HIP HOP IS RUINING OUR KIDS

     I have heard a lot of talk lately that Hip Hop will lead to the ruin of our kids.  Wait a minute.  Before Hip Hop started driving this generation to ruin, Grunge was driving the generation before this one to ruin.  Before that, it was that 80’s music that had no name, aim, purpose or use whatsoever.  Then it was Punk Rock and New Wave music.  Before that, Disco was thought to be the ultimate evil of a generation.  And before that was what many believe to be the beginning of the ruination of a generation, Rock and Roll.  It goes back even further than that, though.  

 

     Have you ever seen those old clips of Frank Sinatra singing or Bing Crosby crooning and teenage girls screaming and falling down like dominoes?   I am sure that the parents of that generation would have shipped those girls off to a convent in no time had they seen the effect that Frank and Bing had on their daughters.  Recently I realized the truth.  Sometimes the truth stings a little.  Sometimes the truth leaves a mark.

     Music is not ruining my kids.  I am ruining my kids all by myself.  I didn’t ruin my kids on purpose, though.  I meant well enough.  My parents were very evil you see.  I had it very tough when I was growing up.  When I was growing up I had to do chores.  I hated chores and I told my parents that, but they made me do them anyway.  I would have much rather been vandalizing the neighborhood with all of the other kids.  But no, I had to do chores before I could get involved in any good wholesome vandalizing.  When I was a kid I had to eat whatever my evil mother cooked.  And get this, I had to eat it all, whether I liked it or not.  If I refused to eat it all, I had to go to my room, the one I shared with a little brother and without a TV or a phone or surround sound stereo.  And when I was older I had to help make the food!  Are you kidding me?  These tyrannical parents of mine even made me take out the trash after dinner.  I will never forgive them for making me feed the dog every day.  I begged them relentlessly for that dog and only got it because I promised and swore I would feed it every day.  The nerve they had for actually making me do what I had said I would do.  They did not confront my teachers when I brought home bad grades; they confronted me.  Since I seemed to bring home mostly bad grades, there were a lot of confrontations and they never let me win one.  Not a single one.  I could only stay home when I was really sick.  I had to resort to creating fake vomit with milk and pretzels (I should have applied for a patent for that formula - pure genius) to get a day off of school.  My parents were brutal.  I did not see my friends’ parents treating them like my parents treated me.  When I had self-esteem issues because I was fat, they did not even consider sending me to therapy.  They told me to stop eating so much and get off of my ass and do something. 

     Discipline was not dealt out with ten minutes in Time Out.  It was dealt out with ten seconds of Mixed Martial Arts. When I was old enough to drive, I was forced to drive the old family station wagon.  They got the new car.  I have no idea who my parents thought they were.  They told me that going to college was a privilege, not a right, and that I would have to find a way to pay for that myself.  I was raised in a dictatorship; somehow I survived it all, though.  I swore that I would never subject my own kids to such child abuse and I never have, until recently, when I saw the damage that I had inflicted on my poor helpless children.

     I asked my oldest daughter to vacuum the living room.  “Sissy, vacuum the living room, please,” I said.

     She refused, so I went old school and put on a ten second display of old school Mixed Martial Arts.  I even showed her a few of the moves from the olden days on the old vacuum cleaner.

     “Stop it!  One of my friends might see you doing that.” she said, “I’ll do it!”

     I set the vacuum in the middle of the floor and said, “You will need this.”

     “That is a vacuum right?” she said.

     “Yes it is.  You are off to a great start.  Now turn it on.”  I watched in awe as she inspected the strange machine looking for a button to push.

     “How do you turn it on?”

     “You press that button right there with your foot,” I said. 

     Sissy pressed the button and nothing happened. 

     “It won’t turn on,” she said.

     “Why do you think it won’t turn on?” I asked.

     “Do I have to plug it in to the wall?

     “Yes you do.”

     She was beaming with pride when she plugged it in and it turned on.  She ran over to grab it as if it would fly away or something.  

     “Now what?” she said.

     “Now you move it around the floor and it sucks up all of the food that you and your sister have dropped all over the place.”

     “This is cool!  How long do I have to do this for?”

     “Until you have done the whole floor.”

     I turned around to walk out of the room and the vacuum stopped.

     “What’s the matter?” I asked.

     “I’m done.”

     “You’re done?”

     “Yep.”

     “Did you do under the furniture?”

     She started laughing and said, “You are so silly! The vacuum won’t fit under the furniture.”

Sissy stopped laughing when I said, “Well then, it looks like you will have to move it.”

     “Is this one of your tricks? There can’t be any food under the furniture. How would it get there?”

     “You will be amazed,” I said as I flipped the ottoman on its side.  She started making sounds like one of the cats throwing up a hairball.  Doritos, cat hair, Lucky Charms, a barrette, two non-matching socks, lip gloss, a chewed piece of gum, something I could not recognize, an empty toilet paper roll, another thing I could not recognize, a quarter, and, ironically enough, a petrified hairball.

“Have at it Sissy.” I said and walked into the bedroom.  

     My wife was in the bedroom and she said to me, “What is that noise?”

