Fail. Rewind. Repeat.

In the days that pre-dated social networks, instant messaging, and texting, many of us only had email as the main source of communication between friends while at work.  Hard to believe for some of those kinder in years, but email was considerably easier than lugging around that ten pound military com unit commonly referred to as a “cell phone” back in those days. 

A regular “activity” for on-the-job, twenty-somethings like me back then, was the constant forwarding of email jokes.  It was our escape from the daily doldrums of office cubical incarceration.  One email, that I actually still keep near-and-dear, was entitled “Modern Philosophies of the Cynic”.  It was my battle-cry, my manifesto.  Bottled sarcasm.  As someone who has always done everything the hard way, it spoke to my inner realist.

“The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required to be pressed against it” and “The hardness of the butter is always proportional to the softness of the bread” were just a couple memorable quips from this masterpiece.  I keep this original list handily nearby, posted to one of my cabinets at work.  Torn and weathered from the dozens of job changes dating back to the mid-1990s, it’s magnificently printed via vintage dot matrix and still proudly echoes one of my favorites. 

“Success Always Occurs in Private.  Failure in Full View.”

I constantly find new ways to reinvent that credo.  And I often do so spectacularly.

Anybody who knows me knows that I’m not a master orator.  Tense public speaking situations for me are often met with wildly-exaggerated sarcasm and self-depreciative mockery.  Humor is my defense.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love talking and joking with a roomful of friends.  But a roomful of judgmental strangers?  Me…as the straight-laced professional with a serious demeanor?  Fuhget-about-it.  In truth, I do what I have to do to make a buck, but I unquestionably loathe every second of it. 

In response to making that buck and take on a greater role in my job, I was recently invited to take an eight-hour executive presentations course through work.  Yes indeed, ladies and gentlemen, now boarding the “A” train to Hell.  Destination: Dante’s Inner Circle with stops at Anxiety, Apprehension, and Public Humiliation.

This particular training covered a wide range of public-speaking scenarios in a corporate environment.  Speak on the spot, presenting with powerpoint, hostile Q&A sessions, and impromptu boardroom fist-pounding speeches.  These weren’t one-and-done sessions either.  Each scenario was done three times in succession.  The first round was a start-and-stop session with critique from the instructor.  The second was a complete delivery with a humiliating, overall performance hack-job from your fellow classmates.  The third and final was the excruciating review of the entire train wreck on videotape.

Yes…videotape.  The ultimate weapon of mental mass destruction.  The vehicle that makes it capable to pacify the most animated of grandstanders, as well as psychologically cement the innumerous possibilities of potential internet blackmail.  Just ask the “Star Wars Kid” how well it worked out for him when his supposed private video went viral worldwide.  Talk about your semester-long case study in psychiatry…and well, drapery products.

There it was.  Stammering voice, delivery, nervous ticks, and gawky appearance on full, 42-inch hi-def display.  If you ever possessed even the slightest trace of personal insecurity, this magnified it fifty times over.  Being the gangly, bald, babbling oaf who makes really bad jokes at really inopportune times, I now understand this.  Honestly, it was not unlike watching the Hindenburg disaster.  In fact, once or twice, I believe I inadvertently channeled Herbert Morrison’s horrified eyewitness account out loud. 

“Oh the Humanity!” 

At the end of the class, the instructor handed back our videotapes and asked us to revisit them on occasion to remind us on where we needed to improve.  Improve?  On utter calamity?  Besides, those images of are now permanently burned into my memory like a psychosomatic branding iron.  So much for that theory of your brain subconsciously hiding extreme trauma in order to protect itself.

Passing through Washington DC on my way home that evening, I contemplated shipping this videotape, via airmail, into the Potomac River below.  Two things kept me from doing so.  One, it was 20 degrees outside and the thought of rolling down my windows on the 14^th Street Bridge at 40 miles per hour was completely unfathomable.  Second, the “Star Wars Kid”.  Having some random jokester find and post this natural disaster to YouTube.  Twenty million witnesses to my personal fail-a-thon.

