DADWAGON

Theodore’s post earlier reminded me that yesterday was Take Your Children to Work Day. And why did I need reminding? Because I did not see a single kid in the office.  H.R. didn’t discourage us–in fact, I think there was a program for tots set up–but, at least on the editorial side of our business, nobody seems to have participated.

I hate to be a churl about this, but I don’t love the idea. Unless you work for Willy Wonka or James Cameron, most work is boring for kids to watch. And on the parent’s side, concentration is not benefited by a small person’s interruptions.  I can’t get a damn thing done, writing-wise, when I’m at home with my son and my wife is not around, and on those occasions when he comes to the office for a quick visit, I have to treat it as a lunch hour. Even the uncomplicated parts of my job require that I pay attention, particularly on short deadlines, and having a toddler around pretty much scotches that.

So why do we do it? Well, the idea was built on female empowerment–remember, it started out as Take Your Daughters to Work Day, until the pro-boys contingent piped up. So now it’s morphed into a way for corporations to show that “we’re all a big family here”–which you hear all the time, and is a completely toxic idea. Remember this, people: As much as your CEO likes the idea, your job is not your family. Your family can’t fire you with two weeks’ notice; your family won’t side with, say, the aggressor in a sexual-harassment lawsuit if said aggressor is valuable than you. Your job is a cash exchange, even if it’s all-consuming or satisfying or fun, and corporations that pretend to forget that have a way of remembering it when the chips are down.

Yesterday I wrote about awaiting an otherworldly visitor at the haunted Gadsden Hotel in Douglas, Arizona, and thought it only right to give an update.

The ghost never arrived. She was, according to legend, going to come sit at my bedside. She did not. At least not while I was awake.

When I went down for chorizo and coffee in the morning (gotta love breakfast on the border), I passed a little plaque at the bottom of the stairs that told the story of how Pancho Villa once rode his horse up the marble staircase, breaking off a piece of one of the stairs. It was, like the ghost stories, a bit of a fiction (Pancho Villa died before the hotel was built, for starters). But it is a GREAT way to make an excuse for a broken stair. Just as the haunted hotel story is a great way to add charm and a backstory to the dripping faucets, rattling windows, creaky floors and peeling paint that would otherwise simply mean Shitty Hotel. As one former guest wrote in the Ghost Book at the front desk: “The only thing haunted about my room was the toilet, which didn’t stop running all night.”

I think I’m going to use this in my apartment when I get back home. Blown fuse? A ghost did it. Dishwasher on the fritz? Same thing. That ghost also, if you must know, keeps leaving my jeans on the floor.

I guess I’ll have to hire Father Merrin to pick up my clothes when I get back to New York.

(This is the Tantrum, in which Dadwagon’s writers debate one question over the course of a week. For previous Tantrums, click here.)

I suppose the answer is … probably not, but who knows? Which isn’t really an answer and shouldn’t be read as such, but really as a jumping off point. In certain respects my esteemed Dadwagon colleagues have covered most of the bases (Matt: exploit away, me hearties; Christopher: never, it’s wrong, damn you—only on Facebook, which no one can look at, except everyone; Nathan: pure arrogance—”The other reason why I’m not that against putting our kids’ pictures online is because they are just more gorgeous than your kids”). So I think I’ll approach this from the perspective of the lone divorcé on the site.

In short, I don’t post young JP’s photo not, as Christopher worries about, because I have no consent from him, but rather, because I have no consent from the evil hag who (to her enduring credit) brought him into the world. Because she would kill me. Dead. And she knows how to do it, too. And maybe already has.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. I certainly write about JP (although using his nickname, not his real name), as well as about his mother (I don’t use her name, either). But that’s a slender thread upon which to hang one’s ethics, fragile enough, I would say, that those ethics could easily hang you.

Ultimately, I choose not to show JP on this site because it just doesn’t feel nice. That’s not much of a definable quantity, I know, and my nice bears no resemblance to the other Dadwagoners’. But it works for me … which is ultimately a fine lesson in parenting, wouldn’t you say?