The Perfect Shave

Ever since my mom started called me “Prince” when I was 13 and sprouted some dark fuzz on my upper lip, I’ve been obsessed with shaving. My stubble has always been a prevalent facial feature, which is why people have always thought I looked older than I was. This made me very popular as a college freshman because I was able to buy beer without an ID. It feels like shaving has always been something I’ve just had to do, like showering and wearing clothes.

There was one summer when I actually got paid to shave. I was a test subject for Gillette. Two or three times a week, I would make a 10 minute drive to a testing facility—a plain, white science lab looking room filled with individual sink basins. Me and about a dozen other guys would shave half our faces with one product, the other half with another and take a quick survey afterward where we would have to count any nicks and cuts. They paid 15 bucks a shave. A great deal for something I was doing for free every day. Suckers.

About six years ago, I grew a beard as a way to save my face from the torture I must inflict courtesy of micro thin steel blades scraping its surface. For I have the unlucky combination of a thick beard and super sensitive skin that bleeds every time I shave. No matter what product I use or how I wield my razor. Thankfully I like the look of my facial fuzz and based on the compliments I often receive, others do too. My beard now feels as much a part of my identity as my hair color or my name.

A few years ago, my curiosity with shaving led me to stumble into an upscale barbershop in Beverly Hills. I mention that it was in Beverly Hills only in order to conjure up the very image you have in your head right now. The place was new and immaculate, with a row of shiny old-fashioned barber chairs the back, a crew of sharply dressed barbers and a waiting room with fancy leather couches and a big flat screen TV. It was like a day spa for men. I couldn't resist it for long and soon went in for a trim and a shave.

You know the opening shot of The Untouchables, where Robert DeNiro as Capone is leaning back in a barber chair with a hot towel on his face while people scurry around pampering him? That’s exactly what it’s like getting a professional shave. It’s taking something that I do nearly every day and making it luxurious, like getting a massage while you shower.

The barber is a pro with a straight blade, and is able to get a much closer shave than I’ve ever been able to while making sure that both sides of my beard are straight and level. (You'd be surprised how difficult this can be.) During the shave you’re treated to hot towels, hot lather, oils, cold towels, talc and a head and scalp massage at the end. It’s bliss.

Paying for a shave is an indulgence that I don’t treat myself too very often but every once in a while I will take some time to relax and get a professional shave. Guys, as a general rule, don't tend to pamper ourselves very much. It's usually women who get the manicures or get hot rock treatments at the spa. But this is something that's just for us. And if you ever have the opportunity to get a professional shave, I say take it. You won't be disappointed.

The Double Down Is Real!

Last summer I posted on my blog that KFC was test marketing a gastronomical abomination called the Double Down. 

I guess enough people seemed to like it because it's become a reality.  Because what we need in this world is way to make some of the world's unhealthiest fast food that much more unhealthy.

So...will you try it?

Scars

There is a scar on my chin, although you can’t see it underneath my beard. It is a souvenir of a time when I was young and reckless. I got it falling off my bike headfirst as I carelessly zoomed down the steep hill where I lived as a kid. 25 stitches later, it left a jagged scar that although has faded over time, reminds me that sometimes you need to slow down and pay attention to the world around you.

I have two circular scars on the back of my right hand, which I told people was from a street hockey incident at summer camp. However, they are actually the result of having a series of warts burned off that mysteriously kept reappearing during my last year of junior high. For years, I didn’t have the self-confidence to admit to anyone what had truly caused the scars.

My other scar is not prominent. It’s a little white line near the fingernail of my index finger that I received while trying to cut through a super ball with a pocket knife, even though my dad had warned me not to. I had to spend the evening with him in the emergency room, enduring his silent but piercing “I told you so” stare. That scar is a reminder that my father is a wise man to whom I should pay attention.

My collection of scars is small. And while they don’t come with any truly great stories, each permanent mark on my body serves as a reminder of who I was and what I’ve learned along the way.

Scars can reveal a lot about a person. So what scars do you have and what stories do they tell about you?

Influential Education

The Soviet Union is evil. That’s what I learned in my third grade history class. It’s one of the few school lessons that I remember in vivid detail, right down to where I was sitting in the class when it was being taught.

It was the early 80’s and even though I wasn’t aware of it, the Cold War was raging. The lesson revolved around how the Soviet Union used to be called Russia, but now it was a communist nation. That meant that the individuals who lived there had no rights. In fact, my teacher said, if we were to try to visit the Soviet Union there would be people who would tell us where we could go and what we could see. There was absolutely no freedom for the poor people of the Soviet Union.

