Nearly One

Oliver will be a year old in a couple of weeks. It's been quite a year, and all I can really say about it is one, he's such an even-tempered boy that he's done a lot more to make things run smoothly than I have, and two I turned out to be the only one who doesn't use his nickname "Opie"* despite being the one who coined it.

We live in a thoroughly middle-class milieu out here, and kiddie birthday parties are almost perfect expressions of petit bourgeois anxieties. The trick is to be almost stupidly extravagant toward a child who would just as happily spend an hour in a puddle of mud while also creating a situation where one can engage in performative anguish over the possibility that little Ayden Alkonqin Stabbler-Dershovitz might end up accidentally sipping a drachm of undiluted orange-kiwi juice, which can lead to such problems as hyperactivity, kidney failure, morbid obesity, a state university education, and marrying an unassimiliated Latina who wants a church wedding.

To resolve this important issue, I'm taking the kid to Vegas. I'm a guest at a small but enthusiastic one-day convention called The Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival, and we got a per diem and a two-night stay at Bally's. So I'll stake the baby and plop him down at a punto banco table and see what happens. As I am a good father, I'll only let him smoke one cigar for every $500 he brings me.

Anyway, if you're in Vegas on Saturday the first, come and see me.









*For Oliver Panagiotis