We are coming for you. And your wallet.

Last week, my daughter graduated from kindergarten. On her final day of school, she presented us with her “art portfolio,” a folder full of drawings she did over the last year. One of them in particular caught my eye. It was a painting of my daughter and her mom, both holding dolls. Her hand-scrawled caption read:

“I love my mom. She takes me to American Girl even though I didn’t earn it.”

For those of you uneducated in the ways of Western over-consumption, allow me to explain:

American Girl is a store that sells dolls. Not just any dolls: American Girl dolls. They’re about 18 inches tall, with cherubic faces and thick, luxurious hair. Each doll is lovingly stuffed with ancient Roman coins, stolen Picassos, Honus Wagner baseball cards, and an original copy of the Declaration Of Independence. They must be — nothing else could justify their outrageous price: $110 each.

There are only a few American Girl stores in the whole country, so a trip to one is akin to the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Every girl is compelled by holy decree to make the trip at least once in her lifetime.

Families travel thousands of miles, braving the teeming hordes for a chance to foolishly squander their kids’ college money on overpriced dolls and accessories. Every day, first-time visitors make a ritual sacrifice on the steps of the store, either by spilling the blood of a freshly slaughtered lamb, or by granting American Girl, Inc. power of attorney over the family’s estate and associated financial instruments.

With so many people arriving daily, the threat of a stampede is omnipresent. The worst was in 2007, when word leaked out about a limited-time-only 10 percent discount on doll undergarments. The crowd surged forward, buckling the steel barricades that had been erected around the store. Parents joined in the mayhem, slashing at each other with rudimentary weapons fashioned from iPhone chargers and platinum Visa cards. A pack of unruly six-year-olds set a BMW minivan aflame, then hurled it through the store’s plate glass windows.

Over 1,400 people – and three Pomeranians – lost their lives that day.

<><><>

The first time my daughter went to American Girl was for a birthday party. I had never heard of the place before, so I foolishly agreed to let her go.

I thought it was odd to have a birthday party in a store. What I didn’t realize is that American Girl is not just a store — it’s a minor metropolis. It occupies its own three-story building. It has a theater. A restaurant. A party facility. A doll hair salon. A hospital.

A hospital.

For dolls.

The doll hospital is just like a real hospital. There are doctors. Nurses. Orderlies. You bring the doll in and they wheel the doll away in a little doll wheelchair. Or, if the injury is bad enough, on a doll gurney. There’s even a helipad on the roof, for when a doll needs to be MedEvac’d after flipping her pink Corvette on the Pacific Coast Highway.

My wife tells me that most of the operations at the American Girl hospital are done free-of-charge. I don’t buy it. That doesn’t sound like American Girl to me. That sounds like Canadian Girl. Or French Girl. An American Girl hospital would charge you $8,000 for a needle and thread. Oh, you want them to thread the needle? That’ll be another $14,000. Up front. In cash.

Concerned parents pace in the waiting room, waiting for word on the fate of their daughter’s dolls. Sometimes, the daughters themselves are there, their brows creased with worry.

A doll doctor pushes through the doors from the operating room. The parents clutch each other.

“How is she?” they ask.

“Not good,” the doctor says, gravely shaking his head. “She’s going to need a transplant.”

“Oh my god.” The father’s knees buckle. The mother catches him and guides him to a chair.

The doctor consults his clipboard. “We can add her to the donor list, but if we can’t find a match –”

“I’ll do it.” The parents turn. Their daughter stands up. “I’ll donate.”

What’s that on her face? Oh yes: it’s brave determination.

The doctor looks skeptical. “There’s no guarantee you’ll be a match, or that you’ll even have enough fiber-fill in your sternum to be a donor. And even if you are, without insurance, the cost could be prohibitive.”

“Don’t worry about the cost,” the girl says. “We’ll pay whatever it takes to save her. Right, daddy?”

“Well, I’m not –” he starts to say, before receiving a sharp kick in the shin from his wife. “I mean, yes. Of course. Money is no object.”

At that moment, the doors of the hospital burst open. Paramedics rush in, pushing a gurney. Behind them follows an elderly Hispanic woman, a Mexican boy in a khaki vest, and a small monkey wearing a pair of red rain boots. Under the blood-soaked sheet is a girl, maybe five years old, with black hair and an oddly football-shaped head.

“Oh, Dios mio!” the elderly woman cries. “Dora, mi nieta! Es un emergencia!”

“What do we got?” the doctor asks the paramedics.

“She’s got multiple gunshot wounds to the upper torso –”

“He just shot her, man,” the boy interrupts. “He fucking snapped!”

“Diego! Silencio!” the old woman says. But the boy continues:

“She was was like, ‘Swiper, no swiping!’ and then he was all, ‘Swipe this, bitch!’ Then BLA-KOW! He just capped her.”

