I’m Addicted (and I just can’t get enough)

It’s Field Day at my daughter’s summer program. The theme: JERSEY DAY. Last night her mom brought over Aidan’s Boston Bruins jersey, an excellent choice following the team’s Stanley Cup victory over the Vancouver Canucks. So dressed as a little Boston Bruin, with her Chorkie puppy in her lap, she and I set off for the 3 mile drive to the school hosting her summer program.

I don’t think we managed to cover half a mile when I started to hear her little voice singing in the backseat:

“I’m addicted and I just can’t get enough, I just can’t get enough, I just can’t get enough …”

She repeated it a few times before we reached the first STOP sign. Hearing my six year old daughter sing the lyrics of a Black Eyed Peas song isn’t a new experience. She loves the group and she’s sung other songs in the car before. But it was this particular song that made me feel compelled to start a conversation about addiction. After all, one of my writing clients is Burning Tree, a long-term drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility in Texas.

Me: Do you know what addiction is?

Aidan: Yes.

Me: What is it?

Aidan: Um…I forgot.

I suspected that answer wasn’t quite true. This girl has an amazing memory. She can recall all kinds of details 24 hours, 1 week, 1 month later. She just needed a little coaxing.

I started by explaining how addiction is a dependence on a substance, one that becomes a habit that’s hard to break. She said, “I’m not addicted to anyone or anything. Are you addicted?” I replied, “I’m not addicted to anyone or anything either.” She seemed happy to hear that statement.

As we continued chatting, it was obvious that she’s had the addiction conversation before with her mother. Her mom knows more than a thing or two about addiction. In fact, she has a brother who’s been dealing with multiple addictions for more than two decades. I’m sure Aidan has learned a lot by listening to her mother talk about the subject of addiction. 

One of the points Aidan brought up was her mother’s own addiction to cigarettes. I acknowledged her example and said cigarettes are highly addictive, although not everyone will become addicted to them. For me, I told her, cigarettes are too expensive, taste bad, and have a nasty smell. I’ll never be addicted to them, I assured her. But I also reminded her that her mother has tried to quit and has had managed to stop smoking for long periods of time in the last several years.

The only other addictive substance we managed to cover in the short drive was pain killers. I explained how certain types of pain killers are more addictive than others. Her first question was, “have you taken those pain killers.” I told her that I had taken pain killers after my car accidents, but assured her that I never became addicted to them. It’s obvious that she’s trying to gather all the facts here and make sense of the world of addiction, as much as it could ever make sense to a young child.

Last night as we looked at the full moon together, she imagined being the first child to “discover the moon.” Today she may be thinking about discovering cures for addiction. I’m sure our brief conversation will be on her mind occasionally throughout the day, although I hope she can set it aside and fully enjoy Field Day. But if the topic comes up again this afternoon, I’ll be equipped with an kid-friendly view of addiction delivered by kids and created by Dr. Robert Lefever, Director of Promis Recovery Centre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzkA7ArGkak 

I’m sure one view of this 8-minute video will change the way Aidan thinks about that Black Eyed Peas song. It won’t prevent her from singing it again, but she will be a lot more informed the next time she does. Of course, if she comes home singing Beyonce’s “Best Thing I Never Had”, I may have to discuss a radio ban with her mother.

Last Rites Averted

Dying is never easy to watch, especially when it seems completely unnecessary. In this case, the process was set in motion by mere neglect. So prior to death would come a period of solitude. It’s a very depressing concept. Dying alone could very well be the worst punishment ever.

But this weekend, a live was saved. Death was delayed, hopefully for years—or however long the flowering plant known as a Morning Glory lives. A few months ago, my daughter wanted a plant. Maybe she needed a plant for school. I can’t recall which it was, but I do know that her mom and I took her to Walmart to pick up some seeds, a pot, soil, etc.

It seemed like a happy little moment. Then, on the following evening, she would plant the seeds. Unlike the immediate-growing plants in some TV shows, these seeds took their dear sweet time to grow. Aidan was sometimes impatient, often rushing outside to the patio to see if any signs of life were visible. I remember her excitement when she started seeing little bits of green sprouting up through the soil. It was another happy little moment.

