A Stupid Person at the Grocery Store

We were in line at the grocery store when the woman in front of us asked my daughter where she got her eyes. She'd been watching Little J for awhile, and suddenly began talking to her. Little J immediately sensed that this was a strange woman, as did I. She moved behind me and did not answer the woman. I don't blame her. I had no idea what the creepy lady was asking, either, until she added, "You didn't get them from your dad." Then I knew what she was after. She was making a statement about the racial differences between me and my daughter.

She continued, saying that she bet Little J got her eyes from her mother. Little J slid further behind me, and I smiled awkwardly and gave her an "uh-huh." Even after she commented about how pretty Little J's eyes were, neither Little J nor I felt very comfortable. I think we both sensed that the purpose of the conversation was not about how pretty Little J is. Rather, the purpose of the conversation seemed to be about how Little J's racial mix was unexpected and perhaps disturbing and unnatural. After all, the woman was implying that Little J should have had eyes, and other physical features, more in common with her father.

I have experienced a lot of racism from people when they encounter me (Caucasian) and my wife (Chinese) together. They seem to think that if we were more normal, we would have been able to find someone of our own race to marry. I have learned to ignore such people. But I have a very difficult time refraining from gouging out the eyes of people who extend their racist attitudes toward my children. Yes, my children do not look exactly like me, and yes, they are Chinese-American. Get over it! And by the way, my children are also smarter, kinder, more understanding, more talented, better looking, bilingual, and able to function in two cultures because they are Chinese-American. Deal with it!

Avoiding the Reciprocal Rule

In an effort to curtail name calling in our house, three years ago I instigated a rule that if you call someone a name, then that automatically means the name applies to you, too. The rule quickly became known as the reciprocal rule, and it was highly effective. Within a few days, name calling dropped dramatically, and has continued at the same low numbers since.

Sad but true, I am now clearly the name-calling-est person in the family, which means I bear the brunt of the reciprocal rule. I always seem to be quick with an insult, such as “worthless piece of kid” or “you’re such a girl.” I have taken my punishment without complaint for a long time, thinking that perhaps I would be able to change my name-calling ways and clean up my act. But after several months of being a “dork” or a “stupid piece of stupid,” I’ve realized that I’m too old to be able to change my ways. And I'm sick of hearing Little J say, "Dad, reciprocal rule!" So I've decided to turn to trickery and deception to get out of the rule. After careful thought, I identified a loophole. I discovered that I can preface my insults with phrases that turn my name-calling into hearsay or friendly queries. For example, I could say something like, “some people might call you an annoying twit for doing that,” or, “Don’t you think that makes you a mindless zombie?” And then if they tried to invoke the reciprocal rule, I could act completely surprised and misunderstood, and then passionately claim and defend my innocence. Ah, a foolproof plan at last! Bwa ha ha!

Or at least it seemed foolproof. The biggest problem with the plan is that I keep forgetting to preface my name-calling with the appropriate qualifying statement. For example, I often burst out with something like, “twinky-nosed child” before I even know what I’m doing, and no matter how fast I say, “8 out of 5 dentists claim that you behave like a twinky-nosed child,” I invariably get the reciprocal rule invoked against me, even when I finish my rephrasing well before they shout “reciprocal rule.” Just as I seem to be too old to stop calling names, I also seem to be too old to remember to use the new phrases. So I’ve been successful in avoiding the reciprocal rule about two times.

I need a new plan.

Triop Wars

J-girl took Little J to the Living Planet Aquarium a couple of weeks ago, and together they decided that the time was ripe to raise triops again. J-girl took advantage of me being at work to commandeer the small fishbowl on the windowsill above the kitchen sink, the one that we use to hold the brushes we use for scrubbing dishes. I came home to find the bowl full of water and the brushes lying forlornly on the counter. A day or two later, the triops began hatching. At first there was a lot of interest in the triops. Little J was excited to see which ones would get eaten and which would survive. She fed them regularly and even cleaned the water once. She and J-girl would count them several times a day to see if any had been cannibalized. However, they soon became desensitized to the violence and gradually stopped watching them. Yesterday, as I was washing my hands at the kitchen sink, I noticed that the last one was feeding on the carcass of the next to last one. All that was left of loser was its head. The winner seemed to be eating its brain stem. Yuck!

I mentioned it to Little J, thinking that this was the supreme example of violence that she had been craving ever since she bought the box of triop eggs. She was doing something at the computer and couldn’t be bothered to look. No one else wanted to look, either. It wasn’t because they were grossed out like me; it was because it just wasn’t sensational enough for them to quit what they were doing and walk 20 feet to the windowsill.

That’s the moment I realized that doing science, especially raising triops, was just one more way that Satan is undermining the moral fabric of society. If I had really been paying attention, I would have recognized this sooner. After all, triops have feelers like horns and a long, evil-looking tail. They get more and more red markings as they grow. It’s not much of a leap from there to conclude that they must be the devil’s angels.

We still have half of the eggs left. I don’t think that anyone intends to start the process over again, at least not for a while. Death and carnage is no longer exciting enough to clean out the fishbowl. I’ll wait another week or so, and then I’ll quietly take the bowl back over. Everyone will be so glad they didn’t have to clean up the mess, and I will be glad to get Satan out of my house.

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

I’ve been running out of creativity lately in primary. I wouldn’t say that I’ve reached the point that I’m boring, but for the past two months or so, I haven’t caused any of the primary leaders to wonder if I’m on drugs. In fact, I’ve been far too normal. I feel like I should always trigger a touch of fear in the primary leaders, leaving them to wonder (and dread?) what crazy stunt I will pull this week, and whether I will finally go too far. But instead, I’ve just been delivering somewhat standard primary chorister stuff. I worry that soon they will start describing me as “predictable,” or worse yet, “pleasant.” Such words should never be used to describe a primary chorister.

