son

Bang Your Head

Went to a show last Saturday night.  The band was doing its thing.  The mosh pit started and then the crowd parted and there was Kiki Dee.   Weezer

I did go to a show last Saturday night.  I took four teenagers and a nine year old to the Weezer concert at the Del Mar Race Track.  I think the evening left as much an impression on me as it did the kids.  It all started when we arrived after race five and I was delighted to find out all the kids got in free.  Money for the ponies!  We didn’t win anything on that account, but oh well.

After the ninth race, we headed on over to the venue which was in the infield.  If you haven’t been to the track, the infield is the center of the racetrack.  We set up our blankets and lawn chairs and cooler.  My sixteen year old son and his buddy wanted to get as close as possible, so they meandered their way up with my friend’s 11 year old son and friend.  My fourteen year old daughter and her friend weaved their way up front also.  I figured they’re fourteen and I need to let them roam around a little.  Jacqueline and I hung out in the back.

The whole concert was enjoyable.  Jacqueline sat on my shoulders most of the time and sang out loud to the songs she knew.  I told my wife later on that she was a babe magnet.  All the women wanted to come up and meet her and give her a high five because she is so cute.

When the teens returned I was regaled by their stories of being up front and close to the band.  My son, his buddy and the 11 year olds entered the mosh pit and got punched in the face, kneed in the head and tossed all over.  They helped crowd surf a guy into the hands of security.  They watched a guy throw a turkey leg at Weezer and he dodged and then picked it up and took a bite out of it.  The two teen girls had popcorn dumped on them.  They were offered a joint repetitively and declined.  Thank the Lord.  They watched two chicks get into a cat fight and got to bop the giant beach balls that were bouncing around the crowd a couple of times.  Quite an earful for a dad standing just a couple hundred feet away but separated by a throng of thousands.

If that wasn’t enough, getting out of that place was skechy.  The only way out is an unlit underground tunnel about twenty feet wide for 10,000 people.  I told the kids to just relax for awhile and wait for the crowd to die down.  The crowd never seemed to die down.  I asked a security guard about another exit and he said they had just opened a gate where we could walk across the racetrack.  We headed that way but there was no open gate and hundreds of people just started jumping the fence and so did we.  I lifted Jacqueline over and then the cooler.  Jennifer hopped over and then came security yelling  at us to back away from the fence.  I wasn’t about to be separated from my daughters so I jumped the fence anyway and the rest of the kids followed.  We ran across the turf and we ran across the track.  It was during this that I noticed the rail the horses follow around the track was already toppled over in many sections and the bushes destroyed.  I yelled to the kids, “Run fast because the cops are going to be coming!”  The guy next to me said that was the funniest bit of parenting he had ever witnessed.  As soon as we got into the parking lot the squad cars were pulling in.

I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun with my kids and I don’t think they’ll ever forget the night we went to see Weezer.

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It Actually Works!

I liken parenting to running a marathon.  There is  nothing short, fast speedy, quick about being a mom or a dad.  Parenting is a long journey.  In a marathon, you may feel great at mile three, crappy at mile nine and great again at mile thirteen.  In a marathon, you may feel dehydrated, tired, pull a muscle and maybe collapse.

As a parent, all the business distracts you from the passage of time.  You live in a world of carpools, homework, science projects, essays, church activities, sports, piano lessons, tap dancing or whatever it maybe.  Time takes on the dimensions of do this and don’t do that.  Did you say please?  Did you say thank you?  Look the person in eye and say hello.  Sit up straight.  Eat your vegetables.  Stop crying.  No biting.  Time is moving at a much faster rate than you realize when you’re parenting.  All the business of parenting makes the years go by fast and pretty soon you look in the mirror and say what the hell happened to me?  You just hope and pray that everything you have tried to teach them will sink in and they will grow up to be good people.

Every Sunday morning, Karen and I go swim for an hour and a half.  We then race home, change clothes, eat something real quick and then race to church with the kids.  On Mother’s Day, before Karen and I left for the pool, I told the kids if they didn’t have anything for their mother, they had a good hour or so to make a card, eat some cereal and be ready for church.  We had a dinner party the night before and still had the banquet tables out and the kitchen was full  of dishes.

Lo and behold, when we got home, there was a present and cards on the table.  The banquet tables were packed  up and put away.  Decorations were put up on the walls.  The dishes were all cleaned.  Our bed was made and my son had bacon, eggs and toast all ready for everyone.  All three of them worked together in harmony to honor their mom who does so much for them.  We were surprised and tickled pink.  This was the best mother’s day they could have given their mom.  I am so impressed that I don’t expect anything for father’s day.

Feeling pretty good around mile fifteen right about now.

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Sweet 16!

First of all, I am amazed that I have helped create a human being and have gone through sixteen years with him.  His mom and I are excited for him and we truly hope he is enjoying his high school years since we don’t have much time left with him.  Before the blink of an eye he will be a man and off living his life.

