Late last week, I offered a few possibilities, none definitive, for the family dynamic among the Antonin Scalia clan and its nine children. Is his wife saintly, beleaguered, adoring, contemptuous? And, amazingly enough, we all got an answer the next day, right here:
“My wife calls me Mr. Clueless.”
Whether this precedent should be interpreted narrowly or broadly, I leave to the Scalia family court to decide.
Ordinarily, the Week on the Wagon comes with some sort of inane, barely rational statement of purpose, like where are our balls, or how many z’s are there in papparazzi (I still don’t know). But I’ve decided to skip that this week and cut straight to the question that’s on the hearts and minds of all Dadwagon readers:
Where the fuck is Nathan?
Now, come on, my friend, one post a week—largely about your not being here—just isn’t going to cut it on the Wagon. We have standards, you know. And principles. And issues–lots of issues. I know, I know, this whole “covering of world events” thing you do is important to you—you being the operative word here. There is no me in you, Nathan, and thank god for that, cause that’s a joke line that went completely awry. I will leave you for now with one thought—write when you learn how!
Christopher spent the week thinking, of all things, about politics, with posts on why Antonin Scalia is a bad father (editorial addition: and a big fat dickhead), how Ron Paul’s son is Ron Paul’s son and how that makes him a racist; in his spare time he complained about incompetent skateboarders in Gramercy and bad Yiddish in the Times.
Theodore, meanwhile, was preoccupied with money: how much a public school would cost him, what a mother might charge him, and, though only tangentially related to cash, what sacrifices he would need to make to see Lebron James in home whites at the Garden. He also found the birthday gifts coming to his son to be excessive.
Matt needed a mancation, wanted to teach the young to skateboard, proclaimed new dads depressed, and accused his daughter of being moody.
Well, that’s what we did for you, folks, with love, for a week. Senseless complaining, bad jokes, poor grammar, and plenty of cynicism—thy name is Dadwagon.
Have a nice weekend.
[Nathan—don’t leave us hanging like that, bro’. Matt was in tears. Seriously.]
You know, I try to be entertaining when I write these posts, and then my morning paper comes along and, in its deadpan way, is funnier than I could ever be. From a Times story about a sex-ed class that provoked protests:
As a result, some of Ms. Kramer’s 30 students went home with neatly transcribed lists of off-color words for sexual acts and body parts, including two Yiddishisms for the male sexual organ.
These kids are in the eighth grade, and somehow the Times turned them all into octogenarian ex-vaudeville comics. Full story here.
One of the least enjoyable things about living in these surreal times has to be the contradictions. On the one hand, everywhere I turn I see exemplars of the newest paradigm—the Free. What isn’t given away these days? Half the world’s best, worst, and pornographic ideas are shared gratis on the Internet, 24 hours a day, for my surfing pleasure; music can be stolen with joyful impunity; movies can be downloaded at no more cost than my time, etc.
Of course, I’m kidding—not very much is actually free, a fact that a quick (free) glance into my wallet will surely attest. But I was reminded of the concept of free this morning as I read a post on the New York Times’s Motherlode blog about how much more parents are being asked to contribute to their child’s public school education:
It is a trend already being seen across the country, as parents are being asked to bridge the gap between what students need and what taxpayers will pay for. In some places, that includes some very big ticket items. Just last month, parents in Cupertino, Calif., announced that they were more than halfway to their $3 million goal, which would offset more than $7 million in state cuts and save the jobs of 107 teachers. Each family with children in the school district was asked to give $375.
JP hasn’t yet entered the public school system, so all of his education to date has been paid for, but I had always kinda assumed that his upcoming free public education (funded by my taxes, of course) wouldn’t actually cost me anything. Apparently, I was naive.
For those Dadwagoners out there with older children, have you noticed the trend mentioned above? Have donations and fundraisers at your kid’s public school become burdensome, or are they still merely bothersome?
