Which came first, the Chicken McNugget or the Egg McMuffin?
Blatant thievery, that question; stolen directly from Little Jackie and her mega hit (as Wiki would say: citations needed. ) "The World Should Revolve Around Me".
Well, it doesn't.
The line she or some song(?)writer composed is definitely worthy of some discussion, though. It raises a philosophical and moral question that has been plaguing six year-olds for decades. It's a derivation of a riddle that is older than my favorite Ham Jam t-shirt depicting a pig's head being squeezed from the tap of a beer keg (1988), and older still than my brother's Mumpy (disgusting yellow security blanket which was sewn circa 1973 by a woman named Severance).
Its a McSong version of the age old question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" (Wiki says its Egg that evolved, in a landslide citations needed ). People have bantered on about the subject for Eons, and the revolving time-warp it puts your logical brain into is a classic dinner topic for farmers, The Duggars and most any family that owns the Little Jackie album (according to Wiki, there are seven such families You really need to find some citations, smartass. ).
Time honored traditions like a dinner topic are a lost art in today's world.
In my house alone it is possible, and not unlikely, for there to be dinner-time interference from 4 televisions, 3 Ipods, a computer, a Wii, a PS2, a Gameboy, two dogs and actual food chewing to get in the way of a family conversation. I am proud to say that we turn almost all electronic devices off during family meals unless the four of us agree that the episode of Drake and Josh that happens to be on is funny enough to warrant leaving the volume up in the family room loud enough for us to get the gist of what's actually happening on the screen. In these instances, we generally migrate one by one in toward the TV, salad bowls balanced on our heads and dinner rolls under our arms. We admit defeat to being TV slaves with barely a whimper as we crowd the couch.
Well not anymore America. My wife of 15 years has recently and proudly invented TalkPicks (Patent Pending, All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2009 anything you say will be held against you in a court of law...Citations needed), and the craze is coming to a disjointed dinner table near you.
TalkPicks is a play on words. Say is fast or without the aid of front teeth and it sounds like an already invented and patented word. Say it slow, and you have yourself a gold mine...and a really cool idea.
Every Sunday night becomes someone else's turn to pick the TalkPick. The first week she introduced it, I glared at her and tried to feign interest while listening to Drake argue with Josh about who would go and...never mind. She told us that, from now on, we would have a TalkPick every Sunday, and spend the rest of the week becoming fluent in that paticular subject for until it became retired on midnight of the Saturday hence (that's a fancy Olde English way for tossing it forward seven days, old school, yo).
Knowing that diving immediately into "Moon Landing Conspiracy Theory" would go directly over the heads of some of the members of our (Sam and Ben) family, she wisely chose Spongebob Squarepants as the innaugural TalkPick. And the ensuing conversation was absolutely glorious.
We talked as a family for 45 minutes. I was so engrossed, I forgot to eat my broccoli (citations propbably needed). We talked about our favorite characters, episodes, sayings and conspiracy theories. We talked about animation, the time it takes to make one episode (six months to a year), the reason the show enjoyed longevity and even how plausible it was that Spongebob would ever need to clean a restaurant floor using a bucket of water and mop when said restaurant happens to be resting at the bottom of the ocean floor. It was truly glorious.
The next week, we selected World Records as our TalkPick at Sunday dinner. There was some huffing and puffing at first because it seemed dull compared to Mr. Squarepants and company, but my eldest son rescued the day with his Herculean effort to right the ship. He came home from school on Monday afternoon having absconded (checked out from the library) the 2008 Guinness Book of World Records. It was a field day. Did you know that the record for most pushups by a 38 year old man is 56 in one day (held by yours truly (citations needed)) )?? Did you?
My point, however difficult to see, is that we now have a bonafide tradition in my house involving feeling, conversation and words as opposed to Megabytes, HTML and Wikipedia citations.
Because of this beautiful and soon-to-be-permanent tradition in our house, I can now explain to my boys how life used to be at the dinner table without sending a single text message.
BRB. ROTFLMAO.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
The Thief And His Pushups
I have two boys.
Sam. Eleven. Gregarious, thoughtful (I'm boasting) and fun loving.
Ben. Six. Sensitive. Wide-eyed and a little too cautious.
This is about Ben, who just left my embrace and headed upstairs to place the pen he stole in a safe place so we can take it back to his piano teacher next week...
Ben broke his leg when he was three. Somewhere in the back of his three year old heart, he grew scared. He jumped off one step when other kids were jumping off three or four. He walked when others ran, sat when they sprinted. He's burned off some of that fear and put himself in harm's way a couple of times since then, but usually because he's not looking where he's going.
