Now that's a Dad yell...

It was a little late on a Thursday night. I was going to be helping my friend, Jeff, the next day moving some stuff. We were on my cell phone talking about details of the move when I heard Julia call out from upstairs.

I was in the basement on the couch and I hear, "Daddy?" faintly.

Then it gets louder.

"Daddy?"

"Daddy!?"

"DADDY!"

I tell Jeff, "Hold on a second."

I pull the phone from my ear and put the earpiece down by my stomach.

I suddenly yell, "WHAT?!"

I normally wouldn't yell, but Julia has gotten into the bad habit of getting into bed and then suddenly calling out to us for odd requests.

Here are a list of her requests in recent weeks:

"I'm hot."

"I'm thirsty."

"My leg hurts."

"Where's my little dog?"

"I need a baby blanket."

"Moe (the cat) wants in my bed."

"I want to tell you something (usually a question about the next day)."

"I want to show you something (usually a small toy she's placed in a bag."

"I didn't give you a hug (not true)."

"I didn't give you a kiss (not true)."

"I want the hall light on."

"I want the laundry room light on."

"I need to find (some toy)."

and so on...

It wouldn't irritate me so much if it wasn't almost every night. You can barely leave and walk downstairs without a request from her highness. A lot of times, we're downstairs and she yells, but then doesn't wait for a response it goes like "Daddy! Daddy! Da(What!)ddy! Da(What!?)ddy!

I'm writing this because while some of the requests are cute, a lot of them are just wastes of time. My hope is that when she becomes a teenager, I can keep waking her up in the morning when she's trying to sleep with odd requests.

"Where's my toothbrush (in my hand).?"

"I'm hot."

"I'm thirsty."

"Julia! Ju(what?)lia!"

I suppose I shouldn't be so cruel. After all, I can recall many nights when I'd get out of bed and my parents would be mad at me for being out of bed. At one point, I would feign a stomach ache in order to get some Pepto Bismol from my Mom because I liked the taste and it allowed me to be up for a while. That trick didn't last too long, though.

I guess I could just end up as the corny Dad that makes the kids laugh, but mortifies the daughter with remarks like, "Hey kids, don't get all... wack on me. I can (makes air quotes) dig it."

Julia will be all, "Oh no he didn't!"

I can't wait! (rubs hands evily together)

Back to Jeff...

I get put the phone back to my ear and Jeff says, "Oh my God! I'm deaf! God!"

I say, "Oh, sorry."

"Now that's a Dad yell!" Jeff said laughing. "I haven't heard a yell like that since I was living at home!"

"Now let me switch to the ear that isn't ringing..."

Kindergarten memories or why can't I stay home and watch The Price is Right?

We recently had to decide whether or not to send Julia to kindergarten this year or wait another year. Julia is one those lucky individuals who has an August birthday, so she's on the fence about whether or not she can go after just turning 5-years-old or wait until she's 6.

It's a double-edged sword. If she goes at 5, she'll be one of the youngest kids in her class. If she goes at 6, she'll be one of the oldest kids in her class. Either way, she'll probably end up hating us for some reason relating to her age, like the fact that she can't celebrate her birthday during the school year, which will undoubtedly make it a lot harder to track down kids to know who to invite. It was a snap when I was in school. I had a March birthday, so it was easy to just bring all of the birthday invitations to school and invite kids that I wouldn't normally call friends to Bill and I's birthday party.

I used to think that having my birthday in March was pretty nice until I hit college. It was then that I realized that it sucked ass. Because Spring Break landed in the middle of my birthday week almost every year I was in college, I never got the obligatory "Let's go out and get Bob wasted because it's his birthday" night because my friends were home because the stupid dorm was closed that week.

Having a summer birthday will suck while she's in school. Then it will become cool when she's an adult because she'll get to plan a great summer party that's also her birthday part. See how it all works out in the end? I'll have to keep reminding her when she complains about her August birthday during grade school that one day she'll be throwing some kicking summer parties and she can thank me then.

It's not like she has the lame birthday on Christmas, which means she'll be getting Christmas/Birthday presents for the rest of her like. I always felt sorry for that poor bastard in my school with that situation.

But this post isn't about birthdays, it's about Kindergarten.

While I've been struggling about when to send Julia to Kindergarten, I thought back to when I went to Kindergarten.

