The Incomparable Quin and Otto and their Hilarious New Trick

We love our boys; sometimes it's near impossible not to stand on top of a tower on top of a mountain and shout some phrase that hasn't even been invented because no one has found the words to mark the giddiness we get about Quin and Otto. I should also say, before I relay this quick story, that nightly I write down mounds of heaping honey stew bubbling with goodness about our children.

Now for the episode from Mrs. Ulibarri's kindergarten room at Englewood's Clayton Elementary School. Home of the Tigers.

So we'd just learned the "Four Pawsitives" of the school's values during an orientation to Quin's next big step. The principal spoke highly of her institution and introduced to the room the four teachers responsible for kindergarten. From there we climbed upward from the little chairs that did all they could to support one buttock, and then ambled about introducing ourselves to the faculty. The boys were fine on their own, playing with one another, which is good, as I believe Sarah and I were mostly distracted scanning the room for methhead parents--the unofficial mascot of our fine town. Most everyone looked fairly reputable and likely to sport the kind of kid we'd want our kids to spend time with, so we moved to the 'math' table to talk to its teacher representative. 

Now I should say I did hear the boys giggling, and kind of loudly, but the room was abuzz with conversation so I didn't think much of it. I would eventually, but not until I'd gesture towards them in the way you do when you're proudly pointing out your children to other adults. It was that pointing that took my attention from the teacher to my boys, and it was with the haughty pronouncement, "Yes, these are my guys right here," where my eyes would follow my finger to the two of them on the floor, Otto on his back with his legs splayed open and Quin ramming his head into his brother's groin. Like Sarah would later say--when enough time had passed that it was funny--"It was the kind of thing you'd see in a movie."

Yes, a movie, like Kindergarten Cop or someting from the 90s with McCaulay Culkin where the awkward situations are trumped up to make them made-for-the-big-screen hilarious. "That wouldn't happen in real life," you'd say as you winced at the high jinks.

Oh yes it does. Thank you boys for keeping me from climbing that mountain tower, at least for tonight.

He would get me back. A lot.

First off, I didn't throw the snowball and, secondly, it did not hit him in the face. It was Tyler who threw it at his little brother, my nephew Axell, and it hit him in the shoulder. Snow then splattered onto his face, thus causing him to freak out. I get it, he's a four year old. I'd freak out too. But after some words about his toughness and some hugging, he was back in the battle--he and I teaming up to get back at his brother. We had some laughs and a some good shots on his agile elder, and then he left us to go back inside. Tyler and I blasted away at each other for a few more minutes, offering the neighbors a show that I imagined looked much cooler than it probably was, before we followed suit. When we got in, we found the previously comforted and fit-for-battle little brother crying to my wife about being hit in the face. She looked up at me like I'd done in JonBenet and from that moment, with my face of incredulity, I was guilty. And once I think people think I'm guilty, I'm guilty. Especially when you're going up against a four year old who's gotten to the mother figure first. Suddenly, I was ten and I was trying to defend myself for what my little sister had told my father. It's impossible. A crying child is ten times more powerful than, in this case, a grown man soaked with snow who claims the kid is lying about getting hit with a snowball.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. Or it does enough for me to be awake and write about it. I truly looked like the biggest prick on the planet even though we got sold out by a master of manipulation. Tyler told Sarah, "He lies all the time!" and in a flash I felt sympathy for the little brother, being one myself, and knowing that any opportunity to destroy your much larger sibling is a one you need to take. At that moment I heard howling, human howling, and it was my then eleven-year-old brother Peter tied up and, I guess, left for dead in a small Blair Witch-like hovel called Devil's Cabin. I was six when I ran up the dirt road to my mother, who anticipated our arrival outside the back door of our old plaster and timber homestead. I thought she was going to greet Gary and me with open arms. Instead, she grabbed my shirt and asked in an angry staccato, "Where. Is. Peter?"

She would ask not only because Peter wasn't with me and my newly acquired ally, the fourteen-year-old Gary who had a motorcycle and whose sister smoked cigarettes, but because from more than a quarter mile away, through the woods and across the west section an 800-acre hay field, sailed the robust cries of her firstborn.

