Family News in Brief -- August ’09

GENERIC SCHOOL SUPPLIES FOUND IN KID'S BAG
On Sun., Aug. 2 at the local Target store, I allegedly purchased generic glue sticks and generic scissors for my 6-year-old son instead of the name brands his school insisted my wife and I buy for him by the time first grade started on Aug. 12. The list of school supplies that officials sent home clearly advised against generic brands. “I didn’t buy anything generic,” I said on the first day of school when I was brought into the principal’s office to explain the generic products found in my boy’s backpack. “I do request that someone come forward to give me legal assistance.” School officials eventually found the name brand supplies buried in my boy’s bag. Investigators suspect my son put his generic home supplies in his backpack in addition to the name brand supplies my wife and I bought and packed for him. I was released shortly after my detainment.

FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM OFFERS BIG THRILLS
There will be plenty of thrills in my 6-year-old son’s first grade class this year, with bulletin boards unlike those in kindergarten, a newly designed alphabet on the wall, a supply holder for each kid’s desk and even a new teacher. My son, who helped his mom (a teacher) set up her classroom during summer break, understands the work that goes into building a successful learning area, and he decided to say something to his teacher about her class. “The classroom looked really nice and I didn’t want to hold in the words and just think about it, so I told my teacher,” he said. “And then she said, ‘Thank you, kind sir.’” My son then learned that his first grade classroom was located next to the “big kids” playground, where he found out he’d get to play this year. He asked his teacher if learning could take place out there with the fresh air instead of inside her stuffy classroom.

SOCCER PRACTICE OFF TO ROLLING STOP
Every soccer team’s priority in preseason is to finish with the understanding that you can’t kick the ball into the wrong goal. Earlier this month, my 6-year-old son and his fellow teammates hit the soccer field running in various directions. “A cat ran onto the field, and we all chased it and tried to pet it,” my son said following his first day of practice. According to my boy’s coach, putting your hands on any animal that meanders onto the field is worse than putting your hands on the soccer ball during play. Once the cat left the field, team members were asked to come up with team names. Suggestions flew at the coach from all directions until my son blurted out the name The Soccers, which led to a moment of confusion and silence, followed by blatant disregard and a storm of good ideas. When practice ended, my son showed his mom how sweaty he’d become, wiping his head all over her arm.

‘BEING COOL' SACRIFICED IN HEROIC DISPLAY OF GOOD CHOICE MAKING
Yesterday, my 6-year-old son risked his social standing at school when he committed an act of good choice making in the name of Kelso’s Choices, a group of actions to choose from when faced with small problems on the playground. Bystanders said that Kelso, a fictitious do-gooder frog, would’ve been proud. “An older kid called the Picarella kid an idiot, and Picarella just ignored the older kid,” said second-grader Billy. “That’s the first choice on the Kelso’s Choices chart. Then, when the older kid kept picking on him, the Picarella kid tried talking it out, which is another Kelso’s Choice. That’s when Picarella tattled.” My son has yet to comment on the matter, but later in the day, his classmates said he upheld his “cool” social standing when he chased a frog, not unlike Kelso, threatening to turn it into a science project in the name of good fun.

-August 2009

Boy Talks All the Time

PICARELLA HOUSEHOLD -- My son started talking when he was about 2 years old, and now, at age 6, he continues to talk and talk and talk -- even in his sleep -- because, he said, God made him that way.

Sources suggest the trait comes from the parents.

“He gets it from me,” my wife said in a statement yesterday. “I talked a lot as a kid.”

According to my mom, however, any kind of parent can have any kind of kid. She knows, she said, because I was a quiet kid and my younger brother never shut up.

“I’m not worried about where he gets it so much as I’m worried it’s gonna hurt him in the future,” I told bystanders moments after a lengthy game of Shhhhh with my son on his first day of school last week. “Is my son gonna be the kid that other kids constantly pick on? Will he be unable to focus on his studies when he gets to college? Will he have a hard time getting a job later on in life because the interviewer never gets a chance to ask the first question because my son is too busy talking about how he’s doing, what he did earlier that day, how long it took him to get to the interview, what happened in the parking lot, the details of the elevator ride up to the interview and what it was like waiting in the reception area for the interview?”

Past classmates reported that my son’s talking never bothered them before. According to many of them, my kid is actually entertaining.

“He talks a lot, but at least he doesn’t have bad breath,” said former kindergartener Joey, who spent considerable time with my boy on the school playground last year. “He used to talk a lot about eating vegetables so he could grow faster and be able to ride ‘The Mummy’ at Universal Studios. He also talked a lot about polishing his toy car and making it really shiny like a mirror. And then he talked a lot about planet Mars and how you have to wear a helmet there -- but not a bike helmet.”

That was kindergarten, though. My boy’s now a first-grader, and according to reports, kids must learn not to speak for the sole sake of making noise by the first grade or they run the risk of falling behind in school.

My wife’s friend said her younger brother read about an incident online where a woman brought her daughter to the doctor for a chronic cough and found out, through a random conversation, that talkative children -- not hers -- struggle in school because they’re talking and not listening, and thus not learning.

“When hearing this,” said my wife’s friend, who wishes to remain anonymous, “my brother told his little boy that talking -- at home and in the classroom -- would be off limits during the really important school years.”

After careful deliberation, my wife and I decided to seek out other advice.

“Should we discourage his need to talk all the time?” my wife asked area parents on the first day of school last week. “Should we just politely ask others to ignore his noise? Or should we talk our kid’s ear off and see how he likes it?”

Nobody had an answer. But my wife and I noticed our boy’s silence as we discussed the matter.

“We actually caught him not talking for a change,” my wife said. “We think it was because he was nervous on the first day of school, and that he was just afraid to talk. So my husband and I took him aside and asked him how he felt about being quiet. He said he liked it. We asked him to keep it up.”

Sources announced yesterday that, for the past two weeks, in the face of multiple opportunities for our kid to talk, he’s remained practically speechless.

It’s now believed that the kid is stonewalling everyone, his parents included.

According to reports, however, kids must learn to speak up by the first grade or they run the risk of falling behind in school.

-August 2009

Smugglin' Ain't Easy

My 6-year-old son and I are in the car out in front of the house. I open a bag of chocolate chip cookies -- one of our favorite treats, second only to M&Ms. I let the sweet aroma fill the car.

ME: You want some of these delicious cookies?

MY SON: Yeah!

ME: Then you gotta help me sneak ‘em into the house without Mommy catching us. You help me do that, and you can have three whole cookies. How’s that sound?

MY SON: You gotta be kidding, right, Daddy? Whaddaya think I am -- a baggage handler? What’d I do for you on Halloween, when I handed over those Milky Way bars? What was that -- a game of Candyland or somethin’?

ME: No kid of mine is gonna talk to me like that. I don’t have to give you any cookies at all. I could’ve had Grandpa call Mommy on the phone to distract her while I snuck these cookies inside.

MY SON: So why didn’t you? And who are you calling a kid? I’m 6 years old. I’ll be 6-and-a-half in a few months.

ME: Oh, so you’re a big shot now, huh? You think you can make it in the big world all by yourself?

MY SON: You kidding, right?

ME: OK, big shot. You’re so big. There’s a bag of M&Ms I’ve got stashed in my desk. Pure milk chocolate. I want you to sneak these cookies into the house all by yourself, and if you’re as big of a big shot as you say you are, get these cookies into my bottom desk drawer without Mommy catching you. You do that, and that bag of M&Ms in my desk is yours. Do you know how to handle Mommy?

MY SON: Sure. But it’s gonna cost you more than a bag of M&Ms and three cookies. Sneaking sweets into the house is no duck walk anymore. Mommy’s like the Navy. She’s got EC 2s with satellite tracking. She sees everything. And that’s ‘cause she’s serious about eating healthy. So I want the M&Ms and I also want half the cookies in that bag -- not just three.

ME: You’ve got guts making demands like that.

MY SON: In this world, Daddy, you gotta have guts. When you got guts, you get the power. And when you got the power, you get the sweets. Me? I just want what’s coming to me.

ME: And what’s coming to you, son?

MY SON: The world, Daddy, and all the cookies and candy in it.

I close the bag of cookies and drop it into my son’s lap. I step out of the car.

ME: Meet me in your room in 10 minutes. That’s when you’ll get your M&Ms and your cookies. But if Mommy catches you, you won’t see another treat ‘til high school.

MY SON: I’m scared.

I leave the kid in the car and wander into the house. He isn’t far behind with the cookies.

MY WIFE: Where’s our son?

ME: I dunno.

The kid enters, cookies in his hands.

MY WIFE: Where’d you get those cookies?

I wonder what the kid is up to, cookies out in the open. His idea of smuggling is different than mine.

MY SON: Daddy gave me the cookies.

I can’t figure the kid’s strategy, but he’s got me fooled for sure.

