Shotgun Daddy

New Bikes and Skinned Knees

My knees were permanently scabbed when I was a boy, a condition that lasted until I was at least thirteen years old.  The scabs were badges earned through bike crashes, clumsy falls, and daring steals of second base, and just as one was almost healed it would be ripped off again and the process would start from the beginning.  I was a boy.

Which brings us to last weekend's bike ride in the park.  (There's video in the previous post, in case you missed it.)  Leslie, Alison, and I all had new bikes, so we decided to spend the afternoon riding the trails at our local park.  I was a bit concerned about Alison.  Like a new pair of shoes, we bought her bike with room to grow into, which means that it's too big for her right now.  She rides perched atop it like, well, like a girl on a bike that's too big for her.  She's in control ninety percent of the time, but she's an accident waiting to happen the other ten percent.  

Henry is an accident waiting to happen ten percent of the time whether he's riding his bike or not.  Like most little boys, he's much more interested in pedaling furiously than braking cautiously, and doesn't yet have a full grasp of how the laws of physics affect him while turning a corner.  Biking alongside him for most of the day was his sister Kate, the closest thing to a constant in the afternoon's equation.  She rolled along, steady and sure, and the rest of us did our best to avoid her.

In short, we were a disaster waiting to happen.  I was certain there'd be an injury of some sort before the day was done, but somehow we got lucky.  When the sun finally sunk below the trees and the bikes were hung on the back of the van, Alison and I decided to ride home while Leslie drove Henry and Kate.  

We rode along the riverbed for a while and then cut back into the park and cruised past picnic benches and baseball diamonds before stopping to watch the aspiring young juvenile delinquents hanging out at the skateboard park.  There wasn't a great deal of talent there, no future Tony Hawks or Ryan Shecklers to be found, but apparently it was inspiration enough.

As we rode away and started towards home, I had a sudden urge to pop a wheelie.  For the first time in twenty-five years, I pedaled hard and pulled up on my handle bars -- it was easy.  Alison had missed this first attempt, so I called to her and did it again.  It wasn't Evel Kneivel, only a few rotations of the pedals, but it was enough to impress a nine-year-old.

"Daddy!  How did you do that??  Do it again!!!"

How could I resist.  I'd try it again, and this time would be even better.  I'd pull up harder, keep the wheel up longer, and be the coolest dad in the history of dads.

But here's the thing.  When you're twelve years old and eighty-five pounds, wheelies are almost impossible.  You don't have the strength to get the front wheel very far off the ground, so you have to pull up as hard as you can and still it never works.  When you're thirty-nine years old, and at least a little bit stronger, things are different.  I pulled up on those handle bars about as hard as I could and the bike leapt up from under me like a bull eager to throw his rider.  In decades past the bike would've fallen harmlessly back to the ground, and I'd be left wishing I were cooler.  Now, though, with an extra hundred or so pounds (emphasis on or so) my mass carried the bike up to the sky, leaving me behind.

I landed on my left foot, but my right knee dragged along the ground, pealing away a piece of skin the size of a silver dollar.  When we got home I found an almost identical wound on the top side of my ankle.  So I was right in the end about the accident, I just didn't know it would be me.

It's been a week, and the scabs are enormous.  I might be thirty-nine, but apparently I'm still just a boy.

Sunday in the Park

We spent our Sunday afternoon riding bikes at El Dorado Park.  Here's the video proof, with words to follow tomorrow.  Leslie bought me a Flip video camera for Father's Day (very cool, by the way), and this is the first film I've actually edited with it.  Since all the camera work was shot from the seat of a bike, it's a bit jumpy at times.  Apologies.

Assembly Required

As a rule, I'm not good with tools.  I can fix you a sandwich, but there's no way I can fix anything else.

It didn't have to be this way.  My dad is a fixer.  I don't remember a single repairman ever entering our house when I was a boy.  Whether it was the dishwasher, the kitchen sink, the heater, or the family car, my dad could handle it.  He was the man of the house.

And because I was the boy of the house, I was always involved.  My job was simple, yet critically important: I held the light.

We were quite the pair back then.  In fact, if my dad and I happen to be buried in adjacent plots, I expect that our tombstones might read "He Fixed Everything" and "He Held the Light."

But of course, I wasn't there just to hold the light.  I was there to learn, serving an apprenticeship of sorts so that when I grew up, when I would be in charge of a house full of things ready to break, I'd be ready to fix them.  It seemed like a perfect plan, except that I had absolutely no interest in hammers, wrenches, or electrical circuits.  I learned nothing.  (Incidentally, my mother is at least partially to blame.  While my dad was trying to teach me to fix things, my mom was busy brainwashing me with "Free to Be You and Me," 70s propaganda designed to debunk the stereotyping of gender roles.  Marlo Thomas and company won me over.)

