Its Christmas Eve. I don’t know how to feel about Christmas. When I was a kid it was great. Presents. I remember the presents. The first present I remember was an alarm clock. It was cool. I thought it was anyway. It was a replica of a the house on Seseme Street where Oscar lives in front of. There were several characters from the show on it. And it talked. I remember it going off in our living room when I was little on Christmas. I thought for sure Santa was locked in the living room.
My kids asked for iPads and iPods this year. Talking Barbies. And a swimming pool. That’s about it. Each of these things is on a specific list of things my kids are NOT getting. Someone in my youngest’s class asked for a light bulb for Christmas. Why couldn’t my kids ask for light bulbs? We have a bunch. I wouldn’t even have to go shopping. I’d just rummage through the basement and I’d be done with Christmas. Life would be good. But my kids want a swimming pool. I’m betting it should have light bulbs too though. So they can swim in the dark if they want to.
Did I mention it is twenty degrees outside? Who wants to go swimming when it is that cold? Maybe they give out gift certificates for psychotherapy to five year olds at Christmas too…
The other day my oldest and I went to get food for the food pantry. We’ve done it each year and each time I have to explain why we are doing it. I KNOW that the food pantry needs food, money, volunteers and supplies year round. No lectures please. At Christmas the scouts or someone else is collecting at the store. So it’s easy. It’s convenient. And I am lazy. We missed all the collection groups this year when we went shopping. I don’t know how it worked out but we missed them. So I collected my five year old and we made a special trip. But this time we discussed that we had to make a trip to the Food Pantry itself and not just help load the food into a large van that the Boy Scouts were staffing.
My daughter this year decided that we shouldn’t be buying food for other people and told me that we just needed to go home instead. I was kind of shocked, so I did the logical thing and asked why. She explained to me that it was OK to buy food for our friends. It was OK to buy food for people we worked with. It was OK to buy food for other people we knew. But we shouldn’t buy food for people we didn’t know.
Of course I challenged this a bit and suggested that there were people even that we didn’t know that needed food and I explained the altruism bits and the religious significance since she is currently really into the church thing. Her retort was that everyone we knew had food and that if people we didn’t know didn’t have food then we still shouldn’t buy strangers anything. Emphasis on anything.
I asked, “Why not?” Exacerbated, she asked me, “What if the strangers are people that would want to steal little kids like me and take me away? What if they took me from you? You would want to buy them dinner?” Then she added rhetorically, “What’s wrong with that?” as if to ask, “What’s wrong with you?”
We worked it out. As long as the people at the food pantry made sure that they weren’t running off with little kids then it would be ok if we gave them food. We had to work this out before she would unbuckle herself from the car and head into the store. There were assurances made and empty promises given. It can be amazingly hard to appease a five year old.
So we went shopping. To make it a special deal my five year old got to push one full size cart for groceries and I grabbed another. As we walked down each aisle in the store I consulted the email on my iPad and we ticked off the items on the list as we grabbed supplies. Some of the groceries ended up in my cart and some of them in hers. She spent more time jumping up and leaning in to organize her cart than I did but it was working.
I put the iPad down on a box in my cart and went to grab some canned soup. I handed three of the large cans to my kid and told her to add them to her cart. Then I leaned over to get a few more. I looked up in time to watch my daughter throw the cans down on top of the iPad in a fashion that I can only assume meant she was aiming for it. The cans hit the unprotected glass of the iPad and bounced with such force that the iPad lifted off the box of spaghetti it was sitting on before resting back down.
After what seemed like a good long time (but I realize I was already walking toward her) I asked why she stuck the cans in my cart. She smiled up at me and pointed out that the cans wouldn’t fit in with her organizational style and my cart was already a mess. Clearly the cans should go there. As I dropped my own cans in the cart I looked down at the shattered iPad, picked it up and closed the cover. I smiled. Told her thank you. Then turned to get more soup from the shelves.
Friends and coworkers will tell you that if I am interested in letting you know that I am irritated that I'll yell or make a scene but I am typically not terribly upset. If I talk slowly and quietly I am mad. The slower and quieter I am the more angry I am. If I don’t say anything I am typically planning your demise in some horrific torturous fashion.
