DADWAGON

I got a call from Dalia’s school this morning. “She’s complaining that her ear hurts,” said the caller. “And her teacher says she’s, ummm, howling.”

Now, this is not a plug for The Wolfman, Benicio del Toro’s movie opening nationwide tomorrow (although, I bet if there were a #Wolfmanmoms blogger junket with a swag bag and a plane ticket to LA, the mom- and dad-blogosphere would be rippling with praise for what a wonderful movie it is for toddlers).

This is instead a shout out to Mohammed Ali. Not the boxer, but the taxi driver who drove me from work to pick up Dalia and then rushed us to make Dalia’s last-minute doctor’s appointment. It would have just been another hectic West Side cab dash, had Ali not spent the whole time in elegant praise of fatherhood.

“This is what God wants you to be doing,” he said, beaming, as I told him I was going to pick up my daughter from school. Ali, who has a son, 12, and a daughter, 14, got metaphysical: “All of these other things, they melt. What stays is your family, your self as a father… to have children is to be in God’s favor.”

It was like getting a ride from Allama Iqbal.

Of course, we all get romantic at times about fatherhood (why else would we be yawping through the tubes about it?). But Ali was willing to take his message to others. “My neighbor, he never had kids. He and his wife like to travel too much, they say. I told them that this money they have, these trips they take, they mean nothing. I told my neighbors, ‘You have nothing. You are empty.”

Good strong words, Mohammed.

Apologies in advance to all those uninterested in the spectacle of a daddyblogger (wonderful term, that–anyone got a better one?) blogging about daddyblogging.

One of my principal conflicts when it comes to participating in this blog is determining how much of my private life to reveal. Plain truth is that I’m going through a divorce, with lawyers, and ugliness, and a fair share of hostility.

I have a son with my soon-to-be-ex, though, which requires us to cooperate on raising him. So far, we’ve been reasonably successful in separating our problems from our care for him. He seems to be a happy little dude, and far as I can tell, no major trauma has come from this disruption in our lives.

But clearly I’m not all that thrilled with his mother as a human being, and there’s a perverse satisfaction in poking fun at her here. It’s a little cowardly, as she can’t respond (she likely has no idea that the blog exists), but hey, life isn’t fair, and I’ve never used her name or provided an image of her.

All that said, potential real-life consequences could come from blogging about my ex-wife, and so at times, I’ve chosen not to write about things because I thought it could hamper the process of my divorce or cause greater conflict between the two of us.

This is one of the those times, ladies and gentlemen. My life is so crazy fucked up right now I only wish I could go up onto a rooftop with a megaphone to explain things to all and sundry. But I can’t.

I could get into all that stuff about the contemporary culture of over-sharing, or the philosophy of living openly on the Internet, but who cares? I will, however, leave readers with these two final thoughts:

1. The image above seems relevant to this post: Loose lips sink ships.

2. On a personal level, the nautical theme holds. In the timeless words of Micheal Ray Richardson, former Knick point guard and celebrated friend of the Jews, “the ship be sinking.”

I shouldn’t be surprised to find that there’s a forum to discuss Google and its competitors, and today discovered Search Engine Roundtable. One of its members here discusses the following Google quirk, initially reported in a Google forum:

I just typed in “slavery and fatherhood” in Google, looking for a book of that name. On the page it says, “did you mean slavery and motherhood?” When I put in “slavery and motherhood” it doesn’t ask “did you mean slavery and fatherhood.”. Why is that?

It’s true. I tried it myself:

The fellow who posted this is (correctly) debunking the idea that there’s some lefty anti-male bias afoot at Google. Which is a silly idea to begin with; Google’s algorithms make such suggestions based largely on the frequency of other people’s searches, and on the volume of links. (I got 685,000 results for the “…and motherhood” version, 194,000 for “…and fatherhood.”) But I like this notion that  shadowy Googlians could be silently proffering politically correct search results. Say you’re searching for the Washington Times: Google could gently suggest “Did you mean New York Times?” Or for the best price on a Mrs. Potato Head: “Did you mean Ms. Potato Head?” Glenn Beck enthusiasts could be coaxed into buying Odelay.  Mike Huckabee fans, may we interest you in a David O. Russell film?

As for people looking up Oral Roberts University. “Did you mean…” Well, sure, now that you mention it–thanks for offering!

Fellow DadWagoner Matt, whose parenting style I apparently criticized this weekend, had a good point about an unrelated topic: If I’m going to go around the Internet saying I love the book Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do), then I might as well actually read it. Fortunately, he had a galley copy.

Reading more than the title of this book did not disappoint. Yes, it covers climbing trees and licking 9-volt batteries, but this how-to for young adrenaline junkies also includes standing in a hailstorm, throwing spears, and staring at the sun. Commenter Jason had mentioned in response to my post that he used to microwave grape halves (they catch fire?!). That’s in there, too.

The book, which was written by a Montara, Calif., paraglider and software engineer named Gever Tulley, became even more appealing after I read a flinty, sarcastic-in-a-Sarah-Palin-way slapdown of Tulley on Babble. The main complaint seemed to be that Tulley doesn’t have kids of his own. Well, this ain’t a sacred fraternity, brother. Anyone with swimmy sperm or a good fertility clinic can have a kid. A sense of wonder and exploration is an altogether rarer commodity. Plus, to be a good father, you need to think seriously about what kind of kid you’re raising. The more I do that kind of thinking, the more I like Tulley’s book.

Bonus, I ran across few pretty great graphics from Tully that appeared in Make Magazine. What the toy warning labels ought to say: