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Happy Halloween!

Still Life With Aneurysm

I had an epiphany on Saturday. I realized the bickering was going to kill me.

I'm not even sure what the three boys were at each other about, something to do with whether McDonald's is better than Subway. Whatever else it was, it was the last straw. I stood up and went to the park, where I sat for half an hour, trying to collect myself before I did something that would turn our home into a tourist attraction.

When I got home, I called the kids together. Still squabbling, they joined me at the table.

"Guys," I said, "with your mom back in school, I need more help from you."

"I raked the leaves," snarled the oldest.

"I folded laundry," howled the middle one.

"I fed the dog," shrieked the youngest.

"I appreciate all of that," I said. "I need a different kind of help, though. I need you to stop fighting so much."

Blank stares all around. I might as well have asked them to grow gills.

"Our family's no different than anybody else's," the oldest finally said.

"I assure you that's not true, but that's beside the point," I replied. "I can't stand listening to this anymore. You're killing me. I'm going to have a stroke and I'll die."

"Can I have your iPod when you die?" asked my youngest. His brothers snickered.

"No, I'm going to be buried with it," I said.

"That's stupid," said the middle one. "Why waste an iPod just because you're dead?"

"I have an idea," said the youngest. "If we don't fight for a year, you can take us to Canada!"

Even his brothers looked puzzled by this.

"Canada?" I said. "What are you talking about? Listen, I'm not expecting you to never fight, and I'm not going to bribe you, but you've got to do a better job of getting along. My heart's going to explode."

Whatever. It was time to leave for my youngest's soccer game, so I settled for grudging acknowledgments of room for improvement.

By the time the game ended, the Lovely Bride was home from the library and had been filled in on the earlier conversation by the oldest.

"Do you really think you should tell our children they're killing you?" she asked. "Your lifestyle's going to give you a heart attack some day and the kids will feel guilty for the rest of their lives. They're not bad children."

"They're horrible," I said. "If you look behind their ears I bet you'd find a '666' tattoo."

She rolled her eyes and went to change clothes.

Saturday night was the annual fundraising dinner for our education foundation, a group that raises money to provide scholarships and other assistance to area students. Our school district is relatively large even though it serves a relatively small area. This gives it an unusually prominent place in the community.

A group of us from the neighborhood usually attend together and we know many of the others who come every year, through youth sports or local politics or just shopping at the same grocery. There's a silent auction and an awards ceremony. The mayor makes a speech and comes back to sit with us and we tell him his fly was open and he panics and checks and swears at us. We drink some wine and act like grown-ups and have grown-up conversations, which is something we don't do often enough.

Every year, some of the students perform after dinner. This time the cast of the high school musical performed excerpts from the upcoming show and the choir sang "Hallelujah" and "Amazing Grace." I sat there watching them and thinking What talent there is in our little corner of the world. Afterward I ran into the parents of a boy I coached in soccer a couple of years ago and we got to talking about the choir and when I said, "Holy cow, did you hear that girl's solo," they beamed and told me it was their daughter.

In fact, all around were people who were proud of the kids. Some of them were parents. That's great. Every child deserves a proud parent. A lot of them, though, were retirees and businesspeople and others who weren't related to any of the performers that night, and maybe not even a child or grandchild in school at all. What they had was a belief that young people should get a shot at being good at something.

The evening gave me some perspective on my own boys. They do well in school. They play hard and fair at sports. They're polite to adults and kind to their peers. This weekend the oldest cleaned the house, the youngest handed out campaign literature for a family friend's campaign, and the middle one went out of his way to make a sad little kid laugh. They did these things without being asked, and without complaint, and without expecting anything in return. The bickering still drives me mad, and I still plan to be buried with my iPod, but perhaps my Lovely Bride is right, perhaps they're not bad kids and perhaps they deserve proud parents of their own.

Bon Appétit, Volume 6 - The Candy Man

With Halloween quickly approaching, my children are consumed by only one thought: Arson. To distract them, I have decided to prepare our Halloween treats the old-fashioned way, at home, instead of buying a bag of factory foulness from the local Crapatorium. Here are some of the recipes we'll be using to stay the toast of the neighborhood!

