The Golden Egg vs. the Golden Rule

A light bulb went on above the little boy’s head as he scanned the yard and realized where the Golden Egg likely was. He’s just five years old, and his bag of eggs was half as full as the other kids. Yet suddenly, he knew where the last, most sought-after, most well-hidden egg just had to be.

He darted across the grassy expanse toward an overturned plant pot tucked under a tree. Others saw his movement, realized what he must be thinking, and began to follow.

Arriving at the pot, he bent down and lifted it, revealing the glint of gold. A smile erupted across his face.

Just as he reached for the Golden Egg, an eight-year-old girl nearly twice his size knocked him over and swiped it from in front of his outstretched hand.

“I got the Golden Egg!” she exclaimed.

My wife and I witnessed this violation of all things good and decent, and we rushed over to set it straight.

It reminded me of the stories making the rounds this time of year about nasty adults and their selfish kids ruining some well-intended community egg hunt, storming fields and knocking over toddlers to get more eggs, which are usually filled with crappy candy and worthless coupons for half-off your next oil change. We read the stories and think: how classless can people be? We dismiss it as examples of bad-parenting, spoiled children, and entitlement. Who are those people, anyway, who will seemingly do anything for a handful of free candy or a Golden Egg?

There’s only one problem with the scene I witnessed with the boy, the girl and the Golden Egg: the kids were both mine.

The mad dash for plastic eggs has begun.

It happened at our annual family egg hunt we hold in the back yard of their grandmother’s house. There were just four kids involved, all my offspring, tasked with finding some 50 pastel, plastic eggs, most containing coins and candy. The Golden Egg – hidden better then the rest – always has a bit more. It’s a fun little tradition, and we’d never had any fights. Maybe some disappointed kids when someone else found the big egg, but no major breaches in etiquette and certainly no brawls. Until this time.

My wife and I immediately stepped in and scolded the older sister for knocking her little brother over and taking the egg he’d rightfully found.

She was incredulous. She grabbed it first! It was her egg! It’s not fair!

But he’s the one who found it, we said. You just grabbed it.

She didn’t see what was wrong with her actions, and my heart sank a bit. Then she started crying hysterically as her brother was handed the egg he’d found, wiping his own tears away and regaining the remnants of his smile.

For the record, our 8-year-old daughter is an exceptionally sweet kid. She’s funny and kind. She makes a point to hug everyone goodbye every time they leave the house, and she’s the one who advocates on behalf of all the spiders and stinkbugs I have to remove the premises, urging me to set them free rather than just squishing them like I’m apt to.

She also happens to be the third in a family of four kids, and has likely been pushed and knocked over herself a few times – not just in life, but earlier in the very same egg hunt. Growing up in a bigger family can be a combat sport. If anything, the episode was the culmination of an egg hunt that had gotten more aggressive than us parents were comfortable with, as kids dove for eggs like they were fumbled footballs. It was ultimately my fault for not enforcing the ground rules earlier.

She’s just a kid, too -- a kid who wanted a darn Golden Egg.

Despite making excuses for her, you can bet we used the incident as a chance to teach about being kind to others, and also about being fair, which probably confused her because she thought she was in the right, and because my lessons on fairness often sounds more like “Whoever said life was fair?” That’s my standard refrain whenever a kid complains that something isn’t fair. Fortunately she didn’t spit it back at me.

In my time as a parent, I’ve found that most kids are acutely aware of this notion of fairness – even if they have a skewed view of what it means.  It’s like we have an instinctual sense that things should be fair.

Understanding what “fair” actually means presents challenges, though, for kids and adults alike. It has nothing to do with getting what you want just because you think you deserve it. It’s more complicated. And, it’s true, somethings in life are inherently unfair. That’s just the way is. Others are unfair and call out to be fixed. Knowing the difference -- when there is one -- can be difficult.

It’s also hard to understand what accounts for a fair result when the results can themselves be so skewed. One kid got the Golden Egg. Three others did not. Is that fair? It doesn’t seem so to an eight year old. But that’s what we’ve always done. That’s the game. Thems the rules.

Which leads to more tough lessons for a kid to understand having to do with the balance between fairness and competition.

I know we’re talking about an egg hunt and not the Olympics here, but as parents, we all want our kids to be strong enough to succeed, to have the will to compete, and to learn to take care of themselves. Competition can teach this. Even competitions for plastic eggs. But we also want them to look out for the weak, to be unselfish, and to never be greedy. It’s a balance.

My wife and I could have watched the Golden Egg scene unfold and shrugged, complimenting the sister for her tenacity and telling the boy he should have grabbed it quicker. But that doesn’t seem right, does it? I want my kids to be tough, but I don't want them to think they can step on people to get what they want.

What’s not right, either, is what happens at those big, awful egg hunts. And when we see adults pushing past kids to fill their own child’s baskets, it’s easy to look down on them. Yet, in so many other ways, modern life rewards selfishness and greed over fairness and equity. In other arenas, we celebrate those who have excess and hold subtle disdain for those who’ve lost and have nothing. We call it survival of the fittest, or just business. Why does it strike us so differently when we see it happen on a field full of kids and dumb Easter eggs?

