Familyhood (8 page)

Which is why I bet you, somewhere in the White House, late at night, you can probably hear someone say, “Hey, I'm sure the Ahmadinejads' kid didn't do so great on that science test, either.”

Bad Words

W
hen my little guy
was in second grade, he came home one day very pleased with himself.

“Daddy, I know what the ‘f-word' is.”

Oh, boy. I knew this was coming someday, I just hadn't expected it so soon.

“Well, where'd you learn that?” I asked.

“In school.”

I was so pleased with the public school system.

“In class? You learned this in class?”

“No. From my friend Max.”

“Max already knows the ‘f-word'?”

“Uh-huh,” my little angel said, bursting with confidence and the need to impress me. “Want to know what it is?'

“Okay,” I said, nervously. “What
is
the ‘f-word'?

He stood to his full three-foot-seven.

“It's ‘shit,' ” he said, beaming with pride. It took me a minute.

“ ‘
Shit'
is the ‘f-word'?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

Now I was faced with a parenting dilemma. Do I let him go out in the world so woefully misguided? That seemed the very opposite of what parenting should be about. On the other hand, correcting him didn't seem right either. “Oh, no, son—you've got it wrong. The ‘f-word' is
far
more offensive. And with so many more permutations and variations. Come—pull up a chair, I shall explain.” That seemed far worse. And counterproductive. So I let it slide.

“That's right, son,” I said. “You've got it right. Now, you know that's a bad word, though, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, as he ran off to enjoy his quickly evaporating childhood. I sensed this discussion wasn't over.

A few days later, he came over and acknowledged, “Daddy, I was wrong. That wasn't the ‘f
-
word' at all. That was the ‘
s-word.
' ”

“That's right, sweetie. What you have there is the ‘s
-
word.' ”

He
was
learning, so that's good.

“I know how to spell it too,” he told me.

“Do you?” I asked, making a mental note to get him new friends.

“Uh-huh,” he said. And then, with professional spelling bee precision, he laid it out. “S-h-i-m-t.
”

“What?”

“S-h-i-m-t,” he repeated with unshakable confidence.

“
Shimt?
” I said, making sure I'd heard right. “With an
m
?”

“Uh-huh.”

I had not known that.
Shimt,
if I'm not mistaken, was a dish my grandmother used to make, generally on the high holidays.
Potato shimt,
with raisins and carrots and pieces of chicken tossed in. Sometimes beef—it varied. I had not heard of it in the context my son was proposing, but I nonetheless decided to accept his version as official.

“That's right,” I said. “You got it. Now. Just because you know these words doesn't mean you get to
use
them.”

This upset him.

“Why not?”

“Because they're not nice words. I don't want to hear you use these words.”

“But why would they have words if you're not allowed to say them?”

“Well, you can say them when you're older.”

“But my friends say them!”

“That's because your friends' parents don't give a
shimt.
But I don't want to hear those words from you.”

He walked off, very frustrated.

AND I HAVE TO SAY,
I understood the feeling. Nobody likes to be thwarted.

As fate would have it, I've been going through the exact same problem—with my computer. My spell check will not let me curse. Not only won't it allow it, it apparently thinks so highly of me that if I
try
to curse, it presumes I've made a mistake, and furthermore couldn't possibly know what these words actually mean.

I was writing a friend of mine who was having problems at work. Trying to be supportive, I wrote back, “Well, gee, it sounds like your boss is a real c*!#sucker.” My computer didn't like this. It underlined the word in red and sounded the little warning
bing
.

“Did you mean ‘coquettish'?” it asked me, trying to be helpful.

I typed back, “No, I meant ‘c*!#sucker.' ”

Bing.
“Funny guy,” the computer snickered. “That's actually a very bad word—I'm sure you didn't mean to say that. Did you maybe mean to write ‘cauliflower'?”

“No, I meant ‘c*!#sucker.' ”

Bing.
“ ‘Crocodile'?”

“No,” I typed back, increasingly aggravated. “ ‘C*!#sucker.' ”

Bing.
“ ‘Cockamamie'?”

“No.”

“ ‘Coriander.' Did you mean ‘coriander'?”

“No, I meant ‘c*!#sucker.' I'm saying his boss sounds like a real c*!#sucker.”

“ ‘Conquistador'? Did you possibly mean ‘conquistador'? Where does your friend live? Does he, by chance, live in fifteenth-century Spain? Because it's possible his boss is a conquistador.”

“No, he's a c!*#sucker, you #@!$*&*%$@er!
”

It finally accepted the word, but sadly the computer has never looked at me the same since. The relationship has been irreparably strained.

But, as my son has explained to me,
shimt
happens.

Enough

M
y kids
love any movie in 3-D. Actual
life
, which is already
in
3-D, they're not as enthralled with. But to see something on a screen that aspires to simulate actual life? They've never been happier.

