Small Gems

1. My son is in his PJ’s. He’s bent over almost double, pulling his pants down off of his butt and back up onto his waist like a rapid fire mooning project. Mom-ita and I ask him what he’s doing.

“I’m just getting the static out of them,” M-ito says.

2. M-ito is standing at the table doing his homework. He’s playing with the newest toy that’s sweeping his school, silly bands (different colored and shaped rubber bands).

“You’re addicted to them,” Mom-ita says.

“Nooooo,” M-ito says. “The only thing I’m addicted to is shiny objects.”

Games for an 8 year old

My son’s birthday list was short this year so he got what he asked for and then some. Here’s the top ten so far:

• The Legendary Starfy for the DS – don’t get me started on the DS again!
• Scribblenaughts for the DS
• Magic the Gathering starter set – for 12 and up age but I played it when I was younger and if you work with the small print rules book it can work. Some of the imagery is disturbing (fantasy art work at it’s best and in some cases a bit gruesome so get a starter set of heros and natures creatures or something like that and stay away from the pestilence and undead decks)
• Yu-Gi-Oh starter set – this says for 6 and up but I’m having trouble figuring out the rules and I’m almost 50. Still… it is very popular and it looks like it’s fun once you get the rules down.
• Nano Hex Bugs – these are creepy bug robots but they are cool in a creepy sort of way. You can race them all over the floor if you make up a track of books.
• Samarkand – M-ito is fascinated with the silk road since we saw the exhibit at the Museum of Natural History so this caught his eye. I’m not sure if it’ll be good or not but the game box says 8 and up. The jury’s still out. The game materials are of a high quality especially neat are the small wooden camels.
• Bicycle – what more is there to say?
• Prince of Persia Legos – he’s already building it. It was the first toy he’s opened up and actually played with other than the DS.
• Settlers of Catan – It’s actually an expansion set but we’ve played the original and it’s a lot of fun, if a little complicated. This is a thumbs up.
• Electro-Gadget 200 – A great electronic circuit game for science buffs.

I can’t believe there’s no Pokemon on this list! He still watches the movies and TV show and loves to play it on his DS so don’t rule any Pokemon out just yet. There just weren’t any Pokemon gifts available that he didn’t already have…

8th Birthday: A Save-the-World Party

I find my son’s birthday to be a number of things: sad, anxiety provoking, challenging, tiring, and at some point, hopefully just a little happy. This year we did a home party again. Mom-ita took care of all the arrangements like, food, who was coming, invitations, speaking to M-ito about everything, and helping him to make his birthday list. At 8, my son is still very much into birthdays. I hope he stays that way for a while.

My job as the Dad-dito was, as it has been in the past, to take care of the entertainment (I have been the entertainment the last three years as the yoga teacher for a personalized class two years in a row, and this year as the designer of the save-the-world from Ratzo treasure hunt), pick up the food the morning of the party, order the cake from Cupcake bakery, then pick it up, call my family and make sure they know the date and can come, buy the gifts on M-ito’s list, and help out the day of the party as opposed to getting in the way.

This year my father came with Jocelita, Max’s grandmother (my father’s girlfriend who has taken on the role of a grandmother – it’s a long story but that’s how it works some days) and they arrived with her in tears and him in a grouchy, angry mood. They were the first to arrive. Mom-ita was stressed. I was stressed. Four out of five people in the apartment were stressed. Oh joy. People were coming over, and M-ito was hanging out waiting, playing and already enjoying being the birthday boy even with this madness in the background. I think he didn’t notice what was going on and as his friends arrived (six in all – a small group this year and that was a blessing) he got wrapped up in them. I got wrapped up in occupying my father and listening to Jocelyn and cutting up the fruit salad and regular salad. I put my father to work on drawing characters for the save-the-world game and hoped, hoped, hoped, he would be nice to Max, whom I also asked to draw some characters for the game. My father tends to critique rather than help when it comes to drawing and M-ito is a good artist in his own right but needs to be encouraged not critiqued.