Somewhere along the way, perhaps due to the oppressive heat in Texas, the plant got moved inside into the cool, air-conditioned environment. It would seem like a blessing, but turned out to be a punishment, albeit an unintentional one. The Morning Glory would feel no glory as it quickly became forgotten for days at a time.

After a period of time sitting on the window sill of Aidan’s mom’s room, the little M.G. plant enjoyed a brief revival and spent time in Aidan’s window. The exposure to sunlight every day would be overshadowed by a lack of water. The window sill was again not the place to keep the plant. It lived a life of great thirst—and perhaps confusion.

Before Aidan and Bonnie left for New York, M.G. returned to Bonnie’s window sill. An unpredictable life would continue, until death slowly took hold of the little green one, even as it struggled to flower. A week away would seal its fate and M.G. would be deceased and out of its misery finally.

But fate intervened. After dropping off Aidan and Bonnie at the airport, I came to their apartment instead of going home. I felt something calling me here. I discovered it was a plant ready to meet its maker and begging for last rites.

M.G. looked far older than ever. A painful sight! Some people might have declared it dead on the spot and tossed it in the garbage. But I saw a little bud desperate to see the sunshine, and I felt obliged to help. M.G. could, no would, live a full life, and when Aidan returns from New York, I can tell her about this triumphant experience to save her plant.

I will remind Aidan of her duty to take care of M.G. as best she possibly can. Finding a proper home for the plant will be essential. Placing reminders in common areas will be helpful. Prematurely digging a grave for the plant will also effectively deliver the message, but there’s no reason to go to those lengths. Yet.

I’m just glad I didn’t give her the seed packets I intended to last month. Then we might  be mourning a Texas Bluebonnet plant this summer. And if there’s one horticulture lesson she needs to learn, it’s don’t mess with the Texas state flower.

Create Like a Kid

One of the most beautiful aspects of Vacation Bible School is an abundance of opportunities to create something. Aidan has spent much of the last 3 mornings in that creative mode, bringing home items such as a beaded necklace, a piece of leather with imprints of various images and a plate with colorful stones placed in the shape of a cross. All little masterpieces!

Like most kids, she simply wants the people in her life to view her work. That’s it! She doesn’t spend hours trying to market it to the masses. She doesn’t post pics of it on Facebook, hoping for “likes” and positive comments. She doesn’t tweet about the experience either.  She gets feedback from mom, dad and friends and that suits her just fine.

I can learn a lesson or 2 from her creative experiences. Once they’re done, she feels proud of herself and moves on to something else. Unlike her, I spent a great deal of time trying to market my projects. In fact, I think I spend more time trying to market and promote than I do engaged in the actual creative process of acting or writing.

I realize the importance of marketing.  It’s not something I can quit cold turkey. But an 80/2o ratio might be the solution: create 80 percent of the time and market the other 20 percent—just like Aidan does.

Based on a week of five 10-hour workdays, I would limit myself to only 10 hours per week for marketing purposes.  That would allow me to create for 40 solid hours a week. Of course, I can always set a higher goal eventually, but the key part of the strategy is limiting the hours of marketing efforts so I am not burning myself by trying to constantly share what I’m doing (or trying to do) with unsatisfactory results.

That’s really the bottom line: marketing without strong results tends to feel like an exhausting endeavor. When the goal is clear simple, like getting mom or dad to say how much they like a child’s painting, the threat of marketing burnout is lessened dramatically. So it’s back to basics for me, with daily inspiration from Aidan. I will create with passion, enjoy the creative process, and market only when I have something ready and worth sharing. Reducing that marketing time will also give me back hours to do more of what I really enjoy: spending time with my daughter.

Home School Me

When my daughter brings up a topic once, I know she’s interested in it. When she brings it up twice in the same day, it must be highly important. I don’t know if she overheard a conversation her mother and I had with a mom who home schools her children, or if she simply was struck by inspiration, but she asked me if we could home school her.

