RT @alaindebotton: It's always the scariest people who parade their kids around us to persuade us of their (elusive) humanity. # Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Parents
My Kid Needs to Learn to Set an Alarm Clock
“I’m taking a nap,” the boy says. “I need to wake up at five.” “Okay,” I reply. “Five o’clock,” he says. “Okay.” “What time do I need to wake up?” “Five.” “That’s right.” Read more →
A Sherlock Holmes Christmas
My kid comes home and sees three newly wrapped Christmas presents . . . “That’s a book,” he says, pointing at one of the presents. Then moving on to the other two: “I don’t know what that is, and I don’t know what that is. I’m on to you guys.” “What are you on to?” I ask. “The fact that you don’t know what’s going on? You only got one thing out of three. Nice work, Sherlock Holmes.” “The clues don’t always come all at once,” he says. “I’m a third of the way there.” Read more →
My Family’s Guide to Failure
At a recent family gathering, someone whom I won’t name here recommended to my son, a high school senior, that he start looking for a community college to attend for a couple of years before transferring to a four-year school. “That’s a good idea,” I said. “Do you have any more good ideas? Maybe he should punch himself in the face really hard.” One of the things I love about my boy is that when he does something, he puts his heart into it. He takes on the risk of failure. The safe approach — and historically the preferred method in my family — is to do things indifferently, fail, then announce that you weren’t really trying and that you could have succeeded if you’d wanted to.” We have family members who — despite, to my knowledge, having never done or said an intelligent thing in their lives — never… Read more →
Once Again, Age and Guile Triumph Over Youth and Talent
We’re at the gas station . . . I’m in the passenger seat while my son fills ‘er up. “This pump doesn’t have any way to lock the handle in place,” he says. “I have to stand here and hold it.” “Really?” I say. Don’t pumps always have a way to lock the handle? “Yeah, really,” he says. “I’m 100 percent sure.” I’m about to get out of the car to look things over when he says, “Don’t get out of the car.” Ignoring this admonition, I get out of the car anyway and sure enough, the pump did have a locking mechanism at one time but it’s been removed. “You owe me 10 dollars,” the boy says. “Why?” “I told you you had to hold it,” he says. “I didn’t say you didn’t. I just wanted to size up the situation.” The problem is that in the process of… Read more →
Bad Dad’s College Advice
HIM: You look sad this morning. What’s the matter? HER: Oh, my son left for college yesterday, and I just really miss him. HIM: Let me share something with you. When my daughter went off to school, I gave her one very important piece of advice. HER: Really? What was that? HIM: Don’t get photographed sucking a dick. HER: Hmmm. That sounds like great advice for your daughter, but it wouldn’t have any value for my son. HIM: That’s not what I’ve heard. Read more →
High School Confidential
I ask my boy how school’s going this year, his senior year in high school. “It’s okay,” he says. “I don’t enjoy it that much but I do it anyway.” When we get to the subject of his English teacher, he says, “He’s fine, other than he’s got a Napoleon complex and spends the entire class talking about himself. I know everything about him and I’ve learned nothing about poetry. “He has a two-year-old daughter and another daughter six months old. He coaches a cross-country team. He considers himself the greatest runner of all time. We don’t know what pain is because he has a messed-up knee and he runs on it anyway. “He thinks Mr. Plette [the AP History teacher] is soft because Mr. Plette give higher grades than he does but don’t tell Plette he said that because Plette’s his boy. “He’s a San Francisco Giants fan. He’s… Read more →
High School Seniors Do Not Appreciate 17th Century Metaphysical Poetry
“Have you read ‘Break of Day’ by John Donne?” my son asks. “I haven’t,” I reply, “but that’s more of a failing on my part than a reflection on the greatness of John Donne.” “John Donne sucks.” “You can’t talk about metaphysical poetry without giving it up for John Donne.” “I don’t want to talk about metaphysical poetry. How is that ever going to help me?” “Someday you’ll quote a snippet of Andrew Marvell in a status meeting and people will be very impressed. Verrry impressed.” Read more →
A Personal Reflection on Current Events
My best friend in college hanged himself. He wasn’t gay. It broke my heart, but nobody famous took any notice. We’re all against bullying of course, but it’s a fact of life. Everyone gets targeted for whatever it is that makes them different, and if you’re absolutely normal in all respects, you’ll be targeted for being too perfect. I put my son in tae kwon do classes at an early age. I said it was for fitness and confidence and all the usual stuff, but really it was so that any needlessly cruel behavior directed toward him could be addressed via a kick in the teeth. Sometimes you have to beat someone’s ass to teach him how to get along with the rest of the human race . . . Read more →