So I walked into junior primary on Sunday determined to shake things up a bit. Before the primary presidency could get set, I started teaching the children actions to the words “bees,” “toads,” “mouse,” and “crows.” Then I announced that we would sing the popular children’s song Head, Shoulders, Bees and Toads, ending with eyes, ears mouse and crows. The teachers giggled nervously, Sister Willey gave Sister Stringham that “he’s whacked again” look, the kids enthusiastically bumbled and leaped, and I experienced a touch of renewal. Truly I am most at home in primary when I’m certifiable.

Me and Josh at War

If you happened to spot me and Josh together, you might conclude that he and I are buds. Nothing could be further from the truth. While we pretend that nothing is wrong as we eat meals together or wash dishes, I am biding my time to exact revenge. Here’s why.

About a month ago, while Matt and I were making breakfast, Josh was sitting at the bar playing with a letter opener. As usual, he was swinging it around, doing all different kinds of slashes, and not being very careful because he thought that it was too dull to do any damage. Then, just for the heck of it, he grabbed the milk carton and sliced along its side. It immediately sprung a leak, after which he started to panic because I had seen the whole thing. Of course I wasn’t particularly happy with the situation, and yelled at him. He immediately jumped up, ran into the utility room, and then came rushing back with a roll of duct tape. He ripped off a strip and stuck it over the cut. When my jaw dropped, he explained to me how he had watched a whole episode on Myth Busters about the amazing uses and properties of duct tape. He assured me that the tape would hold and that the carton wouldn’t leak. I showed my confidence by walking over to the pantry, grabbing a large pitcher, and dumping the remaining milk into it. Josh was outraged, telling me that it would have worked and that I ruined his chance to prove it. I listened very sympathetically as I smashed the carton and threw it away.

So then late Friday night, I came into the kitchen and saw Matt pouring himself a glass of milk. On the side of the carton was a huge strip of duct tape. I went stomping through the house to Josh’s room and demanded to know why he had sliced another milk carton. Seriously, the kid is a major menace. He was nearly asleep, but grudgingly got up, came into the kitchen, pulled off the duct tape and then informed me that there was no hole in the carton. I responded by calling him a few names, after which he invoked the reciprocal rule. And since then, the war has been on. It’s a cold war, though, because no shots have been fired since. But believe me, I will get even. And he’ll never see it coming.

Little J Takes Care of Herself

I took Little J to the field by the Second West Chapel so that she could attend her friend Darcy’s end-of-school party. I was not surprised to find that the party was completely unsupervised. Darcy’s parents just dropped the girl off with a couple of coolers full of drinks and treats. There were at least 15 kids there and not a single parent. I didn’t want to completely embarrass Little J, so I stayed in the car. But I parked so that I was in plain sight as a reminder to all that there was a parent around.

The kids spent the first 30 minutes playing football in the field. Little J spent the whole time on the edge of the action doing cartwheels. Whenever the ball came close, she would move to a different deserted spot on the field. I had to admire her tenacity for avoiding any contact with the ball.

There was a boy, whom I later learned was named David D., who started chasing her around the field. He was the biggest kid on the field, while Little J was the smallest. He would catch up to her and then run away. He did this several times. I could tell from watching that she wasn’t liking it one bit. I nearly got out of the car to go have a talk with the boy. I wasn’t planning on scaring him so bad that he would need to go home and change his pants, but I figured I would educate him about bothering a girl who’s dad had nothing better to do than have a man-to-man talk with a clueless boy.

Then a wonderful thing happened. He did it one more time, and just as I reached down to yank the door open, Little J whipped off her shoe and clobbered him. Both he and I were so astounded that she pounded him at least four times before we knew what had happened. Then the boy ran away. He tried to come close to her again a couple more times, and each time she smacked him with her shoe. And she hit him hard. She threw all of her weight into it. I sat back and enjoyed the show, which was pretty short. Within a couple of minutes, the boy had found something else to do, and stayed away for the rest of the evening.

When Little J found out later that I had seen the whole thing, she was worried that I was going to scold her for hitting. I know I should have probably told her that violence was never the solution. But in this case, I thought it was an excellent improvisation. And it was probably a lot less painless to the boy than what my little talk would have been.

Terror in the Swim Lanes

I went to the Scera Pool yesterday to pick up Little J from swim team. It was a bright, sunny day, with swarms of children splashing and swimming, and contented moms sitting on deck chairs. It looked as if all was well. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

When I finally made it over to the lap pool, I spotted Little J in the closest lane waiting for the cool down set. The instructor told them to swim a 50-meter backstroke. The first girl in line immediately shoved off, and that’s when all heck broke loose. Kids swimming the backstroke at that age are worse than drunk senior citizens driving on ice. They were crisscrossing all over the lane, crashing into each other every 10 seconds or so, after which they would make a dramatic course change and 10 seconds later crash into someone or something else. It was horrifying. I saw kids get karate chopped in the face, run into walls, and become entangled in the lane lines.

The coach didn’t even notice that she had just unleashed pandemonium. She worked quietly at her clipboard as the children continued to maim themselves and each other. I thought about politely reminding her that swimming was not a contact sport, but was afraid she’d tell me that the rest of today’s workout was even more violent. So I chickened out and opted for ignorance, which was probably the right move, because Little J didn’t seem bothered in the least about the aquatic bumper cars when she got out. Instead, she busied herself with trying to get me to carry all of her stuff, which I took as a sure sign that she had emerged from the ordeal unscathed.