Entry 479: No Honor Among (Child) Thieves

Had some parental challenges this week having to do with thievery.  Lil' S1 is really into Pokémon, and he likes to bring his cards and books to school.  I'm not in favor of this, for reasons that will become obvious (and probably already are), but I let it go, because it's not a fight I want to have every morning, because it's a chance for him to learn how to take care of stuff, and because after-care is the only time he sees some of the kids who are also into Pokémon.  So, the other day, he came home in tears, because one of the kids "stole" his Pokémon guide book -- this thick catalog of Pokémon profiles.  He said it was Andy (not his real name), some kid I didn't know.  So, I get annoyed, because I didn't really want him to take that book to school in the first place, and also because I was torn between whether or not I should intervene.  Should I talk to the after-care supervisor and maybe Andy's parents (whomever they are), and try to sort it out, or let him figure it out on his own and maybe learn a lesson the hard way?

I decide to initially take a hands-off approach.  I told him to try to get Andy to give him the book back by himself.  So, the next day he comes home and says Andy told him he didn't take it, and he believes him.  I ask him why he thought Andy took it in the first place, and he gives me a byzantine story with myriad unimportant details and a half dozen pointless digressions.  But I do my best to sort through the web, and when I do, it starts to sound more like he lost the book -- or most likely he forgot about the book, left it somewhere, and when he came back for it later, it was gone.  Probably some kid did take it, maybe even Andy, but that's just a guess.  Lil' S1's name is written all over the book, so there's an outside chance a good Samaritan found it and will return it to him, but that's unlikely.  I think this is a case of "finders keepers, losers weepers," literally.

The thing is I don't feel much sympathy for Lil' S1, because he later told me that he did almost the exact same thing to a different kid.  This other kid left one of his Pokémon cards behind, and Lil' S1 pocketed it and took it home instead of giving it back to him.  I was extremely disappointed when I heard this, and I told him he had to give it back.  He said that the kid would punch him.  We went back and forth for while, but he insisted that this kid would hit him if he found out he took it.  I'm extremely skeptical of this, but part of growing up is self-preservation, so that's something else he has to navigate on his own.  (Although, it's strange that he has enough sense to not want to get beat up for returning the card, but not enough sense to not take it in the first place.)  I mean, it seems incredibly unlikely to me, but what if this kid is super aggressive, and he does beat him up, because I made him give the card back.  Is that good parenting?



Again, I was in a dilemma about what to do.  Ultimately, I punted.  I put the card in his backpack, and I told him that I think he should give it back, but that it was up to him.  I haven't checked yet, but I guarantee you that card is still where I put it.  No seven-year-old has that type of rectitude.  Fine.  He can have a "pass" for this one.  (It's a single Pokémon card, not exactly grand larceny.)  But, I'm going to be bothering him everyday for a while to make sure he doesn't do it again.  He's going to get sick of me talking about it -- nuisance parenting, that's my strategy.

To add to the story, a few nights ago Lil' S1 woke up in the middle of the night crying for S.  I went in to see what was wrong, and he just kept on saying, "I don't know."  I wonder if it's related to all this Pokémon stuff.  I think he knows what he did was wrong.  I think that's why he told me about it.  It might have been a confession, or at least he wanted to gauge my reaction.  Maybe this has been weighing on him.  He will also say things to S sometimes about what a bad kid he is.  When I was his age I had a super guilty conscience.  I still do, to some degree, but not like when I was a kid.  I wonder if he's the same way.

Unfortunately, a lot of this is stuff he's just going to have to figure out on his own.  As a parent, you always want to help your kid, but you can't think their thoughts for them.  (And would you want to, even if you could?)  You can give them food, shelter, and love, but other than that I think they have to pretty much do the rest.  Maybe you can give them a bit of advice here or there, but that's about it.  On that front, my current goal is to convey to Lil' S1 two things: 1) Don't take valuable stuff to school; 2) Don't steal.  If he learns that from these incidents, it will be a huge success.

Until next time...

Entry 478: Promotional Material

I haven't been able to post anything here for a few weeks, because I've busy with work.  It's a strange, unsettling feeling, being busy with work, but it might become the new norm.  We just landed a huge (by our standards) contract, and it means more work for me, for everybody, so for me too.  It also means, I've been told, a promotion.  Over the next year or so, we are hiring more staff in my department, and I'm going to be the director of the team.  I'll get more money and an office, which is cool (the former more so than the latter).

