A man’s home becomes his bouncy castle

“Sorry, bud, there’s not time to go see the Christmas lights tonight,” I told my son Evan, breaking a promise I’d made earlier in the day and bracing myself for the consequences.

The three-year-old brain does many things well.  Playing hide-and-seek with somebody sitting on the same couch, for instance, or detecting and rejecting any food that doesn’t come in nugget form.  Or, if any food does slip past the nugget detector, making sure that it gets dunked in ketchup, even if that food is a strawberry.

But disappointment is not something it handles well, or quietly.

I winced as Evan processed the information.  We wouldn’t be visiting the house with the seven million Christmas lights tonight, the one that, for the month of December, requires its own dedicated nuclear reactor.  We wouldn’t be idling in our car, playing Christmas music, watching the lights twinkle and dance around their yard, while those of us in the backseat wondered where the daddy was at that house, and why wasn’t he walking around unplugging everything, grumbling that light switches go in two directions?

As Evan’s mouth opened, I felt my ear holes clench shut, even as my brain raced, and failed, to come up with a better term for ear holes.

“It’s okay.  Wanna jump in my bouncy castle,” Evan replied.

For his third birthday back in June, we gave Evan an indoor bouncy castle, and I fear that we may have ruined him.  He doesn’t care about anything else.

“What do you want to do this weekend?” you’ll ask him.

“Jump in my bouncy castle,” he’ll say.

“The whole time?” you’ll ask.

“Can we?” he’ll reply.

We thought the bouncy castle would live in a closet, and only get pulled out for rainy days or special occasions.  As it turns out, when your only responsibility in life is to make it to the potty in time, every day is a special occasion.

I worry that maybe Evan’s flying a little too close to the sun.  The grown-up equivalent of being three years old with your own bouncy castle is probably owning a convertible and having a full head of hair, which does not occur in nature.  We might be throwing the universe out of balance.

Growing up, the kid down the street had his own full-size pinball machine, and he turned out kind of messed up.  As a parent, it’s your job to make sure your kid’s life is kind of awesome, but not too awesome.  If yours is the kid who has everything, he’s probably also the kid who’s pulling the legs off of grasshoppers.

Bouncing is now part of our nightly routine.  Basically, we are a family of Tiggers.  Except that Evan is the only one bouncing, since his parents have to lie in the center of the bouncy castle, limbs outstretched like we’re worried about falling through the ice on a frozen pond, trying not to calculate how far over the 100-lb weight limit we are.

While Evan squeals and hops around, I like to pass the time by looking around the basement at all the things we can’t use anymore.  The ping-pong table.  The dartboard.  The video games.  It used to be such a good man cave down there.  Then a benevolent but capricious tyrant built his castle in the center of the room, banishing the original occupants to the outer reaches of the realm, never to be seen from again.

On the plus side, we can break promises to Evan about all the awesome places we’re going to take him, since he has no interest in leaving the house anyway.  We’ll still try to get him to the house with the seven million Christmas lights before it powers down for the year, though.  Assuming their dad hasn’t already gotten home and unplugged everything.

You can storm Mike Todd’s bouncy castle at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Some fiddles are fitter than others

I took this week off from the column.  Here's a seasonally appropriate rerun from 2008.  Happy holidays!  Now, back to the cookies.

This Christmas season, my wife Kara and I decided to be socially conscious and do our best to buy locally, so we headed over to do some shopping at a nearby bookseller, Barnes and Noble, one of our local corporate behemoths.

To our surprise, there was a good deal of very local activity going on in there; our next-door neighbors’ teenage son, Brian, was playing in a concert with his fiddle group in a roped-off area next to the café, where currency is converted into coffee mixed with sundae toppings. The young musicians had clearly not been paying attention in math class; they seemed to have been playing their instruments for longer than they had been alive.

“This is a song that I composed last summer,” Brian announced into the microphone, before heading into a performance that Mr. Holland would have gladly traded for his opus. During the song, three teenage kids played musical chairs with their musical instruments, switching between a piano, an electric guitar, acoustic guitars and fiddles (you could tell they were fiddles, not violins, because the people playing them were not wearing tuxedos). I half-expected Bugs Bunny to march across the stage wearing his one-man-band outfit, playing a trombone while swinging mallets into a bass drum with his ears.

