text: Slate eBook Club Editions February 2003 The Final Push Michael Lewis Sister Trouble Michael Lewis Misery Michael Lewis Driving Miss Tallulah Michael Lewis Infanticide to Infatuation Michael Lewis Neglecting the Baby Michael Lewis Toddler Heaven Michael Lewis The Little One Michael Lewis Eek, Mickey Mouse! Michael Lewis Daddy Fearest Michael Lewis The Final Push What a father does in the delivery room. By Michael Lewis Posted Monday, April 15, 2002, at 10:19 AM PT My main ambition when my wife went into labor was to be sober. Three years ago, when our first child was born, I'd been rushing to finish a book. I'd suspected, rightly, that it would be impossible to reconcile book production with new fatherhood. To finish the manuscript before the baby arrived I'd taken to drinking several cups of coffee after dinner and working right through the night. I'd quit around 4 in the morning, then knock myself out with cheap wine. When Tabitha's water broke I'd just thrown back a third glass of unsentimental Chardonnay. I'd wound up driving her to the hospital at 5 miles per hour and then, somewhat dramatically, passing out on her delivery room bed. I'd woken up just in time to witness the birth of my first child (Quinn Tallulah Lewis) but had made, I fear, a poor impression. For the past two years and 11 months I have been on the wrong end of a story called "How My Husband Was Loaded When My Baby Was Born." I promised myself I'd do better this time. It was my last chance. Last Monday evening, just before cocktail hour, Tabitha said she felt funny. An hour later we were in triage; an hour after that we were walking up and down the hospital halls to accelerate her labor to the point where it generated the respect of the women who doled out delivery rooms. I knew this hospital, from hazy experience. I recalled dimly the secret kitchen stocked with grape juice and the crushed ice and the strawberry popsicles. I remembered vaguely how to finagle a private recovery room. I was the college graduate who had partied his way through school and was now returning on alumni day, hoping his classmates had forgotten what he'd been like. The one thing I knew for sure was that when they asked you if you wanted to get back in your car and endure labor in the intimacy of your own home, or take the hospital room now, you took the hospital room now. Having done this, I settled into the chair beside Tabitha's bed and watched nurses string nine separate tubes and wires from her body to various machines: narcotics drip, penicillin drip, thermometers, blood pressure gauges, gas masks to deliver pure oxygen, heart monitors for baby and mother, and God knows what else. And then … nothing. For the next 10 hours we sat around with expectant looks, like extras in a World War II-movie battle scene waiting for the Japanese finally to come charging through the jungle. From the point of view of the woman "labor" is well named; from the point of view of the man it really should be called "waiting." Your wife goes into labor; you go into waiting. A woman in labor needs to believe, however much evidence she has to the contrary, that the man in waiting beside her bed is directing every ounce of his concern toward her. This is of course impossible; and so the trick for the man in waiting is to disguise his private interests. He learns to camouflage trips to the john as grape juice fetching missions. When he is hungry he waits until his wife dozes off, then nips furtively down to the hospital vending machine for his supper of Ring Dings and Nacho Cheese Doritos. At some point in his private ordeal one of the hospital staff will turn to him and ask, sweetly, "And how is Dad doing?" He must understand that no one actually cares how Dad is doing. His fatigue, his worries, his tedium, his disappointment at the contents of hospital vending machines—these are better unmentioned. Above all, he must know that if his mask of perfect selflessness slips for even a moment he will be nabbed. "Would a little food taste good to you right now?" "I don't think so." (Muffled, through oxygen mask.) "Because they have these Ring Dings in the vending machine. The kind with the vanilla icing." The fixed accusing stare. "You're incredible." Pause. A weary tone. "If you want something to eat, just go get something to eat." At great and tedious length, 14 hours after labor began, the baby made its dash for the exit. Then it stopped. The doctor on call poked and prodded a bit, then took off her gloves and stared. Then another doctor appeared, Tabitha's doctor, conveniently just back from vacation. Tabitha's doctor is maybe the least likely obstetrician in Berkeley, Calif. He doesn't believe, for example, in the