The lesson hit me hard. I was confused and angry that a government would behave in such a way and I was sad for the people that lived there. Why would anyone want to be a communist? Communism is bad. The Soviet Union is evil.

Looking at this through adult eyes, I easily recognize this not as a history lesson, but as propaganda. I’m still angered by the lesson, but not because of communism, but by the fact that at a young age I was manipulated by a school curriculum.

This is why some parts of this recent article about events in Texas by the Board of Education are worrisome. The New York Times article is about how members of the Texas Board of Education make amendments to their state’s curriculum. The board is so influential that their decisions could end up affecting school policies around the country.

In one section the article talks about one very aggressive board member, Don McLeroy, who was trying to get items such as the “conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s”, the Contract With America, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association on the Texas school curriculum.

From the article:

The injection of partisan politics into education went so far that at one point another Republican board member burst out in seemingly embarrassed exasperation, “Guys, you’re rewriting history now!” Nevertheless, most of McLeroy’s proposed amendments passed by a show of hands.

Kids’ minds are sponges, absorbing everything put in front of them. They are also trusting. They are navigating how the world works and have not yet built cynical calluses that cause them to question things, like us adults have. Because of this, we need to be very careful what we teach our children. A simple lesson in the third grade could inform a kid’s thinking for the rest of their lives.

As a child, I was taught that communism was evil. Decades earlier this kind of thinking led to things like the Hollywood Blacklist. Thankfully, by the time I reached high school the Berlin Wall came down officially ending the Cold War. Though communist nations remain, the Russians were no longer our sworn enemy and the paranoia about communism started eroding. The lesson from my youth was no longer valid. But nonetheless a strong impression had been made. I had been taught to hate.

Please don't misunderstand me.  People absolutely have the right to maintain their own political and religious beliefs and teach them to their children. But when it comes to school curriculums, we need to make sure that the personal ideologies of some do not influence all.

5th Grade Valentine

It was the fifth grade and I was “going with” a girl named Amy. My pre-teen gawkiness was at its peak that year because my old elementary school had merged with a new one. The transition to new surroundings, combined with my awkward insecurities, made for a rough time. We now had two of everything—double the number of popular kids, jocks, troublemakers and of course, nerds. I had been hovering near the bottom of my old school’s social hierarchy and was finding myself slipping even lower in this new one.

Despite my social stature, I had managed to meet a girl. At the tender age of 10, Amy was cunning enough to know that she had me wrapped around her finger, and she seemed to relish wielding her power over me. Amy would agree to go with me only to unceremoniously dump me a few days later. The next day she would take me back and the cycle continued. One night we would spend the evening talking on the phone (which was probably only about 15 minutes, but at the time it seemed like the whole night), and the next day she would totally ignore me. Of course, this only made me crazier about her. I had already made a habit of crushing on girls who were completely uninterested in me. Amy was the first girl to like me back, even though for the most part she didn’t treat me very well.

Valentine’s Day was approaching and Amy and I were in a good place. We had been together for almost two weeks without her breaking up with me, so I was feeling really good about our relationship. Notes were passed. Stickers were traded. Hands were tentatively held for brief, but shining moments. Based on our tenuous past, I knew that I had to make a big splash for Valentine’s Day. I bought her a card that was sweet, but didn’t scream “desperate”, and a box of colored pencils.

That afternoon the phone rang. Before the words were even spoken, I could tell it was coming. I had learned to recognize the tone on her voice. She broke up with me…again. But this time it was permanent.

I went through what I would later learn was the normal range of emotions after a painful dumping. I was hurt, but I was also angry. I mean, come on, couldn't she have waited just one more day? If she had only seen the effort I put into her Valentine's Day gift, she might have changed her mind. I spent the rest of the day wallowing in the "what ifs".

There were no great lessons to be learned from this, except for the obvious fact that heartbreak hurts. It hurts even more on Valentine’s Day. It would be a long time before I realized that bad times make the good times better—sweet doesn’t exist without sour. Every so often on Valentine’s Day, as WonderWife™ and I uphold our tradition of eating fried chicken with a really good bottle of wine, I think about how Amy broke my heart so long ago, and I wonder if today is just a little bit better because of that.

Winning the Lottery: What Would You Do?

I was talking with a friend recently about winning the lottery. It's a great fantasy to think about getting a ton of money and turning in your old life for a new one filled with buckets of caviar, gold plated computers and money fights.

