Sweet Meats

When my daughter was a baby we played a game. I would smell her head. Baby's heads smell like caramel - I don't know why, they just do, but it is wonderful. I mention this often, to the point where my son would tell complete strangers, "My sister tastes like caramel."

So I would hold my daughter in my lap and say, "I'm gonna eat your baby brains! Yum, yum, yum!" and gently gum her head.*

My son walked in during a session. His jaw dropped, his eyes were wide, and he yelled, "Daddy! Don't eat my sister! Save some for me!"

* Tales of parents eating children ancient and are clearly an expression of an archetypal behavior. Perhaps the most famous example (if you are a dork) is how Zeus and the other Greek gods were devoured by their father Chronos. There are many theories about the origins and meaning of this behavior. But if, as I theorize, most baby heads smell like caramel, it would explain a great deal.

Mother's Day Save

Father Goof frequently grouses about the price of his son's private school, but today it paid off. Someone had kindof forgotten to do something nice for Mother's Day for the long-suffering Mama Goof. (Father Goof has never claimed to be a good father, husband, or son - merely an adequate one.)

Thankfully my son, directed by his teachers, had created an array of mother-themed artwork, including the inevitable pasta-oriented jewelry and a heart-shaped card with embracing stick figures. Meant to show familial love, in fact the drawing looked like an angry zebra, drawn by someone who had a profound hatred of zebras. There was another set for Bubbe. Wearing the macaroni elbow necklaces gave the women in my life a weird Polynesian-Italian fusion vibe.

Obviously Father Goof was supposed to buy them some non-chewable jewelry, and he will pay a price for his failure to do so. But at least the mothers received some acknowledgement today, and their wrath will be muted. Now at least private school is starting to pay for itself. All the money I saved on jewelry can go towards tuition.

Geometry of Parenthood

Proposition 20 of Euclid's Book I reads:

In any triangle two sides taken together in any manner are greater than the remaining one.

My old textbook (which my wife has been hounding me to throw out) a footnote remarks that Proclus (another ancient geometer) reported that it was the habit of the Epicureans to ridicule this theorem because:

"Even an ass knows that. If fodder is placed at one angular point and the ass at another, the ass won't walk the two sides of the triangle but just the one side. Booyah."

Proclus would respond,

"Oh no you didn't! Mere perception of the truth is different from a scientific proof of it and a knowledge of the reason why it is true."

It was even more devastating in Greek.

I mention this because the assertion that even the ass knows to walk a straightline shows five year olds in an interesting light. Everyday I pick-up my son and carpool buddy and struggle with their inability to walk in a straight line. For example, when I drop carpool buddy off, rather than making a beeline from my car to his front door he takes an elliptical approach that occasionally takes him into neighbors' yards. So, are five year-olds dumber than asses? "What," Proclus would no doubt ask, "Does this say about the human capacity to reason, about logos?"

Or, are five-year olds brilliant? Just as Einstein shattered Newtonian physics showing that space curves, Euclidean geometry also withered before the assault of modernity. Lobchevsky (yes, the one from the Tom Lehrer song) argued that a line lying perpendicular across two parallel lines does not intersect them at exactly 90 degrees because space curves. So perhaps, when my charges are wandering in what to my, aged eyes are parabolic routes they are in fact simply perceiving the curves in space and navigating them.

Or they could just be a pair of dumbasses.

Trouble Ahead

My kids were watching Cyberchase the other day and my daughter announced, "I like Hacker!"

Hacker is the show's villain, he is also green. When she was looking at her brother's Spiderman picture book, she pointed to the Green Goblin and asked, "Who's this?"

"Green Goblin," I told her.

"Is he nice?"

"Not really. He has issues."

"I like him," she announced. I thought nothing of it, she likes green.

But then, she announced her favorite Dora character is Swiper, and on Lazytown she likes Robby Rotten (I admit I was sort of pleased about that - I can't stand Sportacus.)

I noticed a certain trend was forming. When her brother discusses Star Wars (which is constantly) she chimes in, "I like Darth Vader! I like the bad guys!"

I guess I am better off learning this now, rather than when she turns 15.

Swim Lessons

My son’s swim class the other day ended with the instructor asking each student to show her their favorite thing to do in the water. Most kids blew bubbles, floated, or put their heads under. My son just stood their, grinning.

“Aren’t you going to show me your favorite swim move?” the instructor queried.

“I’m doing it!"

"Doing what?" the instructor asked.