I don’t come anywhere close to matching Brian’s success when I compose my own songs, which are generally improvisational message songs intended for much smaller audiences, with titles like, “The Itsy-Bitsy Husband Doesn’t Feel Like Emptying the Dishwasher.”

Regardless, standing among the toe-tapping, head-bobbing audience there beside the biscotti jars, I felt a certain camaraderie with those talented kids because -- and I don’t mean to brag, but -- in certain musical circles, I’m very highly regarded, especially and exclusively in the circles that are familiar with the high scores on our copy of Guitar Hero II.

For those unfamiliar with the Guitar Hero franchise, it’s a series of video games that makes players feel like Jimi Hendrix for the intrinsically nerdy act of being able to punch large plastic buttons on a guitar-shaped controller. I once overheard a guy at a party who, in the saddest boast I’ve ever heard, claimed to be the 24th-best Guitar Hero player in the world, which might be slightly more impressive to women than having the 24th-hairiest shoulders. A true Guitar Hero aficionado will do well not to spend too much time thinking about the real instruments they could have learned in the same amount of time.

We never upgraded to Guitar Hero III in our house, mainly because the pursuit of musical excellence on a pretend guitar began to seem somewhat counterproductive, especially when a very real guitar sat biodegrading in its case twenty feet away, gently weeping from neglect.

A couple of weeks ago, spurred by post-Grand-Theft-Auto-conquering boredom, I pulled my old acoustic guitar out of the corner it had been occupying since before Tom Cruise was crazy.  Shortly thereafter, I discovered that it doesn’t do the best things for your musical confidence when the first chords you strum on your chosen instrument send your dog into a barking frenzy, the same way the trash truck’s brakes do.

Her musical criticism aside, I realized that our dog Memphis was barking because she’d never heard me play the guitar. After watching Brian and his fellow musicians calm and delight the harried crowd that had assembled mainly to throw elbows at its fellow shoppers, it became clear that all those days I heard Brian practicing through the windows, creating a disproportionately beautiful soundtrack for walking the dog, were paying great dividends.

In any event, Memphis is really going to freak out when she hears what our vacuum cleaner sounds like.

You can locate the exit door before Mike Todd’s encore begins at mikectodd@gmail.com.

I saw Daddy hitting Santa Claus

“Why’s Daddy hitting the Christmas tree?” my son Evan asked from the kitchen.  He could only see my legs sticking out from under the tree as it jostled and swayed in the living room, so he could be forgiven for thinking that the tree was trying to devour me, and I was doing my best to fend it off.

“He’s just frustrated right now,” my wife Kara replied.

“Because the stupid tree stand is stupid and we should have bought a normal one,” I answered, slapping the stupid broken pedal on the dumb thing.

“AAAAHHHH!” Evan screamed as the tree fell down again.

Last year, Kara bought a fancy tree stand that’s supposed to let you position the tree while you press the foot pedal, then it holds the tree in place when you step off.  We should have paid a few bucks more for the deluxe model that shouts “TIM-ber!” every time the tree falls down.

“Oh, #&$@%,” I said, looking at the fallen tree.  Evan’s eyes widened.  I knew he was within earshot, so I actually said, “Oh, hash-ampersand-dollar-sign-at-symbol-percentage-thing.”  It takes a long time to cuss when your kids are listening.

With the foot pedal hopelessly jammed, I pulled the tree back up and got it to stay put, but gravity wouldn’t be denied for long.  The tree would easily have been felled by a single creature stirring, even a mouse, and definitely a three-year-old.

Fortunately, it was easy to lock everyone out of the living room.  Our house has enough baby gates to qualify as a Supermax facility.  And our inmates aren’t allowed to use pointy silverware, either.

The next day, I called the tree stand company, which had printed its phone number (how quaint!) on the stand.  The operator bounced me to another operator, who bounced me to Matt, who advised me how to fix the stand with a butter knife.

“Nothing sharp,” he added, as if he’d known me my whole life.  I thanked him and hung up, skeptical.

“If this works, I’ll eat an ornament,” I said as I approached the tree with a dull knife, doing nothing to allay Evan’s concerns that I was engaging in mortal battle with our holiday decorations.

