Caffeine: Frenemy Mine

Mama Goof remembers well the day she introduced me to high-octane coffee. She had grown up drinking coffee and gone to graduate school in Seattle. Starbucks was only just becoming a national phenomenon so she took me.

My previous forays into coffee drinking had been desultory, I was unimpressed by the bitter beverage and my school’s cafeteria had fountain soda so I indulged my childhood fantasies and drank Coke with breakfast. Also, I can admit this now; I was intimidated by the Starbucks menu.

My future wife carefully and patiently explained the choices to me. She got a little frustrated when I kept refusing a latte because, “I didn’t’ want a lot of coffee.” My inability to grasp the differences between a macchiato and a cappuccino were tiresome (particularly since she knew how fulsome I could be in discussing the differences between porter and stout or IPA and bitter.)

Finally, using the same intuition that has served her so well as a mother, she figured out the real problem. I was afraid of coffee, based on my previous experience with cheap canned gruel that tasted like motor oil. She made me promise to try whatever she ordered, and then introduced me to the caramel latte.

From a taxonomic perspective the caramel latte is not properly classified as a species of coffee, but rather in the “ice cream shake” family. I sucked it down, very fast.

Then, something remarkable happened. My eyes grew large and I ran! We were close to Copley Plaza, an upscale mall in downtown Boston. I ran from store to store, picking up objects and relaying observations about them at the speed of an auctioneer on full throttle:

Shiny! Shiny!

Smooth!

Soft!

Furry!

I ran into a Crate & Barrel and couldn’t find my way out. The not yet Mama Goof made no effort to direct me out since it was easier to contain me if I stayed in one store. So I sat on every piece of furniture (including dressers, desks, tables, cabinets, and coat racks.) All the while delivering a monologue about the impact of industrialization on the aesthetic experience of the American bourgeoisie.

I thought I was incredibly amusing. But when Mama Goof heard the store clerks mention calling security, she directed me back out. I raced in and out of other stores. Oddly, the bookstore (usually my favorite) was uninspiring – I could stand still long enough to read titles. I pulled Mama Goof to the movie theater, where I had worked in college. It was a weekday afternoon, and an old friend was working door and let me in. Movies were awesome, but I couldn’t sit still. When the projectionist refused to speed up the film, I raced from theater to theater, watching a dozen movies at once. The staff didn’t mind my peripatetic movie viewing, but they kept asking me what I was “on,” and where they could get some.

Fast Forward to the Future
Fifteen years later, sliding into middle age – nothing has changed.

Serious doses of caffeine still make me crazy. I’ve actually had my children yell at me to calm down when I am in a coffee-fugue.

But I’ve also gotten in the habit. Kids and life make proper sleep hours difficult, so coffee is the fuel of the over-tired. Without it, I am sleepy. With it, I am crazy - a challenge on a par with Scylla and Charybdis.

I’ve tried to switch to decaf, but it has no oomph. I’ve tried tea, but the effects are about the same. I’ve tried decaf-caf mixes. There is no Golden Mean for caffeine.

Every morning I wrestle with this challenge, trying to calculate - 50% caf morning or tea or full-strength. The coffee maker sits on the counter, confident, its percolating almost sounding like Darth Vader saying, “You don't know the power of the dark side!"

End of Cute

I haven’t been blogging much about my kids recently. There are many possible explanations (work, exams, and laziness all come to mind.) But a few weekends ago I was hanging out with the mommy-blogger extraordinaire Not-Ever-Still, and her husband and adorable children. Little L was pulling her dad down by his tie and laughing. After a few minutes of this, he took his tie off and gave it to her. She took it and began stuffing part of it in her shirt – so she could wear it like dad.

So cute!

The fact is my kids are not doing anything all that cute or interesting anymore. At eight and five they have grown out of cute. All my son does is talk about football and my daughter only makes sticker art projects and skips around the room like a ballerina-giraffe (she’s crazy tall for a little girl.) As they’ve gotten more sophisticated they have lost that wide-eyed innocence that underpins all the cute kid sayings upon which parental anecdotes are built. The situation is so dire, that I’m trying to get blog entries out of Not-Ever-Still’s leavings.