After our own egg hunt incident, I began to think what we did wrong and what we could do differently. Maybe it was the fact we only have one Golden Egg and four kids, setting up a classic battle for scarce resources. Of course, if we eliminate the Golden Egg next year, we’d also take away some of the joy of this particular egg hunt. On the other hand, if we have four golden eggs, it certainly wouldn’t  be as fun.  And how do we guarantee each kid finds one unless we fix the results? Why not just hand out the eggs? We don’t because even the littlest kids like the accomplishment of finding the eggs themselves, against the odds.

For me, it’s not about changing our egg hunt, or sheltering our kids from all forms of competition, or rigging it so that they always win. It comes down to teaching kids what fairness actually means and how to recognize it.

This talk of Golden Eggs reminds me of the Golden Rule: Treat others as you yourself would want to be treated. That’s fairness in an eggshell. And that’s the best lesson for my kids, and for anyone who struggles with notions of fairness, competition, selfishness and greed.

It’s true that life isn’t always fair. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t ever be.


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The Simple Phrase that Inspires This Dad to Run

This is not a story about weight loss -- unfortunately. Nor is it a fitness how-to. I’m not the right person to write that. This is simply about one dad’s motivation to get through his workout.

Like many adults, I’ve struggled with those extra pounds over the years. And, like most parents, part of the problem has been finding the time and energy to fit in a fitness regimen. The other part of the problem is that I love food, but that’s a separate story.

#IrunSoIcanWalk

My doctor has a rather poignant cartoon on the wall in his exam rooms. It’s a simple drawing that shows a doctor talking to a slightly overweight, mid-aged patient by cartoonist Randy Glasbergen. The caption reads, “What fits your busy schedule better, exercising one hour a day or being dead twenty-four hours a day?”

A few years back, seeing that cartoon enough times, I committed to doing what I could to not end up dead too soon, because my schedule really couldn’t handle that.

I started hitting the gym a few days a week, going the only time I could: before the kids wake up. That means, on a workout day, I have to be out the door around 5:30 a.m., so I can be back home by 6:45ish.

There have been good and bad spells over the years, but I keep going back and reaffirming the commitment.

I’ve also tried various workouts in that time – spin bikes, ellipticals, weights, and treadmills, and combinations of those. All can work, I’m sure, but what has helped most is to run on the treadmill. I know this because when I run consistently, I see the weight drop off and the belt loosen.

There’s only one problem: running is hard.

As one runner friend said to me, in the first few minutes of a run, your body enters a period of shock, essentially saying, what the heck are you doing to me? To run is all about hitting that wall and pushing through it. And then doing that over and over again.

I’m not a natural runner. I don’t have a thin frame or a particularly smooth gait. I’ve found the only way to get the time on the treadmill I need to have an impact on my health is with a dose of motivation. That’s the only way to push through when my body just wants me to stop. The problem is that some of the typical motives other people use don’t work for me. I don’t really care how I look in a bathing suit. I’m married and have kids, any pride based on narcissism evaporated when we bought our second minivan. And I’m not training for a marathon. I truly don’t have time for that.

Yet, I do have one thing that motivates me.

A few years ago, I started saying a little phrase to myself which helps me get through that next wall. Heck, it even helps me get out of bed and to the gym some days.

The phrase is this: “I run so I can walk.”

It may sound like a slogan for a geriatric commercial, but it’s not.

You see, I have three daughters.

As a dad, I have a lot of jobs I have to do for them and their brother – making school lunches, picking them up places, preparing dinner, reading bedtime stories, and all the other parenting stuff we do each day without even thinking about it.

But I think about that cartoon and about not being dead too soon, and I know there is one job I have in my future as a dad of daughters that I simply cannot miss. And it involves walking with them.

Who the heck knows if any of my daughters are even going to get married? As long as they’re happy, I really don’t care. I’m really not one to think much about such things, and I certainly don’t want them thinking about that stuff either – despite Disney’s efforts to make that every girl’s obsession. There’s really no pressure here.

But chances are that one of them will get married. And, if it happens, I better damn well be there to do my job.

For me, the phrase has become more than about some fanciful day off in the future that may or may not happen. It’s about being there for them every day I can, for as long as I can: For the walks on the beach, for the hikes in the woods, for the strolls at the park, for the random moments I cannot yet imagine. I want to be there, walking through it with them, until it’s not my job anymore.

When I am running and I hit that wall, “I run so I can walk” is all the motivation this dad needs.

Now if I could just find a phrase that can prevent me from eating so much.

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That Time I Spoiled My Child for Every Concert in Her Future

Here’s the good news: I finally got my hearing back. It took a few days for the ringing to end, and, in that time, I read a lot about a thing called tinnitus. But now I can hear again. Though let’s be honest, I haven’t heard very well for years – just ask my wife.

The bad news: I’ve ruined my recently-turned teenager for every concert she attends from now on until the end of time, short of some show where she gets actual front row seats and backstage passes.