As a caring father, I like to know where my daughter’s ideas come from so I asked her directly. She said she didn’t hear anyone talk about home schooling; she simply thought it would be a way to spend more time with me and her mother. She makes an excellent point.

Her mom works 11 am – 7 pm. I work as a freelance writer and actor so my schedule tends to be fairly flexible. We could conceivably start the school day at 8 am with two hours of lessons from her mother, followed by an hour of teaching by me, then lunch. Even lunch time could provide an opportunity for learning as we make recipes together or discuss nutritional value of different foods. After lunch, I could teach for another three hours, covering subjects such as English, Math, Science and History. Music lessons from me would be more music appreciation than anything else, as we listen and discuss various styles of music from the last century primarily. We could also sign her up for formal lessons and the piano would be her mother’s first choice. I would enjoy handling physical education duties, and could incorporate plenty of recreation time into the average week. It all seems manageable on the surface.

As I chatted with Aidan about it, I didn’t have all of these thoughts in my head. I was more focused on investigating what thoughts she had. I suppose she may imagine a lack of structure and more flexible views on rules at home versus at school. She didn’t actually say that but it seems reasonable knowing her as I do.

Rather than give her the answer of no, I explained to her a few basic ideas I have about home schooling. My first comment was about how we could start home schooling this summer. She didn’t seem to like that idea. I explained that home schooled students tend to be in class year round, although I have no idea if that’s really true. I simply remember one home schooled student telling me something similar to that at some point. I wasn’t trying to coerce Aid into dropping the idea; I was just taking away some of the perceived attractiveness of staying at home to learn. I did provide a counterpoint though: I said despite the longer school year (most likely), the school days would tend to be shorter because she would be the only student and that would allow us to cover material faster.

I don’t think the potential shorter school day felt promising to her. She seemed to be stuck on the notion that she would have to be in class during the summer. Telling my six year old that she could be “in school” all summer was probably equivalent to telling her she can’t have any more sleepovers.

Now let’s see how quick she is to bring it up again

Online But Off Base

In a field of challenges related to divorce, one of the biggest ones for me involves the internet. More specifically, it involves what I post online on sites like Facebook and Twitter. I’ll give you an example.

“Let’s see if using the blender to make smoothies also serves as an alarm clock for a sleepy girl.”

That’s an early morning post from today about my daughter. It suggests a few things (e.g., I’m with her on a school morning and I make breakfast for her) and you  may draw conclusions about the rest. You may assume she’s at my home. (She wasn’t.) You may assume this is a Friday morning routine. (It’s not.)

Now here’s a pic I took last night at school during the Kindergarten class performance at the PTA meeting.

Aid enjoys a proud moment after successfully finishing a class performance for a PTA meeting.

Again, you may draw some conclusions of your own based on this one photo. You may assume I used my camera to take this photo. (I didn’t.) You may assume her mom was present at this event. (She was.)

Posted comments and pics allow people to interpret what they see and read. It all comes from what information that is provided (or suggested) and what is left out. The trouble is, I don’t have complete control over how people interpret what I post. That’s created some challenges for me.

The primary area of concern is the obvious one for any divorced dad. Maintaining a relationship with my ex-wife (Aidan’s mom) in person is always a work in progress. We don’t adhere to the custody agreement which can be a blessing and a burden at times. The flexibility is an asset but it also puts us in the same room far more often than a typical divorced couple. Then, when you consider that we also cross paths as co-parents in the online world,  you start to see how new issues could develop quickly.

She and I are Facebook friends. We follow each other on Twitter. She frequently asks me to retweet the links that she provides. They’re usually parenting-related links so I happily share them when I can.  On the flip side, she’ll make this blog accessible to her fans and followers. For now, the online relationship seems copasetic. I hope it stays that way.

On more than one occasion though, one of us has severed the online relationship. I’ll admit, it’s not easy to see my ex-spouse post about an experience we shared with our daughter yet make no mention of me. I know she feels the same way about my posting pics of Aidan when I’m using her camera to take them—and sometimes her laptop to upload them.

