What does "Please" mean?

So Calvin asked me this question:

What does Please mean?

Its a polite way of asking someone for something.

Cause really? What the hell does "Please" mean?

But then I had to put my thinking cap on because he gave me that insolent little look the proves he knows I was giving him a non answer.

The kind of answer that ranks right up there with "Cause I said so."

Well Calvin . . .

I breathed.

To Please some one means to make them happy.

So when you say Please, you are really saying, "Would you do this thing for me in order to make me happy?".

So how come its magic?

Cause I said so.

And this developed into a long conversation over what my role is as a parent. Apparently, Calvin is of the view that my job as a parent is to make him happy all the time cost be damned.

And I had the fortuneate task of informing him that it is my job to make sure that he has food and a place to live.

The gap between our understanding of my role was far too wide for him to comprehend.

So then is it mommy's job to make me happy?

No sweetie. it is mommy's job to make sure you have food, and a place to live, and that that place is clean.

Is mommy's job harder?

Yes.

Is it because she loves me more?

Yes.

I love the fact that Calvin keeps a running tab on all the nice things Joann does for him, and a secondary list of all the things that I force him to do against his will.

When is mommy coming home?

Not for a few more hours.

That's too long. I want mommy.

Why?

Cause she loves me more.

Does she take you swimming?

She would if she were home more.

Can't argue with that.

And here's the thing: Our relationship has become adversarial. I am the dragon. He is the princess. And Joann is the knight in shining armor. Except in this little teleplay the princess has a homemade Katana and has no fear of swacking at the dragon until the knight arrives.

And to push the metaphor even further, let us say that the dragon is also an artist and falling head first into a very complicated project and simply doesn't have the patience he normally would, to devote his attention to the needs of the princess.

And this makes the princess very angry.

And since the princess has spent the entire summer locked in the tower with nothing but video games and swimming pools, its become quite the shock for the little princess to suddenly be thrust into six hours of school each day.

The princess is not happy with the dragon.

The knight's not much help either.

And when the knight and the dragon talk all they can talk about is how much easier it will be when the princess's older brother has gone off to college and the princess has finally accepted that there is no alternative to school.

In the mean time, the dragon's got major rehearsing and recording schedules to manage. His money job is dependent on the Holiday Season, so he has to gear up for that, and the lawn is yet again in desperate need of mowing.

Not to mention that both the knight and the dragon have to lose another 11 pounds.

Dieting makes even fantasy characters a wee bit more cranky than usual.

So we are all on edge.

Except of course the princess's older brother, who at 2:00pm, is still in bed.

Does the dragon want to stay in bed till 2:00pm?

Yes, please.

It is a small world after all is said and done.

Yeah. That never would have made a good lyric, but contract a few words, discard the ending, and you've got the title of one of the most maligned verse/chorus songs of all time.

I was on that ride on Wednesday. Much to the immediate displeasure of Calvin, who whined and complained all through the line and then closed his eyes and covered his ears as we made that joyously air-conditioned boat ride through pure gleeish schmaltz.

Disneyland is no place for children.

At least my children.

I've had an easier time getting him to eat broccoli then I did making have fun at Disneyland.

Next vacation will be an asparagus festival.

But as we rounded the second or third bend, I stopped being frustrated and turned my thought towards the music. At first I found it fascinating that each section was almost seamlessly integrated between the sections. It occurred to me that each section had a different recording of the same song, in the same key, at the same tempo and yet they were all vastly different stylistically and as you passed from village to mountainside, each recording flowed into the next.

How much equipment was needed in the sixties to make that possible? Remember this was an era where the Beatle could record an entire album with just four tracks.

And then I started to listen to the craft of the song. How perfectly clever they were. Not a lyrical line missed or extended. The melody flowed perfectly. How the second part of the verse makes a perfect little dance around the circle of fifths. How the key was selected at exactly the right place for the limited range of a children's choir.

(My biggest pet peeve of children's theatre is how badly keyed it is for children's voices. Twelve year olds should not be doing Sondheim, I don't care how fucking cute "Into the Woods" is.)

I was mesmerized. Fascinated by the craft. I did a quick little google search to see who had written the song and I came across something surprising.

