I recently decided I will no longer read another Curious George story to my kids. Not only do I find the Man with the Yellow Hat‘s supervision skills suspect, Curious George is a shining example of how not to behave. Each one of George’s “adventures” has these key elements:
- The Man with the Yellow Hat decides to leave a juvenile monkey that he stole from Africa and smuggled into the country alone for a moment. This moment is usually prefaced with, “Wait right here, George. I have to go and do this thing….”
- George, unsupervised, gets distracted by something. He then sets off to investigate the distraction thereby disregarding the instructions he received to stay put.
- George causes a problem(s). At the height of said problem(s), authority figures and the Man with the Yellow Hat come rushing in to reprimand George and clean up the mess George created. George gets upset and doesn’t understand why everyone is mad at him.
- George fixes an issue (usually minor) that was the direct result of a problem he created. In Curious George At The Aquarium, for example, George hops into the penguin exhibit and opens the door letting all the penguins out to run amok. As authority figures swoop in to wrangle up the liberated penguins, George sees a baby penguin in the water that cannot swim. He then dives in to rescue the baby fowl in the chaos.
- George is praised and rewarded for fixing an issue that was the direct result of a problem he created. Again, in Curious George At The Aquarium, George is not only thanked for “saving” the baby penguin, he is given passes and invited back to the aquarium to visit “anytime”.
So, George disobeys his slave owner father figure, runs off, causes trouble, fixes something that is a direct result of his actions and is praised for being a “good monkey”? Not on my watch. If one of my kids jump in the penguin exhibit and frees the penguins, the aquarium better not be thanking my kid, giving them free passes and inviting us to come back anytime soon. They better be calling CPS.
Boy: Daddy, where is Aunt Becky?
Me: Aunt Becky is at work today, buddy.
Boy: Where is Grandpa?
Me: Grandpa is in Ohio.
Boy: Where is Captain America?
Me: Fighting Nazis somewhere.
Boy: Captain America is awesome.
Me: Damn straight.
While the boy’s birthing was a marathon fight like Rocky Balboa versus Ivan Drago (minus the sweet “No Easy Way Out” montage), the Broz girl child fired her way out of the chute like a Hitler-hating Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics.
As labor approached the noon hour, my mom asked if I wanted to run downstairs and get a sandwich with her because, “You need to keep your strength up too, Matty.” The wife gave me the go ahead as her contractions were light and I was not planning on being gone for long. 20 minutes later I walked back into the labor and delivery room and the wife had gone from being dilated at 4 to 6 (for those of you unfamiliar with the cervix during childbirth, this is like hitting a thirty-pointer in basketball).
Within the hour, the girl child was being tagged and our nurse was quoted as saying, “That was pretty intense.”
The House of Broz is currently fun, crazy and full of poop. Lots of poop.
Almost a year has passed since my last post on the MB. To say I have been focused on other things might be more of an understatement than when General Custer uttered, “Where did all these Indians come from?”
What have I been up to, you ask?
- Making Babies. The wife and I are expecting a girl child at the end of March. I am studying my Disney princesses and learning how to braid hair.
- Fathering The Boy. His obsessions with Spider-Man and trains are either legendary or emotionally damaging. He also has a penchant for stripping naked in the middle of the night and yelling at his stuffed animals.
- Broz Design-ing. I have entered year three and may have to let go of some of my control issues and hire some help.
I am drinking copious amounts of coffee and occasionally sleeping. Every so often I will wipe the crust from eyes and emerge from the design bunker to kiss the wife, play a hockey game and have a whiskey.
I have been a creative juggernaut this past year. I will be uploading a smattering of essays in the coming months that I am hoping to piece together someday into a book. I am currently getting my Rembrandt on and painting a self-portrait. Finally, I am back posting to the MB once again. Bestiality links will be imminent.
My mom called this morning to inform me that the boy was exposed to some form of a coughing disease a few weekends ago at her house (my young nephew being the little monkey from Outbreak in this scenario). I told my mom that this weekend the boy was exposed to the drunken stupidity of my sixteenth annual fantasy football draft, his dad repeatedly calling the Rockies a “bunch of dirty ball sacks” for getting swept in San Francisco and the assorted programming of the History Channel including Gangland and one very disappointing show about prison tattoos that mostly focused on the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. She said I should get him get him “checked out” just to be safe.
Fatherhood has yet to provide me with any kind of spiritual awakening. After speaking to the other expectant fathers in my various babying classes, I was expecting angels to descend from heaven and play a harp rendition of “MMMBop” while I recognized the kinship of all living things when my son was born. Instead, I was relieved that the boy arrived with no serious health/birth defects and his mother did not go all 19th Century on me and bleed to death during childbirth and leave me and the boy to resent our stations in life and grow bitter over the years while tending to the family farm. It’s cool to have an entire life dependent on you. It’s also scary as hell. I think the true measure of whether or not I was a successful parent will come when it is time for me to go into a nursing home. If I did well? The boy will come visit me with his family on a semi-regular basis and take me out for a steak on occasion while tolerating my rants at the waitress for being too slow with the gravy. If I didn’t do well? I will suffer in a multi-level town house in Thornton and eat Alpo out of the can and call my son “a fucking pussy” when he makes his annual call to wish me a happy birthday. Right now the boy is much like a zombie army; singularly focused on food, growing at an exponential rate and adverse to any kind of a rest. I am debating the Boggins Window Crib to make nap time more interesting. Not sure if that will get me the steak dinner or the Alpo. Only time will tell.