The truth is, of course, my kids are still funny and cute. But I’ve gotten used to them and maybe I’m not noticing their cuteness as much as I used to. Plus, they are, in a normal and healthy way (and despite my best efforts) developing their own lives and interests. If I don't ask, they won't tell. I need, as I am so often telling them, to pay attention!

(Or maybe I just need better tools for recording their actions – iPhones are on sale…)

But at the same time, it is comforting to blame my creative doldrums on the kids knowing that they will, in time, blame just about everything on me.

Christmas of Miracles and Chipmunks

On Christmas, we were in LA. Since I was left in charge of the kids for the day, I decided to only do a partial traditional Jewish Christmas (movies – no Chinese food). Instead I took the kids on a hike up Mt. Hollywood. I promised them terrific views of the Hollywood sign, and I delivered. Of course after the third sighting, after traversing a series of steep switchbacks, the thrill had worn off. My daughter threw a temper tantrum when she learned we were not actually going to the Hollywood sign.

Children are sprinters, not marathoners. Wearing them out through long endurance-testing activities won’t work. They go about eight steps before the whining starts and passive resistance will follow shortly thereafter. But for short bursts children are unbeatable. If my son and I play a round of basketball, we will both need breaks. The asymmetry is in recovery time. His is about five minutes. I need about a day (or maybe a week).

Past hikes have involved targets, from stream, to rock, to picnic area (and they still start complaining every 8 steps.)

So how did I get them to actually go on a modestly challenging several mile hike?

Incentives – I promised to take them to a movie, any movie their choice: but, only if they didn’t whine. I had to remind them of this condition every 8 steps for the entire hike.

But it worked. They powered up the mountain. They didn’t whine, although they substituted for this by arguing about who should walk in front (thus setting the pace.) My daughter seemed to be faster, which offended my son’s dignity. So he would speed up and then my daughter would screech that she needed to be in front. I tried to bring a “no fighting or no movie” sanction into play, but they rejected my efforts to amend our initial “no whining on the hike or no movie” agreement. (I can’t believe my father is an attorney and none of this rubbed off on me – it must skip a generation.)

But we did make it to the top. I tried to get them to do a “Rocky” with their arms up over their heads, but gravity was too strong. They just stood their, looking beat. The process of whining, warning and arguing began anew as we headed down.

Christmas Miracle
The hike begins at the Griffith Park Observatory, so when it came into view on the way down I pointed it out to encourage my little hikers that we were almost done.

“But daddy, it doesn’t look close at all. It looks far away!” my daughter almost whined.

“No, it only looks far away because we are high up,” I responded.

“You’re right daddy. I think you’re right.”

I’m right! My daughter said I’m right! I should savor this now, since I may never hear her say those words again. It’s a Christmas Miracle!

The Squeaquel
The children kept their end of the bargain, so I kept mine. We got a quick bite and went to the movie theater. The kids picked Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.

The kids loved it and for a movie about talking chipmunks, featuring Wendy Malik, it wasn’t bad. It had some clever moments. But here’s the thing…

Behind us was a trio of adults, discussing the movie. And they weren’t making ironic comments. They were actually talking about, asking each other questions like:

What’s going to happen>

Do you think they are going to get together?

Why did he do that?

It is a movie about talking chipmunks!

There are not a lot of nuances or plot twists. If following this movie requires a discussion seminar, maybe you should acquire some starter media, like Thomas Tank Engine or Bewitched to develop your cognitive abilities. Also, try not to reproduce – because if The Chipmunks are too rich a narrative structure you probably won’t be much use helping your kids understand Goodnight Moon or Peter Rabbit.

Manchurian Monopoly?

Around this time of year, my thoughts turn to China. Both because the flood of inexpensive toys has changed childhood and because of my Nobel nominated plan to save the economy through the purchase of said toys.

Again this year, my thoughts turn to the Panda and its efforts to drive Santa's Workshop out of business. Elves don't work cheap and there is real price competition from Keebler. The Chinese Santa on labor costs every time.