When most people talk about winning the lottery, they think about what they would buy, and my friend was no exception.

“What would you do?” I asked him.

He immediately began rattling off a detailed list of purchases that he would make. It was clear this was not the first time he had thought about this.

I interrupted him, “But what would you do?"

He stopped and pondered in silence for a while. This was not something he had thought about.

As great as it would be to win enough money never to have to work again, waking up each day with no real sense of purpose isn't enough for me. I need to be doing something, though if I didn't have to do anything, I'm not sure what I'd do. Maybe I'd write full time. Or perhaps I'd find a cool hobby or take up golf. I'd like to see more of the world than just the United States.  But the reality is while all of these things sound like fun they aren't enough to fill up the rest of my life. I would need to be challenged. I would need to turn on my brain. Vacations are fun, but if there is nothing to counter-balance them, it's easy to imagine life becoming stale.  Without the need to work, what would propel me through life?  I'd like to think that I would be the type of person to use my financial freedom to better the world in some way--start a charity or something noble like that.  

The idea of filling up your life with possessions is easy, but filling up all of that time is much harder. If given all of that money and all of that freedom, what would you do with it?

Gender Toys: the Video Game vs. the Dollhouse

Christmas is just around the corner but this week, I've been knee deep in the Festival of Lights (more commonly referred to as Hanukkah).

Two days ago on my award winning* Twitter account, I posted this:

Although I was kidding, I realize that this may have painted a picture of me that isn’t completely accurate—that I’m concerned with my son’s gender identity and want to make sure he plays with “boy” toys.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. I really don’t care what toys he plays with. He’s got enough toy cars to open a dealership, but if he wants to play with the Ken doll we have lovingly dubbed “naked” Steve (because of the Bean’s continued and steadfast refusal to keep it’s clothes on) I’m seriously fine with it. I would be hypocritical not to. Growing up, I spent just as many hours playing kitchen or Barbies with my little sister as she did playing ball or knock-hockey with me.

On the other hand, there are some who feel strongly that toys should be divided amongst gender lines. I have a friend who can’t stomach the thought of his boys playing with anything “girly”. He gets seriously bent out of shape at the implication that his sons are anything less than brimming with testosterone. And he has no sense of humor about this. I dunno, maybe he's watched too many episodes of Mad Men.

Keeping up traditional gender lines feels like such an antiquated parenting notion, but surprisingly, it still exists today. Why is there such pressure for boys to like "boy" things. There doesn't seem to be as much pressure for a girl to like "girl" things.

What about you? Do you think toys define gender or the other way around? Do you care if your son or daughter plays with toys of the “opposite” gender?

*Okay, maybe not “award winning” but my mom thinks it’s funny.

My Own Worst Frenemy

Kathy and I were friends for many years. When we met we were both the lowest rungs on the ladder in our office and out of the drudgery of that existence a friendship bloomed. We would regularly go out eating and drinking. We helped each other through some bad times and we celebrated the good. Orphans in a big city, we spent some holidays together. We were both single and we were both out there dating, and met up regularly to commiserate about the lack of good people in the pool.

If this were a Hollywood movie, the story would go like this: One night after too many cocktails, the friends tumble into bed. After it being all awkward and stuff, they eventually decide that true happiness has been in front of them the entire time. The credits roll as a catchy pop song plays in the background. However, my life is not some bubbly Kate Hudson movie. Things were a bit messier. The truth is that there wasn’t a single fiber of my being that was attracted to Kathy. She was one of those people who, like a cartoon character, constantly had their own personal storm cloud above their head. She was a severely co-dependent woman whose streak of bad luck had to be more than just coincidence. But she could hold her liquor, which is really all one wants in a drinking buddy.

Things took a turn for the weird when I met the woman would someday become WonderWife™. Kathy's behavior became erratic. She started to lie about things—telling people about places we had been that we had never been or RSVPing for us at parties that I was not attending. She spread false rumors about the state of my relationship with the future WW™. She tried to take over co-hosting duties at my bbq. One night I discovered Kathy, who was armed with a few of my carnal secrets from my dating days, telling a rather ribald tale at a dinner party, where the FWW™ was a guest.

The obvious truth became all too apparent to me. In Kathy’s mind, this was a Julia Roberts movie and she was the plucky heroine who was valiantly trying to sabotage my relationship with the FWW™ because we were destined to be together. My course of action was clear. I had to break up with Kathy.