That Matt’s butter knife trick fixed our tree stand in two seconds was nothing short of a Christmas miracle.  Too bad the skirmish that started the next day couldn’t be solved that easily.  All else being equal, though, it’s best to solve family disputes without involving cutlery.  Even dull cutlery, if you can help it.  

“Aunt Sister and Uncle Charles sent you your first present.  We’ll put it here until Christmas,” I told Evan, sliding the box under the tree.

“But I want to open it now,” Evan said, sliding it back into the room.

“Waiting to open Christmas presents is part of the fun.  Then you get to open your presents all at once on Christmas morning.  Won’t that be awesome?” Kara said.

“Actually,” Evan said, pausing to feign consideration of Mommy’s wisdom, “I want to open it now.”

It’s almost as if three-year-olds have no appreciation for the joys of personal discipline and delayed gratification.

“Evan, we call them Christmas presents because we open them on Christmas,” I told him.

“WANNA OPEN IT NOW!” he responded. Clearly, Mommy and Daddy were not getting it.

“Well, you have to wait until Christmas.  It’ll be good for you to practice some patience,” I said.

“WANNA OPEN IT NOW!” he responded, throwing himself on the floor and writhing around, experiencing the severe growing pains of his rapidly building character.

A week prior, Aunt Sister had sent an email saying that Evan could open his present whenever he’d like, but his tantrum had ensured that he’d be waiting another couple of weeks.  Sometimes, it’s good to take a break from punching your Christmas decorations to teach your kid some self-control.

You can fix Mike Todd with a butter knife at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Sometimes say never again

The first rule of Date Day is: Don’t talk about Date Day, at least not in front of your kids, unless you want Date Day to begin with the peeling of inconsolable children off your shins.

“Hey, there’s a matinee for the new James Bond movie tomorrow at…” my wife Kara started to say, then she looked at our son Evan, who was staring at her while dancing in place.

“Do you have to go potty?” she asked him.

“No, I don’t,” he said, hopping from one foot to the other.  Fortunately, he was too busy holding it in to ask what “matinee” meant (the correct answer in that situation: “It’s a large underwater mammal that serves as a speed bump for motorboats.”) and the issue dropped.

When you have two kids, a day of romantic spontaneity doesn’t happen without some serious planning.  Several weeks prior, Kara and I had both scheduled a vacation day on an upcoming Friday so that – and here’s where the plan gets ingenious – we could still drop the kids off at daycare.  It’d be like having a weekend day from five years ago, back when free time was the default and we were allowed to lounge around, accomplishing nothing for the good of anyone.  It was awesome.

On the big morning, Kara and I played it cool.  When I dropped the kids off at daycare, as far as they knew, Daddy was headed to work.  Then I zipped back home, where Kara and I enjoyed a lazy morning, which might not sound like much, but on a normal day, our living room is more likely to host a motorcross rally.

“This is weird,” Kara said from the couch, coffee in one hand, book in the other.

“Want me to ask you for a waffle and then scream and refuse to eat it when you cut it in half?” I offered.

After a couple of hours, we headed over to a new tapas restaurant that we wanted to try, but that didn’t appear to be the kind of place with buckets of crayons behind the podium.  I’d never been to a tapas restaurant before, and would soon come to understand that “tapas” is the Spanish word for “still hungry.”

“Here you are,” our waitress said, putting four silver-dollar-sized plates in front of us.  I thought we’d placed an extravagant order, but that was back before I realized that lobster ravioli, in this context, was not plural.  They’d taken one lobster ravioili, cut it in half and stacked it on itself to make it seem taller, like a short guy putting lifts in his shoes.

After both delicious bites, we asked the waitress for our check, explaining that we were trying to make it to the Bond movie.

“My brother saw it.  He said it was AMAZING,” she said, getting so enthusiastic that she didn’t notice I’d eaten the plates.

At the theater, I ran to the ticket machine, credit card in hand, no time to spare.  That’s when I noticed that the showtime we’d been trying to make didn’t exist anymore.

“Dude, there’s no 1:10 showing,” I said.

“I just checked it last night,” Kara said, looking up at the marquee to verify my mistake.  But the showtimes had indeed changed since we’d checked, and there were no movies left that would get us to daycare in time to pick up the kids.  The marquee might as well have read: James Bond Skyfall:  NEVER.

We stood by the ticket vending machine, hugging, and I could feel that Kara was crying.

“I don’t care about the movie, we just don’t get to do this kind of thing anymore,” she said.

“Aw, babe, look at the bright side,” I said as we headed to the car, working out another plan for the afternoon.  “The next time we have a chance to see a movie, we’ll be able to legally pay for it out of our 401(k)s.”  

You can paint the town red with Mike Todd at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Nailing that deadline, retroactively

Due to a scheduling error last week (namely the scheduling of the print deadline a few hours before the column was finished), there's no column this week.  I feel a little guilty about missing a week every now and then, but with two small kids in the house, I'm proud of myself for finding time to keep my personal hygiene to a reasonable standard.  Finishing the column is extra credit.

Anyway, let's wheel in some cute kids to fill the dead air!  It's all their fault, after all.

I like to do this, too, except figuratively

'Til next week!  Probably!

When you wait upon a line

“He’ll see you in just a minute,” the woman with the clipboard said, giving us another moment to gather our nerves before heading deeper backstage.

“Is he gonna sign my book?” my son Evan asked.

“I hear he’s nice about signing autographs,” my wife Kara replied, and Evan gripped his pen a little tighter.
The door opened, and we were ushered through.  It seemed so surreal that we were about to come face-to-face with one of the most famous actors in the world, instantly recognizable by his voice, his iconic fashion choices and his big round ears.

“Mickey!” Evan said as the final bouncer waved us in to see the great rodent.

It was our family’s first visit to Disney World, the place where dreams come true, especially if it’s your dream to pay five dollars for a hot dog.

We’d come to Orlando for a wedding, and found that it’s impossible to stand that close to the center of the children’s entertainment universe without being caught in its pull.  Once we landed in Florida with car seats stacked on our luggage then stacked on our strollers, we could almost feel the little four-fingered, white-gloved hands reaching out to grab our children, who were presumably under that pile of luggage somewhere.
Which isn’t to say that our trip to the Magic Kingdom happened spontaneously.  Lunar landings have been conducted with less planning.

“Once we hit Small World, we should grab a FastPass to Peter Pan before heading to the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh,” Kara said in the months leading up to the trip, laptop open, guide book propped on the keyboard, crazy handwritten scribblings falling onto the floor.    

I would nod in agreement as if I understood, because that hardly ever gets me in trouble.  But if I ever took her plan-every-moment style of vacation organizing for granted, I stopped once I saw how much she should be charging for that service.

“Our team of vacation planning professionals customizes your vacation so you can spend your time playing, not planning,” the Disney website says.  All for the low, low (did we mention low?) nominal fee of $300 per hour, plus park admission, minimum six hours.

Whatever line of business you might be in, it is the wrong one.  The world has people in it that will pay $300 an hour for someone to tell them which rides to sit on at an amusement park.  How this is true, I have no idea.  For that kind of dough, you should really be having the kind of fun that would cost you your Senate seat.

But knowing that you have the option to pay $300 an hour to not stand in line sure made me feel a whole lot better about standing in line.  Oh, and we stood in line.

During one part of the trip, we waited in a serpentine line to meet “the real” Buzz Lightyear, with our seventh-month-old wriggling in my arms and yanking the hair of nearby women, while his older brother slalomed between the legs of weary parents.

I looked at my watch and smiled.  “We just saved $300,” I said.

I’d arrived in Orlando with my cynicism firmly in place, thinking of Disney solely as a place where families go to be parted from their money.  And it is that, but it is also a highly efficient fun-delivering, memory-making machine.  That place knows what it’s doing.

After Evan smiled for some starstruck pictures and high-fived a silent Mickey, he walked out of the room staring at the mouse’s signature in his notepad, his new greatest treasure.

“I met Mickey Mouse,” he said, awed.  Suddenly, all the money we’d spent seemed like a bargain.
As it turns out, the fastest way to a parent’s wallet is through their heart.

You can email Mike Todd at mikectodd@gmail.com.  Makes no difference who you are.

