Spreading Smiles at the Expense of Others

This morning, as I was pulling together breakfasts GoofGirl was lurking around the kitchen. She does this quite a lot – she really wants to be helpful (at synagogue she no longer attends religious services, she makes a beeline for the kitchen to help out.)

But this morning she had another agenda. When I stepped out of the kitchen, I came back and found she had placed a banana next to the bagel I was taking to the car, along with a pink “Smile!” card which said:

You’ve been tagged with a SMILE card because someone thinks you’re special. Now it is your turn to pass on a smile. Keep the kindness going by doing something nice for someone. Leave this card behind to keep the spirit going.

I had two divided reactions. Part of me thought, “How sweet.” Another part of me thought, “Great, something else to do.”

GoofGirl’s class had learned about how one person doing a good deed can inspire another to do a good deed, and so on – making the world a better place. I know from my reaction to my son’s community service program, that I am a bad person – but I also love how their school assignments turn good deeds into an obligation.

I’m sure many kids forgot about their cards, and many parents lost them as soon as they received them. That would not do with GoofGirl – she would monitor the project. I bought some time, reminding her that I work at home and probably wouldn’t see anyone today.

“You could make someone brownies,” she proposed, “I’ll show you how.”

Always an agenda with that girl.

The easiest thing to do would be to pass it off to MamaGoof in the evening, I was planning on making dinner that night anyway. But that felt dishonest. I’ll be going to my office tomorrow and I’m sure I can find someone to do something nice for there. The little Goofs like hearing about my office (I think it gives them the illusion that their father is in fact a normal adult.)

But I was inspired and made dinner anyway. I am not a good cook – my primary talent is applying heat to frozen things. Fortunately, I had just done a Costco run and we had lots of frozen goodies.

Meanwhile, at her office MamaGoof was commiserating with her friend who has a really lazy husband. If your wife doesn’t have a friend like this you should urge her to get one. It is important that she have a friend with a husband so useless around the house that you look good. If you can’t find such a husband, the show Everybody Loves Raymand will do, although you might also help out a bit more. Truly if you are the least helpful husband you know you are probably setting some sort of low standard.

I’m not unhelpful, but I do everything wrong (I don’t open snack bags properly and it just gets worse from there.) Also, when MamaGoof walks into a room she immediately sees several thousand things out of place. I miss these things.

But next to my wife’s friend’s husband, I am Mr. Considerate – especially when MamaGoof comes home to a prepared meal. I guess the “Smile!” card worked, keep the kindness going indeed.

GoofBoy & Girls: Planning Ahead

GoofBoy is heading towards adolescence. Not yet, for him this is all far away. But he is ten. For him the teens are decades away, but as one gets older time goes faster (I was told this in college and it has haunted me ever since – not that it has kept me from wasting time, I just fret about it more.) According to my subjective perception of time, GoofBoy will be an adolescent in about a week.

The school is already beginning a program to teach the children about what is coming next. It is taught by the gym, sorry - phys-ed teacher. My recollection of gym leads me to believe nothing could be more horrible. Gym teachers were angry men with enormous voices and little patience for the weak. Apparently they are much nicer now. I feared them, but GoofBoy loves them. In fairness, I was also very strange – GoofBoy isn’t.

Presumably, I will still need to offer some guidance as my son enders the churning waters of puberty. Teenage boys are extremely stupid versions of the male gender (and that’s saying something.)

One area where I can offer no counsel is girls. He has tried to read the section about girls in The Most Dangerous Book for Boys but his sister won’t let him.

“Anything he needs to know about girls, I can tell him. I am a girl!” GoofGirl declares. With her instincts for agenda setting, she will be a combination of Cyrano de Bergerac and Cus D’Amato to GoofBoy’s dating efforts.

GoofBoy is pretty ambivalent about girls now. He doesn’t dislike them, it is simply a matter of whether or not they are interested in sports, Magic and whatever else is rolling around in his brain. If they are, great, if they aren’t there just isn’t a lot of common ground.

Still, I think he knows what he is doing. A few years ago I arranged for him to go to a friend’s house for his sister’s fifth birthday. But he didn’t go, he insisted on sticking around. He organized games, took the girls outside for a bug hunt. Then, he finished off the festivities with a big pillow fight in which half a dozen girls pounded him with pillows and jumped on him.

He’s got a plan, and at eight years old he’s got better moves then I had at five times that age.

I wonder if he worked it out in advance with his sister?

The One Eyed Man is King

“Talk to your son,” MamaGoof ordered over the phone.

A few seconds later, GoofBoy’s tremulous voice came on the line.

“Dad… Dad…” he was on the verge of tears.

“Buddy, don’t worry about it. We love you no matter what. Now, what’s going on?”

“Dad… I need glasses!”

“Buddy, I have glasses. Your mom has glasses. We told you that sooner or later – and probably sooner - you would need glasses.”

“But now I’m going to have these things on my face…”

“Are you worried about the other kids picking on you?”

“A little…”

“You go to a Jewish Day School – almost all the kids are near-sighted and awkward. I think you’ll be fine. Besides, glasses are fun!”

“How?” his words are still full of tears.

“You can use the glasses to focus sunlight and set stuff on fire! I used to burn holes in leaves and I used to chase your uncle around and try to fry him. But don’t use it on bugs, that’s just mean.”

“Really?” tears are starting to become laughter.

“Oh yeah! Plus, I kept all my old glasses. I tried to put them together to build a super-laser. I still have them, maybe we can work on this together.”

GoofBoy is laughing now. In the background I hear my wife yelling, “What are you telling him?”