MY SON: Daddy wanted me to sneak these into the house. He also has a big bag of M&Ms in his desk.

And this is the nightmare I have, just before I decide not to buy cookies at the store. I pick up a gallon of milk and a book of stamps -- the only items I’m supposed to get -- and I head home.

-August 2009

Love Hurts

Life was good.

And then my wife wanted to rearrange the living room furniture.

“We can’t rearrange anything in this place,” I told my wife. “It’s too small in here to do anything.”

You see, we have one of those step-saver homes -- the ones newlyweds were gobbling up a few years ago when the housing market was booming. (A step-saver home, for those not familiar, is a home that allows you to save steps due to its extreme compactness -- an advantage, according to our real estate agent.) So, due to the size of our house and the size of our furniture, there was really only one way to arrange everything.

My wife wasn’t happy with my response. She wanted to see other layouts, even though I was certain nothing else would work. The bigger problem: I’d be the one doing the rearranging. I’d be the one wasting my time. I’d be the one depleting my energy. I’d be the one injuring myself throughout the project.

It was a done deal. I wasn’t going to rearrange anything. My wife was sad, but I wouldn’t have to suffer royally. Life went on.

And then my 6-year-old son said, “If you wanna make a girl happy, Daddy, you have to move furniture.” Apparently, in the third “Ice Age” movie, which my boy recently saw during summer school, an animated squirrel moves a bunch of rocks (the squirrel’s furniture) to impress a female squirrel. Now, thanks to my son and “Ice Age 3,” I never make my wife happy because “I never move furniture for her.”

If my wife thought I was that much of a sucker to fall for a line like that, she was fairly accurate in her assessment of me.

“OK, where do you want everything?”

She pointed at a piece of furniture, and I moved that piece to where she pointed next. Right away I discovered how out of shape I was, huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf with emphysema, even though I was only moving a table lamp.

When I got to the small sofa, the real pain came. I pulled something major in my back. Making matters worse, I was right -- the new furniture layout didn’t work at all. I didn’t need this.

“It’s too crowded in the corner,” I said. My wife was bummed, but she agreed. I smiled, pleased that I was right. Then my wife pointed again, and in an instant, as if I were a remote-controlled car that my wife operated, I was moving the desired piece of furniture to the desired new place in the room.

During the process, I smashed my finger flat between the couch and a wall, giving new meaning to the phrase, “Nothing lasts forever,” only to discover that the latest arrangement was worse than the previous arrangement. I would have to move the furniture again. I really didn’t need this.

While making the next move, injuring myself again, I decided that I’d have to like the furniture layout no matter what it looked like -- I didn’t want to move everything again.

As I predicted, the new arrangement was dreadful, unlivable. Our living room made coach class on today’s airlines look inviting and spacious.

“Wow, it looks great, very roomy,” I said. Then I collapsed onto the sofa for a breather.

My wife wasn’t happy with the room. I knew right away she wanted me to move the furniture again. I just didn’t need this.

“You were right,” my wife said. “We can’t rearrange anything in this place. It’s too small in here to do anything.”

So I moved everything back to the way I originally had it. When I was finished, I felt like I had altitude sickness from all the movement I’m not used to. I most definitely didn’t need this.

While on the floor catching my breath, I noticed my wife staring at me. It took me a few minutes to see she was smiling. She was happy.

And the moral: If you wanna make a girl happy, move furniture for her.

-August 2009

Ill Behavior

My 5-year-old son woke up feeling a bit warm. Mommy checked his temperature. It was 104. So to the doctor we went.

“Yup,” the doctor said, “he’s sick.” I knew this. My wife knew this. “No playing, get some rest, stay home.”

My wife added, “That means you have to stay in bed.”

The kid looked at Mommy, looked at the doctor. “I don’t need rest,” he said. “I’m not sick. In fact, I feel great. Look, I’m not sniffling. Look at me play.” He jumped up and down in the doctor’s office, took a few laps around the exam chair, all the while dragging himself as if pulling dead weight three times his own.

At home, we gave our boy some medicine and then sent him to his room to rest.

“It’s not fair,” he said as he plopped onto his bed and threw the covers over his body, still wearing his shoes. “Why do I have to rest? The doctor is wrong. He’s to blame for this. I want a second opinion.”

After a 10-minute nap, our son got up to use the bathroom. We asked how he was feeling. He said he felt better than perfect. We checked his temperature and it was at least back to normal.

“Well,” my wife said, “you still need rest.”