The work itself, eh, I'm not super excited about it.  I'm not unexcited about it, but I'm not stoked either.  I'm open to it -- that's the best way to put it.  It's likely going to be a lot more managing and a lot less in-the-weeds work.  I've never really been a manager before, but from what I know about myself, I think I will like it less than what I do now.  But I'll still get to do some of what I do now, and when we do expand, there's really no way I can stay at my current position anyway.  Somebody has to be the department director, and I'm literally the only person in the world who can do it without a substantial learning curve.  Even if I said no, I would end up doing it anyway, because I'd be the only person in the office who could do it for, like, the two years.  So, if I going to end up doing anyway, I might as well do it right and get the benefits that come along with.

Also, I might like it -- I dunno.  It's a way I can come out of my comfort zone a little bit and try something slightly different without totally tipping my life over.  I actually kind of enjoyed negotiating the parameters of my new position with my bosses.  (Advocating for yourself and getting what you asked for feels pretty good.)  And it's fun to look over résumés of prospective hires.  Plus, I'm going to get to "represent" the company more now, which is working out in my favor in the short-term, because they're sending me to Seattle for a conference, so I'll get a free trip to see friends.  Although, it's just luck the conference is in Seattle.  If it was in Akron, Ohio, I wouldn't be as excited about it.  (No offense to the fine people of Akron.  I rocked a Zips shirt for many years -- it was one of my favorite tees.)

In other news, things have just been floating along normally here at the G&G household.  The kids seem to be doing well at their new school, and the commute (five minutes driving, 20 minutes walking) is easy on my schedule.  Lil' S1 is kinda obsessed with Pokémon and Super Smash Bros.  He pretty much just wants to play Nintendo whenever he's home.  He's pretty good too.  He beats me about two-thirds of the time, maybe more.  S isn't really into him playing video games.  She says it's because I get caught up playing them too, and then she has to be the "bad guy" to get us to quit.  It's father-son bonding, I tell her.  Actually, that might be part of it: She feels a bit left out when we play.

Lil' S2 is kinda into video games, but doesn't have the motor skills to play yet.  His brother got him to play against him once, and of course, he showed no mercy and just destroyed him.  He started crying, but it was kinda cute because he said, "I'm only four!  I don't know how to push the buttons right yet!"

Let's see... what else... S and I started watching a new show, which is probably the most exciting other thing I have to report.  It's called Black Monday, and it's set at a sleazy stock brokerage in the months immediate prior to the big Big Monday crash of 1987.  Don Cheadle and Regina Hall play the two principal owners of the firm, and they are both frickin' hysterical.  Andrew Rannells and Paul Scheer are also really funny in it.  Kadeem Hardison makes an appearance as Regina Hall's husband, and I couldn't believe it was him when I saw his name.  He's unrecognizable from his days as Dwayne Wayne.  He definitely put on some weight, but facially I didn't even recognize him.  I mean, Sean Astin put on some weight too, and I instantly knew it was him watching Stranger Things.

One thing about the show, however, is that I can only handle one episode a night.  It's not a binge-watch for me.  The excesses of the '80s are a key theme, and comedy styling mirrors this, so the jokes are rapid-fire and offensive.  It feels hedonistic to watch.  Also, it's one of those shows where nobody is a good person, so you can't really root for anybody.  But what it lacks in humanity, it makes up for in hilarity.  They throw in a lot of pop culture Easter eggs, which mostly go over S's head ('80s pop culture isn't her jam), but which I greatly appreciate.  My favorite one so far (paraphrase):

Person 1: I'm going to go as Darth Vader for Halloween.  I just got the mask.  It's the actual one from the film!
Person 2: What?!  You got a Darth Vader mask used in a Star Wars movie?!
Person 1: No.  It's the one from the rape scene in Revenge of the Nerds.

Now that is totally problematic comedy gold.

Until next time...

Entry 477: The Fake End of Summer

Labor Day is often considered the end of summer, but due to global warming, the hot days just keep on coming.  Forecasts have us in the 90s next week.  This used to be my favorite time of the year weather-wise -- when it's t-shirt and jeans during the day and a light jacket at night -- but that period inches back a little bit more with each passing year, and it lasts a little bit longer.  In a few years, we are going to be trick-or-treating in tank tops.  My boys will go as cavemen every year, because it will be too hot to wear anything other than a loincloth.  It's depressing when good weather makes you feel so bad.