Another parent in the waiting room stands. “You can’t treat her here! This is an American Girl store. How do we even know she’s here legally? Where are her papers?”

With a screech of outrage, the monkey in the rain boots leaps at the woman, sinking his teeth into the shoulder of her Arizona Diamondbacks t-shirt. The woman screams, beating at the monkey’s head with her autographed copy of Going Rogue.

“Someone get that vicious creature out of here!” the doctor shouts. “And grab the monkey too!”

And with that, they disappear into the operating room.

<><><>

When the day of the American Girl party arrived, my wife dropped my daughter off at the store.

Since she didn’t have her own American Girl doll, she was ushered into an all-pink room with shelves full of dolls to choose from. They allowed her to “borrow” a doll … in the same way that a schoolyard drug dealer will let a kid “borrow” a vial of crack.

The girls filed into the restaurant — they call it a “restaurant,” because it sounds a little less intimidating than “re-education camp” — where they were plied with snacks, cake, and all the Kool-Aid they could drink. The cake was gorgeous: pink cream icing over alabaster-white angel food cake, with a liberal dusting of sodium pentothal.

Once the indoctrination seminar — I mean “party” — was over, the girls were allowed to wander the store to discover for themselves what American Girl is all about.

American Girl is educational. Each doll has a series of books associated with it, which tell tales about the lives of girls in America throughout history. There’s the pioneer girl who helped her family chop wood to build a house. The Civil War era black girl who escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad. The Manifest Destiny girl who traveled with her family in the Donner Party, learning to survive the winter by consuming human flesh.

The educational part is obviously just a facade, a ploy that lowers your resistance to persuasion by lulling you into a false sense of security.

It’s reminds me of Scientology. You wander into an airport bookstore, looking for something to read on your flight, and — on a whim — you pick up a copy of Dianetics. You think, “Oh, this looks interesting.”

Next thing you know, John Travolta is hooking you up to an E-Meter while Tom Cruise force-feeds you vitamins to purge your thetans.

The American Girl books are really just product catalogs with extra words. That early 20th century city girl who overcame poverty to become a jazz singer? The one whose parents couldn’t afford toys, so she made a doll by sewing two buttons and some yarn onto a used condom? You can buy that very same prophylactic puppet for your doll. For only $49.99!

Admittedly, not all the dolls are educational. There’s also the “Just Like You” series. That’s where girls can choose a doll that is just like her: same hair, same eyes, same defeated father with an overdrawn checking account.

The resemblance is uncanny.

<><><>

Right about the time the party was over, my wife called from her cell phone.

“Would it be okay if we bought her a doll?” she asked. “All the other girls have one.”

“Sure,” I said. “How much is it?”

“About a hundred and ten –”

Mind you, this doll doesn’t  do anything. If I’m paying $110 for a doll, I expect it to walk, sing,  dance, shit itself, and cure AIDS. I want to be able to hook it up to my computer and download music onto it. I want it to make phone calls over a 3G network. I want it have the ability to love.

American Girl dolls do none of these things. They just stand there looking plastic and creepy, like Heidi Montag. They don’t even have articulated joints. Elbows, apparently, cost extra.

However, being the loving, generous father that I am, I agreed to let her get a doll.

“Just don’t give it to her yet,” I told my wife. “For a doll like that, she’ll have to earn it.”

<><><>

I am Scrooge. I will be visited by three ghosts. They will teach me that the most important thing in life is not money, but spending that money recklessly on laughably overpriced toys. I will learn my lesson.

But buying toys is an arms race. If you give a toy like that “just because,” then how do you reward exceptional behavior? With a bigger toy. With a car. A yacht. An armada. Then you have to invade France.

To be clear, I don’t mean she has to get a job. I’m not going to put her to work in a coal mine. I was thinking of something like “no tantrums for a week” or “go three days without bludgeoning your brother with a blunt instrument.”

She doesn’t even really have to do anything. We can find the good things she does naturally over the course of a few days, and use those as an excuse to reward her with the doll.

If we don’t do that, the opposite can happen. Variable reinforcement often leads to repetitive — sometimes unwanted — behavior.

Imagine a bird in a cage. It flaps its wings and a treat pops out. The treat has nothing to do with the flapping, but the bird doesn’t know that. So it flaps and flaps, and another treat pops out. The bird thinks, “I can control the world with my wings. Fear me, humans. I am your God.” (paraphrasing.)

Give a child an American Girl doll for no reason and her brain’s internal wiring gets re-mapped. Subconsciously, she thinks, “What did I do to earn this reward?”

“Must have been the way I kicked daddy in the nuts last night. I’ll do more of that.”

<><><>

About an hour after she called, I heard my wife’s van pull up outside. My daughter jumped out and ran into the house.  Holding her new doll.

