Rhyme and Reason Reign Once More...

“Whether or not you find your own way, you're bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago. I imagine by now it's quite rusty.”

I know.... Posting twice in one day is just setting everyone up for missed expectations later on. So don't get your hopes up, I'm bound to dash them against the rocks at a later date. But I couldn't let today pass without a celebration of something brilliant. The Phantom Tollbooth. I learned today that this brilliant piece of children's literature by Norton Juster is currently celebrating 50 years in print. An achievement by any standard.

But this no random achievement. It is the wide wake of a work of uncommon brilliance that is so rarely seen in our day or any other. For those who don’t know it, the Phantom Tollbooth tells the story of a boy, overcome by boredom and overstimulation and incapable of calculating the immeasurable wonder and wisdom of the world that surrounds him. He is the kind of boy that we have tried to bury in apps and electric guitars and Xboxes in our day, but is all as common now as he was 50 years ago.

In his search for meaning he is whisked away to a land that has lost its meaning as well, trapped between the feuding brothers, King Azaz, lord of Dictionopolis, and his brother the Mathemagician, ruler of Digitopolis. Milo’s guide through this strange world is a watchdog named Tock whose goal is to help Milo know what to do in the face of too much time. Legend has it that the world was once brought to peace and prosperity by twin sisters: Pure Rhyme and Sweet Reason, who have now been banished to a place so mysterious that the skies clap in thunder at the sound of its name: The Castle in the Air.

But this story is more than just the traversal of a bored little boy through a magical land of wondrous creatures. It is the story of what goes wrong in all our worlds when we lose the plot, what happens when we undermine our pursuit of meaning, what succumbs us when we are overcome by the next step and the step after that.

In the end, though I won’t betray the details, Milo learns that his life is rich with meaning and significance. Not in the foolish 21st century way where everyone is special just because they woke out of bed in the morning. No, Milo’s meaning comes from that old wisdom of consuming the marrow of learning, growth and understanding out of every misstep, every moment. It is the realization that one’s way is found not in the light of perfected optimism or carefully manicured safety, but in the risky pursuit of difference-making, mistake-making and a world where the two can, if handled correctly, be one in the same.

If you’ve never read it, shame on you and begin today.
If you haven’t read it in years, do what I’m doing and pick it up afresh.
And most importantly read it to your children. In a world of Twilights and Hunger Games, it may just teach them something more than the importance of their own feelings, their own hungers.

Our world, much like Milo’s, has banished Rhyme and Reason to a distant mythical place, it is perhaps in the sage wisdom of Norton Juster and others like him that we could release them from their occupation and Rhyme and Reason might reign once more.

“And remember, also," added the Princess of Sweet Rhyme, "that many places you would like to see are just off the map and many things you want to know are just out of sight or a little beyond your reach. But someday you'll reach them all, for what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.”

Opportunism: Halloween Style

So it's Halloween. Worst holiday ever invented. Yes, I know, it's for the kids and they're so cute and blah. My kids are cute in their normal clothes. Most kids are cute in their normal clothes. Many kids are not cute in Halloween costumes. In fact, they just look weird. Plasticky Darth Vader comstumes with no helmet (cause the helmet is hot of course). Furry puppy costumes that shed more than golden retriever. It's ridiculous.

And let's be honest, Halloween is not for the kids. Halloween is for the parents. It's to provide and excuse for proud papas like myself to have one more reason to take ridiculous pictures of their children and post them on facebook so that people can affirm me. I am a 21st century American and I covet your affirmation, particularly through "likes." (And followers... particularly followers. How is one to know that one's blog is witty, charming if one does not have an array of followers?) But I digress, back to the subject at hand. Halloween is (for reasons that I cannot possibly understand) an excuse for perfectly normal well-thinking adults the other 364 days a year to dress up like idiots and parade about using their equally dressed up children as shame-shields to protect them from the honest self-reflection of just how silly the whole thing is.

This is the part where some people reading this starting crying in a rage and tears begin shooting horizontally out of their eyes. It's gruesome to imagine, but what the hell, it's Halloween and gruesome is in style.

I'm not afraid of the rage. Bring on the haters, I say! Bring them on! A friend and coworker of mine (who knows who she is) absolutely loves Halloween. Is practically religious about it. I attempted to cancel the annual Halloween dress-up and potluck at my office this year (the only real use of positional authority I have ever undertaken) and was nearly run out of my office by people in tailored suits and pitchforks. She was in the lead wearing a pirate costume and sporting a particularly menacing sword. Call me nutty but I just think its a little weird for an office of white collar professionals to trade in the suits and ties for an afternoon of warmed over food and awkward costumes. One year a particularly hairy man showed up as a hooker in a belly shirt. I really thought that was going to end it. But, of course, it didn't. Not even a decree from the high office of regional vice president (my office: doesn't that sound important??) could shut down the Halloween frivolity. And that is because Halloween is an opportunity.