With this scenario firmly entrenched in my psyche, the remnants of that videotape now sit in a secure, undisclosed location.  Stamped thoroughly and repeatedly with my personal Seal of Approval, courtesy of a 22-ounce framing hammer.  Further durability exercises on said evidence will include stoning-by-cinderblock, pyre-burning, and a private exorcism performed with speaker magnets dipped in battery acid.

Honestly, I don’t know why these embarrassing debacles still affect me.  I was a Public Relations major in college and have taken dozens of these public speaking classes over the course of my academic and professional life.  You’d think by this point, I would be psychologically immune to the end product and looming mortification.  Being that eternal cynic though, I always seem to find that dark ray of comedic sunshine to help me get through it.  This time, appropriately, it was the very first quip on my faithful philosophies list.

“If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that proves you tried.”

Monkey See, Monkey Do

I remember the look on my parent’s faces like it was yesterday.  That look of shock, dismay, and “wow…he really is an idiot” all wrapped up in a single mushroom-cloud blossoming above their heads.  The first inquiry that usually passed through pursed lips was the obvious question of wanting to know why I did what I did.  The response they received was one that had been passed down by children from generation-to-generation since the origins of man. 

“I don’t know.”

As infuriating as that answer is to every parent around the globe, it’s generally true.   Honestly, you could have hooked me up to an EEG machine and seen absolutely zero brain activity during the alleged timeframe in question.  More often than not, it was just something that seemed interesting for me to do at the time.  Consequences?  Well, I hadn’t really thought that far ahead yet.

Before I had children, my parents and I would occasionally sit around and laugh about some of the ridiculous things that my siblings and I did in our childhood.  Most of them were your typical, harmless acts of juvenile boneheadedness.  However, there was always that occasional feat of overconfident recklessness coupled with just enough dumb luck to leave us unscathed in the end.  Stitches were sometimes involved, but we were kids and that’s what kids do.  Oh how we laughed! 

Now I have children of my own.  I’m not laughing so much anymore…

Since it was just before Halloween, we’ll go ahead and channel a little Hitchcock for the moment in order to set the proper ambiance.  Visualize the shower scene from the movie “Psycho”.  This time, however, it wasn’t Norman Bates with the blade outside of the curtain.  It was my son, with my wife’s razor on the inside.  There were no shrieks from Marion Crane….only my wife.  As I rushed into the bathroom, my wife stood looking into the shower.  Arms extended, mouth open.  Our son?  Standing in the shower, razor in hand, and three chunks of hair missing from the side of his head.

They say that imitation is the best form of flattery.  “They” probably never had children attempt to shave their heads. 

Before I could wrap my mind around what had just transpired, my parent’s furrowed brows unwillingly became mine.  The blood rushed to my head, then…ka-blooey.  Radioactive fallout in my bathroom.  Like a trained monkey, the words just fell out of my mouth.  Verbatim, as was poetically performed by my parent’s thirty years earlier. 

“What were you thinking?” 

I wanted to cover my mouth in humiliation, but couldn’t risk letting down my psycho-dad intimidation leverage at that point.  Of course I know what he was thinking.  Zero.  Zilch.  Nada.  Same as his pop thirty years earlier.  Yet I asked anyway?  I’m beginning to wonder if there is some sort of pre-programmed, primordial genetic code that kicks in upon birth of your offspring.  Hmm.  I smell grant money…

After the customary barrage of rants and lectures about making choices and thinking things through, it was time to sit down and survey the damage.  It was down to the scalp, but salvageable.  

After stern lectures like these, the quiet moments following are normally reserved as a time of reflection between a man and his son.  Men address it and move on.  Done.  However, while I attempted to cover the boy’s handiwork with my clippers, I found myself considering the various formations that I could achieve from connecting those three spots shaved into the side of his head.  My mind immediately wandered to a courtside scene from the movie “White Men Can’t Jump”. 

“You got a ‘Z’ in your 'fro!” 

That quiet moment digressed into giggling.  My son, seeing his snickering father with a pair of clippers in hand, panicked.  Thinking that I was about to follow through on one of my earlier rants about shaving him clean in my image, he started to sob. 