The conversation was as dramatic and intense as if Kathy and I had been actually dating. She cried and denied her lies, even though I had proof. She refused to understand. The talk lasted for an hour and afterward, I was as drained as a tri-athlete after a race.

Years later, Kathy still pops up periodically in my life, like a stomach flu. And like a stomach flu, dealing with her is every bit as unpredictable and uncomfortable. We work in the same industry, which means that even though I'm attending a convention with 125,000 other people, it's certain that I will run into her. Based on things I've come to learn about her, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some stalking involved. (I wouldn't be surprised if she were reading this right now.) It’s creepy the way she knows everything about me, about my kids, about WonderWife™. She speaks to me in a friendly tone that does not acknowledge any trouble in our past. To her, I am a long lost friend with whom she is eager to be back in touch. She wants to make plans to come over and see the kids, and WonderWife™. I smile and nod and tell her how good it would be to see her, as to avoid any public confrontations, and when her assistant calls to schedule lunch I never call back. Not that it matters. The next time Kathy pops up, she acts the same, as if she was hit with the flashy thing from Men in Black. Like I said, creepy.

Through all of this, WonderWife™ sees the humor in the situation, laughing at my uncomfortableness. She would love nothing more than to run into Kathy someday. Preferably while we’re out with the kids so she can silently show Kathy what’s what.

Sawing Logs

I slept on the couch last night. Not because I did anything wrong, but because I snore and my wife, who has always been a light sleeper, can no longer stand the dulcet tones of my sawing logs. The night before I woke up at 3am to find my wife and her pillow gone from the bed. This means one of two things: 1) One of the kids woke up and she needed to be with them in the living room or 2) My snoring kept her awake and the only way she could get some damn sleep was to go to the couch.

It's usually number 2.

I fucking hate that it's usually number 2.

When I was a kid, there was a joke in Mad Magazine where a mom was giving advice to her daughter:

The mother said, "Don't sleep with a man before you marry him."

The daughter says, "Okay."

"And don't marry a man who snores," says the mother.

The daughter replies, "But how will I know?"

Funny right? But it was the snoring part of the joke that has always haunted me. 'Don't marry a man who snores.'

I hate that I snore. I hate that people can't stand to sleep in the same room as me. I sometimes wake myself up as a result of my own snoring.

I've tried the strips. I've gargled the mouthwash. I've slept on the pillows. I've done the tests. It's not life-threatening sleep apnea. It's just snoring.

So when my wife is forced out the warm comfort of our bed because of me, I try to give her a night of peace and sleep on the couch. Cause I'm good like that. And because I'm guilty about it.

Mornings are hard enough. Waking up alone when you're married is the worst.

View From the Back

Dear Digital Camera,

At first I was really mad at you. What you showed me made me uneasy. You were aimed at the back of my head as I rode the train with the kids. Downloading the shot to my computer, your crisp 12 megapixels allowed me to zoom in close and confirm the very thing that I have suspected for a while now…a patch of hair on the top of my head is thinning faster than a contestant on The Biggest Loser.

However camera, I got over my ill feelings toward you because I have come to realize that you are the only one who is telling me the truth about my follicles. Brutal though you may be, you’ve been honest with me when my hairdresser and wife have not. My hairdresser has been my friend and confidant for nearly a decade. Her shop is covered in mirrors and sitting in her chair I am treated to various angles of my head. For the past few months, I’ve noticed what seemed to be less hair up top. Figuring my hairdresser would know better than anyone, I asked her if I was in fact starting to thin out. She denied it and blamed bright lighting and the angle of the mirror. My wife, on the other hand, has remained completely silent, choosing to ignore the plain truth, rather than subject me to it. Perhaps they were trying to spare my feelings, but a lie of omission is still lying.

It’s inevitable, I guess. I am fast approaching my late 30s and I’ve noticed by body changing rapidly. Gray hair has weeded itself into my head and body like crabgrass on a forgotten lawn. It seems that the myths are true and I’m destined to follow in the bald ways of my maternal grandfather instead of my father, who at 63 retains a lush, full head of hair.

Camera I know that whatever happens, you will remain an unblinking, objective eye. It’s up to you and only you to tell me the truth about the state of my hair. Thank you for having the courage to confront me. Although the truth hurts, I respect you for it.

Sincerely,

Daddy Geek Boy

The Letter

Reaching back into the Geek Boy vault for this post written in June of 2008. But I think its as relevant now as it was back then...

