Fun With Naked Dolls

As I’ve mentioned before, Paige has an email distribution list that she has used to keep people apprised of “kid stuff” for years. Here’s her entry from a couple days ago. And let the record show that, as in real life, I have a very strong preference for Miss Brunette.

Last night I was giving Hollis a bath. He had asked if he could play in the tub for a while (as opposed to the drive-by baths he gets many times at the end of long days).  I told him that he could play in the tub for a good long while.  I ran the water, and as he was getting in he asked if he could have some people.  Now, people means dolls. I am not particularly hung up on whether he has Barbie or Bratz (super slutty looking dolls) or My Scene to play with, but I started to worry a little at first.  All of the dolls are naked, and some of them have a less than optimal number of limbs or perhaps less than 100% of the existing limbs. He said, "oh, let's have a contest!"  He was taking each doll and putting her under the water and swishing her around.  Then he was pulling her out of the water so that her hair was smooth, and he was saying, "OK, now, let me smooth your hair."  Then he said, "OK, which one is the prettiest?" 

At this point I am thinking........  Maybe, just maybe giving him Hadley's "My Little Pony" castle with all of the "My Little Ponies" was not such a great call.  And maybe, just maybe letting Hadley dress him up and force him to play the female part in a number of plays was not a great idea.

But then we continued with our game.  He asked me to rate the brunette doll. 

Mom:  What is the scale, like what is the highest number?

Hollis:  Ten billion

Mom:  Let's go with an easier scale like one to ten, with ten being the highest.

Hollis: How about 100?

Mom: Sure.

Hollis:  Ok, rate Miss Brunette and also Miss Blonde.

Mom:  Well, I think that the hair on Miss Brunette is probably an 85 and Miss Blonde is like an 80.

Hollis:  WHAT?  Are you kidding me?

Mom:  No, why?  How would you rate Miss Brunette?

Hollis:  Maybe, a 20.

Mom:  Really?  Out of 100?  What about Miss Blonde?

Hollis: 100, of course, ohhhhhhhh (picture a far away look in his eye and borderline drooling) she is sooooooooooooo pretty.

Mom:  Yes, she is.  I take it that you like Blondes (I ask with a sense of relief at this ever so hetero response to the doll)?

Hollis:  Oh, yes. 

Mom:  Are there any blondes in your class?  Like Allison?  She's a blonde.  Is she cute?

Hollis:  Yes, she is.  Pause.......... But not like THESE girls.  These girls are sooooooooooo, ahhhhhhhhhh, man, pretty.  So, let's see how well they can fight!!!!!!!!!!

After a bit of fighting between naked Miss Brunette and naked Miss Blonde (with Miss Blonde winning of course)..........

Holllis: Hey, Mom, is there a guy in the drawer over there?  He has one leg.

Mom:  Yes here you go.

He then had Miss Blonde making eyes at One Leg Guy. 

Hollis as One Leg Man: Oh, come away with me across the sea!

Hollis as Miss Blonde: (in a higher voice) Oh, you are so good with poetry.

Hollis as One Leg Man: Thanks, I practice.

My concern over Hollis being interested playing with "people" was outweighed by the fact that he was finding naked Barbie-looking dolls to be ever so attractive.  I do see some Jell-O wrestling and some major rejection over poor pick-up lines in his future.

The Two-Dog Lie

Every year, there is a fresh crop of students and former students who tell me that they are “getting a puppy (!!!!) and OH MY GOSH DR. WILKINS I AM SO INCREDIBLY EXCITED ABOUT IT but wait maybe I should get TWO OF THEM because then my little precious will have a playmate while I’m at WORK/SCHOOL/BOOTCAMP!!!!” A good portion of these people then say “What do you think???!!!!” ... to which I always respond, “I think it’s a stupid idea”. I am nothing if not honest. And blunt.

And maybe two-faced.

In my defense, when I was doing it myself there were no exclamation points and I was not remotely motivated by the desire for Dog #1 to have a playmate. It just sorta happened. Our last labrador (Morgan -- many of you knew her) went to the Clearing at the End of the Path in November of 2008. At the time I vowed No More Animal Life at the house, because Morgan was dog perfection and I had no desire whatsoever to bring in any new blood. My thinking was, we’ve always had Labradors and this was the last / best of them (a good one to end on, in other words), and our lives are pure chaos anyway so maybe it would be good to just take that variable out of the model.