"Its a Small World." was written by the Sherman Brothers. One of the most prolific songwriting teams in movie and television history. Their father Al Sherman was a writer in the Tin Pan Alley days and encouraged them to write.

I won't bore you with their biography. Besides, I was looking at wikipedia and some of it has to be wrong, but it was extensive. And it really got me to thinking about how the day of the pure song writer is over. How the craft slips ever further from substance into style.

Sure we can't replicate those perfect rhymes any longer. They've become cliches. But Rockstars did something to the craft that is irrevocable. They discovered that money is in copyright. And if they didn't write their own songs, they were loosing out.

Teenage angst pays off well.

So sang Kurt Cobain.

Good line. Lame lyric.

And I've said it before. I'd much rather be a master of the craft than a Rockstar.

"Here Lady Gaga, record this, trust me, they'll love it"

I had a conversation once with another songwriter who was talking about vetting offers from a recording company.

"I couldn't take anything less than a million dollars. Anything else wouldn't be enough to risk my job."

To which her boyfriend leaned over and said,

"You're talking to Josh. He would sell a song for a turkey sandwich."

And he's right.

Let me illustrate:

Recently an old boyfriend of my wife's has made it into the tabloids. I won't bother you with his name but lets just say he's a fifty one year old actor who has had a few big successes, and pops up here and there.

Well this fifty one year old actor has just gotten married to a sixteen year old girl.

A sixteen year old girl with a website showcasing her talents as a singer. A pop singer with breast implants and enough auto-tune to correct scoliosis.

And my first thought wasn't "How Obscene!"

My first though was "Yeah, she's gonna need a real songwriter, and I wonder if my wife still has his email somewhere."

Cause I'm a pig. And a bit of a whore.

And I could really use a turkey sandwich right now.

And it turns out that this fifty one year old ex-boyfriend of my wife, has his own production company.

I'm starting to feel a little momentum.

I know a girl, who knows a guy, who married a girl, who will never be a pop star, but obviously has some money, and could open the kind of doors that lead to real pop stars. The kind of pop stars that have no problem paying for a song with a turkey sandwich.

Notice how I didn't wake my wife up at this point to show her the news.

I wanted to get a little deeper into the story.

On further review of the You Tube videos I recognized a canned drum beat from GarageBand.

Wait, I said. This wasn't a money production. This was someone trying to break out of the porn industry with a three year old MacBook Pro, and a 16 year old girl.

And then I raced to the website of the production company.

Maybe there's some money there.

It's mission statement: "To let artists dream . . . "

Ouch.

And it got worse.

Current projects included (I shit you not) a series of children's books based on the adventures of his chihuahua.

So there's no real opportunity. Even when the songwriter knows a girl, who knows a guy, who has probably reached the tail end of his fame with a slapdash marriage to a sixteen year old girl at a Vegas hot spot.

I wish them love and luck all the same.

And as I clicked out of all the different websites and was about to clean my browser, I saw a little picture of Ringo Starr and the bottom of one of the articles.

A connection to Ringo Starr singing one of his first hits after the break up of the Beatles.

"You're 16."

If you're unfamiliar with the tune, do as I did, look it up on you Tube. It contains the lyric "You're Sixteen, You're Beautiful, and You're Mine."

And there's three points I'd like to make about the song "You're 16."

First, it was a hit by several singers going back to the sixties. Which kind of solidifies the fascination that famous grown men have for girls at that age. (I find them mostly vapid, but I'm not famous)

Second, Ringo Starr's recording of the song is actually the only hit song in recorded history to feature a Kazoo solo.

And Lastly,

you guessed it,

It was written by the Sherman Brothers.

Man in Transition

I stare at the face in the mirror. The one everyone else sees, but I can only glance at. The skin once smooth now creased with a million smiles and a thousand furrowed brows. There is very little boy left in that face. The boy exists now only in the gleam of the eyes and the tilt of the head.

This man is still as angry as the boy. Still as confused. Still burning with the fury he felt ten twenty years ago. Still as insulted by cruelty and injustice. Still yearning for peace. Still embarrassed by his clumsiness, his awkwardness, his narcissism, his laziness, his procrastination, his unmet potential.

The man dreams the same dreams as the boy.

