Thursday, June 1, 2006—Why a Duck?
Now, being a red-blooded American male, I firmly believe in the coffee break. My coffee maker gives me one hour to brew and drink however much coffee I'm having that day. At the end of an hour, the coffee maker shuts off, thus preventing the coffee from cooking to the bottom of the pot and ensuring me of a perfect cup of coffee every time. I have only one complaint about my coffee maker—and it's the same one I have with every coffee maker—is that I can only get five cups of coffee out of it, even though it says I'm making ten cups. I don't know anyone who gets more than five cups out of their coffee maker, so this is something that needs to be addressed by the manufacturers. When Carol and I got married, we received several coffee cups in our pattern and they were very cute, but awfully dinky. They're way too small to drink coffee out of, but they're just right for a snack of chips and salsa.
Now that I've rambled on about that, back to business. Having scraped out countless coffee pots at work, I applaud this latest innovation in coffee making. The only downside is that it's hard to chug a pot of coffee while it's still hot. I like to take the full hour to drink my coffee, no matter how many cups it is. A pessimist might say this is an hour wasted, I prefer to think of it as an hour of peace. I can read my book or work on a crossword puzzle, or watch whatever bad morning television happens to be on. When I have a busy day planned, it gives me a chance to center myself for the coming day. On a pajama day, it's an early start on doing nothing.
I like start my coffee break between eight and nine in the morning. When Timmy was in the morning class in preschool, it gave me a chance to overlap between the time he was at home and after the bus came to pick him up. Now that he's in the afternoon class, I get to watch children's programming on the local PBS station while I enjoy my morning pot of coffee. Yippee.
Don't get me wrong, I like PBS. I don't contribute to it, but I like it nonetheless. I recognize that even though the vast majority of their cartoon characters are annoying, they also teach valuable lessons to children about how to behave. Unfortunately, PBS seems to believe that they have to have diversity in just about every cartoon they show. This enforced diversity leads to some strange programming choices, and a lot of second- and third-rate shows. My kids don't even like the majority of the cartoons, so I know it's not just me.
After we get the breakfast dishes put away, my son resumes building a train layout on the floor. Long gone are the days when he would be satisfied with building something on the train table. That has become a depository for Carol when she comes home from shopping, among other things. The table is piled high with plastic bags from Target and Wal-Mart, with the occasional bag from another department store tucked in here and there. There are also the remains of past layouts, train cars, race cars and various other pieces of flotsam and jetsam from the boys. My younger son spends hours building and rebuilding layouts, arranging mountains and tunnels, hills, bridges, and viaducts.
One day, while building a layout, Timmy held up part of the viaduct and asked my wife what kind of a piece it was. My wife patiently tried to explain what a viaduct was, and was making progress until I broke in with the old Marx Brothers routine and asked "Why a duck?" My five-year-old thought it was funny. My wife, on the other hand, was not amused.
My son asks me to play with him, so I get down on the floor and start laying track. He asks me which train I want to play with and then gives me the other one when I pick the same one he wanted. Our passenger trains are running in opposite directions on the same track. Fortunately we've built enough curves and branch lines in that we hardly ever collide. Every time I try to arrange a head-on collision, he stops me and makes me move to a different section of the track. Soon his train is chasing mine, much to his delight.
After a half-hour of this, I finish my coffee and have to start being responsible. Let's see . . . do I want to do laundry, yard work, clean the house, or remix some music on the computer? After two minutes of heavy deliberation, weighing the pros and cons of doing each job, I decide the most responsible thing I can do is remix some music.
I can hear the eyes rolling from here, but let me explain. After I remix the music and burn it to a compact disc, I delete the files from my computer. This frees up room on the hard drive, which allows the computer to run faster and more efficiently. It also allows me to spend more time with my son and bond with him, not to mention exposing him to more musical styles, which is important to his education. And what could be more important than spending time bonding with my son?
Really. Honestly.
Are you buying this? Let's pretend that you are.
A couple of hours later, I'm putting the finishing touches on my newest CD, and my son asks me for a snack. This time he wants waffles. I check the clock, do some math, and figure by the time the bus picks him up the sugar high from the syrup should have worn off. Sure, no problem, I tell myself. As I'm fixing the waffles I recall a conversation some months earlier with my son's preschool teacher. On a morning when he had been particularly hyper, she had asked him what he had for breakfast. He told her cocoa puffs. She told him next time to cut down on the sugar and he laughed. She was impressed that a five-year-old would get a joke like that; but then again, he got the joke about "Why a duck?" Now when I sugar him out in the mornings, I make sure the effects have worn off before he gets on the school bus.
After his snack, I have him put on his backpack. A few weeks ago we placed a small phone book in it to help weigh him down. We thought the extra weight would help him burn off some of the excess energy that keeps him bouncing off the walls. This energy is in addition to the burst he gets from eating sugared foods.
We go outside to wait for the bus in the midday heat. We stand in the shade of the little elm tree that's between the sidewalk and the street. While I keep a look out for the bus, he plays with the gravel, twigs, and dead leaves at the base of the tree. To pass the time, he makes up a game we can play. We take turns dropping rocks through outstretched leaves, seeing if we can break them. He then makes little piles of rocks on the sidewalk and stirs the dust with a twig.
When he was in the morning class, we'd spend our time waiting for the bus playing hide and seek. I would count to ten and look for him, pretending I couldn't see where he was hiding. I'd search behind the trees, by the front door, around the car, finally making my way over to the fire hydrant he was crouching behind. Sometimes, as an alternative, I'd swing him around and put him on my shoulders and pretend I couldn't find him. Laughing, he would give me hints on where to look. I'd look up on the roof, behind trees and behind the fire hydrant for him. I'd check around the car and in the trees, then stand still and scratch his head, pretending it was mine. Finally he would lean down, his head in front of mine, and yell, "Here I AM!" and I would be surprised. Now that he's in the afternoon class, it's just too hot to play like that, so we wait quietly in the shade of the elm tree. Finally I see the bus come around the corner at the far end of the street.
"I see the bus," I tell my son and he stands up.
"Don't touch my rocks, Daddy," he says as I dust him off.
I assure him his rocks are safe and remind him of how he needs to behave that day in school. It's the second time that day he's heard the speech. He nods and acts like he's listening, but I'm not convinced that he really is. The bus pulls up, the doors pop open, and he climbs on. I walk back toward the door, anticipating getting back inside where it's air-conditioned. I look back over my shoulder and see my son's little face plastered to the bus window. We wave goodbye to each other as the bus drives off.
http://www.target.com/Daddy-Diaries-Kemp-Paul/dp/1606932330
http://www.amazon.com/Daddy-Diaries-Paul-Kemp/dp/1606932330/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232570418&sr=1-3
http://www.eloquentbooks.com/TheDaddyDiaries.html