After some reassuring words, creative use of hair gel, and a semi-reparative fade cut, life returned to normal for the boy.  His hair grows pretty fast, so he would just have to endure a couple school days and Halloween parties.  Thankfully, Indiana Jones was the costume of choice this year.  Doctor Jones’ hat is his patented trademark, so the costume would actually work in his favor.  Although I did stand by with a pair of Chuck Taylors, just in case we decided to finish that “Z”.

When I relayed the episode to my parents, I’m pretty sure that I could make out the slightest satisfaction coming from the other end of the phone.  Karma’s celestial realignment had come full-circle.  Instead of it being me regurgitating the “I don’t know” alibi to my parents after blowing up the neighbor’s toys with roman candles and firecrackers, it was my son.  Same oblivious look, same steadfast delivery.  Just without all of the explosions, pyrotechnics, and smoldering G.I. Joe figures in the background, that is.

I had spent a lifetime attempting to defend the “I don’t know” party-line.  Now, without warning, I found myself on the other side.  Genetically coerced into recycling time-honored dad questions to obvious childhood disaster scenarios.  I wondered what other conventional zingers might be headed our way.  Would preparedness help preempt the inevitable?  My parents would have been a great asset in providing this background intelligence, of course, but why would they cheat themselves out of free skit comedy? 

Molecular genetics theories aside, I’m resigned to the fact that I’m unconsciously wired to continue delivering these pointless inquiries to my children, just as my father and his father’s fathers had, since the beginning of mankind.  Retrospectively, and apparently inescapably, if they all jumped off a bridge, I guess I would too.

The Grapes of Wrath

It really doesn’t seem all that long ago.  Maybe a little more than ten years “BC” (before children) or so.  My wife and I were still just dating at the time.  The summer was creeping to a close.  Warm winds were being replaced by cooler ones from the northwest and all of the leaves were prepping themselves for nature’s fireworks.  It was my favorite season of the year. 

It was fall.  It was October.  It was wine festival season.

Back then, there were usually ten to fifteen of us crammed into a commuter van stocked with an allotment of food and beverage for the day.  Maybe a Lunchable or two in tow for the eternal bachelors aboard.  There were no plans, time constraints, or schedules.  Just a day of music, laughs, and fermented grape juice with friends.  That’s the romanticized version of how I remember it anyway.

Recently, my wife and I had received a flyer in the mail for an upcoming wine festival.  It had been ages since we had been to one.  Right about the time when the kids became a little too mobile to make them enjoyable.  The flyer stated that, on top of the ten wineries, there would also be activities for the kids.  It was pretty close to our old stomping grounds back then, so we decided to give it a try with some old friends.  This just sounded too good to pass up.  Fun for us and for the kids.  This was a sure-fire win-win.

That morning, however, it became pretty evident that the romanticized version I remember so vividly was going to be completely thrown out of the window.  The car was completely packed with booster seats, running stroller, diaper bag as well as toys, snacks, and changes of clothes for the kids.  In the end, there was just enough room for a couple homemade Lunchables for the kids, but apparently no room for the jovial adult foods of years past.  My wife and I would now be pairing merlots with animal crackers and string cheese. 

Upon arriving at the wine festival, we realized that it was lunch time and the kids were beginning to show signs of low blood sugar.  They were spiraling rapidly towards DEFCON3, so food had to be consumed…and soon.  We unpacked the stroller, bags, food, and toys from the car and migrated into the wine festival like vagabonds fleeing the Dust Bowl.  The only thing missing was the family of livestock tied to the back of my Sonata.

After setting up a blanket, I stood to take in the atmosphere.  Music as well as smells of wine and food filled the air.  It was a lot like I remembered.  Except for the part with my kids incessantly tugging at my shorts, wondering where the kid activities were.  After several trips around the grounds, we realized that there was only one ride for the kids.  One.  Stinkin’.  Ride.  A lawn-tractor pulling wheeled-barrels around in a circle.  Oh, and that face-painting tent.  There’s your plural for the kid activities.  Kudos to the flyer’s creator for their mastery of the English language.

