Scott Nagele's Blog, page 5

Snow day: use it or lose it

Yesterday was our first school snow day of the year. I’m not sure why it was a snow day. There wasn’t a particularly large volume of snow. Maybe the school system needed to use up the days before they were lost to spring weather. This meant I had to take a vacation day from work […]

Baked goods in the key of C: a musical prequel

Last post, I wrote about my son bouncing from instrument to instrument in his school’s music program. Since this seems to be a genetic condition, it’s fair I explain how he inherited his musical vagrancy. In sixth grade, three friends and I decided to become drummers. The music teacher needed tuba players, but tubas weren’t […]

The little pianist, violinist, clarinetist, drummer boy

Our guest room has transformed into a percussion studio. There’s a snare drum, a marimba-ish/xylophony instrument, a drum pad, and assorted sticks and mallets where once there was a peaceful rest for weary guests. Big Brother, the artist formerly known as a clarinetist, and even more formerly known as a violinist, and still kind of […]

Give it the old middle school try

There’s an old American phrase: “Give it the old college try.” If you are not American and old, you may not have heard it. To give it the old college try means to lend a task your best effort, even if you believe the challenge may go beyond your abilities. Saturday morning, we woke up […]

Drive-through chaos

When I was childless, I dreaded getting stuck behind a minivan in a fast food drive-through. It took fast right out of the equation. It still does. Now I am the slug driving the minivan. I still hate the combination of minivans and drive-throughs. It’s better to be stuck behind the minivan than stuck in […]

Counting life by tens

When it’s a new year, we look forward. When it’s a new year, especially one that ends in zero, some of us look back. I’m a backward gazer. January 1970 I was a toddler, about a year away from starting my first job. It’s possible farm kids enter the workforce sooner. My first job entailed […]

How many days ‘til Christmas?

How many days ‘til Christmas? I get asked that a lot lately. Mostly it’s Big Man asking the question. His Kindergarten class hasn’t worked their way up to subtraction from such a lofty number as 25 yet. Sometimes Buster will ask me. He knows how to subtract from 25, but why should he have to, […]

The burden of helpful children

If you live among deciduous trees, you know dry leaves are much easier to clean up than wet leaves are. If you live with an 11-year-old, you know this is the sort of fact he must learn the hard way. There are many, many things an 11-year-old has not learned yet. He has learned it’s […]

The opposable thumb of our family

Buster and Big Man got into a debate, separate and apart from the many outright fights they have over LEGOs, somebody calling somebody else Butt Cheek, or the billion other potential provocations. This debate involved no hitting or kicking, probably because I intervened before it had a chance to run its normal course. The debate […]

When you wish upon a chicken bone

A couple of Sundays ago we smoked a whole chicken. After all the meat was cut off, I showed Buster and Big Man the wishbone. I explained that if two people tugged at the wishbone, the person who got the bigger piece when it broke could make a wish. Buster was lukewarm to this chicken […]