We didn’t get front row seats or backstage passes when we went to see Fall Out Boy as a birthday gift and her first real concert ever about a week ago. But our seats were good. Very good.

I’ve been going to concerts my whole dang life, and these were the best seats I’ve ever had. Ever.

Usually, I’m a lawn seat kind of guy. Occasionally I’ll end up somewhere in the rafters, depending on the venue and the demand for the artist. A few times, when I was a bit younger, I went and fought the general admission crowds – that’s how I got briefly in the front of the mob for a Spin Doctors’ song. They were opening for one of those multi-band tours, I believe, and my moment in the sun ended when the mosh pit shifted and convulsed and spit me out ten bodies back.

One time I got into a luxury box for a show at the Cap Centre: Beastie Boys, I recall. (I didn’t pay for those tickets). That was a heck-of-a long time ago. Pretty cool way to watch a show, but not very close to the stage. Kind of subdued, really.

Fall Out Boy, Wintour Is Coming, March 2016, Syracuse.

Our recent trip to see Fall Out Boy was anything but subdued. We were close. Damn close. Too close, almost. Too close for my ears, for sure. But also too close for my daughter’s first real concert ever and for her concert-going sense of perspective. I think I definitely may have spoiled her.

These weren’t front row seats, mind you. And when I bought them, I had no idea how good the tickets were. The seats were off to one side of the stage and five rows back. Which, I figured would be just okay. They weren’t all that expensive, either. But, considering the angles and slope of the rows, the seats turned out to be the absolute perfect distance and height for the stage setup FOB uses on this tour – which is a giant V that cuts into the crowd, including elevated ramps literally a few yards from our screaming faces.

It wasn’t until we walked through the guarded doors to our section, stepped through the black curtain and up a few steps that we realized how absolutely, ridiculously close we were to the action -- and to the gigantic speakers. My daughter gasped with an “OMG” or something hipper and more recent that I couldn’t decipher; then she hugged the friend she’d brought along, while my eardrums let out a little whimper.

She’s ruined for sure. She doesn’t understand that most people don’t get to be that close, or that most times you attend a concert you’re better off looking at the Jumbotron if you want to see the sweat rolling down the bassist’s face. She’s liable to think that at every concert you’re able to count the strings on the guitar, feel the heat from the pyrotechnics, and read the tattoos on the drummer’s chest.

She’s totally screwed. More likely, every person who ever attends a concert with her again is screwed. Every person who ever calls her and says, I scored some ticket to some show. I can hear it now: “This is great, but one time we were like practically on the stage for a Fall Out Boy concert.”

It didn’t hurt that the band put on a great performance, mixing an array of their hits with lesser known but equally solid songs. It also didn’t hurt that the sold-out crowd, filled with teens, their formerly-cool parents, and tons of people in-between, soaked it up and sang along like it was the last concert on earth. And, for a few hours, it did feel like the center of the modern rock-n-roll universe.

Pre-FOB

For the record, my daughter was there.

But you know what else? I was there to witness it.

I did spoil my daughter that night. And I also saw a great show – probably the best I’ve seen since I saw Springsteen or the Stones more than a decade ago in DC. What I’ll remember, though, isn’t the sweat or the sound, but the look of joy on her face, the excitement with which she belted her favorite band’s songs, the tears she shed when they played that one ballad she loves so much, and the number of times her and her friend jumped and screamed and sang because that’s all they wanted to do.

Isn't that why we occasionally spoil our kids? Because we want them to be happy? Because we want to see them happy? That night, she was happy.

And you know what, maybe it won’t ruin her at all. Maybe, after this, she’ll be determined to fill her heart and her head with equally rewarding experiences, musical and otherwise. Maybe she’ll appreciate the uniqueness and the specialness of this concert, and every one she ever attends. Maybe she’ll look back with a special fondness on her first concert ever, and maybe she’ll remember that her dad was there too.

It’s been a full week since the show. My hearing has more or less returned. My daughter has lost all perspective. And I don’t regret any of it.

 

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The Ramblings of a Teenager’s Father

Yesterday my oldest daughter became a teenager. She’s been teetering on the edge for a few years, and now it’s official. The dark and brooding years are upon us. May she arise some day unscathed.

And tonight, I’m taking her and a friend to her first real concert: Fall Out Boy. That’s the band I famously called “Fall Out Guy” to another parent in an ill-conceived effort to look cool a few months ago. The mom quickly corrected me, and I laughed because I am so beyond being cool it’s helpless. But I digress.

My wife and I are parents of a teenager. How did this happen? I don’t know.

But her turning 13 and going to this concert reminded me of a few paragraphs I wrote two months ago and then tucked back into my computer documents file unfinished and uncertain. Here it is.

*****

The white dashes flash by to the approximate beat of the Fall Out Boy album blasting from my empty minivan’s speakers. I’ve grown to like FOB in recent months as I prepare for a planned concert I’ll be attending with my daughter at a future day. They remind me of the bands I liked on the periphery of my musical tastes when I was younger. Worth a listen.

I’m traveling alone this night, a rare treat. Heading to the in-laws in Pennsylvania. Meeting my wife there, who has been in Washington working for a few days. The kiddos are left behind, being watched by their other grandparents.

