Monthly Archives: February 2012

Crash Course In Parenting

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“Dude, I have an extra Smashing Pumpkins ticket. Wanna go?”
“Sweet.”
“Cool.”

The young man before me with the deep voice and a dirtstache had seemingly moments before been my little cousin Anthony. The guy is 10 years younger than me and while I had never disliked him, we really hadn’t had much in common until our mutual love for music brought us closer. By 1994, Anthony was toast and Tony was entering the scene as a gifted teenage musician. What the hell, I’ll give this kid my extra ticket.

Our evening’s entertainment was to be Smashing Pumpkins performing it’s Siamese Dream Tour at the Breslin Center of Michigan State. The hottest ticket in town, I had offered it to my younger cousin and assured his mother that I was no longer a raging madman, but a responsible and sedate 24 year old. She laughed and gave her blessing. She also conveyed to me with a look the untold horrors that awaited me were I to bring her baby home in anything but pristine condition.

Breslin Center is the basketball arena for MSU and I believe it seats around 10,000 people. I had seen smaller bands play the arena where they had pulled a curtain at the proximal free throw line and had a few bleacher seats and a curved section comprised of the upper and lower bowls. On this particular evening, someone had decided to place the curtain at the distal baseline of the basketball court, sell all of the bowl seats and enough general admission seats to fill no more than one third of the available floor space. Couple this with the fact that uninterrupted staircases divide each seating section from floor to ceiling, and it was apparent to a veteran concert goer like me that this was a disaster in the making.

Suddenly, the house lights go down, the young crowd screams and the main event takes to the stage amid shrieking guitars, vocals and flashing lights. A number of  kids try to run down the stairs onto the main floor. A few are successful while others are chased and tackled by members of the largest security detail I had ever seen at an MSU concert. Occasionally a kid would evade the guards and sprint across the floor and disappear into the back of the writhing crowd to the screaming delight of the poor souls trapped in the upper and lower bowls.

After the Pumpkin’s second song I looked at my cousin, who was watching the developing situation like a cat about to pounce on it’s first mouse. “Sorry dude, not tonight.” I told him. Then I turned to my friend and showed him the look on Tony’s face. Johnnie laughed and asked if I was going to let him go play. When I replied to the negative my friend asked,”Would YOU be up here at his age?”

Under the weight of Johnnie’s unimpeachable logic I screamed into Tony’s ear, “Remember which door we came in? If you get kicked out, meet me there after the show. Be careful, have fun and remember if you get hurt, your mother will f*****g kill me!”

Tony scooted with alacrity across the row to my left until he reached the aisle. It was at this precise moment that my first attempt at responsible mentoring took a critical downward swing.

In my haste to be cool, I had forgotten all of the red flags going off in my head regarding the mismanaged seating arrangements.. As my cousin shuffled sideways toward the aisle, I perceived a vibration which quickly changed to a rumble only to become so loud as to drown out the noise of a rock concert. A quick scan of the venue revealed that the entire upper level of the arena was sprinting en masse down to the main floor. The last I saw of my little cousin was his thigh catching the armrest of the final seat he had to negotiate before heading down the stairs. He stumbled and was immediately swallowed up by the human avalanche.

I watched the wave of adolescents gallop down what seemed like a hundred or more stairs and run  head on into security guards who’s hands were outstretched like a drunk woman singing Diana Ross on karaoke night. They didn’t even have time to bend down and kiss their own rears goodbye. The kids went through those poor workers as if they were made of vapor.

Moments later, numerous flashlights indicated that someone at the base of Tony’s staircase had been seriously injured. 18 years later, I feel the guilt which eluded me that fateful evening as I noticed the lemon yellow shirt of a security guard was being hefted away strapped to a backboard. My cousin must have survived the melee.

I remember little of the concert after that point. The Pumpkins played their set, requisite encore and left the stage. Through it all my eyes constantly swept the crowd, looking for my charge in a sea of manic humanity. Upon walking out of the exit doors, my heart lifted when I saw Tony standing there dutifully. I listened in numb relief as he gleefully recanted the adventure of sprinting onto the floor and crowd surfing.

