And perhaps extend beyond that point, in the interest of setting a stern example intended not to be forgotten anytime soon.

I love my boys, of course.  And as I’ve mentioned previously in the context of “why am I writing?” I suspect nothing is more important, rewarding, and life-affirming than being a (good) parent.

But there are days, I readily confess, where I resort, desperately, to judging my own tyranny at home by comparing myself to “The Bird” in Laura Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken.”  A calm washes over me as I watch the school bus pull away with my two tormentees on board (faces pressed against the glass to take a final breath-fogged peek at their morning’s tormentor). In that moment, I begin the assessment: “OK, that was awful, not to be repeated, I do not feel good about any aspect of myself, I just might be a terrible parent, perhaps the worst that has ever inhabited this or any other planet, how did I get this way?, how did it come to this?, should I dash home to destroy any potential evidence should the authorities come knocking on my door at long last?”

In these moments, I reach for the first of my two yardsticks (maybe “litmus tests” is better) in these dark moments — “The Bird.”

If you’ve read the book, you know what a stereotypically sadistic, miserable S.O.B., out and out bad guy “The Bird” is.  (If you haven’t read the book, you should, if only to make yourself feel better as a human.)  The Bird’s behavior is particularly appalling given the protagonist Louis Zamperini’s incredible courage and resilience.  Louis apparently was a Master Lemonade Maker.  🙂  Anyhow, without boring the “Unbroken” unitiated with the gory details, suffice to say that The Bird is one bad dude, capable of unimaginable atrocities.

Which brings me to my crazed antics of this very morning.  As regular readers of The Lemonade Chronicles may recall, Wednesdays are the mornings when I deal with the Kraken and the Land of Unbrushed teeth, solo.  While my wife Hilary trots out to and back from the Golden Gate Bridge in the midst of a glorious sunrise, lungs filled with pungent sea air, in a “The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music” experience.  Back at home, I channel The Bird.

It starts out innocently enough.  First things first, I’m spot-on schedule with the 15-minute dog walk.  Actually an exercise in the physics of jamming something too big (and stinky) into something too small (and too thin).  Anyhow, I’m over that by 6:45am, and on to the next thing:  Getting some sort of healthy breakfast on the table for the boys in about 3 minutes.  No microwave, still, so I boil some water, then ready some oatmeal.  Banana slices, blueberries, and cranberries sprinkled on top, with a touch of lowfat organic milk.  (Supposedly the only kind of milk that is worth a damn.)  Stirred up with the hot-but-not-too-hot water, and set out delicately on hemp placemats with napkin-ringed linen napkins.  So far, I am clearly a great dad, perhaps the best that ever lived, here or on any other planet, and The Bird hasn’t even made an entrance.  How could he?

Then it all starts to unravel.  The “gradual wakening” approach comes first.  Gently opened bedroom doors, shades pulled up (quietly) to expose just the faintest bit of natural light, clicking on blue-lampshaded lights with dim (and eco-friendly bulbs), and a caring peck on each head.  Wailea dutifully trots in to each room, her nails comfortingly click-clacking rhythmically on the boys hardwood floors, before she bounds in to the bed of each, in order, giving them some Norman Rockwellian licks.  I saunter back out to the kitchen, pull up my iPhone’s KQED app to live stream the morning news on our Apple Airplay-connected kitchen speaker (mentally clearing my throat, poised to dish out some high-minded brain stimulation on the President’s “State of the Union” Address), and await my boys’ sleepy-eyed adulation.

But there is no adulation.  Some faint groaning off in the distance.  I glance at the clock.  But there is no clock because there is no microwave.  Only a gaping maw of aluminum framing and some wires.  This is unsettling, but not insurmountable.  I grab the blue plastic Igloo icepack from the freezer, playfully touching it to bare backs and bellies.  This elicits begrudging giggles from one, mumbled curse words (I think) from the other.  The imaginary clock on the imaginary microwave has by now reconfigured its green digital numbers–at least in my head–to tell me that I’m running out of time and getting off schedule.  Taunting my futile attempt to be a good dad.

So I pull out the big guns, though, honestly, still not gritting my teeth, nor bugging my eyes, nor bulging the veins in my neck.  At least not yet.  I’m still calm and in control.  I fill up halfway one of our remnant, plastic Giants cups (maybe the one commemorating one or another of Barry Bonds’ long-forgotten home runs?) with cold water.  I then pad back into Max’s room, peel back the striped cover a bit, and…dump it on his head.  The same tactic is deployed in Everett’s room.  With that, Max responds as I expected, bounding out of bed surprised but enthused by the stimulus, wide awake.  He is on track, with the program, and now officially in the flow of what needs to be done before 7:43am.

