Advice to the Class of 2011

Know your strengths and weaknesses. It's one of the most awkward times of any job interview when they ask your strengths and weaknesses. Because I'm always ready with a spreadsheet of stuff that's wrong with me.

Despite all my issues, I had this era of my life, mostly my twenties, where I thought no matter what I did it would turn out well. So during the interview I assumed that if I started reeling of a Woody Allen-like list of weaknesses they'd think it was endearing. It was a death spiral of destruction.

This is a true story.

I'd gone for a job with a flooring product company in Denver. A team of three people stood tall on one side of a large desk, and I scurried to my place on the other.  They asked my weakness and I started with how I have trouble being focused, and proved it to them to disastrous effects by meandering from there to how I have this issue with people who take work too seriously and, finally, I included that sometimes early in the morning the newspaper makes me cry.  The interviewers were shell shocked. They didn't have a reply. One moment they're shaking the hand of someone who seemed like a decent candidate, and the next they had an image of me in my pajamas and crying.

And this is where I always go wrong: during moments of awkward silence. Get into a conversation with me and you'll note whenever it goes quiet, even if it's a healthy bit of a solemnity, I'll leap in with something, whatever, just some kind of conversational noise. So the interviewers, two women and a man, start to wriggle a little, as if they're thinking about how to get out of the room, and I stop them again by picking up where I left off. Not necessarily the exact topic, just the nerve-rattling rambling. In my head, the place where I'm invincible and can do no wrong, it behooves me to say something about how I might sound crazy, but at least I'm not as crazy as I once was. This takes me into a brief bullet-pointed exercise in nutty things I've done, like jumping off bridges, breaking my back on a mountain bike and dressing up like a superhero.

It's a gift I guess, that I can take something so simple, like a question, and turn it into an epic adventure. I don't know how much that's damaged me in my time, but in that particular job interview it didn't help. Shortly after I wrapped up the details of my superhero outfit, and how my mom had made me a cape in college, they said they'd had enough and they would get back to me. I didn't know then, but the phrase "we'll get back to you" is code for "please for the love of God never come back again."

They didn't even get to my strengths. I really don't have trouble with that one. It's very clear: I know my weaknesses.

Entering the Dadosphere

I missed one of our favorite kids shows, Shaun the Sheep. Quin sat on the arm of the couch, upright and ready to be entertained.  I fell asleep. I was unconscious until Quin shouted, "Where are the aliens?" That's usually a line you wake up from, but Quin was wondering what happened to the little UFO guy who'd crash landed near Shaun's barn. I had no idea. I'm not good with waking up and responding to things. My Navy SEAL days would be short lived.

I do this with the phone, too. It rings, and if I'm sleeping I'll answer it. Often I'll wake up on the tail end of a conversation, not knowing what I've agreed to or what I've told the telemarketer about myself. Once I had a friend grow very angry with my confusing comments. He called to say he was going to a party on Florida (Floor-eeda) Road in Durango and I kept countering with something about the state of Florida. He shouted something and hung up. I made him even angrier by calling him hours later and asking if he had any plans.

Today I was beat because we'd done the Littleton Museum and then had lunch in the park next to it. The museum is amazing. It's got an actual turn-of-the- 20th century village with farm animals and all, but it's rained the past two days and that meant carrying both the boys through the muddy thoroughfares of 1890 America. When we got home Otto was so tired he pointed to his room and said "night night." Quin needed some time to wind down and that's where I got my nap. 

It was intense trying to answer where the aliens were.

Making Daddy Daycare Work for You, Part 2

Our parents had it easy

Sure they were broke and they had to rent movies from a store, but they never had to drop a couple hundred bucks on car seats, and if they wanted to they could leave us in the car for the better part of a weekend. I was running errands the other day and Quin refused to get out of the car for a quick post office trip. I don't blame him. We'd just loaded and unloaded for the grocery store and again to drop off some stuff at a friends.  This was April, and a stormy one at that, so I wasn't worried about heat.  I wasn't worried about someone stealing them either. I was worried some super do-gooder would spot the evil dad leaving the children behind to wilt and die.  Luckily, my windows are tinted, and even better, all I had to do was run in and drop off a bunch of mail. The only bad part was that there was a guy in a big truck next to us.  He saw me get Quin out, struggle with the flailing youth, before letting him wriggle back into the car.  Then he saw me look around the parking lot like I was about to sell drugs.  He leaned out his window and said, "Go ahead, I'll keep an eye on 'em for you." 

OK, not good. I'm paranoid. This guy seemed nice, maybe a little rough in a lifetime smoker sort of way, but probably a decent dude. But what has this world of fear-mongering media done to me? I imagined him repeating, "still keepin' an eye on 'em for ya" over a scratchy phone line as I go Mel Gibson crazy to find his secret lair.  I cant' trust anybody.  In 1980 my parents left a five-year-old me, my ten-year-old brother and our two-year-old sister with a woman they barely knew. And not just for a night. It was their one and only vacation together: three days to Oregon to check out a logging equipment auction.  I can say we had much more fun, as our twenty-something sitter would hand us cash while she went to the bar.  Now in our small town their wasn't much to spend it on, so we all went to the one movie showing over and over.  It was a cool bounty hunter flick and I remember being less scared each time I saw it. 

This is not to say my parents were at all bad parents. They were just doing what parents got to do then: trust people.  They trusted people, they trusted American car engineering and they felt that five hours alone in a Jeepster was good for our character.  To my mom's credit, she was way ahead on the seatbelt thing.  Of course she usually didn't demand it until she saw an accident or almost hit a moose.  Then, after the carnage, she'd freak and demand we all be tethered.  That was if we could find the belts, that had usually fallen under the seat and become putrefied in dog hair and food crumbs.  My dad on the other hand was less careful.  While did have it in him to have me drive him home from the bar, when I was eleven, he countered that nod to safety by having my brother and I ride in the back of his pickup to Chicago.  And back. 

That's something that I think a lot of today's kids will miss: riding in the back of a truck. There's always a few close calls, but after that you stay pretty safe. 

Nowadays the safety industry has lobbied its way into our lives with thousands of dollars of mandated expenses.  Not a bad gig, but I'd like to send them a bill for all the crap I buy that I wouldn't need to if the kids were in the car.  I could so easily and inexpensively run into any store and get right back out, but with the kids I buy things I can't afford. Sarah will come home from work and I'm trying to find a place to put forty feet of bubble wrap.  She'll ask "why" and I'll tell her we were all at the post office and the kids just had to have it.  Yah, I can say "no" to the boys and they take it pretty well, but man it would be a lot easier if I could crack a window and go. 

Next topic: Why did they get to beat us but we not our own kids?