It’s a slow day here at DadWagon HQ as we gear up for a big weekend of schlepping our kids to whatever thing will keep them happy for an hour or so. Yet we are still here, hard at work providing scintillating content for the masses!

In that light, I’d like to share this photo gallery, direct from Babble.com, of pregnant women and their “belly art.”

It’s kinda freaking me out. So enjoy.

Quiet moment in the former empire

I’ve got a few free minutes here in Amsterdam–it turns out my daughter likes to watch Olivia cartoons even when it’s in Dutch.

Dank je! says Olivia. Natuurlijk! say her pig parents. Dalia, knowing nothing but the picture, laughs.

I’ve actually been somewhat in-the-moment here, actually waking and sleeping with the family, and spending all the time in between. Which has, to put it bluntly, hurt my ability to blog about them. But never mind: slowly over the next weeks I’ll have more pics and more of those polished turds of wisdom about European parenting that DadWagon is occasionally known for.

For now, suffice it to say that Central Amsterdam is quite phenomenally pleasant. It’s been a slow visit here, four days without much agenda except for spending time with some friends of ours who have kids our age. I know that Holland has some serious tensions, mainly surrounding the influx of traditional Muslims and the extreme shittiness of Heineken beer. But in late Spring in the Jordaan, where all the houses look like gingerbread, and people putt-putt their sloops down drowsy canals without a care in the world, I’m feeling at peace.

I am buoyed by Holland’s civility and calm not because it’s a tiny country on the edge of an irrelevant continent, but because it actually was once the America of it’s time. About three hundred years ago, this place was the ass-kicking Team America of nations, warring and enslaving, fucking and fighting, brash, unapologetic, all-powerful. Back home, we seem to be quite preoccupied, to the point of half-truth and hysteria, by What Comes Next, after China has overtaken us economically and militarily, after the world has moved on and the United States can no longer bend back the pinkies of its allies and enemies alike. We worry as parents about what this life might look like for our children and grandchildren. Our future as the dethroned superpower can seem grim. At worst, China invades. At best, we will have to flee the ashes of our gluttonous and ruined economy  and look abroad for good-paying jobs, to the glee of irony-loving Mexicans everywhere.

But here in Holland, irrelevance seems faintly sweet, just musty and pleasant, the afterlife of a welcome death. Sure, they had hideous times under the Nazis, but that passed. And they are part of (still) grand alliances, in NATO and the EU. But they are an unimportant part, an inconspicuous partner. They live their lives without much influence or global ambition, and that actually seems like something to be embraced over in America, not fretted about.

So that’s my calming message for this morning. And now, I haven’t been smoking weed. Sleepy, lovely Holland is its own sedation.

Screw those pussies.

I was at my desk writing this morning, and as is my habit, I wanted to insert a cliche into one of my sentences. I half-remembered a phrase that went something like, “Twice is a hobby, three times is an obsession.”

That didn’t seem exactly right, so I went onto the Internet to see if I could look it up. Hit number one for the following search string, “twice is a hobby three times an obsession”, was from Puberty101.com, which has a Q and A page on masturbation. Here’s a sampling of what I learned:

What is the best way to masturbate? I masturbated while watching myself in a mirror and it felt better. Why?
Answer: The best way to masturbate, if you choose to, is the way that feels the best for you — different people prefer different methods. If you like to watch yourself in the mirror, then perhaps that’s best for you. Perhaps you enjoy it because you fantasize that what you’re seeing in the mirror is what someone else would see if they were in the room with you. Lots of people get turned on when they fantasize that others are watching, and that’s okay. Just don’t force others to see you by exposing yourself or “accidently” leaving the door open — that’s not okay.

How do you masturbate?

Answer: Well, I won’t answer that it full detail, but let’s just say that to “play with yourself” seems to be a good description of the act. Most boys discover that rubbing their penises feels good, and after a few minutes they ejaculate (“come”) and it feels really good.

I masturbate 3-4 times a day in private, and maybe once or twice with one or two of my friends. The thing is they only play with themselves once a day, am I normal or am I some kind of sicko?

Answer: Well, as you can read from the other responses, masturbating a few times daily isn’t necessarily bad unless it gets in the way of other activities. Now, I assume you don’t mean that you masturbate with with your friends every day also? I guess that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but at this point, masturbating 4-6 times per day may be taking time away from other activities. You are probably in the normal range, although most boys don’t “circle jerk” that often as they reach their late teens. If you’re obsessed with masturbation, or masturbating with your friends, then perhaps you should take up a sport or hobby that will give you something else to do also.

Oh Good Lord: Look away! (and on a related note: JP is perhaps 7-8 years away from needing this kind of guidance, which is both a relief and not long enough).

I’m aware that in writing this post that I am opening myself up to all sorts of charges of bigotry, anti-Islamic sentiments, and even racism. I don’t think I’m coming from such a place but I guess it’s in the nature of discussing Islam in the current environment. So be it.

For no particularly discernible reason, a good number of the teachers at my son’s pre-school are Muslim women who wear the hijab. I don’t find this remarkable. New York is a diverse place, and although I haven’t ever seen a child in the school wearing religious garb of any denomination, it has never seemed noteworthy that some of the teachers do.

One striking exception to that would be the substitute assistant teacher who wears an all-black chador. I remember the first time she was in JP’s class. We had arrived a little early and the three of us were the only ones in the room. I think JP must have met her before because he said a quick hello and went to one of the tables to start drawing.

I was a little stunned, mostly because I wasn’t sure what to do: as a man, do you address a woman wearing a chador? Do you ignore her? The most obvious response would be to act normally, ask her name, and introduce her to my son. But maybe that wasn’t the right approach.

I have met and spoken to devout women from just about every major faith: nuns, Orthodox women in wigs,Buddhist nuns in grey robes, Muslim women in hijabs. I will admit to being a bit more formal around them–I suppose you don’t tell dirty jokes to a nun–but not much more that. A woman in a chador, however, signifies a very different order of religious stricture.

I’m not in any way an expert on Muslim theology, but it has always seemed to me that the chador reflects a worldview in which interactions between the sexes are difficult, hostile, and potentially dangerous, with the ill behavior generally coming from men. If a woman chooses (or is forced) to retreat physically from the world it’s not up to me to question the decision–but it does imply that they might not want to talk.

If that is correct–and I freely admit it might not be–then addressing the teacher would be the wrong thing to do. That’s what I thought to myself in the classroom: a woman in a chador does not want a man speaking to her, looking at her, even thinking about her.

I found this rather irritating, though. She was my son’s teacher, in the school that I send him to, and was, even if only slightly, responsible for his care. I consider it appropriate to know her, have a sense of her personality and character, and yes, to be able to ask her direct questions relevant to the educational setting.

As I was thinking this–and tripping over my tongue–the teacher made things easy and addressed me, politely saying hello. This was, of course, another level of strange, too. Her voice, muffled by the chador, seemed to come from another part of the room. I looked away from her initially before realizing she had spoken.

I won’t say that entirely broke the ice, but it was enough for me to say hello back to her and even offer a little smile. No way to know if it was returned. I gave JP a quick kiss goodbye and left.

My last thought on the matter was that her clothing had placed me in an uncomfortable position, mostly, I suppose from my ignorance of the social rules surrounding devout Islam. I like to think of myself as an open-minded sort of person, but my thoughts had cycled through an entire roster of stereotypes about her–her husband was brutal and sexist; I pitied her for the restrictive life she leads, and the sexual fear that governs her understanding of religion; what would she have done if she had known I was Jewish?

None of it was fair, I knew. But it was what I thought.