Mr. Snag Goes To Washington

Soon I slip the surly bonds of the Snag family and head to Washington for a few days. I love the place; the towering skyscrapers, the compassionate conservatives, the shit-covered monuments. There's something for everyone.

My work takes me there every year and I try to make the most of it. Most of my days are spent at meetings and luncheons, which typically feature at least one high profile guest. For example, one year I had the opportunity to hear John Boehner, (R-Crazytown), another Steve Case ("Holy fuck, they fell for it!"). Last year I moderated a panel discussion on "Putting Audiences to Sleep: A Practical Perspective."

Unfortunately, not all is fun and games and in the evenings I often find myself at one of the city's more popular eating establishments, wishing I had the expense account of an investment banker. Nevertheless, I'm usually able to eke out a couple of nice meals, even if I have to pocket the bread rolls for the next morning's breakfast in order to save enough money for some drinks. This year, as I have nothing more strenuous on the agenda than pretending to listen, I hope to get a snootful and stand screaming in faux-Croatian outside the White House until escorted away.

I love the museums too. My favorites are the Hirshhorn, the American Art Museum, and the graffiti exhibit at the Metro's Navy Yard station, although I think it safe to say I will never see anything I love as much as Philadelphia's Mütter Museum and its collection of medical oddities (motto - "Disturbingly Informative").

The only downside to this is I hate flying. It's not that I refuse to get on a plane or have to get drunk or medicated first. It's more a question of spending takeoffs and landings praying to the Supreme Being in whom I don't really believe and who's been hosing me on the lottery for years. (My best friend is convinced he's going to die in a plane crash and the only thing they'll find of him is his charred wallet containing a winning lottery ticket. I do not live my neuroses in solitude.)

I've come up with a solution, though, a theory that reading during takeoff suspends my disbelief in the impossibility of flight. It's this suspension that prevents me from encountering the end suffered by Wile E. Coyote when he looks down after running off a cliff. As if to assert his contempt for atheists, however, God typically seats me next to a human Chatty Cathy who wants to risk all of our lives by talking to me about some nonsense in a way that would cause me physical pain if I was at a tea party, much less shoved inside a cylindrical tube of horror. So, up we go into the wild blue turbulence while I grin inanely at my seat companion and chew on the inside of my cheek for courage.

Meanwhile, my hellish brood will be starting school as I pace the linoleum floors of our local aerostation. As one can imagine, my Lovely Bride is less than thrilled at the prospect of spending the first week of school alone with our children, whose attitudes are nothing to write home about under the best of circumstances. That is, in fact, my one consolation, knowing as the plane turns and banks and I stare with wistful panic at the receding ground below, it is worse down there.

Counting Down

Today was pleasant. I slept in, called the office and pretended I know enough to second-guess an actuary, and headed off to elementary school open house day.

Contrary to AG's assertion, our school does not use a catwalk in its hiring process, but it was nice to meet my youngest's teacher. She's an ex-securities trader who changed careers a couple of years ago. She's got the enthusiasm of someone new to the job and the perspective of someone who's been around for a while. We chatted for a bit while my boy and his two buddies M. and V. roamed around the room looking at stuff and trying to act cool. I told her she needed to watch out for these hoodlums and she laughed and said she'd already been warned by their teachers from last year.

Next we went to M.'s classroom. Again, they wandered around the room while I introduced myself as M.'s other father. This seemed to confuse the nice young man who will be teaching him this year, although he struggled gamely to stay on task until I explained I was just a friend of the family.

Last, we visited V.'s teacher. V.'s a good boy, the son of immigrants, hardworking, polite, intelligent, almost a caricature of the immigrant experience. I sidled up to her.

"He seems like a nice kid, but he swears like a sailor," I said.

She snickered. V. blushed and rolled his eyes.

"He gets it from his mother," I continued. V.'s mother, a dentist, is perhaps the nicest human being I've ever met. Her son hid in the hallway for the rest of the visit.

My work here done, I took the boys out to play ball with their new Accubat, picking up my middle son and his friend on the way. I calculated recently that with what I've spent on sports registration fees and equipment over the last month, including a pair of deeply discounted Wades, I could have gone to France for a week. By myself, which only makes the loss more bitter. And it's not like I'm raising Einstein here. If' I'm lucky, I'll get a Borat out of the group.

