To my great surprise, JP asked for a skateboard for his sixth birthday this year, which was at the end of last month. Great surprise, I say, because he’s never expressed any interest in skateboarding before, I don’t skateboard, and as far as I know, none of his close friends skateboard. But he wanted it, I couldn’t think of any reason he shouldn’t have it, and so I bought him one, at this store in Brooklyn called, for some reason, Hommage.
Only problem with said gift is that skating is relatively dangerous and I can’t show JP how to do it. So, I took the fateful and gloriously uncool step of arranging for a skate LESSON for JP. This sucks on a variety of levels. First, you shouldn’t be taught how to skate, right? It’s something you master on your own, after much practice and loss of blood and teeth. Second, if you are going to be taught how to do it, shouldn’t the teacher be your father? I’m afraid that is beyond my admittedly limited athletic capacities, even if my arm wasn’t still useless after my bike accident. Thus, professional skate education awaits JP, at $30 a lesson.
Of course, as I understand it, Matt is a skilled skater. Perhaps, with a little encouragement, he could be prevailed upon to show JP a few things, and in the process save me some dough and alleviate the need of the skate dudes at the skate shop knowing that I can’t skate. I’d never think to ask Matt such a thing, but maybe, just maybe, he’ll think of it himself.
On Saturday, we took Sasha to one of those birthday parties that really reminds me where I stand in the hierarchy of New York City. Held in the family’s home apartment tower in the Financial District, it involved a swimming pool long enough to do laps, a basketball court, multiple platters of bánh mì, “cake lollipops,” an entire room devoted to holding presents, and, by my rough count, 400 children and their 1,200 parents. Oh, and there was a screening room, too, where late in the day someone put on Toy Story 3.
No objections there! I’m generally very happy with Pixar movies, and don’t even need to have a kid around as an excuse to watch one. And while I was sort of disappointed that Sasha wasn’t getting her first exposure to the franchise through the original Toy Story, I figured she’d be able to follow along pretty well.
In case you haven’t seen the movie, the toys’ story is a smart one: As their owner prepares to go off to college—hence leaving behind his childhood—the toys wind up donated to an apparently edenic day-care center called Sunnyside. Small spoiler: It ain’t so edenic after all. Instead, it’s ruled over by Lotso, a pink teddy bear whose strawberry scent belies his cruel ways. In his Sunnyside, unworthy toys are consigned to the toddler room, where they’re chewed, beaten, and otherwise molested, while the chosen ones go to the preschool room—a haven of sophisticated play. Helping him enforce the rules are a creepy one-eyed baby doll and, of course, Ken (of Ken & Barbie).
About halfway through the movie, the cowboy hero, Woody, learns of Lotso’s backstory (from Chuckles the Sad Clown): Once upon a time, he (and One-Eyed Baby) had been the cherished plaything of a little girl, who accidentally left him behind during a family outing. By the time Lotso, Baby, and Chuckles made it back home, they discovered the girl had a brand-new pink Lotso in her arms. They’d been replaced. Lotso was crushed—and angry—and dragged his comrades away into the night. Oh, hey, look, here’s the video:
And it was at the moment that Sasha erupted in tears. “I want to go home,” she cried to us, her wails filling the screening room. Apparently, she hadn’t just been wowed by the Pixar spectacle—she’d really followed what was going on, and had made the connection between creepy Baby and her own baby doll (named Baby Pizza). To see Baby in such misery was just too much. We comforted Sasha and hustled Sasha outside, where she cried fat tears in the taxi home.
This was, to us, tragic, hilarious, and incredible, all at once. Was Sasha, at just 3 and a half, exhibiting empathy? I mean, that’s probably not unusual, but it’s still amazing to see. She is, thank goodness, a human being.
She is also, I like to think, proof that letting your kid watch TV isn’t all bad. That is, from her devoted, increasingly sophisticated viewing of various cartoons, she’s learned the visual language of cinema well enough that these stories make sense to her on a surprisingly deep level. Again, it’s not just the thrill of the action that captivates her, but the way the images convey a narrative that actually means something.
Maybe I’m projecting, maybe I’m rationalizing, or maybe I’m flat-out wrong. Still, it makes me think that, you know, this kid is really getting somewhere (although she does, sadly, retain a misguided love of Scooby Doo). Some kids grow up in zombie-proof towers with their own jacuzzis, but mine will at least be able to explain the difference between a jump cut and a match cut. And now I’m asking myself: What’s next for her Netflix queue? Has Dora remade Rashomon yet? Could Dan Zanes redo the soundtrack to Koyanisqaatsi? And can we get the My Little Pony cast to star in a candy-colored version of Pulp Fiction?
Jacob Sager Weinstein has two kids, and has written for The New Yorker and McSweeney’s, and is a former contributor to The Onion, but what he really wants is to take a shower every once in a while without somebody throwing half-eaten bits of bagel into it. His new book is HOW NOT TO KILL YOUR BABY, a parody of every crazy-making, fear-inducing pregnancy and parenting book you’ve ever cringed over. Theodore spoke with Jacob via the miracle of instant messaging, and got the scoop on his book and parental neuroses.
Theodore: First question: did you ever come close to in fact killing your baby? Falls? Drops? Poisoning?
Jacob: The time I was carrying my daughter across a patch of ice, and I slipped and did a 180 and dropped her, I was too busy falling to see how she landed, so I choose to think she landed on her feet with the perfect grace of a cat, even though she was about one at the time. At any rate, she survived, and she’s brilliant (objectively speaking) so I’m fairly confident she didn’t land on her head. I think that was the scariest moment, in terms of paternal negligence.
Theodore: If that’s the case, and you are in fact, not lethal or possibly lethal as a father, then tell me why you wrote this particular book? It’s very funny–but why turn the attention of your humor to this specific subject?