There might be blood

“Aw, no,” I said, averting my eyes, but it was too late.  Because of what I’d just seen, blood would most likely be spilled.  Or rather, extracted.

There, in the middle of the hallway, sat the sandwich board that reminded me of an unfulfilled promise I’d made to a friend.  I make unfulfilled promises all the time, but this one stuck in my head because it wasn’t to my dental hygienist, who must know by now that I’m never going to start flossing, despite my biannual protestations to the contrary.

This promise was to my friend and co-worker Don, who instant-messaged me one day with this: “There’s a blood drive today, and I always give, but I can’t this time because we’ve been to Africa recently (you can’t give if you might have been exposed to malaria during the past year).  Can you give for me?”

The request would have seemed strange coming from anyone else, but Don is the kind of person who thinks you can make the world a better place by doing things to make it better.  It’s an interesting theory, but one that’s really hard to test when you have so many awesome shows in your Netflix queue.  Sorry, world, I’d like to help make you better, but Sons of Anarchy season 4 just came out.

Don doesn’t make excuses, though.  He was probably in Africa digging wells with his bare hands and teaching lions how to read.  One time, he actually talked me into buying a carbon offset for my car, which invests your fee in enough clean energy to erase your vehicular carbon footprint.  It’s a nice idea, but after a year I found an even worthier cause to invest in: our cable bill.

For donating blood, I hadn’t given since senior year of high school, when I gave two pints to get out of a couple of calculus classes.  I’d gladly have sacrificed at least one toe to get out of calculating another double integral, so an occasional offering of blood seemed like a steal.

“I have a presentation to give today, and I’m going to need all my blood for it, but yes, I will donate very soon,” I promised Don.

Two years later (still “very soon” geologically), on a trip to the cafeteria, I happened across the sandwich board announcing “Blood Drive Here Today,” and I couldn’t think of an excuse (though I tried mightily) for not settling my long-unpaid debt.  

The experience was even more memorable than I’d anticipated.

“Why are you putting pink gauze on him?” the guy from the registration table asked a nurse as she wrapped the arm of the guy next to me.

“We’re putting pink gauze on everyone.  It’s for breast awareness,” she replied.  The guy cocked his head and just looked at her for a beat.

If there’s one issue that doesn’t need its own campaign, it’s breast awareness.  For most guys, if there’s a breast within a hundred-yard radius, they’re aware of it.

“Really?” the registration guy asked, smiling.

“Oh, you know what I meant,” the nurse said.

Then she glanced at the bag of blood hanging from my arm and said, “Whoa, that shouldn’t be full yet.  Guess you needed an oil change.”

And with that, it was over.  Two years of pent-up guilt, gone in less than thirty minutes.  The actual donation part took less than five.  Short of mugging a five-year-old, it’s hard to think of an easier way to score free juice and cookies.

In any event, it’s nice to know that there’s someone like Don out there who cares enough to encourage others to be decent, giving members of society.  Which is why I’ve blocked him from instant-messaging me.

You can remind Mike Todd about breasts at mikectodd@gmail.com. 

The ears of the hurricane

“The trees are dancin’” my son Evan said, looking out the window from his air mattress in our foyer.

The wind from Hurricane Sandy had the trees violently dancing and swaying, turning our yard into an arboreal mosh pit.  Some of the trees seemed to be bending in decidedly untreelike fashion, like the inflatable dancing stick figures that must somehow lure people into buying used cars.

“Yeah, they’re getting down out there,” I said.  We hadn’t mentioned that we’d chosen to sleep downstairs in case one of the trees decided to dance its way through our roof.  Evan had just recently gotten over his intense phobia of falling trees after witnessing a tree collapse in our backyard last summer, so if a tree falls in our forest, we don’t make any noise about it.  As far as Evan was concerned, we were having an impromptu slumber party, and he was stoked.

“You asleep yet?” he asked as he bucked like a rodeo bull on his mattress.  Zack, our seven-month-old, tossed and turned in his travel crib.

“Oddly enough, no,” my wife Kara responded.  

Just then, the nightlight, which had been flickering, went dark, and the hum of the fridge went quiet.  Kara and I had been preparing for this moment for the past several months, as any safety-conscious parent would, by watching the first two seasons of the post-apocalyptic zombie show “Walking Dead” from our Netflix queue.    