Peter might have been upset that Gary had turned on him, and there was probably also the pain of the intricate knots Gary had shown me how to tie. I remember seeing the rope holding Peter's arms behind his back, and the tightness of the bonds on his ankles, and already seeing them affect his skin from his struggle, but it was a moment I had to seize. This was the guy who'd daily, and without mercy, beat me in every possible endeavor. He beat me in football, he beat me in foot races and he just beat me in general. It was Peter who from the bus would run up the half-mile driveway to announce to my parents whatever trouble I'd been in. This is the guy who'd one day tie ME up and kidnap me for one of the most terrifying rides of my life. My mom would not see that, at least not at that moment, nor would she see the marks on my neck from when earlier in the day he and Gary hung me from a tree by my shirt. All she could hear was Peter's wailing.

What made the mom encounter worse, at least for me, was that I'd imagined she'd be proud that I'd finally gotten back at Peter. I saw laughter and hugs and her being impressed and maybe even cookies for me and my friend.

She did come at me, but not in the style of a mom bringing a plate of treats. She stormed forward and, in an unladylike manner not befitting of her at all, charged at me. Grabbing my already stretched, horizontally striped green and brown hand-me-down with the button-up collar, she'd turn what I'd call "Satany." She shot fire out of her eyes and set ablaze my pride. "You get your brother right now," she requested in the same stilted fashion as before. She was a woman so angry that speech had been removed as her forte. She was bordering on replacing it with a new aspiration, physical harm.

She turned to Gary, and to my horror, shrieked at my new, older friend.

"I don't know what in the Hell you're thinking but you get Peter and have him here pronto!" Pronto was a word she used a lot, but always playfully, so I was scared. Plus, Gary was my new friend, one twice my age who was valuable in the war on Peter. And now my mother had fallen far from "cool mom" to an angry lady scolding him right in front of me. Did she not know he had a motorcycle?

Gary and I turned and ran, or at least I did, and cutting through the meadow, I fell into an irrigation ditch. Nearing the cries of my brother, I ran dripping with water and sadness at what we'd actually done to Peter. Sure, we'd left him on the dirt floor of our fort of sod and sticks, but I'd also pulled the nuclear option. I'd embarrassed him in front of who he thought was his friend. Even worse, I'd sided with a guy who wasn't really anyone's friend, but a bored, sadistic teen who used us against one another. And whose motorcycle rarely worked.

I thought I was fast. I had this esteem-building measure where I'd stare at the ground as I ran, and it made it seem like I was so awesome. What it did not offer was the perspective how slowly everything in any kind of distance was moving by. Or, for example, how Gary and my mom, who was carrying my little sister, had long ago passed me and were already freeing my brother. I came up on the scene and my mom was still tearing down Gary. Yes, I was working on an epiphany about his overall instability, but it's still not cool for moms to admonish friends.

I entered the dark of Devil's Cabin and offered my pocket knife. Through the slices of sunlight, my mom made it clear that she did not need my help. In retrospect, I recall stabbing forward in the worst possible way to hand someone a sharp object. She had so much to be concerned about.

Ejected from the seen, I paced around the aspen grove and listened to the melee. Gary was sent home, which was anticlimactic, as he lived in a trailer on our driveway, and mom comforted Peter. They'd storm back to the house to tend to his chafing. My brother walked with a lean into indignation, and mom would look back at me and tell me hurry up as to imply whatever healing she had for Peter was going to be a hurting for me. But she probably knew that the damage was done.

And so I looked at the dusty driveway and saw my footprints from just ten minutes before. They weren't prints at all really, but fleet scratches in the dirt from a kid running up to greet his mom with the news about tying up his brother and leaving him in the woods. Now I plodded deep prints, or imprints, of a day not forgotten.

We have a room available.

Growing up, my brother and I shared a room. At one point, my brother, sister and I all shared a bed. I'm telling you this now so that I don't sound like the most cliche elder spitting the tales of a youth imcomprehensibly more turbulent and less fortunate (you could be talking to a child soldier in Africa and they'd still have it better) than children living today.

