue when I was in my early 20’s because I was right about everything and everyone around me was stupid.  We were arguing about welfare and my folks had a differing belief than mine.  I don’t quite remember what their stance was on it, but I know it was to the effect that too much money was going into the welfare system.  Now, as then, I believe that the welfare system is and can be a positive tool to be used in helping out people who have fallen on hard times.  There are some inherent problems with it like obvious abuse, staying on it for too long, and it only being enough to get a person by on the bare minimum and repressing them by not having enough available resources for welfare recipients to better themselves, etc, etc.  I could go on about this but perhaps that is for another entry.  Anyway, I made my argument and felt valid.  My parents saw some of my points but then I added in a statement for fun that I would eat the very next morning.  I said, “I don’t see why we spend so much government money on the military.  It’s not like we have people attacking us or anything.  It’s a colossal waste of money that we should really be scaling back on.”  I said this because it was only a few days before that I heard that we were spending something like $100 million per tank or something and I thought how ridiculous it was.  My parents told me that it was necessary even though at times we may go a little overboard on it, but I was adamant in my rightness.  I spouted off about how we never get in fights of our own and that we are always running to get in someone else’s fight.  (Which is still kind of true)  But I didn’t think that we needed anything above the bare minimum.

The debate ended as it always did back then with my parents saying, “Where did we go so wrong with that boy?” and me feeling good about being right.  I really didn’t think about it anymore that night because we got into those little debates all the time.  I had just started getting interested in politics and still had the crazy notion that different politicians and political parties could and would make a difference.  I know now that it is all just one giant political system based upon money.  I can really equate our political system to an auction of interests.  Every stance and belief is based upon who is willing to pay top dollar for a party member to stand behind it.  If GLAAD offered Rick Perry a $10 million dollar donation for endorsement tomorrow, don’t think he wouldn’t take it.  He would line up in the nearest gay pride parade he could find and would finally unlock Michelle Bachmann’s husband out of the closet.  Same with democrats, if an abortion abolitionist offered up a hefty check to either Clinton, they would quickly change their stance and start protesting outside of the nearest abortion clinic.  Anyway back to my 9/11 story.  I thought and still think that Bush was a moronic little puppet but I didn’t exactly know why at the time (it was probably because he previously almost ruined the Texas Rangers.  Who knows?  I was 20.) 

I got up the next morning for work, ate my Dunkin’ Donuts, and started my 1 ½ hour commute to RMA Atlanta.  The drive should technically have been about 20-30 minutes at best but Atlanta, at the time, had one of the nation’s worst traffic problems.  I turned on the radio to 99x as I always did because I didn’t own an iPod and my CD player had some sort of substance shoved into it.  It was on one of those morning radio shows were they try to make everything funny and usually go so over the top that it winds up being stupid.  They always kept a TV on onset and had it tuned to CNN so they could talk about anything up the minute and make fun of it or discuss it.  Well, apparently at first these DJs didn’t see any actual footage and only heard of a plane running into one of the Twin Towers because I remember Jimmy (don’t remember the last name) making a joke saying that he hoped the tail end wasn’t sticking out too far of the building so that we couldn’t see what airline it was.  He joked about how bad the publicity would be when it was found out that some pilot got drunk for American Airlines and ran into a giant building.  Everyone joined in laughter and even I did, but then they got deadly silent followed by sounds of gasps and “Oh my God!”s.  I wasn’t very far along in my commute and was in the middle of the interstate so it wasn’t like I could pull over and watch the news somewhere.  So I was like, “What is going on?  What’s the big deal?”  The details started flooding in and traffic came to an absolute halt, zero movement.  All I could do was listen to these jackasses on 99x suddenly shed their “funny” personas and start to act concerned.  It was surreal looking around to the thousands of other cars surrounding me and seeing the same “WTF” face on everyone.  I was still a dinosaur and didn’t have a cell phone yet, but I saw everyone dialing away furiously and frantically speaking to whomever on the other end of the line.  As I was crawling along through the interstate, I heard another “Oh Shit” moment when the on-air guys announced in horror that a second plane had hit.  It was at that point when I first heard the words “terrorist attack”.  The same moron that had made the drunken pilot joke suggested this, and immediately to show how my brain worked I thought, “Dammit, they were right!!”  I was pissed because I was wrong and my point had been shat upon.  I got over it and made my way to work in about 2 hours instead of the regular 25 mile 90 minute drive. 

I arrived at work, and was oddly enough still not that affected.  I thought it was awful and it sucked but I really couldn’t grasp it until I saw actual video proof.  All the bosses had CNN on, with the footage on loop.  I stood there in awe watching the burning buildings and the jumping people.  I worked in a debt collection center at the time and we were contracted through Nextel.  Our job was to call people with a past due bill, ask for the money, and if they didn’t come up with it, we would shut their phones off.  Now imagine trying to prepare to do that on this day.  Many customers were located in New York and our bosses expected us to make these calls as usual.  I protested after doing my first call.  I called a woman in New Jersey who had a $100 or so past due bill and gave my whole spill.

Me:  Hi, this is Dustin Elliott calling with Nextel.  Can I speak with _____?

Lady:  Are you f*ckin’ kidding me?  Do you see the news?  You really gonna call me right now and the world is gonna end? 

Me:  Yep, pretty much.  I know.  I feel like an ass, don’t worry about it.

My boss standing behind me:  No, no, no you better be asking for that balance!!