Even this blog came under fire once. A previous title unintentionally suggested that I’m a single dad and didn’t clearly mention my divorced status. Thanks to a productive chat or two with my ex-wife, I made some changes, which turned out to be real improvements.

She’s a great mom in many ways, and I know that her devotion to our daughter cannot be questioned. I’ve met many other divorced men and women who can’t say the same thing about their ex-spouses. I’m lucky. Aid is lucky. That doesn’t mean life around here is always easy. We have our share of problems, like anyone else, and the ones online tend to get a lot of attention since we’re both people who spend a lot of time online.

The objective seems to be sharing that virtual world without consistently irritating the other person. That potential peaceful co-existence benefits everyone. It allows my ex-wife to have access to my pages to see pics and read comments about our daughter’s adventures. It allows me the same access to enjoy special moments that I may be missing.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to create a few points to remember how to effectively manage the online relationship.

1. It’s never the whole truth. Brevity is the nature of online posts.

2. When reading her posts, remember she’s only telling her story.

3. When posting my own thoughts and comments, avoid misleading details or anything that suggests full credit when it’s undue.

4. When on her pages, only read content related to our daughter.

5. Avoid all negativity. Never say anything directly or indirectly negative about her or allow anyone else to post negative comments about her.

I’m sure she and I will discover new challenges in the coming months while we share the online world. But when we encounter each issue and obstacle, may we peacefully find a solution by remembering that the one who benefits the most is the little girl we both love more than anything else.

365 Days Of Six

Bye Five. You were a constant adventure, but your services are no longer needed here . Six takes over this week. Six is bigger. Six is better. Deal with it.

The night before Aidan turns Six, she already has set her sights on a bigger number: Ten. Seriously! After her bedtime story, we played a new game. As she tapped on my hands, I extended my fingers until all ten were outstretched. My little math enthusiast wanted to tell me the age she wants to be, and she needed my ten fingers to make her point. But I tricked her. As she said, “this is the age I want to be,” I quickly lowered nine fingers. She laughed hysterically as the age she wanted to be appeared to be 1. We repeated it over and over until I finally just kept all ten fingers up so she could claim an age she won’t reach until 2015.

Sorry 7. Pass the message on to 8 and 9. My sincerest apologies. She’s thinking double digits already. That’s funny to me because she was working on triple-digit math problems for homework tonight. Really. She needed some help, but by the end she knew what she was doing.

Okay, I will encourage her eagerness to learn more challenging math, just like she’s learned to read and tackled nouns, verbs and adjectives this school year. Thanks to Christmas gifts, she also got acquainted with the names of internal organs and bones. These things I strongly support. But I will not let her push past Six until it’s time. That means I get to enjoy 365 Days of Six.

Since her mother and I separated (and later divorced), there’s been periods of time that I didn’t see her or talk to her. Sometimes those stretches lasted for days; sometimes they lasted a couple weeks. That won’t happen with Six. She and I live in the same town, and I see her nearly every day when I’m in town and not traveling to Houston or anywhere else.

Knowing it and celebrating it are two different things. So I have decided to make Six more special by documenting every day of this new age. It won’t necessarily be a journal. It could be 365 photos. Or 365 quotes from my daughter. Some piece of every day to claim, highlight and remember.

Once they’re all put together, those pieces of Six will come together like a magnificent puzzle, just like puzzle of the United States that came from Aidan’s Grandma & Grandpa. As she eagerly put it together tonight, I started thinking about a future trip  she and I could take to see all 50 states. Maybe I’ll save that for her 10th birthday.

Aidan beams after finishing a birthday puzzle from Grandma & Grandpa.

Six arrives in the morning when she awakes in the 6 o’clock hour. It will be a full day of feeling extra special. It helps that she is going to school with some superior petite cupcakes to share with her classmates. Six have icing balloons on them. Six have icing ladybugs.  Six have regular icing with sprinkles for kids who hate balloons or fear ladybugs.