The save-the-world treasure hunt had the evil Ratzo trying to rule the world through the kid’s parents with hand sanitizer – vaporizing spray. I’d hidden  clues around the apartment and throughout the building (laundry, garden, mailbox bulletin board) all written in code with tricks and traps everywhere (every other step of the stairs to the garden was poison to the touch, green paper was poison and some clues were written on green paper, a puzzle of paper pieces was inside a green paper folder). I gave them antidote cards for when they were poisoned so they could keep playing the game, broke then into two teams, girls and boys, code books to be able to crack my code, a storyline to work from and 30 minutes to find Ratzo’s switch that would turn all parents armed with hand sanitizer into child vaporizing machines. I was up until 1:30am the night before setting it all up.

It’s easy to understand the feelings of anxiety, challenge, exhaustion and a little happiness. But why would I be sad? Well, my son is getting older and so am I. It is both wonderful and sad at the same time. I want him to grow up and be a man but I also want him to stay my little boy. Such a simple statement and filled with, for me so much emotion. But that is the nature of birthdays. They make me review life, both my son’s and my own and many times that is painful. So, given that, I try to find some happiness in the story of my son’s birthday, day. The smile on his face as his friends race across the apartment building trying to outrun the clock to find Ratzo’s switch that’s in the refrigerator, of course, dodging parents trying to sanitize their hands (I gave everybody hand sanitizer and they kept asking the kids if they wanted to clean their hands – the kids all ran away screaming NOONONONONONONO!). And watching him open his gifts, blow out the candles on his cake. All the things that make up a birthday celebration of turning a year older and a year wiser. And my son is both. Birthdays need to be celebrated as small rites of passage along the way of life. I need to remember how wonderful it is that he is growing up and learning about this wonderful and challenging world that we live in as human beings.

And also remember, that I  now have a full year to go before I have to do it all again. Whew.

A Day of Knights Part 2: The Search for Swords and Black Knights

I found nerf broadswords – the Marauder long sword. The nerf folks have different kinds of swords but they actually have a good looking broadsword (a two-handed sword, not a one handed sword) and I started collecting them. I bought a pair for M-ito and me. Then we tried them out in the apartment a few times. We didn’t break anything, amazingly, and because they are heavier than the regular size swords made by nerf, they are harder to swing around fast. So, though they are heavier, they are more difficult to use. I figured they would have  a lower accident potential. It’s still amazes me how I came up with that calculation.

I thought about using shields and contemplated garbage can lids of all sorts at Home Depot. I even thought about making them out of plywood, but that would have made things so much more complicated – and I’m no carpenter – this I know about myself. And I was trying to keep things simple. That plus I tried out the regular swords from nerf and they were much lighter than the broadswords and when M-ito and I played with them I got tagged a number of times on the hand and it hurt like the devil. I saw the potential for all kinds of face wounds and broken fingers. I figured I’d stick with the heavier and slower weapons. It would also tire them out. the swords were almost as big as the kids were. Besides shields would mean teaching them a whole different skill set – both sword and shield. Broadsword would require concentration on only the weapon as attack and defense. I knew broadsword from stage combat class. I’d choreographed a one-act play I wrote with a broadsword fight in it. My friend DB knew broadsword too and we’d practiced together enough to know the ins and outs of it. And Austino and M-ito wanted broadsword. Shields would have to wait for another day of knights that concentrated on the shield wall.

So… nerf  broadswords it was.

My friend DB is an actor and all around good sport with a twinkle in his eye when it comes to things like teaching kids about swords. So I pitched it to him at breakfast one morning just as he was getting off work and I was going to work (he works the graveyard shift at a law firm doing legal proofreading). “Want to help me teach M-ito and a few of his friends how to use a broadsword?”

“What?”