Anyway, Coach P. has the week off and he and I took turns hurling balls at them down at the park in the hopes of making someone cry. All well and good until my oldest needed a ride to the bus to his cross-country meet. On the way I try to make small talk. A mistake with a teenager.

"Why do you have to be stupid?" he asked.

Trying to avoid provoking him right before a meet, I said, "Sorry."

"Just stop talking," he said. "Nobody wants to hear you."

I love you son.

After several hours more of abuse, tonight's soccer practice rolled around. I took my youngest and half the other kids and worked on defense with them, trying to get them to understand they can't clot around the ball.

"Look," I said, "I know it's like a delicious juicy apple, but you can't all chase it. There are lots of apples and you'll all get one during the season. If you don't stop, Coach Snag is going to cry."

One of the kids on the team is someone who I coached in baseball this year. I looked over in time to see his mother the family therapist whispering to one of the other parents. Way to go, I thought, you've already started creeping out the parents.

Oh well, so be it. I may be leaving a trail of heartbreak and social service files in my wake, but I had a good day.

Summer Draws To A Close

Tomorrow (today actually, but I'm still awake so it feels like tomorrow) I'm taking my youngest and two of his buddies to meet their teachers. I'll be working at home in the morning and all the rest of the parents will be scattered around at their own jobs, so it's off to school for me at noon. We'll make sure the kids know where their lockers are, say hi to the teachers. The boys are nearing the end of their elementary school career so none of this should be a surprise.

I don't mind doing this; in fact, I enjoy it. It's fun walking around the school before classes start, looking at the rooms full of butterfly posters and cut-out numbers and bright signs put together by teachers hoping for a nice year.

There is no chance that my father would have done this. None. First of all, he worked, my mother didn't, outside the house anyway, and the idea of taking a day off to meet his son's teacher would have never occurred to him. It wouldn't have occurred to any of the other dads on the block either. They were good guys and all, but school was mom stuff, to the extent anything besides grades was the concern of parents at all.

Second, even if he'd somehow gotten roped into doing it, say my mother fell into a temporary coma, it would have been the two of us. If my friends needed to go, they'd go with their own parents. If their parents died or something, he'd have fed and housed them, but take them to meet their teachers? That's crazy talk.

I like that things have changed. I like that my neighbors ask me to do this for them, just as they've taken my kids to everything from tryouts to back-to-school shopping. I like that I'll show up at our little local school with my neighbors' kids and we'll walk around and see what there is to see and then we'll go home and have lunch with another dad who has the day off and his kid and then we'll go play some ball and it won't seem crazy, it will just be a good day.

My Friends In Advertising Would Be So Proud

On reflection, I see last night's post could be read as referring to a family budget discussion. Ha! That would require such a discussion take place. No, this was about an organizational budget, one that affects people outside of my precious bloodline, people who aren't as lucky as my hellish brood.

Case in point. Tonight it was time to argue about shoes.

My two youngest are both trying out for traveling basketball this year. The middle one played last year and presumably will again. The youngest, it's the first year he's eligible. Notwithstanding the best efforts of my Lovely Bride and I to get him to stick with in-house for another year or two, he won't be swayed.

For those of you who don't know the difference, and there's no reason you should unless you've somehow found yourself parenting a bunch of kids (in which case you have my sympathy), in-house is more casual, one game a week against other teams from our community. Traveling is more competitive, involving tournaments all over the metropolitan area. It's expensive and exhausting. I like watching the games, but at one time in my life I used to like going to concerts and being an adult. So it goes.

Anyway, traveling basketball it is, if they make the teams. Which, in the tiny little brain of my youngest, apparently demands the most expensive shoes.

"I need Wade 2.0s," he told me when I got home from a late meeting tonight. "For basketball. Traveling, you know."

"Those cost $80. Not going to happen."

He threw himself down on the stairs. "Don't you want me to play basketball?"

"Your mother just wrote out a check for registration fees that cost more than my first car."

"You'd just spend it on beer," he said. Smart kid. "Besides, eighty dollars isn't that much," he said. Which tells you something unpleasant about my kids.

