DADWAGON

My custody arrangement with JP’s mother is hopelessly complicated. Please all, take out your calculators as I explain.

It is divided into a four-week rotating schedule, under which the following rules apply:

On week 1, I spend the first two nights of the week with JP along with the two nights of the weekend. I also have this schedule on week 3. On weeks 2 and 4, it flips, and I have JP for the middle three nights of the week. There are also variations for major holidays (we switch years); school vacations (under certain circumstances we switch off; others we don’t); religious holidays supersede the parenting schedule (except when they don’t); in all circumstances, vacations end at 9 a.m. (!) on the day prior to the alternate parent’s regularly scheduled parenting time. For those who are confused, I can send along my 40-page custody decree, along with the forthcoming divorce stipulation that will implement certain alterations (much needed) to the aforesaid ridiculous legal document that governs most of my life and time.

Most of the stuff goes out the window during August, when we each get to spend two (non-consecutive) weeks of vacation with JP. This is a rather wonderful thing: a full week with my boy, uninterrupted, away from work. I have tried to make the most of my time. I travelled with JP to Florida, Mississippi, and New Orleans; tried, somewhat successfully, to teach him to swim; played soccer with him; discussed the arrival of his sister; let him spend time with my mother, other friends; went to the zoo, an aquarium, the movies, whatever I could think of.

The real question was how good any of this was for him. At this age, it’s debatable that the break from the regular schedule (and the imminent return to the schedule) is a net benefit. I tend to think it is—his mother strenuously thinks otherwise. It should be no surprise that I have a fundamental disagreement about JP’s welfare with his mother. There’s (many) a reason why we’re not together, after all.

This week is one of hers with JP. As is natural for any part-time parent, I’ve spent at least some part of every day beating myself up for my decisions about raising my son. If, as the saying goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder, in the case of divorce absence also makes it grow guilty. Basically, I keep myself sane by reminding myself that JP is a happy boy, surrounded by people who love him, even if at times those people don’t include me.

I also know that it could be worse. We still live in a world in which mothers are the default parents in cases of divorce, and I could have ended up with far less time with JP than I have. So I’m lucky, in many ways.

But still.

Yesterday, the Internet was all a-flutter over the news that 25 percent of grown-ass men travel with stuffed animals. Maybe “all a-flutter” is overstating it, but one or two “news” “outlets” covered the Travelodge survey:

Travelodge said that 25 percent of men reported they take their teddy bear away with them when going away on business. The stuffed animal supposedly reminds them of home and — some say — helps fill a cuddle-void left by distant partners.

At first, I had the same reaction Gawker did: “How sad must the traveling merchant class be?” But then I realized that, once Sasha is old enough to understand that Daddy has to take long trips away from home for work, she’ll probably ask me to bring along Gou-Gou, her dog, or one of the owls, or some little creature so a part of her will be with me. And I’ll do it, and probably become attached to the thing myself, and take pictures of it in the skanky hotels I’m forced to stay in, and will silently cry myself to sleep at night, clutching at the filthy fake-haired animal.

But—please, God, please!—don’t let the creature be Elmo.

I think they call it cold feet. A month after setting a date—to have our 2-year-old son’s adenoids operated on and to have tubes placed in his eardrums—we are wondering if it isn’t somehow elective surgery. The procedure is a week away and we’re thinking of cancelling, at least the adenoidal part.

I had the same dual procedure done in the early ’80s—a time so benighted and backwards that people were driving Pintos and Gremlins—and I survived. I even got a He-Man action figure from my toy-stingy parents for my trouble.

There are reasons, of course, for having the procedures done to Nico. The tubes are most important, because he spent all of last winter with one long ear-infection, and he’s as stubbornly antibiotic-resistant as a veal-calf on a factory farm, so there was really not much treatment available. The ear infections don’t just hurt, they gave him a bit of hearing loss (at least, we think that’s what did it). Not that he’s about to get all Marlee Matlin on us, but still: I spent a lot of time as a half-deaf kid, before my operation, and had to go through speech therapy after I got my hearing back, yadda yadda. It sucks.