It's an opportunity to normally reasonable adults to act out their deeply held fantasy of dressing up like a very large chicken.
An opportunity to convince your boss that while you look like you just rolled out of bed and forgot to shower and get dress and behave like a civilized person, in reality you are dressed up like a "little boy in his PJs." (That's just gross by the way.)
An opportunity to drive down the street to where the houses are larger and they don't know your kids you using your kids as a front can load up on candy at the houses that give away the full sizers.
An opportunity to stand at the street corner in front of your mini van and smile as your kids beg absolute strangers for the most unhealthy food they will consume in the next 30 days.
An opportunity to post pictures of your kids on facebook and make witty comments about them for the benefit of your circle of "friends." (Check! Got that one done yesterday... there is a budding opportunist in us all... even me.)
An opportunity to destroy perfectly good clothes with ketchup and menacing makeup so as to finally achieve the heights of your All Hallow's aspirations: bloody ghoul vampire twilight monster dragon.

And so for a few more hours, I guess we have nothing left to do but to embrace the opportunism. Paint your face green and tie a rope around your neck. Splatter blood down your shirt and practice your most menacing grin. Find a McMansion half mile a way with the lights still on and see how many full-size candies they'll let you take before wondering just how long ago you crossed over through puberty. Rise to the occasion. Celebrate the quintessential value that makes Halloween a purely American holiday: opportunism.

Otherwise you'll have to wait another 365 days before it is culturally acceptable again to take advantage of your neighbors generosity, have an excuse to not clean up your yard for a month, and eat the most transfats you can in the shortest amount of time all in the name of a holiday. Take the plunge while you can friends, cause times like these don't roll around but once a year. It's opportunism time: Halloween style.

Fathering Magazine

Let's call it the American Mothers' Industrial Complex. It is the endless array of products, books, magazines and propaganda directed at the modern day mother to get her to go into more debt than she's ever seen simply based on the fear that she is in fact her own worst fear... she is a bad mother. Now, some might say this is really the American PARENTS Industrial Complex, but I disagree. You see, I am an American Dad. I have read browsed looked at pretended to look at such amazing titles as What to Expect When You're Expecting, What to Eat When You're Expecting, The Baby Book, Birthing From Within, Potty Training Boys, and of course The Sears Baby Book. (And no, that is not the long-form of the SEARS catalog. Let me tell you, that would be a huge improvement. Around our house we heretically call it "The Bible.") And in all of my reading book-collecting I have realized one thing, there are no "parents" in America. There are moms.

Now before my shiny new blog gets egged (What's the e-version of egged?) by the millions of self-assured mothers out there, let me say once and for all, "You are wonderful." No, really. I'm serious. You're fantastic. And we don't say it enough. You're the best. And you don't have to read every book or browse every magazine to prove that you are not your mother. We know you're not your mother, and trust us we, the American Dads, are thankful for it. But I learned something very early on as a parent in this here 21st century. "Parents" is a euphamism for "Moms."

Three years ago when I was a brand new Dad, I thought to myself, "Nick, you are going to do this right. No more screwing up!" So, I set out to be a knowledgeable parent. And like every parent I started in the most logical place: using Parenting magazine as toilet reading. The first couple articles I didn't pay any heed, but as I was about 3 or 4 articles in, something began to get to me. The articles were all written to "parents" but the pronoun in EVERY article was feminine. It was always "she." It didn't take long before I was noticing it everywhere. Not just the pronoun usage but how the entire culture of parenting in America in my generation was focused around mothers.

I'm sure I will have some social/political rant at some point in this blog as to what kind of craziness started this and I'm sure that said rant will include multiple references to liberating women only to enslave them to a culture of expectation and fear, but THIS POST, this post my friends, is warmer and cheerier than that. This post is a happy introduction a glad little tongue-in-cheek homage the sperm-supplying, barf-bagging, catch-playing, home-too-late, tired-too-much, failing-more-than-we-should other sex. This post about Dads. It is for us, the begrudging Mad Men who somehow find ourselves unwinding the dual income households of our parents. We are the wage-earners (barf), bacon-bringers (yikes), pressure-cooked XY-chromosomed, chubby-around-the-edges men who have no magazine of our own. Welcome to Fathering Magazine, readership 1.

Come on, people, you've gotta start somewhere.

I have always wanted to be a dad, but I never knew how. Most days I'm making it up as I go and to be honest I make more mistakes than not. Following me always is the silent ghost of my father, who died to young and taught me only by example. I'm building this plane while I'm flying it people, and I think most of my man-friends are the same. I'm calling you out "Parenting" magazine. I've got your number "Parent-Teacher Conferences." Consider yourself on watch "Young Family's Group." We're on to you, and we know that most of the time people think we'd be better off keeping our suits on and staying at work a little longer.

I'm starting a Movement. I'm calling it Occupy Parenting. Because "parent" is a role my kids need in two varieties. Not just a mom and mom-stand-in. We are the 50%. And we Dads will be Occupying the parenting whether you invited us to or not.

But we would rather not attend the breastfeeding class. Thank you.