Giddy Poop Car

Now that I have a girl I want to lift weights again. I mean it's a genuine primal urge to get strong and prepare for war. It's weird. It just happened. It wasn't like most important issues that I'm only alerted to when Sarah does that gentle, "Um, Jared," that's followed by phrases like "the children need pants" or "you should join us outside to avoid dying in the fire." I was just on it. And now I can't even pull myself away for work because this little lady is so damn cute. From what I've heard she can be a jerk in the day, but in the morning she is on.

She's like a Walmart greeter: in a diaper, toothless and has no idea who I am, but just really happy to see me. That alone, that ridiculous optimism, has me on the floor and grinning like a mentally misaligned zoo animal. It's my one chance! It's my one chance to make an impression without the world intervening. The periphery is all but a Monet and the interaction is simple and it's clear and it's wholesome. You smile. I smile. You smile again, and I smile like something's broken. There have been happy tears, so I hope those haven't confused her. "What's wrong?" might ask one of her middle school friends. "Oh nothing...the world is all too much to take in," will respond the girl who'd get invited to dances if she didn't smile weep at the mere thought of being liked.

Hell, I may be on to something there.

Curbing the Enthusiasm

So there's a giddiness factor I should amend. Some would say to keep it all rocket fuel to the fuckyahtmosphere, but I'd like the children to see some measure of dignity and control. You know, a touch of salty hipster stirred in with their saccharin dad.

I really would like to be hovering over them all of the time.
It's hard not to be too giddy. I mean I have the potential, every hour on the hour, to be the love child of Clark Griswold and a muppet who's taken to heavy stimulants. These kids are crazy good to me and all I can do is reciprocate with kid-like insanity. How much will that hurt them in their twenties with concerned coworkers? I don't know. I think that's why they become teenagers so that we'll be less excited about them. That's my chance to instill the graveness of adulthood. Already I can shave that enthusiasm right off with a Quin's snarcastic "really?" He nails it with the stabbing deftness of an indignant tweener, and while it's been used to torpedo some of my paternal enthusiasm, I'm also hopeful it's working to gently put down the bigger kids who give him a hard time. And he's been picked on some at school. That's helped me to not like kids in general, to the point where I asked his teacher to present unto me the bully's closest related adult male. I shared that with Quin and I got a "really?" steeped in the genuine horror that permeates a teenager terrified his father will somehow cause a scene.

Channeling the Enthusiasm

I do cause scenes. I cause one every morning, but I have managed to contain it within the walls of our white Subaru. The Subaru is our dirty little Israel, a walled-off place where the once-persecuted can thrive. Inside the "white car!" as it is known to the boys (and always with that enthusiasm) is where they can use all the potty talk they want.

That guy right there in the middle. You try and not get excited about him.
Luckily, they both think "shut up" is the worst of bad words. After the first day Quin rode the bus he sulked around the house like an eye witness to murder. After some interrogation, he admitted that his seatmate, a fifth grader, had used the "s-h" word. I thought "well, 'shit' does merit some shock." But then he mouthed "shut up" and further impressed upon me the grave infraction by wide-eyed whisper shouting, "and 31 times!" I can just see him now, his head down in plane wreck position with clenched prayer eyes hoping to withstand the SH bombs raining down around him. Do I need to pause here to say how I much I love this kid? Or would it be more appropriate to admit I worry about him getting his ass kicked at school?

The point: our potty words are very accurate biological functions. So it's the poo and pee that fills the Forester with the kind of revelry that has you trying not to laugh and encourage such behavior. The most popular game is the one where I'm an airplane pilot and Quin and Otto the perturbed passengers pushing the emergency button and complaining that someone has just filled their diaper on row 23. It's comedy gold. And luckily, for the most part, contained within a small foreign car.

And that daughter of mine, I can pretty much guarantee that one day she'll shut that shit up before the men in her life embarrass her.