The celebration doesn’t end at bedtime tomorrow night. 10 days after her actual birthday, we’ll host a dinosaur-themed birthday party for her and her 15 closest friends in the Dallas area. Thanks to her mom’s excellent taste in stationary, the invites will be customized and printed at Party City.

I expect the first ten days of Six will be mainly devoted to adjusting to calling her Six instead of Five. Then, we’ll handle each new challenge as it comes. If I learned anything from Five it was that every challenge she faces amounts to two new challenges for me: figuring out how best to respond to it and then using it a teachable moment for her.

Okay Six, I’m ready. Bring it on, and let’s be best friends forever. Don’t believe anything that Five told you.

Houston Is (Almost) Over

This post was originally written May 10, although it wasn’t published for another week.

My time in Houston is almost over. While I’ve been living in Lewisville officially since November, I return to the Bayou City this week to move the rest of my stuff there into storage and help my brother move into an apartment.  The house we shared since June 2008 will be empty by Friday night.

Aidan got one more visit to the house in March during her Spring Break. She’s spent very little time there since she started school last August, but her attachments to specific things run deep. When I mentioned her uncle’s upcoming move, she expressed concern about the computer she uses to play her games, and the cable channel (Nick Jr.) she watches a lot when she’s there. She also wanted to make sure I wasn’t throwing away (or giving away) her toys.

Listening to her reactions to the move reminded me that we’re always present and absent in different places. When I leave Lewisville this week to go to Houston, I will be absent here for a few days but present there. My life here will continue without me, but I will certainly miss spending time with Aidan, taking her to school, packing her lunch, walking her dog, etc.

For the last several months while I’ve been in North Texas, my life in Houston continued despite my absence there. Many of my clothes still occupied a closet.  Tapes from my work in radio, TV news, producing and acting filled multiple shelves.  A poster of the Subway Series of 2000 adorned a wall in the living room.  Memories of happy times and sad times lingered as well.

The most profoundly sad time was the loss of our beloved dog Emma. Our sweet and cheerful Thai Ridgeback was taken from the yard in July 2009 while I was in Florida for work. Despite making every effort to find her, she never came home. We can only hope that someone kind and loving has her now.

It’s also the house we lived in during Hurricane Ike. Thankfully, the house sustained no damage even th0ugh two trees on the property came down. We weren’t home to see that happen because we were staying with a good friend in another part of town.

On a happier note, it’s also the place my brother, Aidan and I watched countless movies and TV shows, including the Monsters vs Aliens Halloween special. Thanks to permanently saving it on DVR, we not only watched it when it debuted in October 2009, but we also watched it well into 2010. It was like Halloween was always a current event when Aidan was at the house, even in the midst of the hottest weather that  Texas offers.

I started transitioning to life away from the house last summer, spending the bulk of my time in Lewisville to be close to Aidan. When she started school, I became a long-term guest at my ex-wife’s apartment before moving into a place of my own in November. But that meant trying to balance life in two places, which frankly I wasn’t doing effectively.

Soon the ongoing absence there will be over. I won’t feel divided. But even as I move forward, the connection to Houston will remain strong. My brother will still be there. I’ll return for work whenever an opportunity comes up. And most importantly, it will always be the birthplace of my daughter, a place she will feel attached to for the rest of her life. I imagine returning to Houston with Aidan once she’s all grown up and taking her to the places she saw and experienced as a child.

We could make it a long weekend and visit St. Luke’s Hospital, watch an Astros game and go to the zoo. Here’s hoping Katz’s Deli is still open when we make that trip. That’s the first restaurant we brought her to as a baby, and it would be a special stop in 2027 when she’s 22.

“Two cheesecake shakes, please.”

What I Learned In Kindergarten

In the middle of the night I am remembering my daughter’s first day of Kindergarten. I wrote a note to her to mark the occasion and I read it to her before her mom and I drove her to school.

“Today marks the beginning of a new adventure for you. May you see the best of today and recognize all the opportunities that come your way. May your eagerness to learn be a trait that grows stronger from this day forward. May your respect for others and friendly nature help you develop good friendships and relationships with your classmates and your teacher.”