“Daddy! Look what Mommy bought me!”

I whispered to my wife. “What happened to making her earn it?”

She shrugged. “She will.”

I wanted to argue that “that’s not how this works,” but it was too late. My daughter had the doll, and she was thrilled. I wasn’t going to take it away from her. I just had to hope that we didn’t accidentally reinforce some bad behavior that she was learning to repeat.

But I’ll be wearing concrete underwear, just in case.

Warren

(Today marks the return of guest blogger Warren Benedetto. We are glad to have him back, particularly because he’s raising his kids in LA, something which both fascinates and disgusts us. Read more about Warren here).

“You need to spend more time with your son.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

My wife had just returned from my 3-year-old son’s fourth day of Little Lakers basketball practice. He wasn’t participating much. While all the other boys were learning bounce passes and lay-ups, my son was more interested in playing with his sister and her friends on the sidelines. My wife was concerned–all the other boys were there with their dads, and none of those kids seemed to have a problem staying involved in the practice.

I assured her that she was overreacting. “He’s fine. He’s probably just a little too young for basketball, that’s all.”

At that moment, my son sashayed out of my daughter’s room, pushing a baby carriage. He was wearing nothing but his underwear, a pink feather boa, and red sequined high heels. A purse was cradled daintily in the crook of his arm.

“This isn’t  good,” my wife said.

“It’s horrible,” I said, shaking my head in disgust. “That purse totally clashes with those shoes.”

My wife laughed. And by “laughed,” I mean “fixed me with a testicle-withering glare.”

“I’m serious. Someone needs to teach him how to be a man.”

“Okay, sure. Who do have in mind?”

“You.”

Can’t we find someone more qualified? I thought.

I mean, really: what do I know about being a man? I’m 34 years old, and I’m still figuring out how to properly use my external genitalia. Other dads are teaching their kids how to rotate their tires or change the oil–I can’t even pop the hood without breaking a nail. Richard Simmons is a better male role model than I am.

Yet, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I am a man, and I have therefore been afforded all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities thereof. By virtue of having a Y chromosome, I am entitled to higher pay for equal work, and I have the right to own land, wage war, and to masturbate frequently and with vigor.

Apparently, if you read the fine print, I also have the responsibility to teach my son that it’s not acceptable to dress like an extra from La Cage Aux Folles.

The question is: how?

<><><>

“I’ve got it!” I exclaimed to my wife. “Just me and him. Guys night out. One word: VEGAS.”

“He’s three.”

“And a half …”

She didn’t look convinced. “I’ve got another word for you,” she said.

“Divorce?”

“No. Prison.”

Okay, so Vegas was out.

Time for Plan B: Strip club. That would man him up. We’d cash in some of his college money for one-dollar bills, I’d buy him a lap dance or two, and he’d be well on the road to manhood. Unfortunately, it’s damn near impossible to find a strip club that has a kids menu. And not one of them had a booster seat. How’s a kid supposed to see the stage? It’s ridiculous.

I had two strikes against me, so I decided to play it safe with some in-home entertainment. I sat him on the couch, then scrolled through the on-demand movies looking for something sufficiently manly for us to watch. I didn’t really want to pay the $5.99 for Busty Cops 3–although it is by far the best of the series–so I settled for what was available for free: Transformers. Perfect.

You won’t find a more guy-friendly movie than Transformers. It’s like a crash course in the ways of the man. It has cars. Trucks. Robots. Explosions. Wanton violence.

And, most importantly, Megan Fox.

One can debate the merits of Ms. Fox’s abilities as a thespian, but few can dispute the otherworldly hotness of her taut, tanned, glistening stomach as she leans over the hood of a robot car. She’s a Category 5 wet dream, the Hurricane Katrina of nocturnal emissions. Raging torrents of involuntary ejaculate breaching the levees and wiping out entire neighborhoods. Brad Pitt starting a charity just to help rebuild all the semen-ravaged homes.

I fast-forwarded through the first half hour of the movie (Blah blah blah boy gets car yadda yadda alien robots et cetera), to get to the good stuff:  Sam’s car breaks down, and Michaela (Megan Fox’s character) gets out to inspect the engine.

“Now, son,” I said. “I want you to pay special attention to this part. See her? She’s what we call a ‘hot girl.’ Can you say ‘hot girl’ ?”

“Mama.”

“Well, yes, your mama is a hot girl, but I’m talking about the one on the TV. Her name is Megan Fox. She’s a hot girl too. Can you say ‘hot girl’ ?”

“Mama’s a hockurl.”

I sighed. “Simmer down, Oedipus.”

It wasn’t working. I stopped the movie. The TV switched from the on-demand screen to live TV, which was currently playing Blue’s Clues. Steve–the nerdy, balding, ugly-sweater-wearing host–was signing some lame-ass bullshit song about ducks.

