Blinded By Science

Science has never been my thing.

Oh, did I say never?

I meant... NEVER!

I blame it on fourth grade.

That’s the year we dissected a frog.

Everything was good.

Until I opened Kermit’s stomach.

And one second later.

A beetle popped out.

Had it been John, Paul, George.

Or even Ringo.

I probably would’ve been ok.

But having a dead insect in my open palm was more than I had ordered.

I took plenty of science classes after that.

Because they made me.

But none of them tickled my fancy.

And that included Physics in 11th Grade.

And Biology in college.

Twice.

Oh, not because I liked it so much the first time.

More like I never went to class.

And for that I got a big fat F.

The only class I ever failed in my life.

But I really didn’t fail the class.

I would’ve had to try to fail.

It was so bad that the night before the final exam I begged my friend Phil to come over and tutor me.

Phil is one of those brainiacs.

When he got to my place, we sat down at the table.

And he opened my textbook.

That’s when we heard that sound.

You know, THAT SOUND.

The crackling sound of the first time a brand new 300 page textbook gets opened.

Not a good sound to hear the night before the final exam.

I ended up taking Biology again to wipe that F off my permanent record.

And through the miracle of academic dishonesty.

Allegedly.

I passed.

Allegedly.

I can admit that now.

Now that the statute of limitations have run out.

I hope.

Fortunately for my kids, they haven’t had to go through that same route for a good grade in science.

And not only are they doing well.

But they actually enjoy it.

And sometimes their love of science really pays off.

Just yesterday I got the hiccups.

After five agonizing minutes I begged my 14-year-old daughter for help.

She told me to lean my head backwards.

And then she poured some of my Bud Light Lime down the hatch.

Ten seconds later the hiccups were gone.

Take that Isaac Newton!

My kids enjoy science so much it’s not only one of their classes.

It’s also one of their extra-curricular activities.

That activity is called Science Olympiad.

Science Olympiad is a nationwide event with a bunch of competitions centered around... Science.

Duh.

240 regional and state tournaments.

They get metals and everything.

I mean medals.

Well this past weekend my son’s middle school was competing in our local event.

The top X number of teams advance to the state competition.

Then the top Y number of teams from there go to nationals.

Get it X and Y.

I am so scientific.

And smart too.

So smart, I wore my Stanford sweatshirt to the event.

Oh I didn’t go there.

But I sure did fit in at the Science Olympiad.

And so did my son.

He was entered in four different events.

And each of the events has a cute science name.

Like Awesome Aquifer.

Or Shock Value.

Or Dynamic Planet.

Well one of my son’s events was called Storm the Castle.

Storm the Castle is where you load a little hackie sack ball into a trebuchet sling.

And you try to fling that ball into a box.

Well, Castle.

That empty Castle is sitting at a distance that the shooter requests ahead of time.

Closest to the Castle wins.

If you make it into the box, free suspenders for everyone.

My son spent bookoo hours working on his trebuchet.

Built it from scratch.

If you haven’t figured out, he got no help from me.

As in zero.

It’s not that I didn’t want to help.

It’s that he didn’t trust me.

And that was probably a good move on his part.

We were the last ones at school the night before the competition fine tuning his hot rod.

Every time it failed he would look at me.

And every time he looked at me.

I looked at my watch.

Father of the Year.

That’s me.

Well eventually he got to the point where this thing was working like a charm.

In practice.

But that didn’t mean it would work during the actual event.

An event where he had exactly five minutes to get four launches off.

Two “light” projectiles.

And two “heavy” projectiles.

(P.S.  I think that’s the first time I’ve used the word projectile in a sentence without the word vomit right after it.  Wow!)

Anyhoo...

He had five minutes to get his business done.

For launch one he put the box... Castle... 13 meters away.

For those of your outside of Canada, that’s like 40 feet.

Or 42.65092 if you believe yahoo.

Unfortunately his launch went a little more than half of that.

But with the clock ticking he kept pushing forward.

For launch two, he cut the gap in half.

Launch three... um.. let’s just call that a malfunction.

With less than a minute left, he still had one more try.

“Launch in 3, 2, 1,” he barked.

Then as he pulled the pin, time went into slo-motion.

The arm of his trebuchet pushed the object into the air.

It felt like it was floating for more than ten minutes.

It was probably closer to two seconds.

But when it landed, the silent room started cheering.

The projectile had landed about a meter from its destination.

A score that was not good enough to get him on the medal stand.

And not good enough to qualify him for the state tournament.

But a result that did earn him a bunch of high fives.

And a giant hug.

A winning formula from where I'm sitting.

The Eve of Distraction

Twas the night before Christmas.

When all through my house.

There are some damn excited kids.

Ok, that’s not exactly how the poem goes.

But that’s how it goes in my house.

Three kids.

At three very different stages in their young lives.

All looking forward to Christmas morning.

When they wake up to a house full of presents.

For my 14-year-old daughter.

She is somewhere between High School.

And Med School.

She’s always been sharper than her age.

If you look close enough, you can actually see her wheels turning when you ask her a question.

And if you wait four or five seconds, she’ll usually respond with the right answer.

This Christmas is a new one for her.

Probably a confusing one.

I think she’s trying to figure out how old she really is.

When it comes to presents, she’s still all kid.

But when it comes to everything else, she’s all grown up.

High school can do that to you.

My son is two years younger.

And he too is growing up.

Way too quickly.

But he usually acts the age of the people around him.