To my mind, 3-D is one
D
more than necessary. I don't recall ever seeing a movie and thinking, “If only this movie had
one more dimension
! I just feel too confined by mere width and height. I'm hankering for
depth
.” It's never been an issue.

But the makers of these movies prey on our insatiable appetite for
more
. More depth, more volume, more sensation, more of a movie experience.

“Detail so vivid,” they boast, “it's like you're
right there
!”

You know what
I
say? “I don't want to be
there
! I want to be
here
!
You
be there. That's
your
job. You be the movie, I'll be the guy
watching
the movie. From
here
.”

Remember when people used to say, “There's no
there
there?” Well, now it's worse; now there's no
here
here. It's all about taking you
there
.

I appreciate the novelty of these technological accomplishments; I just don't see the
appeal
.

“It makes you feel like you're actually
in
the movie!” my kids excitedly report. “What about that jungle scene—cool huh?! It's like the trees are gonna hit you in the eye!”

The thing is, I've spent most of my life trying to
avoid
getting hit in the eye. It's exactly the kind of thing I'm against. But now we've developed the technology to simulate exactly
that
. I would respectfully argue it's not something we need.

Very much like the new TV we just bought.

We already had a very nice TV. Did all the things you'd want a nice TV to do: looked good, sounded good, the
def
was
high
, the screen was both big
and
flat. (The manufacturers do send a bit of a mixed message with that one. I lose track of what it is we're meant to aspire to: the bigness or the smallness. Happy to buy a new TV, just want to make sure I'm coveting the right qualities.)

I had been perfectly content with our TV. But then I did a foolish thing: I went to a friend's house. And his TV looked much nicer. Bigger, better, clearer, louder, sharper, funnier . . . It just seemed, in general, that it was better to be him than me. A new TV, I believed, would rectify that.

(Deep down inside, I was, of course, embarrassed and ashamed at how remarkably shallow, impressionable, and predictable I can be. But this was, as I say, way deep down. On top of that was layer upon layer of animalistic impulses driving me, almost zombie-like, to “Go, get, more.”)

SO I GO TO THE STORE
to look at new TVs. I tell the guy about the one I saw at my friend's house. Guess what? They've already come out with an even
newer
, fancier model than the one
he
has! Bigger, wider, flatter, picture's more clear, tangibly crisper, painfully louder—all-around better. Ha! Yes, please. Give me that.

I get it delivered—after having completed some construction at home, expanding the wall space to accommodate its girth—and they come to set it up.

The TV is incredible! The picture is stunning! I am very proud of myself. And feeling momentarily complete.

But I soon notice a problem: It's so good, it's actually
too
good. Things look so real, they don't look real anymore. There's so much detail, it's dizzying. So much digital information coming in, so many gazillion pixels that stuff that's supposed to look vivid looks surreal and otherworldly. And oddly amateurish. This can't be right.

The guy comes back, looks at the picture, and in a refreshingly candid admission tells me, “Yeah, that's been a bit of a problem.”

“So, I'm not nuts?” I ask, relieved for the validation. “I mean, it looks
terrible
, right?”

He explains to me that, in fact, new TVs are so technologically advanced they're no longer compatible with virtually everything filmed earlier than, say, last week. So pretty much everything I watch on this TV will look significantly worse than watching it on my
last
TV. The one I just gave away to my nephew because I wouldn't be needing it anymore now that I have this
new
one, this state-of-the-art beauty that apparently can take an award-winning movie of three years ago and make it look like it was filmed with a gas station security camera.

But there is hope, he tells me. If I want, they can
disable
some of my TV's fancy settings to bring it down a few notches, to make the picture look a little
worse
, which would be easier to watch. And therefore
better
. It makes so little sense that my head hurts.

Why, I'm asking you, can't we just leave well enough alone? Why must my computer offer me updates every two days? Are there really that many significant breakthroughs happening that often? Were they
so
wrong and shortsighted the last time they updated it—Wednesday? Even if the update
is
better, do I really have to get it
now
? Can't it wait till I get a new computer in a couple of years? I mean, I know we're meant to be appreciative, that we're kept so up-to-date and everything, but all I feel is
annoyed
.

I can only conclude that the computer geniuses are not doing their job properly. They seem too eager and unfocused. It's like when I see my kids finish their homework too quickly. “Done!” they say as they push away from the table, darting off to go fool around. But then they think of something.

“Oh, wait—I forgot to put my name on it.” So they scribble their name and jump away from the table.

“No, wait, wait—I forgot to finish that last part.” Scribble, scribble, scribble. “Done!” (Beat.) “Oh, hang on a second—I think we were supposed to draw a picture on question four—I forgot to draw the picture.”

It never ends. Don't these computer people understand we're not going anywhere? Relax. Take a second, make sure you got it right, and
then
hand it in.

