Pratfalls, Face Plants and Other Indignities

My wife is a wonderful wife and mother. Nothing matters more to her than the health, safety and happiness of her family.

And yet, she suffers from an unmotherly affliction that overcomes her whenever she sees one of us get hurt: her eyes get wide, her body shakes, her mouth opens, and out comes a rolling, gleeful, and completely uncontainable fit of laughter.

One of her daughters might have just walked into the kitchen table - at whatever age put her at exactly the right height to hit the table after never having had to bend down in the past to get under there - and she's likely crying in genuine pain...but before Mommy can hug her and kiss her and make her all better, Mommy must first stop laughing hysterically.

When we were first married, we lived in a small semi in Richmond Hill. The stairs to the basement had a low ceiling (low even for someone of my stature) and one day my wife and I were on the landing and she sent me down to the basement to get something. With the youthful exuberance of one first married, deeply infatuated with his (relatively) new bride, I bounded down the stairs excitedly - keen to grant my bride's request - and promptly smacked my forehead into a 4-inch vertical piece of the ceiling (probably fashioned that way by the builder to somehow help its overall downward slope while saving a few moments of effort). My feet continued down the stairs a few inches above the next one or two steps while my forehead remained temporarily attached to the piece of ceiling it had found. Then I remember being completely horizontal in the air, with a bit more forward momentum. Then bumping down the stairs. And then I was on the ground, at the bottom of the stairs, dazed and confused, with little birds carouseling about my head. Back up on the landing, I heard my beautiful young wife, bent over, laughing uproariously, stomping her feet, and otherwise of no help to her possibly dying husband. She didn't dial 911. She didn't ask if I was okay. She didn't dash down the stairs to take my pulse or check for broken bones or any other damage...she couldn't. For a good 5 minutes, she had no control over her bodily movements.

I could have been badly hurt and those first few seconds/minutes might have made the difference between life and death, but I don't blame her. I was mad at her - don't get me wrong - but as I then learned, she's got an affliction. My Dad has the same one. As does my childhood friend Paul. Great people, all of them, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want any one of them with my life in their hands after I've walked through a plate glass door, or tripped over a curb and face planted onto a sidewalk.
(Watching a movie like Rat Race with slapstick galore, yes, I want them with me then. Nobody makes the experience more fun.)

I watched a businessman yesterday, uniformed in his suit and tie and hustling off to one of the downtown towers, lose his footing as he climbed the stone steps from the street. He didn't go all the way down, but planted a knee, caught himself with his un-briefcased hand, and quickly righted himself. His first reaction, once back in control, was to swing his head around and scan his surroundings to see if anyone had seen his stumble. Why? Because nobody likes the indignity of being caught in a clumsy moment, let alone laughed at.

Years ago, friends and I were at a concert at the Ontario Place Forum on an icy autumn day. The Forum was a stage surrounded by a few rows of seats, and then large hills on which people could sit and watch the show. Back then (and maybe today?) you could enter the Forum in various ways, one of which was to climb a hill and then make your way down the other side to find a seat. On this particular day, the hills were slick with ice on the interior side, and a whole lot of people coming over the hill suddenly found themselves airborne and then on their butts sliding down the hill - with hundreds of people laughing and applauding their very public misfortune. It became a game - the stadium holding its collective breath as each new victim appeared at the top of the hill, then losing its collective mind as the inevitable wipe-out ensued. Imagine the humiliation. Some people were graceful about it, stood up, dusted themselves off, and took a bow. Others pretended nothing had happened. I remember a kid crying. I remember some genuine anger. I guess we all handle the moment differently.

Not that long ago (15 years? 20?) I had the opportunity to play softball with my oldest sister - the unofficially ordained "Queen of the Pratfall". She got a hit, which itself was something I'd never expected. She rounded first and then second with speed and drive I didn't know she had. And then she fell. But not in a way that ordinary people fall: Her face went down first (for most of us, our hands would have instinctively shot out to take the brunt of the fall - but it was her face that nobly declared "don't worry hands, I've got this one.") When running at full speed with little dexterity, the face suddenly hitting the ground significantly alters what the rest of the body is doing. In her case, her feet continued shuffling forward - in the air now - until not so gracefully touching down on the back of her head. For a moment, she was completely folded in half, and then her legs' inertia continued forward, completing the least athletic flip it will ever be my pleasure to witness.