He still fears the same fears.

He still doesn't like dogs.

But there are dogs he likes.

He wonders as he stares at this face if the face is the only thing that separates the man from the boy.

Is the only difference between that face and this face time?

Hmm?

His wife says the man is much sexier than the boy.

He tells her to prove it.

But she's tired.

The girl is a woman. And a woman needs rest.

But the man is better than the boy. He's not as fast. He's not as strong. But he's quicker with a joke. He's better with a song or with a tale. He can look a girl in the eyes and tell her what's on his mind. And he knows exactly when that's not appropriate.

He doesn't panic as much as the boy.

He's been places and done things. What once was daunting, is now common place. What once was impossible is now muscle memory.

And the man knows who he is. What he has become. If given a choice, the man knows who the boy would want to grow up to be.

Because he grew up to be the man.

Yet I stare at my face in the mirror with shock and horror.

Rather than with pleasure and grace.

Because the boy wasn't ready to be the man.

And then I pick up my guitar and realize I can't even play like the boy used to play. And when I sing I can't sing like the boy used to sing. And when I joke I am taken seriously. And when I speak people become solemn.

But then I look across the room.

I see that the baby is no longer a baby.

The baby is now a boy.

And the boy will never become a man.

If he has a boy for a father.

So I pick up my guitar again and realize I can still play like the boy. But better. And when I sing, even if I don't have as many notes, each note has depth. And when I joke, people laugh, unless they're still boys and girls and then they probably didn't get the reference in the first place and it makes more sense to hang out with people who do. And when I speak, people become solemn, not because of my age, but because the man exudes a power that the boy could only dream of.

And I still have the boy's dreams.

Which keep me alive.

And I still have the boy's fears.

Which give me ambition.

And I still have the boy's eyes.

Which can send a message of love across a crowded room.

As I have been writing. The baby became a boy. The boy became a man.

And the girl became a woman becoming tired.

May She Forever Let Me Know

I'm a damn good teacher.

Its why I have the job that I have. I might not be the best employee in the world. I might be a little too open about the mistakes I make, too honest about how I feel about things, but I can command a room, get people to listen to me, and have them walk away feeling as if their time was well spent. I can make a paradigm shift seem like a walk in the park, and filter details on a need to know basis.

Its really the only reason my boss likes having me around.

Wasn't something I was born with. But like cooking, its something that I wanted to do and I spared no lack of energy learning how to do it.

For as the saying goes:

Teaching like cooking like making love should be approached with reckless abandon.

Or something like that.

Ask Julia.

So, teaching a class today and my phone buzzed.

I didn't check who it was, I just casually switched the phone off so that it wouldn't buzz again and continued delivering my speech.

Usually when my phone buzzes, its my wife sending me something sweet/funny/dirty/cryptic. Those can wait for a better time.

And there's no better time than when the computers fail and we have to take a ten minute break in order to sort out the glitches.

Which happens all day.

So the computer crashes (damn you PC and your cheap fucked up alternatives to an actual working system), and I check my phone.

Instead of being from my wife, there's a string of texts from my sound engineer wanting to set a date for working on the new album.

OMG. I'm actually gonna start working on music again and the thought fills me with joy. For it has been too long since I've not only worked on the album, but too long since I actually wrote about the musical portion of my life. Its as if the context of my life has strayed from dreams and become mired in reality.

And reality is no place to live.

I'm so excited I reply right away. How about next Tuesday? Five O'clock? The answer is swift, as if he knew Microsoft was going to crash at that exact moment. See you then. And my posture takes on a whole new dimension of confidence.

For I am not a working stiff. I am pre-Rock Star and its time to show everyone in the room that this little training is far beneath my scope of life, yet I am happy to do it as long as it pays the bills. You're not getting the beaten down version of me, you're getting the pomp of a man who has strength and ambition, you're getting a performance of a man in his prime.

The training goes well. I hope they learned. I hope they trust I know what I'm doing. I dream that they could feel my air of confidence and that that air has wafted into their souls and filled them with peace. For I have given them the real me. The me who lives in many worlds.

But the me who lives in many worlds is a farce.

Its scientifically proven that there in no such thing as multitasking. What we think of when we think of multitasking is actually a physically and emotional draining skill of re-prioritisation.