“Hot girl …?” my son asked, pointing at Steve.

<><><>

The fact is, I’m just woefully underqualified to teach anyone how to be a man.

I don’t hunt, I don’t fish, I don’t watch sports, and I only pee standing up because my ass is too big to sit comfortably on a urinal. If I lived in New York, I’d be one of the Sex And The City girls. I’m one uterus short of being a lesbian.

I don’t even like guys. I never have. With one exception, all of my friends have been girls. Even back in elementary school, when the girls were rumored to be infected with a particularly virulent form of cooties, I was more interested in hanging out with them than with the other boys.

That supposedly made me gay–at least, that’s what the signs stuck to my back said–but nothing could be farther from the truth. I was actually prematurely heterosexual.

What the other guys didn’t realize yet is that those girls didn’t have cooties: they had boob nubbins. Under their shirts were glorious little mounds of ladystuff. If you looked into their open sleeves from just the right angle, you could actually see God.

Around junior high, the other boys started to figure it out, but by then it was too late: I had staked my claim. They were MY boob nubbins. Get your own. Right, girls?

Wrong.

So very, very, wrong.

They say the early bird gets the worm. What they don’t tell you is that the early bird also gets banished to a barren, sexless Siberia, where he’ll spend puberty shivering in an endless winter of pathetic loneliness.

I watched from afar as boob nubbins blossomed into glorious, wondrous breasts, supple and firm and bursting with fruit flavor. Every few months, bundles of mail would be dropped into the gulag from a passing cargo plane, bringing news clippings about make-out sessions at parties long forgotten. Occasionally, a wayward ribbon of ticker tape would drift by, carried across my path by a frozen gale of soul-crushing disappointment.

“April Johnson. STOP. The girl you loved since second grade. STOP. Gave Chad Martin a blowjob. STOP.”

What did these other guys have that I didn’t? I mean, except for muscles. And good teeth. And hair gel.

But who cares about all that? Those guys were disgusting pigs: boorish, obnoxious, sexist, disrespectful. Why would any girl want them instead of me, a nice guy who would probably be quite good at cunnilingus, if given the chance to prove it?

<><><>

I’m supposed to teach my son how to be a man. But that begs the question: what kind of man? I don’t want him to grow up sitting on the sidelines–I want him in the game. Not just in the game; I want him to be the captain of the team. I want him to be popular, and athletic, and good-looking, and all the things I wasn’t. I want his name on that ticker tape, in the hands of some other milquetoast, asexual loser.

Or do I?

Do I really want my kid to be one of those guys I envied in high school? Sure, they got laid, but they were assholes. They got invited to parties that, in retrospect, I wouldn’t have wanted to be at anyway. They treated girls terribly, they picked on people weaker than them, they lied and cheated and stole to get what they wanted, and ultimately, they went nowhere in life.

I, on the other hand, married a hot girl.

It’s true. My son was right–his mother is a hot girl. Way hotter than I have any right to be with. You know when you’re walking down the street, and you see some gorgeous woman on the arm of some lumpy, doughy doofus? And you think, “Ugh. What does SHE see in HIM?” Well, that’s me. I’m the doofus.

It almost always works out that way. Sure, you’ll find the rare stud who spends his life sipping the elixir of life from a golden chalice while being fellated by a non-stop parade of supermodels. But more often than not, the guys who ultimately win out aren’t the ones with bedrooms full of high school sports trophies.

The band nerd grows up to be a rock star. The computer geek becomes an internet millionaire. The president of the chess club becomes a titan of Wall Street.

So, what kind of man do I want my son to grow up to be? Personally, I’d rather have him grow up to be the latter. That’s where he’s going to find long-term happiness. And if that means he needs to spend a few years in the frozen tundra of Noblowjobistan, then so be it. He can borrow my jacket. I don’t need it anymore. I’ve got a better way to keep warm now:

Standing next to his mom.

Sometimes I regret not beating our children.

Parents have been beating their kids since time immemorial. Your dad beat you, you beat your kid, your kid will beat his kid – it’s tradition. Beatings are handed down through generations, like a secret family recipe. Grandma’s apple pie. Mom’s chicken soup. Dad’s back-handed bitch-slap.

Some parents have kids specifically so they can beat them.

“Honey? I’m pregnant! We’re having a baby!”

“Can I beat it?”

“Of course you can!”

“Now?”

“Let’s wait until it’s born.”

So you wait. Nine months later, your wife is in labor. The doctor comes in. You pull him aside.

“Doc, you know how, right after the baby is born, you slap him so he’ll cry? Can I do that part?”

After you finish talking to the lady from Social Services, the police uncuff you. You ask them if they’re going to use the Taser again, but apparently they’re too busy filling out the restraining order to give you a straight answer. Instead, you fiddle with your ankle monitor until the judge says you can go back to the hospital to see your new baby.