And my sister sat up, looked at us - some of us laughing, some of us staring in horror - brushed the infield sand off her clothes, and laughed harder than anyone else. She handled the moment well.

When I was lying at the bottom of the basement stairs all those years ago, I didn't handle the moment well. I think I yelled at my wife. I think I said something like "Would you mind fucking checking if I'm fucking hurt and might need to be fucking hospitalized before fucking laughing at me?" Like I said, I guess we're all different.

Two-year-olds and three-year-olds are only partially people at that age. They are clumsy. They've only recently learned to go about on two legs. Their heads are too big and heavy for their tiny little bodies. They bump into things. They fall down stairs. They bang their head. They lose their balance when there's absolutely no reason to do so. When these things happen, they want (and need!) their Mommy's tender loving care. In my house, they used to get Daddy's tender loving care and Mommy in tears, laughing hysterically, pointing, and then finally stepping up to the TLC plate, trying to hug them but still shaking with laughter, trying to console them, but still giggling under her breath. And yet they love her.

She's got an affliction. So does my Dad. So does Paul. And yet, they're all good people.

Some people don't like being laughed at when they fall down go boom. Others don't seem to mind as much. Some laugh at themselves. Some scream profanities at the person/people laughing at them. Again, they're all good people.

And sometimes, people who laugh at others when they hurt themselves marry people who don't like to be laughed at when they've hurt themselves.

True love means staying together for decades despite our differences.

Patterns, Patterns Everywhere and not a Stop to Think

The street is crowded and all sorts of people are walking toward you. That man looks dangerous, so you keep a watchful eye on him. The woman over there is clearly in a bad mood, which is a shame because she looks like a nice person. Maybe she's in the middle of a relationship that's ending? Those two girls walking together are such good friends that they've even started to look alike. That kid's gonna have to marry rich because he's not getting a job any time soon (not until he loses the skateboard at least). That guy's way too busy for his own good; slow down man, try smelling the roses...

All that in the blink of an eye.

We are walking, talking pattern-matching machines. Our brains instantly assess and categorize who and what we see - instinctively looking for threats, opportunities, and so forth. All part of our survival programming.

Our senses sense and our brains make sense of what's sensed by looking through our storage banks, file-after-file, for similar patterns that can be quickly translated into meaning. We do it when we read. We do it when we watch movies and listen to music and eat. And we do it when we're strolling down the street looking at complete strangers and making instant judgements about them.

Nothing new or particularly insightful here, except that we tend not to pay attention to this particular aspect of our human experience. We just trust the processing we do and go about our days blinded to the impact it might be having on our moment-to-moment encounters with the world.

As we get older and experience more and more things (and books and movies and people) our storage banks become richer, the patterns become more firmly associated with meaning, and we become more and more trusting of and governed by the "wisdom" we've accumulated.

That's why we become so frustrated with our kids when they don't trust us and when they don't listen to us and when they challenge us and act as if they know and we don't. We expect that we can do the pattern-matching for them (don't date that loser, don't trust that "friend", don't hang out in that neighbourhood, ...) and they will implicitly have the faith in our experiences that we do.

And, of course, the frustration goes in the other direction as well: How would you know? You've never even met him! Things have changed since your were a kid. (Even more frustrating when your parent turns out to be right so often).

But here's what's wrong with the pattern-matching: We're programmed to do it fast. Survival often requires immediate decisions, after all. So our brain takes short cuts, filtering out the minutiae and paying attention to a finite set of cues to which we've ascribed meaning (...that growling sound reminds me of the time that a sabre tooth tiger ate Jimmy).

