The Filial Thirteen

My son is twelve. TWELVE! ALMOST A TEENAGER! And so I got this brilliant idea to do a Thirteen all for him. Trouble is, I did it last year, too. So much for originality. Can I come up with thirteen more memories about my son?

You betcha.

1. The twinkle in your father’s pants. The other day, Karen and I reflected that some folks have kids to “save” their marriage, but we waited for most of the hellish bits to pass before we even considered parenthood. Seriously. We never talked about it before we got married, and afterwards, we had far more worrisome things on our minds than winning the Darwinian Challenge.

By the time I was in my last year of residency, however, we realized (A) we weren’t getting any younger, (B) Karen’s health had stabilized, and (C) we finally had enough money to hire help, so Karen’s disabilities and my call requirements were no longer a bar to having a child. So we did it. A few times. And it finally worked. And for any more detail than that, you really will have to read last year’s post (linked above).

2. No YouTube for you! Like most new parents, we had to buy a camcorder. We took lots and lots of videos. I remember shooting seven or eight minutes of tape, filming my son asleep. Yup, just sleeping, not even snoring or tossing and turning. He was such a beautiful little creature — and, yeah, I can picture it even now, which is a good thing, because our camcorder was stolen (tape and all) four years ago. We were getting this place remodeled. We suspect an inside job; any of the contractor’s guys might have tipped off a friend. They stole job site tools and our tools, generator, telescope, and the camcorder. Weird. And quite a pisser.

Here he is, asleep:

So tiny.

3. Diapers? No problem.

Wash on the “Gentle” cycle, and use 1/2 the usual amount of detergent. Tumble dry.

4. He has always had my sense of humor, although two or three years ago, he went through a phase where he was frustrated that he couldn’t consistently be funny. But he has always cracked us up. Before he was two, he would play this game. When we called him, he would run into his room, slam the door, and laugh hysterically. The kid has the proper attitude toward authority, don’t you think? And when he was three, and still only marginally verbal, we were vacationing in Ashland and I wanted him to hurry back to the car after dinner. “Hurry up!” I said. “You’ll freeze your ass off!” To which he screamed, “Freeze your penis off!” and laughed hysterically, of course.

5. We bought our first house shortly after Jake’s first birthday. We had always been renters, so perhaps that’s why we both wanted land. Lots of land. We got a nearly new house on an acre of Texas scrub dotted with gnarly oaks. Nice front lawn, self-fertilizing thanks to the wild deer, but the back yard was a horror show of fire ant mounds.

Did I let him run around in the back unsupervised? I didn’t think he was unsupervised. I mean, I had my eyes on him the whole time. And so I saw the look on his face right away: he stopped scampering, stood deathly still, and blanched. He didn’t scream, didn’t cry, but I knew something was horribly wrong. Right away, I thought of the fire ants.

I dashed out, picked him up, and found not ants but burs infesting his socks. Nasty little sticky burs that only hurt if you move; but if you move, God help you. On the run to rescue my boy, some got into my socks, too, and the last thing I wanted to do was move. I had to get him back to the house, though, where I could strip off my shoes and socks, then his socks, and only then was everything all better.

Texans can keep Texas. If it wasn’t fire ants, it was sticky burs, or chiggers, or scorpions, or wasps. Even the public parks were pocked with fire ant mounds. The only safe place we could go was Sea World.

6. Speaking of Sea World, it was always hot as hell there. I had to bring a spray bottle along to spritz my wife and son. They don’t sweat.

All three of us would have liked to go topless, but I suspect there were laws about that.

7. We came back to California when Jake was not quite three. If I had to pick one reason why we left Texas, it would be the heat. Thanks to the heat, Karen was housebound for seven or eight months out of the year, and Jake could only play outside for half an hour before he would turn red.

He doesn’t remember much of Texas, which I suppose is a good thing.

Anyway, we found a great day care for him, a wonderful gal who was recovering from breast cancer treatment and wanted “an easy one” to get back into the swing of things. Jake has never been all that difficult. I think it was a good match.

8. The kid was train crazy, though. Back then, Thomas the Tank Engine was hot (probably still is), and every toy store had a full display. If we took him into a store like that, we wouldn’t be able to remove him for at least an hour. Bribes wouldn’t work.