Twitter: 2010-10-04
I hear my kid downstairs yelling about Kunta Kinte & the 13th Amendment. His mom must have asked him to bring the groceries in from the car. # RT @eddiepepitone: Does it make me a bad person if to get to sleep I visualize boating accidents? # Read more →
High School Senior
My son, dismissing the need for parental advice in his senior year of high school: “You only know what people tell you. I know what’s going on.” Read more →
Twitter: 2010-09-01
I hate to see my son cry when I drop him off for the first day of school. Fortunately he’s old enough to drive himself this year. # Read more →
Here Come the Brides
We went to a wedding over the weekend, although it won’t be recognized as such by the state of California because both people involved were women. One of the women is Asian, the other Mexican. Both are in their late 20s, both pretty, and they seem to be very happy together. The reception was held at The Reef restaurant, affording a beautiful view of Long Beach harbor and the downtown lights beyond. The bride wore white. The other bride also wore white. We couldn’t find a “bride and bride” wedding card at the Hallmark store. We asked an employee about it, an older woman. “You want what?” she said. “A bride and bride card. All the wedding cards are bride and groom, a man holding a woman’s hand. What we want is a bride and bride card.” “We don’t have anything like that,” she said. “You should get some.”… Read more →
Playing With Pain
My son comes home from playing basketball at L.A. Fitness with what looks like blood all over his white T-shirt. “Is that blood on your shirt?” I ask him. “Yeah. A guy followed through on his shot and smacked me in the face.” “So your nose was bleeding?” “Yeah. I wiped it on my shirt.” “That’s awesome.” “I know. It’s sick.” Read more →
Living in Beverly Hills
LOS ANGELES — Donald Bren’s two out-of-wedlock children testified Monday in the fraud case they brought against their billionaire father that they didn’t lack any material things growing up in Beverly Hills, but that his absence in their lives made them feel angry, hurt and abandoned. — ocregister.com Hey kids, that feeling — is called “life.” Read more →
What I’d Really Like, Dad, is to Borrow the Car Keys
My son walks into my room and says, “Dad, where are your car keys?” “Where are you going?” I ask. “Gym,” he says, and starts to walk out of the room again. “Wait a minute. Where are you going?” “To the gym.” “I got that, but you asked me a question and you’re walking out of the room before I answered it.” “I thought you could give me the answer as I was walking away.” “Well, I can’t because the keys are in my pocket.” “Oh,” he says. “See, that’s what threw me off,” I say, “is I’ve got the keys right here and you’re walking in the other direction.” “I don’t have time to stand around,” he says. “You don’t? Well, I don’t have time to figure out other people’s mystifying behavior.” Read more →
Short Books
My kid’s got a summer assignment for AP English — select and read two novels from a list of about 20. I’ve been telling him since June that I’d be glad to go over the list with him and recommend books that he might enjoy reading but he’s put it off so long now that I’m limited to recommending short books that he might enjoy reading, and that leaves us with Ethan Frome, Wide Sargasso Sea and All the Pretty Horses. He comes back from the bookstore with Frome and Sargasso, two books about men who marry crazy women. He ruled out All the Pretty Horses because it’s 300 pages long and “I read the first sentence and it had like six adjectives.” Read more →
A Dog at the Airport
Picking up my family at John Wayne Airport . . . There’s a guy walking around the baggage claim area with a toy poodle on a leash. I point this out to my son and say, “I didn’t know you could walk your dog around here. I would have brought Lightning.” “Maybe it’s a bomb-sniffing dog,” he says. “A bomb-sniffing poodle?” “Yeah.” Read more →
Comparing Hands
My son comes home from playing basketball, holds his hand up in front of me and says, “Let me see your fingers.” I don’t know what he’s up to here but I put my palm against his palm and we compare fingers. They’re about the same. Mine are maybe a little longer. “HA!” he says. “It’s your fault I can’t dunk! Bad genetics! I can get over the rim but the ball comes out of my hand because I can’t palm it.” “Hmmm,” I say. “I could palm a basketball easily when I was your age so your theory doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny.” “Could you dunk?” he asks. “I’m still working on that. I hate to admit it but I don’t think it’s going to happen for me.” Read more →