Clearly the focus was on preparing her for a year of learning and adventures: new teacher, new friends, new rules. Little did I realize how much I would learn in Kindergarten this time around. Also, consider the additional difficulty of  being the non-custodial parent who doesn’t have a set routine five days a week because my daughter lives with her mom, and you can understand how a school year already packed with challenges became even more challenging for me. With that in mind, here are the Big 8 lessons I’ve absorbed in the last 8 months.

8. Packing lunch at night saves time. On evenings I am with my daughter at the apartment she shares with her mom, I like to prepare her lunches. The results are more effective at 1o pm than they are if I go over at 6:30 am. I spend far less time searching the refrigerator for missing food and looking through cupboards for plastic containers. Plus, she notices if I forget to include a spoon for her yogurt. She’s forgiving, but she doesn’t hesitate to point out my mistake.

7. Signing any necessary paperwork right away means it’s less likely to get lost and forgotten. That includes report cards, tardy slips, permission slips and fundraiser forms. Speaking of paperwork, we’re overdue to either order or return her school pictures. I suspect we’ll be ordering everything sent home. Who doesn’t love kid pictures on magnets?  

6. Offering an incentive for a week of perfect behavior may be futile. Managing to go 5 days without a single mark must feel to a kid like buying a scratch off lottery ticket does to an adult. Even the best intentions don’t lead to the best results. It’s better to offer incentives one day at a time. Last week, I rewarded a day of good behavior at school by buying her ice cream at the park. But, earlier this year, my daughter managed to get earrings thanks to a sweet deal with her mom who rewarded her for a combination of a week of fairly good behavior at school and bravery at Tae Kwon Do class.

5. Being as patient as possible when she’s learning to read pays off forever. She’ll be stubborn at times and refuse to read, even though she absolutely loves books. It’s better to maintain a sense of humor (albeit a strained one) when she’s being difficult about using the reading skills she’s learned. Otherwise, I risk creating a negative association with reading altogether.

4. Walking her home on my shoulders is a great workout. This is especially true when it’s hot and humid. My legs feel like solid as a rock, and I’ve lost 25 pounds since she started school. If I walked her to and from school every day, I could be down to 160 pounds by June.

3. Filling out the form for the school’s required background check is a sensible thing to do in September. I waited several months to do it, and waiting a bit longer could have affected my ability to accompany my daughter—and every Kindergarten student—to the Fort Worth Zoo this week.  I imagine she will persuade me to get ice cream for her and her little friends, and I will be unable to say no. Sure, I want our little group to have more fun than any other group.

2. Remembering that the only job title I possess at her school is “Aidan’s Dad” is helpful. Nobody needs to know what I do for a living. She’s my priority and my only focus when I am taking her to school and picking her up. My daily activities of looking for acting and writing gigs become irrelevant in those moments, and how my daughter is doing is the most important thing I can discuss with anyone I encounter. 

1. Sleeping as much as I can whenever sleep is available is always a brilliant move. My girl may need some extra help on the mornings I’m helping to get her ready for school. She may wake up in the middle of the night due to growing pains at times she’s staying with me. She may fall asleep in the early evening on the way home from an activity only to wake up at 11 pm and not want to go back to sleep. She may have endless energy at 6 pm and want me to run all over the playground with her. Saying “Daddy is tired” doesn’t sound reasonable to my 5 year old. I need my energy to match hers as often as possible.

Okay, so I’m dropping the ball on #1 by staying up ridiculously late to write. But I’ve already promised to walk her to school in the morning so #4 is in play. That’s even better because it means we won’t have to deal with the lack of etiquette in the carpool lane.

The Cost of Kid Clutter

I just looked at a few websites for housecleaning services in the Dallas area. I’m not hiring anyone; I just wanted to get a sense of how much it would cost. But I don’t think I can get an accurate estimate for my daughter’s room because cleaning isn’t the primary issue. It’s a clutter problem.