Our trip has a purpose: to help my wife’s parents tie up the loose ends on the selling of the little store they've owned for 27 years.

27 years.

Clearly, my obsession with the passage of time has yet to abate.

I’ve always found it interesting how an hour on the road can creep by when that’s the length of the trip. And yet the same hour can fly by when it's part of a three hour trip. And, when part of a ten hour trip, the hours can click by like the lines in the middle of the road.

I guess time is relative, and you don’t need complicated formulas to see it.

Despite warnings from my elders, I’ve been truly amazed at how the years do click by faster and faster as you get older. The holidays upon us each year before you can blink. The adage “Boy, this year is flying by” said with more earnestness and sincerity each time. 

The whole of my youth stands in my mind as a millennia compared to the decades packed on since college. Yet the memories of both fade.

There’s a line from the Jimmy Buffet song, He Went To Paris, that used to confound me. It’s on the Margaritaville album, which anyone who’s spent time dreaming has listened to in its entirety countless times. Not my favorite song from the album, but it grows on you. The song chronicles the bulk of someone’s life, saying at one point, “And four to five years slipped away.”

I used to think, how can four to five years slip away?

Now I know.  

If nothing else, this dumb blog thing has helped me put into writing some of the precious experiences (and not so precious).  More and more, I think I need to do that, as the potential memories evaporate like dreams you neglect to talk about the morning after.

I joke with my eldest child that my mind isn’t what it used to be. Words don’t come as easily to my lips, and memories from last week slip through the crack before they make it to the long term file. I worry sometimes that I have early onset something-or-other. But I think it’s just life.

Then again, I haven’t written as much lately. Which only I notice, really. So there’s no need to apologize. I have a new job I’m enjoying and use the rest of my free time to eat with my family and sleep.

The other day, someone mentioned they saw something I wrote somewhere, and then cocked their head and asked how I liked the new job. I told the truth, that I like it a lot. I get to do good work.

It made me think about that question we all ask each other, what do you do? It’s a simple curiosity, but it’s also kind of profound how we use it to put people and their lives in a box. But it’s never that easy, is it? 

In the eighties there was an old show called Taxi. For some reason we watched it often and mourned when it got canceled. I remember one thing about it in particular. In their minds, none of the taxi drivers were actually taxi drivers. They were struggling actors, aspiring boxers, and other dream chasers. All except Alex, who’d come to grips with the notion he was just a taxi driver. And that was enough. He was okay with it.

I think about my answers to that question over the years: a journalist, a speechwriter, a chief of staff, a political consultant, a public relations consultant, a freelance writer, an adjunct. I've always struggled with this question, both asking it and answering it. I always just want to say writer. But that's rarely been true.

Maybe I don't like boxes. Maybe I'm just not okay with it.

*****

Like I said, it was unfinished and uncertain.

More recently I went to a writers’ convention that I’ve mentioned before. One of the main speakers talked about legacy. He referenced that same question. What do you do? And he put that question in its place when he said this: Nobody cares about your resume when you’re gone. Your impact on this world is so much more important than just what you do for a living. It’s what you do in everything else that often matters more. And, most important, what you leave behind.

That’s what he said, anyway. It spoke to me as the parent to some amazing kids. Kids who are growing up too fast and becoming interesting, curious and complicated people way before my wife and I are ready. They are going to be my legacy.

Tonight I get to take one of them to a concert.

How did my wife and I become parents to a teenager? I don’t know. We just did. The white dashes keep passing by.

And I’m okay with it.


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Finding Our Version of Perfect a Few Rows Down

My son walked through the tunnel connecting the upper concourse and the actual arena and paused as he took in the massive space that is the largest college basketball stadium in the country.  

“Whoa,” he muttered.  Whoa is right.


The boy's first glance at the Dome.

It was this five-year-old little boy’s first visit to Syracuse University's Carrier Dome. And, it was an awesome sight to behold: a world within a building, with a bulbous white roof like a puffy cloud arched over a coliseum big enough to hold 50,000 people and an entire football field, to boot.

For basketball games, they only use half the stadium, tucking a court into the one end. But the whole space is still there before you. And it’s immense.

All four of the kids stopped at the railing at the end of the tunnel and just gazed at the sight before them. We were three levels up, which added an element of height to the view as well. Our 8-year-old daughter, who happens to be afraid of heights, stood less close to the railing than the others. And while the dome looked bigger than they expected, I’m sure the court looked a bit smaller.

Then we turned away from the railing and showed our tickets to the usher. He pointed up the steep concrete stairs toward the rafters.

“Whoa,” I mumbled.  Whoa is right.

One of the older kids look at me as their expression of amazement, turned to disappointment. And it was then I knew I’d screwed up. On the day weeks before when I planned this rare family outing, my intuitive frugality – a.k.a. my tendency to be a cheap ass – had steered me toward more affordable tickets. And now, the usher was steering us to the cheap seats.