Have you ever been in the situation, where you were talking to somebody really attractive—like the best looking person you’ve ever had the pleasure of being in public with—and exactly 2 minutes and 43 seconds into the conversation you realize that they are unbearably dull?

Well this happened to me, only I didn’t know it because I was 15 years old.

Recently my parents sold the house in which I grew up, meaning that a few weeks ago two boxes containing all of my old stuff arrived at my front door. Going through the boxes, I have never been so happy that not only was I a pack rat, but I was an incredibly organized pack rat. I know it will sound really nerdy of me to admit this, but I actually kept all of my notes, journals, term papers, creative writing endeavors in chronological order. I’ve since been spending evenings here and there re-living my teenage years. The mountain of paper that grew out of these boxes provides a very vivid and accurate portrait of yours truly right in the midst of his most gawkiest, rawest and hardest teenaged years.

But those times weren’t all bad because in the summer of 1988, I met a girl. She was one of the most memorable “J”s in a long line of girls I’ve dated whose names began with that initial. This particular J was, to me at the time, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. And she liked me. I mean really liked me. She liked me in the only way a 15 year-old girl likes anything—totally obsessed for a very, very short period of time. And I liked her back. I mean I really really liked her back. This was true pimply puppy love. We spent two glorious whirlwind romantic weeks together before I shipped off…on a teen tour across the country.

Before I left, there was a teary goodbye between us that could have been lifted from a sweeping Forties-era romantic epic. She promised to write. And she made good on her promise with a nearly 50 page handwritten correspondence that came to be known on my tour bus as, “the letter.” The Letter’s magnitude was unprecedented in the brief romantic experiences of the 50 or so teens on that bus. It's very existence and the fact that it was sent to me became the stuff of legend. It helped make the summer of 1988 one of the most memorable I’ve ever had.

Exactly 20 summers have passed since then. And in unpacking the boxes I found, nestled between my journal and one of my high school yearbooks, the letter.

Before I get into the letter, here are two things you need to know about this girl:

1) She dumped me the moment I returned from my trip. Literally as I’m driving back home from the airport.

2) Years after that summer, I learned she was severely anorexic when she would show up at the gym with less meat on her than a chicken. She was topic of a lot of gossip by my mother’s friends.

The contents of this letter are truly astounding. It is written in the classic bubbly girl scrawl. The one where all of the dots over the “i”s and the periods are little puffy circles. In reading this letter, I immediately realized that this girl was the most vapid, shallow and boring girl ever. A good majority of the letter was spent telling me about the minute details of her day. You see, J led a very simple life. Her summery days were spent exercising to Kathy Smith’s aerobic workout videos and weighing herself. In the afternoon, she would sunbathe on her deck and then cool off in front of the TV watching reruns of “The Brady Bunch.” That doesn’t leave a lot to write about. Often in the letter she would just list what songs were playing on the radio. A typical passage of the Letter went like this:

“The song ‘Electric Blue’ is on Q107. Before they were playing ‘Faithfully’ by Journey. WAVA is playing ‘Hungry Eyes’ by I don’t know who [Eric Carmen, by the way]. But I’m listening to Q107. They’re in the middle of a 10 in a row overflow. Pretty nifty."

I’m not kidding. This went on for pages and pages. In another section she refers to one radio station as “the black people station.” Holy shit. She’s a racist too!

Of course, I had absolutely no idea at the time who this girl really was. All actual memories of real conversations with her have eroded over time. But this letter serves as a perfectly preserved snapshot of this girl in the neon-colored time that was 1988, and how a young geeky boy ignorantly and blissfully fell for a beautiful blonde.

I’m so thankful that the 15 year-old me knew that the 35 year-old me would totally love this stuff.

Is Sharing Caring?

How much do you want to share of yourself when your kids grow up? A generation ago, this question would have probably been irrelevant. The lines between parents and children were a lot more defined. But in this touchier, feelier age in which we live, parents are friendlier and closer with their offspring. Add to that the transparency of social media and blogging, and it becomes seemingly harder to stay opaque. So when it comes time that your kids are going to start to get into the same kind of trouble that you did, stare down the same demons, what are you going to say?

I’m a long way from this, but I think about it a lot. I’m fairly confident that my parents, especially my dad, had their share of shenanigans growing up. Yet when it came to the inevitable talks about using substances or sex or any of the other things that keep parents of teens up a night, my folks never shared anecdotes. That was probably for the best. When it comes to learning about your parents, there are many things better left unsaid.