1. Moosie Pops

Carefully trim fat from 1 ounce fresh moose. Sauté until medium rare. Heat three Hall's Mentholyptus Cough Drops until softened. Form cough drops around moose meat. Insert stick and allow to cool. Makes 1 serving.

2. Malted Milk Balls

Coat one 24-ounce package medium-sized balls in yeast. Truss and allow to rise. Microwave on high until balls explode, approximately 4 minutes. Scrape ball pieces into baking dish and dot with 50/50 mixture of margarine and malt. Cook in 300 degree oven until mixture has consistency of asphalt. Form into cubes and serve with crema espesa. Makes 4 servings.

3. Rolled Sugar

Sprinkle rolls with sugar. Eat. Serves 6 1/2.

4. Hard Crack Candy

Purchase one ounce food-grade crack. Cut into eight ball sized servings, reserving lidocaine for future use. Melt two pounds chocolate (60% cacao content) over doubleboiler. Stir in crack and remove from heat. Allow to harden. When arrested, trade name of dealer to police for $50 bill. Use money to buy caramel corn. Serves 3 to 5.

5. Polecat Nougat

Trap one large polecat. Massage gently to extract 3 tbsps. musk. Combine musk with four cups honey, one cup dry mustard, and a tsp. of flounder. Mix on low speed until thoroughly blended. Serve warm over rice or gravel.

I'll Be Damned

Blue Girl's post about funny stories has me thinking about things I've seen. Not funny things so much. More like, "I'll be damned." Stories I like to remember, or better yet to tell to people, or best of all to talk about with the people were there.

For example. Years ago, I lived with a couple other guys in a duplex near downtown. The cops showed up at our front door once with their guns drawn, and another time a tornado touched down on the next block over. Usually, though, it was pretty quiet. There were renters and homeowners and couples and singles and old and young and students and working people and blacks and whites and pretty much everyone else living next to each other and nobody thinking about it much at all.

My roommates and I liked to sit out on the front porch after work. We'd listen to baseball on the radio, have a couple beers and visit with the neighbors. Cars would come and go, especially when the dealer who lived across the street was home, but we were far enough away from the main thoroughfares that it never got too bad.

One night we were doing that, having a beer and a smoke after dinner and talking with the couple who lived in the bottom half of the duplex. It was a lovely evening, that quiet time not long before sunset when neighborhoods seem to settle in on themselves. The young couple who lived two doors down had left to run errands twenty or thirty minutes ago, and I suppose we were waiting on their return as a sign it was time to go inside.

Then, suddenly, the sirens. Fire trucks raced down our street, sliding to a halt in front of the young couple's house. Firefighters poured out, tightening their gear as they ran across the lawn. We stared as they pounded on the door. Getting no answer, one of them pulled back his ax and swung, crash against the door, and crash again and again until the door splintered and broke and they rushed into the house. More noise from inside, more ax swinging, and more shouting. Then nothing. Quiet, for a minute, maybe three.

The firefighters walked out of the house, stopped on the front step. They looked up at the house numbers, at each other, then up at the house numbers again. One of them reached in his pocket, took out a notebook, wrote something on a piece of paper and stuck it on the house, next to the hole where the door used to be. Then they climbed back in their truck and left.

Stunned, we finished our beers. I went in, got us each another, and came down to wait for the neighbors.

Soon enough they returned. Their car pulled up, in front of their house. They got out, walked halfway across their front yard, and stopped. Gaping, slack jawed. They turned and stared at us. We pointed, yelled, "there's a note." They looked, saw it, pulled it down and read it. Went inside. Then nothing. Quiet, for a minute, maybe three.

A light went on in their house. The guy who lived downstairs, a carpenter, stood up, saying, "I better see what they need." He said he'd get us if need be and left. We waited a moment, went upstairs, turned on some music, and every once in a while, I'd catch someone else's eye, and we'd shrug and raise our beer in a toast to things we don't expect.