The barrel ride was a hit for the first half hour.  But, as the afternoon wore on, the kids grew increasingly bored.  They wanted us to walk down to the river, play games, or read to them.  I can’t complain really.  Ten years from now, they’ll probably deny that we’re even related to them.  However, we were finding our opportunities to taste wine narrowing and opportunities to converse with old friends dwindling.  The nostalgic, carefree wine festival was becoming a parental juggling act.

The times that I was able to taste, I noted my surroundings.  At one point, I was standing next to two twenty-somethings reeking of expensive cologne and narcissism.  Their egos were vaguely familiar, but I’m well-aware that I misplaced such bravado eons ago.  Gelled hair, Polo sunglasses, and Armani dress shirt on one.  “Faux hawk”, Versace sunglasses, and matching designer shirt on the other.  A third walked up with similar garb.  Then there’s me.  Bald head, $15 Dockers “Danger Magnet” sunglasses from Kohl’s, $10 button-up dress shirt from Old Navy…and that stroller.  Eeny, meeny, miney, schmoe.

After five long minutes of their insufferable banter, I had an uncomfortable revelation.  Were my friends and I really this obnoxious at wine festivals, all those moons ago?  You’d have to replace their $200 Italian leather shoes with Timberlands and Vans, of course, but you see where I’m going.  We had a lot of fun back then and we were just as full of ourselves.  Not only did the parallel startle me, but I also suddenly wanted to hurt myself.  OK, I’ll admit it.  I really just wanted to hurt them.  The thought was surprisingly therapeutic to my self-loathing at that moment. 

Essentially, I chalked up the differences to a welcome change in my priorities.  I took solace knowing that over those ten years, I changed from thinking of myself first to thinking of the family first and myself last…without even thinking about it.  It just happened.  That was a lot of thinking.  At that point, I decided that I needed more wine to subdue any further maturity or enlightenment on my part. 

As I walked away, I humored myself by mumbling a famous Steinbeck quote.  “They's a time of change.”

Finally, it was time to go home.  Our kids were ecstatic.  I’ve never seen them leave anywhere as cooperatively as they did that afternoon.  As they cartwheeled towards the exit, I stopped, put my glass in the stroller’s drink holder, took in a deep breath, and looked around one last time. 

Nope.  I still wanted to hurt them.

Danger Magnet

Superdad, Representative of the League of Responsible Husbands, the Man’s Man, and all-around Encompasser of Smoothness.  A lot of fathers strive for the full package.  However, there would be no such luck for this guy.  Not that weekend anyway.  It’s those moments you look back on as a man and cringe.  OK, two moments.  For now though, I’m blaming the sunglasses and will have them tested accordingly.

It was a beautiful Saturday.  My wife had taken part in a four mile run that morning.  I had lone dictatorship of our children and offered to meet her for a picnic after her race.  Three kids, dressed, lunches packed…Mr. Together.  I had even gotten us to the park fifteen minutes early. 

As I got out of the car, I noticed a group of women talking nearby.  They waved politely as they witnessed Superdad get kids “A” and “B” out of the car and swiftly set up the running stroller.  All this mind you, while baby was still happily giggling in her car seat.

It was at that point that I noticed the flat tires on the stroller.  With fists on hips, I raised my face towards the noon sun and laughed heartily out loud.  Superman may have needed a phone booth, but not this guy.  After all, Superdad had remembered to bring the electric air pump.  Your flat tires were no match for my superior powers of preparedness!

What I hadn’t accounted for though, was the thundering racket that the pump made when turned on.  So obnoxious, in fact, that it terrified baby.  Laughter instantly turned to ear-piercing scream.  A scream that clearly echoed through the same crowded parking lot in which restless kids “A” and “B” were now running wildly amok. 

Then, my cell phone rang.

As I stood to grab the phone and scold my scampering brood, I proceeded to smash the nosepiece of my sunglasses into the handbrake on the stroller.  Pain, as well as many of the decorative words that I had learned in various locker rooms, swam uncontrollably downstream from throbbing nose to unfiltered mouth.  Squinting in agony, I immediately barked at my darling offspring like the crotchety old man telling the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn.  Missing were my shillelagh and weathered fedora.