Thirty years later, I'm paying the price.  I can accept the financial hit I take in money spent to have crown molding or lawn sprinklers installed, but there's a hidden cost that I could never have anticipated when I was ten years old.  When a friend casually mentions that he built the deck in his backyard or when my four-year-old daughter asks when her uncle will be in town so he can fix her broken drawer, I'm being taxed for my mechanical ineptitude.  When I spend three hours putting together an IKEA bookshelf, I'm being punished for daydreaming while I was holding that flashlight so many years ago.

My big problem, though, is that sometimes I can't admit -- not even to myself -- that I have no skill in this area.  Just two days ago my wife was buying herself a new bike and the salesman mentioned that we could save thirty bucks if we took it home and assembled it ourselves.  So Leslie turns to me and asks, "Do you think you can put together this bike?"

The obvious answer should have been no.  I should have climbed atop the counter and announced to all within earshot that I had no business putting together anything that wasn't made out of Lincoln Logs or Legos.  I should have said that I'd happily pay a hundred dollars for someone else to put the bike together, but I did none of these things.  

Instead, I looked at my three children, eagerly waiting to be impressed; I looked at the salesman, smugly predicting my surrender; and I looked at my wife, her eyes overflowing with encouragement.  I was powerless.

"Sure, I can put this together."  I think I even scoffed and said, "No problem."

Reality hit a few hours later, on step two.  The good news was that unlike IKEA's products, the bike came with directions that actually had words; the bad news was that the words made absolutely no sense at all.  The bike was manufactured in China, and it was clear that the instruction manual had originally been written in Mandarin, then translated to two or three other languages before being reincarnated in English.

There were moments when I thought about packing the bike into the minivan and making the drive of shame back to the bike shop.  Then I wondered if I could instead take the bike (or rather, take the assorted pieces of metal which could actually become a bike under the proper hands) to another bike shop, thereby lessening the shame.

But I persevered.  Things looked better the following morning, and although I did call the bike salesman two separate times for help, I was able to make something that resembled a bike.  (See below.)  Even so, as Leslie rode down the driveway on her maiden voyage, I had visions of the bike disintegrating beneath her cartoon-style, the wheels spinning alone down the road, leaving her sitting on the cement still gripping the useless handlebars.

But it didn't happen like that.  The bike was fine, and Leslie spent the afternoon riding around the neighborhood with Alison, the first time she had ever gone on a bike ride with her daughter.  Even though I wouldn't admit it at the time, I was proud.  Next time, though, I promise to pay the assembly fee, whatever it might cost.  

Maybe I can even get a discount if I offer to hold the light.

Big in the Philippines

David Hasselhoff has Germany, and apparently ShotgunDaddy has the Philippines.  Don't believe me?  Check out this link.  And if you're one of my new readers from across the Pacific, welcome!  Now pull up a chair and stay a while... 

And while it's cool to be big in the Philippines, doesn't everyone really want to be big in Japan? If you remember the 80s, here's a little nugget that you might enjoy.

 

I Shop, Therefore I Am

I don't like to shop.  Big surprize, right?  Like a typical guy, if I need something, I go to the store, buy it, and go back home.  Simple.  It had been roughly a decade since I had gone to the store on my own and bought clothes for myself, so when the good folks at Marshalls and TJ Maxx sent me fifty dollars in gift cards with an offer to check out their stores, I thought it might be time to give shopping another chance.  Maybe, I thought, I had given it a bad rap.  Maybe, I thought, it wasn't that bad after all.  Maybe, I thought, I should shop.

And so on Saturday afternoon, when most respectable men were finishing up a round of golf, mowing the lawn, or building something with wood and dangerous power tools, I ventured into the twin jungles of Marshalls and TJ Maxx.

First stop: Marshalls.  It was immediately clear that Marshalls sells almost everything, but since I'm in desperate need of casual shirts, I went straight for the racks in the men's section.  Okay, here's my problem with shopping -- I have no problem picking out stuff I like, but I have absolutely no idea whether or not anyone else will like it.  You probably know people who are colorblind; I'm fashionblind.

The good news today, though, was that I had a consultant with me, someone who could guide me through the sea of choices, sometimes affirming my instincts and other times gently coaxing me in another direction.  I had someone who would make sure each garment I chose was on the cutting edge of fashion.

I had Kate, my four-year-old daughter.

Confident, I dove right in and pulled out a striped shirt.

"Oh, I like that one, Daddy!"

Success!  What were the odds that she'd like the first one I picked out?  Emboldened, I went for something flashier, something that pushed the boundaries of good taste.  Not dogs playing poker, but in the same ballpark.

"Oh, I like that one, Daddy!"

Really?  Hot damn, I was two for two!  Even so, I wanted to make sure that I had the two that I wanted, so I kept looking until I found these, a Hawaiian print for $12.99 and a more conservative plaid number for an insane $7.00.  How can you go wrong for seven dollars? 

