Dad Entry #94

The kids love school supplies. They'd rather shop in the school supplies aisle at Target than the toy department. It’s a new obsession with playing school, I guess. Sara and I are cool with it; we figure there are worse things to be obsessed about than school. So I bought piles of pens and pencils in China and brought them home as gifts. It’s what they asked for, and they’re less expensive over there, mechanical pencils, glitter markers, highlighters, Post-it notes, and so on. Again, better it be school and art supplies than other things they could ask for like candy or cheap plastic toys or weapons. Michael hasn't asked for Chinese throwing stars yet. Or nunchucks. But it won't be long; I gave him a deck of cards with 54 different images of Shaolin Monks doing Kung Fu. HI-YA! I will introduce him to Bruce Lee soon. And Donnie Yen.

Michael and his 2nd grade class - and Megan too, since Mommy was a chaperone - went on a field trip to the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History. So last night Megan said, "Dad, did you know a long, long time ago in Egypt, they didn’t wear underpants?" I said, “Really, that's interesting, how do you know?” Megan said, “I saw it at the museum on Michael’s field trip, there was a picture of an Egypt man, and he was naked.” Megan must've really studied the hieroglyphic symbols and drawings at the Egyptian tomb exhibit. But then I thought, Were the man's private parts depicted somehow, in that weird Picasso-esque 2-dimensional drawing style, commonly used by Egyptian artists? And then I thought, Why couldn't the Pharaoh find someone who could draw with more of a 3-D rendering effect? And then I thought, Megan gets her ADHD from me, obviously. Whatever, at least the stick figure drawing with male private parts was not anatomically confusing for Megan, like, say, the drawings of Egyptian men with dog heads. Uh-oh, I just teed that up for the ladies, didn't I? A man with a dog head isn't confusing at all... yeah, yeah.

Michael knows how to use Microsoft PowerPoint. No kidding. He said he knew how and when I was incredulous, he said, "I'll show you." So I opened PowerPoint on my PC and handed it to him and he proceeded to create a slide about Megan. He selected a layout and design, then he entered some text about her favorite things and added a clip art image. Wow. He's going to sit me down soon and project a few slides on the wall, or maybe route it via HDMI to our flatscreen, where he'll use a laser pointer to walk me through a presentation in PowerPoint complete with a spreadsheet and graph of the payment schedule he's proposing for the big allowance he deserves, with competitive bids and valuations and accounting for the chores he'll perform, followed by a pareto of how he'll spend the money. My son. He's very cerebral. I was giving him some reminders about baseball at his game on Saturday, in between innings. Michael played 3rd base and afterwards I pointed out to him, "Hey man, when the ball is hit to someone else, remember to cover your base. Especially if there's a runner on 2nd, he might advance to 3rd and someone might try to throw him out there." Michael's eyes were glazed over halfway through my comments. He wasn't interested. But... I bet if I gave him a baseball rulebook, he'd devour it and before long spout things like, "Dad, did you know there's something called the Infield Fly Rule, to prevent infielders from dropping pop-ups on purpose so they can turn double plays. Without this rule, a defense could drop a pop-up with runners on first and second, and turn it into a double play because the runners have to stay close to their bases so they won't get doubled-off, but then they can be easily forced-out at 3rd and 2nd base if the ball is dropped." Yes, Michael, I know, I played in the infield in something like 500 baseball games.