You can't do two things at once.

You can't be two people at once.

You can however switch between the two quickly.

But you blow twice as much energy doing so.

So you can't do it for long.

And eventually, the two things become weak shadows of themselves and nothing is done well.

Artists know this. Which is why in every other aspect of their lives they are complete assholes. You can't be a good Husband/Father/Employee/Artist. You can only be a good artist and shitty at the rest.

I've defied this logic for as long as I can.

but my wife knows better.

Four months ago I showed her the recording schedule I had mapped out for my the new album. She immediately noticed the lines throughout April, May, and June for recording and mixing.

No, she said.

What? I replied.

Those are the months we need to help Taylor find a college, the months where we need to get him settled for graduation. There are parties to plan, weddings to go to, finances to adjust, cleaning to do, a five year old to keep busy.

No, she said.

Why? I asked.



Because I need you.



And so I stalled everything else.

I put my engineer/producer on hold.

I went from writing once a week to every other week.

I etched vacation into every work crevice I could find.

She knows I can't be everywhere. Everyone. And she knows I would have tried. But she didn't want me to try. She wanted me to be there for her, for the family, for this one moment in time when we can relish our triumph of delivering Taylor into the unknown world with the best possible foot in the door.

And I was okay with that. Because when it becomes my time, I know that she will watch my little artistic ship sail and eagerly await my return.

But when I tell her that I will be meeting with my engineer this Tuesday, she looks at me funny.

Damn,

she says.

What?

I ask.

Katie was going to come over for dinner that night.

Oh. I say. No problem, you'll just have to make dinner.

Hmm. She says. Maybe she can come over another night.



Because when it really comes down to it, my boss needs me to teach.

And my wife needs me to cook.

Unless she needs me for something else.

And hopefully,

she will forever let me know.

That's Me in the Corner

Don't be such a snot bubble.

Dad, there's no such thing.

Of course there is. In fact, I majored in snot bubbles in college.

No . . . You didn't.

And he was right of course. I never majored in snot bubbles. What little college I did finish was devoted solely to the theater. Instead of Speech, I took Voice. Instead of PE, I took fencing and dance. Psychology was devoted to the scansion of plays, history was Henry V, mathematics was lighting design and four part harmony. Women studies remained the same, but Ophelia was my model and Katherine my muse. I walked away with a certificate of completion, a strong diaphragm, and an identity crisis.

Ten years later, having a pint with an old friend (Well, porter for me, a big tasty glass of water for Jon), I was asked if I ever had any desire to return to the stage.

Sometimes, maybe, not really.

Not sure if I would let a juicy part slip through my fingers, though. Maybe Hamlet or Iago. The Emcee in Cabaret, or Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar. I would jump at the chance to see my own failed musical staged, and I would be hard pressed to say no to an invitation to participate in just about anything involving those long lost friends whose blood sweat and tears have mingled with my own. But the pursuit of stage is a singularly devoted one, and my life is too precariously balanced to invite that level of obsession.

After we finished our meal (pizza for me, salmon salad for Jon) we drove eleven blocks to a see a preview of a new play opening that weekend. The space was special to Jon in that he is a resident artist of the theatre group, and his fiance designed the set.

The set was pretty stunning. A center stair case spiraling into a stratospheric oak tree. Intricate levels of staging areas, lots of eye candy, compact enough to be intimate, grand enough to create distance. It's a shame that the play wasn't rewritten to make better use of it.

The play, a two actor mishmash of themes. Love, sex, poetry. Life, death, birth, sickness, rebirth, crazy talk, brief violence and mild nudity. Or is it mild violence and brief nudity? Poetry as dialogue, stage direction as dialogue, list upon list upon list as dialogue.

The story, a tale of boy meets girl, girl gets stabbed by an environmentalist, girl gets sick, girl turns into tree.

And herein lays the problem.

We have all read "The Giving Tree."

It is rooted in our soul.

Chuckle, chuckle.

However, as any agronomist will tell you, a tree isn't exactly the nurturing mother earth life giving creature its made out to be in transcendental poetry.

A tree,

is in fact,

a weed.

That's right. A big weed.

