DADWAGON

The latest YouTube sensation is this 2-year-old’s unhesitating gleeful dive into the world of the Apple iPad:

You know, I’d like to get all stiff-backed and righteous about this (shouldn’t that kid be playing outside?), but I just can’t. I think it’s wonderful. I first messed with a computer at age 5 or 6, when such machines were clumsy and alien beasts, our first home computer arrived about five years after that, and I’ve never been away from one since. They’re as basic as books–increasingly, they are books, for all practical purposes–and my child will consistently have a lot of access to both the paper kind and the glowy kind.

And yes, I am a confessed Apple chauvinist, after quite a few years spent in the Microsoft wilderness. This 2-year-old has figured out how to use an iPad for a reason: Apple’s Tufte-inclined designers have spent years refining the interface, not just to make it simple but to make it responsive to the way we think and act. That is not a technocratic approach. It is a humanist one, and unless you’re truly an off-the-grid guy, I can’t understand the weary Apple-bashing that I heard all last week. If these people got their mitts on every piece of electronics in our house–let’s say the convoluted push-button interface on the microwave oven, or the incomprehensibly marked apartment-building intercom–our lives would run a lot more smoothly.

From Moscow by way of Tennessee comes this awful story of adoption failure. I’ve heard of some crazy ways of ending relationships: one of my favorite people in the world was divorced by email (no, not Theodore). People disown each other by text, I’m sure, and Skype  to say they’re never coming home. But putting your adopted 8-year-old son on a one-way flight back to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport with nothing other than a handwritten note explaining that he has psychological problems? This is insane. Vindictive. Terrible, not just for the boy, but also for the non-batshit families that want to adopt responsibly. The fallout was a pretty immediate form of collective punishment: a call by the Kremlin to freeze all adoptions to the U.S. from Russia.

That said, the challenges facing some families who adopt from Eastern European orphanages are just astounding. The best report I’ve ever come across about this was from This American Life. The episode is called Unconditional Love, but what eventually led to the remarkable taming of the nearly homicidal adopted son in the story was less love than pragmatism. It’s an incredible testimony. Listen to it.

The other day, I was sitting in a bar in Nové Zamky, Slovakia, when an interesting ad came on the TV. The scene: Dad’s at home with his two daughters, who’ve gotten into Mom’s make-up kit and transformed their lily-white dresses into the kind of hideous rainbow garb you see on old Haight Street hippies. Unperturbed, Dad goes to the washer-dryer, but he’s skeptical when he sees the box of Ariel brand detergent.

So, what does he do? He calls his mother and asks her, “Yeah, will this really work on these tough stains?”

“Don’t worry, schmuck,” she says (I think).

He does the wash, the clothes come out clean, and his gorgeous wife arrives home just as his mother shows up to baby-sit while the happy couple go on a date. As they leave, Dad gives his mother a wink.

Now, I don’t really know much about Slovakian fatherhood, even after spending several days walking across the country, but I was sort of impressed, and it wasn’t just because the Zlaty Bazant had gone to my head. For one, the Dad wasn’t your typical American TV father, in over his head as he tries to do Mom’s job. No, he’s totally cool with the kids and is absolutely up for doing laundry—but he’s a little iffy on the power of the detergent. Understandable! Who knows what cheap crap Mom bought anyway? Not like she does laundry much anymore.

Plus, at the end of the spot, they go out on a date! (At least, that’s how I remember it.) He’s a guy who watches the kids (although not closely enough to keep them out of the makeup), does laundry, then takes his wife out. Or is she paying? Either way, he seems—they all seem—marvelously grown-up in a way you almost never see in America.

Which is why I’m switching to Ariel* brand detergent—the way a DadWagon dad keeps his kids clean.

(*This post not sponsored by anyone, unfortunately.)

[Note: Ten extra dork points to anyone who recognizes that headline without Googling it.]

When I am holding my son, he paws at my face, often snagging my eyeglasses (rimless wire frames; they’re doomed) but generally going for the mouth. For a long time, it was clear what he was doing: He and I often goofed around, doing that bibble-bibble-bibble thing that involves strumming your lips with your finger while humming. I’d try it, then he’d do the same, then he’d start trying to prompt me by reaching for my mouth.

Lately, though, he’s lost interest in the game, and has just been flapping his hand at my face. Hard. He does it to other people, too. And the other day, when I was out somewhere, a friend saw it and said, “whoa.” To him, it looked not like flailing or playing but actual hitting. It hadn’t even occurred to me to think it was, but now I’m wondering. Is trouble ahead?

What’s the difference between random exuberant waving (which I wouldn’t dream of curtailing) and actual smacking (which needs to be nipped in the bud)? I honestly can’t tell. I don’t connect this activity with any distress, anger, or other bad juju. On the other hand, I also don’t really enjoy being beaten about the face and neck, even by a small soft lovable hand. The only one in favor of this activity, I think, will be my optician, who (at the rate I’m going) is gonna buy himself a boat this summer.

Fellow rope-a-dope victims: Any advice you have is welcome in the comments.