You Are Now Free To Move About The Cabin

Sorry folks. I took a week off for a business trip to Tulsa and a few days visiting with Grandma and Grandpa down in Florida. Unfortunately, our trip to the Sunshine State happened to coincide with the arrival of Tropical Storm Fay which pretty much torpedoed all of our planned outdoor activities. Traveling with the two boys on the airplane was less stressful than I expected. There were no major freak-outs or screaming fits, although when we exited the plane in New York, the row we were seated in looked like the Giant Stadium parking lot after a playoff game. I am not the most organized packer in the world but I do get around for business and have developed a fairly static routine that gets me through airports and to my destination without too much fuss. Such a routine approach to travel is impossible when you are also lugging two kids and their equipment around. A flexible approach is best for one’s mental health. The most important lesson I learned is that it is easier to get through security and to the gate if the kids are rendered completely immobile for 99% of the time. I had Jack in a backpack carrier and Dimitri was more or less strapped into a stroller. Newark airport is a pit, but Tampa actually has a carpeted playground next to the Continental departure gates; a godsend if your flight is delayed. Unfortunately for us, our flight was delayed on the way out of New York; we sat on the tarmac for 30 interminable minutes until we had to go back to the gate to drop off a sick passenger.

The only other glitch was on our way through security in Tampa, Erin was selected for “special screening” because her handbag was deemed “too heavy” by the TSA clerk. “There isn’t anything in there that could hurt me, is there?” he intoned as he solemnly poked through a years worth of ATM receipts in a handbag about the size of a vanilla latte. What a dick. He also didn’t want to let Jack’s bottle or Dimitri’s juice through but relented after realizing that he would get the opportunity to tear the rest of Erin’s luggage apart. Such a farce. And completely ineffective at diverting any sort of terrorism. Erin walked through the first checkpoint when the guard’s attention was diverted by a couple of dangerous looking grannies and made it to the second checkpoint without anyone even looking at her ID or boarding pass. I was carrying both suitcases but the geniuses at TSA didn’t realize we were traveling together and didn’t find it the least bit odd that Erin was carrying a small handbag and knapsack, with no checked luggage and two children. No one ever asked to look at my luggage, although I was told by the airline (!) that I was going to be selected for special screening when I got to the airport.

The TSA is the most useless government agency since the CIA. Seven years since the 911 attacks (which the TSA would not have stopped) and there still isn’t anywhere to put your shoes on after you get through the line. Never mind the indignity of being questioned by someone who probably couldn’t get a job at Burger King and made the TSA their fall-back plan. Ah, well, government agencies tend to accumulate like barnacles on a ship's hull - once created, they're pretty hard to remove and they keep replicating themselves. Especially the ones granted some sort of quasi-police powers.

The very creation of the TSA was a triumph of Republican free-market ideals combined with the persistence of bureaucracy; a dangerous combination that succeeded at nothing other than funneling large sums of tax dollars into the pockets of private security companies. Created in November 2001, the TSA’s goal was ostensibly to secure our nation's transportation system by replacing private airport security screeners with "fully trained, professional" federal screeners. The head of the TSA went about this, of course, by hiring a private company to train and provide the screeners. While this proved that they were adept at the particularly Republican, supply-side skill of creating something no one needs and then billing them for it, (TSA blew through its original $2.4 billion budget requested an additional $4.4 billion by the summer of 2002) the architects of the TSA were much less effective at their actual mission of keeping weapons off airplanes. The TSA regularly fails its own security tests. In 2002, TSA documents revealed that their screeners were missing 24% of mock weapons in undercover tests, with some airports experiencing a 50% failure rate. LAX had a 41% failure rate. They even failed when they realized they were being tested, as screeners had begun to recognize the testers but still failed to find smuggled weapons. That would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

All of this is to say that being dressed down by a government lackey in an airport while juggling two kids and all of our stuff was a crappy ending to a difficult trip. Next time maybe we’ll take the train.

The Olympics

I’ve been watching the Olympics this week and wondering about those kids. The amount of training necessary to perform at such an elite level is incredible and has to start at a very young age. In fact, from what I’ve heard children as young as 3 can sign up for swimming and gymnastics programs. By the time they’re a few years older, they can avail themselves of early morning and late evening training sessions in specialty gyms dedicated to producing the next generation of Olympians. But seriously, at 6 or 7 years old what kid in his right mind really wants to spend 12 hours in a gym banging out floor routines? The only logical conclusion is that it isn’t what the kids want, it’s what the parents want.

Whenever I see those teenage competitors in gymnastics or diving I seriously wonder about their overall mental health. Can you really say that spending hour upon hour perfecting one thing with single-minded determination is good for a developing brain? These kids are trying desperately to please their Type A parents by bringing home a gold medal. Unfortunately, the law of averages being what it is, most of them won’t (odds are roughly 1 in 1,000,000). So why do they do it? I think the parents who push their kids into such a hyper-competitive environment must have some serious unresolved psychological issues. Youth sports activist Bob Bigelow calls it "the Tiger Woods syndrome" i.e. parents think they have to push their little kids earlier and earlier to give them a leg up on the competition.

Have you ever taken a close look at Tiger Woods? He might be a great golf player but he has the face of a robot. When he does poorly he becomes enraged; even when the reason for his poor performance is because he is playing with a broken leg. Such dedication! What a weenie! Clearly Tiger could have benefited more from drinking the occasional six-pack behind McDonalds and sneaking cigarettes with his friends (assuming he had any) rather than spending his entire childhood at the driving range becomming intimately involved with his drivers. What kind of freak can bounce a golf ball up and down repeatedly off a seven iron? That takes a long time to master and it isn’t even a golf skill. It sort of looks to me like a slightly less destructive version of a dog chewing all of its hair off in one spot because it’s stressed out. But I digress.

According to Dr. Charles Yesalis, a Penn State professor of health and human development. "Kids doing sports activities three to five hours a day for five days a week is almost child abuse. When you talk to kids away from their parents, they feign injuries because they're burned out," he says. "They don’t want parents to know because of their financial and time commitment." Ultimately the question to ask your children after getting them involved in any intensely competitive sport is, “are you having fun?” Childhood is supposed to be about fun, isn’t it?

A Question for the Readers

I’ve been feeling a touch maudlin lately and I’m not really sure why. I was putting Jack to sleep tonight and I started thinking that I should make a video for him in the event that I, well, die, before he reaches an age where he can remember me. I can tell him all about my life and Becky’s life and maybe he’ll understand something about his place in the universe and blah, blah, blah. This is weird, right? I actually sat down and filmed myself telling him he should be a good boy if anything happened to me while I was in Peru, but I deleted it because it seemed too freaking bizarre. Yet I’m thinking about it again. I’d guess this sort of thing never enters the mind of most parents,  but having seen the random slice of the karmic axe first hand it seems sort of reasonable to me. Does anyone have any thoughts about this? Good idea? Insane idea? I’m not really sure. Being a lawyer, I can be a bit of a blowhard so I wonder if this is more about ensuring Jack thinks about me in a certain way rather than being a really strange instruction in the ways of the world. I was adopted when I was 4 months old and therefore have no idea what version of genetic roulette I’m playing. Will I live to be 100 or am I doomed to flame out at 50? No clue. 

I think this whole idea has come up because of something my sister-in-law said at the family reunion a couple of weeks ago. She noticed Jack calling Erin, “mama” and said, quite correctly, that she was the only mother he would ever know. She didn’t mean it in a bad way, just a factual observation but  its also very true. As sad as it is to me that Jack will never know his mother first-hand, it really isn’t sad to him. That bites a bit. He will grow up without having had a first hand experience of Becky and will know her only through photographs and remembrances of friends and family. That is a very odd concept for me to wrap my head around. Of course, being the self-absorbed fool I am but it bothers me that if I drop dead tomorrow he will think of me in the same way. So maybe this is all about me? I don’t know. Mind you, this is not to take anything away from Erin, who loves Jack as if he were her own son. I can’t even conceptualize where we would be if she hadn’t come into our lives. My love for her is without limit. She and Dimitri have enriched my life in a way that  I never would have thought possible a year ago. 

But if I were to make such a video, what would it say? I love you very much and your mother loved you very much? I think that is kind of obvious. Do I attempt to convey my philosophy of life, i.e. don’t take yourself too seriously, don’t sweat the small stuff (and its all small stuff)? Seems kind of trite. Do I tell him about my views of religion and rationalism? Also a bit superficial since I assume he will have access to my old blog as well as this one which more than adequately represent my views on everything from the New York City subway system to the state of civil liberties in America. So what would I say? I would appreciate your input.

Sleep Deprived and Twitchy

Erin and I found ourselves stretched a little thin yesterday as the boys' boundless energy ran up against our more limited supply. At some point in the mid-afternoon, probably around 4 or so, we both hit the wall at the same time. Thinking back on the events of the week-end, I now realize we were contending with a perfect storm of behavioral issues. These included Jack’s sore molars, loss of appetite and resulting moodiness and Dimitri’s return from a visit with his father, which often triggers a cascade of bad manners and general grumpiness. We are usually pretty good at dealing with the boys' high-octane personalities, but we have been laboring mightily to get the apartment in shape and when Sunday night rolled around we were both pretty tired. There is, of course, no way to turn them off or turn the volume down. You just have to roll with it. Which isn’t to say you can’t carve out a few minutes of sanity here and there. I ran out of the house at 7:45pm after eagerly volunteering to jump-start E’s car which had been sitting powerless and forlorn in front of the post office for a few days. After successfully getting the motor to turn over, I hopped in and took a cruise to the gas station and filled up before taking a long slow drive back. (To charge the battery, of course). By the time I hit the front door I knew I was going to survive the rest of the night without resorting to anti-anxiety medication, whiskey or cigarettes.

I have discovered that dealing with two boys is a lot more challenging that dealing with one. Mathematically, this doesn’t make sense. There may be two boys, but there are also two of us. In theory *we* should have the upper hand, insofar as we are more mature, wiser, carry a certain air of parental authority and can manipulate their environment to produce desired behavior. (After all, we control the food supply). What I apparently failed to consider was the fact that they are younger, faster, more motivated and work devilishly well together. This takes our intellectual and physical advantage and nullifies it through their sheer application of boyish energy. Most times we have a lot of fun, but sometimes they get the upper hand and wear us down to dust. I can usually tell I’m in trouble when I feel like going to bed two hours before Jack does. I feel like I now understand why people do this when they are a lot younger.

I promise the next few posts will highlight the fun stuff, lest I convey the mistaken impression that its all wandering around sleep-deprived and twitchy, which, for the most part, it isn’t. :-)

To and Fro

The last two weeks have been pretty tiring. Last week I was in Wilmington on Tuesday for work, and then on Friday we packed the boys in the car and drove down to Virginia to the annual family reunion. 6 hours each way. That’s a lot of sitting still. We got back on Sunday night, and then left again Monday morning for Boston. Three days in a hotel in Boston with two toddlers while contemporaneously engaging in protracted negotiations to settle a complicated construction defect case left me completely drained and fried by the time we pulled out of the I-Hop parking lot in Cambridge and pointed the car towards home. J and D weren’t fairing much better and screamed and/or whined for the better part of the ride home. I am consistently guilty of overestimating the boys tolerance for new experiences as do I consistently overestimate my own ability to deal with their overt expressions of discontent while also attempting to engage in normal, adult activities. As much as I try to remind myself that the boys are just being boys, I still feel like my nerves are chafed raw when I have to listen to hours of whining and protestations whenever we’re doing something that they aren’t interested in. (Like sitting in a car for 4 hours on I-90). I need to work on this. I think the solution is a combination of engaging in activities more suited to their ages and being more aware everyone’s limitations. That and a good swat on the behind every now and then when the protesting itself is completely unreasonable.

I’m not really the type to spend a lot of time sitting around the house and I thought the Boston trip would be a fun family experience. For the most part, it was. We got to go to the old North Church and E and I even hired a baby-sitter and went out to eat alone, an increasingly rare occurrence. I have discovered, however, that work and toddlers don’t really mix. I’m not saying my performance at the mediation suffered, but I was a little more stressed out than I usually am at these sorts of things and I felt like the purpose for which I was in Boston, (work), was taking a back seat to changing diapers and trying to keep the boys from destroying the hotel. It might be a while before I try to blend business and family travel again.

Speaking of being unable to recognize limitations, with some trepidation I booked a flight for the four of us to Tampa to go down and see the folks in mid-August. Jack has flown to Florida twice since he was born, once at 4 months, once at seven. Both times he was a perfect travel companion, but he was sleeping a lot more in those days and didn’t have a little pal to conspire with. I have no idea what to expect behavior-wise from either one of them, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the early flight time and the motion of the plane will rock them both to sleep before we get carted away by the air marshals.