When it comes to people passing us on the street, our assessments come down to things like the cast of the eyes, the slope of the eyebrows, the way the hair is worn, the posture, the clothes, and of course the accompanying equipment (skateboard, designer purse, knock-off purse, abacus in the pocket, and so on). Furthermore, our brains are doing these assessments based on stimuli provided via imperfect sensory devices (sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations all filtered through input/output equipment that is limited by design) and a relatively small sample-size of experiences (our own and others' with which we have been programmed).

We're getting partial data, dismissing cues we don't recognize or pay attention to, and making instant judgements that we innately rely on. Of course, being the good people that we are, there's a layer of conscious judgement that overlays the more mechanical snap judgements and governs our responses so that we don't act on impulses in socially unacceptable ways (like running away from the mean-looking dude, or hugging the sad, but nice-looking woman.)

In the course of the work that I do, I meet many, many, many, many, many people from across North America (mainly), from different industries, different jobs, different hierarchical levels, different pay grades, different geographies, different demographics, and so on. Increasingly, I see patterns in people. I meet someone and find myself acting as if I know how they're going to sound and behave before we've even shaken hands. I'm actually reacting to the person of whom he/she has reminded me, but I'm often (suprisingly) bang-on accurate in the superficial pattern-match.

One of my psychology-student daughters tells me this is because we all reinforce the patterns we see, and society has made this new person in front of me just like the person I matched him to (he's big, so he's a jock, which means in a group he's treated this way, which means he responds that way, ...). I guess that means there are legitimate human archetypes that society develops and perpetuates and those are the patterns I'm picking up on. Which isn't a very good thing at all (even if it simplifies my job).

Pattern-matching fuels racism and ageism and sexism and other -isms. It makes us leap to conclusions about people and their actions based on what we've seen in the past. It drives us to shape people to meet our expectations. It blinds us to nuances about people and situations that are genuinely new but difficult to process in our pattern-matching heads. It makes us crotchety old people who think they know better than everyone else, especially as our senses decline and the only signals we can pick up on in our pattern-matching machines are the extreme ones. It's what and how we teach our kids about the world.

But...

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana 

We need to remember past data points that may signal future dangers, or else we learn nothing from those experiences and should expect to see them repeat themselves time after time. That's wisdom.

And...

We need to recognize our own limitations as pattern-matching machines - let our survival instincts do their thing and save us from the occasional sabre-tooth, and then slow down and use our highly-evolved brains to consciously question our own assessments.

Just because our sensory equipment and pattern-matching processor has put us on alert to something or someone triggering a match, that's just a data point surfacing from a past experience. Wise to note it, and far wiser to then apply some real thought to what the trigger was, why it fired, what it matched, and all the many reasons why it's probably a false match. In that way, we don't act on and perpetuate the false signals as if they are reality.

That'll never be instantaneous, but how often is it a survival imperative to instantaneously judge a person, and when is it ever right?

----

P.S. Did your own personal pattern-matching processor catch a few words breaking the pattern of font usage throughout? Go back and re-read them in sequence, and you'll find a corollary to Santayana's famous quotation above.

What it Means to be Canadian (Perspectives from a 7-Year--Old)

On this Canada Day, I asked my 7-year-old to share her thoughts on being Canadian. What does it mean to live in Canada? What does it mean to be a Canadian? What makes Canada a special place to live?

Her 10 answers were surprisingly deep. That said, in case you can't quite see the deepness I've added my own "David making sense" commentary to help you get there.

1. My friends and teachers live here. If I wasn't here, I never would have met them.

David making sense... Here our 7-year-old is pointing out the importance of multiculturalism and tolerance in Canada. She also extols our education system. Digging deeper, there's a bit of the if-a-tree-falls-in-a-forest question implied as well: If she didn't live in Canada would her Canadian friends and teachers still be friends and teachers never having met her, or would they just be people? Speaking of fall...

2. Sometimes it's summer and sometimes it's winter. In some places it's cold in summer and in some places it's hot in winter. In Canada, in the summer you can play summer games and in the winter you can play winter games.