Me:  Ma’am, I need to ask you …. (click)

I couldn’t do it.  I hung up on her.  I turned around and told my boss that it wasn’t right, we couldn’t be calling these people.  I logged out of my computer and noticed that several others were as well.  All the bosses were telling us to get back on the phones but they could see that their effort was futile.  People were emotional and crying to customers, others were exchanging information about what was going on with customers, and nothing was getting done.  I raised my eyebrows as if to say, “See?  I told you” to my boss.  They all gathered us around and said they would call Nextel headquarters and find out what to do.  Soon enough, they announced that they were able to determine that it was one of the douchiest moves in history if we continued to call customers and offered to let us go home.  I never passed the opportunity to go home early and since I had an 11 day old son at home, I took off. 

Leaving Atlanta that morning was like trying to shove a watermelon into a fly’s rectum.  I spent the next 3 hours trying to make my way back home.  I was listening to every available radio station and gathering information.  It was miserable, I smoked a whole pack of Newport’s on the way and heard the same news over and over.  I arrived home so I could finally get to sit down and watch all the horror. 

As I was watching, I really realized that we are a nation of voyeurs and rubberneckers.  We constantly watched the same footage over and over.  We were glued and hooked to the mayhem.  My lady friend actually made a good point after a few minutes, she said, “Why are we still watching this?  We have seen it now and nothing is going to change.  Find a channel that has Spongebob or something, I’m sick of this.”  She was right and wrong.  Nothing was going to change but after you see something like that on TV you are afraid to walk away because you don’t know what might happen next.  Plus I was wanting to see if all the rumors would be debunked throughout the day.  At work, rumors had been flying about attacks all over the place and that Olympic Park was being burnt to the ground and that bombs were being set off in every federal building.  Of course, none of that actually happened but that’s rumors for you.  So I sat up until about 2 a.m. watching the news and feel asleep with dreams of burning buildings.  The next day I got the call from my dad saying, “What was it you were saying about our national security the other day?”  Yeah, I was wrong.

Many stories were pretty much similar all across the country I’m sure.  I am not special but I just remembered a few of the bullet points of that day that just seem odd to me and thought I would write it down finally before I forget.  A lot has changed in those 10 years, we got really patriotic for about 6-8 months, no one questioned anything, we went to war with Iraq, we “won” the war, we stayed over there and still are, we grew up, and came full circle back to being cynical about everything again.  I don’t think I ever lost my cynicism during the whole thing.  I thought it was stupid from the beginning to go to Iraq since the terrorists were supposed to be in Afghanistan.  I was never really a conspiracy theorist about the whole 9/11 thing although there are a few odd things that happened and some shifty situations went on.  I do continue to at least listen to alternative ideas and am open to other suggestions, but I won’t be a fanatic about it.  I thought country music fans were morons for banning the Dixie Chicks.  It was the most moronic stance I have ever seen a community take.  I don’t care how patriotic Toby Keith is, I think he is a redneck jackass who is just capitalizing off of other’s pain.  So, see I kept up my cynicism.

I do support our troops and all that they have done, I just think that perhaps the people behind the curtains don't know what the hell they are doing.  Just wanted to make that clear.

Just a long form vent to get it out of my system.

Are people inherently good or bad?  Can someone really be born with little devil horns and have the agenda of being a soul-sucking, human hemorrhoid hell bent on being a dick to everyone that they ever come across?  Or can a person be born pure and happy with the predispostion of being cool to everyone, kind of like a "hippy Jesus" who goes around doing nice things for other people and making them feel better about themselves?  Or do we learn to be who we are?  Do all of life's little experiences shape us into the person we become?

I tend to lean towards the nurture side of the "nature vs. nurture" argument when it comes to how we treat people.  I believe that nature gives us the basis and the ground work for a human being but those around us have to do the rest.  Humans are like a new computer.  You take it out of the box, get everything hooked up but until the user actually does something with it, it is a useless hunk of mass.  The user determines what the computer is going to be used for.   The user decides what programs to put on it, what information is downloaded, etc.  The user ultimately determines if the computer is going to be a non-stop porn machine, a vehicle for writing an award winning screenplay, or equate the algorithm of equalateral mechodynamics.  In life the "user" is all the people that we surround ourselves with, we are the computer.  We get all the input from the people around us and they are supposed to shape our very being. 

Having said all of that in dramatic fashion, it leads me to wonder, "Who the hell shaped some of these a**holes?"  How do we arrive at products like Michelle Bachmann, Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussien, Fred Phelps, and Gallagher?  Some people seem so grossly inhuman that it leads me to think that perhaps they were raised by some sort of mutant species that only lives off of human waste by-products.  Maybe monkeys or gorillas with hidden agendas are raising them.  I'm not sure.  I do my best not to surround myself with people like this as I am sure most people with common sense do as well.  But we all inevitably find ourselves at some point or another being around these mutants.  I see shifty people taking advantage of others, I see sociopaths destroying other souls just so they can possibly feel something, I see liars who will cheat to get everything that they want.  It is the good "hippy Jesus" types of people that they feed off.

I am not sure which side I am on.  I know that I like to think of myself as a decent human being.  I like the feeling of helping someone or making someone feel better, but I also know that I have done some dirt in my life as well.  I have wronged others, I would've kicked my own ass if it was possible in some instances.  I do know that I despise the human hemorrhoids though.  I want to abolish them.  I think that it would be a great idea to just dump them all off into that radioactive hell-hole in Japan.

I don't know what my point is in saying all of this, I think this is just a long form, off the wall vent.  I just had to get this out of my system in order to move on mentally, so next time I sit down and write it can be something worth a damn.