“That is Sissy vacuuming the living room,” I said.  My wife started to cry. 

      I asked her, “What’s wrong?” 

     “She is growing up so fast!”  Sissy was seventeen at the time.

     At some point I started treating my children as if we were friends.  Looking back, what I am guilty of was child abuse.  Not my parents.  Me.   My kids have friends.  They have a lot of them.  They change friends a lot too.  They change them more often then I change my underwear. I tried to become one of those friends.  Then I realized that by being their friend I left them without a parent.  When I realized that, I stopped being their friend.  And you know what?  They never noticed.  It seems while I was being their friend they did not see it that way.  They still saw me as their Dad, no matter how hard I tried to be their friend.  I thought that by being their friend it would make it simpler for me to be a Dad.  The truth is it made parenting much more difficult.  I spent all of my time trying to make them happy, trying to give them everything that they wanted, and trying to keep up with all of the other Dads that were blindly doing the same thing.  

     I am no longer their friend.  I am a Dad and while I have found that it is very simple to be a Dad, there is nothing easy about it.  I don’t try to make them happy; they are never happy anyway.  My job is to give them what they need, not what they want.  My job is to make sure that they have food to eat, whether they like it or not.  My job is to tell them when they are wrong and to tell them when they are right.  I do not build their self-esteem; they build their self-esteem.  That is why it is called self-esteem and not Dad esteem.  My job is not to live with them in peace and harmony.  My job is to teach them how to live in peace and harmony, period.  My job is to be a Dad.  If I am their friend then I am not their Dad.  They only have one Dad.  If you were to ask my kids, they would tell you that one Dad is all they need.  I had no idea how to be a Dad until my kids pointed me in the right direction.  For that I am eternally grateful.  

     That is all.

 After Word-

     Sissy did very well after she learned how to vacuum that day.  She went on to get her Master’s Degree in Social Work.  Sissy left our house one morning at 10 am sharp, bound to start her new career in Miami, 1,113 miles away from our living room.  She did not take the vacuum with her.  I prayed with all my heart that morning that I was able to give her what she will need.  Because I know that prayer works.  I also know, with all my heart, that she will indeed have what she needs.  I am ridiculously proud of what she has been able to do with her life so far, despite my many shortcomings as a Dad.  Dads don’t cry.  Their eyes leak though.  But only when no one can see. 

     And no one can see me now.

PET NAMES

     I bought a beautiful new plant one day.  I was walking outside to plant the beautiful new plant just as my daughter was walking down the driveway.  “What are you doing out there Sugar?” I asked. 

     “Looking for cute boys,” she said. 

     “See any?”

     “Nope.”

     “Well, maybe you will find some cute boys later today.  It is still pretty early for cute boys.  All boys usually sleep until noon.  Cute boys sleep even later than that.”

     “Good point Daddyboy.  What are you doing?”

     “I am going to plant this beautiful new plant.” 

     “Where?” 

     “Next to that other beautiful plant over there.” 

     “You can’t.”

     “I can't?”

     “Nope.”

     “Why not? I don’t see the cops anywhere and Mommygirl is sleeping.” 

     “Because Cuddles is buried there.”  

Cuddles the cat died of old age.  My wife and my kids were devastated.   “Ok, I will plant this beautiful plant under the beautiful tree then,” I said.

     “You can’t,” she said.

     “I can’t?” 

     “Nope, you can’t.  The roots are too big and you will start cussing and the neighbors will call the police again.”

     “How do you remember that?”

     “Because you were digging the hole to bury Duckie when that happened.”  Duckie was an orphaned duckling that my youngest took in.  I have a suspicion though that she kidnapped the duckling from a wimpy mother duck.  Women will resort to things like that to satisfy their womanly urges to mother.  Duckie died from either choking on a piece of corn that the internet said never to feed a duckling or being rolled on by my oldest daughter during our very short-lived “naptime with a duckling.”

     “Oh yea, I forgot about that.  How about next to the gate then?” I said.

”Nope. That is where we buried Fluffy,” she said.  Fluffy was a hamster.  Fluffy was a tough one.  Fluffy actually experienced life after death.  Fluffy died the night before my daughter was supposed to take him to school to show her class.  The next morning we almost forgot Fluffy.  I ran back into the house to grab Fluffy and put him in his hamster carrying case so he would not be late for school.  I did notice that he was remarkably easy to catch.  I did not notice that he was dead.  My daughter’s daycare sitter did though, thank God.  She played it off as only daycare moms can and sent her to school without Dead Fluffy and called me to ask if she should tell my daughter Fluffy was now called Dead Fluffy or if I should break the news to her.  I was thrilled to be called out of an executive management meeting to hear the news.  Being in an executive management state of mind, I made an executive management decision.  I told the daycare mom that I would drop off a replacement hamster and all would be well.  Executive management tends to focus more on the big picture and less on the details.  That explains exactly why I dropped off a live brown hamster to replace a dead white hamster.  Eventually, that was explained away using the analogy of Daddyboy’s hair changing from brown to gray.  Live Fluffy was buried in our yard.  Dead Fluffy is actually buried in an unmarked grave somewhere on North Point Road between day care and where I work.  