A water hoarding, nutrient zapping, soul sucking weed.

And had the writer taken a botany class, and possibly been blessed with a sense of humor, this play would have had a good guy, a bad guy, and a truly original metaphor that might have propelled it into one of those great nights of theatre.

Alas.

But I'm not a theatre critic. Nor should this influence anyone. And I haven't really gotten to the meat of this weeks tale.

In order to stay on track, we have to introduce a new character.

The female lead of the play.

And there is something not quite right about her.

She is pretty. But not second look pretty.

She is thin. But not athletic, or grotesque thin. The kind of thin a girl in her thirties gets when she works all day and all night, and doesn't see the sun light and doesn't eat enough food.

She smiles a hard smile, she moves with the elegance of a former dancer, and her eyes betray a frightful lack of confidence that I've seen so many times before in the nightmarish hallways of audition purgatory. There is no Bachelors from Brown or MFA from A.C.T., that could ever erase the wall she has built to keep the cruel real world at arms length.

It was her first line that gave her away.

After a painful emotional roller coaster monologue from the male actor, she has this one line:

"Shut up."

That's it.

"Shut up."

There are a million ways a wife can tell a husband to shut up, and even after a decade with my wife I am still learning new ones. There are tones and nuances of voice that speak volumes. Anywhere from "Shut up and kiss me." to "If you don't shut the fuck up right now I am going to stick this fork in your eye."

But the "Shut up" delivered by the female lead actor, wasn't any of those. And every subsequent line of dialogue and awkward physical seduction proved that this poor lady has never made the real human connection needed to deliver the line with the gravitas required.

For the actor's life is no life at all.

A fairy tale cocoon of comedy and tragedy.

Men have it much easier. For our identity is facade.

Woman is labyrinth.

Only for our female lead and the others who have trudged this trail of hopelessness, the labyrinth goes nowhere, for it has never been anywhere.

In a few years she'll start teaching. She'll attach herself to a community theater. She play as many of the roles as she can as she ages from Dorothy to the Wicked Witch.

She may have children, but most likely cats. She'll travel the world. She'll have friends. She'll know what good wine tastes like, but she'll always come home to the half filled bottle of the cheap stuff.

She'll never regret her decision to devote her life to the stage. But she'll never know how to tell a man to shut up the way my wife can. And her performances will forever lack the depth of the true human experience.

I chose differently.

Mostly cause I was hungry.

Which leads me to the climax of my story.

In a few short months, Taylor will begin making those kind of choices. Each path along the way is filled with broken hearts, broken dreams, devotion, obsession, tragedy, comedy, and a whole lotta farce. I don't understand him the way I do most people. I don't know how to empathize with him the way I can with someone I just met. Think of how eerie it is to be the central male figure in a boy's life for over a decade, and not have the faintest idea about what makes him tick.

So I don't know which kinds of choices he'll make or how to guide him through that process.

I tease him. But I have to stop because his facade is wearing thin.

Who knows which melting pot he'll find himself in.

Right now, he wants to be a Forensic Scientist. Which means his classes will take him through a myriad of chemistry, physics, biology. I can offer no support other than to eat well and get some rest. Go for a walk. Turn the headphones down a little bit.

Calvin is easy. He wants to be a ninja/Jedi/pirate/wizard.

If a certificate of completion from a now defunct acting program taught me anything at all, it was how to grow up to become a ninja/Jedi/pirate/wizard.

But Taylor is going to be needing a graphing calculator. He's going to be reading books that have words I don't even know and couldn't put into a sentence. His whole world is flying beyond my intellectual grasp.

If I was the father of our female lead when she was eighteen, I would at least have some sense as to where her life was taking her, we could at least have casual conversations, I could be a help, I could be a support, I could offer my advice when needed, and keep my mouth shut when not, and I might even know the difference. But then again, maybe not.

He will be dissecting things.

Somewhere along the line, he could be extrapolating cause of death scenarios from the mucus membranes recently deceased cadavers. And he might be excellent at it.

He could enter a world where people are the masters of mucus membranes and what effect they have in life or death situations, where I would just have to stand quietly in a corner with my thumb up my ass, waiting for lunch time to come around.

Cause I'm hungry.

