Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 573

Goodnight dance

My daughter has taken to dancing right before bed.  We read our books, and just when we are ready to turn off the lights and plop her in her crib, she starts dancing.   

It's cute, and she has some genuine moves, but it's not the best way to relax before going to sleep. 

The maypole is kind of stupid. Right?

It's the kind of thing that parents love because they get to watch their kid run around a pole as they genuflect on tradition and ancestry and Earthy goodness, but in the end, the kid is just hanging onto a ribbon and running around a pole.

Of all the ancient traditions to survive into the modern day, why this one?

I mean, if your kid grabbed the clothesline and ran around the pole in the backyard, you'd tell him to knock it off.

Right? 

Add a few men in skirts and funny hats, a beer garden and some old timey music and suddenly it's a thing. 

Even if your kid is excited about dancing around a maypole, how long does that last?

Three rotations?  Four?

My first bit of Thanksgiving thanks

The dog woke up at 2:30 AM. She was acting crazy. Snorting, sneezing, rolling on the ground. 

I thought she was sick. 

Then I smelled something foul. 

"Oh no," I thought.  "What has she done?"

I quickly inspected the floor and found nothing.  "Just gas," I thought and decided to bring her outside. 

I tossed on some clothing and carried her downstairs as she continued to wheeze and snort.

The smell grew worse by the time we reached the first floor.  For a moment I thought it was the dog, about to erupt, but then I realized what it was.

Skunk.  Somewhere in the neighborhood, and probably fairly close, a skunk had decided to spray some unfortunate animal.  The entire house smelled of skunk and my dog, with her advanced sense of smell, was suffering the worst.

She ran to the front door and scratched.  She wanted to go outside.  Already dressed, I figured it was still as good a time as any to take her outside, so I attached her leash, opened the door and stepped out onto the stoop. 

I looked up.  The sky was cloudless and filled with stars. 

The dog whined and crawled between my legs. 

I looked down.  Standing on the front lawn, less than four feet away from me, was the skunk.

I froze. 

The skunk didn't move. 

The dog continued to whine.

It was a large skunk.  A well-fed skunk.  Considerably larger than my 21 pound Lhasa Apso. 

Larger than I had ever imagined a skunk to be.

Then the smell hit me.  It had been bad inside the house, but out here, the air reeked of the skunk's scent.  The smell had replaced all other smells.  For a moment, I thought I had already been sprayed. 

I decided to not move.  I'd wait and see what the skunk did first.  I'd be Hamlet, choosing inaction over action. 

I stood there for what felt like a long time.  No, it was a long time. 

Finally, the skunk turned and trotted around the house toward my backyard.

It's Thanksgiving.  I have much to be thankful for today.

Coupons cant terrorize anyone

I love The Daily Beast, but their headlines can occasionally be sensationalized to the point of absurdity. 

Yesterday The Daily Beast reported on a Groupon deal gone bad.  British bakery owner Rachel Brown was forced to hire temporary workers when the 75 percent discount she offered through Groupon on a dozen cupcakes was purchased by more than 8,500 people, amounting to about 100,000 cupcakes in need baking. 

Brown ultimately lost money on the deal.  

The Daily Beast's headline for this story: 

Bakery Terrorized by Groupon Deal

Not only is the headline inaccurate, but the the word terrorize is often used by news agencies in reporting genuine acts of willful intimidation and violence upon individuals and organizations, making The Daily Beast's inaccurate use of the word highly inflammatory as well.

Shame on you, Daily Beast.  

Step in or step away?

I was leaving the gym at 8:20 PM on Monday night, hurrying home to catch the kickoff of the Patriots game, when I noticed a mother and her two sons standing by the wall of soundless television screens that stretch from floor to ceiling. 

The boys were elementary school age, probably second and fourth grade, wearing footed pajamas and holding small pillows.  Mom was ordering them into a pair of cushioned chairs, which she then swiveled around so that her sons were facing the televisions. The boys had the choice of watching basketball, hockey, the NFL pregame show or ESPN news while their mother walked away to begin her workout.

As a teacher of children their age, my initial thought was this:

I'm glad I don't have those boys in my class. 

While their classmates were probably already asleep, these two boys were left  unsupervised in the lobby area of a gym at 8:20 PM on a school night n front of a dozen television screen so their Mom could exercise. 

In their pajamas. 

It's moments like this that I have a difficult time refraining from saying something.  While it's not my business how this mother chooses to parent her children, it is my business. 

Kids are my business.  I work hard every day to ensure that my students will have the brightest futures possible.  I counsel them daily on how the decisions they make today will impact their lives forever.  I tell them that the world is filled with intelligent, talented people who went nowhere because they were unwilling to put in the effort. 

Kids are my business, and they should have been this woman's business, too. But on Monday night, it did not appear that they were. 

This is a problem. 

Eventually, these boys will become a problem, if they aren't already.

Someday they might become my problem. 

It would've been wrong of me to stop this woman before she began her half-hearted leg lifts and warn her about her parental folly.  Not only would it have been rude, but the scene could've gotten ugly fast. 

