Hopscotch

On my walk home from work three days ago I noticed a pink and blue chalk etching of a hopscotch line.*

*I don't know that I've ever before played hopscotch and if I have, I'm certain I didn't play it correctly. I'm not even really sure what the thing kids jump on is called. I mean, I know that they're literally jumping on the sidewalk, but doesn't the sidewalk turn into something when you draw numbered hopscotch boxes on it? I was always under the impression that hopscotch was what you did, not what you did it on. Are you hopscotching or are you jumping on the hopscotch?

I thought nothing of it three days ago. It was poorly created, the chalked lines were uneven, shaky and faint and the numbers inside each box were barely legible. I'm not sure I would've recognized them as numbers had I not already known that numerals were supposed to go inside the boxes.

Three days ago, it was fairly easy for me to glance at the 50 hopscotch boxes and forget I ever saw them. Some kids had a nice weekend. It's better than playing videogames, Twittering about how atrocious the new Facebook layout is or putting the finishing touches on the new meth lab. Good for the kids. One point for the antiquated ideal of youth.

Two days ago I noticed the hopscotch boxes had extended to the end of the block. There were 650 boxes now. I imagined the calf muscles these tiny children were going to have by the end of this hopscotch game.* I was happy the children were setting lofty goals for themselves and playing outside in order to attain those goals.

*Again, forgive my hopscotch naivete, but I'm not sure how one wins the game. For the sake of this blog, I'll assume one wins only after their opponent trips while hopping and crumbles to the ground. Kinda like Russian drinking games, but instead of trading shots of vodka, it's hopscotch and instead of barfing, it's falling.

Yesterday, I came upon the hopscotch again and found two kids, a boy and a girl, both about 11-years-old, at the end of the massive row of hopscotch boxes. I've made it quite clear at this point that I'm ignorant to all things hopscotch,* so perhaps I've got it all wrong, but they seemed a little old for hopscotch. These two kids really looked 11 and by the time I was 11, I was playing baseball. I don't want to come off as any sort of elitist, but a baseball field's chalk lines indicating fair and foul are about the only things that a sport like baseball and a children's game like hopscotch have in common. I was a little disheartened that these kids looked 11 and not six.

*I'm close to being ignorant about all things scotch. I'm clueless on hopscotch, I know nothing about the whiskey, except that it makes me want to die just sniffing it. I run shallow on my Scottish history other than that I really dig the Fratellis. My only saving grace is that I know shit loads of stuff about Scotch tape. For instance, did you know that "cellophane tape" originated with two sticky sides instead of one (what we now call double-sided tape), but to cut costs, 3M produced the tape with only one sticky side? A Minnesota automobile trader said that the Scotch bosses at 3M were stingy and the name stuck (no pun intended).

Anyway, they had traversed the street and had continued on the adjacent sidewalk starting at 651. I wondered what they would do about the 20 feet in between hopscotch box 650 on one side of the street and hopscotch box 651 on the other. Was the street a free zone? Are you allowed to have a free zone in hopscotch?

Is it halftime?

It didn't really matter. The street, the ever-growing numbers, the ages of the kids, the rules of the game. None of it mattered. Kids will be kids. They were setting goals. Fun goals. Innocent goals.

As I walked closer to the children etching an even greater number of chalk boxes, I noticed that one kid wasn't helping the other. The boy was, in fact, slapping the nearby concrete with a fallen tree branch. The girl was etching each box with what can only be called careless consumption. There was no effort put into each box (which was why a box created by an 11-year-old looked to have been created by a six-year-old). She wasn't making a hopscotch table, she was absently drawing boxes and numbering them, like she had nothing better to do.

There were no rocks, no hopping, no competition. Nothing. Just two stupid kids spending the time not taken up by drooling to stand around doodling on the ground with blue and pink chalk.

What a betrayal! This was not a quaint hearkening back to Opie Taylor or Wally and the Beav'. This was two uncreative, bored-ass idiots drawing boxes on the ground and swinging sticks around like a bunch of Appalachian mounties. Video games would have been better. The meth labs, the Facebook... all better than this idle nothingness.