This Man Walks Into A Trap

Blue Girl's looking for funny stories. Here's a hilarious one.

After a brief stop at home last night so I could cram food down my gullet and let my kids tell me I'm lazy, it was off to a meeting. It's budget time, which meant it went late and I got home after everyone was asleep. I brushed my teeth and went to give my two youngest their goodnight hugs.

Instead of a tender Snag family moment, however, it became one more bloody, hellish milestone. Literally. My Lovely Bride inexplicably decided to buy the youngest boy a lava lamp on Sunday because his first one broke and stained the carpet. With the remarkable good judgment my children display, they'd set it on their bedroom floor, where Katie the Wonder Dog promptly knocked it over with her tail, sending glass shards all over, which got picked up, except for the one stuck in my damn foot.

Going downstairs to find something to staunch the bleeding, I tripped over the laundry basket. The one that was full of clean laundry. More accurately, the one that had been full of clean laundry until someone threw a wet towel on top of it. Good, now I had clothes to wash, again, get me off my lazy ass.

I finally stopped hemorrhaging and dragged myself to bed at 12:30 in the morning. At 5:45 a.m. the clock radio went off, Matchbox Twenty or some crap, at a volume you could hear wherever you're reading this. Adrenaline pumping, I sat up and said to my wife, "Light of my life, whatever in the world is going on?"

"One of the kids must have been playing with the radio last night," she answered.

"Oh those rascals," I said, or words to that effect.

I called a friend of mine this morning and asked him to shoot me in the head. He laughed.

My whole life is a punchline.

Mr. Snag, Your Straitjacket Is Ready

Last night, after finishing the dishes and the laundry and getting the Crockpot going for tonight's dinner, I came downstairs to watch a little television. Silly me. There was the remote lying in the middle of the floor, missing its back and its batteries.

Irritating, but not fatal. Except in our house, where the boys long ago broke the TV set's on/off switch.

This afternoon the kids got home from school and tried to turn on the xBox. No luck. It was unplugged, the power cord hidden.

"What's wrong with this piece of crap?" demanded the middle one. His older brother left, wanting no part of whatever lecture was coming.

"Nothing," I said. "It's turned off until someone finds the back of the remote." As an afterthought, "Watch your language."

Five minutes of looking didn't locate it. Demonstrating admirable resolve, the middle one gave up and left to sell cookie dough and frozen pizza to the neighbors. The class trip to D.C. is next spring.

"This is stupid," said the youngest.

"No it's not," I replied. "I'm tired of throwing money down the drain. You guys break lights, you break televisions, you put holes in the wall. Why should I let you use the xBox? You'll just break that."

"Exactly!" said the youngest, who equates certainty with logic.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"We haven't broken the xBox."

"Right. That's why I unplugged it." I picked up the plastic scimitar he got with his Halloween costume and pretended to behead our dog.

"Stop it!" he shrieked, hurling himself on top of her. "Katie hates you."

"It's mutual," I said. "Why don't you go find the rest of the remote?"

"Why don't you give me the xBox cord"? he asked.

"I need it to keep me alive when I have a stroke," I said.

"I'll unplug you."

"Good. We'll all be happier."

"I'm going to get a scholarship," he said, abruptly changing the subject.

"Really? Where?"

"A baseball school. Arizona or Stanford."

"Super. I'll come live with you."

"You can't. Mom can though. Then I'll be a professional baseball player and I'll change my name."

"You don't need to change your name. I'm going to do that for you."

"To what?" he asked warily.

"I'm not sure yet. Probably Flounder Ploop Ploop."

He glared at me. "How much does a personalized license plate cost?"

"It depends. What do you want it to say?"

"I H8 DAD."

"You're so precious," I said.

The middle one walked in, his sales finished for the day. "I'm precious?" he asked.

"No, you're smelly. Go take a shower."

"I sold $200 worth of stuff today," he said.

"Perfect. You can buy a new remote."

"That's just crazy," he said.