It seems like a lot of parents and the government are completely paranoid about their teens getting a driver’s license.  Karen and I can’t wait.  I wish he could have gotten his license on his birthday, but with his broken leg and all, he’s a little behind schedule.  However, in a couple of weeks, we should have a new driver in the house.

I am looking forward to this for mainly selfish reasons.  When you have three children, a lot of your life is spent in the car.  Almost every night of the week, either Karen or I are driving around for dance, soccer, swim, surfing and whatever else you can think of.  We believe the kids need to work hard in school, but we also believe they should have an athletic endeavor to keep fit, so it is all brought upon ourselves.

About three years ago, I had a melt down in the car.  It was Labor Day weekend and there was a soccer tournament.  Why do these morons schedule games at seven in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays?  After a long week at work and spending the entire weekend at a soccer tournament in one hundred degree heat, I lost my temper in the car on the way home.  All this driving around was getting to me.  Something had to give.  We had to change our priorities and we had to actively look to carpool with other families. 

I got over my tizzy and life continued, but when you’re child is fifteen there is a constant tug of war going on.  They want to do more and go more places, but they are entirely dependent on you for transportation.  I don’t know about you, but getting up at 5:30 in the morning, working all day and then picking your son up at  11:30pm on Friday night at a party that is eight miles from your house just isn’t appealling.  I’m becoming a fuddy duddy.

Here we are on the brink of a new driver in the house and I can’t wait.  He can take himself to and from school.  He can help drive his sisters around.  He can drive himself to and from swim practice.  He can drive himself to and from the beach.  We cand send him to the grocery store.  We can make him go gas up the car.  It seems the possibilities are endless.

You’d think it’s my birthday as excited as I am.

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Fundraising From Hell

I want you to think back to when you were a kid.  Do you remember “No Soliciting” signs on the front doors of businesses and houses?  It was a different time before email and websites and eight hundred television stations.  There were actually door to door salesman that would walk around trying to sell you stuff because it was one of the ways available to get their product in front of you.  It actually was so prevalent that people would get pissed from having their front door bell rang all the time, they put these signs up giving you fair warning not to knock on their door.  I can still remember my father slamming the door in the face of some guy from Greenpeace way back when.

When we signed our son up for little league, you had to assist the league in fundraising.  This was done by having each family sell a box of about twenty candy bars.  You either take the time to sell the candy bars or you pay an additional forty dollars cash up front for the registration fee if you want your kid to play baseball.  We take the chocolate bars and walk around the neighborhood once and sell maybe one or two candy bars.  What are we gonna do with the rest of them?  You give it three or four weeks and they magically disappear into my mouth, my wife’s mouth and my kids’ mouths.  Now, we’ve eaten all the candy and have to pay for it.  Good grief! 

The door to door salesman still exists but in a different form and for a different purpose.  They are all cute little boys and girls walking around the neighborhoods in some kind  of uniform or another with freckles and ballcaps or ribbons in their hair.  The typical for sale items are magazines, wrapping paper, popcorn, candy and cookies.  It’s the perfect scam getting the children to do the dirty work for all of these organizations that supposedly need money and it’s high time it stopped.  It’s the same old sob story with the teacher’s, the schools, the pta, the girl scouts, the cub scouts and so on.  If we don’t fundraise, then programs and activities are going to be cut.  I’ve been hearing this same old tune for a long time and it never seems to change and the programs and activities always seem to grow and never diminish.

The ultimate question is where does all the money go?  Do you remember the director of the Red Cross here in San Diego whose salary was $400,000.00 per year?  You ever notice there is never an accounting made available of what the funds are for?  What’s the cost of the actual goods being sold?  Whose really benefiting from the proceeds?  How much of the proceeds actually ends up at the local level?  When did this become the children’s responsibility to do this?  How much free labor did these organizations just receive from us and our kids? 

I know a lot of you think I sound like a curmudgeon.  What put me over the top?  The schools sure do seem to send a lot of papers home with the children.  Usually, my wife reads all of these papers and I never looked at them until recently.  My eight year old daughter brings me a piece of paper saying I have to fill it out because she has to return it in the morning.  It’s an order form to buy books.  The schools’ and the teachers’ are now peddling books to the children through the classroom and I have to fill out a form saying yes or no.  Why can’t they read the books at the school?  Isn’t the library good enough?  Shouldn’t our taxes cover this?  Please don’t tell me some kid isn’t going to learn how to read if I don’t help out.

Do people question things anymore?  Are we all so busy in our own lives that we don’t notice the slow transformations that have taken place incrementally over time?  Are we all ever going to stand up and say no to some of this stuff or are we too afraid of conforming and keeping our mouths shut?  I sure have a lot more questions than answers.

I won’t slam the door in your face, but the answer will be a polite, “No.”

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Hey Teacher! Leave Them Kids Alone!