A recent post on Twitter in regards to the Smashing Pumpkins led me to this trip down  memory lane. Given the title of this post, I’ll briefly segue my time as a pretend parent to one terrible moment as the giver of someones life.

In the winter of 2003, my wife and I finally decided that our kids at the age of 4 were old enough to go sledding at a local hill. She stayed down at the bottom of  while I walked up with the children. When we had risen a sufficient distance about two thirds of the way up, I turned around, loaded my son and pushed him head first down the hill. Once again, time stopped playing as a motion picture in my mind and became a series of vivid snapshots each with it’s own searing caption.

Just as with my cousin in 1994, a complete lack of situational awareness underscored by my desire to make someone happy had led me to make a critical lapse in judgement. As my little dude slid away squealing, “Whee daddy wheeeeee”, I noticed a few things. First, the snow was actually very icy and slick. Second, my boy was gaining speed at an alarming rate. Lastly, he was heading straight for a tree at the bottom of the hill.

As the thought, “I just killed my son” raced through my mind, I felt the same hopeless, impotent feeling from the concert amplified tenfold. The sound of my words, “No No No No No” barely audible in my ears, I braced for the moment of impact. The sum total of my parenting, nurturing and protecting of that child now lay in the hands of The Almighty. I was through having a bit of influence over whether my boy lived or died. May no other parent experience such a feeling.

 Little dude caught just enough of a lip at the last possible moment to veer him to the right where he rocketed past the tree. He then hit a patch of sun thawed, drenched leaves that immediately stopped his sled, causing him to launch face first into a mud puddle. My laughter must have seemed inappropriate in contrast to the oohs and ahhs of the other parents on the hill. I scooped up my little princess and met my equally panicked wife at the scene of a most narrowly averted tragedy. As much as happy endings preceded by suspenseful tales rub me the wrong way, I am glad to report that on this day in 2012, I just tucked my 12 year old children into bed for the evening.

I recently tweeted that wisdom is the net difference of subtracting reality from idealism. The point being that we have experienced enough in this world by the time our children are born that spotting danger and the corresponding path of evasion should be instinctual.  Parents owe it to their brood to consider all possible scenarios before granting permission for the sake of being well liked.

The War On Fairer

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George W Bush justified the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan with a simple credo. We were going to combat the tyrannical ideas of jihad and Islamism with the noble concepts of freedom and liberty. It is in this vein that I wish to combat the oppressive notions of fairness and social justice with the ideas of individualism and sovereignty.

How many of us stood mute with clenched teeth last week while the president defied candor and committed blasphemy at the National Prayer Breakfast by insisting that Jesus would approve of him levying a tax on the wealthy? We couldn’t even watch the bowl game without POTUS toting the old fashioned American values of fairness and contempt for Wall St in his pre-game propaganda.

Short of griping on the social networks and blog sites, we’re mute because we have been forced into submissive silence over the past 2 decades. I first noticed the change when Clinton added the oxymoron ‘Political Correctness’ to the American lexicon. Thuggish tactics by the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson, smears by the ACLU, SPLC and dare I say the ADL left people fearful that any proclamation deemed insensitive or racially motivated could cost you your job, house, and even your freedom.

Fast forward 20 years and America is a shell of the dynamic culture she once was. The institutions of marriage and Christianity have been completely decimated by a handful of moguls that feed the masses a steady stream of promiscuity, immorality and a whole new batch of so called rights. In this I refer to the 24 hour news channels. Try watching a sporting event or prime time TV with your child and tell me revulsion and disgust don’t wash over you like rain.

Even debate for the purpose of exchanging ideals has become a thing of the past. All but the most seasoned, professional individuals resort to argumentum ad hominem and vitriol by the second interaction. The political ruling class feeds on this gangrenous condition like so many parasites and as such flourishes in the cesspools of federal, state and local governance.

