Earth's Hottest Man, Brownies, Her Birthday . . .

I take pictures every now and then to put on my blog so that readers can feel like they were there. But this is one event that photographs, not even digitally enhanced photographs, will do justice to. My wife’s birthday.

I made her favorite dessert: hand-stirred chocolate brownies with hand-scooped vanilla ice cream, but not just plain vanilla ice cream, vanilla bean ice cream.

Right before putting the hand-stirred brownie batter into the oven, I took hand-broken chunks of a Hershey’s milk chocolate candy bar and sprinkled the chunks on top of the batter.

The result was an aesthetically pleasing presentation that I think should be rated PG-13 For Some Sensuality, because it was very sensuous.

But if we’re talking about how I served the brownies, then I should probably add PG-13 For Some Sensuality and Brief Nudity.

And you know how it is these days; those PG-13 films are often times more suggestive than the R’s. I like to think that’s how it was last night at dessert. 

What the Finns Call, "Sisu"

Sometimes eating regurgitated food, or food smeared across my child’s face, is the only way to get rid of it. Parents know what I’m talking about: baby on my knee, a glob of grape jelly drooling out the corner of her mouth—no napkins, nothing to wipe with.

Times like that I’ve got to make a choice: the kid’s shirt, my own shirt, or my finger. Which means eating it, because I’ve already established there’s nothing to wipe it up with (why I used my finger in the first place).

It's taken me four kids to develop that kind of bravery. But brave as the World’s Sexiest Man is—and bravery is one of the chief characteristics that makes me so damn sexy—there are still some things I may never be brave enough to do. 

I’m talking about bare-fingering a wet booger off my kid's face when there's no Kleenex.

Only a few days ago I was standing in the hallway at church when my friend Brian approaches me, looks at my daughter, says something wonky in that adult baby voice, “Yes you are, yes you are!” then takes his finger and does just that--wipes a giant wet one off her nose and lip that I hadn’t seen.

Giant, like that glob of grape jelly I was talking about—similar in substance, just not the same color.

Confession: the world’s Sexiest Man will never, ever have, what the Spanish call, cojones, big enough to pull off a stunt like that. Wipe a wet booger (or even dry one, for that matter) off the face of somebody else’s kid? With a bare, ungloved finger? Hell, I wouldn’t do it in a Hazmat suit.

And then the story gets better (or maybe worse)—instead of running for the bathroom and screaming at people to get out of the way, my friend walks to the drinking fountain and attempts to wash the booger off his finger, only it’s too sticky to wash off completely, so he ends up rubbing his finger back and forth against the drain of the drinking fountain in an effort to sort of scrape it off—that little drain people have been rinsing their mouths into, spitting their loogies into, all day, all week, for who knows how many months and years.

Now that I’m writing this, I’m beginning to think that the whole episode had more to do with some kind of neurosis my friend must be struggling with than the actual size of his, what the French call, couilles.

I’m so glad I found my way to this conclusion. Another threat to the World’s Sexiest Man identified, analyzed, and dismantled. I’d been worrying about it all week, that my friend has bigger, what the Italians call, coglioni, than me, what the Macedonians call, muda. The Russians, “стальные яйца.”

Money, Part 2

I was sitting in the family room when my oldest daughter comes sprinting through the front door, breathless with the news, “Dad, Dad! ---- just stole twenty dollars from Mom’s wallet and he’s outside buying ice cream from the ice cream man!”

Twenty dollars? My four-year-old son? A lot of money for the little guy—like robbing a bank before ever shoplifting a candy bar.

From the porch I see the damage has already been done: there he is, standing on the curb, ice cream in one hand, a fistful of change in the other. 

Only something isn’t quite right.

I expect my son to run and hide, to eat the goods he paid for with the stolen cash in secret before coming out to take his punishment, whatever that might be.

But he isn’t running away. He’s walking right to me, and with a huge smile on his face—like he just won a lottery, if he knew what a lottery was.  

And I’m thinking, this kid’s got a lot of nerve. Steals our money, buys an ice cream, then eats it in front of me. Or maybe he’s got some kind of cognitive disorder, can’t differentiate between right and wrong, no sense of morality or justice or guilt—innocent, in way, but a potential mass-murdering Ghangis Khan in another. How to find a good therapist?

In a moment he’s to me, still smiling, the biggest smile: “Look how much money that man just gave me!” he says, “Look how much money!”

Two fives and eight ones—eighteen dollars of change, a rather fat wad that he stuffs into my hand. “Look!” he says again, hoping, I can tell, for something like approval, for someone to celebrate with. “Look how much money he just gave me!”

What to say to this four-year-old boy with the math skills of a St. Bernard. So many bills in exchange for the single, solitary twenty he’d started out with—a thief, yes, but a joyful thief, one wanting to share, to provide a return.   

Who am I to have to break it to him.

Money, Part 1

My seven-year-old is explaining to me that if she had a billion dollars, she’d be able to spend $100 everyday for a whole week. I tell her she’d be able to spend $100 everyday in a row for a lot longer than that, and thus begins our little discussion on how many days in a row she’d be able to spend $100 if she started out with first, say, $1000; then $10,000; and finally $100,000.

The thought of being able to spend $100 for a thousand days in a row overwhelms her. She doesn’t ask it, but I know what she’s thinking. How many My Little Pony sets is that? How many La-La-Loopsies!?

“And if I started with a million dollars? How many days in a row then?”

“Everyday in a row for about thirty years,” I say, hoping I’m close.

She closes her eyes, imagining, I suppose, $100 a day for the next thirty years: row upon row, in her mind’s eye, shelf upon shelf—eternal aisles of dolls and figurines and dress-ups; no clue, obviously, that even a family living on $36,500 a year, hardly millionaires, burns through a $100 a day, spread out over the course of 365 days, if they spend it all.

When her finite mind is worn out by the thought of what must seem to her like infinite, inexhaustible toy-purchasing power, she says to me, in a voice much too dreamy, much too voluptuous for a seven-year-old to ever, ever be using: “Oh, Dad. Kill me when I’m thirty.”

Does she want the money first, before I kill her? To spend every last hundred-dollar bill of it, heedlessly, recklessly, on crap?

Or perhaps she feels that she can’t live past thirty, not on her current income, not when the millionaires out there are living high on the hog, $100 a day, even on Sundays.  

To be honest, some days I wish someone had killed me when I turned thirty, but that’s a topic for another post.