David making sense... In Canada, we enjoy an array of seasons - sometimes in a single week. That seasonal variety enables Canadians to be mediocre in all sports, instead of being really good at any one specific sport by focusing on it all year round (the exception, of course, is hockey because Canadians are the only people who have Tim Hortons to drink when their kids are playing it). We do love winning, but we love trying hard just as much. And if (when) we are disappointed with the outcome in a given sport, along comes the next season and we quickly move on. Where else but Canada?

3. I like the food. McDonald's here is better than in other places.

David making sense... Say no more about Canadian food. My 7-year-old thinks McDonald's is the culinary signature of our country. The wife and I were recently talking to some Americans in Stratford Ontario. We passed an Asian restaurant that proclaimed it served "Canadian Food". They asked what that means. We answered that it means the food is bad. McDonald's, on the other hand, is the place to get good, distinctly Canadian food. McDonald's elsewhere can't compare (unless of course you've eaten there, which our 7-year-old has not).

4. I like shoe stores.

David making sense... Shoes matter. Especially with the Canadian seasons changing all the time. You can tell a lot about a country by its footwear. In Canada, we have lots of it and many, many places where you can buy it. With two sisters in their twenties, our 7-year-old has seen her share of shoe stores and clearly she has chosen to like being there. What she doesn't like so much is shoes (and socks for that matter). She routinely spends 30 minutes trying to get her socks just right (so the little toe seam doesn't bother her, which it always does) and then her shoes just right (so that they don't put undue pressure on the socks' toe seam). Needless to say, I don't share her affinity for shoe stores.

5. Talking Canadian is nice.

David making sense... From eh to zed, there's no better language in the world. And Canadians use their language to say lots of nice things. So talking Canadian is synonymous with "nice", not to be confused with Nice (in France) where they speak French, which is not to be confused with the language that Canadians in Quebec speak.

6. We don't have tornadoes or earthquakes.

David making sense... Nothing ground-shaking here, other countries blow, Canada doesn't.

7. There's a spider living in our basement.

David making sense... Ahem. I can't make sense of this one. I don't know what she's talking about. If there was a spider living in our basement, surely it wouldn't be living anymore. Ahem.

8. People have pants. In other places people wear loin cloths (like Tarzan).

David making sense... We wear pants here, but not always and not everyone. For example, in our house, only the spider-killer wears pants. In other countries, loin cloths are a lot more common. And the problem with that is that when you're swinging through trees (like Tarzan) people can see up your loin cloth. When people say "Tarzan has balls" they don't mean he's courageous. But in Canada, where we talk nice, we'd never say something like that.

9. The baseball team has a bluejay, and bluejays are blue, my favourite colour.

David making sense... I'm just glad she didn't say hockey team. That makes her a much bigger sports fan than my other two daughters.

10. People can dye their hair.

David making sense... Clearly the 7 year old is reflecting on the freedom of expression we enjoy in Canada. People aren't persecuted for flamboyance, for looking different, for being different, and for showing who they are on the inside in how they make themselves up when they're out and about. All that said, in my family PEOPLE CANNOT DYE THEIR HAIR. Your hair is beautiful the way God gave it to you and once you change it, you can never go back to how it looks best. My wife has never dyed her hair and look how beautiful and young she still looks. So yes, in Canada people can dye their hair and all that stuff. Just not in this little corner of Canada.

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!

Father's Daze

Yesterday was Father's Day 2016 (or it was, today, when I'm writing this). Good food, time with two of the three daughters, digital contact with the third, relaxation, Game of Thrones as a nightcap...all-in-all, a great day.

23-and-a-half-ish years ago, when I first became a Daddy, I had no idea what that meant. Not that I didn't have one, but having one and being one are two very different things (same is true of peanuts, cars, and headaches).

When the eldest was born, I didn't have that love-at-first-sight moment that some people talk of, I didn't think she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen (au contraire, new-newborns are not much to look at, all misshapen and gooey as they are), and I certainly didn't feel like my entire world had been turned upside-down (that took at least another 6 or 7 hours).

