Monthly Archives: June 2007

I know that nobody ever really wanted to be the Oscar Meyer Weiner Wagon Guy (or Gal) when they grew up (and, even if that had been their youthful ambition, one too many “between the buns” jokes along the way would have eventually dissuaded them from that career path). Not that it wouldn’t be a lot of fun to drive the big hot dog around town–it would–but to have to do it, day in and day out, for a (probably tiny) paycheck, would undoubtedly suck. Knowing all that, I found the dour demeanors of the Oscar Meyer Weiner Wagon Guy (and Gal) that visited Flagstaff the other week to be completely understandable, along with the fact that they exhibited all the bonhomie and joie de vivre of a couple of Secret Service agents on the Betty Ford detail. I even found it understandable that they were neither joyfully touting their product, nor cheerfully pressing buckets of swag into the arms of every passerby. What wasn’t understandable is why, after they had (grumpily) parted with one tiny little piece of swag, they then refused to honor a mother’s desperate plea of “Can I just have one more–I have two children?”

But that’s exactly what happened to me after I had so eloquently (“Hey! Where’s the free stuff?”) convinced Mr. And Mrs. Weiner Wagon to part with one of their precious Oscar Mayer Weiner Whistles. That’s it; just one. Like a couple of Beefeaters being heckled by a tourist, they were immune to my entreaties to help maintain sibling parity by coughing up one more whistle, calming rebuffing my request with a terse, “One each. Move along.” (Ok, they didn’t say “move along”–but they may as well have).

They weren’t even interested when I tried to explain that an earlier incident involving just one cowbell had already led to sibling wars of a magnitude previously unthinkable over one of the lowest instruments on the musical totem pole ( I guess it’s true what they say about “never having too much cowbell”). Nor did they want to hear about how this earlier contretemps had only been solved by giving the offending cowbell to a passing baby, a reverse Solomon-like decision that could not be repeated in this case without grave consequences; after all, you can’t give an Oscar Mayer Weiner Whistle to a baby–it’s a choking hazard. (And besides which, an Oscar Mayer Weiner Whistle is way cooler than a cowbell.)

Their steadfast refusal to help avert the looming crisis meant that there was only one possible solution: I needed to somehow make the Weiner Whistle so uncool to one child that they would rather wear a Barney backpack on the first day of school than touch the whistle. Clyde was out–he doesn’t know what cool is (which, actually, makes him the coolest of all), but Clementine was still a possibility: her cool-o-meter is so finely attuned that she can tell me I’m dressed like a dork even before she sees what I’m wearing.

At first I considered appealing to her vegetarian side, and telling her that the Weiner whistle came with “genuine hot dog flavor” (which, in a way, it does; it is plastic), but I was afraid that once the truth came out I’d be back in my original position. Luckily for me, I recalled the circumstances under which I had gotten the whistle–and from whom–and suddenly the solution was clear: I would simply tell her that the whistle was under some sort of piggy curse, and that whoever was disrespectful enough to actually blow into it was doomed to drive the Weinermobile for all eternity (or until Starbucks called back–whichever came first). Which, for all I knew, could be true. After all, there has to be some explanation for all that surliness besides just standing around in front of a big weenie all day.

When the poet Robert Frost wrote about “something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” it was obvious that the something he was referring to was not a child: otherwise, the line would have read, “something there is that loves a wall too much;” or, at least, “loves all manner of portable ones.” I am referring, of course, to those instant barricades that banks, amusement parks and night clubs all rely on to funnel their large, mooing masses of humanity into orderly queues; there is just something about them that children can’t resist. It doesn’t matter whether they are literally velvet ropes or simply cheap plastic chains: whenever children are confronted by one of them they are powerless to resist pulling on them, leaning on them, (attempting to) sit down on them, and in general, wreaking havoc upon both the barriers and everyone else around them.

It doesn’t matter how familiar the child is with the barricade either: every house in America could be fronted with a velvet rope and a burly doorman, and still, every child in America would attempt to sit on every one of them, every day, with the result that every child in America would simultaneously end up flailing their arms, knocking down the stanchions, looking shocked, and defensively declaring “But it was an accident!”

I do not know if this is a universal habit, but I suspect that it is. Do Mexican children pull down the barriers at Chichen Ixta? Do French children fall flat on their derrieres when sitting on the ones at the Louvre? Do the children of Alpha Centautri cast all twelve of their eyes upwards in shocked amazement when the proton chain is disrupted by the insertion of one of their 226 knees? Probably.

Perhaps, then, the problem isn’t one of familiarity, but of acclimation. In many cultures it is customary for parents to gradually accustom their children to local traditions and foods; for example, a Thai mother might slowly introduce her child to hotter and hotter peppers, until they, too, can laugh at the silly farang as he attempts to eat a “mild” curry. Or, a British mother might expose her children to racier and racier tabloid stories, until finally they can look at the front page of The News of the World and see David Beckham’s bare bum juxtaposed with the Queen Mum’s face and barely bat an eye.