And besides, kickoff was less than ten minutes away.  I had to get home.

But part of me still thinks I was wrong to not say something that night.  That every time we choose to say nothing in a situation like this, a child suffers. 

Parents have a right to choose how they raise their children, but there comes a time when lines are crossed and people, even strangers, need to step in. 

But was a line crossed on Monday night?

I'm not sure. 

No admittance

When we arrived at the playground, my daughter told told me to stay in the car.

"This is Mommy and Clara's playground," she said.  "You stay here.  You can't come."

Mind you I've been to this particular playground with her many times. 

Eventually you agreed to cede me temporary use of the property after I threatened to take her home.

She may own the playground, but the car is mine.

 

Is good parenting sometimes cruel parenting?

When I was a child, I suffered from a paralyzing form of claustrophobia.  I was unable to put my head under blankets, enter closets, crawl under furniture or hide in the dryer (which my sister often did).

Tight quarters of any kind terrified me.

I'm not sure if I was born with this fear or suffered a traumatic episode at some point as a child, but one of my first memories is a dream in which I am thrown inside a sack by a handful of shadowy men and thrown into the trunk of a car, unable to warn my unsuspecting father as they prepare to attack him. 

I managed to make my way through life relatively unscathed by this fear until my first camping trip as a Cub Scout.  Though I wanted to go camping with my friends, I was also keenly aware that we would be sleeping in tents, and in terms of my claustrophobia, I knew that even stepping inside a tent would be impossible. 

It was also the first and only camping trip attended by my evil stepfather.  I would go on to spend more than 300 nights sleeping outdoors as a Cub Scout and Boy Scout, but this was my one and only chance to have a parent alongside me.  

We were sharing a tent with another family, and when it came time to go to bed on the first night, I panicked.  I poked my head into the tent, large enough for an adult to stand upright, and knew there was no way I could ever sleep inside.

I couldn't bring myself to even enter.  The prospect of spending an entire night in that tent, zipped up and trapped, frightened me like nothing before.  There have been moments in my life when I have been more frightened than that moment, but they are few and far between.   

At first I tired to play off my fear as a desire to sleep under the stars.

When that request was refused, I argued that if I slept outside, there would be more room for everyone else inside the tent.   

When that request was refused, I panicked.  I cried.  I became inconsolable.  Fear and tears and snot mixed in what must have been an ugly combination. 

My evil stepfather gave me two choices:

Sleep in the tent or go home.  He shouted this at me in front of my friends and their parents, mostly fathers but a smattering of mothers, and when I opted for the trip home, he retracted his offer and told me to get inside the tent.

I refused. 

There was yelling.  Crying.  Screaming.  At one point the struggle became became physical.  I looked to the other parents for help, but their eyes were averted from the scene.  Lots of staring at the ground and sudden concern for the loose shoelaces and the cleanliness of the dinner plates. 

Eventually my evil stepfather forced me into the tent and zipped it closed.  His only concession was to allow me to sleep by the door.  I huddled against the zippered door and cried.  Even the confining nature of the sleeping bag frightened me.  I was afraid that if I fell asleep, someone might find a way to zip it closed like the sack in that childhood nightmare and trap me inside.

I lay there against the edge of the tent, my sleeping bag fully unzipped, waiting until the last flashlight was switched off and darkness consumed the tent's interior.  Then I pulled the zipper on the tent door open a single inch and pushed one finger through the opening. 

One finger on the outside while I was trapped inside.  Somehow it made the terror slightly more bearable.   

I spent the night in this position, sleeping very little, if at all. 

I cried and screamed the second night as well, but it was better. 

On the third and final night, I was still sleeping with a finger outside the tent door, and I had cried a bit upon entering the tent, but the panic was gone.  It had been replaced by resignation, anger and shame for how I had behaved on the first two nights. 

As I said, I spent many nights sleeping in tents as a Boy Scout, and it took a long time before I was ever comfortable inside a tent or even a sleeping bag.  Large family-sized tents eventually gave way to smaller, more confining, two-man models, and these posed an especially difficult challenge for me. 

But nothing was ever as bad as that first night with my stepfather, and never again did I require the prodding of an adult to get inside a tent.  While I am sure that the spectacle of that first night remained burned in the minds of my friends and their parents for a long time, I entered every tent after that trip with falsified confidence, a counterfeit smile and a slowly diminishing sense of terror.

I remain claustrophobic today, though only slightly. The only time I ever feel that panicked sense of confinement is when I am in a large crowd, unable to move freely.  Closets and sleeping bags no longer frighten me, and if I could fit inside the dryer, I think I'd be fine in there as well. 

In many ways, I began to overcome my claustrophobia on that first night of camping as a Cub Scout when my stepfather forced me to face my fear. 

Was it right for him to force me inside that tent?

Was it right for him to embarrass me in front of my Cub Scout troop?

Could he have handled the situation more deftly?  He was, after all, a psychiatric social worker and occasionally worked with children.