     “Ok I will plant the beautiful plant at the corner of the house then.  Is that carcass free?" I said.

     “Nope. That is where Maddie is buried. Maddie ate the poisonous plant in the back yard.  You remember Daddyboy?” She said.

     “Oh yea, he was an inside cat right?” 

     “Yea.”

     “Why did we let him outside?”

     “He was staring at the window and we thought he was sad.”

     “That’s right.  Ok, how about the other corner of the house then?”

     “Nope, that is where we buried Willie.”

     “The one that was hit by the car?”

     “Yep.”

     “He was an inside cat too right?”

     “Yep.” 

     “How did he get outside?”

     “He looked sad too.”

     “You know, it might be a good idea to keep the inside cats inside the house from now on.”

     “Good point Daddyboy.”

     Our newest edition of an indoor cat, Satan, was staring at me, looking sad in the kitchen window. I looked around the yard and said, “I guess I could put the beautiful plant in a pot and then put the pot in the yard.”

     “Nope,” My daughter said, “It would clash with the tires and all of the other junk that’s already in our yard.” 

     “Good point Sugar,” I said.  I sat down on the porch steps, still holding on to my beautiful new plant and wondering if I should plant it in the trash can since tomorrow was trash day and just head on inside to make a grilled cheese sandwich.  

     “Daddyboy?” my daughter said, “How deep to you have to dig to plant the beautiful plant?”  

     “Not deep,” I said.

     “As deep as we buried everyone?”

     “Not even close to that deep,” I said.

     Then she did it.  The blind side.  She said one of those amazing things that all kids say to their parents at some point that make our toil and struggle so very worth the effort.

     “Well, the plant is beautiful.  And if we don’t have to dig a deep hole I think we should plant one on top of where we buried everyone.  Because they were beautiful too.  And I think about them a lot.  And I miss them a lot too.   Sometimes I even dream about them and they are good dreams. And in my dreams they are still alive.  The beautiful plant would be kind of like a tombstone.  Do you think that would work?”   

     She has such a beautiful mind.  She gets that from her mother.  A bug must have flown into my eye or something because my eyes started to leak a tiny bit.  

     “Yea Sugar.  That will work.  Let’s do it,” I said.  

     So we planted the beautiful plant on top of one of the rotting carcasses of a beautiful and beloved former pet.  And as we did that, we talked about them all.  And we laughed.  I told her the story of Dead Fluffy and Live Fluffy.  She said she had always had suspicions.  I told her how Dickie died and she got mad at her sister.  We talked about the inside cats and I reminded Sugar that Mommy told Sissy and her to never let the cats outside and how important that was.  And she said she knows why now.  And then she flipped the subject on me.  She is crafty like that.  She gets that from her mother too.  

     “How come you never had a pet Daddyboy?” she asked me.

     “I did.”  I told her.

     “Why don’t you like pets then?"

     “I only like animals I can eat.” I said, trying to move away from this subject.  She laughed and then I told her the truth.  

     I said, “Sugar, I do like pets.  I love them.  I don’t have one because every one I have ever had has broken my heart.  When they died, it hurt me.  And they always die. They just don’t live long enough. You know what I mean Sugar?”  

She didn’t say anything for a second.  I thought I may have taken this conversation a little too deep for her since it was already way too deep for me.  

     She said, “I know what you mean Daddyboy.”  And then she went off.  She told me she didn’t want pets anymore either.  Her life was complicated enough already without having to worry about her pets dying all the time.  She said she wished she could find a pet that would not die at all or at least live as long as she did.  She went on for a little while and I let her vent.  She stopped for a second and then said, “Daddyboy, if I can find a pet that lives a long time can I get one?”  

     “Sure thing Sugar,” I said.  

     We went back inside.  She went to her room and I went to sit down on the couch for the rest of the afternoon, evening and as much of the next day as possible.  Before I could sit down though, she came out of her room. 

     “A tortoise,” she said, “A tortoise lives one hundred and fifty years.”  

     I said, “It might be hard to find a tortoise around here Sugar.”  

     “Good point Daddyboy,” she said, and she retreated back into her room.  Just as I steadied myself, victoriously above my spot on the couch, she reappeared from her room, looked at me, smiled, and said, “PetSmart.”

Sugar and Callie

     “What?” I said.

     “PetSmart has tortoises.  They have two in stock right now.  I’ll get the keys.  We have to get more beautiful new plants for the others too.”  

     I thought, who stocks tortoises?  Or is it torti?  Is the demand really that high?  Is it legal to stock a tortoise?  I had no idea how much a tortoise might cost, so I took my wife’s wallet.  I am glad I did too because they are not cheap.  So now, we have a tortoise.  The tortoise is named Callie.  The tortoise even has its own Facebook page- Callie TheTurtle.  It does not post often.  It is a tortoise after all.  But it does post.  I like the turtle.  I tell everyone I like it because I like turtle soup.  The real truth is, I like it because it will never break her heart.  

     That is all.