Tie a Day, Number 54

Sam rushed up the stairs this morning to make sure he got to help me pick out my tie. I was barely out of the shower and had to remind him that he already picked out today’s tie yesterday. He was thrilled that he was able to dress Dad for the second day in a row. I may have started a trend with him.

This is the Calvin tie. This tie has a repeated picture of my oldest son Calvin staggered across the front of it. He was two in this picture and I am pretty sure I received this as my back to school gift from Amy in 2000.

Today, Calvin is eleven and almost as big as me. Soon he will be bigger, and I will make him kneel when he talks to me. I am not sure how they figure these things out, but according to the Doctor, Calvin should be 6’ 3” someday. All that height skipping right over me in the family tree…

Amy laughs because she says I falsified a legal document just so I can claim my true height to be more than reality. It is not my fault that the DMV has a flawed licensing system. Here’s some news for you, I don’t weight 160 pounds either! Stick that in your document falsifier…

I can’t help but feel like I have cheated Savannah today. I talked about her brothers, but today is her birthday. My baby girl is eight. She may be too old to be called that by anyone, except me, because no matter what- she will always be my baby girl.

I can call her that because I got to deliver her. It was one of the most special times in my life. In the delivery room, the nurse practitioner asked me if I wanted to deliver her. Amy had an uncomplicated pregnancy, and since things were going smoothly, I was ready and jumped at the chance. And when Savannah was born, I was the first to hold her. I feel like I have had to let her go just a little every day since.

Happy Birthday Savannah.

Tie a Day, Number 53

Sam, my six year old son, asked me yesterday if he could help me pick out a tie to wear. Of course, I said, “Yes!”

I tried to narrow down his choices from the remaining 80 or so ties I still have not worn, but he was having none of that, he wanted to see all of his choices. I was a little worried because I had already ironed my shirt and I was afraid that he would pick a tie that completely clashed with what I had prepared. Luckily, I remembered the golden rule of men’s wear, as long as you wear solid colors almost any tie will work. This is how I came to place my fate in the hands of a child who wears horizontal and vertical stripes together in the same shirt and pants combination.

I know that what Sam wears he likes, and that is much more important than matching. So I let him pick out his clothes while he can still get away with that approach. Once you get a little older, everyone offers their opinion, but when you are six, people say things like, “Awesome Transformers shirt!” And isn’t that all that really matters?

In the end, he gave me a choice. I could wear the Calvin and Hobbes tie today, or the tie that I have that has a picture of his brother, Calvin on it. Whichever tie I didn’t wear today, I have to wear tomorrow.

This Calvin and Hobbes tie is special to me because my wife Amy gave it to me when I was still teaching Kindergarten, before we were married. I believe it was 1994. We have always loved the Calvin and Hobbes comics and joked that our child would end up to be exactly like the Calvin in the strip. After we found out that Amy was pregnant, we had months of discussions on possible baby names (I wanted to carry on the family name with the 5^th in the Doss male series, and Amy did not) we could only find common ground with one name, Calvin. This is how we named our first son (as a compromise he has my middle name; that is as far as she would go).

Calvin was a much better name than the extreme name that I picked out. I only made it up to force Amy to see what great mistake it would be to pass on my name. The crazy name that I adopted involved clicks, a whistle and a smoochy sound strung together to form a completely unspellable name. The idea was that if I wouldn’t budge on the ridiculous extreme name, then she would have to give up and and the family name would live on.

Amy is too smart for me and knew I would fold; and I am glad. But it still makes me laugh to think of a teacher on nthe first day of school trying to call roll and reaching a unspellable name...

"Would 2 clicks, a whistle and smoochy sound Doss please raise his hand?"

Tie a Day, Number 16

Today's tie is one of my all time favorites! The tie has a repeating pattern of Calvin and Savannah sitting in a little car. Calvin was 4 years old at the time, and Savannah was only a year old (he is 11 now, and she is 7). Amy gave the tie to me in 2003, as a beginning of the school year present.

Needless to say, but I will do it anyway, I think this tie is beautiful. It has made me smile all day. People have stopped me to look at the tie and I am allowed to talk about my children. There isn't anything better than that.

I have two ties like this, the other tie has a younger Calvin that repeats all over the tie. But I don't have a tie with Sam on it. I think I might need to break down and buy one- I already know the picture I want to use. I can't have Sam feeling left out on the ties!

If every tie made me feel this good, I would wear ties every day of the week- including the weekends. And with nothing else on- even in the shower.

Thanks Chuck

Establishing and keeping connections with people is a full time job. It is difficult and not something that I am remotely good at with anyone. People I work with, friends and even family... Family is what I care about the most, but I still find it hard to connect to them.

My son Calvin is ten and becoming a man. I am always trying to find ways that we can be together and bridge that gap that is between us, but even the best plans don't always work out.

Luckily, I am an opportunist.

Calvin has his own unique sense of humor, but as Steve Martin said, "Comedy is not Pretty." In the wrong place with the wrong audience, and you can get in quite a bit of trouble with your best punch line. Timing is everything.