Survival in a world without electricity is one of the show’s main themes, along with how to properly puncture a zombie’s head so that it will stop trying to feast upon you.  We haven’t really picked up too many practical tips yet, at least none that we might be able to apply without investing in a crossbow, but we’re still watching, just to be safe.  At the very least, the show does give some helpful perspective: no matter how long the power is out, at least you don’t have hordes of undead attempting to devour you.

After confirming that we’d lost power for good, I headed downstairs to start the ritual, with some guilt, of unhooking the garage door from the electric opener and dragging the generator into the driveway.

When I was a kid, part of the fun of a power outage was the silence.  It was one of the rare times when everything went perfectly quiet, except for the sounds of nature, if just for a while.  Nobody had exhaust-spewing, cacophonous gas-powered generators.  We just quietly let all the food in our fridge spoil, and we liked it that way.

Now, as soon the lights flicker out, you can almost hear the pull cords on the generators in our neighborhood being yanked simultaneously, and then the surround-sound roar begins.  Our own generator is just a little 3500-watt unit, but when the engine revs up, it sounds like Satan’s lawnmower.

My decibel-induced guilt isn’t quite as strong as my preference to keep our barbecue sauce in the fridge that expired in 2009 from getting worse, though, so I found myself out in the hurricane adding to the racket.  
On my way back in, I noticed a huge, dead oak tree that had fallen parallel to the house, twenty feet off to the side.  It had dropped a gigantic branch that came within three feet of landing on, or through, our roof.  Somehow, though it must have sounded like a stegosaurus stomping through, nobody heard it fall, including, thankfully, Evan.  Probably because he was too busy stress-testing his air mattress.

We got lucky all around.  Many people affected by the storm and its devastation would probably have chosen a zombie apocalypse instead.  Within a couple of days, though, our lives were back to as normal as they get, and our trees, thankfully, were back to being wallflowers.
 
You can pop Mike Todd’s air mattress at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Hurricane delay

Last week's weather, as you may have heard or experienced, was not conducive to concentrating on a column.  All is well here now, and I hope it is wherever you are, too.

So, pictures!

Take a little trip with me

In my experience, if you’re going to fall down a flight of stairs while carrying a baby, it’s best to do it at around 3am, when the sleep deprivation will have you all woozy and shock-absorbent.

Of course, some might argue that if you’re carrying a baby, it might be better to avoid falling down the stairs altogether.  This is a compelling argument, but one that is easy to ignore when you’re stumbling around the house in the middle of the night with your brain running in standby mode.

It all happened, as these things do, so fast.  One second, I’m walking down the stairs with Zack in my arms, quietly suggesting to him that maybe, after seven months, it would be okay if he decided to see what sleeping through the night felt like.  The next moment would cause me to seriously reevaluate my nocturnal footwear decisions.  From here on out, whenever I purchase white gym socks, I am basing my decision entirely on which socks have the highest coefficient of static friction.

See, Dr. Rowe!  I was too paying attention in physics class.

My heel slipped off the front of the (thankfully) final step, and I went down like a sack of potatoes, taking my tater tot along for the ride.  As two generations of Todd men sailed through the air, I hope Zack appreciated that Daddy’s reflex was to clutch him tight and take one for Team Todd.

The thud echoed through the house, followed immediately by Zack’s cries.

There’s nothing scarier than causing harm to your offspring.  Most parents, if given the choice between losing their own pinky finger in a table saw accident or having their kid get a little paper cut would, without hesitation, choose the paper cut.  But they’d feel really bad about it afterwards.

The timing seemed strange for this to happen, since I’d just added “tripping while carrying Zack” to my mental catalog of things to fear.  I’d filed it alongside the fear of having my cell phone fall out of my breast pocket and land in a toilet, and the fear of drinking a wasp that crawled into a Coke can while I wasn’t paying attention.  About a week before it happened, I’d realized that it COULD happen, which is why I’m never drinking a Coke outdoors again, or going to the bathroom.

It also seemed an odd coincidence that this wipeout happened so close to Halloween, the time of year when we celebrate our deepest fears, and also festoon our department stores with Christmas decorations.