My response to the well-compiled Tomato Nation 25 and Over list:
- Remember to write thank-you notes. The written word is a lost art and most youngsters under age 25 think texting ‘THX PLAYA’ does the trick. Taking the time to send off a stamped, hand-written note (especially after a job interview) shows that you are considerate and not a serial killer.
- Do not invite yourself to stay with friends when you travel anymore. Being as I have a deep aversion to inconvenience (both for myself and those around me), this has never been a problem for me. I would much rather crash at a hotel even if family/friends are close by.
- Do not expect friends to help you move anymore. I only expect my friends to help me move things if they stayed at my house due to a bout of excessive drinking the night before. Asking someone to help you move a roll-top desk with a crippling hangover should not be an issue if said someone yaked in your sink twelve hours earlier.
- Develop a physical awareness of your surroundings. I pride myself on assessing my surroundings and acting accordingly. Alcohol often kills this one for me.
- Be on time. I generally show up on time to most events. If I am late to anything longer than thirty minutes, I will blame my infant child who cannot speak.
- Have enough money. Nothing pisses me off more than somebody who never brings money out in card or cash from. You did not leave your wallet at home. You are just a cheap bastard.
- Know how to calculate the tip. It is not difficult to multiply the bill by two to get the 20% tip equivalent. If you do not have the mental capacity to calculate a tip without the aid of a calculator or cell phone, eating out is probably the least of your worries.
- Do not share the crazy dream you had last night with anyone but your mental wellness professional. Depends on what the dream is about and what your intentions are by sharing said dream. A sex dream with the intention of getting yourself laid? Absolutely. Murdering all you co-workers with a machine gun during a casual Friday with the intention of getting a raise? Probably not.
- Learn to walk in heels. Only applies to me if I patronize an East German sex club.
- Have at least one good dress-up outfit. Before the wife cleaned me up, taught me how to dress and expanded my wardrobe, I owned only one suit at the behest of my mother. It was my all-purpose suit that saw many weddings, funerals and job interviews. I could sometimes tell the last time I wore it by reaching in the inner-coat pocket and finding an old event program.
- Do as invitations ask you. I am usually not formally invited to anything and if I am the wife handles all the RSVP-ing and gifting. It is better this way.
- Know how. Sadly I think most people 25 and under grew up with every convenience afforded to them and would perish in the wilderness after being given a knife and a water source. Problem solving is lost on a generation that did not have to solve any problems because their parents were afraid if they failed it would crush there delicate sensibilities. I like to think I know enough about enough to be dangerous.
- Don’t use your friends. This should be on an age 5 and over list. You should never use your friends unless they have an awesome surround-sound system.
- Have something to talk about besides college or your job. As the many people in my life can attest, I have plenty to talk about besides college and my job.
- Give and receive favors graciously. As my Dad said while scolding me after an excessive sports celebration in my youth, “Act like you have been there before.”
- Drinking until you throw up is no longer properly a point of pride. It depends on how good the scotch is.
- Have a real trash receptacle, real Kleenex, and, if you smoke, a real ashtray. Toilet paper serves multiple purposes (in my opinion); nose blowing and ass-wiping. If you smoke? You will be dead before me. That and you should properly dispose of your butts. My yard is not that place.
- Universal quiet hours do in fact apply to you. Working from home I keep weird hours and I keep the volume down during the quiet hours without even realizing it.
- Take care of yourself. Workout a few times. Take a shower every other day. Do not eat Taco Bell three times a week. Repeat.
- Rudeness is not a signifier of your importance. It is when you are from California.
The first few weeks of parenthood have been rife with happiness, urine, poop and sleep in three hour clips. The boy is still getting the day/night schedule figured out so I am getting used to working at four in the morning while he squirms about and makes cute little noises. The wife has it far worse as she is the food source and usually the one waking up at all hours to nurse. Women really get the shitty end of the deal in nature. Menstruation? Check. Squeezing a living human out of your vagina? Check. On call for the first year (or first six years if you are a perverted fruitcake) to suckle said living human? Check. Then here I am, Sperms McGee. Just the male actor in a straight porn movie. The prop. “Stand over there with your penis and do not say anything stupid. We will call you when we are ready.”
The wife has successfully gone number three and brought into this world our first offspring. She was in labor for 33 hours and produced our eight pound, twenty-inch boy on April 7, 2009 just after 8:13 PM. I saw many things I can never un-see during the birth of my son. All parts of the female anatomy are now completely demystified for me. While I can still objectify naked woman, I now understand that nature intended for boobs to be suckled by infants and that a vagina was meant for a baby to be pushed out of, not for me to press/push/thrust my penis on/in/around. The boy is experiencing a touch of the Jaundice and is currently laying in a portable baby tanning bed, but other than that, we are all happy, healthy and exhausted.