Wiffle Dad

Every day, without fail, my son -- nine years old -- asks me to play Wiffle Ball. (I'm not sure about the universality of this game, so I will mention, for my readers outside the U.S., that Wiffle Ball is baseball, more or less, with a plastic bats and balls that allow play in one's back yard without breaking windows, faces, etc.) So, every day, the lad asks me to play.

He has quite a skill for asking me to play at the most inopportune times. As soon as I get home from work, for instance -- I mean, the instant I come in the door. Or, right at the end of dinner -- simultaneously with my last bite, usually. (Two days ago, I ran around the bases moaning "Ugh. Too . . . much . . . pork . . . in . . . belly," which he thought was hilarious.) He asks me when I wake up on Saturdays. He knocks on the bathroom door and asks me. He asks me while am writing blogs. He throws open the door to my studio while I am practicing or recording or singing and asks. The only way he can ramp up the issue would be to wake up at three in the morning, shake me, and ask. It hasn't come to that. Yet.

It Ain't Natural

From Darwin's
The expression of the emotions in man and animals

We're kind of stuck, aren't we? We like to argue for the legitimacy of things by saying: "It's natural." Of course, by this, we imply that natural means it is okay -- good for us; advisable; even moral. Sometimes, the argument works; usually it doesn't. I think it would be good if we all remained aware of this.

Yet, we construct belief systems that are meant to elevate us above the rest of nature. Sex, for instance, is natural. It is natural to feel sexual feelings. How we act upon those feelings throws us into a tizzy, though. Usually, we put lines around it: You may be sexual under conditions A, B and C, but not under condition D. You may be sexual under condition A, as was aforementioned, but not if element Z is introduced into the situation.

The Memory of Now

What do you think of you, now? What did you think of you back when you were a teenager? When you look back from now, what do you think of you when you were a teenager?

I have a serious lack of connection to my past.

That is to say, I have vivid memories of being me in, say, 1985, but not of what was happening around me so much on a day-to-day basis. I couldn't, for instance, tell you what classes I had in my junior year and who my science teacher was. I can, however, remember various teachers well and I can probably still do a pretty good impersonation of them.

Parental Love (A Riff)

I wonder how many incongruities and insecurities and soul-aches in life come out of the fact that none of us could possibly love our parents as much as they love us.

And I wonder how many lives have fallen short of their mark because that sort of love was never realized -- not on the superficial level that people use to say things like: "life before kids was worthless" (which it is not, whether before or completely without kids, by the way), but in a sense that the intensity and type of love that lives in the heart of a parent was never in the mix as an impetus for deeds and aspirations.

And I also wonder why we don't love our parents as intensely as they love us.

I'd hate to think it might be evolutionary, simply -- the idea that cute babies make us feel protective.

Bill, Disconnected

The man ventured forth into the night, leaving his beautiful wife behind in the glow of lamplight. It was cold and the streets were wet with melting snows.

He shivered and pulled up the collar of his coat and punched the button to unlock his minivan. He opened the door and stepped in and then drove off into the darkness on his mission: ice cream. "Mint pinky-berry swirl" for her, "chocolate chewy candy chunks" for him. The usual.

Halfway down the dark suburban road, lined with spooky houses that glowed blue from the windows as television screens flashed, he reflexively and then violently felt his coat's breast pocket. His heart rate quickened. It wasn't there. Where was it? It was always there . . . where had he put it?