sanctity of his patients' whims. He has no time for superstition; he is unapologetic about his belief in the power of modern science; he believes that the best way to endure childbirth is not out in the woods surrounded by hooting midwives but in a hospital bed, numb from the waist down. He is, in short, my kind of guy. Maybe my favorite thing about him is the way he dismisses ignorant fears with such contempt that they simply vanish. When he is around Tabitha feels, rightly, that she is in more capable hands than her own. This, for her, counts as an unusual experience. Tabitha's doctor collected information from the doctor on call, in the way doctors do. They spoke for maybe two minutes, in English as intelligible as their handwriting. At some point I remembered that it was my job to know what was going on. "What's up?" I asked. "The baby wants to come out face first," said the doctor on call. "And that's not good?" "It won't fit," said Tabitha's doctor. He let that unpleasant thought hang in the air. "We can't get a grip on it to turn it around," said the doctor on call. Without ever uttering the phrase "C-section" the two doctors conveyed the idea of it well enough. As Tabitha's doctor leaned in to see what he could do, I leaned over Tabitha and, drawing upon my years of selling bonds for Salomon Brothers, tried to persuade her of all the advantages to having her stomach cut open. She pretended to nod and agree but tears welled in her eyes. The doctors, to their credit, noticed her distress; and, to their even greater credit, they responded to it. Before I knew how it happened Tabitha's doctor brandished a large pair of suction cups, one over each hand. "I'm going to try to pull this baby out," he said, in a different tone. He was no longer a doctor. He was a deep sea fisherman. One of those guys who sat on the back of big motor boats hauling in schools of giant tuna with one hand while drinking beer with the other. Tabitha's head popped off the pillow. "If it puts the baby at any risk I'd rather have the C-section," she said. "Tabitha, no shit." The doctor shook his head and pretended to say to me what he wanted to say to himself. "I love the way her mind works. Just what I want to do, put the baby at risk." Ten minutes later, by some miracle I still do not understand, he was hauling a baby girl into the world. I knew from experience that the little involuntary sob of joy I made as my eyes met Tabitha's was a fleeting sensation. I also knew that other, less understandable emotions would soon follow. Sister Trouble Tallulah fails to welcome her new sibling. By Michael Lewis Posted Monday, April 22, 2002, at 2:23 PM PT The last place to recover from what they do to you in a hospital is a hospital. When Tabitha staggered down the hall from her delivery room to her recovery room, she left a place where people had cared for her so well that it brought tears to my eyes, and entered a place where she was a nuisance. You might think that people who work in hospital maternity wards have some special feeling for new mothers. You'd be wrong. Some of them enter the spirit of the occasion, and a few do it with obvious pleasure. But an astonishing number seem to resent any woman who has had the nerve to reproduce. To ensure that she thinks twice before she does it again, they bang bedpans against her door every 20 minutes, holler down the halls all hours of the night, ignore all her gentle requests, and, in general, exude the warmth and charm of an old Soviet border guard. "Oh, great, another fucking baby," I half-expected a few of them to say as they breathed their heavy sighs over my wife's pale, spent body. For all I know, this is sound hospital strategy. Certainly, the atmosphere in the recovery ward discourages anyone from staying longer than necessary. The patient remains on the premises just long enough for the hospital to collect the data it needs to prove to the courts that it didn't kill her. Anyway, the last time around there was no question about what I would do after our child was born: I'd curl up in a little ball in the chair beside my wife's hospital bed, protect her from the hospital staff, and pop down to the nursery every half- hour or so to make sure that Tallulah hadn't been sold on the black market. This time is different. This time I'm free to go; indeed, it is my duty to go. By default, I'm now in charge of family harmony. Which is to say, I'm supposed to fetch Tallulah from home, bring her to the hospital, and prove to her that her life, as promised, is now better than ever. The past few months Tabitha ginned up what we both imagined a ruthlessly effective propaganda campaign to brainwash our 2-and-a-half-year-old into thinking that the arrival of Dixie, and the subsequent collapse in her share of parental attention, was actually in her interest. Out went Dr. Seuss and in came I'm a Big Sister! and Hush, Don't Wake the Baby. Each night Tallulah laid her head on her mother's swelling belly and engaged her imaginary sibling in loving conversation. A few weeks back, I even drove her over to the hospital, walked her through a play–by-play of the birth, and, to encourage her to think of this as a win-win situation, bought her a chocolate doughnut from the hospital vending machine. When I got home from the hospital, I found Tallulah as delighted as ever with life. "Daddy!" she cried as she freed herself from the baby sitter and threw herself into my arms. Then it dawned on her something was missing. "Where's Mama?" she asked. "Mama had the baby!" I said. "A baby girl! You're a big sister!" "But where is Mama?" She was no longer a happy, loving child. She was a personal injury lawyer taking a deposition. "In the hospital! With Dixie!" "I want my family back," she said. "But now you have even more family. We have Dixie, too." "I hate Dixie," she said. Then she howled and bared her teeth. It was an unpromising start. In this situation an unprepared father, a father who hadn't done his homework, might say something foolish. He might say, for instance, "That's not a nice thing to say," or "Of course you don't hate Dixie. You love Dixie. She's your sister." But I'd read the parenting texts, or at any rate the passages Tabitha highlighted and dropped in my inbox. I'd listened intently to the many reports Tabitha brought back from the parenting classes she attended every week. I'd taken note of the instructional parenting cartoon Tabitha glued to our refrigerator. I understood that my job was no longer to force the party line upon Tallulah. My job was to validate her feelings. "You hate Dixie because you're afraid she's taken Mama away," I said. "Yes," she said. "Yes," I repeated. And then … I was stumped. I couldn't think of what to say next. All I could think was: Of course you hate Dixie. She has taken Mama away. I'd hate her, too, if I were you. Truth is, a tiny part of me was proud that she saw the situation for what it was, a violation of her property rights. It boded well for her future in the free market. The parenting books don't tell you where to go when your first move doesn't lead to psychological checkmate. The only thing I had going for me was the toddler's indifference to logic. "So you want to go see Dixie?" I said. "To the hospital?" "To the hospital." She thought about this. "Can I have a chocolate doughnut?" she asked. The hospital visit went well enough. The doughnut purchased the hour needed to initiate the first of the peace talks. But that night, when I put Tallulah to bed, something was not quite right. First, she insisted that I lay her head at the foot of her bed and her foot at the head. Then she demanded three books and two stories instead of her usual two and one. Finally, as I switched off her light, she said, "In fact, you forgot to give me a kiss." I gave her a kiss. "A kiss doesn't make all the angry go away," she said. And then: "Good night, Daddy" in a voice I'd never before heard. A chillingly adult-sounding voice. An hour later there came from her room a sudden noise. She was still awake, fiddling furiously with something on her floor. It was a book of family photos, given to her by her grandmother, which had given her a year of pleasure. She'd yanked it to pieces and scattered them across the room. Misery The way we live now. By Michael Lewis Posted Monday, April 29, 2002, at 12:18 PM PT In three years of wading through the parenthood literature, I have read exactly one piece of writing that comes close to capturing the potential misery of it. It was an article in The New Yorker by John Seabrook, in which the author hunted down a man named Ferber, whose research gave birth to a coldblooded method of training babies to sleep. As I recall, Seabrook and his wife had been made miserable by their newborn's tendency to holler through the night. Addled by lack of sleep, they set out to "Ferberize" their child. This meant shutting the door and clinging to each other as their baby in the next room shrieked with greater and greater urgency. Ferber extremists believe that parents should leave their infant to learn how to fall asleep on its own, even if the poor creature becomes so upset it vomits. One book even suggests that parents spread a plastic sheet under the baby's crib to catch the mess. Before Seabrook went this far, he set out to find Ferber. When he found him, he also found that Ferber had recanted. He was no longer quite so sure about his early