"That's because he's crazy," said the youngest.

"You're right," said his brother. "Let's go find the crazy person's remote."

They went to look. I muttered, "If I'm not crazy I will be soon." Katie heard me and rolled on her back. I scratched her belly with the tip of the sword. At least one of us usually gets what we want.

If You Try To Hug Me, I'll Kill You

I met H. a few years ago. Our youngest sons were on the same team and we'd chat during practices and games, casual talk about our families and jobs.

One night we found ourselves standing next to each other without our kids or wives around. We started telling stories, about being in high school, and college, and what have you. Finally H. stepped back with an admiring expression and said, "You might be the first person I've ever met who would be a bad influence on me."

We've since become fast friends. We like singing loudly, tormenting our children, and whiskey. We've gone ice fishing together. Dressed as pirates, we called bingo for last year's elementary school fundraiser. We're both treating our high cholesterol with an aggressive regimen of salami and cheese. Most important, his wife and mine have gone back to school. They're just happy if we amuse each other and leave them alone.

Our love for singing is accompanied by a love for musicals. We've developed a habit of getting together every other Sunday night or so. We have a couple drinks and watch a show. The first night was at my house, Walk the Line, all well and good until my Lovely Bride came down at 12:30 in the morning to ask why we were singing "Ring of Fire" on a school night and what the hell was wrong with us.

Now we get together at H.'s house. H.'s wife is an awfully good sport. A typical evening has us turning on a movie, pouring a glass from our impressive collection of half-finished bottles of bourbon, and settling in with a nice plate of liver sausage and onion sandwiches. She'll walk through, shudder slightly, and escape as quickly as possible.

This Saturday we got a jump on the week. My oldest son and I spent the afternoon in one of our city's more interesting neighborhoods. We had lunch at a new restaurant, did some shopping at a wine and cheese store and a Ukrainian deli. It would have been a shame not to share this food and H. happily invited us over.

My Lovely Bride was studying so it was just H., his wife, another couple, my oldest son and I, sitting at the kitchen table, eating and talking. Eventually the conversation turned to hunting. My hunting is pretty much confined to threatening my dog and chasing pheasants around once or twice a decade. H. is much more serious about it and is planning on going this year with a mutual friend of ours. He asked if I wanted a deer if they got lucky.

"Sure," I said. "I like venison. Where do you get yours processed?"

"I do it myself," he said. "Out in the garage. If I get one, we'll do it together."

My oldest shook his head. He's seen us together. H.'s wife has too, and this was her garage.

"Listen," she said, "if you two morons think you're going to splatter blood all over the garage, you're wrong. I remember the time my husband dragged a dead deer through the back yard. There were blood stains on the ground until the next snow fall. I told him if one of the neighbors went missing he was going to have a time explaining it to the police."

H. waved his hand. "We'll be fine. Hang it up, gut it, make some sausage. It'll be fun."

"Fun," said his wife. "It's fun all right explaining to the kids why there's something bloody dangling under the tarp in the garage."

I took a sip from my drink. "This is great. We'll make a sign that says 'Bates Motel' and nail it to the front of the garage. Hey, that gives me an idea for this year's bingo night." H. and I are chairing the bingo committee this year. How nice for the school.

"Vampires," H. said, pouring a drink for himself. "We'll be vampires." His youngest son looked up with alarm from the other room. He hadn't heard the whole conversation but he's already worried about bingo. A statement like "We'll be vampires" didn't do much to help.

H.'s wife had had enough. She stood and told their child it was time for bed. H. and I talked a bit more about bingo night, then the other couple stood to go, I gathered my kid, and we all said our goodbyes.

On the way home, my son asked me, "Are you really going to be vampires?"

"Probably," I said.

"Are you really going to butcher a deer with H.?"

"Probably. I hope so."

He sat in silence the rest of the way home. I'm not sure he understands my friendships. I'm not sure I do. It doesn't matter. I enjoy them, and that's what I hope my kids see and learn, that friendships don't need a reason, sometimes they just are.