Recently, I was waiting to take Calvin out to dinner after his play practice. I am just standing there taking up room in the hallway while he is waiting in line to change his clothes. I hear him say to his theater instructor, "You know Jesus is the son of God, but God is the son of Chuck Norris."

I was furious! First of all, he has been told to not try out his new material with anyone but me. Plus, he has already gotten in trouble for trying to be funny by talking about religion to his theater instructor. Jokes about religion are hurtful and make people angry.

What surprised me the most was his Chuck Norris joke. When and where did he hear Chuck Norris jokes? More importantly, why did I not know about this sooner? All that wasted time when we could have been giggling over ridiculous punch lines!

After doing my parental duty- chewing him out for his poor timing and for breaking the joking about religion rule, I asked him where he heard the Chuck Norris joke. Still a little shook up from the stern talking to I gave him, Calvin sheepishly said, "I made it up."

He is creating his own Chuck Norris material? Wow! I am thrilled. As an early adopter of Chuck Norris jokes, I have treasured them ever since I told my first one in public and was greeted with a puzzled look. It is an acquired taste.

If you don't know the story behind Chuck Norris jokes, I will try to clarify. A few years back some college kids were sitting around trying to think of funny things to say to one another when one of them touched on the ultimate man icon of the 80's, Chuck Norris. His cool steely look, and his Karate abilities made him a natural for this humorous game of one-up-manship. Chuck Norris Facts became a fad. These jokes are mostly shared among guys, because we are, as a rule, immature and silly. The more impossible the Chuck Norris feat, the funnier it is to us.

It has apparently escaped my son that I have a Chuck Norris t-shirt, and my wife had just given me a Chuck Norris Facts poster that I took to work. So, I tried to lighten the mood by telling him one of my favorite Chuck jokes, "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could Chuck Norris? ...All of it.”

And with that one joke, there was a new bond between us- and a whole slew of new inside man jokes! We spent the next hour at Wendy’s with me telling Calvin Chuck jokes from my blackberry while scanning Chuck Norris Facts.com.

You know your son is having fun when he squirts coke out of his nose while laughing.

Thank you Chuck for helping me to stay close to my son.

Just a Fresh Coat of Paint

I am pretty sure that marriages have fallen apart because of the words, "All we need is a fresh coat of paint in that room." Families have been destroyed and perhaps countries have even gone to war over this innocent statement.

There is so much more to painting a room. The room has to be cleaned, rearranged, and everything must be covered, and then you can paint. I don't think I have ever painted one coat of paint on a wall. It always requires two. The off-handed way that people suggest that a room can have paint slapped on it and everything will be great is so deceptive that I believe that it should be against the law to say something that ridiculous.

I have heard people say that a room just needs fresh coat of paint on those home improvement shows more times than I can count. I guess they are allowed to say that because that is what the show is about, but is so unfair to real people who attempt to pull off these things at home to cut to the finished room 3 min after they suggest a new coat of paint. They never show the work crew, all the work that is done, or give you the actual time it takes to get the job done. All of that is very wrong!

After watching Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture, and seeing him on 20/20 and Oprah last year, I told Amy that I was going to let the kids paint their rooms. On the show we were watching, Randy talked about how wonderful he thought it was that his parents let him paint his room any way he wanted. He painted murals and little amusing things on his walls. It a very moving experience.

If you haven't seen the Last Lecture, you should take the hour and 16 mins and do it.

Last week, I began to work on Calvin's room. The entire room needed a base coat to cover the odd tan color that had been on the walls long before we moved in the house 3 years ago. Then we could paint the walls with the sky blue color he picked out. Only after the room had been painted a uniform color would the Pokemon mural finally go on his wall.

Amy and I have been married for 13 years and she knows me pretty well by now. She understands that when I paint it is best to leave me alone and let me do it by myself. If she had forgotten that unwritten rule, she was reminded when I remarked on the inadequate nature of the tape job that I was inspecting before the first coat of paint. With a hurt look on her face she said, "I did that." Then she threw some offensive hand signal at me. I love the fact that she doesn't put up with my bad behavior.

I have always felt that there is something very Zen to the nature of painting. Once I become one with the brush, and together we transform a wall from one color to another, it is very calming. It is like meditating.

When I began to prepare to paint my son's room, Amy asked me if I wanted her to take the kids out of the house.

"No," I said, "They can help me."

"Are you kidding?" Amy asked me in that way that tells me she thinks I am pulling her leg.

There is nothing Zen about adding children to a paint job. I love how eager they are to help with any and every project, but there is so much energy that it is hard to get them to focus on anything. It is barely controlled chaos. I think I would have had a better result if I had tied a paint roller to my dog's tail and just chased her around the room.