When you get to the nursery, your wife is there. She’s glowing with radiant light and beauty. Or no. Wait. That’s not your wife. That’s someone who doesn’t have kids yet. Your wife is the one who looks like a sack of flour that has been trampled by a herd of beef cattle.

“You look gorgeous,” you tell her, because you’re a sensitive guy. “Where’s our little shitbag?”

<><><>

My wife and I decided to take a less-traditional approach to child-rearing. We agreed early-on that we wouldn’t be the types of parents who hit our kids. We would discipline them with kind words and intense love. Instead of hitting our children, we would hug them. We’d make them understand that anger gets you nowhere, and violence is never the answer.

HUGE mistake.

Clearly, violence is very often the answer. It may not be the only answer, or the best answer, but it’s often the most gratifying answer.

Case in point: bullies.

Sure, you could try to reason with a bully. Or you could just ignore him. But wouldn’t it be more satisfying to push him down a flight of stairs, or to stab him repeatedly in the throat with a #2 pencil?

Of course it would.

When my daughter was in preschool, there was one girl in particular who was always picking on her. Let’s just call the girl “Isabella” (because that was her name).

Isabella was about a foot-and-a-half taller than every other girl in the class. I’m pretty sure she was left back a couple of years in a row. I didn’t even know it was possible to fail preschool, but apparently some kids just can’t handle the pressure. Too much juice. Too many Goldfish crackers. The brutal academic rigor of remedial nap time.

A few weeks into the semester, my daughter came home complaining about Isabella. She wasn’t letting my daughter play with anyone. My daughter would be happily chatting with a group of other girls, when Isabella would waltz over to inform the others about some arcane rule from the preschool canon like, “you’re not allowed to play with girls who have blue eyes.”

The other girls, recognizing Isabella as the senior member most knowledgeable about parliamentary procedure, would follow her away, leaving my daughter to play alone. In tears.

I tried to counsel my daughter, explaining that bullies are mean to people because they hate themselves. Their only self-worth comes from seeing the effect they have on others. If you don’t react to a bully, you drain them of their power. Eventually, they’ll realize they can’t get to you, and they’ll go bother someone else.

She nodded thoughtfully. She’s getting it. I thought. This parenting shit is easy.

“Dad …?” she said.

“Yeah, babe?”

“Can we get Mighty Putty? It’s great for crafts, and it’s waterproof too.”

Now, on the surface, it may have appeared that she wasn’t, in fact, getting it. But I’m telling you: While her ears were hearing that Mighty Putty can be used to re-attach shower tiles and repair cracked pipes, her subconscious was busy imbibing the sweet elixir of my fatherly wisdom.

My wife had been observing this exchange from across the room. She beckoned me over. I could tell that she could tell that I was doing a good job.

“It’s cool,” I said, with breezy confidence. “I handled it.”

“Don’t be such a pussy,” she whispered, then brushed me out of the way. She walked over to my daughter.

“Did Isabella hit you?” she asked.

My daughter nodded.

“Then hit her back.”

<><><>

Teaching kids about hitting (or not hitting) has got to be one of the hardest parts about being a parent. There are so many nuances. It’s not okay to hit. Unless someone hits you first. Then it’s self-defense. Unless it’s your little brother. Then it’s not okay. And it’s never okay to hit mommy and daddy. And it’s not okay for us to hit you. Unless you deserve it. Then you better run.

Despite my wife putting the “violent” back into “non-violent resistance”, my daughter continued having trouble with Isabella and her arbitrary rules. “Girls with curly hair don’t get to play here,” or “Nobody wearing a Cinderella shirt can come,” or “This playhouse is only for preschoolers old enough to need a tampon.”

It concerned me, but mostly I just brushed it off as a kids-will-be-kids sort of thing.

Then my daughter came home with a bruise.

On her face.

Now, in general, I tend to be sort of passive, avoiding conflict at all costs. I’m a “pussy,” as my wife so keenly observed. My wife, on the other hand, is not afraid to advocate for her children. She is – despite ample physical evidence to the contrary – the man in the family.

When my wife saw that bruise, she turned into a Grizzly bear. I don’t mean metaphorically — I mean, she actually physically transmogrified into ursine form. She was like fourteen feet tall on her hind legs. Claws the size of meat hooks.

“That little bitch,” she said, except it sounded more like “RRRRAWWRRWRRRR!”

My wife wanted to drive right over to the school to confront the teachers. Why weren’t they doing more to stop the bullying? Why wasn’t Isabella punished, or even reprimanded?

I didn’t answer. I suddenly had a terrible headache. The situation was so stressful. Also, my wife had knocked me to the ground, and was gnawing on my skull. I once read an article about a man who survived a Grizzly attack by pretending he was dead. I figured it was worth a try.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” she asked. “Hello?”