Wellllll ... about 4-6 weeks later, Paige started talking about dogs -- Rescue Dogs, in particular. My initial thought was are you kidding me no no no no absolutely not I do NOT want another animal right now AT ALL -- particularly not some random Rescue Dog that has had who-knows-what done to it (I know, I know, it’s a good cause and all that but still ...). But after talking about it some, I figured it probably would be OK and we decided to do some investigating. Within a week or so, Paige had located what she claimed was the perfect dog, from one of the Houston area Lab Rescue organizations. At roughly the same time, our next-door neighbors had a visitor who just happened to be in possession of a 3-month old yellow Labrador puppy. I was in the backyard when the puppy was out, and our neighbor passed him through the fence to me. I took him inside (like a complete idiot) and put him down on the floor, and of course the kids went absolutely nuts. After all, there is nothing -- and I do mean NOTHING (including your first-born child) -- that is cuter than a fat, huge-pawed Labrador puppy.

You can feel the Perfect Storm brewing, right?

That very afternoon, we called the top breeder in the area and sure enough wouldn’t you know it by golly they had a fresh litter of super-high-end Field Trial pups. We drove out immediately, looked them over (thereby sealing our fate), and I intentionally chose the smallest, most docile 3-week-old of the bunch. Meanwhile back at the ranch, Paige is saying, “Ummmmmmmmm ... this isn’t going to have any impact on the Rescue Dog situation is it? Because, y’know, we’re RESCUING him and I’m sure he’s counting on us at this point. It just wouldn’t be right to NOT get him. Besides, they can keep each other company and play together while we’re at WORK/SCHOOL/BOOTCAMP!!!!!!!!” 

And then I feel the Barney Fife uniform dropping down on me and the door clicking shut behind me and I know that no matter what I do, there is no way that I will be able to reach the key hanging on the wall outside of my cell.

So Bo (the two year-old Rescue Dog) came to live with us. He hung out outside. He came in when we indicated that it was OK (after politely asking if we were quite sure this was allowed and wiping his paws carefully on the mat). He gracefully hopped up on the couch and sat next to Paige when we watched movies. He went into his kennel at 10:30 p.m. and loved it there and actually had to be coaxed out in the morning. He never moved at more than a walk. Ever. He would sit there, dead still, and let you pet him for as long as you wanted and would then look up at you and say “thank you very much ... that was very kind of you ... would you like me to calmly walk over to the door and go outside or would you prefer that I calmly walk over to my kennel and retire for a while or maybe you’d rather I calmly lie here in case you decide you’d like to come back in four or five hours and pet me again?”

It was unbelievable. We actually treated him for a marginal thyroid problem because he was TOO CALM. No joke. He acted like he was part sloth.

A month or so later, Mia arrived in all her glory. We have always had well-bred Labradors because I used to do a lot of duck hunting here in Texas and a lot of desert quail hunting in Arizona. I like trainable dogs and I like really smart dogs, and Mia most definitely is both of those things. But Mia’s bloodlines are Different. Very Different. The smart money says there is an ADHD greyhound in the woodpile somewhere. Or a racehorse ... or maybe a Tasmanian Devil (the cartoon kind). When she was 4-5 months old, we called her Spawn of Satan. She’s now a little over a year old and she has not slowed down a bit. When I take her running with me, after three miles or so I look down and she hasn’t even begun to think about panting. The look I get is more like “OK, I’ve shown you that I can heel at a trot for 25 minutes ... any chance you’d be willing to unsnap that leash so I can actually get some cardio work in?” Having owned this breed exclusively for 20 years, I KNOW that high energy in young Labradors is the norm. But seriously, this is completely ridiculous.

Anyway, there could hardly be two more different dogs than Bo and Mia. Or at least that’s what I used to think. If you’d been at my house in January of 2009 and then decided to pop back in for a visit tomorrow, you’d probably come in and ask where Bo is. I’d go open the door to the backyard, let the two dogs in, and after you’d been leveled a couple of times by the black-and-yellow tornado, you’d say, “No seriously ... where is Bo?” The black dog would then (hearing his name) sprint to your side with a crazed look in his eyes (and a yellow dog nipping at his heels), you would notice that this specimen does, indeed, bear a striking physical similarity to the sloth-dog you’d seen 14 months before, and then you’d probably comment that the demon that Jesus cast out of the possessed guy and that subsequently sent an entire herd of pigs to their death seems to be pretty comfortable in its new home. 

So in other words, my answer remains, rather emphatically, that getting two dogs so that they can keep each other company (or whatever other reason you decide to fabricate) is not the greatest of ideas. The activity-slash-destruction function is not remotely linear. Two dogs ruin the yard at least three times as quickly as one dog does. Two dogs tear up four or five times as much junk in the house as one dog does. Two guinea pigs? Fine. They’re in cages. We have that setup and it works. Two of those worthless little rodent dogs that you can dress up in doll clothes and carry around in a lunchbox? That might be OK too. I dunno. Double the annoying yappy barking, double the cheese bill ... it might work. But if we’re talking about animals that could survive for 24 hours on their own in the wild, I tend to think that the Magic Number probably is 1.

Editor’s Note: No, the author of this post does not regret getting two dogs. But there is absolutely no question that if Bo could push Mia in front of a bus or arrange to have her water bucket filled with Prestone, he would.

Unhappy with a Hat Trick?

Hadley hates losing. No, I mean she really, really hates losing. In the semi-finals of their weekend tournament today, they got thoroughly spanked by a team in the top division and she was as mad after the game as I’ve ever seen her (about soccer, anyway). At least some of the parents know this and are accustomed to it. As she was walking purposefully (i.e., storming) off the field today, one of the parents told her she played well. Her response was “mmthxmm” and she didn’t even look up at him ... or slow down. He smiled and, I’m sure, chalked it up to Hadley being Hadley (note: I absolutely LOVE the parents of the kids on our team). I’ve told Hadley this is rude and she needs to be a bit more gracious, and actually she usually does pretty well with that. I guess today was just too much.

About a month ago, Hadley’s coach sent me a message after one of their tournament games. They had just tied a game, hadn’t played particularly well, and of course Hadley was not real happy with that. At all. He knows how competitive she is and requested that she write a paragraph about why she loves winning and hates losing so much (I believe he read it to the team at halftime of the next game). I’ve shared this with a few people but thought I’d go ahead and include it in the blog for Posterity’s sake. So here it is:

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Why I Love Winning So Much and Hate Losing So Much

by Hadley Wilkins

I love winning because it makes me feel really good. I love competing and I don't understand why people would play if they don't think winning is the most important thing ever. I like running down the field and hearing people cheer. I don't like it when people just jog after balls because you're just going to lose if you don't hustle. I love winning and I like winning by a whole lot, not just 2-1 or something because that means that you're really a lot better than the other team.

I hate ties and I don't understand why we don't always do penalty kicks if there is a tie. I hate seeing the other team score and cheer and brag and jump all over each other and I really, really hate the feeling I have when we walk off the field after losing. I don't really like people telling me that I played a good game after we lost because obviously we didn't play good enough.

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The reason I returned to this writeup for today’s entry relates to their first tournament game on Saturday morning. In the opening round, Hadley’s team played a team from Waco that was comprised of younger (by a year or two) girls. We didn’t really play well at all, but it didn’t matter. We won 3-0 and Hadley scored all three goals. After the game, I asked her what she thought about it and she didn’t seem excited at all. She actually seemed down. When I pressed her on it, she said she hoped they would play girls their own age in the next round because playing the younger girls didn’t seem fair.

Excuse me?

Whatever happened to “I love winning and I like winning by a whole lot”? And maybe even more telling, whatever happened to wanting to score a lot? When Hadley was 6, her team won a game by forfeit and while all of the other girls were jumping up and down and cheering because they could go back home and watch cartoons and play with their dolls, Hadley was sitting on the ground by herself, crying because she wanted to play (translated: she wanted to score). And in what quite possibly could be the best coaching line to date, in Saturday’s second round game Hadley’s coach told one of the other girls who has a very strong leg but isn’t quite as offensively minded as she probably should be that she “needs to want to shoot like Hadley does!!”

Thoroughly. Awesome.

Hadley has gotten waaaaaay better about passing the ball during the past 2-3 years, but still ... she’s never seen a shot she didn’t like. So that’s why I couldn’t quite wrap my arms around her being disappointed about getting a hat trick against a worse team. I guess it’s just a part of the maturation process. And obviously maturing is good. Now if we can just work on extending it to post-game interactions with well-meaning adults ... :)

Finally, lest you think that Hadley is getting tooooooo mature, the pre-game McDonald’s hotcakes-and-sausage conversation should ease your mind:

Me: So did you know anybody from yesterday afternoon’s team?

Hadley: Yeah ... one girl is Molly’s sister.

Me: Molly? (thinking ... best friends are Athena, Sidney, and Lauren)

Hadley: Yeah ... you know, Molly ... our codename for (insert name of Boy X)

Me: You have a codename for this boy?

Hadley: Yeah, so he doesn’t know we’re talking about him.

Me: Is he cute?

Hadley: I think so. Athena thinks he’s more off and on.

Me: Are you gonna marry him?

Hadley: I dunno. Probably not.

Me: Why?

Hadley: Because I don’t know what he’s gonna do or what he’s gonna look like.