Perhaps we should do the same with our children and barriers; perhaps we should begin when they are small by putting barriers around their cribs. Something sturdy, like a combination of concrete and rebar (I’m liking the sound of this already), before continuing on with ever longer and more delicate barriers–perhaps stucco and plywood in grade school, and cyclone fencing and concertina wire when they become teenagers (like you haven’t thought of it), until, finally, they reach a point where they are “barrier-proof.” If this plan is followed rigidly I can foresee a future for them in which, even in their late teens, they will be able to stand in line at their cousin’s wedding buffet and resist the urge to rest their weary buttocks on top of the ethereal band of flowers woven into a loopy rope especially for the occasion.

It could happen.

Or not.

Realistically, I have no reason to believe that even constant exposure to various and assorted barriers would result in anything other than various and assorted chaos. After all, isn’t the definition of insanity “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”? Last summer, for instance, I watched both of my children fall through the barriers at Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, Indiana Jones, Space Mountain and Autopia at Disneyland for four days straight–something that clearly qualified as insanity on the part of someone present. I’m just not so sure it wasn’t me.

When I went to see the new Spiderman movie, I was struck, once again, not only by the fact that superheros, as a rule, tend to be some of the morosest people on the planet (maybe Joan Baez is a superhero in disguise), but also by the fact that, just like the heros in Greek tragedy, they all seem to have some fatal flaw. With Superman it is, of course, kryptonite; with Batman it’s having mood swings rivaling a post-partum Britney’s; and with Aquaman it’s–let’s face it–the whole “aqua” thing. (Seriously: how formidable can a guy be if he has to lure you out into the water to defeat you? What’s he going to do about some guy who’s building a bomb in Kansas–send him an anonymous all-expenses paid trip to the Caribbean?). And then of course there’s our hero du jour: Spiderman. Spidey is perhaps the superhero with the most debilitating weakness of all: a really, really whiny girlfriend. (In fact, MJ is such a fatal fatal flaw that I’m surprised Peter Parker isn’t a sub-hero instead. And yes: this was true even before Kirsten Dunst brought her own special brand of whining to the role. For proof, see the “But I don’t want to have spider babies!” episode that ran in the newspapers years ago.)

Anyway, it was the realization that all superheros have their Achilles’ heels that got me to thinking about something that had happened to Clyde that morning at the breakfast table–something that, when viewed through the lenses of my new superhero-awareness glasses, suddenly took on a whole new meaning. What had before appeared to be just another instance of Clyde being a picky eater now seemed likely to have been the dawning awareness of his own superhuman abilities. Maybe, in fact, what he had been dealing with was his own personal kryptonite–the Cheerio.

What happened was this: in an effort to cut down on the towering pile of dishes that seem to erupt, Vesuvius-like, from the bowels of our sink every morning, I had re-used my own cereal bowl for Clyde’s bowl of Batman cereal. (Or maybe it was Superman Returns cereal. Or Hulk. Or Fantastic Four–I think a savvy marketing guy could just slap a picture of the latest movie hero on a box of three-year-old All Bran and it would fly off of the shelves). Unbeknownst to me, however, in my haste to obey rule #2 of the recycling mantra (reuse),I had inadvertently left a single Cheerio behind. What this meant was that just as Clyde started to take his first bite of delicious Sugar-O’s, he was treated instead to a much less welcome sight: a Cheerio. Yes, there it was, staring up at him malevolently from the top of the bowl like the baleful eye of some oaty fiend. Only by quick thinking on Clyde’s part (ferociously scrubbing his tongue with a nearby paper towel) was he was able to escape the deleterious effects of Cheerio poisoning, but it was obvious to all that it had been a near thing.

Like I said, at the time I saw it as just another instance of picky eating, but now–with my eyes opened to the ways of superheros by the new Spiderman movie–I can see that maybe it was actually a case of a troubled hero facing his one true weakness. Or rather, one of his one true weaknesses: there’s also the little problem with socks and underwear (can’t wear them), as well as toothbrushes, bananas, pickles, and sleeping in his own bed. Now that I think about it, it does seem like rather a lot of Achilles’ heels for one superhero–more like Achilles’ heel, knee, elbow, and wiggly thing at the back of your throat.

Still, it’s better than having to come home every day to Mary Jane.

Although the saying “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” has been around for centuries, its veracity has been doubted for centuries as well. Naysayers will cite a variety of reasons for why this particular scenario never could have happened, not the least of which being the fact that at the time Rome burned, the “fiddle” (as we now know it) was still several hundred years away from being invented. Personally, I’ve always thought that the historical accuracy of the saying was irrelevant: it seems more likely that whoever coined the phrase was simply struck by the lyricism of it; in other words, they couldn’t let something as trivial as the facts get in the way of a good story. (Something my daughter Clementine claims happens on a weekly basis right here in this very column.) And, you must admit that, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” does sound a whole lot better than “Nero tickled the ivories while Rome burned.”