Damn, I thought. She can smell me breathing.

“Maybe you should let me handle it,” I suggested.

I felt like I would probably be a little more calm, and a little less likely to disembowel someone. I would talk to the principal, letting her know that Isabella hit my daughter, and asking her to intervene to prevent further altercations.

Apparently, this plan only further reinforced the obvious truth that my arms are labia, and my head is a giant clitoris.

“But you can’t just drive over to the school right now …,” I protested.

“Why not?”

“You don’t have an appointment. Also, I’m bleeding profusely, and may need a doctor.”

I expressed further concern that driving-while-grizzly may run afoul of certain traffic laws, but my wife remained unconvinced. Then I raised the issue that she might not fit in a Toyota Corolla in her current state of bear-ness. She dismissed my concerns by ripping the roof and doors off the car.

“RAWRRRRRRRWWWR!” she said.

Which I think meant, “You drive.”

<><><>

When we got to the school, my wife went into the principal’s office. I waited in the hall.

As I read the fire safety poster for the 50th time, I heard the faint squeak of a restroom door. I looked up. There, standing just 15 feet away, at the end of the long hallway, was the beast herself.

Isabella.

My heart thumped in my chest. My hand reflexively went to my belt, poised over my my revolver. A tumbleweed rolled past, lifted by the hot, dry desert breeze. It was a stand-off.

I quickly sized her up. She was about 3 feet tall, with a short blonde bob and a button nose. Her Barney-purple overalls were a few inches too short, revealing a pair of Hello Kitty ankle socks. A clear droplet of snot dribbled from one nostril.

I was pretty sure I could take her in a fight.

<><><>

The bullying issue has particular resonance for me, because I spent an entire school year being abused by a merciless bully. Day after day, I was forced through a crucible of physical and emotional abuse. I was poked, pushed, knocked down, laughed at, and generally humiliated, all at the hands of the single most callous bully who ever befouled the Earth.

Her name was Karen.

Karen’s locker was right next to mine. Every morning, as I squatted down to put my books into my backpack, Karen would saunter up and push me off balance, sending me sprawling. Or she’d come up behind me and bump the books out from under my arm. Sometimes she would box my ears, or put my shoulder in a Vulcan neck pinch until I begged for mercy.

She was a monster.

After several months of abuse, I decided that enough was enough, and it was time to fight back. And by fight back, I mean “cry.”

It was the 1000th time that she had knocked the books from my arms, which I guess was some kind of milestone. Balloons and confetti fell from the ceiling. A marching band started playing. A guy showed up and handed her a giant check.

While all this was happening, I was busy picking up my scattered papers and trying not to let anyone see me crying. My cheeks were hot, my face flushed with embarrassment.

“If you do that again,” I mumbled, keeping my eyes on the ground. “I’ll punch you.”

She snorted. “You’ll punch me? Yeah, right.”

“I’m warning you,” I said quietly. “Don’t make me do it.”

“Oh, I’m scared!” she squealed, in mock terror.

Before I really knew what I was doing, I stood up. Turned around. And threw a punch.

As my fist hurtled towards her face, life went into slow motion. I saw my parents – my father with his fedora clutched in his hands, my mother dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief – as the principal explained that The Son Who Could Do No Wrong had punched a girl.

I saw the police wagon pulling up outside the school, as I was led from the entrance in shackles and leg irons. Students lined the sidewalk, shouting obscenities and pelting me with empty chocolate milk cartons.

Karen’s mother stepped from the behind the onlookers. The officers holding my elbows pulled me to a stop. A hush fell over the crowd. Karen’s mother moved closer, only inches from my face, her eyes searching mine as she silently implored, How could you, you … you … you monster?!

Then she spit in my face. The crowd cheered.

As this played out, my mind simultaneously rattled off thoughts at a machine-gun pace.

OhmygodI’mgoingtobeinsomuchtroublemyparentsaregoingtokillmeI’llnever
gotocollegeandI’llendupbagginggroceriesuntilIdie

What was I doing? I had never punched anyone – or anything – in my life. I couldn’t even knock out Glass Joe in Mike Tyson’s Punch Out on my Nintendo. And yet here I was, right now, as we speak, at this very moment, punching someone. Someone with a vagina.

My fist connected with her cheek. Everyone in the hall froze in silent anticipation of what would happen next.

I figured she’d drop to the ground, instantly unconscious. That’s usually what happens when the underdog finally stands up for himself and clocks the bully.

When she didn’t fall immediately, I realized that this was probably one of those times where the bully totters uncertainly on his (her) feet for a moment, before toppling backwards like a felled tree. I’d be fine with that.

Except … there didn’t seem to be much tottering going on, and there was a distinct lack of toppling.

Also, there was more smiling than I expected. Quite a bit more laughing too.