As my eyesight returned, I immediately looked around for potential witnesses.  That same group of women had stopped talking and just stared.  Sunglasses skewed ninety degrees in the wrong direction, feral children galloping about, baby screaming…all with blood and tears trickling from my swollen beak.  Add to that the intolerable sound of that pump still churning away in the background, setting the appropriate “Symphony of Pandemonium” ambiance. 

Smoothness personified in just under ten seconds.

Cringe event number two took place twenty-four hours later.  We took the kids hiking for the day in the mountains.  About halfway up the ascent, I took note of the shear drop off from the sides of the trail.  Having my nine month old daughter strapped in a carrier, I decided that use of a walking stick was probably in our best interest.  At this point, I wasn’t particularly interested in being the world’s first father-infant daughter BASE jumping tandem.

At the top, we stopped for a break.  I propped my stick against a wall and bent down to unbuckle the baby carrier.  Really, a skilled marksman couldn’t have sighted it any better.  The stick slid off of the wall and right into the nosepiece of my sunglasses.  I’m pretty sure that I heard a twenty-strong chorus of groans to accompany the event.   Ego and nose still painfully bruised from the day before, I mumbled through the remainder of my offensive vocabulary before ripping the sunglasses from my bottom lip.  The only thing that kept me from heaving them deep into the wilderness below was the lecture that I would have received from my four year old standing nearby.  “You littered.  You’re going to jail!”

The sunglasses have now been sent to the Institute for the Modishly-Impaired.  I anticipate the test results will confirm my theory that the nosepiece is made from the exact same magnetic material as is found in my toes.  I’ve been known to smash toes in the same weekend, even the same day.  However, this was a first for the nose.  It had to be the sunglasses. 

So, where does this leave me and my shades?  Hipness enabler or danger magnet?  GQ advertisement or Plastic Surgery Weekly? 

For now, I’ve opted to keep the sunglasses.  They may be a reprehensible maiming hazard, but they’re still functional.  This, even after the skin and dried blood were washed from them.  Public humiliation may have dimmed those brief flickers of “smoothness”, but I’ll continue to strive for that full package status.  For now, no phone booths required. 

Although a part of me is beginning to wonder if these types of scenarios are what led Superman to totally disregard the trendy eyewear fad.

Murphy and the Power of Three

We’ve all heard of those old sayings.  Adages, clichés, and truisms.  We always smile at their charm and light-hearted wit.  Most are tongue-in-cheek.  Some can be applied to our everyday life to some degree.  There are two in particular that I take seriously and actually find myself planning life around.  It may sound odd, but a few recent experiences around my home have helped feed this twisted paranoia of mine.

The first adage is a personal favorite of mine.  "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong".  This is affectionately known as “Murphy’s Law”.  Affectionate, that is, unless Murphy has taken up residence on your doorstep.  Now, we have all had little things that go wrong on occasion.  A dish breaks, the cable goes out, you smash four of your toes on the hallway baseboard.  None of these qualify as Murphy products.  He is the one responsible for the real doozies.  The kind that leaves dents in your wallet as well as your vacation plans.

The second adage is “bad luck always comes in threes.”  This adage is Murphy’s personal sidekick.  Batman had Robin, Penn had Teller, Crosby had Stills…and, well Nash…and eventually Young as well.  Anyway, you get the gist.  They travel hand-in-hand.  It’s like clockwork. 

When Murphy makes his initial appearance, the first thing that I usually do is take a proactive look around my house.  This is a completely useless defense mechanism of mine employed to seemingly prepare myself for the follow-on double whammie.  I typically start with the high dollar appliances and work my way down.  This blatant domestic profiling probably stems from one of my father’s favorite adages.  “Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”  I heard that one a lot growing up.  A good twenty years later than he had probably hoped, but apparently it stuck.  Ultimately though, planning for the unknown is about as pointless as bringing a glass of water to a wild fire.

Murphy’s latest barrage on my humble abode was certainly no exception.