 

And since I had a few bucks left on the gift card, I snapped up this sweet Lakers cap for $9.99.  Who said shopping was boring?

Satisfied with our purchases, Kate and I jumped back in the car and headed over to TJ Maxx to look for more of the same.  By now, Kate had a pretty good idea of what we were looking for.  As she perused the racks I heard her commenting on what she saw: "No, this one has long sleeves..." and "No, this one doesn't button down..."  I had a certified personal shopper on the payroll.  How could I go wrong?

I was looking for another Hawaiian print, but something a bit more subtle, so I chose this one:

 

And I chose another plaid variation, something with a bit more green in it:

Since both of these had $12.99 price tags -- what a bargain! -- we were done.  Kate approved of both so I was happy.

There was a near disaster, however.  As we stood in line waiting for the cashier, the woman in front of me turned around and eyed the two shirts dangling from the hangers in my hand.  This woman was eighty-five if she was a day, and her red-tinted hair was strangely reminiscent of Bozo the Clown.  Clearly, a woman with her finger on the pulse of fashion.  1940s fashion, but fashion nonetheless.  I nodded nervously, expecting her to say something about my adorable daughter.  Instead, she focused on the shirts and dropped a bomb:

"Oh, my!  Look at those two shirts you chose..."

Waiting, waiting...

"I just love them both!"

And there it was.  I thought I had come so far.  I thought I had done so well.  And with five simple little words, Bozo the Octogenarian had shattered my fashionista dreams.  An eighty-year-old woman (gulp!) loved my sense of style.  The horror!

But I must remember the big picture.  I may have taken a small step this weekend, but it was a giant leap for mankind.  Thanks to Marshalls and TJ Maxx, I had evolved.  To paraphrase the immortal words of Rocky Balboa, if I can shop, and you can shop... maybe we all can shop!

The Daily Grind

You know the sound.  You're doing the dishes and you click on the garbage disposal to clear out the drain, but instead of a smooth whir you hear a loud clanging and grinding.  It happens all the time at our house, and usually it's something simple like a spoon or the top of a sippy cup.  (We really need to move on from the sippy cups.)  

You also know what happens next.  You quickly switch off the disposal, turn off the water, and tentatively reach your hand into the drain to retrieve whatever it is that's fallen into the abyss.  Intellectually, you know that what you're doing is perfectly safe.  Nothing could happen.  Not a thing.

But when your hand is stuck in the drain and your fingers are probing in and out of a set of steel blades designed to mash and pulverize, certain thoughts can creep into your head.  There could be a fluke power surge.  There might be some "residual electricity" in the line that could cause the disposal to switch on.  Aliens could land in your neighborhood and the magnetic field from their ship could cause every electrical appliance on the block to come to life.  Heck, your wife might wander into the kitchen to turn on a light and flick the wrong switch.  PLENTY of completely plausible things could happen.  Sure, you might be looking for a twisted fork, but in your mind's eye you're finding a disfigured hand and several mangled fingers.  But I digress.

What this story is really about is what I found in the garbage disposal today when the blades started complaining.  Not a spoon, not a fork, not a chicken bone, but a skateboard.  If you're not a teacher or you don't have boys of a certain age, you might not recognize the broken toy in the picture up above.  It's a Tech Deck, a miniature skateboard, and somehow this particular one had found its way into the sink and down the drain where it waited until I turned on the garbage disposal.

Kate discovered the wreckage just as I finished fishing out all the parts, and immediately asked me to fix it, which was kind of amusing.  I put her off until tomorrow, hoping against hope that she'll forget about it, but I really don't think I'll be that lucky.  The good news, though, is that she'll probably unleash a tantrum so hellacious that I'll have something interesting to write about tomorrow night.  So I've got that going for me.  Which is nice.

Four

Happy Loving Day

My mother and father were married in Detroit, Michigan, in 1968.  To spare family members from having to make a choice about attending a wedding between a black man and a white woman, my parents invited only my Uncle Alvin and Aunt Gloria to serve as witnesses.  Consequently, this is one of the few photographs taken that day; it has sat near my bedside my entire life.

Only forty-one years ago -- and just a year before my parents were married -- interracial marriages like this one were illegal in seventeen states.  (Here's a cool interactive map that shows the history legalized interracial marriage.)  On June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ended this embarrassment when it ruled that "Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides within the individual and cannot be infringed on by the State."  

Chief Justice Earl Warren's words came in the Court's ruling on the case of Mildred and Richard Loving, a black woman and a white man who had been arrested in Virginia nine years earlier for the crime of falling in love and getting married.  Four decades later, we mark this landmark decision by celebrating Loving Day.  There were will be celebrations around the country, but I'll spend the day talking to my children and my students about the brave decision my parents made.  There were no laws in the state of Michigan prohibiting their marriage in 1968, but their road was still difficult.  I thank them for travelling it together.