“Wow,” she chuckled. “You punch like a girl.”

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I’m not the type of person who angers easily. I’m pretty laid back, which is typical for someone who has lived most of his adult life as a giant vulva.

But now that I was standing face-to-face with Isabella, I truly, genuinely wanted to smack her. Even though she was just a kid – and there was a 60 to 70 percent chance that she could kick my ass – I felt like someone had to put her in her place.

Even if I didn’t actually cold-cock her, shouldn’t I at least say something? Like maybe, “Hey, leave my kid alone,” or “You should learn to be nicer to people,” or “Let go of my arm, you’re hurting me.”

Isabella sniffled, sucking the little snot dribble back up into her nose.

I looked around. I figured I’d have time to get in one good shot – or at least a snide comment – before someone called the police. It would have to be a good one.

Suddenly, the hallway flooded with light as the door behind me opened. Isabella’s eyes lit up.

“Mommy!” she shouted and ran past me.

I resisted the momentary urge to stick out my foot and trip her.

Apparently this child had not been belched from the fires of hell, wholly formed. She had been birthed. Born of a mortal woman. Expelled from a blackened, unclean womb.

Maybe it wasn’t appropriate to confront the child. But certainly I could confront her mother.

I summoned up my inner spirit animal, and transformed into … a bunny wearing a party hat. Okay, bad idea. Back to human form.

I clenched my jaw. Clenched my fists. Clenched my anus. And prepared to unleash the white-hot hellfire of my fury on Isabella’s mom.

“Hi,” I said. That’s it. Lull her into a false sense of security.

“Oh, hello,” said the woman with a smile. “I’m Isabella’s mom. Karen.”

She extended her hand. I flinched. Something hot and wet sluiced down my leg.

“I think my wife wants to talk to you, if you have a minute.”

(Warren Benedetto is joining DadWagon as a guest contributor this week. We are glad to have him here, particularly because he’s raising his kids in LA, something which both fascinates and disgusts us. Read more about Warren here).

This weekend, my wife and I found ourselves filled with the Easter spirit — as well as enough marshmallow Peeps to send the average human into a diabetic coma — so we decided to take the kids to an Easter carnival at the local park.

The highlight of the carnival was, of course, the Easter egg hunt. What better way to celebrate the brutal torture, sadistic murder, and creepily Sam Raimi-esque resurrection of the Risen Lord than with a quest for candy-filled plastic eggs?

When we arrived at the park, the air was electric with the hum of the children’s nascent, ill-formed greed. Hundreds of kids lined the perimeter of the park’s baseball field, eying the hundreds of colorful eggs nestled in the tall grass. Who knew what treasures might lie within those magical multicolored orbs? Diamonds… rubies… exotic meats and spices… maybe even a Fun Size Snickers.

As the start of the hunt drew near, the children began to grow unruly. Desperate parents struggled to restrain their rabid offspring, hooking belt loops and clutching fistfuls of shirt collars, all while glaring disparagingly at the few parents prescient enough to bring along a monkey-shaped kid leash.

“Look at them,” they sneered. “Putting their kid on a leash like a dog.”

“Ugh. It’s horrible. So degrading.”

“Yeah. We should ask them where they bought it.”

As the excitement reached a crescendo, the Master Of Ceremonies stepped up to the press box microphone, his words booming from above like the voice of God Himself.

“Hello, every-bunny! I hop you’re ready! On the count of five! 5 … 4  –”

With the rending of cheap Wal-Mart fabric, one child tore away from his exhausted mother and streaked across the field ahead of the countdown. Chaos ensued.

The rule of law was subsumed by the laws of evolution. Survival of the fittest. Every kid for himself.

Hair was pulled. Eyes were gouged. Fingers were trampled. A bloodied spine spun through the air like a wayward javelin. The ground was littered with what might have been Chiclets, but may also have been a scattering of human teeth.

The children swarmed the field like locusts, vacuuming up every single Easter egg on the field in less time than it takes a school of piranha to skeletonize a wild boar.

Within 30 seconds, it was over.

<><><>

For some kids, the hunt was a glorious, candy-filled victory. For those lower on the evolutionary scale, it was their first taste of the crushing disappointment that is sure to plague them throughout their painfully average lives.

One girl — a 3-year-old in a Cinderella dress, whose life will never come close to fulfilling the potential implied by her wardrobe — sat on the ground, sobbing over her empty basket. She hadn’t gotten a single egg.

Nearby, a 5-year-old alpha male lorded over the spoils of his conquest, regaling his friends with tales of the pillage and plunder which had brought him such splendor. This was no ordinary 5-year-old. He was about 6’2″, and was already sporting hairs on his lip that would surely erupt into a glorious mustache by the time he got to first grade.