Ever see a toddler with pudding smeared all over his or her face? Sure, part of you is sad that the child has gross poop-like desert gelatin surrounding its mouth, but most of you is annoyed that that child hasn't got the sense to wipe off the mess or not allow the mess to happen in the first place.

In that analogy hopscotch is the pudding.

Here I thought these kids were the last vestige of old fashioned outdoor play. Overachieving competitors in a simple elementary game. Turns out they're just "Deliverance" with a pail-full of chalk nubs in place of banjos.

Oh the humanity.

The Freedom to Fail

NO JAVELIN ZONE: Leryn Franco might not have displayed much talent in Beijing,
but perhaps she displayed something of more abstract importance.

With the 2008 Beijing Olympics 3/4 finished, it seems only appropriate that I write something about the global event. And because this is me we're talking about, it shouldn't surprise you that it will have little to do with the athleticism or glory of the Games.

But that's okay because the subject of my Olympic affections also has little to do with athleticism or glory.

Leryn Franco, a javeliner from Paraguay, caught my attention about a week ago when, for my job, I was researching some of the lesser known Olympic events. Two things need mentioning about Franco right off:

1) Franco is an attractive woman and for that reason alone, she caught my attention.
2) Franco failed to qualify in the javelin event in which she was scheduled to compete.

So why, in an Olympic season with Michael Phelps, Shawn Johnson and Usain Bolt, would I bother writing about this chick? Why not just post a few pictures and move on? Well, like I said, this hasn't much to do with athletics at all and Lord knows I don't have anything to say about those Olympic champions that hasn't already been said thousands of times.* Contrarily, Leryn Franco doesn't represent greatness. She doesn't even represent competitiveness and therefore, most will lump her in with other hot athletic duds such as Anna Kournikova, Andy Roddick and Michelle Wie. Franco came in the bottom two in both of her qualifiers (51st and 25th). For all intents and purposes, she really didn't seem to have any business being at the Olympics and could not have done much worse. Your skepticism will most certainly increase when I tell you that back home, Ms. Franco is both a runner-up in the 2006 Ms. Paraguay pageant and full-time model. Her modeling, in fact, is how she pays the bills while pretending to be an Olympian.

At this point, I can almost hear your eyes rolling around in their sockets. If I were interested in this woman only because she were attractive, I'd expect this reaction, perhaps even demand it. But she's different enough from athletes like Kournikova, the Russian tennis player, who started the tennis circuit as a promising prodigy, lost most of her competitive skill and became fetishized as a symbolic female athlete instead of an actual one. Kournikova is really no longer an athlete and therefore is nothing more than a famous personality. But Franco is not that, because Franco does not get paid to throw a javelin. She gets paid to be attractive, a job for which she is clearly well-suited. She then takes that money and spends it (perhaps "wastes it" is more appropriate) on training for the Olympics, where she embarrasses herself two Olympics in a row (at 22, she tossed a javelin in the Athens Games and came in 42nd place).

Why would anyone do this?

People became annoyed with America's last tennis hope Andy Roddick because they felt he stopped caring about his sport. Teenage golfer Michelle Wie was seen as someone too wrapped up in her own hype to effectively compete anymore. Franco flies under that radar and in fact, seems only to enjoy the process of throwing a javelin, perhaps too, she enjoys the process of representing her country without having to wear a bikini to do it. Either way you slice it, Leryn Franco represents something that us Americans claim we hold dear: passion and spirit.

There's a tacit sprytness present in someone who would fashion a career in modeling so she can finance her frivolous grand-scale hobby. Musician Jack Johnson woke up on the beach one day, decided he wanted to stop being a professional surfer and start making crappy mellow music and he's generally well-liked for it. I see the same preciousness in Franco.

There was never a point in which Franco could have thought she would qualify for the final javelin competition. During the Beijing qualifiers she threw the spear 12 meters shorter than her 2007 personal best. Had she matched her personal best at the Beijing trials, she still would have only been ranked 37th, 29 slots out of qualifying. No chance.