But as I got to know this little tiny person, and held her, and sang to her, and (one day) coaxed out a smile, and (one day) got her to laugh...the hook was set and I fell truly, madly and deeply in love. I used to leave on business trips from time to time and fear that I'd come home and she wouldn't know who I was. I used to get jealous when other people stole her time from me. I used to stare into her eyes and try to figure out who she'd be. And, yes, I used to watch her sleep and listen to her tiny little breaths, and feel better about whatever else was going on in my day that day. For real. That stuff really happens.

Then we had a second. And it was another girl. And being a strategist and over-thinker, I decided that once the second one was born, I would shower the older one with attention to compensate for the loss of her mother's focus. The younger one wouldn't notice for at least a few weeks and during that time I'd be keeping the older one strong. But that plan assumed I was free to partition my heart that way, which I wasn't. The new little girl had me in her spell the minute I first looked in her eyes. And her bigger sister was suddenly a new person as well. And they were two, but they were also one. And my life was a completely different thing, all about getting as much of both of them as I could.

And we were a family. A whole thing. With internal rules and processes and procedures and routines that only we really knew. And that's what it was like to be a Daddy. To implicitly belong to others, heart and soul, in a love-trance that covered everything else all the time. The rest of the world was the rest of the world. And at the end of every day I got to come home to my very favourite people in the universe. And for them, my return was like the most important thing ever. Every day.

Other (older) parents always told me to enjoy it while I can - "it's gone in a flash", or "once they hit adolescence, they turn on you". And their childhood did pass in a flash, but I think I felt every moment of it and still can. And they never turned on me. They just got bigger and better and smarter and more delicious. And we all became soul-mates...with a deep understanding of each other's weaknesses and strengths and tender spots that you have to stay away from. If there's one club that it's okay to be an exclusive member of and keep others out of, it's this club. Nobody else who isn't your daughter (or son I suppose) or father (or mother I suppose) gets in.

So there we were, hearts full and lives full, when leaving-the-nest time started to loom. A choice to make: Let them go and move on to the next phase of our lives where we sit at home and wait for the time they can afford to give us, OR start it all over again with one more? Go back to the start with the bad nights and the poop and the everything else, or ... dare I say it ... let ourselves get old?

You know what we chose. And I thought I knew what that would be like. How the new one wouldn't quite replace the old ones, but that she'd be some compensation for what we'd partially lost.

Now the older ones were still teenagers at the time we implemented this decision, so when we told them that we would be inviting someone new into the club, there could have been anger and resentment and jealousy and disgust (you know, about mommy and daddy "doing it"). But there wasn't. My first two gave us probably the single most memorable moment of my life with their reaction: The purest and most spontaneous tears of joy in the history of all humankind.

And it's been nothing but pure and spontaneous joy ever since. Anyone who has followed this blog or my Facebook posts knows how I feel about my little one. You may also know how the rest of the "club" feels about her. But if ever there's been a decision that was so clearly perfect and instantly validated as such, it was that decision to do it all over again.

How could it not be? I'm a Daddy. That's what I do best. I'll always be a Daddy. The women for whom I've been a Daddy for 23 and 21 years respectively will never ever ever stop being the babies, then toddlers, then kids, then teenagers, then young adults with whom I am forever utterly in love. And the same will be true when this latest one is ready to go off to school and then who knows where. My heart will break again and then it will be okay again because it's not an end, just a change.

So that's what it's meant and means to be a Daddy. To be in a permanent state of "Father's Daze". Happy, sad, astonished, excited, worried, proud, and completely lost in love for these incredible things that I (we) made - once upon a time, every day of my life since, and (happily) ever after.

(And yes, Daddy didn't get enough sleep once again. And yes, he shouldn't write blog posts when he's in this state because they're always mushy and not funny at all. Live with it.)

With apologies...

It's been too long since I've written anything. I'm sorry about that. In fact, I'm sorry about a lot of things. And given that today, June 8th, is the secular Day of Atonement, I would like to take this opportunity to say sorry for many of those things (for example, I'm sorry for making up the thing about June 8th being the secular Day of Atonement when it's not actually until next week).