Was this really the best strategy to help a kid overcome an unreasonable fear?

I'm not sure.  While I am certain that I would handle the situation differently as a parent, with considerably less anger, physicality and volume, I sometimes think that this was the best thing, and perhaps the only good thing, that my evil stepfather ever did for me. 

Had he allowed me to go home that night, I might have quit Scouting altogether and missed out on some of the best moments of my childhood.

Had he allowed me to sleep under the stars, I suspect that my fear for the tent would have only grown larger and more difficult to manage in subsequent camping trips.        

It makes me sad to think about that nine-year old version of myself, crammed against the door of the tent, alone, a single finger extended into the cold, autumn air.  But had it not been for that long night of terror, I might still be suffering from this paralyzing fear today.

Is good parenting sometimes cruel parenting? 

As a parent, I hope to have the courage to do the right thing for my daughter when the easy thing would be to coddle and protect her. 

But perhaps there is a middle ground.

A space between coddling and the actions of my evil stepfather that might serve to help my daughter while not leaving her alone, ashamed and afraid. 

Either way, I think I am grateful to my evil stepfather for forcing me to face my fear that night. 

Maybe.

Best

I had a thought.

My daughter and I were standing at the top of the slide.  The sun was setting.  It was unseasonably warm.  Geese were flying overhead. 

Clara reached over, grabbed my cheeks, and pulled me in for a kiss. Then she counted to three and pushed me down the slide.

A second later she followed.  She and I piled up at the bottom of the slide in a tangled, giggling pile.

"Again!" Clara screamed as she disentangled herself from me. 

As she began to climb back up the slide, it suddenly occurred to me:

Has any moment in my life been better than this one?

I didn't think so. 

A few may have been comparable, but none have ever been better.  

That's a pretty good feeling. 

 

MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND: Foreign news

Two exciting pieces of foreign news related to my upcoming MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND:

1.  The UK audio rights to the book have been purchased by WF Howes, an audio and large print publisher based in Leicestershire, England.  Since the story is told in the first person, this means that Budo (my protagonist) will presumably be speaking with a British accent.

I cannot wait to hear this. 

2.  My Italian publisher has hired the translator of JK Rowling's HARRY POTTER novels to translate MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND.  

In the words of my agent:

"This is a pretty big deal. Unlike the in the US, translators' names hold weight in Europe, so this adds a recognition factor to your book.  Plus the translator is supposedly one of the BEST!"

Unless I learn Italian, I'll never be able to judge the quality of the translation, but it's wonderful to hear that my book will be in the company of Rowling's masterpiece.

At least in Italy.

In translation.

On an unrelated note, my second novel, UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO took another baby step this week on its journey to film adaptation. 

Nothing is even close to definite yet, but the chances of seeing Milo on the big screen became slightly more probable this week.   

Good things apparently come in threes. 

Keeping it off

A new study conducted by the National Weight Control Registry examined about 3,000 men and women who managed to maintain the bulk of their weight loss for at least 10 years.

Over the last two years, I have managed to lose a total of 53 pounds and have yet to put any of the weight back on.

Nor will I. 

Participants in the NWCR study identified the following strategies to assist in maintaining weight loss:  

Count calorie or fat grams or use a commercial weight-loss program to track food intake

For the first year, I used an iPhone app called Lose It in order to track my calories, but I eventually became proficient enough to count calories without the help of technology.  I can now roughly determine the number of calories for almost any meal and can quickly total the day's calories mentally.

But learning to count calories was essential to my success.  It cannot be underscored.   

Follow a low-calorie, low-fat diet. They take in about 1,800 calories a day and less than 30% of calories from fat.

I never followed this rule.  I simply counted calories.  I also take in up to 3,000-4,000 calories per day but compensate by exercising daily. 

Eat breakfast regularly

Always. 

Limit the amount they eat out. They dine out an average of three times a week and eat fast food less than once a week.

I did not follow this rule either.  Again, I simply counted calories.  If I was going to eat a fast food meal for dinner, I ate a light lunch.

Also, I eat fast food almost everyday.  My breakfast is almost always an Egg McMuffin, hash brown and Diet Coke.      

Eat similar foods regularly and don't splurge much on holidays and special occasions

It's true that I often eat similar foods.  The same breakfast almost everyday and oftentimes the same lunch.  But I was never concerned with splurging on holidays or special occasions.  If I did so, I ate smaller meals in the following day or exercised more. 

Walk about an hour a day or burn the same calories with other activities

I exercise every day, almost without exception, for at least 30 minutes.

Watch fewer than 10 hours of TV a week

I watch far fewer than 10 hours of TV most weeks.

Weigh themselves at least once a week

I weigh myself daily.

I'm often asked how I managed to lose so much weight.  My answer is simple:

I eat a little less, and I exercise every day. 

I get the sense that this answer does not satisfy a lot of people. 

I think they'd rather hear that I ate bacon and tree bark and took hot yoga classes for six months.