He has these huge blue eyes and a totally honest heart, so you can't imagine for a minute that he would become the Keefe thief. But he did, clear as a blue bell today at his piano lesson. I wasn't there, but I could see it in those eyes the second he walked into the house. He looked like he stole the car, ran over the dog, went out with friends and got drunk, tagged the neighbor lady's garage door with green spray paint, and then passed out in the bushes in the front of a cop's lawn. But he is six and I just watched him leave for piano an hour earlier, so I put that anxiety on hold for 12 years from now.
One of the jobs a little brother has is to be amazed at things. You have this big brother that does stuff and you can't be too amazed because you share a room with this guy, and you can't just be dropping your jaw every time he coughs or defeats Bowser on a Wii game. But all the same, keeping your cool isn't easy and sometimes your big bro does stuff and you just want to faint because it seems so cool. But the closer we get to 7, the less we decide to be impressed with big bro and the more we'd like to show him up just a little.
I made a New Year's resolution to complete a minimum of 40 pushups every day this year until 40 seems wimpy and I'm not sore (not yet) and then move it to 50 and so on until I transform magically into a 5' 9" version of Michael Phelps with smaller teeth and fewer cranial hair follicles. I shared this with the boys and they went bananas. They practically cleaned their room to make a place to do pushups to outshine the other. Sam has good core and leg strength (I rationalized after his 3rd pushup left his arms shaking like a hummingbird trying to pose for a class photo). Ben, however, just lit it up. He could probably do 100 pushups if he didn't constantly lose his train of thought and decide to go have a snack.
Sam needed the rationalization not to feel to bad for being outshined Soundgarden style by Ben. He appreciated my praise of his core strength and tried to blow it off. Little bro finally had the upper hand, though, and was not letting him off the hook. He dropped and gave me twenty for no reason and then shot a supermodel-catwalk-over-the-shoulder glare at Sam as if to say, "I know you counted."
And I want to be impressed with both my kids for their achievements, honesty, hairlines etc., so it's really hard not to want to give Ben a high five at this point, which I wisely choose not to do in order to save some emotional scarring for the 11 year old. (Ed. Note: I can hear my father, father in law, brothers, grandfather and high school gym coach now: "Oh man, the pussification of American kids...") Maybe.
Bottom line, Ben is staring at me and wanting this reassurance, so I give him a quick wink and smile and we move on to less competitive activities like going to bed. That wink sticks with you as a boy, and he wears it like an honor badge for two straight days, falling on his hands and throwing down 10 pushups between bites at dinner. Anything to catch that wink and smile again.
Well, I'm glad I gave him that wink now. It occurs to me that needing your Dad's approval and support makes it harder for you to let him down. Ben had the complete opposite look on his face when he came home from piano tonight. Kari and Sam walked in chatty and moved in different directions and left me staring at big blue-eyed Ben, half crying and broken. I was clueless at the time what might have gotten him to that state of mind, but I could sense the body language in the threesome that someone needed to tell me something. He was holding a pen. It was silver and had a ball point tip on one side, and on the other side it came equipped with a laser pointer and a light blue flashlight. This is a an extremely rare find for a first grader; such a marvelous and multi-purpose writing/pointer-of-things-on-the-wall/dog-teasing instrument rolled into one.
He'd stolen it from his piano teacher's apartment, subsequently been questioned as to the origins of such an awesome instrument, and copped to the theft in the car. Mom and Bro told him it was wrong, but they left him alone with his tears and sobbing apologies because they knew it was me he was really afraid of disappointing.
He didn't. He admitted it, told me he was sorry and agreed to return it and apologize.
I couldn't be more proud if he broke the world record for pushups.
Sam. Eleven. Gregarious, thoughtful (I'm boasting) and fun loving.
Ben. Six. Sensitive. Wide-eyed and a little too cautious.
This is about Ben, who just left my embrace and headed upstairs to place the pen he stole in a safe place so we can take it back to his piano teacher next week...
Ben broke his leg when he was three. Somewhere in the back of his three year old heart, he grew scared. He jumped off one step when other kids were jumping off three or four. He walked when others ran, sat when they sprinted. He's burned off some of that fear and put himself in harm's way a couple of times since then, but usually because he's not looking where he's going.
He has these huge blue eyes and a totally honest heart, so you can't imagine for a minute that he would become the Keefe thief. But he did, clear as a blue bell today at his piano lesson. I wasn't there, but I could see it in those eyes the second he walked into the house. He looked like he stole the car, ran over the dog, went out with friends and got drunk, tagged the neighbor lady's garage door with green spray paint, and then passed out in the bushes in the front of a cop's lawn. But he is six and I just watched him leave for piano an hour earlier, so I put that anxiety on hold for 12 years from now.