BUT WE HAVE GROWN
accustomed to—
addicted
to—getting newer, better, faster . . .
more
all the time. And I don't see how it can ever end well.

My boys like rolled-up dried fruit. It used to come in little strips—a couple of bites' worth per serving. Now it's sold by the
foot.
I'm delighted they want to eat something relatively healthy, but putting a foot of
anything
in your mouth is just wrong.

We were at the movies and my kids talked me into getting them each a Slurpee the size of my first apartment. I know it can't be good for them, but to be honest, it's just that the cup is so big, I figure whatever's going on inside it must be pretty terrific to justify that kind of commitment.

And besides: the price of a massive amount of Slurpee is not that much more than a small. Same with the large size of popcorn or fries or anything; having already jumped off the ledge of good health and reason, why quibble over the amount? Might as well go whole-hog. (Do you notice, by the way, it's never “half-hog”? Even in describing our gluttony, we have to go overboard. You would think half a hog would be more than enough to paint the appropriate picture, but no—we need the
whole
hog.)

I KNOW THAT, AS PARENTS,
it's our job to guide our children in these matters, to help them develop that muscle, that internal mechanism that tells them when they've “had enough”—of anything. But I may be the wrong person to lead on this one; from the get-go,
portion control
has never been one of my strengths.

My wife continues to be bewildered at my inability, when eating, to distinguish what might be reasonably called “a portion.” I continually defend myself by arguing that I only eat “one” of anything.

My units of measurements are, however, admittedly murky. A platter of roasted potatoes, for example, meant to serve
many
, is, to my way of thinking, still just
one thing
of potatoes. Eating
two
families' worth of potatoes would be piggish, no question. But
one
family's worth? Come on! It was there, on the plate. I assumed it was meant to be consumed in its entirety, so I
did
. Why is that wrong?

Eating one muffin and then
another
muffin could, I understand, be considered eating
two
muffins. But I don't see it that way. I round up to the
largest unit of measurement
. There was a box/a plate/a bag/a container—a
thing
, whatever you want to call it—of muffins and I ate it. I ate
the thing
of muffins. I didn't have
two things
of muffins, because that would clearly be unhealthful and inconsiderate.

Do you see what I'm saying? I fear you don't. Yeah, well . . . I'm not arguing; it can be a problem. Even without entire industries conspiring against me, I sometimes have a hard time knowing when enough is, in fact, enough.

I'm the same way with
work
. I love to work. I also love doing absolutely nothing. What I do
not
enjoy is doing
just a little
of either. I tend to lean toward all or nothing.

If I'm doing nothing, I really must do absolutely nothing; I'm talking about a not-moving, staring-into-space, slack-jawed, spittle-on-the-bottom-lip Nothing.

When I'm on vacation, I have great clarity of purpose. I know what I'm there to do. I look at a beautiful mountain and say, “
That
is a beautiful mountain.” My job is simply to look at it, take it in, and enjoy it. Nothing else. I don't have to climb it, fix it, or explain anything to it. I don't have to report it, sell it, talk to it, expand it, or turn it into a novel. I just have to let it be a mountain. I am very clear about my job and committed to it.

Just as when I'm working, I commit wholeheartedly to
that
. I dive in, work constantly, stay up late, and wake up early, preferably working on
several
things at once, with an equal amount of adrenaline-stoked energy brought to each of them.

As there are but twenty-four hours in a day, this amount of work necessarily detracts from my personal life.

I recently made the mistake one night of bringing a script I was working on into bed with me. I was so excited and immersed in the story, so happy with that day's progress and anxious to continue tinkering, that I just couldn't help myself.

My wife looked at me from her side of the bed with that same expression of bewilderment she has when I happily polish off a whole thing of potatoes. This look was a little worse, actually. This was as if I had brought that plate of potatoes into our bed. With a stripper. It was a
hybrid
look; equal parts amusement, disgust, and confusion, topped off with the slight tilt of the head she does which I have come to recognize as “You're kidding me, right?”

I was then made to understand by my lovely bride that either
I
could stay or the
script
could, but that she was not prepared to deal with three of us in the bed.

Point taken, I rolled up my script and headed downstairs to our guest bedroom to spend the night. My reasoning being: as much as I adore my wife—and I do—she would likely still be there tomorrow, whereas the brilliant idea I had for the script might
not
. (Again—I'm not saying this is good. I'm saying, yes, there's a problem: I can't always tell when enough is too much.)

I STARED AT THE PAGES
for a while, but sadly, predictably, the inspiration had passed. I had nothing.

I tossed the script aside, and having already “made my bed,” so to speak, I shut the lights and finally called it a night.

But I was still too wired to sleep. So I flipped on the TV we have there in the guest bedroom. It's from three houses ago. It's eighteen years old, square, thick, and has
no
def whatsoever.

You know what? I'll be honest with you: it looked fine.