We had a nice holiday weekend, at least.  On Saturday, S and Lil' S1 went to the National Book Fair, which they thoroughly enjoyed, and I took Lil' S2 on a "hike" to Rock Creek with a friend and his five-year-old twins.  It's probably good to hang out with them once in while without Lil' S1 there, as he tends to just dominate the activities.  This way they can do more of the "little kid things" that they probably want to do, but don't do, because Lil' S1 has them doing something else.  For instance, after we went to the creek, we went to a playground, and everybody spent almost the entire time on the swings.  That likely wouldn't have happened with Lil' S1 there, because he gets bored on the swings, and he would have convinced everybody to do want he wants.

After we got back, we watched The Goonies, which was not my choice.  It's a nostalgia-inducing cult classic for people my age, but it's a pretty terrible movie, and it has some problematic parts for little kids.  For example, there's a relatively graphic scene in which Chunk is trapped in a freezer with the corpse of a murder victim, and the gag is that the body keeps falling on him.  And how do you even explain Sloth to a little kid?  Oh, he's just a severely disfigured, intellectually disabled guy who gets imprisoned and tortured by his family because he's different.  That's all.  Interestingly, however, that wasn't what Lil' S1 was bothered by -- he didn't like how the other kids treated Chunk.  At one point he asked me, "Are they mean to Chunk the entire movie?"  And I replied, "Yeah, actually, they kinda are."  But, he liked the movie, and I learned about Lupe Ontiveros, so overall it was a success, I guess.

The next day, Lil' S2 went to a friend's house and then S took him out to run some errands, so I switched things up and spent most the day alone with Lil' S1.  I promised S that I wouldn't just play video games with him the entire time, so we played a long game of Monopoly instead.  I like Monopoly, but it's so long, and it's not much fun with two players, especially when one of them doesn't yet understand how to evaluate the properties on the game correctly.  He gets excited when you land on his single property for $15, even if it means you skipped his corner with a bunch of houses and hotels.  But at least he gets to practice his arithmetic and think strategically and whatnot.  It probably is more intellectually stimulating then playing video games, and it's definitely better than watching iPad.  (Also, we did play the Nintendo Switch a bit, because a new game came -- Super Smash Bros.  It's a more ornate, more cartoonish Street Fighter II.  It's pretty fun.)

When it comes to Lil' S2's learning I've gotten pretty into the technique espoused in the book Range, which is basically that it's almost always better in the long-run for the student to suffer through a task or problem on their own, even if they do it "wrong" and get the wrong answer, than it is for them to be guided by a teacher to do things the "right way" and get the right answer.  There's way more value in exploration than there is in learning the "proper technique."  This so rings true to me based on my own experience.  I got really good at math in college by sitting in a quiet room by myself and staring at a bunch of seemingly incomprehensible symbols until they made sense to me.  And I inadvertently built the foundation for thinking this way at a younger age by not being tethered to the "right way" of doing things.  I had an absent computer science teacher in high school*, and I wonder if that actually helped me, because it forced me to do everything on my own.  So, I'm trying to take a hands-off approach with my kids.  S isn't as zealous about this idea as I am, but she seems to be mostly on board, so we shall see.

*He was in some sort of course to be an administrator so he frequently missed class and his substitute literally didn't know how to code.

Anyway, we capped of Labor Day weekend with a terrific day at this water park owned by the city of Gaithersburg, MD.  I had no idea this place even existed, but we went for the birthday party of our friends' kid, and it was so nice.  It wasn't crowded at all, and the water slides were actually pretty fun.  Lil' S1 is finally tall enough for thing like this, and he must have gone down those slides 15 times.  You could basically just go down and go right back up without waiting in line.  I went down a few times, but I'm mostly too old for that shit.  (Later in the day, I actually felt kinda seasick from it -- pathetic but true.)  Lil' S1 is pretty good in the water in general.  He still doggy paddles a lot, and he looks like he's struggling, but then he will submerge himself and swim underwater when he needs a big burst.  It can be nerve-wracking to watch, but it's somehow effective.

Lil' S2 is making progress too, but he still has a long way to go.  The thing about that kid, though, is that he's pretty much fearless, when it comes to things like that.  He jumps in the water and tries to swim, but he just can't do it yet.  He'll get the hang of it though.  Very few kids learn before five and most (like his brother) don't learn until six or seven.

Alright, I gotta cut this post off kinda abruptly.  The boys are at a friends' house, and I have to go pick them up.

Until next time...

[Lil' S1 took his book outside this morning to try to "sell it."  (I think he wanted S to buy him something online.)  But he didn't find any takers, so he just sat down and started reading it instead, and his brother decided to join him.]