Varieties of beautiful people are represented in these games. U.S. Softball pitcher Jennie Finch represent everything perfect about humanity (talent, beauty and dedication)**, U.S. hurdler Lolo Jones represents everything real about humanity (skill, drive, missed opportunity) and Leryn Franco represents a lighter, freer, humbler quality of humanity (the personal desire to compete and the freedom to fail).

Leryn Franco is, at best, a tiny footnote of these grand Games, but in a way, that tinniness is why it's worth noting. It's quirky. Paraguay is a quirky country, javelin is a quirky sport and her involvement in these games was a quirky failure. Most importantly however, the spoils of javelin chucking are enough to compel her to embark on that failure.

This free desire has been grossly underrepresented.

Click on photo for extra large dose of beauty... and talent?

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* Except maybe that Shawn Johnson has two different sized eyebrows. Has anyone else noticed this? In every picture and every video clip, it looks as if she's raising one eyebrow. It makes her look cocky and perhaps a bit smarmy and if she doesn't make the Wheaties box like Mary Lou, you'll know why.

** Ironically, less than 12 hours after I wrote this, the U.S. Softball team lost their first game since September 21, 2000. The loss can only be looked at as a massive upset and proof that even Jennie Finch is flawed.

Big Bad Dad

When I was younger, I used to think I was extraordinary because I could hear noise coming out of a dog whistle. All my life, everyone kept telling me that dog whistles were undetectable by human ears. But everytime I heard someone blowing a dog whistle, I mistook the sound of air escaping to be the actual sound that dogs were hearing from miles away.

I can't explain to you how special I felt by my odd superpower. When my excitement overtook me and I could no longer keep my awesomeness a secret, it was my father that I opted to confide in. I told him everything about my acute sense of hearing.

He paused. Looked at me. He smiled and bent down close to me. He told me that the sound I was hearing was just air, not sound waves.

I was not a superhero of the hearing world.
I was just a dumb little kid.

Looking back, given my father's tendencies to mess with my head (see previous blog entitled Poop Dudes (a.k.a. Blog of Awesomeness) ), I'm shocked that he let me in on reality.
Thinking back on it, if it were me, I would have let my stupid son continue thinking he was superhuman.

"Dad! Dad! I can hear high pitched sounds like a dog. Humans can't hear dog whistles, but I can. Do you hear that? That man is blowing a dog whistle! I can hear a noise coming from it!"
"Son, I don't hear anything. There is no sound eminating from that man's device." (I plan on talking to my 4-year-old as if he was a college professor)
"But Dad, I can hear..."
"Son, whistles make noise. That man is simply using a fancy metal cigarette, for some inexplicable reason. But as I cannot hear any sound coming from it at all, in any way, I'm quite sure it is not a whistle."
"But Dad, I can hear a little..."
"Nonsense son. Now go ahead and play on the monkeybars and don't tell your mother that we ever had this conversation."

I'm not going to be a very good father.

* * * *

They say that a child learns more in the first two years of their life than all the other years combined. They also say that a parent will make most of their mistakes in that same span of time. And despite the fact that every parent goes through this and a certain percentage of those kids turn out pretty okay anyway, I'm convinved my kid will not be in that same certain percentage.

Quite the contrary, I'm convinced my kid is going to be either the prom queen-type who sleeps with the entire football team, and purges every meal she has from 10th grade to her college graduation, or that I'm gonna have the long-haired trench-coat kid who constantly carves the anarchy symbol into his lunch table (which he will no doubtedly be sitting at alone).

Currently, this is my greatest fear in life. Not whether I will succeed in graduate school, nor my progress on becoming a rock god, not even in finding a girlfriend who isn't wildly crazy; nope.
I'm horrified that my unborn, unconceived child is going to be a tramp or a maniac.
I stay up at nights wondering how in the hell I can possibly prevent dirty high school boys from slurping all over my daughter or how I can keep my son from murdering me because I bought the wrong type of peanut butter.