“We’ll teach ‘em the basic foot work, the cuts, the parries, give ‘em an obstacle course to run through, then have a giant melee – kids against adults. What do you think?”

He only hesitated a moment. He looked out the diner window as if imagining the mayhem. ”Sure,” he said, nodding.

“Austino’s father is going to help out also and we’ll get one more. So there’ll be four adults. We’ll be the black knights. We’ll get the kids all padded up with arm pads and bycicle helmets and then let them go at us.”

DB nodded, his smile getting bigger. He loves these kinds of things.

“And I want you and me to show them a short fight with the real swords. Then I’ll do some choreography with each of them so they get to try the real ones out. We’ll rehearse a couple of times before-hand, if you can spare the time.”

“Yeah, we’d better,” he said.

“Then you’re in?”

He nodded.

Let the Mayhem Begin!

It would be two months before we picked a day but I had my players and the beginnings of a plan.

A Day of Knights: Part 1, The Idea

None shall pass!

It started as a simple question from the back seat of the car on the way in to school. M-ito and Austino  were sitting in the back seat and talking about farts and other such kinds of things when Austino asked, “I wonder what it would be like to use a real broadsword?”

“It’s heavy,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, I’ve used a real broadsword and it’s heavy. As a matter of fact if you want some day I’ll show you.”

“Okay.”

And that was it. This was back in the winter, probably early February.

“I’m serious,” I said. “We could have a day of knights and I could show you guys how to use broadswords and let you use a real one. I have two. Would you guys like that? A day of knights?”

“Yeah,” they both said.

The conversation went on to other important things, like how big a catapult would you need to take out the house across the street, that kind of thing. But I remembered what they said and it started my mind to thinking. A day of knights. I’d have to call my friend DB, an actor and fellow stage-combatant who knows broadswords and kids. This would be cool. The idea started to percolate. Every week for the next two months I kept the idea alive, reminding the boys that I was going to do it… some day when the weather got warmer. I don’t know if they believed me – or at least I know my son did. But I began planning in my mind and collecting what I was going to need. The first thing I’d need were broadswords… not the real ones as I had two of those already. But something the kids could use that were the right size but wouldn’t cause permanent damage to anyone…

The Shy Child

Here’s another poem M-ito’s teacher showed us at parent teacher conference. This one made us all cry, each for different reasons. The punctuation and line breaks are all his.

Shy

I am always shy

when I meet people

I always make

a shy face

but when I

get used to people

I am not shy at

all

I wish I could change

how I am shy

but I cannot.

What does this mean to me as a father? Have I gone wrong by having a shy child? Would I rather have an outgoing, rambunctious child? I love my son just the way he is but these questions come up for me as a father. Did I somehow make my son shy or is he hardwired from having two shy parents? Is it in the genes? I was shy also (and continue to be) though I see already my son is way ahead of me in being able to express who he is and what it feels like to be him. That ability to express himself like this at his age amazes me. He is an introspective child and that is a wonder.

I remember when he was younger he was the slow-to-warm-up child. An hour into the party he would finally let go of my leg and start to enjoy himself, just as the party was over and all his friends started to leave. He’s grown so much since then in his abilities to socialize and make friends, but like with so many of us, it’s hard to him to do. This poem is such a reflection of his starting in this school and pushing himself to make friends this year – and he has. None of his teachers would say he’s a shy child now because he is so much a part of the 2nd grade and so well-integrated. But his view of himself is on paper in front of me and it is both beautiful in its honesty and sad at the same time because it’s painful what he is expressing. Don’t we all wish better for our children? Is being shy a bad thing? I don’t think so, but it’s hard not to get caught up in the sayings, like the early bird gets the worm, and the emphasis on being assertive to get what you need. The loud child gets the attention at home and in the classroom. But some of us are just not hard-wired that way and we have to learn other ways to exist. Shy is good, even if it’s harder. Perhaps that should be made into a mantra and chiseled into Sanskrit for all the world to see.