“But, Mom,” the boy insisted, “I feel fine. What good is rest gonna do me? If you’ll just let me show you, you’ll see I’m not sick. How about we go to the store? Don’t we need groceries? I know we need asparagus. I’ll push the cart.”

My wife told him to stop negotiating and return to his bed.

“This is ship,” the kid said. Only my wife and I believe he said the curse word that sounds very similar to “ship.”

“Did you just say a swear word?” we asked him.

The kid went into a panic. He knew he’d be in big trouble if he used a swear word. He got two days hard time for saying the “F” word -- fart.

“I don’t swear,” he said, trying to be as smooth as possible, “I swow.” Yup, he said swow, which is, I guess, his made-up verb for “wow.”

“Did you get a new hairdo, Mommy?” the boy asked. “It’s really beautiful. And I love your shirt, Daddy. You look tough.”

I thanked him for the compliment and patted him on the head.

My wife wasn’t buying the boy’s charm, and the kid knew it.

“OK,” he said with his head in his lap. “I did wrong. I know that now, and I’m a new man. But I’ll go take a timeout anyway. I’ll think about what I did.” He plodded back to his room, shut the door behind him and took a timeout.

When my wife and I peeked in on him, he was slumped on the bed, quiet, thinking. He caught us looking in.

“Why bother checking on me?” he groaned. “What’s the point? Why should I even go on living?”

By this time, the kid was looking really ill again. His fever came back. He was coughing nonstop. Sniffling. His eyes sagged to match his sagging mouth, sagging posture. My wife and I had planned a big birthday bowling party for the following day, but with our son sick, we’d have to cancel it.

“We’re gonna have to cancel your party,” we said.

The boy tried to refute this, but found he couldn’t fight it any longer.

“I knew it’d come to this,” he finally said. “And I know there’s nothing I can do about it, even though I’m not really sick. But it’s OK, Mom and Dad. I’ve lived a good life. Now I’m ready for the end, even if I’m not really sick. Go ahead, finish me off.”

He fell asleep and woke up the next morning feeling better -- for real. We didn’t have to cancel his party after all. And we all had a great time.

When we got home, the kid crashed, exhausted.

“What’s wrong?” we asked. “Didn’t you like your party? Didn’t you like your gifts? Don’t you wanna play with all the stuff you got today?”

He looked at my wife, looked at me. Then he went to his room, plopped onto his bed and threw the covers over his body, still wearing his shoes. “I can’t play anything,” he said. “I need rest. I’m really sick.” And then he passed out.

-August 2009

Family News in Brief -- July ’09

PICNIC ANTS TERRIFY SON
A picnic with my family on the Fourth of July turned into a feast for a family of ants. My 5-year-old son said he was badly injured. “Those ants ate my feet and my legs and my belly and my hair,” he said. “And my ears and my back and pretty much everything else.” The kid was rushed to the bathroom where Mommy opened up the medicine cabinet and administered operation: Band-Aid resuscitation. “There were no physical injuries,” Mommy said, “other than he just felt hurt without the Band-Aids.” Meanwhile, the ants crawled over nearly every inch of the picnic and were moving in on the Boston cream pie. I hosed the army of ants off the plastic-ware and safely moved our stuff back into the house, where the 5-year-old was threatening never to leave his ant-free room again. “The only time ants are dangerous,” I told my son in my here-I-come-to-save-the-day way, “is when they’re exposed to radioactive rays and they grow to the size of a building and eat people for lunch.” Apparently, I made matters worse.

ACUPUNCTURIST FINDS PROBLEM
My wife, who’s grappled with severe anxiety for many years, heard that acupuncture is a good stress reliever, and so she decided earlier this month, while on vacation, to give the Chinese medicine a shot. She said she learned a great deal about her body during her one-hour visit. “My stress, evidently, is related to liver issues and digestion issues,” she reported when she got back home. “Wow,” I said, “the doctor found that out awfully quick?” My wife had seen several doctors in the past and underwent rigorous examination, including blood tests, heart tests and extensive therapy. No doctor or specialist could find a problem or a solution to her ailment. “So what did this acupuncturist do to figure this out?” I asked. “He looked at my tongue,” she said.

