City v. Suburbs: Part One

Posted on | July 23, 2010 | View Comments

My friend, Lisa, wrote a blog post about why she didn’t go to Taste of Chicago this year. It’s on the new blogger community, The Chicago Moms, right here.

Her primary reason — aside from the heat, mediocre food, crowds and pale, large people who feel compelled to spill, shirtless, over their jean shorts and into your personal space — is the worry over violence. She’s got a little guy and had visions of bad things happening.

Bad things happen. To everyone. But if I had to point to a fundamental difference between moms and dads, aside from the whole breast feeding thing, it’s this. Moms worry over random acts of violence that will, of course, happen to them. Dads admit that these things happen, but we’re confident that they will happen to someone else.

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There comes a point where most parents start having what I like to call the,  ”Maybe-we-should-move-the-hell-out-of-the-city-before-we’re-shot-in-the-forehead” conversation. Lara and I are having that now, sporadically. We can have it all we want. Thanks to the titans of Wall Street, we’re not selling our house anytime soon.

But still, we have it, every now and again. The wife grew up in the suburbs. I grew up in the city. Guess who wants to stay and who wants to leave?

I can recognize some of the appeal. Not having to pay $85 for a city sticker so you can park in front of your own house. Fewer sirens. Backyards that are larger than a postcard.

But I like the city. I work in the city. And, with Jack so young, I don’t feel like losing two hours a day on the train, going to and from work. Maybe I’m being selfish and will sing a different tune when he’s about ready to go to school. But for now, I want to stay put.

I think the wife does, too. But if I said let’s go, I don’t think she’d put up much a fight. Even so, we have some pretty funny conversations about it.

Wife: The suburbs are so nice. (She’s driving us home from Palatine, where Jack swims on Saturdays.)

Me: Uh-huh.

Wife: Summers growing up were the best. Going swimming and then being out at night, catching lightning bugs.

Me: We had lighting bugs in the city.

Wife: No you didn’t. Maybe one little lonely one.

Me: No. We had actual lightning bugs. A whole bunch of them.

Wife: No you didn’t.

Me: What do you think we did? Run around and catch rats in pillow cases?

Wife: Exactly.

There’s rats in the suburbs. I’ve seen them. They’re just smaller and ride ponies on their way to golf lessons.

Raising a Geek

Posted on | July 20, 2010 | View Comments

Over the weekend, I read a story in the New York Times about these Brooklyn kids who go to a summer camp based on a book.

Camp Half-Blood, as it’s called, is based on the Percy Jackson series in which young Percy finds out that he is half Greek-god. (That Zeus. Such a wolf.) So at the camp, all the kids operate under the same assumption. That each of them has one god as a parent.

My first thought was that the whole thing was pretty funny, especially one of the quoted kids, who said he went to the camp to train. Because he thinks that the god-parent thing could, in his case, be true. (My hope is that people who matter are keeping a close eye on this kid.)

But my second thought was just how different childhood might be for Jack. Because if I went to a camp based on a book when I was in grade school — assuming that such a thing was even thought up to exist — I wouldn’t have gotten interviewed in the New York Times about it. I would have gotten the crap kicked out of me for being a nerd.

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Even at his age, I want people to like Jack. He’s at that point where being a baby isn’t going to carry all of the water in that regard anymore. Aspects of his personality are really starting to come out, more each day. The hope is that we’re not raising a little jerk, someone who is mean and disrespectful and self-centered. I’m pretty sure we’re not.

That’s a universal hope. That as a parent, I’m raising a nice little human.

But there’s a funny thing that comes with interests, especially as a kid. How you can get categorized and ridiculed just for things that you like. There was a girl, in my grade school, who loved Shaun Cassidy — think Justin Bieber, just older — to the point of distraction. She had gotten this outfit, where his face was silkscreened on both her pants and shirt. I don’t remember what we said, exactly, but I remember much howling and laughter and pointing.

I don’t think she ever wore it again.

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So much of that kind of judgement, at least in broad stokes, seems irrelevant now. So many things that were invitations to ridicule when I was younger just aren’t such a big invitation anymore.

Reading? Cool, thanks to Harry Potter and iPads. Superheroes and comic books? There wouldn’t have summer movies without them. Computers? Um. I think society would implode without those. Dancing? Cooking? Singing? If reality television has one redeeming quality, it’s in making each of these activities less make-funnable. (In high school, being in a band was cool. Singing wasn’t. I didn’t understand it then. I don’t understand it now.)

I’m not naive enough to say these kind of judgements have disappeared. They haven’t. Not from the playground. Not from the office, for that matter.

But kids, and people, should like what they like (as long as it isn’t things like Nazis and torturing cats) and not be made to feel inadequate or strange because of it.

If I have one wish, as a father, it’s that I hope that my kid is spared some of the crap I dealt with when I was younger. It seems like he might, if Camp Half-Blood is any indication. But I want to teach him that what people say doesn’t matter, either. To never let someone else’s judgement get in his head and keep him from doing something he loves. To never be ashamed of who he is.

I think about this, when he grabs a Batman action figure off my bookshelf, starts dancing in the middle of the living room and then, when the song ends, walks around in a circle for a while, talking to himself, before collapsing on the floor and opening a book.

I think, “Go, Jack. Go.”

Why Superman Doesn’t Have Kids

Posted on | July 14, 2010 | View Comments

Jack has some kind of problem with my glasses, in that he likes to grab them and throw them to the floor.

Bending steel and outrunning a speeding bullet are one thing. But constantly trying to keep your glasses on your face while protecting a secret identity? Yeah, Superman, I kind of get why you and Lois won’t take the plunge. (Fellow comic book geeks will likely take umbrage. They prefer more complicated and “realistic” explanations for such things, like how human and Kryptonian DNA is incompatible.)

This is a behavior we want-slash-need to nip in the bud. Because in addition to the glasses throwing, he’ll sometimes grab at the nose, slap or pinch the cheek.

The wife is reading, “How to Say No to Your Toddler.” Which sounds too much like the kind of book you’d read as you’re training a dog to quit chewing your furniture. “How To Set Boundaries With Your Puppy.”

It’s not that we don’t  say ‘no’ to the boy. It’s more like he understands us, then ignores us, like it’s a game. He’ll stop what he’s doing — usually climbing something or putting one of the dog’s toys in his mouth — look at me, smile, then go back to his climbing or dog toy eating. Physical removal from the setting is usually the best option.

I’ve held his hands and said ‘no.’ I’ve put him in his pack and play and left the room for twenty seconds. I don’t want to have to start taping my glasses to my head.

I can appreciate that the boy is developing a healthy mistrust of authority. But how do you teach a fifteen-month-old that behaviors, especially bad ones, have consequences?