research. Millions of babies were being tortured without a theory. Even if we had a theory, we couldn't abide by it. It's unnatural to leave a baby to cry alone in its crib; it makes you feel about as humane as a serial killer. And so, in the past two weeks, our lives have resumed a pattern they last had three years ago, when Tallulah was born. Only this time it's worse because Tallulah is still here. Dixie—who is now referred to by the other three members of her family simply as "the baby"—wakes up every hour between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. and bleats just loudly enough to alert Tallulah to the possibilities. Tallulah wakes up at 11 at night, then again at 1, 3, and 5:30 in the morning and each time screams a horror-movie scream that sends a chill down the spine of the man across the street. There is no way my wife and I could function if we each had to deal with both children, and so we've split the family in two. I sleep downstairs with Tallulah, Tabitha sleeps upstairs with Dixie. On good nights, we meet for dinner. Essentially, we are both single parents. I reckon that Tabitha averages maybe three hours of sleep each night, broken up into 45-minute chunks. I get more like five broken hours, and while I should be pleased about that, I am, in truth, pissed off. That's what happens when you don't sleep properly for long stretches: You get pissed off. At any rate, that's what happens to me. My wife grows melancholy. I decided to keep this diary for a couple of reasons. The first was that I wanted a written record for Dixie, who, as a second child, runs a risk of being a blur; and I knew that there was no way I would take the trouble to record her arrival if I didn't have an editor breathing down my neck for the material. The other was that I noticed a tendency to gloss over the unpleasant aspects of parenthood, in part because it's unseemly to complain about one's children but also because there is a natural inclination to forget that there was anything to complain about. But there is. In the first few weeks after a child is born—or at least after a child of mine is born—it is as if someone must pay for whatever it endured when it exited the womb and entered the world. Here's what my typical day now looks like, for example, beginning at what used to be bedtime. I awaken at 11 at night, and then again at 1, 3, and 5:30 in the morning, to persuade Tallulah that there isn't a spider in her bed. At 7 a.m. she rises for good, somehow fully rested, and hollers at the top of her lungs for her mother. As battered as Rocky going into the 12th round against Apollo Creed, I wrestle her to the ground, dress her in clothes she does not want to wear, and drag her out of the house, still screaming, to my office, where I feed her a breakfast she does not want to eat. She demands chocolate; I offer a fruit plate; after tantrums on both sides of the bargaining table, we compromise on an Eggo waffle. Around 9 I get her to school and enjoy a brief feeling of self-satisfaction: I am coping manfully with a great big mess. I'm preventing my wife from further suffering. I am the good soldier who has leapt on the hand grenade, so that others may live. This cheering thought lasts until I get home and find my wife in tears. Often I try to hide, but usually she spots me, and when she does, she will usually say something poignant. "I feel like I am going through this alone," for instance. Or, "I don't know how much more of this I can take." Whatever she says neatly undercuts my belief that I am carrying far more than my share of our burden; indeed, it makes it clear that I am not a hero at all but a slacker, a deadbeat Dad. Demoralized, I tromp back down to my office and try for a few hours without success to put bread on the table, before retrieving Tallulah from school. By about the sixth day of this routine, I am as random as a misfiring piston and as raw as an exposed nerve. Driving Tallulah home the other day, for instance, I was cut off by a woman in a station wagon. "What the fuck are you doing, lady?" I shouted at the windshield, hysterically. "Daddy, why did you say fuckyoudoing?" a voice inquires from the back seat. "Oh." Pause. "That's not what I said." "Was she a fucky lady?" "Funky. Funky lady." "You said fucky." Once home there is paid help—for which I feel guilty, if you can believe that— and I try to use it to get back to work. In truth, I usually wind up curled up in a little ball of fatigue until dinner, which is my job to throw together. After dinner, I put Tallulah to bed while Tabitha nurses the baby for the twenty-thousandth time. Then the cycle begins all over again. I know that all of this will soon pass and our family will once