A Week on the Wagon: Change Is the Only Constant

Many of the Dadwagoneers faced down some kind of instability this week. Could you tell from their posts?

Matt experienced a genuine life shift: giving up his Frugal Traveler column at the Times, and moving to a looser (and presumably easier) schedule. And what does he do with his newfound freedom? Make wiseass remarks about selling Chinese babies, the ways in which network TV is destroying his marriage, and his daughter’s incipient racism. Then he topped it all off with this cheery little view of the world.

Theodore (whose workplace saw some turmoil this week) was in a similarly introspective mood, musing on John Seabrook’s adoption story and making fun of Nathan’s Tolstoy obsession. He also filled us in on the bizarre family tree (or grove of trees, really) from which his child descends.

Speaking of Nathan, he returned from Russia with a bit of that country’s sour shrug to him. He was uncharacteristically indecisive about his child’s tae kwon do classes (see secondary post here) and definitely sour about the prospect of what he considered the world’s worst Father’s Day gift. (What’s better, Nate–vodka?)

And me: Apparently I just bounce and spin around, reacting to whatever oddments and light insults life throws at me, with no coherent philosophy or approach at all. Unless you, reader, can come up with a reading that ties together Antonin Scalia, denim-printed diapers, my love of paper-shredding, and math puzzles. The only context is the lack of context, as George W.S. Trow sort of said.

Maybe it’ll all be clearer come Tuesday. Happy Memorial Day weekend to all.

Diff’rent Strokes, Same Ending

Happy families are all alike.

Happy families are all alike.

I’m sure I don’t remember Gary Coleman quite as well as most people. I tuned in to “Diff’rent Strokes” long after it had gone into syndication, and never developed the kind of ironic affection for it that so many Gen Xers did. But what I do remember him from was “On the Right Track,” a movie in which he played a homeless shoeshine kid, living in a train station, who had a special power: When he shined shoes, he could pick winners from the Racing Form.

Predictably, the discovery of this ability meant everyone wanted to take advantage of our young hero, who still somehow managed to sail through the movie without losing his imperturbable optimism. Of course, he was acting.

Which is pretty much the story of Gary Coleman himself. Trapped forever in a child’s body due to a kidney ailment, he found little success as an adult, but whenever I saw him on the news—whether for suing his parents for mismanaging his $3.8 million trust fund or for just causing a ruckus—he maintained that chubby-cheeked childlike cuteness. He could turn on the charm for the cameras. Again, he was probably acting.

Or maybe not. He may have played an orphan on TV, but he was one in real life, too—a spiritual orphan, cut off from his family and desperate for someone to take care of him. That was Conrad Bain’s job, and it was our job, too, even though he was just as desperate to prove he didn’t need anyone. “Family never meant anything to me,” he said in 2003, “but a whole lot of trouble that I don’t need.” But what do you do with kids—teenagers, especially—who say they don’t need you? You try even harder.

The ridiculousness of his death is that he died after falling at home and hitting his head—meaningless and bathetic, it gives us no easy way to sum up his existence. I can almost imagine telling the young Gary that’s how he’d meet his end: After a lifetime of health problems, money problems, work problems, and behavior problems, you’ll trip, fall, hit your head and die at 42. I think we all know what he’d say to that.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Reply

The Meaning of Giving Life, or Why We Screw in Summer

Nine months before Memorial Day weekend

Nine months before Memorial Day weekend

So JP’s birthday is tomorrow, which is not what this post is about. This post about sex, late-summer early-fall sex, the kind of sex that results in children born … on Memorial Day weekend. Am I imagining this, or are half of the children that I know having birthdays coming up this weekend or week?

Is life that simple to understand? You go to the beach with your Other (you judge the significance), eat lobster, sip gin-and-tonics, and whammo! Nine months later it’s crotchfruit time.

Or is it even simpler than that? After Memorial Day, summer peak vacation pricing starts. Does everyone just schedule their schtupping so they can get a break on a time share?

I report. You decide how seriously to take it.

Worst Father’s Day Gift Ever? Hardly.

31Bu90W7CSLAll due respect to Nathan, but this isn’t even close. I own a paper shredder, as it happens—come to think of it, a castoff from my own father, who upgraded to a fancier model—and I take ridiculous pleasure in grinding up my paper trash. I can only explain it in the most hazy terms, but here’s my best shot: I guess it’s the pretending to be a Machiavellian operator. Doing something as mundane as tossing out the credit-card solicitations I get in the mail suddenly turns into an operation out of a John Le Carré novel. Before, I was disposing of the junk mail; now I am involved in espionage, and I emit a quiet little Henry Kissinger heh-heh-heh every time I drop a piece of paper in. I’ll never have an Aston Martin with a smokescreen package, but we do what we can.

Also, if you have to ship anything, the shreddings are cheaper than bubble wrap. It’s economical!

I would say that, yes, I am a freak… except that I am not alone in this, by even the slightest measure. All I can say is, consider these people.