*****

You learn pretty early on as a parent that perfection is impossible. It’s never more true than when it comes to the plans you make for you and your family. I’m not talking about the big plans, like where you’re going to be in five years. But the small plans, like what are we going to do this Saturday.

You can make all the plans you want, and envision all the perfect outcomes. When reality happens, one unforeseen variable can turn the whole affair on its head. Often that variable is out of your control: an unexpected toddler meltdown, an unsuspected stomach bug. Life has no shortage of flat tires. But, occasionally, the unforeseen variable was seeable. And you just ignored it because you’re dense, or overly optimistic, or cheap.

The day we went to the Dome for a basketball game started out pretty well. We decked ourselves in Orange and then piled into the van to make our way to the stadium. The excitement was palpable. For two of our children, it would be the first time to an SU game. For the rest of us, it was the first time we were going with the entire family.

I’d made the plan for this family outing to the Dome around Christmas. I’d picked a game on a Saturday against a lesser ACC opponent – as in not Duke or Carolina. Then I bought six tickets. It wasn’t cheap.

The plan felt perfect. I’d looked forward to it for weeks. Then reality arrived.

****

Picture it: A husband, a wife and four kids sitting on a cold, hard bench in the nose bleed section of the Carrier Dome, with row upon row of empty, cushioned seats between them and the third level railing. Picture, too, a miniature basketball court in the distance, complete with small ants in warmup suits doing what looked like lay-up drills. It was hard to tell.

Did I mention the 14 rows of seats between us and the third level overlook were all cushioned … and empty. Cushioned seats; all empty.

After the usher pointed us up the concrete staircase, one of the “glass-half-full” kids in our family saw the orange and white cushions and exclaimed, “Cushions! Yes!”

That lifted my heart momentarily.

Then we began our ascent to section 318, Row N. When we passed Row J, I realized the cushions were ending in a few rows, and it was cold metal from there on.

Row K? Cushions. L? Cushions. M? Cushions. N? No cushions. I could hear the air being let out of my pre-teen daughter’s mouth as she sighed at our cushion-less future.

She, too, was the one who vocalized our collective frustration as tip-off arrived and the seats in front of us remained empty.  “Really?!” she said.

Row M had cushions. It was also a few bucks more.
So, no cushions for us.

I kept smiling, and we did a few family selfies, as prompted by the Jumbotron. Then we tweeted the selfies to an appropriate hashtag to let the whole stadium see how happy we were despite having the worst seats for miles.

I tried to focus for a moment on exactly why I’d dragged the family there. And I knew it wasn’t for the views, or even the game. It was for the memories.

I’m getting older, and the memories of my youth are further and foggier than ever. But I do remember the first time I went to a real baseball game. It was Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Orioles vs. Yankees. I was there. My dad was there. I don’t remember what our seats were like, probably not that great. I come from a 300 section kind of family. It’s just reality.

I also don’t remember many details of that game. Reggie Jackson was in the outfield. And Cal Ripken was probably playing – though that’s kind of cheating. I don’t recall if he was.

The truth is I don’t remember much about it. But I remember it. I remember the feeling it gave me.

That’s what we’re doing with our kids, why we plan so much, and drive so much, and fill our weekends – and most of our weeknights – with adventures and outings. It’s so a handful of those experiences will make it through the great distiller that is childhood memories and that they and us will come out on the other end happier.

And yet, it seemed there was a dearth of happiness in Section 318, Row N of the Carrier Dome that Saturday.

Luckily, I’m married to a woman who knows how to fix such problems. With a break in the basketball action – we knew because the ants all huddled on the sidelines -- she asked the kids if anyone wanted a pretzel. One thing I’ve learned in the many professional and college sporting events I’ve attended since that trip to Memorial Stadium is that the food makes up a quintessential part of the experience.

So, down the steps she went with a couple of kids in tow in search of overpriced pretzels.

I sulked in the seats with the remaining kids and contemplated the benefits of moving down one row into the empty cushioned seats before us. Would the usher notice? Would the kids learn the wrong lesson?  The truth is, most 300 sections let you move down to the better seats once it’s clear nobody’s coming to fill the slightly more expensive rows. Yet I couldn’t muster the will to decide what to do.

Then I saw my wife returning with the pretzels, rounding out of the tunnel to begin her ascent. And she did something brilliant; She sat down in the empty, cushioned row of seats by the railing. The usher didn’t even glance her way. Then she waved at us to come down.

It didn’t take much convincing to move the rest of the kids down to where she was.  It was only 14 rows closer than our seats. But the court was that much bigger, the players that much clearer and the seats that much better.

Suddenly, the kids were into it. The moment I’d planned for had arrived.

Can you guess who we were rooting for?

It helped that the game was a good one, with leads exchanged back and forth, and long shots made, and the crowd rapt with it all. The band played, and my kids chanted, “Let’s Go Orange” along with 23,000 others. The drama was so intense that my almost-teenaged daughter at one point anxiously exclaimed, “I didn’t sign on for this,” which is pre-teen lingo for “This is intense and awesome and I’m so into it.”

We all felt the same.

To top it off, Syracuse won -- in exciting fashion, no less. 