I also bring it up because Quin and Otto each have well-appointed bedrooms. Quin has a bunk bed, a LoveSac beanbag, my grandmother's dresser, Sarah's grandfather's old recliner (yes, like our entire house, the motif is "estate sale"), a cat and a plant. Otto's plant didn't make it, but he does have a swank Craiglist find of a beefy blue big-boy bed. This has been such a big deal in our little home that Quin has deserted his privacy to sleep with his brother.

At first it was chaos. They were so excited to share the same space it was like they'd only just discovered each other, as if all the time they've played and bickered and tormented one another was only a distant whistle to their ground zero of joy.  BOOM! in the night would go one of their bodies or heads against the wall-- something that would cause great consternation any other time or place--and like chittering, giggling lunatics they'd forsake the sleep that keeps them from, say, throwing a tantrum over the length of time it takes Dumbo to get to the DVD menu (but seriously Disney).

As a parent it's nice to find a position of power; some type of wizarding place where your edicts yield results. Often I proclaim some new rule and then, to soothe the embarasment of what appears to be a man shouting all by himself, am left to mutter something sarcastic about my attentive and rapt audience. After we'd try to coax Quin back into his bedroom, we found just the salvo to calm the nestlings. In something of a complete generational reversal, we told them if they weren't good that they'd have to have their own rooms.

It's worked. They're so serious about not separating they've developed severe peer policing. You'll hear harsh "Shhhhhes!" to any deviant noisemaker. It's become so severe that we'll get the occasional, "Mom, Otto's not sleeping," shattering the quiet still of a bedtime house.

So it is, in a strange ironic twist, that the boys sharing a bed has made them the most dutiful sleepers, like their slumber is an act of patriotism. Now we just need to figure out how to get them out of bed. Every morning you'll find me fresh off another lonely proclamation, muttering something about their being so cooperative, while Sarah's in the kitchen plying them with food and cartoons. In this case, I can actually say I didn't have it so good when I was a kid...and as all parents know...that's a good thing.

Littermates.

Things dad should not to do: Give kids pudding for the drive to school

The Quick Story of the Super Bowl and our Willis McGahee Spots

(ripped from my blog at work)

So the Super Bowl ends and you're left with an empty bag of chips and a belly full of regret. If someone were to present to me on one plate all of the things I ate, I'd be horrified. But whatever weariness comes with a hungover Monday can be easily countered by watching our co-worker and customer support superstar John Rupp lose himself and smash his telephone.

We had planned on Pro Bowl football star Willis McGahee playfully spiking the receiver but John, possessed by his unearthly rhythms, and like a man with his soul on fire, grabbed the Polycom Soundpoint IP and launched it to its death.

That was the fun and kind of frightening end to a great day of shooting commercials with the Denver Bronco running back, and the video has been a nice elixir to three+ hours of some pretty disappointing Superbowl television ads (How many times during the game did you ask, "They paid $3.5 million for that?).

So why Willis? It all started with a phone call from his agent. She wanted him to be associated with what she'd heard was a popular tech company. We tried to play it cool, but by the time he was scheduled to arrive we had a body painter, a professional camera crew, cranes, jibs and an office at the ready for Willis skits. The hot, new .CO domain pitched in, and we were off...well, almost.

Denver got nailed by a over a foot of snow. Our body painter was trapped in a suburb, the media couldn't make it, and Willis' overnight trip from Indianapolis was cancelled. Things were looking bleak, but then Willis managed to get an early flight, the body painter was able to dig her way out of her home, and our Veep of operations got a bunch of pizza. We were off and running...

The Intro: We Wonder if Willis Will do What We'd Done Previously for .CO

The Fail: We Try to Emulate What GoDaddy Did, but It Just Doesn't Feel Right

The Recovery: Back to What We Do at Name.com, Good 'ol Non-Trashy Fun

The Wrap: After a Blizzard, a Stranded Body Painter and Willis' canceled flight, it was good to have some fun.

Now watch, rate, comment, subscribe. You won't believe what we're rolling out next.