Alan Kercinik has been a Chicagoan his whole life and a dad since 2009. He finds it easy to relate to his two boys, since he still likes most things from his childhood. All opinions here are his own, to the relief of his wife, employer, family and majority of his friends.
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Silence of the Lambs: my training film for fatherhood.
Jack has hit a pair of developmental milestones at the same time. He is copying almost everything we say. He is also openly defying us. I wasn’t anticipating waging full-on psychological warfare with him until he hit fifteen.
(Read this next line in the voice of that movie trailer voice-over God, the late, great Don LaFontaine.) Instead, it has begun.
When Hollywood makes the Always Jacked movie, here are five lines of dialog I’ll push to keep in the script.
Jack, don’t climb on that.
Repeated frequently around Casa Kercinik, it has been said in reference to a chair, the coffee table, a dresser, our kitchen cabinets and, most recently and memorably, our dining room table.
Ass!
This one is totally my fault. We were driving and this terrible human being slowly tried to cut us off and that was my loud reaction. Jack immediately incorporated it into his growing vocabulary and turned it into a song. I have been trying to teach him all manner of words, many of them not even swears. None of them have the staying power like this one.
Plop
Our big sound effect, this is the noise that food makes when it hits our kitchen floor. Jack will hold a piece of food — say a big, wet piece of strawberry — look my wife right in the eye, listen to her tell him not to drop said big, wet piece of strawberry. Then he drops the strawberry. Typically while smirking.
"What are you rebelling against, Jack?" "Whaddya got?"
“You can’t run into the street.”
Screw peanuts. If Jack ends up allergic to anything, it will be holding our hands when we go for walks.
“No beer for you.”
Jack wanting what we have knows few boundaries. He tries to drink our coffee, wine and beer. And he’s stubborn enough to want to dip a crab rangoon into some pretty spicy sauce we could not dissuade him from wanting to try. Thank God we wait to use drugs until after he goes to sleep. (Editor’s note: we don’t use drugs.)
7 comments
hannemaniacs says:
September 3, 2010 at 2:56 pm (UTC -5 )
@AlanKercinik I feel like you have been crazy productive on your little staycation. You’re onto something, Kercinik.
AlanKercinik says:
September 3, 2010 at 6:18 pm (UTC -5 )
@hannemaniacs Thanks. This will give you a clue into how I think — I feel like I haven’t gotten anything done.
hannemaniacs says:
September 3, 2010 at 6:25 pm (UTC -5 )
@AlanKercinik Welcome to my world.
Lisa Hanneman says:
September 3, 2010 at 4:50 pm (UTC -5 )
1. Can’t wait to see you guys and Jack in action this weekend. Your child makes me laugh. Hard.
2. No wonder you have a injured player on your team.
3. Dammit.
Alan Kercinik says:
September 3, 2010 at 6:20 pm (UTC -5 )
1) Agreed. Hopefully L and I won’t be all laughed out.
2) That is a subject of a whole other post — how if feels to be more the Mom for a week.
3) We still feel really bad about that. Dammit.
The JackB says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:20 am (UTC -5 )
Defiance is fun, when I get to see it in children who are not mine.
Alan Kercinik says:
September 9, 2010 at 8:53 pm (UTC -5 )
I feel the same way. I want him to question authority, just not my authority.