One of the jobs a little brother has is to be amazed at things. You have this big brother that does stuff and you can't be too amazed because you share a room with this guy, and you can't just be dropping your jaw every time he coughs or defeats Bowser on a Wii game. But all the same, keeping your cool isn't easy and sometimes your big bro does stuff and you just want to faint because it seems so cool. But the closer we get to 7, the less we decide to be impressed with big bro and the more we'd like to show him up just a little.
I made a New Year's resolution to complete a minimum of 40 pushups every day this year until 40 seems wimpy and I'm not sore (not yet) and then move it to 50 and so on until I transform magically into a 5' 9" version of Michael Phelps with smaller teeth and fewer cranial hair follicles. I shared this with the boys and they went bananas. They practically cleaned their room to make a place to do pushups to outshine the other. Sam has good core and leg strength (I rationalized after his 3rd pushup left his arms shaking like a hummingbird trying to pose for a class photo). Ben, however, just lit it up. He could probably do 100 pushups if he didn't constantly lose his train of thought and decide to go have a snack.
Sam needed the rationalization not to feel to bad for being outshined Soundgarden style by Ben. He appreciated my praise of his core strength and tried to blow it off. Little bro finally had the upper hand, though, and was not letting him off the hook. He dropped and gave me twenty for no reason and then shot a supermodel-catwalk-over-the-shoulder glare at Sam as if to say, "I know you counted."
And I want to be impressed with both my kids for their achievements, honesty, hairlines etc., so it's really hard not to want to give Ben a high five at this point, which I wisely choose not to do in order to save some emotional scarring for the 11 year old. (Ed. Note: I can hear my father, father in law, brothers, grandfather and high school gym coach now: "Oh man, the pussification of American kids...") Maybe.
Bottom line, Ben is staring at me and wanting this reassurance, so I give him a quick wink and smile and we move on to less competitive activities like going to bed. That wink sticks with you as a boy, and he wears it like an honor badge for two straight days, falling on his hands and throwing down 10 pushups between bites at dinner. Anything to catch that wink and smile again.
Well, I'm glad I gave him that wink now. It occurs to me that needing your Dad's approval and support makes it harder for you to let him down. Ben had the complete opposite look on his face when he came home from piano tonight. Kari and Sam walked in chatty and moved in different directions and left me staring at big blue-eyed Ben, half crying and broken. I was clueless at the time what might have gotten him to that state of mind, but I could sense the body language in the threesome that someone needed to tell me something. He was holding a pen. It was silver and had a ball point tip on one side, and on the other side it came equipped with a laser pointer and a light blue flashlight. This is a an extremely rare find for a first grader; such a marvelous and multi-purpose writing/pointer-of-things-on-the-wall/dog-teasing instrument rolled into one.
He'd stolen it from his piano teacher's apartment, subsequently been questioned as to the origins of such an awesome instrument, and copped to the theft in the car. Mom and Bro told him it was wrong, but they left him alone with his tears and sobbing apologies because they knew it was me he was really afraid of disappointing.
He didn't. He admitted it, told me he was sorry and agreed to return it and apologize.
I couldn't be more proud if he broke the world record for pushups.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Ears and tears
It never fails. Right when Sarah Brightman spills into the high ending of "Time To Say Goodbye", the tears start to well up. This song might be on and I'm driving like a Nor' Easter to make it to a softball game on time, wearing cleats for crying out loud, the manliest of footwear, and the tears start to come. Hell, I could be playing poker with Clint Eastwood and John Wayne and I'd cry when she gets to the high part.
Something about music transforms the prefontal cortex (or is it the mandibular lobe?) and bathes my brain in the moment. Am I the only one? No way? Really?
I once confided in a good friend, (and an intellectual guy) that I got really emotional whenever I heard the song "Satellite" by Dave Matthews. I had been reading the album credits one night (pre-dawn technologically, of course, as I actually owned the physical CD) and happened upon the dedication of the song or album to a little girl who had passed away. I can't even remember, and the dedication isn't important, but the words hit me just as the song hit a crescendo, and consequently, so did my heart. It's all about crescendo.
Anyhow, my intellectual friend is a music fan, culturally efficient and wears pink while maintaining masculinity, so I figured he'd have some empathy for my situation and possibly even share a similar tale. The reaction I got was similar to the one you'd get from a 2nd grade classmate upon calling your teacher "Mom" when asking her a question. He still has never let me live it down. He'll call me when he's visiting from Chicago to check on me, and the line of questioning is in the order of:
-How's the family?