"When we go to the beach, my daddy says going pee-pee in the ocean is the best thing.”

Usually the indoor pool where my son takes lessons reverberates with the sonic booms of children shrieking and splashing. But suddenly the entire place fell silent, and everyone stared at me.

“Ha ha. OK buddy, let’s go now,” I said.

“Right daddy, come in and we’ll swim to international waters – then no one can tell us what to do! You can go pee-pee too.”

More stares. Parents pull their children out of the pool. The instructor moves away.

“No, I think you are getting cold. Why don’t we just go… RIGHT NOW!” I added through clenched teeth.

“No, daddy, come in! The water is really warm!”

Passover Preparations

Traditional Passover preparations at my house have usually my son and I huddled together watching the Charlton Heston version of The Ten Commandments while my wife does the last minute cleaning (it is essential that every bit of chametz - bread product – be removed from the home.) My wife, understandably, hates this tradition for many reasons. However, my son has now been doing it for most of his life (this will be his fourth year of it) so she is stuck with it. I was doubly excited because my daughter just turned three and would have been ready to join us. Naturally the networks have decided not to air it – further evidence of the moral and spiritual decay of our society.

Fortunately, my family has other, even deeper Pesach traditions. Many families at their seder (traditional Passover feast) sing a song called “Who knows one” (usually sung in Hebrew “Echad mi yode’ah”). It goes:

Who knows one? I know one. One is our God, in heaven and on earth.
Who knows two? I know two. Two are the tablets of the covenant; One is our God in heaven and on earth.

And so forth to 13. You want more, Google it.

In my family we sing this song in Yiddish. Very occasionally, we run into others who also know the Yiddish version (although never with the same tune). I decided that my son is old enough to learn it as well. Like all things Yiddish, this had to start with a story:

My grandfather, your great-grandfather, your bubbe’s daddy, was named Bernie. When you were born, all of your great-great aunts said you looked just like Bernie. When your sister was born, the same great-great aunts agreed that she looked like Bernie. The truth is, most babies look like Bernie - Bernie was fat and bald.

When he was a little kid he went to Hebrew school, but it wasn’t nice like your school. It was grubby and the one thing he learned that really stayed with him was this song. You told me you are learning “Who knows one” in Hebrew. At his Hebrew school, Bernie learned the song in a language called Yiddish.

So I sang him a little bit of it, and my son burst out laughing (an appropriate reaction to Yiddish – a language with a disproportionate amount of onomatopoeia.) It also threw him a little; he thought Hebrew was the Jewish language. I explained:

You know about Hebrew, the holy language, the language of Israel and Torah. Yiddish is different. For centuries lots of Jewish people lived in the great Northern Plains of Europe. It wasn’t a happy time. It was cold, boring, and the people around us didn’t like us very much. The governments there liked us even less. Many terrible things happened to us there. You should be grateful everyday that your great-great grandparents left.

But, as a tiny gift to make up for it, God gave us the funniest language ever spoken – Yiddish. That funniest thing about Yiddish is that it is so close to German. But German is a serious language – a language where, “Good morning” is a direct order. In Yiddish, even though a lot of the words are the same and if you know one you can understand the other, everything sounds like a joke. They are the Bert and Ernie of languages. There’s Bert, wound too tight, worrying about his bottle-cap collection. And then there’s happy-go-lucky Ernie getting the bottle-caps out of order, scaring off the pigeons and just generally driving Bert nuts.

”Like I do to you daddy?”

This is a kid who is ready for Yiddish.

So, without further ado, here is “Who knows one” in Yiddish. It should be sung with great fervor. Because Yiddish was the Ebonics of its day, there are few hard rules about pronunciation and you can make up any tune that suits you. (I will spare the world my own rendition.)

Chorus:

Mah ah noymair
Mah ah debair

Oy vey ny ny na ny ny

Vair ken raidin
Vair ken tsailin

Vos is ____ bah dye
Vos is ____ bah dye

1. Ainer is gutt un gutt is ainer un veiter is kainer
2. Zvei zenen dee luchus
3. Drei zenen dee footers
4. Fear zenen dee mooters
5. Finif zenen dee chumushin
6. Zex zenen dee mishnayes
7. Zeben zenen dee taic frum vuch
8. Acht zenen dee brit meilah
9. Nine zenen dee moonaten
10. Tzen zenen dee dibrayes
11. Elef zenen dee shtairen
12. Zvelf zenen dee shevawteem
13. Dreitzen zenen dee ashawreem