The A-team’s John “Hannibal” Smith used to say, I love it when a plan comes together. Why I’m quoting a member of the A-team is beyond me. But I thought of that oft-repeated quote from the mid-80s as this plan of mine came together, despite my best efforts to derail it under the guise of frugality.

And I realized something else. As a parent, you learn what real perfection actually looks like. It’s not perfect.

We achieved our version of it that day. And I’m sure the kids will remember it.

 

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How to Make Virtual Friends And Find Your Tribe

Making friends after you've become a parent is hard. That’s one parenting truth people forget to warn you about. It can be a friendless endeavor.

Often, it starts by losing the friends you had before your kids came along. They fade away. Some do so by continuing on their pre-kid trajectory. Others have kids of their own and recoil into their new lives. You’re still “friends” with these people, technically, but you never see them.

The act of having a child then hinders your ability to replace those friends. Lack of sleep, diapers, soccer practice, it takes up all of your time. That challenge seems to grow exponentially with each child.

I know because I have four kids. And a few years ago, I had no friends.

Of course, I had my brothers. But they had to be friends with me. And they each had their own circle of friends. I had guys I’d been friends with my whole life who I’d hang out with and laugh with on the rare times I’d see them. But they all live hours away, or are so caught up in their own lives that the best we can do is say “We should get together more” when we happen to randomly see each other once a year or so.

When it came to regular interaction, I had no one I could chat with, laugh with, or interact with. I had no one who would ask me to get a beer after work, or to watch the big game, or just to complain to or listen to about dumb life stuff. You know: friends.

I took pride back then in thinking that my wife was my best friends. Which is an honest and sweet sounding thing, unless your wife is also your only friend.

Back when I had no friends, I also worked from home. You can probably see where this is going. Working from home also hinders the whole friendship thing. I had guys I’d meet up with on work conference calls every few days. But we didn’t exactly have conference calls after work hours, unless there was something really bad happening. And because I worked remotely from home, I couldn’t “grab beers” with them when the official crap was done for the day. Despite the fact I got along well with these guys, they didn’t exactly fill the friend void.

And here’s the thing about us people. We need friends. We’re social beings. We need people beyond our kids, and our spouse, and our coworkers, and our families. We really do. Because there’s stuff you can talk to friends about that families won’t react well to, that coworkers don’t want to hear, that your wife is sick of hearing, and that your kids won’t understand.

Back when I had no friends I also began writing this blog. Those two things aren’t related. At least, I don’t think so.

So to recap: I had kids, worked from home, wrote a blog, and had no friends.

And then the weirdest thing happened. A stranger who also happened to be a dad and a writer reached out to me. His name was Oren. It turns out, he had lots of friends. And he invited me into his group. It was a Facebook group of fellow dads and writers from all over the world.

Me and a few hundred of my closest friends listen to
Michael Strahan talk about fatherhood and life.
One of many highlights from Dad 2.016 Summit.

It sounded odd. But suddenly, when I wasn’t busy toiling away at work stuff, or driving kids to soccer practice, I had a group of people that I could laugh with and joke with, tease and debate. Some of them were work-at-home dads like me. Others were stay-at-home dads. And some worked at offices, and did their best to parent and write about it. There were divorced dads, gay dads and Canadian dads. There were funny guys and finance guys. Guys with 100,000 followers on Facebook and guys with 100. They were all dads who wrote. They were like me.

I had virtual friends. I’d found my tribe.

I know what you’re thinking -- or at least, I know what I was thinking at the time. I also know what my brothers were thinking, because they razzed me. Virtual friends aren’t real friends. They’re just pixels. Things that let out a “bing” when they respond to you.

I thought about that some. And it’s true, in the age of the Internet, and Facebook, and Twitter, it’s easy to make virtual connections. But it’s hard to make those connections feel real.

Still, for the past three years I’ve been interacting with these fellow dad writers online: laughing at their jokes, reading their articles, and hitting “like” when they post pictures of their families. We talked about world events, shared beers though “drink threads,” and picked on each other about whose professional football team sucked the most. These virtual friends filled a void in my life that was created by parenting, and was ironically refilled by the same endeavor. They helped me through a time when I needed friends.

I grew to really like these guys.

Then a very sad thing happened. One of them got sick and died. That was Oren.

I can tell you something I learned: If you think virtual friends aren’t real, then you’ve never lost one the way we did. I bawled. We all did. Hell, I’m crying as I write this. Sorry.

Also in the past three years, this dumb blog thing helped me reconnect with a lot of old friends, real friends who have scattered across the country since whence we met. Friends in places like Colorado, and Southern California, Maine and Florida, Saranac Lake and Rochester. People I’ve known throughout my life, who now have kids and struggle with all the same crap us parents face -- including the challenge of making friends -- but who just happen to live far away.

Some of the Old Friends I just met.

I’ve also broken through on a more local level, getting up the gumption to join a group of fellow dads who have kids at our local elementary school. And I started working from an office again, rather than home.

Now, I have people, both real and virtual, that I can get a beer with – though I rarely have time to do that.