Seriously. I'm almost 25-years-old and I'm already horrified that my 18-year-old son is going to commit patricide.

In an effort to assuage my worry, I have developed a list of the three most important things that are going to have to happen if I'm going to have any chance at raising a successful family.
It is as follows:

1) My wife will not mind being the "bad cop".
I don't mind being the heavy artillary when the going gets rough; the strong silent, wait-'til-your-father-gets-home-type, but I'm really gonna need my wife to do the bulk of the daily nagging.

I'm afraid I just ain't got it in me.

Also, as an aside, I'd really like it if she cooked the bulk of the dinners. I don't mean "cook me my dinner" in the caveman shauvenistic type of way. I'll be happy to do the dishes and take out the trash and drive the kids to school. The problem is that I'm a very bad cook, nor do I enjoy the process of cooking in any way shape or form. I do enjoy eating food , nor am I a picky eater.
But if dinner was left up to me, our family is looking at many a night of mac & cheese and pizza.
But no, nevermind that. It's most important that she be the bad cop.

2) If I have a daughter, she cannot be named Jenna. If I have only one contribution to the manner in which we raise our daughter, this is my contribution.

I have a long-standing belief that any child born a "Jenna" is doomed to both beauty, popularity and trampishness. Let me ask you, have you ever met an ugly Jenna? You haven't.
I want my daughter to be smart and well-balanced. And if that means I have to trade a pair of big green eyes for a fuzzy upper-lip, then fine.

Her name will apparently be Beatrice.

3) When I was little, I enjoyed three things; my green blanket (which was essentially a soft dish rag that my grandmother gave me and that I cleverly named "green blanket" based on it's color and comparative size to me), 'Sesame Street' (no explanation needed - I hope), and rock 'n' roll music.

The first two are normal little kid things, but the third is a direct result of my parents' accomplishing what I hope to one day. Both my mom and dad loved rock music. Growing up in the 80's I'm sure they felt it their duty to shield me from Oingo Boingo and Culture Club.

So instead of Ah-Ha, I got the Beach Boys.
Instead of Bananrama, I got Chuck Berry.
And instead of Devo, I got Creedence.

I'm sure there are quite a lot of parents out there who would toss their limp bodies in front of a speeding bus in order to save their offspring. But how many of them would have the forethought of mind to shield their child from the horrors that would be music in the 80's? *
I'm not sure how they did it, but I am convinced that I am a better person because I don't like Dave Matthews or Morrissey and I'm gonna have to load both guns if I am to repeat what my parents did with me with my own kids in this age of instantaneous media and free downloading of crap in just about every outlet imaginable.

I think I'll start by playing guitar for my kids from the start. From infancy, I plan on serendaing them to sleep. I've even got a playlist that I occasionally practice when I am alone in my apartment.

SET-LIST FOR BEATRICE'S NIGHTY-NIGHT TIME

1. Chicken Lips and Lizard Hips (originally written by Bruce Springsteen)
2. Wonderful Word (originally written by Sam Cooke)
3. Hushabye (originally sung to me by my dad)
4. Pony Boy (originally sung to Springsteen's kids by Springsteen)
5. Q'est Seras-Seras (originally sung to me by my mom)
6. Don't Fear the Reaper (originally written by Blue Oyster Cult)

That last one might not make the final cut, but it seems like a good idea to keep my kids alert at all times. Besides, if Beatrice isn't asleep by the sixth song, then she's probably not going to sleep at all that night and so I might as well give her something to think about.

* * * *

I feel cool now.

I'm in the middle of my twenties and I feel cool.

I look around and people older than me seem less cool. And people younger than me haven't figured out how to attain full coolness yet. But when you are a dad, you can be Keith Richards or Brad Pitt and to your own kids, you are not cool.

I don't look forward to that status. It's not attractive, but it's true. Being a parent automatically warrants that everything you do, say, wear, watch, or touch is suddenly and tragically uncool. I consider my parents to be at the tip-top of the "Bell Curve of Cool", but inescapably - despite my feelings - my father is to blame for ending Will Smith's street-cred in the autumn of 1997 when he casually used the word 'jiggy' in a sentence.