 “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”  One afternoon while my wife was cooking, our oven automatically switched itself from 250 degrees to broil.  Apparently, Murphy likes his banana bread, as well as my surrounding cabinetry, well-done.  After numerous phone calls to customer service and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, it was determined that there was a recall on that range, but not on my particular serial number.  I’m going to summarize my salty telephone language that afternoon with a customized adage mash-up.  “He who casts stones at the company he keeps, gets last laugh.”

“Here today, gone tomorrow.” After a harsh winter and some spring downpours, our driveway had begun to crumble and wash away.  Obviously, this had to occur at its narrowest point and next to a five foot creek bed.  After each rain, more asphalt was missing and the growing chasm more prominent.  My daughter would often ask my wife why daddy stood and talked to the driveway while waving his arms uncontrollably.  Finally though, a professional was summoned to build a support system and patch the landslide.  For now, nightmares of giant sinkholes and the family having to learn Mandarin Chinese were rested.

“One swallow does not a summer make.”   Maybe one swallow does not a summer make, but a broken air-conditioner in August definitely does.  One evening, I noticed that the temperature upstairs was 88 degrees, but set at 76.  Heavens to Mergatroid!  The grand finale!  The heat index for the weekend was forecasted to be 115 degrees.  This time, it was my son who stood puzzled as I shook my fist at the ceiling and mumbled incoherently in uncouth tongues.  It took one sweltering week, a makeshift FEMA camp downstairs, and all of the lint from my wallet…but we could finally sleep upstairs again.

With the trifecta now complete, Murphy’s latest visit has come full-circle.  I can now walk around my home paranoia-free knowing that I have met my quota for this year.  I can finally rest my conscience and my credit cards for a while.

“Ignorance is bliss.”

Crazy Days, Lazy Nights

The old adage states that you’re only as old as you feel. That’s a great mantra and definitely words to live by. However, I still haven’t read anything that includes the post-30s addendum clause “...or as otherwise dictated by your immediate surroundings”. Case in point, a recent vacation with the wife and kids to Myrtle Beach where I received that cold splash of geriatric reality. Twice.

We arrived at night in the middle of “Bike Week”. At a stoplight, we’re surrounded on all sides by deafening, high-performance motorcycles. Completely encompassed amidst the modern epitome of masculinity. Then there’s me, in a minivan with the family…and a wagon strapped to the roof. To say that we were the sore thumb is an understatement. However, in a vaguely reminiscent pre-30s demeanor that I once possessed, I glanced around and gave a couple of guys the customary male “chin nod”. Much to my surprise, there was no snickering. More dumbfounded shock than anything else. I turned toward my wife and stated proudly in my best sniffling, Don Knotts impression, “yep, they’re jealous.”

The reality is that twenty years ago, I was one of those guys. Out all night, cruising the Strand in search of bedlam, without a care in the world. A youth lost on borrowed time. These days, you’re more likely to find me body-surfing with my kids instead of planning the evening out. However, sitting at that stoplight, I also found myself looking at my two daughters and contemplating what would happen if they ever decided to bring home one of those guys. Someone like…well, me. Sigh. “Alas poor Yorick, I knew him…” All-too-well.

Later in the week, we drove past the house that my friends and I had rented for our high school senior graduation week. The week where fifteen of those guys drove down to Myrtle Beach with grand aspirations of utter lawlessness and rampant hooliganism. My Mustang SVO loaded down with friends, guitars, just enough food to sustain an existence, and just enough beverage to humiliate a German Oktoberfest. A week of blowing off steam before moving on to college or jobs. We had even adopted a song that week to commemorate the lifestyle. “Lazy Days, Crazy Nights” by the ‘80s band Tesla. “I love those lazy days and crazy nights; It’s my way, it’s my life; I’m doing fine right here on borrowed time.”

Let’s fast forward twenty years. Replace my beloved SVO with a minivan, the cases of libation with bags of children’s beach toys, and my guitars with that eye-sore strapped to the roof. Furthermore, let’s replace those friends that yelled from the backseat every time that we passed a female with my children doing the same every time that we pass a miniature golf course. Thought I saw all of that coming? Back then, I might have been arrested for choking a fortune-teller.