“My room is a disaster,” Aidan said recently. She was merely repeating something her dear Dad has said many times. So she’s aware of the problem.

Her mom has been a troubleshooter in this situaton. She’s bought items to help, such as shelves and drawers and containers. But where the organization attempt falls short is getting the child to actually use these things. Even her bed comes with a pull-out bookshelf, but she would prefer to surround herself with books in bed rather than putting them away.

I’ve made several attempts to start clearing the clutter. Each time I make some progress only to see it get reversed in a matter of days. But all that is about to change.

Aidan’s birthday gift is supposed to arrive tomorrow. It won’t be gift wrapped; it’s a Catahoula Leopard dog named Rio! Actually, it’s a puppy who is only six months old. Now you understand why my daughter’s room needs to be cleaned.

We met Rio at a fundraiser for Paws in the City. The choice to adopt him wasn’t impulsive. She’s been promised a dog for her birthday for months. She even has a doggie calendar that’s she been using to cross off days until her birthday in May. But weeks before her birthday, she met The One.  She noticed the words “Adopt Me” on a band Rio was wearing, and was suddenly attached to him.

Wow! We skipped the entire search process with one visit to a fundraiser on a sunny Sunday afternoon. So while the effort to find the right dog was drastically lessened, the work load to prepare a home for a puppy is immense.

Fortunately the timing gives us an advantage. Good Friday closes Aidan’s school tomorrow so we can devote all day to cleaning her room together. She understands that a puppy could chew on anything so if she wants to spare her favorite toys from getting destroyed, she needs to clean her room.  I’m sure imagining bite marks on her Cyndi Lauper doll will keep her motivated most of the day.

I’ll get the work started today. If I can get 4 hours done, I can easily charge her $100. Of course, she won’t actually have to pay me in cash. Just the sight of her playing with Rio in her clean room will be worth far more than that.

The Case of the Missing Earring

Not long ago my daughter got her ears pierced thanks to a deal with her mom. Inevitably, she lost the backing of one of her earrings. If no one noticed, it’s quite possible one of her brand new earrings would have vanished that day. But her mom noticed immediately and replaced the missing backing with one of her own.

Today we went to the piercing salon so my daughter could get a new backing and give back her mom’s. Even just the mention of a visit prompted my daughter to focus on my ear lobes,  specifically my left one. The signs of a former piercing caught her attention a long time ago and she remains curious about it to this day. The questions started while we were having lunch at Chip’s Old Fashioned Hamburger in Dallas.

“Tell me again why you got an earring,” she blurted.

I wish I had a fascinating answer. I got it while visiting my sister Rhonda at Nazareth College in the late 1990s. We were at the mall with a cousin and I just got it done spontaneously. I didn’t give it much thought. It was more of a “why not?”  moment.

The questions from my daughter continued. I felt like I was being interviewed.

“Why did you take it out?” she asked.

A natural next question. 

“I stopped wearing it when I took a job in TV,” I explained.

I’m not sure why I assumed that would be a sufficient explanation. It definitely didn’t answer her question. I think I’m training her to not let her subjects be evasive.

“But why did you take it out when you took a job in TV?” she asked impatiently.

“I got a job where they wouldn’t want boys to wear earrings,” I quickly replied. 

At the time I was working as a radio DJ at Z-93 and added a gig as a fill-in weatherman at WWNY in Watertown, New York.

When she heard this information, she found a new direction in her line of questioning.

“Why didn’t you just get a job where they would let you wear earrings?” she asked.

She caugh me off guard. I had to think carefully how to respond. But I think I came up with a solid answer.

“I really wanted the job more than I wanted the earring,” I explained.

I was ready for her next question. I figured she was on a roll and far from done. I was wrong. She slowly turned her attention to the corn dogs in front of her and started eating.

Maybe that was all the information she needed or maybe her corn dogs suddenly seemed more interesting than my answers. At any rate, the case of the missing earring came to a close for now.

But I’m not letting my guard down. I’m sure her curiosity about my missing earring will strike again soon.