"Fine, then you pay for them," I replied. "I just bought you new cleats for fall soccer." A season, I might add, that I once again got talked into coaching. Another two nights a week I won't be going to concerts.

"I don't have enough money," he said.

"No shit," I answered, prompting a glare from my Lovely Bride. "I don't have enough money either."

"What am I supposed to do?" he asked.

"Knit some goddamned shoes, I don't care," I answered.

"Mom," he shrieked. "Dad's being a jerk."

"Alright, alright," I said. "Let's go look and see what's for sale on the internet."

So we did. I saw a few things more in the price range I was thinking, and we'll go shopping in person this weekend. In the meantime I offered to get him some pink Crocs, just to piss him off. It worked. When we go to the stores this weekend, I'll offer him cheap plastic shoes with cartoon characters and he'll demand Wade 2.0s. We'll eventually compromise somewhere in the middle. He may not learn much about basketball or teamwork or sportsmanship, but he'll damned well understand negotiation by the time we're done.

The Social Contract

Tonight we did what we've done too many nights. Scrambled for money to pay for things that are essential. Not essential in the sense of "Boy, too bad if we can't do this." Essential in the sense of "People will die if we don't do this."

We found the money, I think, I hope. To pay for the essential things, anyway. The nonessentials, well, that's a little harder.

We talked about that a lot this evening. What it means to cut back on the things that make people happy, that make it seem as though there's more to life than waking up and slogging off to work and then slogging back home to sit inside, alone, watching television. These amenities, art and parks and celebrations, they may be nonessential but they give meaning to what we do.

For a long time, it seemed as if that didn't matter. Our humanity measured with a balance sheet, our dreams only important if they could be patented. It's changing, I think, I hope. People are remembering what it's like have friends and neighbors, to count on them and let them count on us. Remembering why the nonessentials matter so much to us.

In the meantime, we'll do what we can.

Eating Good In The Woods

As you can see, I spent a long weekend with some of my buddies. We've been doing this for eight or nine years now, a small group of us at a cabin, fishing, watching movies, and discussing issues of national and international importance. Such as: "Which tastes better, bourbon or scotch?" and "Goddamnit, where's the fucking remote?" and "Holy Christ, what's that smell?"

While much about these trips remains shrouded in mystery, at least as far as our spouses are concerned, I can pull back the curtain just a little to give Friends of Befouled a quick glimpse of life at the cabin. There's no better way to do that than to describe a typical year's dinner menus. There are other meals of course, sodden breakfasts of coffee and meat, festive lunches of beer and meat, but those are an afterthought really. After all, as Plato liked to say, "Dinner makes the man."

Thursday Night

We typically don't get to the cabin until fairly late in the day so we try to stick with something simple. In other words, meat. As in years past, this evening's meal consisted of a side of beef and a gallon of lamb, all carefully passed briefly over a fire and washed down with several flagons of liquor. There may have been some asparagus and a potato somewhere in the kitchen during this time period. I don't really recall.

Friday Night

Friday night was devoted to a celebration of our skills as hunter-gatherers. A substantial amount of fish, culled from the lake on the basis of an algorithm incorporating deliciousness and catchability, was placed in a pile, coated with a batter made of malt-based beverages and milled grains, then fried until no longer repulsive. It was served with a cherry tomato and liquor.

Saturday Night

To celebrate our communion with nature, we started with an appetizer of seared lamprey over a salad of milfoil and buckthorn. Our main course was a freshly snared and roasted osprey, stuffed with zebra mussels and native morels and glazed with a reduction of bear juice. Dessert was candied squirrel face. Flights of whiskey accompanied each course.

My Fair Walleye

I'm going fishing in the mornin'!
Yee haw! The lures are gonna fly.
Put on a bobber!
I'll catch a lunker!
But get me to the lake on time!

I got to be there in the mornin',
Stock up the leeches and the beer.
Fish, let me catch ya,
Then I'll fillet ya.
But get me to the lake on time!

If I am workin',
Shove me out the door!
If I am passed out,
Pick me off the floor!

For I'm going fishing in the mornin'.
Yee haw! The lures are gonna fly.
Open the throttle,
And pass me the bottle!
Just get me to the lake on time!