“Buddy, are you ok now?”

“Yeah,” his voice has dropped again, “It’s just that they said one of my eyes was bad. I hate being told I’m not ok…”

“Wait, it’s just one of your eyes?” I asked.

“Yeah, one eye is fine and the other has a syndrome.”

“That’s astigmatism. But if it’s just one eye, then you don’t need glasses.”

“But the doctor said…”

“Buddy, listen, you are so lucky and I am so jealous. If it is just one eye you can wear a monocle!”

“Like the King of Tonga or Colonel Clink?” he asked, getting excited.

In the background I hear my wife shriek – she knows whenever the king of Tonga comes up in conversation trouble is brewing.

“Buddy, I’m so proud. Maybe you can be in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s youngest monocle-wearer!”

“Mommy, Daddy says instead of glasses he is going to get me a monocle!”

“Give me the phone,” MamaGoof commands.

Before she starts yelling at me, I make my plea, “I know what you are going to say. But – would it make a difference if I told you knew just where to get a kid-sized top hat, cane, and cape?”

Addressing Art Issues

I've written before about Shabbat Overload, the overwhelming amount of Jewish ritual objects created by children in pre-school and elementary school. But this is only a fraction of the problem. An artistically-inclined child can easily draw a half-dozen pictures a day.

GoofBoy has gone through Star Wars phases, super-heroes, and now is primarily drawing funny monsters. GoofGirl has, unsurprisingly gone through kitty, flower, and pony phases. But she has been doing a great deal of self-portraits.

GoofManor is literally littered with piles of drawings, as though inhabited by pre-school hoarders. The obvious and sensible thing to do would be to throw them out, but we can't quite bring ourselves to be sensible. What if one of the little Goofs becomes a brilliant artist (or world-renown gangster - I have high hopes for GoofGirl) and their childhood art becomes really valuable?

I came up with the brilliant idea (if I do say so myself) of taking pictures of the art that was interesting. Piles of junk on my hard-drive are much less inconvenient then piles of junk around my house. This process, however was time-consuming and we only took it on in occasional spasms of frustration.

But now, the little Goofs can operate my cel camera. So I asked GoofGirl to go through her recent masterpieces and divide everything into three piles: keep, take a picture, and just throw out. She did a great job.

Cats & Dogs: Boys & Girls

When she was a little girl my mother believed that dogs were boys and cats were girls. Clearly, biology was not as advanced in the late Middle Ages as it is now. Nonetheless, there is something to that ancient wisdom.

GoofGirl’s favorite stuffed animal is a “kitty” – a cat – and she obsesses over all Hello Kitty products, while GoofBoy sleeps with stuffed dogs (and bears). But besides their respective preferences for those animals, there is their behavior. GoofBoy is a dog and GoofGirl is a cat.

When we go away without them, we will come back and GoofBoy runs to us, throws his arms around us and says, “I missed you! I missed!”

GoofGirl sniffs and turns her nose up at us and – after an appropriate wait, sometimes several days – she allows us to approach her and make amends. Fortunately, she hasn’t expressed her displeasure at our leaving by pooping in the corners – yet.

GoofBoy, like a dog, constantly wants to play.

“Dad, let’s go play ball. Wouldn’t that be great? Or we could play badminton – I bet you’ll win this time. Or how about that bamboo stand on the trail. Didn’t we have a good time the last time we went there?”

No begging or imploring for GoofGirl. She takes my participation in her planned activity for granted and simply positions me as necessary.

GoofBoy has a simple, direct and uninhibited enthusiasm. One night, he begged us to take him to a local restaurant because a radio morning show was doing a promotion there and “The guys on the radio always say how much fun it was. I don’t want to miss it! I’m sure we’ll have a good time.”

He always wants us to come to school to see his presentations and activities. GoofGirl, on the other hand, always tells us that, “Parents don’t have to come.”

But like dogs and cats that have lived together a long time, when they fight it is only for fun. And neither sheds – that job is left to me.

Nieces are Nice!

One of the great pleasures of Thanksgiving this year was seeing my niece (let’s just call her NieceGoof). She is two and a half, which is just an awesome age. She is mobile and good-spirited. She runs around looking into things. When you say a new word to her she repeats it with a big smile on her face as though full of joy and wonder about the possibility. And for her, it really is.

One thing that is funny with two year olds is how they go to the same place over and over again. At my parents’ condo they have a few toy figures of African animals kept in a cabinet. My niece goes to the cabinet, announces each animal and puts it on the table. She does this every time she visits. Her grasp of what each animal is has improved – slightly. For a long time the lion was just a “rawr!” Now it is a lion.

When I told her zebras have stripes she was thrilled, “Stipes!” she yelled.

She also remembers me, I taught her peekaboo. I’m good at peekaboo and my kids won’t play it with me anymore. As soon as she sees me, she puts her hands over her face. That could also mean she thinks I’m hideous.

GoofGirl is really taken with her cousin and uses her as a lab for her baby-sitting techniques. Although she is only seven, GoofGirl has shown real talent for it and takes pride in it. GoofGirl watched her little cousin while the grown-ups gorged – carefully walking her up and down the stairs.

Later that night, GoofGirl took a bath with NieceGoof. I missed it – since I was busy being the greatest dad ever – but I heard that NieceGoof thought it was hilarious when her big cousin poured water on herself. But NieceGoof laughed even harder when the water was poured over her head!

The Ravens won – but I’m sorry I missed this.

It was nice to be reminded that two-year-olds are wonderful – especially when they belong to someone else.