In no particular order...

To my mother: I am sorry that years and years ago when we were all on our way out somewhere on a wintery Friday after dinner and you warned all of us to be careful on the icy steps, I went out first and lay down at the bottom of the steps moaning and groaning as if I had just slipped all the way to the bottom and hurt myself badly. That wasn't nice. Funny, yes. But not nice. Sorry.

To my father: I am sorry that I haven't done a better job of referring my enormous fan base to your new and thought-provoking blog: Atheists, Theists and Other Fools. I am also sorry that I never took you fishing when I was young. And I'm sorry that you and I never had a chance to run a half marathon together. And I'm really sorry for laughing at you when you were showing my daughters how to use crutches years ago and fell down with a tremendous thud. I'm also sorry for not being bald and fat by 50 like you always said I would be. But mostly I'm sorry for underselling your new and compelling and genuinely insightful blog: Atheists, Theists and Other Fools.

To my brother-in-law (the one who used to be my camp counsellor): I am sorry for pretending I knew nothing about how to get a blog up and running when my dad came asking for help. I am sorry for sitting quietly by as you became the IT Help Desk for my parents in my place. I'm also sorry that I'm only a little bit sorry about these things.

To my wife: I am sorry that I have never stopped telling the story about waking up one morning, opening the garage door, and seeing your car neatly parked with a big orange pylon trapped under one of the rear tires. It's small of me to keep bringing that story up and I'm sorry.

To my oldest daughter: I am sorry for pretending I could do 11-digit multiplication in my head when you were younger. I am even more sorry that you didn't realize I was faking it until you were in University math. That must have made you feel inadequate by comparison. Boy am I sorry that 8-digits is my limit. And by the way, I'm sorry that I allowed your mom to lead you to believe that plants pee, and that I let that go all the way until you were in University as well.

To my middle child: I am sorry for not being more empathetic the other night when you were truly upset that the spider you had seen in your bathroom had already slinked off into a hiding place before Mom was able to get there and remove it for you. I'm even more sorry for putting that big plastic black spider on your pillow while your back was turned and you were yelling at Mom for not getting there fast enough to catch the spider. I'm sorry for laughing when you screamed. I know that people who live in glass houses shouldn't play with plastic spiders. I'm a terrible person and I'm sorry.

To my youngest child: I am sorry for that time I said no to you - a momentary lapse in judgement that won't happen again. Daddy loves you.

To my sisters: I am sorry I didn't turn out to be gay like you always thought I would. I am sorry for misleading you by being neat, well-dressed (always in the latest polyester pants), kind and gentle.

To my one-and-only sister-in-law: I am sorry that during the years when you were in University and used to spend lots of time in our house, I used to complain to you about when you'd empty our Brita water jug without re-filling it. I'm sorry for thinking that would be easy for you when it was clearly a lot to expect. I'm sorry for that one time I was in your house years later, poured the contents of your water jug into the sink, and left it empty on the counter. I'm also sorry that around the same time, when your kids were little, I used to write obscenities on your fridge using the cute little letter magnets. I'm sorry if I haven't always been the big brother you wanted me to be. If I've sometimes left the Brita water jug of your life empty on the counter instead of re-filling it with my love and compassion, I am sorry.

To most of the people I've played cards with: I am sorry for winning so often when we've played games of skill. And I'm sorry for explaining to you when I lose games of luck that they are, indeed, just games of luck. I got that from my father and I'm sorry for that.

To all the drivers out there who piss me off: I am sorry for calling you assholes, pricks, dickheads, and the like when I don't even know you. I am sorry for doing so behind your back and for patiently explaining to my daughters in the car with me why I felt that way about you without giving you a chance to explain your side. But to be fair, if you had just moved into the middle lane when you saw the light was changing and that I was signalling a right turn behind you so that I could make the turn instead of having to wait for the light to change before going on my merry way...asshole. Never mind. Not sorry.