“What was that?” my wife Kara called down the stairs, alarmed.

“Nothing, it’s fine,” I gasped, not sure if that was true.

I’d landed hard on my backside and elbows, and was only somewhat comforted that I could tell the difference between the two.  The important thing, though, was that I didn’t fumble our child.

I limped around the room apologizing to Zack, who settled down almost immediately.  He’d been frightened by the fall, but hadn’t been hurt.

I wanted to explain to Kara that I was a hero, but it’s hard to be the hero when you’re also the idiot who caused the problem in the first place.

“He’s fine, everything’s good,” I said, looking up at Kara as I placed Zack into his swing, clonking his head on the plastic mobile on the way in.

“Dude, seriously?” his wide eyes said.

That happened about a week ago, and we’ve navigated the stairs successfully many times since, perhaps because of the crampons I’ve strapped over my socks.  Undeterred by the incident, Zack still insists upon an audience around 3am every night.  If this keeps up, it might be worth a shot to try from a few steps higher next time.

You can crawl into Mike Todd’s Coke while he’s not looking at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Showering in expletives

“What can I pinch with this?” my son Evan asked, holding up the pair of channel locks I’d left on the bathroom counter.

When it comes to which tools our three-year-old is allowed to play with, my wife Kara and I draw very different lines, as I discovered the first time I let Evan wield a Phillips-head screwdriver.  Kara acted like I’d handed him an anthropomorphic chainsaw that taught bad grammar.

“Tell them you don’t want no more dinner!” the chainsaw would yell as Evan sliced it through our dining room table.

“I’m not sure that’s the safest thing,” I started to say, but then this huge smile spread across Evan’s face as he scissored the air with the channel locks like he was trimming hedges, and I realized that there was still hope for one of us to be a decent do-it-yourselfer.

I surveyed the landscape for something suitable.

"There, my underwear on the floor," I said.

Evan picked up my underwear with the channel locks and ran around the bathroom, waving my undies back-and-forth like he was in the color guard at a halftime show.

“Pinch, pinch, pinch!” he yelled.

For all the parents out there who are struggling to find ways to keep your kids entertained, forget the iPad.  All you need is some channel locks and a pair of striped boxer shorts.  Plaid might also work, but I have yet to test it.

I turned my attention back to our leaky showerhead.  A good showerhead should be leaky by design, but this one was leaking out the wrong end, against the wall.

“Hey, this could be the perfect time to switch to a water-saving showerhead,” I’d said to my wife, Kara.

She carefully considered the idea by immediately saying, “No way.”

“But think about how much less you’d be getting,” I said. My persuasion tactics could use some honing.

“I really enjoy showers.  Don’t take that away from me,” she said.

Point taken.  The shower is the only place we can escape from our children.  We should probably install a
TV in there, and perhaps a can opener and some shelves of emergency rations.

For some reason, I offered to fix the shower while entertaining both of our kids.  After the first minute, I’d lost the first member of my audience to the siren call of my crumpled-up underwear, but his little brother Zack watched me from his bassinette in rapt attention.

“Now watch Super Dad fix the plumbing while taking care of two kids!” I said.  Then, with a flourish, I snapped the pipe in half.    

“Aw, dude, that wasn’t supposed to happen,” I said, the presence of my offspring making it impossible to apply the proper expletives to the situation, at least out loud.

Evan became bored with the channel locks and set them down, then put his nose an inch from Zack’s face and yelled, “BLAGOO BLAGOO BLAGOO!"

“Hey, Evan, don’t do that,” I said, pulling him back by the shoulders to reveal Zack’s huge smile. To Zack, Evan is David Letterman, the Cirque du Soleil, Coldplay, Six Flags Great Adventure and HBO original programming all rolled into one.  Being manhandled and shouted at by his big brother is Zack’s greatest joy.  Something tells me that this will serve him well in life.

“Well, show’s over, folks, until I can get to the hardware store,” I said.  We left the bathroom and prepared to shatter the silence elsewhere in the house.

In some respects, the operation had been a great success.  Since nobody could use the shower anymore, it was saving a ton of water.

You can plumb the depths with Mike Todd at mikectodd@gmail.com.