Maybe 6 and 10 are inappropriate ages to expect children to become good painters. I tried to be a good Dad and tell them everything they needed to know to be good painters, but maybe they weren't listening, or just forgot- over, and over, and over again. My children were trained at school to think that painting is fun, and that no matter what you create, it is art. I explained the difference between fun and work, art and painting walls, and I even paid them in Pokemon cards for their help, but they became worse the longer the paint job went on. Painting can quickly change from a fun new experience, to a mind numbingly, boring exercise in paint application for a 6 year old.

By day 3, it was all I could do not scream incoherent gibberish at my wonderful children. They didn't understand that touching freshly painted walls makes me a little jumpy. It was news to them that when you paint a wall you must cover the entire wall with paint, not create a wall spotted with thick layers of paint, thin layers of paint, and no paint at all. Maybe it is my fault. I mean, I never did learn to appreciate their tiny painted footprints around the house.

Even with plastic drop cloths, hearing my son say," Uh oh," was alarming. Oh well, the rug was old. Maybe no one will notice the new light blue shaded area in the center of the room, or the speckled zones on the corners of the carpet.

What originally began as a recreation of a warm and fuzzy memory from Randy Pausch's childhood that would have my son painting the pictures of his choice on his walls, transformed into Dad's personal home improvement project. It was a natural progression from everybody helping in a family activity, to a smaller more controlled workforce, to me doing it all the way I thought it should be done. I don't think that was the idea Randy was promoting.

My family survived painting Calvin's room, but I am still in the middle of putting up the ceiling fan to replace the defective light that used to be there. I am taking it slowly because the mental picture of me dangling from my son's 12 foot ceiling while electricity shoots through my body, bothers me. Maybe I should turn the main power switch off. I did train Amy to kick the ladder out from under me if I begin to glow or behave in an oddly electric way. I think I'll be alright...

The house does look a little better, but there is much more to the ordeal of painting than, "just a fresh coat of paint."

Latias - the Pokemon on my son's wall.

10

This Thursday, June 19th, is my oldest son's birthday. Calvin will be 10 years old.

According to Einstein, time is relative to the observer. If you are a stationary observer, your clock moves faster. It seems that I have become very statue like. Time seems to fly by me, and my son, who was an infant only yesterday, is becoming more man-like in thought and appearance in front of my eyes.

I know this is only an illusion, but I secretly want time to stop so that I can hold my children forever. This is an unreasonable fantasy, but I can't shake it. Honestly, it doesn't seem like it was that long ago that I was anticipating Calvin's arrival.

I was probably better prepared for birth than most men are at that point in life. In college I had to take all of the classes in child development. I was the only guy in a class full of young women during the birthing video. Every girl watched me to see how I would take the miracle of birth displayed on video before me. I treated it like a fat shot of tequila in a biker bar. I stared directly at the screen and didn't flinch. Any display of weakness in a situation like that is the kiss of death. I was young and single and was not about to eliminate any potential liaisons.

I also had the benefit of being man in a female dominated profession. The things that women discussed in front of me when they accepted me as non-threatening were always very interesting. When my wife became pregnant I had been a kindergarten teacher for 8 years. That is 8 years of listening to girl talk. I must have picked up something.

My wife and I took those pregnancy classes together, not Lamaze, just the regular birthing classes. Amy was having none of that non-epidural birthing, and I don't blame her one bit (any man that thinks he knows what is best for a woman during childbirth needs to shut the hell up). The classes involved talking about all of the changes that were coming, reviewing anatomy, and watching birthing videos. Really just review for both of us.

The only problem was that I was not prepared for the overwhelming emotional response that was coming. We had a day to prepare for Calvin's birth. At our last OBGYN visit (yes, I went to every Dr's visit for all of my children), the Doctor turned to us and said, "Do you want to have a baby today, or tomorrow?" We picked the following day. I had to cut the grass, I don't know why I had to do that, but at the time, that is exactly what I said. So I cut the grass and worried about all of the things that I had not yet completed in preparation for our new arrival.

Calvin's birth was as smooth as they come. I held Amy's hand and let her squeeze me very tightly while practicing the breathing that everyone tells you to do. The Doctor said, "Ok, here he comes," and bam! He was out. I was presented with this small, wiggly bundle that I could not see. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was crying. That was the most wonderfully overwhelming experience that I have ever had. It really did not change with my other two children, each time I had the same reaction. Overcome with the beauty and magic of life.

And now Calvin will be 10.

Once, when Calvin was almost one, I was holding him up while he tried out those wobbly little legs that all babies have, and I felt like I was in control. I was protecting him while he began to explore the world. Slowly he moved is feet forward. Then out of nowhere, his feet kicked out from under him and he went limp, banging his chin on the coffee table, and opening a small bloody gash.

I was devastated. My perfect baby was scarred for life by my careless parenting. How could I have been so thoughtless? It took me a long time to forgive myself. I finally realized that I had done everything possible to protect him, but that is just not enough. Life is hard, and no matter what you do, you can not protect your children for all that life throws at them. This is the one thing that they don't cover in the birthing classes and the hardest lesson that all parents must learn. Maybe that is why I want to stop time and just hold my babies...