DADWAGON

This disturbing (and yet somehow believable) crime story from Louisiana reopens an age-old debate. What’s worth more: two kids or a cockatoo?

Yes, the child trader in the story swapped two kids (a girl, 4, and a boy, 5) for a cockatoo. But the bird wasn’t quite an equal trade, so she asked the couple to throw in $175 as well.

Now, I know there’s some outrage about this. The courts convicted both the trader and the recipient (a married couple, perhaps tired of IVF?) of serious crimes, for example. But I’d like to offer a modest defense of the woman involved.

First, these kids were placed in her care by their biological parents.  It’s possible the parents just hadn’t mapped out clear expectations for the arrangement. Did they state, in writing, Don’t Trade Kids for Exotic Pets? Doubtful. You can’t expect people to just infer things like that. Sheesh.

Second, I know Cockatoo sounds like an unimpressive beast, because it’s tiny and incontinent and has a the word ‘cock’ in its name. But have you considered the magnificence of a cockatoo? They didn’t say exactly which species, but it could have been a Major Mitchell’s for example, which is pictured here. Look at that big beauty: it’s like a pink eagle, for Chrissakes.

Or, it could’ve been a red tailed black cockatoo, which retails for up to $15,000. Tell me what those kids have done to generate that kind of cash. And I shouldn’t have to mention the great problem facing art thieves also faces kid-sellers in this economy: it’s very risky getting them off your hands. Making that asset liquid could get you in a lot of trouble. The cockatoo market, on the other hand, is easy and sometimes even legal.

Let me be the first to admit that cockatoos do have one major weakness as pets and partners. The cockatoo comes from the jungles of Australasia and therefore have evolved to communicate in insanely loud screeches. And if you do not respond to their demands, they only screech louder.

That is, they are exactly like preschoolers. Except in this case, they also came with $175 in cash. In Louisiana, that can buy a lot of crawdads, people. Case closed.

Have you ever heard of a guy named Roger Dawson? No, well, if your toddler is anything like mine, perhaps you should. He’s the author of You Can Get Anything You Want, but You Have To Do More Than Ask.

These days, everything I do with JP is a function of haggling.

“Breakfast: A Tragedy in One Act”

• JP: I’ll eat one waffle but I won’t drink my milk.
• Me: How about, you eat two waffles, but only half of your milk?
• JP: (counting on fingers) I don’t know what half is.
• Me: (pleased). Good. Then how about this? Three-quarters of a waffle, two raisins, four-fifths of the milk, and tonight I’ll read you an extra Curious George.
• JP: No.
• Me: Go to your room!
• JP eats one waffle and drinks a sip of milk. I let him watch Sesame Street.

This goes on all day and all night. It’s a cycle I don’t know how to break and am not sure I even want to break. If I can’t negotiate something out of him, I might actually get nothing. This would be bad.

So maybe this Dawson fellow can help. His book does, after all, include sections on the “Good Cop/Bad Cop” technique; the value of stalling (JP knows this one instinctively); how to protect against “unethical negotiation tactics” (does this include crying?); and of course, the dreaded “vise gambit.”

Certainly I’m not the only parent out there suffering the slings and arrows of their child’s ability to cut a tough deal. Any stories out there? Any advice? Or am I the only American father to feel as if a power struggle with his 3-year-old is a losing proposition?

I just had an awful thought: what if JP has already gotten his hands on Dawson’s book? It would explain a lot.

Yesterday evening seemed to be going normally. I picked Sasha up from her babysitter around 5:30, stopped at the supermarket to buy some overpriced organic milk, then lugged her stroller, diaper bag, the mail and the groceries up the stairs while Sasha gingerly climbed ahead of me.

But once we were inside, Sasha—after playing with her new stacking cups for a few minutes—spotted the remote control. Picking it up, she pointed it at the TV (the wrong way) and started saying “baby, baby.” When nothing happened, she walked to the TV, turned it on and said “Baby, baby” again—evidently, she wanted to watch “Baby Signing Time,” her favorite DVD. Luckily, the cable was off and no image appeared.

And so, the first sign that I am failing as a parent: My 14-month-old is addicted to TV and wants nothing more—even after 20 minutes futzing with a remote—than to come home and plop down in front of the same crap she’s watched a million times already.

Christopher: You were right.

We each, in our own way, seek to love and honor our fathers, even if that sometimes means killing them after finding them “in the clinch” with our wives.

So it shouldn’t be so shocking that Samantha Bell would call her father — the sadsack IRS killer-pilot Joe Stack — a “hero.” She told Good Morning America that he, at least, took action:

I think too many people lay around and wait for things to happen. But if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished.

Indeed, Samantha. Your father took action against the great menace facing our free society. He alone was willing to stand up to the tyranny of Vernon Hunter, 67-year-old office worker.

Okay, so it’s not like politicians have encouraged this kind of action. Steve King (R-Iowa) was only calling for the IRS to be imploded, not exploded. See the nuance there?

Will Bunch at the Huffington Post, sensing blood in the Internets, has a ready answer to this “hero” nonsense: lift Hunter up as the “real American hero.”

They were picking up on the theme started by Hunter’s son Ken, who told ABC his dad was a hero. That is Ken’s right. His dad — a two-tour Vietnam vet and by all accounts a loving father — seems like he was a solid guy. But the HuffPo is being a little opportunistic here. Hunter was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Making a martyr out of him won’t strengthen the tenuous case that Sarah Palin was secretly behind the attack (seems to me that Stack was studiously nonpartisan: anti-capitalist and anti-IRS).

Let Hunter’s son remember him as a hero. A good father should be a hero to his son. The punditry, though, should leave him be. Let him be just another good person who got killed in the U.S. — one of more than 16,000 a year — and didn’t deserve it.

As for Stack’s daughter: Holy Christ, woman! Shut your mouth already.