We finished shopping, and as we checked out of the grocery store I contemplated how to get the biggest bang for my buck while burying my kid in the back yard. We dropped off the groceries. Ran other errands. Dropped off candy to people for Christmas and generally had a great time. It was especially grand for her. She was out of school and we had left her sister at day care. I took her out to eat lunch. Then we went out to dinner as well. She ate a big lunch but not as much for dinner. That is likely because I had given her popcorn and chocolate during the day. She even got to skip her nap. I figure all that stuff is the five-year-old equivalent of a death row inmate’s last meal.
Pardon me. I'm sorry. She’s five and a half. I might as well recognize the half. Because there was a time I thought she might not make it this far. But it is clear that this fatherhood thing has run its course and is ready to come to an end. So why not go with it? She is always pointing out the “half” and I might as well say something to that as well. Its kind of like acknowledging the unimportant things at a funeral.
My wife put the kids down for bed and I went online to look at “Last minute” gift ideas that were streaming in on my email. While I was sitting there and stewing over my busted iPad I was contemplating repair options. No, it’s not technically insured against for accidental children. I checked.
I was thinking that the swimming pool thing might be a good idea after all. We even bought some shovels. The whole family could pitch in and we could dig the hole for the in-ground pool together. Once we got it a good six or eight foot deep I could just ask my oldest to climb down the hole. She would do it with a smile on her face and think she was even cool. Then I could pour the concrete over her head. The youngest would have a swimming pool and get to think of her sister laying underneath it on a hot summer day. And if I ever needed a patio at least the youngest would be practiced with a shovel.
These are the thoughts of a father in mourning over his busted iPad. For the record, a repaired iPad is never the same as the original. It’s like repairing your car after an accident. You see the dents even after they are repaired and are reminded of it every time you look at the car. Even though it looks like new the care is never really the same. It makes an odd noise when you are driving or the car door doesn’t shut just the way it used to. A busted iPad is the same. You can fix the glass but somehow it has lost its luster.
So I’m looking at this Best Buy ad with last minute gift ideas that you can order online and pick up at the store. And while I am thinking I am glad that I am more or less done with my shopping and contemplating how to take care of a swimming pool in my back yard, I start wondering ….
I forgot a small detail about my iPad in all of my dispair. A month ago I got a scratch resistant and smudge proof (not really but I had hoped) protective cover for the iPad. There was something new about this cover. I hate those plastic films for phones and tablets. They all pretty much leave everything to be desired in my opinion and I don’t plan on keeping a device long enough to care about the casual use marks on the screen. I’m totally a consumer in that regard. Apple will release a new device in time for me to not need one of those stupid plastic things.
But last month I bought a protective cover for my iPad. In the interest of full disclosure I have two iPad minis. I bought two protective covers for over the glass of the iPad. I put one on and figured I’d get to the other some day in the future. The second cover was sitting in the Best Buy bag still in plain view of the living room couch. I hadn’t gotten to it yet. But it got me thinking so I got up and grabbed the iPad and comeback to sit on the couch again. I opened the iPad and looked at the shattered glass of the screen. I slowly pried my fingernail under the covering and lifted it up and off. The shattered cover came off and revealed a perfectly good iPad beneath.
The protective covering I had purchased for the iPad was a thin sheet of tempered glass by Zagg. The cover was destroyed. Between the tempered glass that was laminated to the iPad and the slight give of the cardboard box and spaghetti a Christmas miracle occurred and saved my kid from harm. She will live to see another birthday.
In the mean time, it’s Christmas Eve. My kid isn’t getting a swimming pool. Definitely isn’t getting an iPad. And I am headed to the hardware store to return the shovels she and I purchased for the Christmas family activity we had planned. I guess we don’t need them now and I want to beat the post Christmas rush for returns.
I hope they take the one shovel back that she and I painted the handle pink on. She thought it would be cool. And who was I to deny a child's dying wish? I don't think a little paint should create a problem with the return. It should dig a hole just fine. But she's going to be pissed when I tell her we are no longer planning on digging a hole for the pool in the back yard. Having the pool was the only way I could see getting her to dig her own grave.
Hmmmm.... Maybe I should lay off the mob movies for a little while too.