more achieve some wonderful new equilibrium. With one more person on hand to love and to be loved, we'll soon be drowning in finer feelings. But for now we're drowning mainly in self-pity. You would think that someone would have come up with a humane, economical method for absorbing a new child into a family. Certainly there's billions in it for whoever does. As it stands, there are three approaches to the problem, all of them inadequate. You can pretend to believe the books and do whatever you must do to your children to ensure a good night's sleep for yourself. You can throw money at it and hire squadrons of night nurses to tend to your children while you move into the local Ritz Carlton. Or you can do what we are doing and muddle through as best as you can, grabbing at any old piece of advice that comes your way, less because it will actually help matters but because it offers hope. In the end you tell yourself: Eventually this baby will learn to sleep, just as eventually it will learn to walk and to use the toilet. After all, you don't see a lot of adults who wake up hollering at the ceiling every 45 minutes, just as you don't see a lot of adults who crawl around on all fours, or who crap their pants twice a day. So it stands to reason that the problem will solve itself. Here's hoping. Driving Miss Tallulah A daughter resists the back seat. By Michael Lewis Posted Tuesday, May 7, 2002, at 11:32 AM PT The other day on the way to school Tallulah demanded, unusually, that I shut off the nursery rhymes. Then, even more unusually, she sat silently, staring straight ahead, ignoring my attempts to engage her in conversation. I tilted the rearview mirror to make sure she wasn't choking on something and was greeted with a gaze of what I can only describe as mad intensity. Finally she said, "My Daddy is dead." Four weeks ago, before the birth of Dixie, this would have shocked me. Now it's almost pleasantly familiar. Tallulah's going through a dark phase. A week ago she came home from school with a stack of drawings. Gone were the blue and pink pastels she has favored since she first became a prolific artist. In their place were many disturbing furious black scrawls. One horrifying ink and crayon sketch resembled an ax-murdered spider. My child has entered her first new period. "Oh, so now I'm dead?" I said, cheerily. "You stink, Daddy," she said. "Am I dead or do I stink?" She thought it over. "Both." On some days she hollers insults at me the whole way to school—"You stink" and "You're dead" are two favorites—and if she can find something to hurl at my head, she'll do that, too. Driving her around these days is like playing right field for the visiting team in Yankee stadium. The division of responsibility that's followed the birth of a second child has left me exposed in whole new ways. With Tabitha essentially glued to Dixie, I am the only outlet for Tallulah's understandable need to scream at her parents. I am also her main parental influence. I confess I hadn't realized the implications of this until the other night when, after a brutalizing day on which I foolishly agreed to take both children myself so that their mother might go to San Francisco, I was tip-toeing out of the room containing mother and nursing child and aiming myself in the general direction of the sofa bed. Mother seemed glum. "What's the matter?" I asked, not particularly caring for the answer. Out gushed a torrent of complaints about Tallulah's behavior since Dixie's birth. She'd become surly with baby-sitters; she'd stopped sleeping through the night; she no longer ate her vegetables; she was resisting the final, crucial stages of potty training; she showed no interest in any activity except watching Shrek for the 150th time; she'd been rude to her mother when she returned from San Francisco. In the good old days when Tabitha complained to me about Tallulah she did so in a collaborative spirit. We were joined by common interests; we were Munger and Buffett hashing out investment strategy. This didn't sound like that. This sounded more like an Arab attempting to engage an American on the subject of the Israeli army. "She's not eating her vegetables because she's pissed off about Dixie," I said. "She's not eating her vegetables because she had a huge cup of Frosted Mini- Wheats just before dinner," she said. The Frosted Mini-Wheats had been my idea. She didn't say that; she didn't have to. Everything about Tallulah was now my idea. My wife knew this was the time in Tallulah's life when she needed to be indulged. But she also had an investment to protect. "I just feel like my two and a half years of work on her is being washed down the drain," she said. "She'll get all her good