We thought if we bought him his own Thomas gear, maybe then he would leave the store displays alone — but no. He would stake out his territory and defend it against kids twice his size.

It used to be such a blast, watching him play with his trains when he didn’t know we were watching. He would make up his own stories and use the trains to act them out. Then, some time around age seven or eight, he discovered Legos. I dunno, maybe even younger than that. And when Legos and Battlebots demanded more of his attention, poor Thomas and James and Percy (the gay engine) and Lady (Thomas’s love interest) languished in their boxes.

He’s not train-crazy anymore, but he’s still into robotics.

9. I guess we were all nuts about Battlebots, because when Jake was five or six, we made a special trip to the Bay Area to see the competition on Treasure Island. Jake got to meet some of his favorite designers, and (despite the incredibly uncomfortable bleachers) we had a great time.

Getting there, though — that was a different story. Visitors were not allowed to drive to Treasure Island. We parked in the East Bay and waited for buses to take us there. Well, on the first day of the match, we all decided to use the bathroom before getting on the buses. (Important plot point: there were several buses. One left every ten or fifteen minutes.) I can’t remember quite how it happened, but I thought he was with his mother, and she thought he was with me, and when Karen and I met up, neither of us had the boy in tow.

I’ll spare you the sturm und drang. Yes, the cops were called. Yes, we pulled our hair out. And yes, Jake had gone on ahead of us, making friends with everyone on the bus, unconscious of the fact his parents were plunging into Stage I of the grieving process.

10. He loves cats, too. Here he is with Faithful, his first cat:

Sadly (stupidly?), it took us a while to realize we simply can’t have outdoor cats here in Oregon. SOMETHING around here likes to maul and/or eat cats. Our current cats, Mist and Ash, don’t get to go outside. Ash, the tabby, likes to play fetch. Mist is the more stand-offish of the two, unless you’re my son. No cat can resist his charms.

11. He did well in regular school. Too well. Kindergarten and first grade went well, but beginning in second grade, the teachers felt it necessary to spend three months in review before delving into new material. He didn’t need three months of review. He was already past the new material.

We started talking to him about home schooling in third grade, and by fourth grade, he was ready for it. We did the first two years down in California, where our teaching practices were monitored closely. And therein lies a tale.

In California, third graders have to build a model of a Mission. It has been that way forever. I built one, Karen built one; I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Karen’s mom, who grew up in California, built one, too. In the old days, sugar cubes and Elmer’s glue were the usual construction materials. Nowadays, people build them from clay, Legos, God knows what else.

At one of the meetings where Karen and I met with some of the folks who were supervising the home-schooled kids, a teacher insisted he do the Mission project. It would be fun. We should at least ask him if he wanted to do it.

I explained that I objected on political grounds. If they insisted he do the project, I said, then I would have him build a model of the mass graves into which the Friars dumped their “saved souls.”

Yeah, she blanched. But we never heard another word about Mission-building.

12. Don’t let anyone tell you home schooling is easy. We had lots of fights early on as Jake adjusted to us in our roles as teachers. We still fight about it. But is it worth it? You bet. He gets to learn math at his own pace (he’s up to Algebra II), study American history from Howard Zinn, and ancient history and the sciences from Larry Gonick. With regard to literature, we bounce around to keep things interesting. He recently finished The Stranger, and now he’s reading The Odyssey (Robert Fitzgerald’s translation). I think we may do some Greek tragedies after that.

And before Camus? He read a ton of Kafka — most of the short stories, and The Trial. Just for funsies, I’m having him read “The Call of Cthulhu.”

I suspect he likes Kafka better than Lovecraft.

13. What’s he into nowadays?

• Homestar Runner (which, I kid you not, I found by googling “Denny’s Menu”)
• Invader Zim
• Anything by Jhonen Vasquez (the creator of Invader Zim)
• Books by Stephenie Meyer or Christopher Paolini, but . . .
• I persuaded him to read I, Lucifer and Kafka on the Shore. Couldn’t convince him to read any J. M. Coetzee, but I haven’t given up yet.

Jake, if I weren’t so tired right now, I’m sure I could have come up with a better Thirteen. But rest assured, we love you. Happy Birthday, son.

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D.