Everett, on the other hand, is a different story.  I may have mentioned before that he is a stubborn one.  And these Wednesday mornings, I fear, have become a fruitless attempt on my part to plumb the depths of his stubbornness.  And I can’t find the damned bottom of it.  Everett relocates to the living room, blanket over his head, uttering a stream of “I’m not going to school,” “How could you do that?,” “There’s NO WAY I’m going to eat oatmeal,” “No we CAN’T take a taxi to school and pay for it out of our own savings,” etc.  You get the picture.  I am panicked that my true lack of control here has been revealed.  So I scan my low-balance memory banks for something that might capture Everett’s attention, something that a 2nd grader will respond to (I don’t care if it’s a positive or negative response at this point, I just need a response, and fast, because 7:43am is only 10 minutes away).  Something truly gross, perhaps?

In a flash of brilliance (that now seems like temporary insanity), I announce in a matter-of-fact tone that the “water treatment” actually wasn’t water at all.  In reality, it was a scoop of toilet water from the guest bathroom toilet. I add, in full-on teaching mode now, “You know, the one where the toilet water is always yellow because you guys refuse to flush that no matter how many times I’ve asked?”  Man, I am proud of myself right then: A look of horror and disgust washes across their faces, particularly Everett’s, as he begrudgingly slides into his seat at the breakfast table.

Mission Accomplished!

Sure, if your “Mission” is to do whatever it takes to get your kids to bend to your will and fall in line in a compressed timeframe.  Probably not, though, if your “Mission” is to build long-lasting, loving relationships with the only two human beings that will carry your last name forward, long after you’re gone.  And I’m not sure I want this particular chapter shared with my great-great grand kids.  It probably doesn’t reflect well on their great-great grandfather. Then again, it could be worse.  I could have been The Bird.

NOTE: For those paying close attention, I only mentioned one of my yardsticks/litmus tests above.  The second is George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” monologue.  More specifically, how many of them I am able to avoid giving currency during a flash of anger, stomping around the house trying to get my boys up and out. Today’s tally — Six left unspoken.  Not bad.  But tomorrow’s another day.

Thanks for reading.

Modern, enlightened parent that I (think I) am, I still have a few hot button issues that I am unabashedly attempting to install into my sons’ operating systems.  Of their heads, not their iThings.  I am willing to endure the exaggerated eye rolls and plaintive “Ohhh Daaaads” to make my point on something that I consider truly important. As in, life and death important.  Repetition is my friend in these matters.  But an exciting event is my best friend in these matters.

San Francisco has a major problem with crosswalks.  More specifically, with how pedestrians treat crosswalks. As if those two parallel, white lines can protect whoever walks between them from anything that might do them harm.  Typically, a couple tons of steel, glass, rubber, and plastic.  Hence the sarcastic moniker, “Magic Paint.”

I have my boys trained (I know how that sounds, but I’m OK with that in this case) so that when they witness an oblivious (but not impervious) pedestrian strolling through a crosswalk in the face of menacing traffic, they shout out “Magic Paint!”  Not in a threatening way, and probably not loud enough for the iWalker with his iFace glued to his iPhone to even iHear the call out.  But loud enough to make my inner Great Santini feel relieved that this is one lesson that just might stick.  So San Francisco crosswalkers — if you hear some sarcastic kids yell out “Magic Paint!” in your direction, please don’t take it personally.  It’s due to an overzealous parent hard at work. Repetition.

It’s even easier for the Magic Paint lesson to settle into the Hippocampus — or is it Cortex? I’m shooting for the both — if some sort of stimulating/dangerous/Jackass the Movie-ish event presents itself.  Now, picture me with a tight, librarian smile (no teeth showing), eyebrows raised, hands delicately crossed with palm edges pressed to the table.  This is my preferred posture when seizing on a “teachable moment.”  And class is in session….

A couple months ago, I was wheeling through the Presidio with a Prius full of carpool kids, my own and a family friend’s.  We came to a stop a few feet away from a fairly new crosswalk.  The crosswalk was empty, like “Soylent Green” empty, I mean deserted, so I let my foot off the brake and the car slid forward.  At that moment, a nice young woman launched herself into the crosswalk, iPhone stuck to her ear in full conversation.  No glance up to check for heavy machinery.  Ahh, Magic Paint.  I stomp on the brakes, lurching a bit. Well, aside from motor vehicles, the Magic Paint also fails to prevent death by coyote attack. At the other end of said crosswalk stood a mature coyote, hackles up, teeth bared, staring directly at our nice young woman.  Our nice young woman was walking directly towards him (or her), completely oblivious.  So I politely honked my little horn as she began to pass in front of our bumper, figuring this would wake her up to her impending evisceration.  I heard her say into her iPhone, without looking up at me, “Nothing, it’s just some a#*hole honking at me in the crosswalk.” I gripped the steering wheel a bit harder rather than revv the engine (my preferred choice 20 years ago).