The boy’s mom spotted him in the crowd, which wasn’t hard seeing as he was the only kid there with hair on his knuckles.

“How’d you do?” she asked.

“I won,” he said.

“Oh, honey,” she clucked. “Everyone’s a winner here.”

“Not her.”

He pointed to the sniffling 3-year-old, who will never grow up to be a princess, no matter how hard she tries.

The boy’s mother gasped. She knelt down next to the girl.

“Oh, poor thing! Didn’t you get any eggs?”

The girl shook her head.

The woman beckoned to her son. “Caleb, come here. Give her some of your eggs.”

“But mo-om …” he whined. “These are my eggs. It’s not my fault she’s a loser.”

The girl sobbed even harder, realizing deep down that she will never be swept away by a dashing prince on a white horse, and will instead end up married to an accountant, or possibly an orthodontist.

The mother grabbed her son by the arm. “I said share,” she intoned with a growl that came with the implicit addendum of “or else.”

Or else what? I wondered. You’ll take away his motorcycle?

With a mighty sigh, the boy dropped one of his eggs into the girl’s basket.

“Share more,” his mom said.

The boy sighed even harder, then dropped two more eggs in the girl’s basket.

As if someone flipped a switch, the girl stopped crying. Her tears evaporated instantly. She leaped to her feet and sprinted across the field towards her mother.

“Mom!” she shouted. “I won!”

<><><>

Within a few minutes, I managed to locate my own children in the teeming horde. As we headed for the exits along with throngs of other families, I found myself surrounded by crying children with empty Easter baskets. Apparently, little Ashley wasn’t the only loser in the bunch.
“It’s a shame,” my wife commented. “They should have enough eggs for everyone.”

A woman next to us leaned in. “They do.” She pointed. “Up there.”

Sure enough, a gaggle of elderly volunteers was stationed at the exit, each of them wielding a shopping bag full of extra Easter eggs. As the children with empty baskets filed past, the volunteers would drop a few eggs into their baskets, along with just the right amount of motherly condescension.

“See? It’s not so bad, is it?” or “Here you go. These are some special eggs, just for you,” or “The Easter Bunny asked me to give you these.”

As we passed through the exits, my wife smiled.

“That’s nice. Now nobody has to feel bad.”

<><><>

Yeah, I guess it’s nice. But is it honest?

It’s easy to rationalize. It’s a holiday, right? Who wants kids to feel bad on Easter? It’s just a stupid Easter egg hunt. Let them enjoy it. It’s not like it’s something important.

Okay … and when it is something important …? Is that the right time to be honest?  When the stakes are the highest, and the emotions are the most raw?

How long do we maintain the illusion of a perfect world where everyone gets exactly what they want?  When is it okay to say, “you’ll need to do better next time,” or “you didn’t work hard enough” or “you didn’t deserve to win.”

We have a responsibility as parents to protect our children from harm … but do we have a responsibility to protect them from disappointment?

How old do our kids need to be before they’re no longer “too young to fail”?

The way I see it, we need to stop misleading our kids into thinking everyone’s a winner. It’s bullshit. There’s usually one winner, and it’s probably someone better-looking than you, with a name like Chad, or Brad, or Keanu. That’s life. What’s important is how you deal with it.

I want my kids to understand that most people fail, most of the time … at least at first. If they know  how to deal with failure — how to accept it, how to embrace it, how to be motivated by it — then maybe they won’t be crushed by it when it happens. And I’d rather they learn that lesson now, with the small things, so they’re well equipped to deal with the big things when they happen.

Let daddy ruin Easter now, and maybe you won’t go on a bender ten years from now, when you find out the lead in the school play went to Lindsay Lohan’s untalented little sister.

You’ll thank me later.

<><><>

After the Easter egg hunt, my family and I ambled over to the Easter Carnival. There were several tents set up with a variety of kid-friendly carnival games: tossing stuffed baseballs through hula hoops, kicking soccer balls into kid-sized goals, spinning a mini wheel-of-fortune.

My daughter decided that she wanted to play a variation of the “goldfish toss,” where the player tries to toss a ping pong ball into a grid of water-filled plastic cups (which, incidentally, were curiously absent of goldfish).

Her first toss fell short, bouncing off the front edge of the table and into the grass. The second toss sailed well past the table, pinging off of the forehead of an elderly lady in the next booth. The last toss  made it onto the board, but ricocheted hopelessly off the rims of the cups.

“Oh well,” I said to my daughter. “You can’t win ’em all. Maybe next time.”

“Oh, she still gets a prize,” the volunteer said cheerily. She held out the prize bucket. “Take whichever one you want, hon.”

My daughter looked up at me as if to say, “should I?”

I shrugged. “If you think you earned it.”

She considered for a second, then shook her head.

“No, that’s okay,” said said to the volunteer. “I’ll get back in line and try again.”