The Handy Man Can & The Field of Nightmares

I am not a bad husband, overall. I have my strengths and my weaknesses, but when asked, my wife's big complaint about me is how completely and utterly "unhandy" I am with tools. I do not build, fix, or repair anything. My father-in-law was a regular McGyver and his yard is a treasure trove of decaying tools, inventions, and jury-rigged devices of uncertain origin - or, as my children call them, "toys."

My father can also fix things, but I did not inherit this, despite his efforts to teach me. I believe that I was a poor student because as a southpaw, I am at disadvantage in attempting to repair right-handed devices - just another way rightey keeps us down!

So I am sending her (through the very private medium of this blog) this recent Washington Post article about Jim Scardina who's -

entire front yard is a baseball field. With dugouts, bleachers, even a concession stand.

Piece by piece during the past 10 years, Scardina has built the field from scratch, to the astonishment of his neighbors, the disapproval of his wife and the delight of his son....

But it didn't stop with grass on the outfield. Scardina started working on accessories: A bathroom so players wouldn't have to hike all the way to the house. Bleachers and a concession stand for the kids.

Then one day, Michelle Scardina noticed a big shed being erected beside the house. At the time, they were using a tractor to mow the grass on their 10-acre lot. "A storage shed for the tractor, that's how he explained it," she said.

But within months, the tractor shed had somehow transformed into a $100,000 winter baseball training facility with a bathroom, shower, kitchen and office. Two batting cages were installed with 90-mph pitching machines. An area to the side served as a mini-infield for the boys to run drills.

This will be a quick lesson that she should be careful what she wishes for. I have lots of big ideas. Recently I've been considering a catapult system to send the kids to school so I don't have to drive carpool, but I can't find a good contractor.

But since my primary medium is words, the biggest danger my wife faces is that I'll start another blog. The pen may be mightier then the sword, or hammer, or even the lathe. Perhaps my words will change the world. But they won't clutter up the yard (although my office is a wreck.)

Father's Day Finances: Mamawala

One last Father's Day gift - my wife, after talking to her mom handed me some cash. I looked at her quizzically - not that I mind being handed cash.

"It's from my mama," she explained. Although of course I am grateful that my mother-in-law likes me, this is, however, a worrisome sign that her usual good sense is failing.

But here is the thing, it was my wife's money - and we basically pool our money so what was I given exactly?

My wife shook her head, "Just take it - my mama said to do this so we have to do it."

Suddenly I understood the hawala system, one of the informal financial network used by diaspora communities to transfer money. The system works entirely on trust, one broker will release money strictly on the say-so of a broker on the other side of the world.

Mamacita is running her own network, and I'd best go along with the mamawala.




So what will I do with my good fortune? I'll take my inspiration from former major league pitcher Tug McGraw, who, when he was asked how he would spend his $75,000 salary (this was 1975) said, "Ninety percent I'll spend on good times, women and Irish whiskey. The other 10 percent I'll probably waste."

I'll do like good old Tug McGraw, an old, sluggish, married Tug McGraw who needs to be up early the next morning.

Father's Day Card Update

Below (no link, just scroll down) my I wrote about my daughter's disturbing Father's Day card. Bouncing her on my knee this morning, I asked her about it again.

"Sweetheart, why did you make the person on the Father's Day card all bloody?"

"Daddy, I did it to make you freak out."

Well, it kind of worked.

Father's Day Cards: Portrait by an Artist as a Red Man

So my kids made me Father's Day cards - pretty standard stuff (and as such, painfully sweet.) My son's card had a picture of my pitching to him, his drawing of my face had black magic marker blotches because I hadn't shaved. Great!

My daughter (she's four) made a card featured below.*



After my son explained his card, I asked my daughter about her work. She explained, "That's a bloody man."

"Oh."

"The sun, the clouds, all bloody," she continued.

"Daddy, maybe it is from that time you had a lot of nosebleeds and got blood on everything," my son suggested helpfully.