Bill and I were 5 and 1/2 when we went to Kindergarten. I don't remember much about the build up to Kindergarten except for a few days when my Mom sat us down to practice writing our names.

The first day of Kindergarten was a little traumatic. I didn't realize that day that it would start a trend on never getting my Falls and Springs off again. I just figured that it was a short-lived experiment.

I remember the first day of school vividly only because of what I did wrong. I went into the wrong bathroom. It would start a trend where I would worry about bathrooms and their locations, but that's a different story.

In our grade school, the Kindergartens had bathrooms inside the classroom at the back of the class. I guess they figured that if you left the room and took a wrong turn, you'd never be heard from again. Maybe they were afraid we'd be hazed inside the bathroom and then we'd never want to go there again. Whatever the reason, we had them.

Unfortunately for me, they were not labeled as Boys and Girls. Rather, there was a picture of Charlie Brown on one and a picture or Lucy on the other one. Seeing as the Charlie Brown one was occupied, I had to go, so I went in the Lucy one.

I remember almost gagging because the last person that went there did not flush a number two silo. I still remember that it was pretty big. To make matters worse, after flushing the mess and then going myself, I had to answer the door with two girls outside telling me that I was in the wrong bathroom.

I'm sure that the teacher explained which bathroom was which, but giving the distracted nature of kids, it's a miracle that 90 percent of them hear your instructions let alone all of them. I should know. I student taught seventh and eighth graders. I don't know how many times, I would not only tell the kids at least two times what the assignment was AND wrote it on the board only to have them come in the next day and have several go, "Homework? I didn't hear about this!"

Another distressing thing about Kindergarten was the fact that I couldn't understand why I couldn't stay home and watch my shows, especially the Price is Right.

I loved watching the Price is Right when I was a kid. It had a format that was consistent, but the games the contestant played were also changed up to keep the show fresh. I loved them all: Plinko, the Rock Climber game, the big-ass dice game, the switch the prizes around game, the wheel segment and the Showcase Showdown.

Besides the Price is Right, there were other game shows like Password to bide the time over before the useless soap operas hit the screen at 11 am. I never could figure out why they ruined a great run by breaking into boring dialogue all day long.

So I'm sitting there thinking about my shows and wondering how long this was going to last. I literally thought this was going to be just a few days and then it was back to TV, but that was a wrong answer. We were stuck there... at least until lunch, when we went home. We were on half-day kindergarten schedules back then and I used to envy the kids that had it in the afternoon after we left. At least they got to see the good shows!

You may laugh at my feeling about kindergarten and it's show-blocking technique on me, but I mentioned this to a friend at work and he had the same realization.

"That's what I was thinking, too!" he exclaimed when I mentioned that I couldn't understand why I had to miss my shows.

Kids today don't have to worry about that as much. They have their DVRs, their DVDs and hours upon hours of cartoons and kid shows that run all morning into the evening on a handful of channels. Lucky bastards. Like any piece of technology that gives me a choice of more of what I want, I would have given my left nut, whoever small it was back then, to be able to have access to all the choices kids have today. Back then, if you didn't like it and it was the only thing on, you'd watch it anyway because it was better than nothing.

At least Julia won't have the transition period like I did. She already goes to a school-like day care in which she doesn't get to watch much television.

Her entire class (six kids) will graduate Pre School and go on to Kindergarten next year, but Julia will not. I hope she enjoys the extra year without the pressure of succeeding and moving from grade to grade. I think I would have enjoyed it when I was a kid. At least I would have gotten to see The Price is Right one more year.

I hope no one saw that...

So I was telling my Mom about the last story. The one in which my 4-year-old daughter snapped the cat's collar on her and took off running to show how far she can run. The one that ended with the rope snapping taught and my daughter getting pulled back. That one.

It was a little scary, but also a little funny after the fact.

When I told my Mom the story, her response was, "I hope no one saw that!"

I laughed, "Why?"

"Because someone might have gotten the wrong idea and called the police."

I started to get a little mad.

"Who would call the police on that?"

"You never know," she said.

I understood what she was getting at, but I was still mad at the paranoia.

"Hey, if anyone ever tried to take Julia away for something that stupid, I would make their lives a living hell."

It got me thinking about today. People are sooo protective of the children. Sometimes, we go a little far in some areas and not far enough in other areas.