He could be so proficient in extrapolating cause of death scenarios from the mucus membranes recently deceased cadavers that he may . . .

in fact . . .

Major in Snot Bubbles.

And I couldn't be any prouder than if he actually grew to be a ninja/Jedi/pirate/wizard.

Double Tap

That was how the execution was first described.

Tap.

You're most likely dead.

Tap.

You're hella dead.

To use my late eighties Californian vernacular.

I'm not gonna weigh in on the pros and cons, the right versus wrong, or raise my fist, or thumb my nose. But I will say this; the double tap, aside from being a well respected method of execution, is also a social convention we use every day.

Hi. How you doin?

As in, Hi, I want to let you know that you are now in my social circle. How you doin, it is important to me that since you are in my social circle I want you to feel loved.

Excuse me? Are you using that chair?

Can I get your attention and let you know that I too have needs. Needs that right now can only be met because you clearly have one more chair than you need, and I, have one less chair than I need, and even though I'm not evangelizing a socialist world order, it would be nice, just this once, if you would be so kind as to share the wealth.

Honey? When you pick up water, could you also get some soap?

This is my wife's double tap.

Because at no point had I considered picking up water today. In fact I had no real intention of doing anything today. But rather than asking me if I would go pick up water and soap, which might solicit a negative response, she used the passive aggressive voice, which made it seem as though I would be doing her the simple favor of picking up soap since I was going to the grocery store anyway to pick up water. The first tap is only implied.

Tap. Tap.

Knock. Knock.

Bang. Bang.

Vroom. Vroom.

Cough. Cough.

The list goes on and on.

On and On.

etc. etc.

To quote "The King and I"

This also leads me to think about how socially ingrained series of numbers can be.

Three, aside from being the magic number, is also the basic form of all list comedy. A form I use all the time. Its used in speaking to an audience. Its used for childhood discipline.

One! Get your clothes on.

Two! Get your clothes on.

Three! I am getting up off this couch and am gonna chase after you and when I catch you, you're gonna be sorry, and etc. etc. . . .

Three Blind Mice, Maids from School, Little Pigs, Amigos, Musketeers, Penny Opera, and the rate at which famous people or loved ones die.

Four is the basic stanza of lyricism. Five is a limerick. Six is two haikus (but that really brings us back to three).

Seven is lucky. But that's about all. And the rest of the numbered series stretching out into infinity are just too difficult to grasp. Unless you're a nerd, and if you are, can I use that chair?

One is pretty powerful too. As in this piece of advice I will be giving to my step son as he begins his college career:

Do not eat the second brownie.

I am sure that there are a lot more important pieces of wisdom I can impart. Plastics. Wear a condom. Don't drink and drive. (Which may seem like a double tap, but the usage of the word "and" implies that you can drink and you can drive, just don't do the two things together.)

Neither a lender nor a borrower be, be true to thine self. But Polonius gets stabbed to death while hiding behind a curtain, and I have much bigger plans for my future.

Besides, he was a bit of a fussbudget.

No, what Taylor really needs to understand is that one brownie is enough. Everyone I know can tell the tale of the second brownie and the very bad that follows. Cause we all thought the same thing:

"This one isn't working,

I should have another."

And it is always a bad decision. Always.

Yet, now with a more reflective voice, he is not likely to heed that advice. We all need to learn about the second brownie in our own pathetically personal way. We all need to be doing something when that second brownie hits. Something that will forever be etched into our psyche. We all need to lie on that dirty dorm room carpet, terrified that we are so stoned that every breath takes all of our concentration. Hopefully that room will be filled with sensitive art majors who only want to protect us in our time of need, and not the room where there is loud music and an abundance of permanent markers.

People have lost eyebrows because of the second brownie.

Taylor's gonna be an Aggie. That's right. Checks have been signed, credit cards charged, and tonight we get hoodies and pennants emblazoned with the UC Davis logo. He's going to be introduced to the whole wide world of college life splendor. And he's finally going to take ownership of the kind of social fuck-ups that separate boys from real men.

I'm proud. I'm jealous. I'm scared and I'm absolutely powerless to influence the choices he makes from this day forward.

For his life is the Titanic.

And I am the little rudder that couldn't.