There was nothing to be done about it. My dad couldn't have seen it coming. He just forgot his powers of geektitude.

The teenage years are going to be tough for me, because teenagers are contrary. They seek out what is normal and do whatever is 180 degrees different from that norm, no matter how inexplicably assinine such actions and interests are. It takes a rare Rory Gilmore-type kid to identify and embrace what they are truly interested in.

One of my good friends has a brother who is six years younger than she is. He is a typical punkass skater kid:
Blue hair.
Oddly painted fingernails
Blink 182 patches on his backpack.
A chain connecting his wallet to his board shorts.

You get the idea.

The funny thing about this kid is, he's constantly sneaking downstairs into the basement, alone, to watch old musicals from the sixties. All of his friends would ostracize this kid for watching 'Singin' In the Rain' and 'Seven Brides For Seven Brothers' if they knew, so he hides it.
But those musicals are a part of him, a part of how he's been raised.

It used to be, teenagers had to hide what they hated most about themselves, now they hide the things that make them happy.

Now everyone knows that each of his friends were sneaking into their respective basements as well watching... who knows?

Reruns of 'Knots Landing' or Raffi videos or Oprah. It could have been anything.
What I'm trying to illustrate is that people very rarely feel comfortable being themselves in front of the people they call their friends. Teenagers are the most obvious case of this and I expect nothing less from my own kids. I just hope that when they sneak down into the basement of our house that they listen to old Who or Sam Cooke records instead of making bombs.

Not that my kids would get very far in their bomb making endeavors. My kids will never be alone long enough to get away with any of those shenanigans. By the time I have kids smart enough to trick me, our nation will have enough satellites up in the sky to keep tabs on them no matter where they go.

And I plan to.

Oh boy, do I plan to.

I fully admit that my kid will have no privacy. If a kid has privacy, you can damn sure bet he or 

she is gonna take advantage of it. But I also know that I'll be raising a rebellious little turd if I'm smothering. So my breech of privacy has to come sneaky-style.

Essentially, I will be forced to utilize CIA tactics.

When inspecting my kid's bedroom, I am free to observe anything in plain view... that's including diaries and photo albums. If those goldmines of a teenagers thoughts and actions are out... place your bets now on how often I'll be perusing them. Also, if there are any guests being entertained inside my kid's bedroom, you can rest assured all antannae will be raised and humming. There ain't no program on television as riveting or important as an inter-bedroom discussion.

If there is a member of the opposite sex in there... well there won't be, not without the door open and industrial flood lights shining through the windows and doors, anyway.
And if it's a member of the same sex, and they're in my child's room, then that means it's gossip time and that's even better than my child's diary.

It will be like my own personal 'Laguna Beach'.
Wait... wasn't one of those girls on that show named Jenna?
Hmm... I'll have to look into that.

I just hope I'll be able to create a tolerance for the word "like" being used in-between every third word.

Plus all that giggling. Oh Christ, the giggling.

I also plan to track my children's whereabout on the On-Star satellite automobile tracking system the family car will have installed. If Beatrice says she's going to the movies, she better damn well go to the movies.

The thing is, I really want kids someday (just check my MySpace profile if you don't believe me) but I'm horrified of it. Everything about it makes me skittish. Everything from the big turtle-shell reading glasses I'm sure I'll have to wear when I'm older to the high-rising mom-pants my wife might start wearing without telling anyone.

All of it. It's all one big horrorshow. Nevermind the kids themselves. How can I make a good life for them when it seems so much out there is designed to corrupt them? Allowing my kid to believe he is superhuman is nothing compared to sex, drugs and the inevitable interest my kid will have in music from the 1980's.

Oh what jiggy times we live in.

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* That's right, I said it. Music from the 80s was not good; it was kitch, and very rarely is kitsch good. Not everything from it was bad, but it is by far the worst decade of music in the last 100 years.