As for me, I was not a real troublemaker, but I was no angel either. Let's just put it this way, I'm really glad there was no such thing as Twitter when I was in college. As per usual, my teenage years included lapses in judgment that sometimes resulted in trashcans filled with puke or walks of shame (every once in a while, both).

At the end of the day, I don’t think my kids need to know everything about me. Just like I don’t know everything about my parents. I love my kids, but they are not my friends. Even though I call my son "buddy" all of the time, he is my child. Knowing the trouble I got in to, or narrowly avoided, would probably give him license to do the same things. Right?

What say you? Do you acknowledge your past in the present?

A Young Man's Game

I am not a 24 year old, though I often wish that I was. I want to indulge in the lifestyle of my youth but I cannot. I feel like Tom Hanks in Big, a young man trapped in the body of somebody who's much older with much more responsibility than I should.

It's not that I'm decrepit. Sometimes the wants of the younger me conflict with the needs of the elder me. Take for example this Halloween weekend. My favorite band is coming to Southern Califorina to play a 3 day festival. It sounds completely awesome and is something that if my life were completely my own I wouldn't hesitate to do. But my life no longer belongs to me alone. It's Halloween weekend and there is no way I could or would miss out on that day with my kids. They could be crushed. I'm kind of bummed to have to miss it, but honestly it's for the best. They're probably saving me in the long run because the physical toll of three days of living like it's Woodstock would most likely take weeks to recover from.

I have to face the sad fact that I can't bounce back like I used to. I was talking with a friend of mine about the old days when we would say up till dawn with Red Bull and booze coursing through our veins. She's still single and mentioned that we should all go out like that again. I looked at her as if she had more than the normal amount of appendages. We didn't even start those nights till 10pm. Most nights these days, I'm passed out on the couch by 10:30, Family Guy reruns playing in the background while a small line of drool runs down my face. (Sexy image, huh ladies?)

I still think like a young man, but I traded in that lifestyle the day the first umbilical cord was cut. Kids don't care if you've been up all night. They won't stop soiling their diapers just cause you're hung over. Their hunger doesn't subside cause you need a nap.

What about you? What do you miss most from your pre-parent lives?

Crossing the Streams

My life, for the most part, is compartmentalized. I have three distinct areas--work, friends and online. My friends are not a part of my working life and my online life is completely segregated from my real life. There are a handful of people in my life who know that I write as Daddy Geek Boy. On line, I write a few blogs and am a regular member in a parenting community called Offsprung. But very few of my readers and acquaintances know me by anything more than my internet handle. However on occasion, there are times when the streams get crossed and one of my worlds bleeds into another.

Blogging is a strange thing. There are thousands of blogs on the interwebs and one of the things I find most fascinating is how small communities of bloggers tend to develop. The same people start to read and comment on each other's blogs. Sometimes these relationships migrate from these postings to places like Facebook and Twitter. And sometimes, you learn that these "virtual" people you have been connecting with live nearby. Before you know it, you've made plans to meet in person and the line between the internet and reality blurs.

This is how I found myself spending an evening in front of a fire pit drinking beer in the backyard of the original Hot Dad, Tent Camper, and his partner in crime, Mariah.

There is an established familiarity when you meet a blogger who's work you've read. You know their voice and you know their stories and you know about the people who populate their lives. It's a nice shorthand that cuts through the awkwardness of the beginning stages of a new friendship.

There were a few other people around the fire that night and as we were telling them how we all knew each other, somebody asked Tent Camper how did he know that I wasn't a lunatic and could be trusted in his home. Tent Camper's response was that he didn't. But he had a feeling I was okay. The same could be said about them. You never truly know who somebody is until you meet them in real life. But even though one's online persona isn't always exactly who they are in reality, if a person writes honestly you have a pretty good barometer.

It didn't surprise me to learn that Tent Camper and Mariah were just as warm, affable and cool as they are on line. We had a fantastic evening and each left wanting to do it again. They are good bloggers but more importantly, good people.

Sometimes it pays off to cross the streams.

So what about you? Have you met anyone from the blogging world in real life? If so, did they meet your expectations?

Adversity

My son has been going through some mild bullying in pre-school. For the most part, he seems to shrug it off, but every now and again he complains about being hit on the head with a toy shovel or being pushed. He still likes the kid who is aggressive with him, but I can tell that it sometimes bothers him.