Still, I felt I owed something to these virtual friends, the ones who befriended me when I had none. And I owed something to myself. I needed to make them real.

This past weekend, I went to a conference for dad bloggers, writers, and authors, and other people who just care about fatherhood issues. It’s called the Dad 2.0 Summit. This was the 5^th annual gathering and the first one I could attend.

To the uninitiated, it may sound like a strange thing – a bunch of dad bloggers hanging out at a hotel. It’s much more than that, though that would have been enough. It’s a conference for the people on the cutting edge of what modern fatherhood means. As I told my kids, it’s kind of a big deal.

For me, it was a homecoming. A surreal one at that. All those guys who were just “bings” and pixels were suddenly standing there before more, extending their hand to shake, and offering to buy me a real and actual beer.

It was surreal. And it was also very real.

One of the many cool things I got to take
back from the Dad 2.0 Summit.

I finally got to meet these guys I’ve known for three years, and to make some new friends, and laugh, and joke, and celebrate, and cry. I got to mourn the man who introduced me to all these dad writers and do that surrounded by these friends.

So today, I feel like a person with lots of friends. And you’ll be happy to know that my wife is still my best friend, and that doesn’t sound lame to me at all.

But there’s a lesson here that I hope others can draw from my story. It can be hard to make friends. But none of us are truly alone. There’s people out there who are struggling with all the things you’re struggling with, facing the same obstacles, enjoying the same outlets. You just have to find them. Because they are there, and they are real.

So, find your tribe, befriend them, and meet them. You won’t regret it.

I certainly don’t.


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Alexander, My Daughter and Me

My 12-year-old daughter has become obsessed with Alexander Hamilton, and I don't know what to do about it.

That’s one sentence I never imagined I’d write. Really didn’t see this one coming. But it’s true. Alex, as she calls him, permeates her every waking thought.

You’d think a typical dad like myself would be pleased that his precocious and energetic child was focusing her young intellect on the life and philosophy of one of the greatest minds in American history. But no.

I fondly miss her past days of being singularly pre-occupied with a certain insufferable British YouTube duo, named Dan and Phil, which she still is when not talking, singing, or reciting random facts about our nation's first secretary of the treasury.

What's next, a musical about math?
Or cumulus clouds? Or cats?
... Oh wait, never mind. 
(I also just noticed the "Parental Advisory"
label -- wish I saw that earlier).

And what ever happened to the happier days of her youth when she would endlessly belt Fall Out Boy lyrics, or wistfully engage in a game of name that obscure Disney tune with her siblings. Ever heard your kid sing “Great Spirits” from Brother Bear? I have. Or at least, I used to.

Now, she’s more likely to rap the preamble to the Constitution, or shake her shoulders and sing, “I’m not throwing away my … shot.”

Not to mention, she knows more random facts about Alexander Hamilton than any 12-year-old should. Heck, I have a graduate degree in political science – which I’m still paying for, by the way – and she has more Hamiltonian and revolutionary facts stored in her young brain then I was ever exposed to in all of college, and I had a whole grad-level class on Alexander Hamilton and the constitutional convention, taught by a renowned expert on Hamilton. This play's soundtrack has taught her more about the founding of our country than I learned in grad school.

Sure, that was a while ago. But I didn’t recall that Hamilton wrote 50 of the 85 Federalist Papers.

[Daughter chimes in]: “Actually, he wrote 51, dad.”

What?

“The plan was to write 25. John Jay got sick after writing 5. James Madison wrote 29. Hamilton wrote the other … 51.”

Oh. Thanks.

“He also wrote an 80 page essay to a supporter of King George III named Sam Seabury about how colonial England was a tyrannical government.”

See what I mean. It’s not that I have anything against Hamilton, though truthfully I always considered myself more of a Jefferson guy. It’s just kind of weird to have my days filled with all these random facts from American history.  You know, I mean, political philosophy and the fundamental questions about democratic principles have their place. But do we really have to talk about Hamilton’s design of our national financial system at the dinner table. Can’t we just talk about how school went today?

I’m sure many people reading this know the root cause of my problem. It’s her mother. She’s the one who studied theater in college, and turned my daughter on to classics like Les Miserable, years ago. The soundtrack to Les Mis was actually the first album she put on her first MP3 player when she was little. (Yes, that was her first electronic gadget – a true gateway electronic, if you ask me).

She used to sing “On My Own” ad nauseam when she was a spritely 7 years old. Which, in hindsight, was kind of cute.

Which gets us to the actual cause of my Hamilton-obsessed-child problem: Theater.

For those who don’t know, and I counted myself among you until recently, there is a new “smash hit” on Broadway about the life and times of, get this, Alexander Hamilton. Apparently, it’s a cross-genre, hip-hop and classic, historically accurate, tear-jerker of a musical that follows this founding father through the revolution and early years of our great democratic experiment. It sounds like a total flop, right? But the aptly-titled Hamilton, which began off-Broadway last January, made the move to the bigger stage in August and is now sold out for the foreseeable future and, good-money has it, it’s a shoo-in to win a bunch of Tony Awards. I heard that last part.

