Long Shrift

eye on the ball

I'm not saying we're the Sedentaries, but it was definitely weird to see all three of in exercise gear at 8 am on a Saturday morning - Jenny going for a run, and Quinn and I heading off to baseball practice.

(I was slightly surprised to find that there isn't a band called the Sedentaries - I'm thinking some kind of slacker band along the lines of Cake or Soul Coughing. There does seem to be a lonely Facebook page, though.)

Of the three of us, I'll definitely be getting the least exercise, standing around while Quinn practices his batting and fielding. I'm no athlete: I haven't regularly exercised since high school, and the only sweatpants I had served as pajamas. Now, at least, I think I at least blend in with the other dads at the ballpark, or at least they're polite enough not to snicker.

Watching Quinn catch and throw, you may think that he's got a chance to overcome both heredity and environment. But when he bats, he can't seem to keep his feet planted: when the ball comes, he pivots and steps forward, as if swinging a sword at the knees of an invisible assailant. Sometimes he connects, and sometimes, like this morning, the ball rolls up the bat and into his face.

Frank, the coach, got to him first. "You OK?"

"Yeah," Quinn sniffed, between tears.

"You ever been hit in the face before?"

"Yeah, the other day my dad threw a ball at my face."

I look up into the faces of the other dads, most of whom look back with understanding nods. But there's one dad who regards me through narrowed eyes. I suspect he's going to tell his kid to stay away from the grownup with the new sweatpants.

(After a minute, Quinn regained his composure and was back in the game, and even wanted to stay after practice to work on his swing. The ball didn't even leave a bruise.)

bears repeating

Today was one of those days when our son puts us through the entire emotional spectrum.

He stayed overnight at Grandma and Grandpa's house, and he was all smiles and frenetic energy when we went to pick him up. On the drive home, Jenny looked at Quinn in the rearview mirror. "I understand Grandma got a little upset with you. Do you want to tell Daddy what that was about?"

This probably won't come as a surprise, but my wife and I are not thrilled with Governor Walker. We try not to be vitriolic about it in Quinn's presence, but like other 6-year-olds, he picks up more than he lets on. If he asks questions about politics, we try to explain the issue as best as we can. More than once I've tried to explain that while Walker is doing some bad things, he's not a bad person. (Granted, I may not be able to do that with the utmost sincerity.)

In our family, progressives are in the minority, and Quinn's grandparents are definitely on the conservative end of the spectrum. At family gatherings, the kids provide plenty of fodder for conversation, so we rarely go near politics. But while Quinn was over at Grandma and Grandpa's, Walker somehow came up, and Quinn called Walker stupid, and a bad man, and probably some other things as well. This happened twice during Quinn's stay, and Grandma in particular wasn't happy.

I was furious with him. We've always called Quinn out if he referred to someone or some thing as stupid or bad. To blurt out some derogatory comment about Walker (apparently, the quote was "Walker? Blech!") is unkind, and shows a lack of respect for the people who think Walker is doing the right things. Like the ones that were babysitting him for the day.

I fumed for a few miles, realizing that we were largely to blame. Maybe we could do a better job of teaching Quinn to keep an open mind. He's seen us react when protesters in Madison were on TV. Many of our friends feel the same way about politics as we do, and I'm sure I've said some less-than-kind things about Walker while Quinn played a few yards away.

And, of course, he's six years old, and he deals in absolutes: the Force comes in light and dark, games are won or lost. There aren't many debatable topics for him, outside of whether or not bedtime has arrived or if he should consider blowing his nose one more time.

The day rolled on. At his swimming class, he managed to successfully do the front crawl and the back crawl, and I swelled with pride. After getting home, we decided to play catch in the backyard, and about thirty seconds after warning him not to use his head as a backstop, of course he did exactly that. Then we sat on the sofa for a while and watched Cash Cab, one of our favorite shows. (One of the questions was about how the US Postal Service, in order to commemorate some new Star Wars stamps, decorated hundreds of mailboxes in the image of a certain droid. Quinn and I would've lasted longer than those two contestants did.) Later, we all decorated Easter eggs, and before we knew it, it was bedtime.

At school, Quinn has 'tenth days' - if a student is well-behaved for the day, they get a sticker; at the end of ten days, they get to take a prize from the toy chest. The toy chest holds the kind of stuff you'd get out of a happy meal, but getting that tenth sticker has become a big deal. We thought we'd do something similar at home, but instead of giving him, say, notepads with pharmaceutical logos on them, he'd earn a reward like getting to pick what we're going to have for dinner, or whether to take a field trip to the museum or the zoo.

