A week of notice me, please on Dadwagon, and why not? Summer has reached a boil, school is out, the children are running amok in the street–don’t we all have to raise our voices to be heard over the din?

First, there was our Tantrum for the week, on whether or not it’s okay for parents to argue in front of their children. My response was to yell at my computer screen, “OF COURSE IT IS! EVERYONE YELLS IN FRONT OF THEIR KIDS! I’M YELLING RIGHT NOW AND MY SON IS WATCHING IN HORROR! AND THAT’S FANTASTIC!” Nathan agreed, so long as the parents doing the yelling expected to get divorced. Otherwise THEY SHOULD JUST SHUT UP AND SUBLIMATE THEIR RAGE WITH ALL CAPITAL LETTER TYPING. Matt agreed in theory, although because his childhood and life are perfect, he couldn’t really comment. I called bullshit on him, and he responded with pleasant confusion, which he is CURRENTLY SUBLIMATING BY TEXTING IN ALL-CAPS. Christopher, for his part, also claimed to live in idyllic bliss with his significant other, but vowed to instruct his child in how to bang on tables, under the proper circumstances, and when said banging is effective.

What else? Nathan sounded off about his son’s explosive shitting, as well as his own linen-thievery. Then he ran off to the playground to get drunk while his kids went swimming while unsupervised.

Matt promoted someone as committed to exploiting his child profit as he is, sounded the alarm bell on naked girls, and alerted the reading public to Playboy‘s blog, which he came across while reading the articles. Prior to this moment, I made not one single joke in response to that post because I’M GETTING MY ANGER UNDER CONTROL. Except when it came to schmucks in a hospital. They upset me.

Christopher was largely AWOL this week, except for a post which, if I’m reading it right, seemed to be saying that kindergarten is a waste of time, despite scientific evidence to the contrary (Note: I’m not reading it right).

Well, that’s about all, folks. Hope we didn’t hurt your ears. See you next week.

Well, you’ve heard the range of opinions, from Theodore (who sounds like he lives in a Marina Abramovic piece) to Nathan (who just grew up in one) to Matt (who prefers entirely passive forms of aggression). As for our home life, I doubt we will have to deal with this question anytime soon. Like Matt’s household but maybe even more so, ours is essentially argument-free. I guess my wife and I have our disagreements, but we are both fairly easy compromisers with a distaste for any sense of entitlement, and both of us know well enough where the other’s limits lie that we don’t have to discuss a lot of things that lie beyond the boundaries thereof. I honestly can’t think of a single real shouting match we’ve had. The worst it ever gets is a little peevish, with apologies later.

I continue to be a little flummoxed by people who shout and scream a lot. Why on earth would a person do that? It only irritates people. It loses you as many of the things you want as it gains you, because others (or at least I) dig in their heels. Yet I suppose I can see a disadvantage to this, even if I vastly prefer it to a life spent hollering over who left whose wet towel on the floor. I do periodically wish that I were more of a fist-banging-on-the-table sort, because in certain environments, nothing else will do. I am therefore a little reticent about passing on my reticence. If I can imbue my son with that same sense of premodern politesse and diplomacy, while also offering him a little more punch, there’s no telling where he could go with that.

It’s Friday, so I’m running out of energy for clever things to post, but luckily I happened across this new book, which—yeah, sure, why not?—I’m dubbing the best kids’ book of all time. It’s called “All My Friends Are Dead.” Click through to the Website and you can read a bit of it. If your child is obsessed with dinosaurs, extinction, or mortality in general (I’m looking at you, Nathan), it’s perfect.

Pulled from the oh-no-she-didn’t files of American letters, I bring you this short item on unibrows from the “Dear Prudence” advice column over at Slate. The scenario: mother writes in complaining that her “smart, pretty, and fun” 7-year-old has inherited her “Hispanic” father’s hirsute genes. This was less of problem when said tyke was younger, but now as she is coming into the full flower of her 7-year-old womanhood, mom is “shocked to see that her coarse eyebrows are starting to grow together—downy hairs are appearing across the bridge of her nose.” This, mother says, “bothers” her.

Is that so wrong?

Prudence (not prudent) does, in her defense, tell mother it’s probably best to do nothing about her daughter’s scarlet brown letter of shame … for now. As to the future, all bets are off, ladies and gentlemen, and it’s open season depilatory-style:

Today a little girl with a brow like Bert the Muppet can have it transformed almost instantly into something more like Brooke Shields. This article [in the New York Times] describes the growing trend for getting young girls with moustaches and heavy brows zapped with a cosmetic laser.

Ah, Prudence, you are a veritable font of useless, possibly traumatizing, potentially actionable wisdom.