Me: (laughing)

Hadley: I’m going to marry a guy who is super-good looking and super-rich so I can just be a teacher or something.

Me: Nice to have aspirations.

Hadley: Yeah, but I’ll get my Ph.D. anyway just to make myself feel good.

Awesome.

Getting Old

I really like my students.  A lot.

Believe it or not, they are what (who) keeps me relatively sane an awful lot of the time. Several of the students that I like with two or more “reallys” (and who I think are particularly well suited for the job) end up being recruited (AFTER finishing my class) into the Babysitting Brigade. At any point in time, there are likely to be 7-8 of these individuals on campus who are just a text message away from being called into service. It’s kinda like the National Guard, I guess. Y’know, they’re getting paid to pretend to be Moms, but they don’t usually get shot at. Anyway, my kids adore them, they are great role models (the babysitters, not my kids), and they give Paige and me the opportunity to get away from the house and pretend NOT to be adults every once in a while. As a result, they basically are my favorite people ever.

One of the most endearing / amusing things about these people (and my students in general, babysitters or no) is their willingness to be totally frank with me ... about absolutely anything. So today, I got a  message from a former student / member of the Babysitting Brigade / person with at least five or six (possibly more) “reallys” associated with her cool factor that read ...

*****

Hey,

So I have a question: Where do old people in this town go? And when I say “old people” I’m asking about people as old or older than you.  :)  What do they do?  I need to find out how to best market to these people but as of now I don’t know what these country type townies do LOL.

*****

I’ve omitted the specific context of the note to protect the innocent (or guilty, as it were), so if you’re here at A&M just be suspicious of every PPA student you know ... particularly if she gets giggly when you mention Chuck Bass.

Why on earth do I remember these things? Good grief ...

Anyway, in response, I typed the following message to her:

*****

Dear Young Whippersnapper,

Unless I am misremembering, this is the second time you've asked me a question of this nature during our brief, but certainly illustrious, relationship. (Editor’s Note: This is a true statement.)

First, Paige said to tell you that we stay home and count our wrinkles.

Second, I have very, very few friends my own age in "this town" or any other, so I can't really speak for the broad population. Paige and I go out once a week, whenever possible. When we go out, we go to dinner and a movie and then pretty much come straight home so that the babysitter du jour can get on with her life and go have a good time being young and all that. Sometimes, if we have enough time between dinner and the movie, we'll (gasp) go to a coffee shop or something ... but if we push it too far, we'll invariably have to pull out the supplementary oxygen and maybe even stop off at Walgreen's for a free blood pressure check en route to the theater. Being reminded of one’s mortality tends to put a damper on the evening, though, so usually we just play it safe, head over to the theater a little early, and sit down to enjoy some fresh air and talk about how expensive things have gotten and how there was too much food at the restaurant and how we could very easily have gotten one entree and split it between us thank you very much and wow wasn’t that crossword puzzle in today’s paper difficult (it’s Friday, you know, and they do get harder as the week goes on) ... and my goodness can you believe how short that young lady’s skirt is (if you could even call it that). 

Y’know, standard old people talk.

In a perfect (or at least vastly improved) world, I would live in College Station during the week and Tucson or Seattle or Paris on the weekends. Obviously I love live music (there is none here, clearly, but we go to Austin / Houston / Dallas when we can), I like ballet / theatre (ditto), etc. ... but my students happen to be in College Station. So there you have it.

I suspect that if you were to pose the same question to a random sampling of people in this town who have somehow managed to defy the Grim Reaper for as long as I have, the typical response would be something along the lines of ... "we do stuff with (translated, “for”) our kids ... and then if there's time and we have any energy left, we do laundry". Hadley plays competitive soccer, which occupies 20+ weekends during the year in some form or fashion ... and she's just one person (technically). The other parents of the girls on her soccer team have multiple kids, all of whom are involved in a lot more stuff than ours are. That, combined with the fact that -- 20 years down the line -- I’m still crazy about her, means that Paige and I "date" WAAAAAY more than anyone I know who is anywhere near our age.

Bottom line?

Getting old blows. 

As I've told you, personally, since your accounting “misgivings” on Class Day #1 -- do what you want to do (not what people tell you that you SHOULD do) ... travel (maybe even be ... I dunno ... a travel writer?? Editor’s Note: inside joke) ... and have fun (responsibly). Once you have kids, things are different. 

Very. 

Not BAD. Not even worse. They’re dead cool in a whole different way. But they’re different. 

Honestly, I wouldn't trade places with ANYONE that I know ("old" or not). But it's most definitely not like being 22. At least not the version of 22 that I remember.

:)

Sincerely,

Geezer