-Still love your job?
-When can we get a beer?
-Are you crying listening to DMB right now?
-How's your Fantasy Football team?
Etc.
But the older I get, the more frequently the emotional tags keep coming, each one pasted neatly to a song from the past or present. The latest example is a song I bought off ITunes two days ago that I would NEVER have purchased with your money had it not been for the cry tag that accompanied it. I first heard "Jai Ho" at the end of the movie Slumdog Millionaire right before Christmas with my wife. Unless a movie stars Burt Reynolds and Dom Delouise, I don't watch the credits. Well, that's not entirely true. Anyone who saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off stayed for the credits. And, I accidentally discovered the magical and side-splitting ending to Napoleon Dynamite after the 5th or 6th time I'd seen the movie.
For some reason, when Slumdog ends, you stay. I'll need to see it again to know how long it is between the closing scene and the start of Jai Ho and the (SPOILER ALERT) dance scene, but it seemed like a long time. We didn't move from our seats, thankfully, and it turned out to be another cry-tag moment. There's no reason why...it's not at all sad. In fact it's the movie's most jovial and uplifting time. In addition, the actors are no longer even in character. So basically, this song comes on, the actors (not the characters) start doing this dance to a song by this artist from Mumbai and I am crying.
Before you suggest anti-depressants, let me tell you...It was a good, cathartic little cry just like the one that got me when my boys were playing in their first piano recital three weeks ago. Another came the same day when their teacher sat and played this incredible concerto (or sonata, I can't read music). Just a little tear. That's all. Eyes well up a little and then it passes. But it feels really good.
I might be an emotional goof, but I like it. I look for a song with music and lyrics that builds up fiercely, slowly, and without pretense, and then spills it's guts on the floor. I want my music to puke when the rides over.
Something about music transforms the prefontal cortex (or is it the mandibular lobe?) and bathes my brain in the moment. Am I the only one? No way? Really?
I once confided in a good friend, (and an intellectual guy) that I got really emotional whenever I heard the song "Satellite" by Dave Matthews. I had been reading the album credits one night (pre-dawn technologically, of course, as I actually owned the physical CD) and happened upon the dedication of the song or album to a little girl who had passed away. I can't even remember, and the dedication isn't important, but the words hit me just as the song hit a crescendo, and consequently, so did my heart. It's all about crescendo.
Anyhow, my intellectual friend is a music fan, culturally efficient and wears pink while maintaining masculinity, so I figured he'd have some empathy for my situation and possibly even share a similar tale. The reaction I got was similar to the one you'd get from a 2nd grade classmate upon calling your teacher "Mom" when asking her a question. He still has never let me live it down. He'll call me when he's visiting from Chicago to check on me, and the line of questioning is in the order of:
-How's the family?
-Still love your job?
-When can we get a beer?
-Are you crying listening to DMB right now?
-How's your Fantasy Football team?
Etc.
But the older I get, the more frequently the emotional tags keep coming, each one pasted neatly to a song from the past or present. The latest example is a song I bought off ITunes two days ago that I would NEVER have purchased with your money had it not been for the cry tag that accompanied it. I first heard "Jai Ho" at the end of the movie Slumdog Millionaire right before Christmas with my wife. Unless a movie stars Burt Reynolds and Dom Delouise, I don't watch the credits. Well, that's not entirely true. Anyone who saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off stayed for the credits. And, I accidentally discovered the magical and side-splitting ending to Napoleon Dynamite after the 5th or 6th time I'd seen the movie.
For some reason, when Slumdog ends, you stay. I'll need to see it again to know how long it is between the closing scene and the start of Jai Ho and the (SPOILER ALERT) dance scene, but it seemed like a long time. We didn't move from our seats, thankfully, and it turned out to be another cry-tag moment. There's no reason why...it's not at all sad. In fact it's the movie's most jovial and uplifting time. In addition, the actors are no longer even in character. So basically, this song comes on, the actors (not the characters) start doing this dance to a song by this artist from Mumbai and I am crying.
Before you suggest anti-depressants, let me tell you...It was a good, cathartic little cry just like the one that got me when my boys were playing in their first piano recital three weeks ago. Another came the same day when their teacher sat and played this incredible concerto (or sonata, I can't read music). Just a little tear. That's all. Eyes well up a little and then it passes. But it feels really good.
I might be an emotional goof, but I like it. I look for a song with music and lyrics that builds up fiercely, slowly, and without pretense, and then spills it's guts on the floor. I want my music to puke when the rides over.
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