I wasn't bullied a whole lot growing up. I was only in one true fist fight. I was threatened by a thug with a knife one other time. I mostly had run ins with boys who saw me as a meek and easy target and attacked my psychologically. But I don't think my experience was anything more than typical. Nonetheless, there were a lot of times where I felt like an outcast. I was lonely and felt ignored. There were times when I was supremely unhappy. Enough so that my teachers called my parents in for a conference or two.

I've been thinking a lot about this time in my life while WonderWife™ and I have tried to figure out how to best handle my son's situation. As much as I want to protect him from being hurt, is that the best course of action? The world is not always easy and people are not always nice. There is nothing that is ever going to change that. So it is better to be bullied than not at all? Running afoul of somebody can teach an important lesson in survival. It can teach you how to adapt.

To be clear, I'm not talking about severe bullying--the cases you read about. I'm am not talking about those kids who have been bullied to the point of suicide. Or beaten within an inch of their lives. I'm talking about the inevitable brushes with people that I'm sure most of us have experienced.

Learning to rise above adversity is a good lesson, but it's a hard one to learn. And it's a hard one to watch your kid go through. But when I stop to think about my life, I would not change those turbulent times for anything. They made me stronger.

So is it better to be bullied than not bullied at all?

--Daddy Geek Boy

My Great Shame

I don’t know how to build anything. I don’t know how to fix anything. I know nothing about cars. I really have no skills at all. But it’s not my fault. I grew up with a father who also lacked skills. He is the kind of guy that when something breaks, calls a repairman or gets a new one. This way of handling a problem has been passed down to me.

I think handiness may have skipped a generation. As I recall, my grandfather was handy. But for some reason, it didn’t transfer to my dad. Maybe it was some form of rebellion that my father perpetrated against his father. But it’s left me without a mentor.

Sure I can do the easy stuff. I can change a light bulb. I can screw together Ikea furniture. I’ve even replaced a ceiling fan. But if the toilet is running or a faucet is leaking, I’m stumped. I don’t like being like this. I want to be able to fix stuff. I hate shelling out my hard earned cash to repairmen whom I know are over-charging me. But I have nobody to teach me.

I don’t feel that I should experiment home repair skills on my own house. If I break something, as I’m all but certain to do it’s going to cost me even more money to get it fixed. I bought a set of Black and Decker home repair books, but they will only take me so far. I wish I had the wrenching gene. I wish I could walk into a hardware store and actually know what I was talking about.

I know we're almost done with the Aughts and we should be beyond old fashioned gender roles. But as a guy, this is my great shame.

What’s yours?

-Daddy Geek Boy

A Porn Story

Watching two people have sex in front of a camera isn’t nearly as exciting as you’d think. I know this because I was in a porn movie. I was just out of college and when the opportunity to earn a little extra cash came up, I jumped at the chance. I kept my clothes on. I was an extra.

One Saturday morning a long time ago, my buddy called me and asked if I wanted to be an extra at a porn shoot. Much like when somebody asks you if you’re a god, when somebody asks if you want to be on the set of a porn movie, you say “yes.” They were paying $50 cash, which for a broke recent-college graduate without a full time job was a decent payday. My friend and I were soon on our way to some gaudy mansion in Glendale to begin our careers in the porn industry.

The movie being shot that day was the sweeping epic tale of legendary lover Rudolph Valentino. Yes, it was a period piece. Not that the crew seemed overly concerned with the accuracy of the time period. I’m pretty sure the casual observer can see more than a few wrist watches in some shots. It was immediately clear that this was not the production of one of established porn producers. Running the show was a trio of aging Italian men. The star of the film was their studly young nephew, who was reminiscent of a thinner, better looking Fabio and could barely speak English. He wandered around the set in a daze asking his uncles in broken English, “Fuck? Fuck yet?”

My buddy and I filmed our scene in the morning and spent the rest of the day hanging out, eating junk food. Telltale signs like empty bottles of KY let us know that they had been filming at this house for a few days. We were told that they were shooting the day’s only sex scene in the afternoon and we were welcome to stick around, which we were planning on doing anyway.

A few hours later, we gathered in the back of an upstairs bedroom to watch the action. There were about fifteen guys in the room, mostly the crew and a few assorted perverts like my friend and me. Finally, they called action. And it was startling.