In school, he’s a 7th grader.

Around me, he’s a lot more polished.

But put him with his eight-year-old sister.

And let the games begin.

He’s definitely a candidate to work at NASA.

Because when it comes to getting under her skin, he knows all of the right buttons to push.

The eight-year-old is our last piece of innocence.

The last one who actually wants a hug.

The last one who does what we tell her.

And the first one to express herself.

At our Christmas Eve dinner, she decided to perform the National Anthem.

Oh, not sing it.

That happens in the morning.

At dinner, she decided to pit fart the National Anthem.

Talented, that kid is.

When that was over, she started singing the words to "Santa Claus is coming to Town".


He sees you when you're sleeping.   He knows when you're awake.

Then suddenly she stopped.

"Santa kinda sounds like a stalker," she quietly mumbled.

"But he's a nice stalker," with a big smile on her face.

I asked her what she wanted Santa to bring her this year.

“Three things,” she said.

Without any hesitation.

“A baby brother.”

“A little dog, like a chihuahua.”

“And a magic wand.”

Well if I were her, I’d ask for the wand first.

That’s her best shot at getting the other two.

I love that little girl.

Love her sense of humor.

Love her kindness.

Love her innocence.

I love looking into her eyes.

As much now as I did the first time.

Eight years, two months and two weeks ago.

She is something special.

And she’s not afraid to show it.

Tonight before bedtime, there were six of us hanging out in my son’s room.

Me, the three kids and a pair of books.

A pair of Christmas books.

What else.

One of those books was “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

But reading the book wasn’t good enough for her.

She had to perform it.

From the first line, through the last.

She was living on her own center stage.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

She did that one from memory, not once taking even a glance at the book.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter

She tapped her fingers on the wood door, as quickly as possible, to provide her own version of a clattering noise.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf

She tried to inflate her frame as big as possible.  But sixty pounds only go so far.

Now Dasher!

Pause.

now, Dancer! 

Longer pause.

now, Prancer

Drama Building.

and Vixen!

Silence.

On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!

Those she flew right through.

Picking up the pace to recapture the energy of the story.

She flipped each page, like it was the script of a play.

Each line more theatrical than the one before.

Finally closing with...

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!

And with that came a bow.

A bow she held for seconds, but felt like minutes.

A bow that signaled the end of Christmas Eve.

And the beginning of the longest night of the year.

Waiting for hours.

That feel like days.

For morning to arrive.

When we all learn what Santa delivered.

I'm hoping for the Chihuahua.

Extra Special Happy Hour

There were about three minutes left in happy hour.

When I started crying.

Literally.

Tears coming out of my eyes.

Amazingly, it had nothing to do with the end of happy hour.

By that point we had pretty much wiped out the entire extra-value menu.

• 3 orders of chicken wings

• 2 plates of ahi tuna

• 1 bbq ribs

• 1 calamari

• 1 fried mushroom

• And six beers

Jenny Craig here we come.

Fortunately there were three of us.

So I only consumed 1/3 of the 10,000 calories.

I was midway through one of them Thai Wings when my phone rang.

It was my wife.

Normally she knows better than to disrupt me during this holiest hour of the day.

But I answered anyway.

And I’m glad that I did.

She started off the conversation by notifying me that we have done a great job as parents.

“Awwww,” I said.

But “HURRY UP, HAPPY HOUR ENDS IN THREE MINUTES!”

Is what I thought.

But she continued.

She told me one of the parents at her school came up to her today.

To talk about our 12-year old son.

Naturally her first thought was.... “what did he do now?”

But as the story continued, she quickly realized that this story was different.

This story was special.

It goes a little something like this....

Last week my son started middle school.

7th grade.

A pretty big deal.

For us.

A giant deal.

For a 12-year old.

He’s been in the same school for a few years now.

But this is the year he becomes one of the big boys.

The boy who gets a locker.

The boy who gets some freedom.

And the boy who gets to sit wherever he wants for lunch. 

During his lunch break on Thursday, my boy was sitting with a bunch of his boys in the cafeteria.

Just like he always does.

As he prepared to woof down his meal, his eyes wandered.

To another table.

Another table of seventh grade boys.

The cool guys.

Well as these... cool guys... were getting ready to enjoy their lunch.

They were joined by another boy from their grade.

A “special” boy.

A “slow” boy.

A boy who spends part of his day in a different part of the school.

Learning at a different level.

Well apparently the cool kids didn’t like the idea of a new lunch partner.

Or maybe there wasn’t enough room for all the cool people.

Or maybe they didn’t like the idea of that lunch partner. 

Whatever the reason.

They all got up.

One by one.

And left the table.

Leaving the “special” boy not feeling so special.

All by himself.

A feeling he’s probably felt.

More than once.

Now it would’ve been very easy for my son.

Or any 12-year old boy.

To see this, ignore it and go on with their lunch.

And their day.

But apparently it wasn’t easy for my son.

In fact when he saw the boy sitting all alone at the table.

He put his stomach on hold.

And let his heart take over.

My son picked up his lunch.

Got up from his table.

And joined the other boy.

For a special lunch.

For two.

One of the moms saw the whole thing and quickly reported back to my wife.

As my wife started sharing this story with me, I quickly figured out where it was headed.

And before she was done.

I was finished.

With tears filling up in my eyes.

Not the first time I’ve broken down at the end of happy hour.

And not the first time I’ve cried in my beer.


But this time it was for a good reason.