Things used to be so simple back in the day.  You either took a regular class or you took an honors class.  The highest your gpa could be was 4.0.  The SAT was a maximum of 1600 points.  Sports had a season and they weren’t played year round.  You got Thanksgiving and the day after off.  You got two weeks at Christmas and one week at Easter.  Pardon me, I’m not being politically correct.  I should have said winter and spring break.  Back in the day, summer was very long.  You got out of school around the middle of June and always went back the day after labor day.

Things have gotten so complicated.  There are regular classes, honors classes, AP classes and international baccalaureate classes.  They even have honors classes in Spanish in case you can’t speak English.  What’s the point?  Why so many classifications?  It turns out the colleges don’t give a rip whether you were in regular or honors.  The colleges only care about your gpa.

I personally am not sure the regular classes are rigorous enough, so I have suggested, encouraged, pushed and demanded my son be in the honors classes.  I don’t expect the international baccalaureat because that’s just too much work if you’re in sports and not inclined to that much academics.  My son is with the program.  He hasn’t balked at the challenges and did well last year. 

Getting to the point of all this, I really want to know who the moron is that starting assigning homework over the summer.  This is what happens to honors students these days.  They get homework assigned over the summer.  This is really irksome to me.  Do these teachers have any idea how hard it is to get a fifteen year old motivated to do homework over the summer?  Talk about government intrusion into my life, I just can’t take it anymore.

You’re probably not much that different than my wife and I.  We divvy up our parental responsibilities.  It just so happens that it has been my responsibility to make sure my son does his summer homework.  This has been like pulling teeth.  At the beginning of summer, we decided he could have until August 1st without having to worry about any school work.  So on August 1st we sat down and made a schedule of how much he should do per day, so it could all be done with a week to spare.  In this way, the last week of summer could be totally carefree.  I don’t think it’s going to turn out that way.  The educators have turned this into my angst and I’m not happy about it.

I can honestly tell you that growing up I never had as much homework as my kids do.  I never did homework over any summer.  I don’t even remember doing much homework during the week during the school year when I was growing up.  I feel sorry for this generation.  Why is everything a race and a pressure cooker?

I’ll never forget what my dad told me on my graduating from UC-San Diego with my bachelor’s degree.  He shook my hand and said, “Congratulations, nobody cares.”

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I’M NOT READY FOR THIS!

Do you remember when you first got married?  Or should I say do you remember the first time you cohabitated with the opposite sex?  It’s one of those things you thought you were ready for, but in reality could never be ready for.  The way he brushes his teeth bugs me.  Why does she have so much trouble cooking a chicken?  Why does he have to fart in the bed?  The list goes on.

How about when your first child is born?  You’ve watched your mom and dad.  You’ve had brothers and sisters.   You’re mentally prepared and ready for your first child.  It’s another thing you just can’t be ready for no matter how much you think you’re ready.  I always remember the first night at home with Stewart.  He was up all night wailing away because he had gas.  I remember him laying between Karen and I at 3:30am and  we were both looking at eachother like we didn’t know what to do for him.

Last night was supposed to be a typical Friday night around here.  There’s dance class and then there’s dinner.  Stewart asked to have a friend over to spend the night and if I could take them surfing early in the morning.  It’s been a long week, so I make a cocktail and sit down to relax, when Karen informs me that three teenage girls are coming over to “hang out.”  I didn’t take it seriously because one thing I’ve learned with young teenagers is that most of their plans seem to fall apart at the last minute because they never inform their parents until the last minute.

Sure enough, three teenage girls are sitting in the backyard around the firepit thirty minutes later.  I’ve known this was coming for a long time now, but I’m just not ready for this!  I can’t lay around in my underwear anymore.  Karen and I want this to be a positive experience for the kids and for us.  After we got over our shock, we went out and introduced ourselves and offered them lemonade and to turn some music on.

After a couple of hours, the boys come in and tell us they are going to walk the girls home.  Before too long, I’ve watched a little television in bed and now am soundly asleep.  It’s ten minutes to midnight and Karen wakes me up saying the boys aren’t home.  Here we go.  It turns out all the teens got a little sidetracked and decided to go toilet paper a friend’s house(who Karen and I happen to be friends with the parents).  The teens broke the two golden rules of toilet papering.  Never toilet paper someone’s house while they’re home and never toilet paper someone’s house at 10pm on a Friday night.  They got caught and had to clean the whole mess up which is the excuse for getting home so late.

I’m not ready for this, but somehow it will all work out.

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Baseball on the Brain

The last time my son played little league was three years ago.  I was the manager of his team that season.  I remember we started out in January with the draft.  The season started the second week of February.  I think it was thirty one games later the season ended in the middle of June.  I was tired of baseball when it was over and it was good to take a break.  The next year my son didn’t want to move onto Pony baseball and that was okay.  I knew my son was not passionate about the game and I didn’t want him to feel like he had to play because I loved it.  Not being part of baseball for the past two years has been fine, I really haven’t thought about it, until now.

So thanks for letting me get my baseball fix by blogging.  See you at the ballpark.

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