Aparigraha Lessons

It (aparigraha) means non-possessiveness or non-hoarding and it’s a yogic concept right out of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

Last year at parent teacher conferences in First Grade I took a look at the interior of M-ito’s desk and found it filled with papers, old homework, half-finished drawings, used and new tissues, and all the way at the back there was a sandwich of some sort, wrapped in sarran wrap. I don’t know how old it was and neither did M-ito. Neither of us wanted to see what it looked like so it just got thrown out.

“In case I was hungry,” M-ito said, when asked,”Why?”

Last week at parent teacher conferences in Second Grade, at a new school (which we are amazingly still happy about) we found that our son was hoarding pencils. He picked them up whenever he found them during the day and put them in his desk. He had quite a few of them from 3/4′s of a year’s tidying up of pencils. He told us, “I’m hoarding pencils,” with a big smile on his face. One of his friends was hoarding scissors, the same way. I’m glad M-ito was only hoarding pencils. The kids at M-ito’s school all have pencils, scissors, notebooks, folders, and pens (when they get to them) given to them by the school. There’s no competition over styles and designs, no extra cash to lay out for these kinds of utensils of student work. It’s all in the tuition. Gulp. So M-ito’s collection of pencils is not differentiated by these things. Instead each is differentiated by whether a pencil is sharpened or not, how many times it has been sharpened which determines its length, and finally how much of an eraser is left – maybe he also codes them by the size of the bite marks left on them – I don’t know. My son collects pennies too – wheat pennies only. It’s a hold-over from my grandfather who was a trainman, and myself who collected in his footsteps.

I believe he’s going to give all the pencils back to his teacher at some point. At least that’s what he said when I asked him. At least he’s helping to keep the floor clean. Gotta give that to him.

Dumb and Stupid Redux

The holidays are still a fresh memory but all the decoration are down.

The DS is now an integral part of the household.

We were all working last night. Mom-ita preparing dinner, me preparing for my yoga class, and M-ito preparing to be a world class fossil hunter. It sounds exciting, I know it does. But here’s the thing. In order to be a world class fossil hunter my son has to do the following:

1. Sit hunched over a tiny handheld portable electronic gaming device (a DS) for an hour, possibly more if we let him – and we try not to let him ever go that long;
2. Intuit directions and rules as he goes along as to what is needed to be a world class fossil hunter (not easy because the rules are in small print and I can barely read ‘em even with my reading glasses and, of course M-ito doesn’t like to read the rules, and double of course because you also have to understand gaming lingo) – also M-ito makes lots of mistakes along the way and it is frustrating going;
3. Figure out how to pause the damned thing when either his mother or father wants him to stop to either, say… get the table set, or answer a question, or interact in any way with the world around him;
4. Yell out successes and failures to me while I’m ten feet away typing wickedly at emails (of which I have no idea what he’s saying because I haven’t played the game and can only guess at what his statements mean – I usually simply answer, “that’s great,” or “keep trying, you’ll get it next time.”);
5. Do lots of thumb exercises and obtain good hand-eye coordination (hey, I have to be honest – it does take some of these qualities to succeed in the game including make good use of your opposable thumbs)

So… after the fifth or sixth time we asked him to come in and set the table M-ito, still playing, nodded and mumbled something akin to, “Yes.”

I got up and said, in typical, I’m-not-proud of myself-mode, “If you don’t put that game down I’m going to take it away.”

At which point he said, with extreme frustration, “I can’t figure out how to pause the game without losing the game I’m playing.” He said this, uncannily, while still playing, barely missing a beat.

I reached over for the game and he leaned away from me, using his elbow to slightly block my angle on the DS. I said, in my most menacing voice – because I was getting pissed off now (though you should note that I also knew I was tired from my work and upset at myself for letting him play so long and so… attempting to take some responsibility for the confrontation occurring), “You’d better turn that thing off right now or I’m going to throw it out the window.” Ah, that was poetry.