My mom noticed my son really liked playing Monopoly with his grandfather - probably because he kept winning. Just as my son regularly bests me at Risk even though I study international affairs, he beats his real estate attorney grandfather at Monopoly. So that game jumped to the top of the gift list.

Little Goof got the new-fangled version in which players buy cities instead of Atlantic City real estate and an electronic device registers transactions and keeps track of the money. One of the great advantages of board games over video games is the limited level of beeping - the new version of Monopoly however is as noisy as a Gameboy.

I couldn't help but notice that everything in the box was made in the USA - except the electronic banker. I'd love to say that this does not bode well for America's future - that we make the cardboard and the Chinese make the complex electronic component. But I'm not sure that's the case, since the intellectual property - the game itself is - was invented here in the US and that's where the action is.

Still, I worry a bit about America's future. I remember a short story by the great science fiction writer Alfie Bester. Earth was in a cold war with another planet and the story was about the government unit that examined toys imported from this planet, to make sure that the toys did not hide something dangerous. In the story the unit was focusing on a robot that built things on its own, certain it could turn violent. They quickly looked over a futuristic Monopoly game (thorium mines on Mars, colonies on Venus etc.) and decided it was harmless, still focusing on the robot. One of the team members brought the game home for his kids - who took to it right away. But their parents didn't notice the object of the game was lose money as quickly as possible.

My son's new Monopoly could also be part of an insidious plot against America - it eliminates the need for any skill at arithmetic. Is this a similar devious plot (and do the Chinese read Alfie Bester?) In fairness, this may be a self-inflicted wound, the game-maker merely asking the Chinese to build a device to make the game easier on slothful Americans. In the game itself, the cities that can be purchased are not grouped by any logic I can detect - thus simultaneously undermining American's already shaky hold on geography. Fortunately, we have still have Risk to balance this out.

Accidental Veterans Day

I regret to say that the Goof clan did not do anything special for Veterans Day. There is no excuse. America’s veterans made great sacrifices to ensure the freedom that we enjoy every day. We didn’t even go to a Veterans Day sale – and truly our Veterans made their great sacrifices thinking that their children, and their children’s children could enjoy the opportunity to purchase discount mattresses and kitchenware.

But I did take the little Goofs to the bookfair at their school. Each of them was permitted to purchase two items. I didn’t look at their purchases carefully (it was the school bookfair, so I wasn’t really worried about the appropriateness of the material.)

But at bedtime, my daughter dropped her current book and had me read the new one, introducing me to Piper Reed: Navy Brat (by Kimberly Willis Holt). Piper’s dad is a Navy NCO who fixes jets and is called Chief. His family has to move a lot because that is the life of a navy family. And sometimes he has to go away for long stretches on ships.


Goofgirl found this fascinating and asked if I could join the Navy and then we could live in different places, have adventures, and get a dog (because Piper has one.)

First and foremost, there is no military service that could make use of me – I am allergic to responsibility and require a lot of naps. But, putting that aside, I explained to Goofgirl, “If I were in the Navy I would have to go away on ships for a long time and you’d miss me.”

“No, we could all go with you.”

“No sweetheart. In the Navy, the daddies or the mommies go away on the ships for months. The kids don’t come because it can be dangerous. They are protecting us and sometimes to do that they have to go away for a long time.”

Her eyes got a little wide as it all sunk in. She didn’t know it was Veterans Day, but she did get an inkling of their sacrifices.

Meanwhile, Piper has taken her rightful place in the pantheon of my daughter’s literary heroes, next to Ramona, Junie B. Jones, Cam Jansen, and Judy Moody.

Wisdom of Eight

I was asking my son about an after-school activity. He hadn't been able to decide if he wanted to participate or not.

Finally, after a couple of days he told me he didn't want to do it.

"You like the activity, don't you?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"So why don't you want to do it?"

"Because," GoofBoy explained, "It's on Thursday. That's the day of my easiest homework and I just like to finish it up and relax."

What a great answer. This is one wise kid.