Think about it, when I grew up, it was common practice that mothers would go into the store and leave their kids in the parking lot. I ought to know, I was left out in the parking lot in my Mom's van with my other siblings. Rather, we were victims that were left out in the hot sun with no air conditioning and no water, with only each other to cling to for comfort. Just kidding Mom!

Actually, if one was to come across the scene, it would look us kids were having a great time!

Sometimes, we would come up with activities to amuse ourselves. A popular activity was steering wheel rides. One of us would sit on the bottom part of the steering wheel and hold on with our hands. A sibling or two would spin the steering wheel back and forth to give a nice ride. It was great... I mean, it was a great way to misbehave, and now completely impossible what with the locking steering wheels that cars have today.

Another activity while left in a hot van while your Mom shopped was to honk the horn. Oh sure, it doesn't sound too fun, but it became a game by seeing how many times you could honk the horn before our Mom came out pissed off. You could play this with a defiant sibling honking or daring someone to honk. Invariably, my Mom would be checking out when someone at the checkout would comment, "Your kids have been honking the horn." She'd come to window and glare out at us. We'd stop right away. We pushed buttons, but we weren't stupid.

Nowadays, you're just asking to get reported for child neglect if you leave your kid out in the car for just a second.

I was witness to this taken to extremes. When I worked at Pizza Hut, our shift manager at the time called the police on a customer, whose kids were waiting in the car outside some 10 feet away while their Mom sat inside waiting for the pizza. It's a good thing he came too because what with people coming and going the Mom that far away, they might have been without aid for 30 whole seconds.

It's amazing how far we've come. We've come from kids being left out in cars, kids in no car seats and kids not even buckled in to every type of safety device holding our kids into something. Don't get me wrong. It's probably a good idea, but as the attention Britney Spears is getting for her hair-brained child seat techniques shows, people are just a tad sensitive.

I joked to my Mom that today, she'd be put in jail many times over for her actions in the past, but that's just the way it was back then. Leaving your kids in the car was convenience. Now it's abuse.

Same with the leash story. Back then, it was always funny because kids do silly things. Now it's your fault for not anticipating their silly actions.

How far? Far enough...

Our new house has a relatively small back yard with no fence. Because of this, we were initially concerned that our cat, Moe, would want to go outside, roam around and generally be a pain in the ass to get back in the house.

For a day or two, that's what happened. We'd let Moe outside, he'd venture way past our property into the dirt beds of the opposite side of the street where they're starting to build new homes behind us.

Fed up, I got a yellow nylon rope that we used the last time we moved to tie stuff down, tied one end to our deck, tied the other end to Moe's collar and put the collar on Moe.

Moe resisted at first, but then gradually accepted his fate to be tethered to our deck. It's worked out pretty well save for the one night when he walked around part of the deck's base three times and then could only make it up the deck stairs halfway before running out of rope. He was out there for hours before I remembered he was out there.

One thing Julia likes doing with the collar and rope is that she'll snap it on herself and crawl around on the deck like she's the cat. She thinks it's funny and it is generally.

The other day we had some friend over. Julia, like any other kid her age, was trying to get their attention, so she snapped on the collar and started acting like a cat. Our friends laughed at it, so Julia kept it up.

My friend, Jeff, asked Julia about the rope.

"How far can that rope go?" he asked innocently.

She said with an air of confidence, "Far enough."

I had just turned my head to check the grill when I heard Jeff exclaim, "No! Wait! Stop!"

I turn my head in time to see Julia running. She had run down the steps of the deck and made a beeline straight out from the deck into the yard. This while the rope was trailing behind her with the slack getting shorter and shorter.

She heard Jeff's cries to stop and had stopped with about 5 feet of rope behind her. Now all of us were yelling to come back, stop and don't run.

Those messages must have sounded like, "Don't stop. Keep running!" because Julia took off again, only to have the rope's slack to tighten. Thankfully, Julia wasn't going that fast as the rope snapped because while she did indeed get pull backwards by the rope's tightening. She pull herself off the ground with no harm.

We lightly scolded her while we took off the cat collar she had snapped on herself and told her not to do that again.

It's funny now, but it could have been a worse ending.

Keith Richards falls out of a tree. No seriously...

Keith Richards, the guitarist for the Rolling Stones, fell out of a tree while in Fiji. Seriously, he did. See the link if you don't believe me.

He was in Fiji on vacation and fell out of a coconut tree. Keith Richards suffered a mild concussion and spent several days in the hospital.