habits back once she gets used to Dixie." "Once you lose good habits you can't get them back," she said. Never having had good habits myself I was poorly situated to argue the point, and if I had, I wouldn't have been believed. My wife was raised in a military household that left her in full possession of the martial virtues. I was raised in a home where it was possible for me every couple of weeks to steal a jumbo sack of Nestlé's chocolate-chip cookies from the kitchen and secrete them under my bed at night without anyone being the wiser for it. I was meant to be 6-foot-3 and make straight A's through high school but as a result of skipping dinner and instead eating a dozen Nestlé's chocolate-chip cookies every night I wound up 5- foot-10 with a D in biology my sophomore year. I could see my wife's point. She had spent two and a half years drilling her better qualities into her first child only to see them sucked out in three and a half weeks of prolonged exposure to me. She was the ace of the pitching staff who had shut down the opposing batters for eight innings only to watch the closer blow the game in the ninth. (I've had baseball on my mind.) In the past three years I have tried on occasion to imagine what effects I am having on my child. I do this dutifully rather than naturally because it seems like the sort of thing a father should do. But I never get anywhere with it. The fact, as opposed to the theory, of life with a small child is an amoral system of bribes and blackmails. You do this for me, you get that. You don't do this for me, you don't get that. I've always assumed that if a small child has enough joy and love and stability in her life, along with intelligently directed bribes and blackmail, the rest will take care of itself. And my approach appeared to be working. Right up until the birth of her sister Tallulah excelled at childhood and did so, it seemed, effortlessly. It honestly never occurred to me that I should be in some way shaping her. I was one of those easy-going CEOs who believe that excessive discipline crushes the creativity of his employees. I believed in managing by hanging around. In retrospect, the only reason I was able to get away with this pose is that I wasn't the CEO. I was more like a titular chairman, allowed to sit at the head of the table but never actually listened to. Now, clearly, I must take a different approach. The CEO's attention has been diverted by a difficult acquisition in a foreign country. The chairman is, however briefly, in charge. Everyone else is anxious. Infanticide to Infatuation Why daddies don't kill their babies. By Michael Lewis Posted Monday, May 20, 2002, at 8:29 AM PT The thing that most surprised me about fatherhood the first time around was how long it took before I felt about my child what I was expected to feel. Clutching Tallulah after she exited the womb, I was able to generate tenderness and a bit of theoretical affection, but after that, for a good six weeks, the best I could manage was detached amusement. The worst was hatred. I distinctly remember standing on a balcony with Tallulah squawking in my arms and wondering what I would do if it wasn't against the law to hurl her off it. I also recall convincing myself that official statistics dramatically overstated the incidence of sudden infant death syndrome—when an infant dies for no apparent reason in her crib— because most of them were probably murder. The reason we all must be so appalled by parents who murder their infants is that it is so easy and even natural to do. Maternal love may be instinctive, but paternal love is learned behavior. Here is the central mystery of fatherhood, or at any rate my experience of it. How does a man's resentment of this … thing… that lands in his life and instantly disrupts every aspect of it for the apparent worse turn into love? A month after Tallulah was born, I would have felt only an obligatory sadness if she had been rolled over by a truck. Six months or so later, I'd have thrown myself in front of the truck to save her from harm. What happened? What transformed me from a monster into a father? I do not know. But this time around I'm keeping a closer eye on the process. I can't honestly say that I've found Dixie, at least at first glance, quite so loathsome as her older sister. She doesn't holler so much for no reason at all, and when she does, I'm usually not around to hear it, as I'm taking care of Tallulah. That's the main difference this time: I now have what her mother regards as a good excuse to avoid the unpleasantness of these first few weeks, and so I do. Occasionally I even forget that she's there. It's a strange sensation to walk into a room, flip on the television, watch