To all the Facebook friends I have unfriended over the years: I am sorry you won't get a chance to read my apology. (Note: I have never unfriended anybody. So this apology really goes out to those of you who unfriended me. And that makes it ironic because it's nothing for me to apologize for and yet I feel sorry for you.)

To Bacon, my childhood dog: I am sorry I wasn't there for you at the end. I'm sorry I went off to camp without a real goodbye knowing full well that my mom meant it when she said "You'd better say goodbye to Bacon because you'll never see her again." I knew what she was capable of, and yet I chose not to believe. I still love you and dream about you.

And finally, to my faithful readers: I am sorry for wasting your time with apologies I only half mean (except for the one about Bacon). I'm a little sorry for all the high-brow stuff I've written over the years that you didn't understand. I'm sorry you missed out on the gems that you didn't bother to read. I'm sorry for avoiding politics and controversy and just wanting you to have a little corner of the world where you can spend a couple of minutes every now and then in search of a smile. But I'm not sorry for who I am. You shouldn't be either (I mean sorry about who you are, unless you're sorry about who I am, in which case you should be...I mean sorry about who you are).

Until next time...David

One Evening, When You Were Seven

It was spring and I worked at home all day to get important things done.
After work I picked Mom up, I picked you up, and we went home.
I grilled some baked potatoes, vegetables and salmon.
We finished dinner and Mom sent me back out on an important errand.

We had agreed you'd have a bath before bed.
So when I came home I asked you to please go upstairs to do that.
I planned to watch an important basketball game after you were bathed and reading in bed.

But you said no, which for you is like a temper tantrum.
You said that Mom said that we should go for a walk every night because yesterday you and she went for a walk and got Dairy Queen on the way home.
And I said no, you need a bath, and that Mom had said that about walking, not me. And I was tired.
But you pouted and looked at me through your brand new glasses and said please.
And I melted, like I always do, so we went for a walk.

The weather was the best weather of any place at any time of year.
It was warm at last, no bugs yet, perfect for jeans or shorts, and long or short sleeves.
We went out on the trails, towards the troll bridge and the spooky old forest.
But once across the bridge we went left instead of right towards the ravine, and away from people.

You started talking about Mom's new car and other important new things.
You said everything is new: "I'm new because I wear glasses and I'm seven. And even you're new."
I asked what you meant but you said you didn't mean anything. Just saying words.
Playing along, I asked you if you wanted a new Daddy.

And right then you stopped in your tracks and grabbed my hand, suddenly very serious, and turned to me and said:"I never want a new Daddy."
Very important to you that I understand that clearly.
Message delivered, you started walking again, still holding my hand firmly.

Instead of turning back when I said we would, we took an extra loop that we never take.
The trees were thicker there, so there was still some mud.
We used some logs as bridges to get over those spots.
At the end of one log I had to jump off first and onto firm ground so I could hold your hand and help you jump 1000 feet in the air all the way over the mud.

Just returning the favour.

First They Came

If you aren't already familiar with the English-language poetic variations/adaptations of Pastor Martin Niemöller's "famous statement and provocative poem about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazi's rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group" (to quote Wikipedia), you can read it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_.

Scary to anticipate a future version that goes something like this...

First they came for the Muslims, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Muslim.
Then they came for the Mexicans, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Mexican.
Then they came for the Homosexuals, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Homosexual.
Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Poor, and I did not speak out—because I was not Poor.
...
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Do I think there are people seeking power in the US who might try to round up Muslims one day? Yes I do. Rounding up Mexicans, Homosexuals, Socialists, and the Poor? Doesn't seem likely. But targeting them for hatred? Already happening.

Problem is, the "conversation" is currently taking place in the context of an upcoming US election. For that reason, it comes across as politically motivated to "speak out". I suppose that was true during the Nazi's rise to power as well.

Take the politics out of it though, and see it for what it is.

It's time to speak out.

(For those who expect a fun read from my blog, I'll get back to that now. My 7 year old is doing all sorts of cute things and I'm dying to tell you about them.)