Tuned In

I’ve given up and tuned in. Tuned into the music of my kids. “High School Musical.” 1, 2 and 3. Troy, Gabriela and Sharpay.

It’s either embrace it or keep my hands pressed over my ears for 10, 12, 14 years, all the while muttering, “What’s that noise?”

No, I won’t do that. I won’t be a fogy. I won’t be too cool for school. I’ll get into it, embrace it and live it.

Why not?

The kids dig it. They’ve got “HSM” CDs, DVDs, microphones, outfits and swimsuits. They dance to it, bop and jig and twist.

And invent. “Hey Dad, watch me,” my daughter says. “This is the backstroke.” And there she goes backstroking across the room and back again, followed by my son. Next comes the bum slide, the leapfrog and then the spinner.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“The basketball dance,” my daughter says. Dribble, dribble, dribble.

Soon I’m enjoying it, swaying to the music. My wife, too. Swaying and crooning out, “Cause you are the music in me.”

And I think, it isn’t all that bad to be tuned in. Or is it?

SOS

At this stage, I think we qualify for the description, harried parents. Even haggard.

We have three children under six. Most days our three-year-old son looks like a nudist at a coal mine. Why’s he never got clothes on? And how do his feet get so black? Then there’s our eldest daughter, who’s showing signs of kleptomania. I drilled her the other day on the whereabouts of my missing credit cards and she looked at me and said, “I don’t know.” So I mollified my approach. “You won’t be in trouble or anything. Daddy just needs his credit cards.” Then she said, “Oh, I know.” And out it came, the story. Her brother took them and put them in her black wallet, which is in her purple handbag. Thank goodness, I thought. Then I thought, when did she ever get a wallet? And a handbag? She’s only five.

The youngest is involved in all of this as a five-month-old cooing bundle in our arms, getting heavier and heavier after two, three hours of holding her. Oh, the things I could do with two free hands.

Then my wife takes her. I have to take the dog out. A five minute breather for myself, I think. But my son is right behind, his shirt on but no trousers. He pulls on mismatching boots – each on the wrong foot. Off we go. Half a block along and he stops. He wants to go back. So we turn around. He follows and stops to draw in the sand. “Come on!” He walks. I walk. Then he’s dawdling again. Now squatting. Now poking his finger in something. “Come on!” But he’s not moving. I walk back and look down. He’s poking his finger in dog crap. Quick! Pick him up and race home. Wash his hands thoroughly. Where’s the nail brush?

My daughter is there. “You mean the elephant one?”

“Yeah, the new one, the one with the elephant on it. Have you seen it?”

“No.”

And you know she’s got it. Your blood boils but you play it cool. “You won’t be in trouble or anything. Daddy just needs the nailbrush.”

She says, “Well, it was like this…”

The Return of Pumpkin Face

I ran into Pumpkin Face coming out of school. He’s the terror kid who hit me on the shin with the grim reaper’s scythe at the Halloween party for our children and went on to terrorize everybody for three hours.

Well, he stopped me and said, “Can I come over to play.”

“Well, not today,” I said.

“Tomorrow?”

“Well, maybe.”

My wife overheard the conversation and came up and pulled me away. She said, “I’d rather eat my own sick than let him come over.”

Me too.