Honestly though, I can’t think of a more satisfying outcome. Having a family and being a dad to bouncing, giggling kids will do that. Mentally, I’m still just as young at heart and still feed that sense of adolescent invincibility with occasional stupidity. However, those lazy days and crazy nights have transformed themselves into the wonderfully crazy days of my wife and I chasing our kids around and the lazy nights of collapsing on the couch afterwards. There’s a real sense of accomplishment there for me.

Heading home, I pulled that song up on the iPod for amusement’s sake. After hearing those apt lyrics and cracking a reminiscent smile, I promptly turned the Backyardigans CD on to pacify the restless kids in the backseat. I even found myself humming along. So, to my immediate surroundings, you can keep your bikes and your borrowed time. I’m taking my wagon...and going home. It’s my way, it’s my life.

 - Originally published in Fluvanna Review July 15 2010

The Art of Payback

“It’s all fun and games until someone leaves with a staple in their head.” Sage advice from a friend and fellow witness that now has special meaning for my four year old daughter. Thankfully, my daughter is just fine and now belly laughs when I refer to her as “my little staplehead”. However, somewhere not far from Fluvanna, I can hear my parents quietly giggling. Payback.

It all started innocently enough, as it always does. Our friends’ had decided to take us in for the evening after we had lost electricity during one of Virginia’s latest Arctic impressions. Not only did my family invade their otherwise quiet Sunday night, but we had also brought along our Springer Spaniel as well. It was our dog that started the evening’s festivities by first repeatedly drinking out of their toilet and then proceeding to leave a fresh present on their screened porch. However, it was our illustrious exit that provided for the post-New Years fireworks.

As I loaded the car to return to a reheated home, the children ran around in last ditch efforts to employ a variety of parental annoyance tactics and assorted kiddy mayhem. Then, it happened. Daughter and friend bump into each other and daughter launches headfirst into the nearest wall. Standard physics and sheet rock density aside, she wasn’t even fazed. That is, until she saw the blood. A quick check by the remaining, non-hysterical adults in the house confirmed it stitch-worthy.

OK. Check the watch. 9:15 on a Sunday night. Perfect. That gives us exactly 45 minutes to get her in the car, get the well “relieved” dog home, and get to the Martha Jefferson Pantops ER before it closes at 10 pm…all on snow-covered roads. Also to impose further on our friends to now watch both our son and infant daughter. Little did they know when they invited us over that this was standard operating procedure for the family. You’ve heard the old saying “Friends help you move, but real friends watch two of your three children at 10 pm on a Sunday night as your daughter’s head is bleeding”. Something like that anyway.

One fun-filled Sunday evening ride to Charlottesville and one staple to the noggin later, the patient is doing just fine. We can laugh about it now, but this brings me to yet another life lesson. A seemingly ever-growing list as I continue down the road of parenthood. “No matter what you do, your children will inevitably take after you…usually at inopportune times and always in grand fashion.”

After a childhood of repeatedly denting and abusing my cranium, our 4 year old has begun to follow dad’s lead. My parents had to endure much of the same from my childhood. If it wasn’t 105 degree fevers while sitting in Christmas traffic on the Jersey Turnpike, it was getting my own skull stapled together after one of those “see-what-I-can-do” moments that I am still too embarrassed to discuss publicly. I think back to some of the other less-than-intelligent feats that I had performed as a child that led to similar devastating results. Is this only the beginning? My parents can now sit in amusement as my wife and I shake our heads in disbelief. Been there, done that.

I shudder to think that I’ll have to look back on my own childhood to get an idea of what’s in store for my wife and I. I’m fairly certain that my parents were on a first name basis with our ER for a good portion of my childhood. It’s amusing that my daughter is the one that has begun to piece it all together though. As I look at her and refer to her as “my little staplehead”, she can honestly look back up at me and stated proudly, “it takes one to know one, daddy.” Touché.

Or should that be “en garde”?

- Originally published in Fluvanna Review February 25 2010