I'd like to beat a child

Time to put the cards on the table. I have never abused a child. I have never struck a child. My son may
grow up one day with issues having to do with his father, but none of them shall ever involve my raising my
hand to him. We have, in fairness goofed around and things gotten out of hand, but each time out that ended
up at the bathroom cabinet seeking the mercy of mercurachrome of the soothing bactine and a band aid,
usually came along with at least one giggle while explaining what had actually happened. It's part of
playing hard. It's part of growing up as male. Females may encounter the same kind of experience, but
having grown up male, I can't speak to that.One way or another, you know the kind I'm talking about, I have never once raised my hand and struck my
child. I like to think I am raising the kind of a son with enough sense of self that he will one day, over
budweiser perhaps, admit that his behavior may have been worthy of it, but he'll admit that I never hit
him. Theyn, maybe we'll hug, or something Robert Bly like that.Now, that part aside, I have chosen as a subject today, how much I'd like to strike other kids. The loud
ones, the ones yelling in the nice restaurant, the ones yeslling without supervision at the movie theater,
the ones dressing like members of the Beastie Boys although they haven't passed the third grade, the ones
who have talked out of like to a check out girl and not been struck down, reprimanded, dirty looked, forced
to apologize or otherwise make amends for being a punk.
A child is a work of art you mold when he first comes out of the shoot, they wipe him off and hand him to you. He's your responsibility. He's got some of your DNA which is part of the equation. I'm a bigger beliefer in nature than nurter. Raising a kid is a verb. It's work, but, done well, it shouldn't seem like a job.
So this weekend when it came to my attention, that Robbie, who gets along with everyone I've seen him talk to, is telling me that a couple of incubi told him they don't like him because he's annoying. Which is a word I don't remember using when I was a kid. But it was ebough to make me want to clothesline the little kid.There you have it. I am a good father to my kids, But I have a recurring desire to beat on other kids. Fortunately, I've seen Robbie pushed by other kids, he's pushed back. I even had a report from the afterschool teacher that he had to have a talking to and a time out with the other kid about keeping their hands to themselves. I got the Paul Harvey rest of the story from Robbie later. His proud father bought him a happy meal on the way home. He'd earned it. He didn't provoke the problem, but he pushed back and ended it.Didn't matter. I still wanted to smack the kid. I've got my kid's back.

This is one of those days where I intended on doing some serious writing, so as a result, the laundry got more attention than it's earned. I loiter on facebook and make sure the dishes are in tip top condition. Anything but write something useful and readable.
This is also one of those days where I really don't feel like writing because I am expected to do so, so in true scribe fashion, I am writing about how much I hate writing. I have two papers due soon on highly technical aspects of computer maintenance and programming but prefer to bitch about the weather, crappy pop music and recently discovered pop music. If I can find the time, maybe drop a few F-bombs on the suckitude of the 2010 Red Sox season thus far.
I was thoroughly pumped a few weeks ago when I bought my son Robbie the most recent volume in Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Not only did he say "Yes!" with Marv Albert-like enthusiasm when I handed it to him, but he actually finished it the next day in a single sitting instead of bringing in his Nintendo DS unit where he normally chaired a lunchtime coffee klatch while networking the units together in a virtual outdoors while reposing in the warm, dry comfort of indoors. In the days before Bill Gates existed as a role model, parents frowned on such behavior. I'm still content to have him work that muscle in his head once a while as well.
More than once I've found Robbie paraphrasing Sam from iCarly's axiom that "reading is like TV for your head." Good man.
One the same trip I'd picked up Robbie's book, I'd bought Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Jim Butcher's Dead Beat. I was already reading Leg Grossman's The Magician's on the suggestion of a friend so they would be my to-do list once school finished.
Speaking of which, outside of the substances that inspired me in youth, my prime motivator was a deadline, which calls now. Two term papers are due by midnight. Let's see if I can make it. Later friends.

Goodbye, Ma

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote here. My mom had another heart attach two weeks ago and passed a few days later. By the time it came it arrived as mercifully as a pill that says 'this will make the hard part go away," and we more glad to see that after a week of seeing her suffer and feed her ice cubes and figure out which of her gestures had become part of her pantomime to identify her needs, which had gotten fewer and fewer as time passed along.Ice cubes in my mouth, cool cloth on my forehead, "soft" had become her code word for "I'm too hot, take this damn blanket.
None of us knew how much was pain or how much was inflicted by mercifiul morphine. She couldn't tell us. She didn't know. She wasn't having a good time.
What I was sure of is that my only method of communicating with my mother had been reduced to squeezing a finger or a thumb to express, I know you're here. I'm glad to see you. It's alright.I love you. I love you. A week before, once she'd had the initial heart attack. The one we didn't know until a week later, when the doctors worked it in as part of their usual updates like "by the way, she had a heart attack last Friday."
She and I were sitting in her hospital room, talking lucidly about the same stuff we always did. Robbie' Cub Scout Activity, the Red Sox suckituded that had opened the 2010 season.
This was not the first time we had brought this subject up of her checking out. Once someone passes what they consider middle age and enters old age. Maybe it just starts when someone decides they've done all they plan to do and each day becomes another race against the sun, starting watching the Guiding Light, reading Reader's Digest, sashaying into that night's Jeopardy.
Death becomes that elephant in the room. You're already paying taxes, there's only one other constant and it's sitting there with an abacus counting down your time.So she brought the subject up once again. "I should be home in a few days," she began. "But if this is it, I'm fine. I've done everything I've ever wanted to do. I want you to go on.I tried shaking my hands and go, ok, ok, I understand. We've talked about this and so much other stuff over the years that there wasn't much that had been untouched.
"I remember the first time you brought this up," I told her. It was the first year I brought Melanie home for Christmas dinner, it was you, me and her."We were having the roast beef dinner with potatoes and the usual trimmings and Ma mentioned how she didn't want a lot of rigmarole at her funeral. This would have been a buzz kill at any event outside of Christmas. I excused myself to the bathroom and spent the next ten minutes getting the crying out of my system. Melanie and I discussed it on the way home and how Ma and I didn't talk about this a great deal and the novelty had more that a little bit of effect on me.
Then she said it again in the hospital.She was determined to let me know, just like she had every day, that any debt that existed between us on my part or on hers, were square and covered.I knew Ma had plans written down and contracts and to do lists for everything she wanted done if she didn't make it out of the hospital.So when she started in again.
"Listen, If I die, I don't want a lot of rigmarole," she said. While I still had neglected to look up the literal meaning of rigmarole I knew where she was going "And no boo hoo-ing, I'm ready. There is no reason for anyone to get this old."
"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ma," I told her. "We've already rented the wood-chipper."It wasn't shock. It wasn't anger. It was just a silent sink in of what she'd just heard her on say. Then she started to laugh.
"A wood chipper?" more laughs. Louder. Deeper. Faster.
"Yeah, we thought it would be fun for the kids."More laughs that turned into a laughing fit.I knew I'd won when she was laughing as hard as I'd ever seen her laugh and she managed to say "I have rotten kids."
That's how I got completion with my Mom. I made her laugh for the last time.
Thanks, for that, Ma. Love You.