I no longer think that most porn stars can’t act. The weird thing about watching a porn scene live is the undeniable fact that it’s artificial. The Italian Stud certainly had the equipment for the job, but lacked the stamina so they had to keep stopping the scene before it was over too soon. The woman was screaming in ecstasy, only to stop on a dime when they called “cut”, leaving an empty silence in the room that remained until they started filming again and she picked right back up where she had left off. It was quite a performance, but standing in that room there wasn’t anything titillating about it. The whole thing was oddly uncomfortable. After staring slack jawed for about half an hour, my buddy and I decided we had seen enough. We collected our cash and met our friends in a bar to tell the tale.

A few months after the shoot, I tried to find the movie but came up empty. Years later, I was relaying the story to a friend and not more than an hour later, he sends me an email with the link to buy the DVD.

It’s a really bad porn. It actually fails on every level from the awful story to the mundane sex scenes. But in one scene, when Rudy is standing on line waiting to hear about a job, you can see three quarters of my face, giving the performance of a lifetime. The movie has surely not gone down as a classic, but it was my movie debut and we all gotta start somewhere.

-DGB

Our Idealized Selves

My friends tell me that I’m much funnier in my blog than I am in real life. I wish I could disagree with them, but they’re kind of right. In real life, it’s usually the most obvious joke that pops to mind and unfortunately for those around me, I lack the impulse control not to say it. My cheesy sense of humor has become a thing of legend amongst my friends, who somehow still have the will to hang out with me.

On line though, I have control over what I say. As a writer I can fine tune what is said. Drinking a few beers before sitting down to the keyboard will yield even better results, though it makes typing a bit more challenging. I spend a lot of time editing and rewriting. I’ve probably taken five passes at this paragraph alone (so you can only imagine what my friends endure with “unfiltered DGB”). On line, I have the ability to be a slightly different version of myself.

These days, we live our lives on line. We blog. We tweet. We update our status. We present ourselves through words on a screen. But is the life we lead on line true? Or are we creating idealized versions of ourselves? My guess is that it’s the latter, which is why social media has become so prevalent. In these great big informational tubes, we project a carefully crafted image of ourselves for the world to see.

This being a parenting blog, logic dictates that the majority of us lurking about here have kids. If you think about it, having kids is similar to living on line. Stay with me on this. Kids, at least the young ones, idolize their parents. It doesn’t matter if the jokes are cheesy, or we burn the toast or we drop the ball during catch. Our kids, at least for a little while, see us as the idealized, perfect versions of ourselves. They think we are hilarious, great cooks and amazing athletes. They view us as the person we wish others would see.

Do you wear different personas in your life? If so, what are they and how are they different from your true self?

-DGB

Vay Kay Shun

It's really happening. After talking about it and planning it for what seems like several years (even though it's only been 9 months or so), the Geek Boy family is taking our first vacation. I've been trying not to be all Clark Griswold about it, but I have gone out and bought a vacation guide so we'll know how to best navigate the island of Maui with the kids in tow. Oh yeah, did I mention we're going to Hawaii?

Thankfully, Southern California is only a 5 hour plane ride from the magical islands of one of our best states. WonderWife™ and I are east coasters, so we've done the 5 hour plane ride before. (Okay, I'll admit that I personally have not done it with two kids, that honor goes to WW™ who did it by herself--twice.) But once we're on vacation, what then? Are the kids going to go crazy with the general lethargy and lack of structure that comes with a vacation? Or somehow will they get into the spirit and kick back with us? Only time will tell.

So all of you awesome Hot Dads readers, I open up the comment section for you to discuss your family vacation strategies, stories and tips. I've got to go finish packing. Now where did I leave my sunscreen and Speedos? *


*Kidding of course. I never use sunscreen.

When Schedules Don't Collide

My wife works at home.
I work in an office.

Her work day officially starts at 6:30, when the first kid gets up.
My work day officially starts at 8:30, when I begin my commute.

Her work day is non-stop. When the kids are napping, there are chores to be done.
My work day offers me a lunch break and sporadic pockets of time in which email can be read.

Her work day officially ends when the last kid has finally fallen asleep.
My work day officially ends when I arrive at home, sometimes just as the last kid has fallen asleep.

After work, she retreats to the computer to check email or Facebook, or sews.
After work, I quickly make dinner and wolf it down.

We connect for about an hour, where we decompress and maybe watch some TV together.

Her energy depleted, she goes to sleep soon after.
I've still got an hour or so left in me to check email, write and read blogs before passing out on the couch.

Tomorrow it will start all over again.

How do you deal with the varied schedules within your home? Do you have to work to carve out time to do all of the things you want? Do you have to sacrifice some things to make others work?

The discussion begins below...