DADWAGON

I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count all the kiddie birthday parties I’ve been to of late, but suffice it to say, the con artists at the Norwegian-organic-brain-toy store up the block will be eating steak this New Year, on me.

As I go to these parties I’ve begun to notice a disturbing trend:

Thank you cards. From the birthday boy. Clearly written by said child’s mother. Who has clearly lost her freaking mind.

Why in the world would you send a thank you note for a child’s birthday party? To whom are you teaching manners? Not your kid. If it was your kid, then I’d see his four-year-old scrawl on that little bit of Hallmark-ian frippery you’ve mailed to me. Not my kid, either–because he can’t read, and has no way to understand what a thank you card could be, other than a veiled insult directed at his father, who begins cursing each time he sees one.

There is no need to thank my child for a ten buck gift for your child that my child didn’t choose and which my child angrily demanded not to give to your child in the car on the way to your child’s party because my child wanted to keep it for himself and couldn’t understand why it couldn’t be his birthday today and not your child’s.

No need whatsoever. Now cease and desist. Immediately.

We’ve never been the kind of parents to buy our daughter lots of toys. Oh, I’m sure she’s lucky compared to other kids, and earlier generations of toddlers, but in general, we just don’t buy her much. Maybe it’s a New York thing, not having the space for piles of junk?

But visiting friends and, now, staying in this house in L.A. have shown us what massive collections of playable other families have. The children’s library stretches floor to ceiling, the kid’s room has everything from Buzz Lightyear to a San Diego Zoo-worthy menagerie of stuffed animals, and in the den, six under-counter rolling drawers hold railroad tracks, a Razor scooter, and who knows what else? Frankly, I’m a little scared to look too closely.

One toy, however, sticks out in mind as especially Los Angeles-style, though I’m sure it exists elsewhere. It’s a one-foot-tall plastic boy with a baseball cap and a pencil behind its ear; its name is Handy Manny (apparently based on a Disney cartoon), and when you push a button on the buckle of his toolbelt, he speaks with a very light Latino accent: “Let’s work together!” “Vamonos, tools! Come on!” “Measure twice, cut once.” “Thanks for your help, gracias.”

I guess it’s cute, and I don’t mean to suggest Handy Manny is wrong or disturbing. I mean, I know that toys for young kids are meant to familiarize them with the objects and characters they’ll encounter in the world. Why else would Sasha obsess over ambulances—playing with Matchbox versions, building ambulances out of Duplo blocks—except to skillfully recognize them on the street?

But immigrant labor? It feels odd to me, especially when Handy Manny says, “I couldn’t do this job without you,” and I want to add, “Because you’re paying me under the table and didn’t ask for a Social.”

Again, maybe this is an East Coast–West Coast culture clash. The friendly neighborhood underage, quasi-legal Latino handyman just isn’t as much of a figure in New York. The Puerto Rican super? Sure. The gruff Ukrainian movers? Absolutely. But this, to me, seems like an only-in-L.A. toy, and I doubt Sasha will miss Handy Manny when we go home.

Still, I like the idea, and next Christmas I’ll be working on a Chinese nanny version that Sasha will absolutely love—until it gets deported.

Earlier this month, I went snowboarding for the first time in a few years. Not much has changed for me since the last time out. I still suffer from the same heady mix poor depth perception and lousy risk management. I still have a strange talent for collapsing in a heap at the top of the chairlift, where many people get to watch me writhe in the snow as I try to stand up again. And I still find the experience of shooting down a hillside so appealing that I actually don’t mind looking like such a fool.

But there was one major change this time: for the first time in my life, I wore a helmet. And it wasn’t just me. A few years ago, it seemed like skiers and snowboarders came equipped with all kinds of headgear–ear muffs, knit caps, Elmer Fudd hats, headbands, baseball hats. But now it seems like a uniform sea of shiny black skater-shaped safety helmets.

The National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) backs up that impression: they report that last season, 57% of skiers and snowboarders wore helmets, an increase of 19% from the year before. Eight years ago, only a quarter of skiers and snowboarders wore them.

In the majority of circumstances, of course, having a helmet makes a big difference–especially in the kind of glancing blows and freak accidents that can cause unexpected brain trauma–so it’s hard to argue against wearing them. There’s a reason that California’s legislature, always on the cutting edge of nanny-state innovations, considered passing a bill last spring that would make helmets mandatory at in-state ski resorts (they backed off eventually).

But there is a counterargument to be made, particularly when it comes to fatalities. As the NSAA points out, fatality rates have remained stubbornly constant over the past three decades of better awareness and equipment, even as other types of injuries have fallen dramatically (it’s worth pointing out that skiing and boarding is still very safe, much more so than driving, for example).

There’s a certain profile to the average person who dies on the slopes: he (and it’s usually a he) is in his mid-twenties to forties, is an intermediate to advanced skier or boarder, and is hugely overconfident, going faster than he should. In other words, he’s a lot like me.

Which gets us back to my helmet. If anything, I felt more indestructible once I had it on.  I’m not sure I even knew that helmets are only rated for impacts at 12 mph or less. Nor I did I think much about the fact that as rates of helmet usage go up, so do the number of people who die wearing their helmets. Helmets do little for the kind of high-speed, low-control accidents that actually kill people.

So why did I wear mine? For the same reason I started regularly wearing a bike helmet for the first time this summer: my four-year-old daughter makes me. Not in an overt way, perhaps, but simply by exposing my hypocrisies, the way young children do. We started putting helmets and knee pads on her when she rode her scooter and then her bike (the knee pads were overkill, I eventually decided). So when it came time for me to go biking with her, she wanted to know if I was going to wear a helmet. I actually contemplated coming up with some lie about adults having harder skulls or somesuch, but fortunately decided it was easier to just do the right thing.

This month’s snow trip was the first time my daughter went skiing for real, chair lifts (she didn’t fall at the top!) and everything. And part of her kit–part of every child’s kit on the mountain–is a miniature black helmet. Throughout the industry, in fact, it has been child safety that has opened the door to adults wearing helmets. Helmets really are mandatory in a lot of kids ski schools. Vail also makes its instructors and employees ski or board with them to set examples for the children. The NSAA has their own campaign called Lids on Kids to drive home the message. And they’re right: focus on the kids first, and even reluctant parents (like me) will follow. I actually liked the helmet. It’s warm, and when used right, it will keep me safe. I don’t think I’ll board without one in the future.

There’s no shortage of irony there, of course. I’m constantly aping the Yo Gabba Gabba “try it, you’ll like it” mantra to my kids. And they’re constantly being irrational about their decisions—saying they just don’t feel like eating this, or buckling that, only to find that it’s actually no problem at all. I have complained about this behavior richly to my friends and on my blog. But it turns out they just learned it from me.