a baseball game for 20 minutes, look to your right, and find a 5-week-old child you did not know was there looking back. Still, I've been left knowingly alone with Dixie enough, and been made sufficiently unhappy by her with fatigue and frustration, to have felt the odd Murderous Impulse. At the same time, I have already noticed, in the past week or so, a tendency to gaze upon her with genuine fondness. Here as best I can determine are the factors contributing to what appears to be another miraculous shift in feeling occurring inside me at this very moment: 1) Maternal propaganda. I am a professional writer and therefore am meant to be keenly observant. Without Tabitha, however, I would notice next to nothing about my own child, and certainly nothing admirable. All I am able to see by myself are the many odd-colored substances that emerge from her that need cleaning up, and the many unpleasant noises she makes that shake me from my sleep. But there are all these other, more lovable things about her, too, and her mother sees every one of them and presses them upon me with such genuine enthusiasm that it thaws my frozen heart. Her facial expressions, for instance. She has her Smurf Face and her Bowel Movement Face and her ET Face. She has Her HowYaDoinToday Face and her CallMeAtTheOffice Face and her Mafia Hit-Man Face—which is the one when she curls her lip at you and you half-expect her to say, "You talkin' to me?" 2) Her gift for mimicry. A 5-week-old baby is for the most part unresponsive to ordinary attempts to communicate with her. You can scream at her or you can sing to her, and all you'll get in return is a blank stare. But if you press your face right up close to hers and contort it into grotesque shapes, she'll copy whatever you're doing. Stick out your tongue, she'll stick out her tongue; open wide your mouth, and she'll open wide hers, too. Lacking anything else to do when we find ourselves thrown together, we do this, and the more we do it, the more I like her. 3) Her tendency to improve with age. Already Dixie has progressed from waking every 90 minutes and screaming at the top of her little lungs to waking every two hours and screaming at the top of her lungs. While this might seem insufferable to anyone who didn't know any worse, to me it seems like extraordinary progress. An act of goodwill, even. She still won't win any good citizenship awards, but she's gunning for Most Improved Player, and it's hard not to admire her for the effort. But there's something else, too, which I hesitate to mention for fear it will be used against me the next time we divvy up the unpleasant chores around here. The simple act of taking care of a living creature, even when you don't want to, maybe especially when you don't want to, is transformative. A friend of mine who adopted his two children was asked by a friend of his how he could ever hope to love them as much as if they were his own. "Have you ever owned a dog?" he said. And that's the nub of the matter: All the little things that you must do for a helpless creature to keep it alive cause you to love it. Most people know this instinctively. For someone like me, who has heretofore displayed a nearly superhuman gift for avoiding unpleasant tasks, it comes as a revelation. It's because you want to hurl it off the balcony and don't that you come to love it. Neglecting the Baby For the new father, something has to give. By Michael Lewis Posted Wednesday, June 12, 2002, at 8:27 AM PT The first rule of fatherhood is that if you don't see what the problem is, you are the problem. For most of the past couple of weeks I hadn't been able to see what the problem was. Everything had been going swimmingly. For the first time since the birth of my second child I was able to get back properly to work. My fear that my children would starve, or, at the very least, be forced to attend public school, was receding. The time I needed to earn a living had to come from someplace, of course, but it hadn't been obvious to me where in the family it should come from. Not from my wife, to whom I am addicted. Not from my eldest child, who has made it clear that she can't survive on one minute less of parental attention than she received before her sister was born. The only person who would be perfectly untroubled by my absence was the baby. Having worked up enough feeling for her that I could say honestly that I preferred having her around to not, I could now, in good conscience, neglect her. Sure enough, by laying Dixie off on her mother and various baby sitters I was able to slip back into something like my old routine. By the end of last week I had a new book up and nearly running. All was well. And then her mother