That’s when the tears started and the crying – all while still playing, at least minimally so his game didn’t disappear and be reduced to oblivion. Sometimes the most difficult part of playing these games is figuring out how to save your game. The simple precaution in the future is to read how to do this first, before he starts to play. After you’ve plowed through an hour of hard work making mistakes and learning game-play I understand not wanting to lose what you’ve gained. I do. I really do.

I used some yogic breathing, calmed myself and said, “Let’s look at the instructions and see what they say.”

Twenty seconds, M-ito still playing, I took the DS from him. His eyes wide with terror he shouted, “No!” as I touched a button to find the right screen. A quick flash appeared with the dialog, “Do you want to save this game?” M-ito used his stylus, angling the two screens towards him so he could see and pressed the statement a few times.

“It’s not saving!” he shouted again.

I took his stylus and tapped the, “Yes.”

The screen disappeared and M-ito mouthed, “O.”

Then another screen came on asking, “Do you want to continue playing?” and I quickly tapped “No.”

M-ito only saw the no and broke down into tears again. These are the kind of tears that go right through you. The dad-ditto-you’ve-betrayed-me kind.

“You lost my game,” he said. “Now I have to go back and start all over!” Variations of this came and went between sobbing and weeping. I sat in the other room, looking at Mom-ita and looking back into the room. I might have said, “It’s only a game,” but I hope I didn’t. I tried to tell him it was okay – that I’d not erased anything. He swore it was all lost. The game didn’t mean a thing to me, but I tried to remember it meant a lot to this 7-year old boy. M-ito’s anger turned sullen. He wouldn’t come in and eat. He wouldn’t talk to us. He might even have said something in the nature of, “You don’t want me” or “love me” but I’m still to this moment not sure. Mom-ita as the neutral party, tried to get involved. She said, “We’ll take a look at it after we eat,” but he got angry at her too.

We ate a quiet and unhappy meal. I got angry again after a while too and called him on his attitude (how did he get that look in his eyes and the nasty set of his jaw?) and the way he spoke to his mother. Otherwise I was silent the rest of the meal too. It was a big unhappy party and I didn’t think I could be brought lower until I started wondering if I had indeed lost his game. What if I did?

Finally, dinner over and the game back in hand, Mom-ita playing mediator. We looked at it together and lo and behold. The game was right where it was supposed to be – saved and in one piece.

M-ito looked up at me and smiled, gave me a big hug – night and day.

“Next time have a little faith in your father,” I said. Exactly what my own father had said to me many a time when I was a kid. Oh how these things come back and haunt you.

36 States then Hawaii

Maine is a long, long way from New York and Queens. Most car games did not work to keep M-ito occupied.

Who am I?  - too boring.

Rhyming games from my improv days? – I don’t feel like it.

M-ito gets car sick so reading, movies, quilting, drawing, anything that requires him to look at something other than the passing scenery won’t work.

But… the licence plate game – now that was different. We took two days travelling up, staying in New Hampshire night one and ending up in Bar Harbor day two and the reverse on the way back soem eleven days later. Looking out for different state licence plates actually kept us all going when eyes were tired and tempers flared.

“Have we seen North Dakota yet?”

“YYYEEEESSSS.”

We got California early and Alaska (2x) and most of the east coast then started to work our way out west. we dontinued the game on throughout the whole vacation, spotting cars in the parking lot where the Champlain Mountain trail started and in down town Bar Harbor at the Pizza and a Movie show parking lot. Honestly we thought we’d never get Hawaii. We even talked about the odds of getting all 50 states in one trip and how Hawaii would be the impossible one. How could you find a car from there out here on the east coast.

But at a rest stop in Connecticut, only 45 minutes from home and the end of our vacation, as we were pulling out of the parking lot I saw something that looked like a rainbow on a plate out of the corner of my eye – at licence plate level on a white van. I decided to turn left instead of right, as we were heading out of the parking lot.