She was moving closer to the coyote with every step, and the coyote was not backing down, looking increasingly agitated and probably feeling threatened.  From years of coaching grade schoolers in loud gyms and broad fields, I have developed a refined, eardrum-piercing, two-fingered whistle.  I mean, it’s loud.  And it was my last resort.  “Thaaaweeeet!” out my lowered window.  The carpool kids all instinctively reached for and covered their ears, albeit too late. The nice young woman stopped in her tracks and looked at me with a very angry face, appalled that I would dare disturb her so rudely as she glided along within her Magic Paint.  The coyote’s knees flexed at the whistle, then she (or he) instinctively lowered to the sidewalk a bit and sprung the hell out of there at a full sprint. I actually am not sure that the nice young woman ever even saw the coyote, and perhaps that nice young woman is blogging somewhere about the a$#hole driver who honked and whistled at her in a Presidio crosswalk. But the kids in the car totally got the Magic Paint message that afternoon.  So I’m Ok with that.

The photo at the top of this blog post is of course not the coyote in question.  The photo at the bottom of this post indeed is the coyote in question.  Oh, and no coyotes (or other animals) were harmed in the making of this blog.

PS for regular The Lemonade Chronicles readers, San Francisco Bay was 51.1 degrees this dark and foggy morning, I turned off 10 lights in our house (yes, I counted) after my boys had bounded out for the bus stop (yes, on time), and no, I do not believe that Siri could also have saved that nice young woman from being “et”.

Thanks for reading.

Actually, I know exactly who has the Alien Head. And they know that I know that they have the Alien Head. And I’m fairly certain they don’t read The Lemonade Chronicles, so it’s very tempting to reveal the Alien Head’s current owners, and thus the Alien Head’s current location. But I’ll refrain, since this would violate one of the many unspoken rules of the Alien Head Game.

We’re something on the order of 18-20 years into this. Maybe more maybe less. Same deal with Satchel Paige’s true age. I don’t think anyone really knew. A number of close college buddies of my wife and mine rented a ski house in Vermont many (too many) winters ago. No kids yet, which is impossible to imagine now. So to fill our time more creatively than just the usual 20s-ish self-absorbed behavior, we were heavy into oddball pranks. (Still are, or at least am). One of the gents in this ski house crew, let’s call him “Frank,” stopped at a novelty store on his way up to Vermont from NYC. Spencer’s Gifts. Oh how I miss that place and it’s aisle 3 of forbidden fruit, but I digress. It wouldn’t have been good enough for “Frank” just to pick up a whoopie cushion or fake vomit or pretend poopie. Instead, he eyeballed a merchandising prop that was decidedly not for sale, and somehow managed to convince the teenaged store clerk that the prop should leave the store with Frank. “How much for the Alien Head?” A crumpled five dollar bill exchanged owners and the rest is history.

I don’t remember how the idea was born in that Vermont ski house that weekend, but the Alien Head has played a central role in our group’s lives ever since. The game is simple enough to explain, in a handful of previously-undocumented rules that I will now officially document —

1. Do not get stuck with the Alien Head in your possession. Ever. Never.

2. Do stick said Alien Head with someone else, unbeknownst to them, to be discovered and completely unwelcome by the oblivious recipient.

3. The Alien Head “transfer” must be creative, i.e., it cannot simply be Fedexed on down the line. Creative transfers become part of the legend, part of the multi-decade narrative that we are weaving together.

4. The true Alien Head Game Master will absolutely resist the urge to boast about or point out immediately or even ever for that matter, the fact that he or she has just handed off the Alien Head to its next owner. I struggle with this particular rule mightily. Probably some offshoot of my instant gratification character flaw (which Stanford points to in saying I’m screwed). And I admire my fellow game players who are able to say nothing, literally nothing, for years in some cases, about the fact that they genuisly (not a word, but it fits here) hid the Alien Head in the zipped up spare tire cover bolted in the cargo bay of our old Jeep.