Quinn could've earned his first tenth-day sticker from us, but he forfeited that after getting Grandma upset. Again, we explained how people with other ideas aren't necessarily wrong, and why it's important to respect the opinions of others. Next time, we said, take it as an opportunity to ask Grandma why she likes Walker, or why she believes he's doing the right thing.

I realize that we're asking Quinn to do some things that we wouldn't expect of many adults, ourselves included.We want him to make a distinction between complex, subjective issues with many shades of gray, and things that are just plain wrong. To calmly and patiently listen to someone espouse a viewpoint contradictory to his own, without betraying boredom or revulsion. Worse, we're expecting him to know something that we can't teach him: when he'll have to start thinking for himself, even if that leads him to values that are contrary to how he was raised.

In short, we want it all: we want him to be raised by the village, and leave it to him to figure out who the village idiots are, and be polite to them anyway... especially if they're his parents.

democracy is in a hallway by the men's room

Usually we go to Florida around Easter, a longstanding tradition from my wife's side of the family, but that didn't work out this year. We decided to take the time off anyway, and to start off by taking a long weekend in Madison. We'd see some friends, maybe walk around in the State Capitol with some painter's tape and do a few hundred thousand dollars' worth of damage.

I found out that Sarah Palin was also going to be in Madison, but sadly, we missed her. I had been hoping I could get her to sign my new t-shirt. It's clear that Palin, who denounced the anti-Walker demonstrators as out-of-state 'rent-a-mobs', would not have understood the irony.

Our first night in town, we had dinner with a couple of friends who are public employees. They're thoughtful, well-read, and liberal - in other words, enemies of the state. We saw firsthand how their lavish lifestyle - driving aging cars, adopting two children from overseas - is destroying our state's economy. They should be ashamed.

Sunday, we were to meet my wife's cousin at a restaurant near the Capitol. I will admit that although I have a smartphone, I rarely do a lot of smart things with it, so I decided to use Google Maps to figure out how to get there. We walked around the square the long way, because even Google's billions of dollars cannot adequately compensate for my poor sense of direction. There were a handful of people carrying protest signs, and one elderly gentleman with a tape measure who seemed preoccupied with determining how wide the sidewalks were. (Maybe the Fitzgerald brothers' uncle landed a public works job.)

The afternoon and the evening passed pleasantly - an excellent lunch at the Great Dane followed by dinner at the Old Fashioned. Still chuffed with myself over using Google Maps, I decided to try something else I had never done: check in on Facebook. I discontinued the practice later, after my brother writes:

I keep getting these little notices of where you are? Is that on purpose? are you lost and waiting to be found? wth?

On Monday morning, our last day, we walked into the Capitol. Although my wife and I had been to Madison several times in the past, this was the first time we had ever been inside. Quinn was mildly impressed by the art and architecture, but as soon as another kid pointed out that you can see some fossils in the stone, he managed to find evidence of dinosaurs everywhere. It's an awesome thing to see, and it pains me to think about what Walker is trying to do in there. As we walked in, we said it would be cool if we were to run into our representatives and get a chance to thank them. I didn't realize how serious my wife was until we were standing outside Chris Larson's office. We hemmed and hawed for a minute - I didn't want to interrupt the guy, he certainly has other things on his mind - but there goes my wife, knocking on the door, and turning the ornate doorknob.

Larson wasn't there, but half a dozen staffers were jammed into a small office. One of the staffers offered to show us Larson's modest office. My wife asked how offices were assigned, and the staffer explained that the priority is given to the majority party, and then by seniority... and Larson, as the newest Democratic senator, got the last pick. While this ground-floor office is relatively easy to get to, it also stands next to the men's bathroom, which can be something of a zoo when school tours are coming through. (In case you were wondering, the second-worst office is next to the women's room, where the crowds are slightly more demure.)

The staffer who showed us the office and patiently engaged in a conversation with our 6-year-old was incredibly nice, and never gave us the impression that he had anything better to do with his time. Quinn carries around a leather pouch on a string, which is filled with, well, the junk that a 6-year-old accumulates. As Quinn pulled out some Silly Bands and a miniature flashlight, the staffer asked Quinn if it was a Native American medicine bag; Quinn explained that it was actually a European man bag.  On the way out, we made a point of thanking the staffers.

A stop at Ella's Deli for lunch, and we were on our way home. We had a good time in Madison, which seems closer to Milwaukee than I remembered.