Recently, however, new information has come to light (at least for me) that might make this whole theory moot: perhaps the word that has gone wrong in this phrase is not fiddled at all: it’s while, meaning that the correct phrase is not “Nero fiddled while Rome burned,” but actually “Nero fiddled, so Rome burned.” In other words, Nero wasn’t playing a not-yet-invented violin at all; he was just screwing with stuff.

I developed this new theory after watching Clementine pick up a half-full gallon of milk, tip it upside down over the floor, tilt it back upright again, check the seal on the lid, and then repeat the whole process over again. And again. And again. It only stopped when I couldn’t take it anymore and erupted with a shout of “Quit fiddling with it!” at which point she got up and, with a sigh, moved into the living room, where she no doubt experimented with seeing how close to the edge of a table she could put a glass of grape juice before it spilled onto the carpet, or how many times she could toss a pillow up into the air before it knocked a blade off of the ceiling fan–either of which scenarios would result in howls of anger and disbelief on my part, looks of shocked incredulity on hers, and, of course, the inevitable words, “But it was an accident!”

The “accidental indemnity” clause is a favorite of Clementine’s, even though when it comes to awarding claims I am about as likely to buy the “accident” story after the lid comes flying off the top of the catsup bottle the 53rd time you spin it up into the air as an insurance company is to approve a claim of “accidental death” for someone who has spent his last few hours on Earth playing an extended game of Russian Roulette. Not that this stops her from employing it, even when–especially when–she is standing in the middle of the pile of debris that usually follows her depraved indifference to the laws of probability.

Of course, in her defense, it’s not like she’s the only one living in a state of “accident” denial: if she were, then car insurance premiums for teenage boys wouldn’t be equal to the monthly payments on a new Lexus. Still, that does not stop it from galling me when, after the open bottle of fingernail polish she has just attempted to pick up with her toes flips upside down and spills onto the couch, she is shocked–shocked!–by my “harsh” reaction to what was so clearly an “accident.” Nor does it stop her from taking that reaction as further proof of my unfitness to walk amongst decent human beings. That, and the fact that I took her brother’s side after he broke her scooter trying to ride it down the slide. “Lighten up,” I said. “It was just an accident.”

Although the saying “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” has been around for centuries, its veracity has been doubted for centuries as well. Naysayers will cite a variety of reasons for why this particular scenario never could have happened, not the least of which being the fact that at the time Rome burned, the “fiddle” (as we now know it) was still several hundred years away from being invented. Personally, I’ve always thought that the historical accuracy of the saying was irrelevant: it seems more likely that whoever coined the phrase was simply struck by the lyricism of it; in other words, they couldn’t let something as trivial as the facts get in the way of a good story. (Something my daughter Clementine claims happens on a weekly basis right here in this very column.) And, you must admit that, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” does sound a whole lot better than “Nero tickled the ivories while Rome burned.”

Recently, however, new information has come to light (at least for me) that might make this whole theory moot: perhaps the word that has gone wrong in this phrase is not fiddled at all: it’s while, meaning that the correct phrase is not “Nero fiddled while Rome burned,” but actually “Nero fiddled, so Rome burned.” In other words, Nero wasn’t playing a not-yet-invented violin at all; he was just screwing with stuff.

I developed this new theory after watching Clementine pick up a half-full gallon of milk, tip it upside down over the floor, tilt it back upright again, check the seal on the lid, and then repeat the whole process over again. And again. And again. It only stopped when I couldn’t take it anymore and erupted with a shout of “Quit fiddling with it!” at which point she got up and, with a sigh, moved into the living room, where she no doubt experimented with seeing how close to the edge of a table she could put a glass of grape juice before it spilled onto the carpet, or how many times she could toss a pillow up into the air before it knocked a blade off of the ceiling fan–either of which scenarios would result in howls of anger and disbelief on my part, looks of shocked incredulity on hers, and, of course, the inevitable words, “But it was an accident!”

The “accidental indemnity” clause is a favorite of Clementine’s, even though when it comes to awarding claims I am about as likely to buy the “accident” story after the lid comes flying off the top of the catsup bottle the 53rd time you spin it up into the air as an insurance company is to approve a claim of “accidental death” for someone who has spent his last few hours on Earth playing an extended game of Russian Roulette. Not that this stops her from employing it, even when–especially when–she is standing in the middle of the pile of debris that usually follows her depraved indifference to the laws of probability.

Of course, in her defense, it’s not like she’s the only one living in a state of “accident” denial: if she were, then car insurance premiums for teenage boys wouldn’t be equal to the monthly payments on a new Lexus. Still, that does not stop it from galling me when, after the open bottle of fingernail polish she has just attempted to pick up with her toes flips upside down and spills onto the couch, she is shocked–shocked!–by my “harsh” reaction to what was so clearly an “accident.” Nor does it stop her from taking that reaction as further proof of my unfitness to walk amongst decent human beings. That, and the fact that I took her brother’s side after he broke her scooter trying to ride it down the slide. “Lighten up,” I said. “It was just an accident.”