Allie Hodgepodge

When I was growing up, there was no Derek Jeter or Tiger Woods or Mariah Carey or Halle Berry.  And there certainly was no Barack Obama.  I grew up privileged and sheltered, so I would never complain about my upbringing, but there were certainly times when it was difficult being biracial in a world where everyone else seemed to have a label to call their own.  Some of the issues were simply confusing -- like wondering which box to check on a form, black or white?  Others were painful -- like having to explain why you don't look like your mother.  

The heaviest part, though, the part that never goes away, is that the only reflection you ever see of yourself is the one looking back at you from the bathroom mirror.  The people you see on television, the people in your geometry class, your best friends, and even the people in your family might look like each other, but they certainly don't look like you.

For my children, it will be different.  They'll grow up with biracial role models in the sporting world, pop culture, and even the White House, for crying out loud.  But perhaps the coolest thing we've come across recently has been Amy Hodgepodge, the main character in a series of books written by Kim Wayans and her husband Kevin Knotts.  Amy's mother is Asian, and her father is half-black and half-white, just like Alison's parents.  

I first heard about Miss Hodgepodge while listening to the Mixed Chicks Chat, a cool podcast about the biracial experience.  The authors were being interviewed, and as soon as I heard what they were writing about, I clicked over to AmyHodgepodge.com and who do you think I saw?  My own daughter, starring in her own series of books.  Doubt me?  See for yourself.

Alison has read and loved all of the books, and although we have only talked a bit about the main character's ethnic background, she knows that the two of them are cut from the same cloth.  Mainly, though, she likes that when she picks up the book she sees a version of herself on the cover, something I never experienced as a child.

Several weeks ago Alison was lucky enough to meet Kim Wayans and Kevin Knott at the L.A. Times Festival of Books.  We were able to spend some time chatting with the authors, and I thanked them both for giving my children something I didn't really know I needed but never had.  A funny thing happened while we were talking.  People looked at Alison and saw the character from the books.  Their publicist took one look and said, "Oh my gosh -- she looks just like Amy!" and then quickly snapped a photo that you can see as part of a slideshow on their website.  (Here's one I took a bit later.)

There are lots of things that we do as parents to help our children grow up to be confident in who they are, but it can be difficult to know how to handle the questions about who we are or where we come from.  When I was growing up I had one friend who was half-Indian and another who was half-Chinese, and that was about it.   Alison has several biracial friends, and a book that seems to have been written about her, so I'm hoping things will be easier for her.

(By the way, my friends the Mixed Chicks are running a celebration of the mixed experience, the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival, held this weekend, June 12-13, at the Japanese American Museum in downtown Los Angeles.  If you're interested, be sure to check it out -- you might even run into Allie Hodgepodge.)

Off the Beaten Path

If you're like us, your kids are about to get out of school, and summer yawns before you, waiting to be filled with memories. You could spend a few thousand dollars to fly the whole family to the Bahamas, or you could do something more sensible, like taking a family road trip.  

When my wife and I were married ten summers ago, we spent our honeymoon driving from southern California to New Orleans, and as much fun as we had in Nawlins, getting there, as they say, was at least half the fun. We stopped in places we never would've planned a direct trip for. We drove long stretches of historic Route 66; tasted ice cream at the Blue Bell Creamery in Brenham, Texas; took the tour at the Tabasco factory on Avery Island in Lousiana; slept in a teepee at the Wigwam Motel in Arizona; and watched millions of bats fly out from beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas. Sure, if we had hopped a plane in LAX we could've gotten to Bourbon Street in about four hours, but just think what we would've missed. 

Road tripping is an American tradition, and if your kids are old enough to sit still (or young enough to sleep) for long stretches of open road driving, the good people at Reader's Digest have just the book for you. In Off the Beaten Path, they've put together a collection of travel destinations that might appeal to a family that wants to take an adventure without taking out a second mortgage.

The book describes more than a thousand scenic locations and points of interest, all divided by state to make your trip planning easier, and each entry includes an in-depth description complete with intuitive icons representing the different amenities available, ranging from picnicking to campfires to WiFi access. As for the variety of locations, the book's title tells you all you need to know. You won't find anything about the Grand Canyon, Fisherman's Wharf, or Mount Rushmore, but a random flip through the pages gives you a peek at the SPAM Museum in Austin, Minnesota; Snake River Wine Country in Idaho; the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial in Red Cloud, Nebraska; and dozens of state and national parks.

As odd as it might seem, the best thing about this book is that it is still a book. In an age when trips are planned with a few clicks of the mouse, there is something comforting about curling up on the couch and flipping through the pages, looking at places you might visit someday and others you never will. With each turn of the page you imagine yourself and your family in the picture making memories that will last a lifetime.