How to be the Most Powerful Person in the World

I look at kids and am happy they don't yet know I'm not really all that cool. I was walking with Quin last night--well he was on his bike--and since he's always the line leader, I had a chance to gaze at his larger-than-normal head and smile an uncontrollable smile about how awesome he is. It was about then, as it always is, that I freak out about the countdown to teenage assholedom, which these days seems to be getting winnowed to about the age of seven. And it's not so much that children grow into pubescent pricks, but that I've got an even shorter timetable until they realize they're smarter than me. I must stand up here and gaze down in grinning glory while I can.

This morning we lay in bed and listened to Quin cough. He runs amok all day, no coughing, not even a wheeze, but then when we lay him down to rest--for all of us to rest--and he coughs like an 80-year-old smoker. And then, after nearly launching a lung, I hear him up and playing with his brother. When he trots into the room I ask, "How are you feeling?"

"Good," he replies, like it was a pretty dumb question.

I have no idea how he's functioning. He's been coughing for two nights, the little tubes of cough suppressant pebbles (yah, they're like medicinal pop rocks) don't seem to do anything. If that were me I'd be nuts. Aside from being from a family that wants people to know when they're consternated, I'm the kind of guy that will throw down a company if their product doesn't work (Mucinex can suck it). Quin doesn't seem to mind that we startled him out of his sleep to force down tiny pills, or that it didn't seem to help. Thing is, he didn't even mind that he was coughing. I was the one pissed about it, on his behalf, and did my best to keep Sarah awake with my sighs of disapproval. Meanwhile, Quin's entire body is convulsing to a constant cough, and somehow he's docile as a dead armadillo.

This should be your head.

There's something in there that we haven't gotten to. And I'm happy about that. He seems to not realize that your body making loud gyrations throughout the night should be a bad thing. He's living at the apex of human enjoyment, a place where one has yet to hang all the negative shit around their mental kitchen. He's thriving in the cinnamon rolls and cheese sandwiches of constant satisfaction. There's no garbage smell or outdated meat somewhere in the back. He's so pure he can sit across the couch from me and not at all be bothered by my overhwelming desire to have him be the least bit annoyed. I'm reeking of skepticism and he just rubs his eyes, looks up and asks, "Dad, can I have a waffle for breakfast?"

And damn if I'm not leaping around making sure he gets bread doused in butter and syrup, because in a moment it's the least I can do to maintain what could be the most perfect thing I've ever seen: a human creating its own condition. This is what we all try to get back to. We spend millions on books and trips to see the Dalai Lama just to find out how to remind our brain to like us again. This little dude with bedhead and pajamas dwarfing his tiny butt, who's mouthing the alphabet along with a cartoon pig on PBS, does not care that he's the most powerful being on the planet.

The other night we rolled his "emotional" dice he made in school. The ones with the little faces of different expression glued to each side. "Angry" rolled to the top and we followed the assignment by asking, "So, Quin, what makes you angry? Do you know what makes you angry?"

He's not sure so we enthusiastically tell him when and why to be angry.

He repeats back some of our suggestions but with tredipation and question marks: "So, I'm angry when someone takes a toy?"

Yah, that's it. Now you know. And I'm half tempted to say he should be crazy angry for coughing all night, but he's into that waffle, and now his brother is up too, and he yells, "Otto" at the TV when the cartoon pig asks him his name. Sarah and I smile. It's so cute.

After all, a cartoon pig did ask. We grown ups stare at the TV all the time, and are rarely satisfied with the one-way conversation.

Quin finishes his waffle and I get to work getting his clothes. "What do you think you'll do at school today," I ask as I button jeans around a ten-inch waist.

"I don't know," he replies. "Probably play."

All hail the mighty wonders.

In the truck with the boys and The Big Lebowski

Little Urban Achievers.

Su-ba-ru

We were driving home and I noticed the Subaru Forester had cracked 300 miles on one tank. I cheered the car for the milestone, but Sarah said "uh oh." I was celebrating the efficency and Sarah was realizing that the car had to be about out of gas. It's who she is. It's who I am. And when the boys asked why were laughing so hard, it was easy to explain: we're different.

I've written it at least ten times--and those brilliant assholes who scribe the show Modern Family expressed it brilliantly in the episode Punkin Chunkin'--that I'm the kite and Sarah is the tether. Sometimes I lift her up, but when shit gets a little too hairy, she reels me back to the ground. It works. Sometimes it bugs the shit out of me, but I can't imagine how Sarah felt when about a year ago today I woke up and said, "I'm going to do 100 comedy shows in 10 days!" The kite broke loose for a while, but every night it ran out of wind and came crashing down to home.

We don't know what we've done to our boys. At least genetically they could end up with a host of issues, or as my mother in law says, things they've "come by honestly." Other than crazy love for our kids, Sarah and I have three things in common:

1. Stubborn. Dumb stubborn. Our stubbornnesses are different. Sarah, for example, won't budge on--Christ I don't know. But she's got this clinging to weird traditional shit when you least expect it. Mine is the kind of thing that YouTube videos are made of. Before YouTube it would have been Rescue 911, in that I don't care what odds are against me, I'm going to leap off a bridge/drive fast on an icy road/carry this couch by myself (in order of age-advancing risk) no matter what awfulness could befall me.
2. Our sarcasm. I'm worse, but Sarah's got a nuclear sneak attack that will have you scrambling for shelter.
3. Our loathing of bullshit. Corporate bullshit. Televised bullshit (local news). Personal-level smiling-and-saying-nothing-while-talking bullshit.

I'd also add a #4, in that we're both extremely self conscious. You might look at that and ask, "What in the fuck have you done to your progeny?" And we'd sarcastically respond, "Oh, just riddle them with a lifetime of skepticism in the oncoming specter of richer-than-fuck kids loaded on legal speed and Ivy League enemas."

Goddamn, it's tough raising little ones wondering about all the things you only recently realized are wrong with you. Euthanization is only a facetious joke, but you do feel very sorry for the young you've trotted into the world with the attitude of a donkey and Michael Moore. There's something brilliant out there for them, except we may be the first people to hire a nanny for their kids after college. We're just too damn cynical to encourage anybody after 16 tornadoes just tore up 11 states. It seems more like a world for Mad Max shop class enthusiasm rather than a life in a cubicle. (If you can find it after the storm--see?)

So the kite and the tether cried tears of laughter with their sperm/egg combos shouting questions about what was wrong with their mom and dad. I said, "I'd wonder the same thing too," to the inquiring boys. And to tell them the truth, we were having a cathartic moment after months of new jobs, shit salaries and sometimes seemingly insurmountable life obstacles.

There's a two-edged sword to being who we are. We can create. Goddamn we can create, and to bring that to an earthly level, I mean Sarah can work magic with an Excel spreadsheet. She has coworkers backing away in silent reverence at the new girl's ability to spin some serious mojo on Microsoft Suite. The other side of the sword? We could give two shits about for whom we're creating. That is to say, "We're nearly developmentally disabled on our own, so we still need you, corporate narcissist, to cut us a bi-weekly check for our efforts."

It's OK. It's OK in that someone is still paying us, and that every day we chip away at the granite between us and ourselves. Yah, whatever. But we're in there, and we're tapping away at the self doubt.

The Subaru did get nearly 21 miles to the gallon city driving, which for Sarah and me isn't enough (and bothers the shit out of us how many NPR listeners drive them around like they're doing something good). But what was impressive was the sperm/egg combo. No kites. No wind...or winds of skeptical subversion. Just two kids interrogating us from the backseat of an inefficient used car.

Yah, we made them.