I learned my lesson - never ask an artist to explain his or her own work, just appreciate the spirit that went into it.

One source may have been some of our recent reading. Their Trotskyite grandfather gave them Big Bird's RED BOOK, with its focus on the need for discipline and monster/child unity in order to prevail in the class struggle (Mr. Hooper is obviously a symbol of bourgeois control over the means of production - particularly of milkshakes). Still, politics aside, Big Bird puts it best when he says, "Red is a very beautiful color. I think you're going to like it."

*Astute readers may have noticed my daughter's card was signed with an "E" that she made herself. It is the first letter of her name. Recently, when I was catching up on some work, she expressed the opinion that my boss was making me work too hard. She announced that she was "Going to write him a letter!"

She made a neat card, with lots of drawings and when I opened it up, inside was a big letter "E."

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Past Father's Day Entries

I've built up a bit of an archive of Father's Day pieces.

My favorite is my first - Fatherhood and Today's Dad about how previous generations of fathers had it easier, with a reference to the late great King of Tonga Taufa’ahau Tupou IV (I expect they will have another - who can refuse a fifth?)



You can read the full Father's Day Archive here.

Gaming Lessons Part II: Seizing the (Father's) Day

Risk is much more to my son’s liking. Counting and remembering may not appeal to many little boys, but world domination is right up my son’s alley. He likes it so much, that this morning I woke up to hear him trying to teach his little sister how to play. She is only four, and while she was eager Risk was a bit over her head both in mechanics and in purpose. She is less interested in domination. When we play chess the Queens meet in the middle of the board, have tea and invite the bishops, knights and castles to join them. For some reason the king is always busy checking his email.

My son became frustrated and starting yelling at his sister for not paying attention, so (after a few moments of enjoying this delicious irony) I accepted that, Father's Day or not, I could sleep no longer and went down to play her part – naturally she had chosen pink.

The die was cast, and it kept coming up in his favor. While I sought chokepoints (Iceland is good, so is North Africa) and to develop adequate force ratios, my son favored a more direct stratagem: “Attack!” His tiny expeditionary forces trounced my citadel in Quebec, my firewall in Ukraine, and my strongholds in Peru and Kamchatka. Soon he needed more pieces then the game provided, so he started using red pieces to augment his forces. A canny move, since my aged eyes had some trouble distinguishing between his red and my pink pieces.

Not that he needed much help. As four straight rolls went against me in the battle for Egypt I envisioned a newspaper headline spinning out, reading: Nile Defenses Shattered as Demoralized Pink Armies Collapse. But then, my small Mongolian contingents put up a surprisingly fierce resistance. I began composing lines for a future history textbook:

Unfamiliar with the terrain and overconfident from their stunning successes, Blue Armies found themselves bogged down by a tough insurgency in the depths of Mongolia’s deserts.

Finally, at my last bastion – inevitably Madagascar – the garrison fought well. I imagined its commander exhorting his men in their doomed defense like Hector at Troy and delivering bombastic speeches like Henry V calling on history: “To always remember the courage of the armies of Pink!”

But a few more rolls and it was over.

As a graduate student of international affairs, who has studied Sun-Tzu and Thucydides, it is humbling to be bested. It was also a lesson in the role of fortune in human affairs (and perhaps a warning that my coursework in conflict management is not serving me well.) The laws of probability decree that we all have a certain number of favorable rolls of the die in our lives. But perhaps these favorable rolls are bunched up at the beginning, for, as Machiavelli instructs, “…fortune always favors young men because they are not so much inclined to caution as to aggressiveness and daring…”

So my duty as dad is to teach him the things he’ll need when fortune’s favor shifts – as it inevitably will - diligence, virtue, and perhaps just a bit of cunning. That is my Father's Day Lesson, to teach my son guile, but as to girls he’ll be on his own.

(And to some extent so am I - I can't teach my daughter anything about guile, or much of anything else. She is four and knows everything.)