About a month and a half ago, my daughter was introduced to the soundtrack by one of her theater friends (a reminder how important it is to make sure your kid hangs out with the right crowd).

Anyway, flash forward to now, and she’s singing, dancing and rapping about the founding of our country and one of its chief architects.

Worse yet, she forced me to start listening to the darn thing as prerequisite to writing this – I’ve gotten through the first act, so far -- and now I’m hooked, as well. It’s amazing, on so many bizarre levels. Genius, really. Who would’ve thought the subject I studied in boring grad school classes had the makings of a Broadway classic. Not me, for sure.

And now I’m learning random facts about Hamilton that I never knew, or completely forgot.

For instance, I did not even recall that he and Aaron Burr were actually friends going way back.

“They were quite close. Their rift had to do with Alex’s belief that Burr was unprincipled and an opportunist, and that’s what led to …”

Stop. Don’t give away a spoiler.

“I can’t spoil it, dad. It’s actual history.”

Oh. Right.

Anyway. This is our latest obsession. And maybe sometime in the not too distant future, we’ll feed this obsession with a trip to New York and a visit to Broadway. If we can even get any tickets.

In the meantime, I’ve got a soundtrack to finish.

I wonder how it’s going to end?



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Elf You and Your Elfing Elf on the Shelf

Like the Christmas season wasn’t elfing stressful enough. Now, there’s a magical elf in the house that supposedly reports to Santa every gosh darn night in December – or at least most nights -- and changes places upon its return.

What an elfing awesome idea! Thanks so much to the magical creators from the North Pole who came up with this challenging addition to our holiday routine. We really needed this wakeup call, this extra check on our attentiveness, this daily reminder that we are far from the parents we set out to be each day.

For the record, our family resisted this elfing movement for many years. We did. Then last year, as the kiddos exchanged their traditional Christmas Eve secret Santa gifts, one sibling got the other a brand spanking new Elf on the Shelf. So, our introduction into elf-on-the-shelfdom officially happened on December 24, 2014. The elf’s arrival initially set off a bit of family squabbling over whether to name him Abraham or Stanley. Why either name was the choice, I have no idea. A compromise was reached, and he was promptly named “Abraham Stanley.”

Our boring Elf on the Shelf, boringly sitting on a
boring shelf, where he'll likely be for more than
one morning in a row.

That very night, Santa came to our house and picked up Abraham Stanley and took him back to the North Pole, as the legend goes, until the next holiday season. (And by legend I mean the instructions in box he came in).

From last Christmas until this December, Abraham Stanley hasn’t caused us any trouble, spending the better part of the year with his friends and colleagues at Santa’s Workshop. Then, on December 1^st of this year, he magically arrived on a shelf in our once happy home. Now each morning begins with a frantic kid-led search for our little yuletide spy. That search is often preceded by a frantic parent moment where one of us asks the other, did the elf move? It's amazing how this little question, which I had never asked before this year, can now shake me to my parental core.

Despite our united focus on this nightly task, and the google calendar alert set to 5:00 a.m. each day that simply reads, “Elf,” our little Abraham Stanley doesn’t always move. He’s a bit of a slacker, really. And that has left the kids a bit perplexed.

Apparently, he’s also not the most creative elf in the world. The kids regularly come home from school with stories of how other elves in the neighborhood always do funny things, having tea with dinosaurs and toilet papering the doll house. Ours just sits on shelves and atop rather predictable book cases.

“Why is Abraham Stanley so boring?” one of them asked me the other morning. Dagger.

Like I said, the only thing our elf does consistently is serve as a daily reminder that we are just hanging on as parents.

Not to deflect the criticism, but I think I know why he’s such a slacker. Let’s face it, any elf worth their salt spends December working on a serious toy production deadline. This whole Elf of the Shelf mass arrival is really just Santa’s – or someone else’s – plan to clean out the elf riff-raff. Personally, I’d like to send all these little red interlopers back where they came from.

Oh no. I think my frustration with Abraham Stanley has led me to go full Trump on these holiday helpers.

But honestly, we really don’t need their help. The mere threat that “Santa is watching” has worked to keep our kids on the straight and narrow – a few weeks a year, anyway – for as long as we’ve had kids. Having a physical presence on the premises only moves the good behavior needle a fraction, while causing more grief than anything. Our Elf on the Shelf is just not elfing worth the hassle.

I know darn well there are many parents who’ve complained about these magical little additions to the Christmas rigmarole before. And maybe we can’t just deport all the elfs currently in homes across the nation. But something needs to be done.

Because we simply don’t need more elfing stress this time of year. So, here’s my message to all the parents who have yet to go down the Elf on the Shelf rabbit hole: resist it. This is one new tradition that just isn't sustainable. To the parents who go over the top with your elf-written poems and hilarious antics: please tone it down a bit. I shouldn't have to resort to Pinterest to figure out which crazy predicament Abraham Stanley is going to be found in tomorrow morning.

And, to all the Elves on Shelves and the institutions pushing them on overstressed families everywhere: “Elf Off!”

I sure hope Abraham Stanley doesn’t read this.  

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