“What are you doing, Dad-dito,” Mom-ita said as I turned to go out the longer way.

“I thought I saw something,” I said.

We stopped in front of a family sitting inside of a van and whooped and hollared as we stared at them and their Hawaii plate. High-5s fluttered left and right. The van owners stared at us for a moment then must have realized what it was we had seen in their car. The licence plate game must be a game played everywhere – either that or they are used to being spotted. They waved and smiled back at us, nodding. Yes, we’re from Hawaii.

Oh yeah. Our list follows. Compare it to yours on your next trip up and back.

1. New York
2. New Jersey
3. Deleware
4. Pennsylvania
5. Connecticut
6. Rhode Island
7. Massachusets
8. Vermont
9. New Hampshire
10. Maine
11. Virginia
12. Washington DC
13. Washington
14. California
15. Ohio
16. Kentucky
17. Tennesee
18. Georgia
19. South Carolina
20. North Carolina
21. Florida
22. Illinois
23. Indiana
24. Missouri
25. Michigan
26. Maryland
27. Texas
28. Louisiana
29. Minnesota
30. New Mexico
31. Arizona
32. Alaska
33. Wisconsin
34. Oklahoma
35. North Dakota
36. Iowa
37. Hawaii

Just for the heck of it we also saw 4 Canadian states: Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick.

An Aisle Seat

Each movie we go to see I think it will be different, but it’s not. It’s okay. I don’t mind a lot, but I do a little. If I’m being honest with myself -I do. On the other hand I do like to go to movies and it is the only way we get to go. I’m movie starved because I have a six-year old. I’m so starved I salivate at the thought of a good animated film. Okay, okay, I did the same thing before M-ito was born. I like animated films – always have – only now I have someone to see them with. So this is good.

Here’s the deal. We went to see Beverly Hills Chichuaua on my birthday. We watched the first half hour in our seats, with M-ito peeking through my fingers whenever he got scared – which was often. But I really shouldn’t say he got scared. It’s more like he got afraid for the characters (not wanting anything bad to happen to them), not necessarily afraid for himself. My son is very empathetic. He worries about people he comes to care about whether they’re dogs, animated characters, film characters, or real humans. We then get up, say, “excuse me,” to all the people we have to pass by to get from our seats to the aisle, then head towards the exit. We watch the rest of the movie alternating between the space in front of the exit doors and the top of the ramp leading to the seats. There’s a banister along the wall we use for support. I go down on one knee and M-ito sits on my other.

“Do you want to go back to the seats?” I ask.

M-ito shakes his head.

My knees complain but I try not to. I take a few deep breaths and settle in. I see about 80% of the film. I enjoy it. When it’s over, M-ito says he enjoyed it but maybe we should wait to see it on DVD again.

I know the sound bothers him – dolby stereo is great for adults but not for little kids. It overwhelms them and scares them. I can still remember getting the chills when dolby first came out and I watched Alien in a movie theatre in Syosset and heard the tinkling of chains behind me and to the sides just before the Alien took another victim. It scared me as an adult. I know Beverly Hills Chihuaua is not Alien but the sound works just as effectively when an angry dog growls or barks. We all jumped a little in our respective seats. I think the screen is too big – overwhelming and towering. So just to tally things up it’s the screen and the sound and the scary bits worrying about the main characters – the important ones, not the minor ones whom we don’t care about. At least that’s how M-ito explains it to me.

Back at home, we’ve watched Star Wars I, IV, V, and VI about a dozen times each - Clone Wars twice that number of times. M-ito can repeat lines of the movie verbatim.

Yesterday M-ito said, “Can we see Hotel for Dogs?” It’s a new family film that just came out. We saw a preview for it at the movies when we saw Chihuaua.

“Sure,” I say. I’m looking forward to my aisle seat.