Jacob: A friend of mine (and fellow comedy writer) named David Feldman once told me that all comedy comes out of anger. I don’t think that’s universally true– “Singin’ In The Rain” is full of brilliant one-liners and it’s the least-angry movie ever made– but I do think that it’s often true. When my wife was pregnant, I read a lot of pregnancy and parenting books, and a lot of the advice was delivered in a condescending and/or crazy-making way, or was just plain bad, or contradicted the book I had just read. At the time I didn’t know enough to get angry– I figured, hey, these books are written by experts. They must know what they’re talking about, even when they’re contradicting each other. But once I got more experience as a dad, I starting getting retroactively angry with a lot of these books, and because I’m a comedy writer, that anger turned to mockery pretty quickly.
Theodore: That’s interesting, because I didn’t really read anger in it. To me, the subtext of the book was about how fears of parenting are unfounded and absurd, and that we should just worry less. Are you just totally pissed off in person, and it doesn’t come across on the page (or via IM, I should point out)?
Jacob: HOW DARE YOU ASK ME THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Better?)
Theodore: Very good.
Jacob: Seriously… I think that’s a very reasonable way of reading the book. What angers me most about certain parenting books and products is that they seem aimed at exploiting the natural but ludicrous fears we all have as parents. And so if I’m satirizing that sales approach, I’m naturally poking fun at those fears. Also, I tend to be a pretty easy-going guy, so the anger that sparked the book probably dissipated itself pretty quickly once I started making myself giggle. But I think you can see it poking through in certain sections. I’m going to thumb the book and look for one while you’re writing your next question.
Theodore: On to an incredibly important question: You and your wife as parents: Helicopter or Benign Neglect? (Full Disclosure: I already wrote my questions. I’m incredibly well prepared!)
Jacob: OK, first, I found a passage that I think is about as close as I got to expressing my anger– and it’s right at the beginning of the book, in the Introduction. This tends to support the theory that my anger dissolved on impact, leaving behind only a residue of pure goofiness. Here’s the passage:”Dear Parents-to-Be, Ever since you received the good news, you’ve been subjected to an endless barrage of bad news, from dire warnings of dietary health risks to incessant pressure to follow the latest trendy parenting fad. This book is written in the commonsense belief that, no matter how much pressure society puts on you, it’s always possible to add more. Tonsmore. Hundreds of pages more, plus illustrations. So, read on. Unless you’re some kind of baby-hating creep who wants to parent all wrong.” OK, on to the helicopter/benign neglect question.
Theodore: Nice self-quoting, btw.
Jacob: I think we’re somewhere in between. So instead of helicopters, we’re hovering over our kids in those crazy James-Bond jetpacks that never work quite as well as they’re supposed to, and half the time we’re right above them, and the rest of the time, we’re shooting around in the clouds desperately trying to get back down in time to pick them up from school before the teachers call the Child Welfare office on us.
Theodore: That sounds about right. Unfortunately my colleagues here at DadWagon (not me) tend more toward a form of not-so-benign neglect. Sad but true. Next question. i think another interesting element of the book is that it’s gender neutral, with COMPLETELY useful advice for both Mom and Dad. Did you have concerns about coming across as a sexist pig while writing sections like “How not to Kill your fetus”? I mean tips from a man about how to read a pregnancy test is practically screaming for a kick in the nuts.
Jacob: The nice thing about writing a humor book is that if anything seems offensive, I can just claim I was parodying something offensive, and I completely share your outrage about those awful people who did the original thing I’m parodying– Look! They’re right over there! LET’S GET THEM! (Actually, in this case, I can make that claim with some honesty. Part of what annoys me about a lot of pregnancy/parenting advice is that it’s written by men who seem to think pregnant women would just roam their houses drinking cleaning fluids if there weren’t some PhD-equipped male to explain why it’s a bad idea.)
Theodore: Last one, and then I won’t take up more of your time. You live in London. Does your kind of humor about parenting hold there? Or are the local fears/insecurities different? Or, as we are led to believe of the French, are English parenting problems completely non-existent? (Please add something about being slender and smoking and chocolate.)
Jacob: Right now, I don’t have a UK publisher for the book, so I can’t say for sure. (Although maybe the fact that I don’t have an English publisher answers the question already.) But I think that parenting fears and insecurities are mostly the same the world over. Still, you just gave me a million-dollar idea for my next book: “Stiff Upper Lip: How British Parenting Techniques Can Transform You Into A Queen Mum.” The central thesis will be that requiring children to put that extra “u” into “flavour” teaches them patience, and swapping the last two letters of “theatre” teaches them to think outside the box.
So, the first monthly presentation of “DadWagon Presents” went off relatively well! All our speakers showed up—that’s Paul Ford, Peter Meehan, and Jeff Yang, who actually arrived so early he had time to go home, beat his children, and return to Pacific Standard to kick off the reading. And it’s a reading we can now bring to you, here on the Internet, through the magic of technology! Please allow “DadWagon Presents” to present to you “DadWagon Presents: The Podcast.”
Part 1: Jeff Yang, the “Tao Jones” columnist for the Wall Street Journal, discusses his membership in “Rice Daddies,” a Bay Area support group for Asian-American fathers. Click here to listen/download.
Part 2: Paul Ford, digital guru and novelist, on his surprise that he doesn’t actually hate being a parent to his twin 9-month-olds. Click here to listen/download.
Download them, listen to them on the subway, then look uncomfortable as your fellow straphangers edge away from you, the guy who’s cackling uncontrollably.
And get ready for next month, when “DadWagon Presents” returns to Pacific Standard with a new crop of readers. No idea who they’ll be, by the way.