WE'RE EATING CEREAL THREE TIMES A DAY
Cereal box contests reportedly pay off, and last month my family began a steady diet of cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner, playing all the contests on the boxes so that maybe we could win our summer vacation. My wife and I were skeptical about the contests at first. “One day,” I told sources, “while eating a bowl of Wheaties, staring at the contest on the box, I asked my wife, ‘Does anyone really win these contests?’ My wife said she didn’t know anyone who’d ever won anything from a cereal box contest. I didn’t know anyone either. So, throughout the month of July, we decided to find out for sure.” My wife and I surveyed family and friends to see if they or anyone they knew had ever won anything from a cereal box contest. We also surveyed strangers, took out ads in various newspapers calling for past winners, and we even contacted some cereal companies. “Aside from some specifics about past winners that the cereal companies provided us,” I said, “we really had no solid proof. We needed a more credible source.” So I checked the Internet. After reviewing various Twitter posts, Facebook pages and random blogs, I can now say for certain, cereal box contests are for real.

HEALTHY MEALS HELP YOU GROW
About eight months ago, my 5-year-old son took up healthy eating. My wife and I had told him that if he ate healthy, he’d grow up big and strong. “He ate broccoli, peas, green beans no problem,” my wife said in a recent statement. “And he rarely drank soda or ate too many sweets -- he was determined to grow up big and strong.” Yesterday, my wife and I were introduced to a friend’s newborn baby, and we couldn’t help but reminisce. “Remember when ours was that small?” my wife asked me. “Yeah,” I responded. “I wish he wouldn’t grow.” So our son announced, “If you don’t want me to grow anymore, then just give me sweets.” And that was the end of his healthy eating.

-July 2009

I Must Set the Record Straight

For the record: My wife gets to watch much more TV than I do. And I’m fine with that because there’s not much on TV I really need to see. I like to go to the movies. I’m a movie-going kind of guy.

I saw three movies in the theater last year. I guess I’m too busy giving my wife and 5-year-old son the care they deserve.

My family subscribes to Netflix, where you can rent DVDs online and have them mailed to your house the next day. We rent two DVDs at a time -- one for me/my son, and one for my wife.

For the record: When I receive a movie in the mail, I watch it that night when everyone in the house is asleep, or, if it’s a movie for my son, I watch it with him when Mommy is out with friends. I mail the disk back the next day.

My wife’s DVDs sit on top of our TV for months at a time before she watches them. I just can’t see the harm in renting two movies for myself when I have the chance. My wife thinks I’m unfair.

She, unlike me, watches her shows during the prime times of the day. And what does she watch? Oprah. Reality TV. Entertainment news. I’m sorry, but I’d rather take a fastball to the groin. And I think my son feels the same way.

Thursday night, I asked my wife to get off the phone with her best friend so she and I could finish the conversation we’d started several hours previous. We couldn’t agree on which TV programs to delete off our DVR so we could have the space to record a cartoon our boy really wanted to see. We had six hours before dawn, when his program was to begin, so we needed to make a decision before going to bed.

I suggested my wife watch a few of her shows that night -- like I unselfishly do -- so she could then delete them and have space for our kid’s program.

“I don’t think so,” she said without any thought. “Let’s just delete your movies and be done with it.”

“But I’d really like to keep my movies because, unfortunately, I can’t tape them -- our VCR doesn’t record anymore. Not only that, but none of the movies I have on the DVR are available for purchase on video, nor will they ever be on TV again.”

For the record: My wife leads me 10 to 1 in magazine subscriptions. I think it’s clear who makes the compromises in the family.

“Sweetie,” I asked my wife lovingly when she abandoned the conversation to phone a friend, “can you please come back and finish arguing with me?”

She ignored me.

“He doesn’t even let me watch my shows when I’m watching them,” she said as if I weren’t there. “He talks the entire time.”

“I’m usually trying to quiet down our son so he doesn’t disturb you,” I said. “I apologize.”

“He’s just a TV snob,” she said to her friend. “He just wants to watch his stupid film noir.”

For the record: The quotes above were taken directly from Thursday night’s transcripts of our debate. Notice the name-calling on my wife’s part and her hostility toward the terrific, ground-moving film noir movies I like to watch? I, on the other hand, would never give my wife an unfavorable name. And, before this article, I never once criticized the shows she watches.

My wife eventually went to bed that Thursday night. And my son eventually woke up the next morning to watch the cartoon that had aired earlier. I’d recorded it on the DVR.

For the record: I had nothing to do with the mysterious loss of shows my wife had previously saved, allowing space to record our son’s cartoon.

Even if I was responsible, I wouldn’t feel at all guilty because of all the unfairness I’m usually dealt -- as described in detail above.

Note to reader: Please disregard any retractions from my wife. She’ll likely say my facts in this story are incorrect. And that’s a lie.

-July 2009