When I read this headline, I thought it was a joke, but April Fools Day had already passed.

So after reading this, I have to wonder, was it because he was stoned, drunk, both or just stupid? If you've ever seen Keith Richards, he looks like he crawled out of the grave and has for years. He's skinny and looks like he's consumed every vise under the sun, yet he decided to climb a coconut tree.

My other thought was that maybe he was too cheap to buy a coconut. After all, he's part of the same band that have more money than any human being could ever spend and they still want more. This is the same guy that was pissed off when he heard the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" song that sampled the Rolling Stones. Instead of letting the band settle, they screw them by forcing all profits to go to the Rolling Stones and even barred them from performing it live.

Or maybe it's fate telling Keith that it's time to come home. I think he's been tempting fate for years with his smoking, drinking and other vices. Who knows? It's still pretty fun.

And Keith if you're reading this, hope you're well, loved your first solo album and please don't sue me...

Saw the Wild Madascar Nemo movie...

So I was dragged to the new Disney movie, the Wild this past Easter Sunday.

I was lobbying to being let to go see Scary Movie 4, which looked a lot more interesting and way funnier, but I was given the evil eye, so that was nixed.

The first 20 minutes or so, I was so bored that I thought I was going to fall asleep.

The movie centers around a lion named Ryan, who wants nothing more than to roar like his Dad, Samson, who is voiced by Keifer Sutherland. So Ryan sneaks off while Samson and the other animals are sleeping and gets into this green carriers that Samson had warned Ryan were "trouble". The carriers are of course loaded onto a freighter to be sent to the wild. Ryan wants to get to the wild so that he can find his roar.

The first part of the movie is a bore because they jam it so full of dialogue and goings on that it feels forced. I got the feeling that the test audiences wanted them to get out of the zoo faster.

It's only when Eddie Izzard, the British comedian, gets more screentime as the Koala from London named Lionel that the movie starts to move along. That and some decent performances from William Shatner, Janeane Garofalo and Richard Kind help break the monotany.

What bothers me about the film is it's very similar plot points from other animated movies of recent.

When you consider...

The Wild features a father that doesn't want his son out in the wild...
Finding Nemo features a father that doesn't want his sone out in the wild (ocean)...

The Wild features a son that is resentful of his father being so protective...
Finding Nemo features a a son that is resentful of his father being so protective...

The Wild features a lion that is a main attraction on billboards and posters...
Madagascar features a lion that is a main attraction on billboards and posters...

The Wild features a trip across the ocean with a lion and other animals...
Madagascar features a trip across the ocean with a lion and other animals...

The Wild features a group of animals that believe the Lion is their savior...
Madagascar features a group of animals that believe the Koala Bear is their savior...

The Wild features a group of animals that sing and dance...
Madagascar features a group of animals that sing and dance...

The Wild has a buddy Giraffe...
Madagascar features a buddy Giraffe...

You can see where I'm going with this. It's an okay movie. Unless you really love Eddie Izzard, like my wife, or can't get out of seeing this with your kids, I'd suggest to leave well enough along and stay away.

I'm sorry, but the mass of squiggles on the screen doesn't match your signature...

With our new advances in technology, there are bound to be some snafus, some glitches, some bugs in the system.

I love using my bank's debit card for purchasing items from the store. It's convenient and fast.

One thing that I've notice about them. Every now and then, you run across one of the signature base type thingies that you run your card through and sign that doesn't quite work correctly.

One of the bigger office supply chains is a haven for these machines. I've run across them in different cities in which I'll slide my card and then when it's time to sign my name, the writing stylus goes crazy and a mass of squiggles ensues making any hope of signing my name neat and legible slim to none. The one downside to those machines is that it's hard enough to sign my name neat when using a stylus, but when it goes haywire, even more so.

Usually when I run across those messed up signature 'consoles' (?), the cashier doesn't ask for my card to compare the signature because what would be the point, but every now and then one of them does.

"May I see your card?"

I stare down at the mass of squiggles, shrug and hand the cashier my card. The cashier will then analyze my card signature and the signature on the console. This always struck me as unusual anyway because we're at the mercy of hourly employees who've been standing around all day to suddenly become handwriting experts to stop would-be thieves who may be using a stolen card that's not theirs. But in this case, the person was a big enough expert to be able to tell what I was going for when signing. Like a subject studying an inkblot, she saw through the mass of squiggles and recognized my signature. Nice one...