The current situation is hopeless, correct? Hardly. As I stated prior, good ideas can and will be the saving grace of America. Leading by example and verbalizing good intentions in a manner which is meant to inspire and not subjugate will lead to a rekindling of the belief that all things are possible with hard work, support from one’s community and a bit of good fortune.

My wife works very diligently as a primary care physician to nurture the physical and spiritual health of her patients. In 2003, she left an owned practice and started her own office. In each our first 2 years solo, we identified a family that was falling on hard times and solicited the parents to be  beneficiaries of our Christmas donations. We then placed a spreadsheet on the  bulletin board in our waiting room indicating the age and gift requests for the family’s children. We provided a few gifts ourselves and then left the rest to the benevolence of our patient base.

The response was overwhelming. We took in so many gifts that the tearful parents hid some away for the following Christmas and we even donated some to local charities. In subsequent years, we sponsored children at a local women’s shelter for abused families. We currently deal with the Salvation Army who brings little gift tags that we hang on our office Christmas tree. They even pick up all donations and distribute them prior to Christmas.  I believe in 2011 we helped more than 30 kids have a memorable Christmas while alleviating the pressure of spending rent money on presents from their parents.

In the summer of 2010 I received an email from the PTA of my children’s school indicating that one of the families in our fold had suffered a tragedy. Their house had burnt down in the middle of the night and they had gotten out literally with the clothes on their backs. Within 24 hours, we had coordinated the rental of a beautiful farm house, replacement of the children’s clothes, toys and video games and even arranged enough volunteers to bring dinner to them for an entire month. A small individual effort magnified by dozens of willing participants bought the parents crucial time to get their affairs in order to rebuild their lives. I scoff at the notion that any government program or entity could provide relief with the kind of speed and efficiency that we the people did.

My family resides in a rural Northeastern community. There is a curved intersection near our home that requires routine trimming of wild shrubs and mowing of weeds to provide a safe viewing distance. For years I called the state and township transportation departments only to have the buck passed back and forth. Neither side claimed responsibility for the hazardous condition that persisted where my wife and I needed to turn left across an oncoming lane on a daily basis.

I’d been told through the grapevine that some former neighbors had received permission by the landowner to trim back the foliage at the corner. That was all I needed to hear. For the past 5 years I have accepted the countless poison ivy lesions and near misses by vehicles to maintain this small piece of the motorist’s landscape. Neighbors often stop and thank me for my efforts. My reply is always the same,”Someone’s gotta do it.”

 The old timers speak of an era when the neighborhood cleaned out it’s own ditches and kept the corners maintained. That time has since elapsed and people now lean over the fence and gripe about how unsafe our road conditions are in the township. At this point I am unaware of anyone besides myself that is willing to get off their duff and help the road crews so they may handle more pressing issues like filling in our ubiquitous potholes.

These are three of the many things that my wife and I do to help others in our community while teaching benevolence and a sense of responsibility to our children. The illustrations are not intended to bolster my sense of self worth but rather to ignite the spark of self reliance in a society which has been lulled into the mindset that ever increasing taxes and fees have bought us more and better services from our government. We have the sense to know that this is a complete fallacy of logic.

America is filled with millions of small businesses. Many of these offices, or shops that have high customer traffic would undoubtedly engage in the kind of non invasive solicitation that my wife and I have been blessed to participate in. People want to help others but may not have the knowledge in how to go about it. If you want to get involved, tell your doctor or merchant of another office that solicitsfromit’s patients gifts to help kids. You could even offer to put a food collection bin in their waiting room and deliver the contents to a local food bank on a regular basis. You’ll be amazed once the word gets out, how often you will need to empty the container. A few moments of your time and a couple gallons of gas are all that are required to make a real difference in the lives of many.

We owe it to our fellow citizens and their posterity to combat the ideas of government handouts and political correctness. Use your kind words and your charitable actions to set an example for others to follow. A tiny contribution by millions of people adds up to the kind of change we actually want to believe in. Leave the politicians to their frauds and felonies. Americans look out for their own.