DADWAGON

So, last night Jean informed me she was pregnant again—and that she was leaving me for someone else, and she suggested, although we both know the truth, that Sasha was this other guy’s. The strange thing, though, was that the other guy was also me, my doppelganger, and that Jean and I (that is, the me that is writing this) weren’t married to begin with—for some reason had never gotten married, and that was part of why she was now dumping me … for me.

Please know: This was a dream, not reality. And yet it wasn’t exactly a nightmare either, although in the dream I recognized that these were not fortuitous events. But they came across in a very neutral way, as if we’d known all along what was going to happen, and were just acting out prescribed roles.

Now, I hate reading too much into dreams. Actually, I hate reading anything into dreams. In fiction, especially, they substitute symbol for plot, and fail to recognize the essential randomness of what happens during REM sleep.

But when you’ve had a particularly vivid or surprising dream, it’s hard not to wonder what’s behind it. And I know what’s behind this one: “Lost,” for one thing. All season the show has been shifting between what’s happening on the Island and what’s going on in “sideways time,” the world in which the Island no longer exists. This dream had the distinct feeling of sideways time—a world that might have come to be if things had happened differently.

And the other part of the dream is that, well, I’m ready to go home. I’ve been telling people here that Jean only lets me travel two weeks at a time; any longer than that and I might as well not come home. The dreamworld encounter with Jean definitely had a subtext of “You stayed out too long too often, and look what happened. What did you expect?” So this must be my subconscious telling me to hurry on back to Brooklyn.

You know what, Subconscious? Shut up. I’ll get home soon enough—three or four more days, I think—and life on my little island can resume. Till then, just let me sleep through the night, okay?

I’ve just reread Warren’s post about his racist preschooler, and it brings a couple things to mind.

First: what the fuck, Warren? I’ve never met you, but you are clearly ignoring the first rule of guest-blogging: do not write better than the regular bloggers. Seriously, it’s the same reason women don’t wear white to someone else’s wedding. You’re like one of those parents who, when taking their daughter to some else’s birthday party, dresses them like a débutante in a princess gown and tiara, as if was THEIR birthday, which, of course, it is not. This is not your cotillion, Warren. It’s ours.

This is all particularly galling because, as our About Page makes clear, the four of us regulars at DadWagon actually write for a living (although I’m twinging with shame to even say it now). Warren does not. I think he used to write for money, but now he is apparently something of a code monkey who makes websites or Facebook apps or whatnot. Let me just say that I were to build a web page on Warren’s site, I would make sure that it was a suitably deranged Drudge-Report shitpile of static HTML. Not just because I stopped evolving as a web designer in 1994, but also because I would would want Warren to look good on his home turf.

We’ve been extended no such courtesy, and it’s making our readers think. The estimable @wrath66 commented that he hopes Warren keeps writing for DadWagon. It was good of him at least to not publicly suggest which one of us four sadsack original DadWagoners should be let go in order to make room for this wunderkind from Los Angeles.

I am, of course, kidding. We are beyond pleased that, in a week where Matt is walking through the Slovak woods and Theodore is trying to score coke in San Juan (just a guess), we have found someone to do all our work for us, and do it better.

On to my second thought about his post: my daughter is actually having the opposite problem as Warren’s son. As you’ll recall, Warren’s impish bairn was trying to say Snickers, but just ended up sounding like Kramer at the Laugh Factory. There were other examples of the boy trying to communicate something harmless but instead sounding quite potty-mouthed. My 4-year-old daughter, on the other hand, is actually trying to swear but can’t quite get the words right.

I should say here that I suspect my girl is not that great with language. I mean, she’s probably brilliant or whatever, and will undoubtedly be appointed President of the Global Federation that will take over the United States after the Second Amendment is repealed in 2038, but language is not a natural strength of hers. She started speaking late and seems to still be catching up at times, particularly in Spanish (one babysitter was basically mocking Dalia for speaking Spanish like a gringa, which seemed strangely judgmental for a preschooler who can’t speak English so good either). But Dalia’s never been good at repeating words or sounds; the essential mimicry that is the basis for speaking other languages, and your own, well are missing.

What she lacks in a musical ear, though, she more than makes up for in exposure to profanity. OK, the ‘what the fuck?’ she said apropos of just about nothing when she was two and a half was pretty well-formed. But more typical was last month’s failed attempt to curse. We were playing in the living room when her little brother walked by, his diaper bringing the smell of Canal Street into our delicately scented Upper West Side abode.

“Nico split his pants,” said Dalia.

“He what?” we asked her.

“Nico split in his pants. That’s why it smells bad.”

We realized immediately what a gift of decorum this could be. While many parents struggle pointlessly to get their kids to say darn instead of damn, Dalia will probably just say lamb because that’s how bad she is at repeating words. And everyone will continue to think she’s cute, even though she’s got filth on the mind.

OK, let’s all go back to eagerly awaiting Warren’s next post now.

Reading Chris’s post about the miniature Dadaist living in his home reminded me that we’ve been running this here blog long enough (five whole months!) that he’s now experiencing with his kid things I did with mine a little while earlier. How time flies!

All I can tell you, Chris, is to enjoy that melty feeling while it lasts. For a while, everything will be Dada, Mama included. But then, at a certain point, he will, just as Sasha has done, start saying “Daddy!” and pointing at you, and that—wow, that’s pretty neat. Then you’ll notice green guck oozing from his ear and you’ll forget all about that.

I can only imagine that by the time our kids reach Ted and Nathan’s kids’ ages, we’ll just wish they’d shut up, or go harass Mommy for a while.

Months ago, he started saying “Dada,” and I thought very little of it beyond “awww.” It was a pair of easy-to-vocalize syllables, one that certainly didn’t mean “Daddy.” A (female) relative suggested that dads have adopted the term because their children could say it so early, and I agree with her. If a typical first word were “turnip,” we fathers would all be naming ourselves after root vegetables.

Lately, though, I don’t think that’s true. He often says it with intent, while looking at me. Dada = daddy, for real, maybe. But there’s one thing he almost never says, and that’s “mama.” Occasionally he’ll run off a few chattery syllables that include those, but not reliably or consistently.

This puzzles me. I don’t like to say it, but–like virtually all babies–he’s likely to be more deeply bonded with his mother than with me. I’m by no means an absent dad, but I work late at least a couple of days per week, and I don’t do much breastfeeding. He just gets more time with her, and a substantial amount of that time is spent in close physical contact. Why does he not have a word for her?

The answer I come up with is that I’m dreaming. “Dada” isn’t me. It could just as soon be the cat, or a blanket, or that shape-sorter toy he likes. I just want him to say it, because, like all dadas, I turn melty when he does. He’ll come around soon enough.