The adenoids are a different story. As far as I understand it, having oversize adenoids (a gland in the nasal cavity) basically makes you a snotty mouthbreather, which he is from time to time. But he doesn’t snore heavily, have sleep apnea or other breathing distresses. And the adenoid operation is a slightly more intense procedure. They don’t actually cut (misleading headline, right?), but they snake a cable through the mouth, reach up and cauterize (i.e., burn the crap out of) the adenoids. It swells up for a few weeks, but then it shrinks as it heals, and he can breathe easier.

The thing that gives my wife pause—and she should know, since she’s a tube jockey—is that he would have to be intubated for the adenoids, with an IV in his arm and the whole deal. For the tubes, it’s just some happy juice and a gas mask. Intubating is not a big deal, but there is a risk—however minute—that they won’t be able to ventilate him. Death is always a risk with anesthesia, and you just want to feel like you needed to do it.

So: any advice? Encouragement? Scorn for being such cowards—either too scared of anesthesia or too scared of mouthbreathing?

Speaking of solipsistic television personalities, I have a confession to make: My daughter, Sasha, despite all my efforts to keep her unaware of his existence, has fallen in love with Elmo.

This actually began several months ago. We’d be walking down a street and pass a toy store, and she’d see him in the window, wearing a leather biker jacket or just his plain old magenta fur, and she’d squeal “Elmo!” I don’t even know how she learned the name. Perhaps from her diapers? No, we never told her the Muppet’s identity. Maybe from school or at a playdate—who knows?

However she learned of him, Elmo is lodged in her consciousness. One of Sasha’s first complete sentences, in fact, was “It’s Elmo!” Ah, the elation, the defeat! Emphasis on defeat, for we’ve now given ourselves over to the fuzzy preschooler. Sasha now owns “The Best of Elmo” on DVD, and watches it with the kind of rapt attention she usually reserves for, well, nothing else. It’s like Ritalin for toddlers.

I try to look on the bright side. Sasha now recognizes Ernie, Cookie Monster, and, with surprising difficulty, Big Bird. (Come on, it’s a 7-foot yellow bird, a big bird, right, Sasha?) And she as yet possesses no Elmo toys, though I imagine the demands will arrive one of these days, screeched on the F-train as she spies another child with the Tickle Me edition. And then we’ll see how well I hold up.

Why do so many of us hate Elmo so much? I can’t speak for everyone, but for me, it’s less the gratingly high-pitched voice and the tendency to refer to himself in the third person. Or maybe the latter is a symptom of what makes Elmo so distasteful to me—his utter narcissism. In the Sesame Street world, everything revolves around the feelings and desires and talents of this overly cute little Muppet. Everything. Elmo hangs out with the stars (e.g., Julia Roberts) and is a genius painter whose masterpieces everyone covets, and fantasizes himself as the greatest tap-dancer who ever lived, and when he writes a song, he calls it “Elmo’s Song”:

• This is the song—la-la la-la—Elmo’s song.
• This is the song—la-la la-la—Elmo’s song.
• He wrote the music,
• He wrote the words.
• Thaaaat’s El-mo’s sooooooong!

Worse is when he invites Snuffy and Big Bird to sing along, substituting their own names for his. It seems natural, but then at the end they all wind up back to using “Elmo” and showering praise and attention on the creature, at the same time demeaning their own abilities. “I wish I’d thought of that,” says Big Bird, not at all sarcastically. It’s Elmo’s world—they just live in it.

Perhaps the worst part of this DVD (which Sasha only gets to watch once a day, at most) takes place near the end. Having given away all but one of his masterpieces, Elmo is confronted by a Honker who feels slighted at not receiving one himself. But, Elmo worries, if he gives the Honker the painting, what can he deliver to the Monster Art Show? He asks the “audience” for advice, and finally determines that the feelings of a friend are more important than the gallery show. Good! But as soon as the painting’s in the Honker’s hands, the mood turns again—now Elmo’s sad! Oh no! The little monster can’t go two seconds without maundering about his own circumstances. I hate him.

But I suppose my efforts to hide him from Sasha were all in vain, as are most attempts to shield our children from the realities of the world. And in the end, it probably doesn’t matter. After all, as a kid, I wasn’t allowed to have G.I. Joe toys, and look how I turned out.