Archive for the ‘I’m the Dad’ Category
First Blood…
The Boy stands on the step, looking at me, inside the camper. He’s quiet, still. Eventually I sense he’s there, and turn to him. -Whatcha doing? -Nothing. Mom’s getting a bandage. -Oh? He shows me a bloody palm. -Did you crash? -Yeah. -What happened? -Got into some gravel and tried to turn. -Yep, that’ll do [...]
Do the Hustle…
Dad? Yo. What does “hustle” mean? We’re on our way north, for another basketball game. We’ve, appropriately enough, been talking hoops. I feel this is one of my duties as a dad, to deliver the motivational speeches and encouragement before The Boy undertakes whatever activity. I don’t reach win-one-for-the-gipper levels, but I almost always play [...]
Driving the Fly…
I slow time. The colors are lurid, dreamy, and at my leisure I scope in for the head shot, unaffected by the cloud of blood that erupts when the bullet hits its mark. Calmly, serenely, I locate another target, fire, and am onto the next before the slug finishes its flight. In a bombed out [...]
The Damnedest Thing…
It’s the message every father fears. Your son’s first basketball game of the season is tonight. Okay, maybe not every father, but if you have a son like mine, a kid whose previous athletic performance is perhaps the very definition of the word spastic, it sets the heart to racing. See, I remember last season. [...]
Where Art Is…
The Boy was stressing because the trees were not cooperating. The brown lines of the trunks trembled like cheap animation and the green scalloped poofs sitting atop them varied in size, testament, to his eye, that he just couldn’t do it. He had a brain template, you see; A tree looks like this. A bird [...]