So when I tell him not to eat the second brownie, it is possible that a single declaration will not suffice. Maybe a first year college student requires the same kind of force a world Super Power needs to send a terrorist icon into oblivion.

I think I'm gonna need the Double Tap.

Here goes.

Ready?

Taylor . . . Do not eat the second brownie.

Trust me.

Fear and Corn dogs in Captivity

Are you excited to go to the zoo?

Will there be cows?

I don't know.

Cause I'm not going to the zoo if there's gonna be cows.

Kay.

I'm far from delighted to admit that the fear of cows isn't exactly a new thing in my house hold. Walking home from visiting his preschool Calvin suddenly stopped, screamed and ran to Joann and I in clear panic.

What the fuck?

We thought.

What's the matter?

We said.

I can't see it. I can't see it.

What?

The cow.

There isn't a cow.

Then what's that noise?

We paused for a moment. Listened to the air rustling the wind. Then listened to the air rustling the wind chime. The wind chime hanging from the awning of a little cottage on our right. And we knew instantly what he was talking about.

The wind chime sounded like a cow bell.

Not just any cow bell, but the exact same pitch of cow bell that signals to an avid "Slingshot Cowboy" that there is about to be a stampede. A stampede where furious cows with deep red eyes charge the player in all their pixelated fury.

The first time Calvin played this game, which no respecting parent would allow their child to play since it simply consists of launching rocks at grazing cows, the first time he played this game and the angry cows stampeded toward him, he threw the iPhone ten feet from where he was sitting and ran to find us. Eventually he found a unique love for the game where he was satisfied with launching the rocks, but would close his eyes and turn off the sound at the very moment the cow bell chimed.

Is it over?

He would ask.

Sure, I would say.

So when the wind chime scared him out of his pants, we thought it far too funny to give it any concern. We had and have other concerns, and really, what are the odds that Calvin is going to need to stand his ground during a conflict with a charging bull?

And so when he mentioned his fear of cows as the number one concern when attending a field trip to the zoo, I realized something.

I kind of don't care.

Central to his challenge in life is going to be fighting his flight response in the face of the unknown and poorly perceived.

Who am I to stand in his way?

How many times is someone going to tell him that butterflies are not dangerous?

It's not gonna hurt you, its not gonna hurt you, its not gonna hurt you . . . etc.

Doesn't work.

Never did.

Try it yourself.

The apathetic approach is far less stressful and effective.

Dad! There's a bug!

Here's a fly swatter son. Kill the fucking thing or go inside, I don't care which.

It has a 50% success rate.

Just slightly above Prozac.

And self indulgence does not require a prescription.

I was thinking about this a lot today as I dragged my struggling son from exhibit to exhibit. Watching animals in a zoo fills me with a powerful ambivalence. The tree hugging side of my psyche wants tigers to run and birds to fly, and monkeys to masturbate in private.

The logical side of me thinks that if you could ask a two toed sloth if it would prefer the jungle to a nice cozy tree limb and three squares a day you'd probably get the kind of violent eye roll exclusive to teenage girls.

Most of those animals would be unable, for whatever reason, to go home again and enjoy the freedom of survival.

And, really, they can't feel any more trapped than I do when asked to participate in a conference call.

We all exist in our little cages. And I'm not pointing out anything poetically new. The cubicle metaphor has been mined and mined and mined again. Still . . . I was thinking about all the little cages we build for ourselves and wondering how stressful it has become rattling our tin cups against the bars.

I wanna be a rock star. I want to redecorate the house. Why is there never enough money, food, books, time, sex, sleep, clothes, friends, time, words that rhyme with tertiary, time, wine, money, sex?

Hey Mr. Lion. You wanna pop outta that cage?

Nope.

You sure?

Yup.

Don't you wanna run around, scare a few kids, and stalk something?

Nope, dude, I'm cool.

Don't you wanna sneak outta that cage and take a big fat bite of a freshly deep fried corn dog covered with spicy mustard. Don't you want to burn the roof of your mouth and not entirely care until you've nibbled the crusted cornmeal off the end of the stick?

Seriously dude. I'm cool. Go bother the monkey.

Just don't shake his hand.

Freedom is apathy.

And I'm making corn dogs for dinner.