To these 4 basic rules regarding which I suspect all of our group members would easily agree, I’d like to propose a new one:

5. The Alien Head Game must be passed down to the next generation, and to their next generation, and so on.

The Alien Head has kept our group of best friends bonded together, as we’ve gotten older, moved together then far apart, survived Cancer scares, shared our innermost secret fears about life, helped each other navigate the inevitable bumps in the winding road of marital bliss, and raised our own children. I’m breaking one or two rules here, but on Thanksgiving, I saw the Alien Head. With mine own eyes. I don’t think I’d seen him for a couple years. He looked like shit. The scrapes on his skull, new to me but likely a couple years old, betrayed the unreasonably small suitcases he’d been hurriedly jammed into on trips to one airport or another. And given how prominently he was displayed in his hosts’ home, I knew that his hosts, let’s call them “Val and Dave,” would do just about anything to hand him off to me and my family before the night was through. I might argue that such a prominent display is also against the rules, but that would distract from my big picture point coming up.

As dinner progressed and darkness fell, I sent my son Max on a quiet, secret mission to go search our car and make sure that the Alien Head had not yet been bestowed to us. Giddy, he found it, and brought it back inside. I scanned the faces of Dave and Val first, then seeing no hint of mischief, brought my accusatory gaze to their youngest daughter. The look of conspiracy flashed in a blush across her face; she was obviously in on it. Part of the Alien Head Game. And it was then that I realized that the Game needed to be played by a larger number of players, the next generation of our group. I hope that the Alien Head will connect them across time zones, ups and downs, and serve as a reminder of good times, just as it has for our group of best friends who are now 20 years older than when the Alien Head first came into our lives.

PS there is a “boys weekend” coming up very shortly, when “Frank,” “Dave, (let’s call him) “Alex” and I will all be in the same time zone for the first time in too long. The Alien Head Game figures to be a hot one. Wish me luck.

Hilary and I are in trouble.  Our 12 year-old Max is not even a teenager yet — he actually seems quite far to me from being anywhere close to molting into a teenager.  And yet, we fear him.  Well, not all the time.  Ninety percent of the day I’m not fearful, just as Nosferatu was pretty harmless unless you crossed his lanky path at the wrong time of night.

But in the mornings, in particular, it is fair to say that we fear our sub 5-foot eldest offspring.  Maybe “fear” is too strong of a word.  What is the word for “make you pretend you’re still asleep in your own bed so that your spouse might show mercy, spare you, and sacrifice herself to the morning wakeup ritual”?  Maybe “cowardice”?  “Self-preservation?” Let’s just say that I can fake-sleep with the best of them.  And I’m OK with that.  I reckon I have become such a masterful fake-sleeper that even though she will undoubtedly read this blog post and feel the wiser for it, my wife Hilary will not be able to ascertain — sleeping or awake? — when I pull the curtains on my next “Sleeping Beauty” act.  I have worked on this for years, well before having kids, well before meeting Hilary, when I was still a kid myself.  I have always equated fake-sleeping with invisibility. My own personal super power.  It has come in handy more times than I can remember, and no doubt I’ve got a few more decades to continue to perfect my master craft.  

A sense of humor helps, too.  In the mornings, I mean.  With Max.  If I haven’t thrown myself into my fake-sleeping pose on time, and my wife has flipped around and caught my eyes before I could close them and thrown in a lips-slightly-parted mouth breather effect, let alone full-on fake breathing sounds (did I mention how good I am at this?), I resort to humor.  I think I’d do the same in front of a firing squad, crinkled cigarette dangling from quivering lips — definitely something side-splitting to be said there to cut the tension.  Fortunately, my wife shares my sense of humor (most of the time), and we’ve become accustomed to protecting ourselves with it during these morning terrors.  

In cahoots, like Navy Seals storming a safe house, one of us pads up the stairs, squeaks open Max’s door, pulls up the riveted shade draws (it’s dark in there!), assesses the position of the beast, then deploys the most soothing voice and caring touch of the head: “Time to wake up, buddy.”  Nothing.  No response.  If I’m doing the waking, at this point I’ve checked behind me to make sure I have a clear exit back out of the dungeon.  I’ve bent my knees, poised to spring for my life.  And I hold my breath.  I don’t know what Hilary does, but this is what works for me.  This is just my technique.  Somewhere in here, the beast will arise, slowly, annoyed at these mortals and their silly soccer games and school buses, occasionally speaking in tongues that leave us wide-eyed and aghast.  The advance scout flies back down the stairs, flames licking at his or her heels, to the relative safety of our bedroom.  The other of us, still in bed (though as I’ve already pointed out, not fake-sleeping), shouts, “Release the Kraken!”  Release the Kraken indeed.  Speaking of which, the Kraken is now loose, being fed (eggs, not baby eagles) for an early soccer game.  So I have to run.  But I did manage to snap a photo of said Kraken in situ just before being released this very morning.  Thanks for reading.