turned up in my office, with that look in her eye. I tried to head her off before she got started, by telling her just how secure I was making our family's finances. She was uninterested in the family's finances. "You need to set aside time to spend with Dixie," she said. "Oh," I said. "I've spent time with her." "You just went an entire week without seeing her." "It's not like she knows." "You know," she said. Which was true. Sort of. "How often do you want me to see her?" "I think you should have enough material about Dixie to sustain a biweekly Slate column," she said. My first thought was: What kind of father is it who sees his child just enough to generate material for his column? My second thought was: my kind of father. In that spirit, but not only in that spirit, I took Dixie and her mother to the Parkway Theater in Oakland, to see Italian for Beginners. The Parkway Theater, the greatest invention since birth control, is a cinema that, on Monday nights, admits only people over the age of 18, and then only if they are accompanied by people under the age of 1. Sixty parents of 30 babies purchase their tickets, order their dinners, gather their glow-in-the-dark dinner claim-check numbers, and head into a theater. There, seated on deep plush sofas, infants howling mightily all around them, relaxed for the first time in a week, they wait placidly for their dinners to arrive and their movie to begin. It usually does this without much warning. There aren't any previews or ads at the Parkway. Whatever they're showing just starts right up. Watching a movie with 30 babies is different than watching a movie without them. It's actually better, in some ways. The babies themselves, all piled up in one place like that, are themselves worth paying to see. They tend to howl all at once—say, when a character laughs raucously or a shot rings out in the night. They also tend to sleep all at once—say, when a character isn't laughing or a shot isn't ringing out. Occasionally, they even perform amazing tricks. Just before the movie began, for instance, a 6-month-old girl in the front row balanced herself in midair, with nothing for support but her father's unsteady palm. The whole crowd cheered. The success of an evening at the Parkway turns on the movie. There are good movies to watch with babies and bad movies to watch with babies. Italian for Beginners, odd as it may sound to anyone who has seen it, turns out to be very nearly the perfect movie to watch with babies. It opens with a firm promise to be one of those bleak Scandinavian character pieces in which every character is either dying or despairing, or both. This came as good news for us, as it seemed unlikely in the extreme that any character would laugh or that any shots would ring out in the night. Nobody needed murdering in this one. Also, there's nothing like the misery of life as presented in Scandinavian art to remind the new parent that, no matter how bad he thinks he has it, some people have it even worse. Scandinavians. Without Dixie I would have stewed in my seat, thoroughly pissed-off that that I had been conned by the cheery sounding title into sitting through an Ibsen drama. With Dixie I was pleased to have been conned. But then something happened. Two things, actually. First, about midway through, a bleak Scandinavian character piece became a spoof on a bleak Scandinavian character piece. Everyone who needed to die died in a hurry, leaving the remaining characters to cope with their despair, unaided. And toward the end of the second act their quiet Nordic depression took a dangerous U-turn, as all at once they discovered, as if they were thinking an original thought, what Scandinavians have known for centuries: If you want to be happy in Scandinavia you have to go to Italy. The second thing that happened resulted directly from this shocking eruption of Scandinavian joie de vivre: Dixie woke up and began to holler. The implicit rule at the Parkway is that you can let your baby cry and enjoy the show and no one will think any less of you. The Parkway offers the guilt-relieving sensation usually available only to smokers who find themselves surrounded by other smokers or to fat people who find themselves seated on airplanes with other fat people. But if before you arrive at the Parkway you have earned a reputation with your wife as a neglectful father this sensation is no longer so easily had. Instead, you must rise and walk around with your child until she is mollified. The final scenes of the movie I glimpsed only out of the corner of my eye. A happy Scandinavian remains, to me, an elusive sight. Toddler Heaven Camping in Fairyland. By Michael Lewis Posted Monday, June 24, 2002, at 2:43 PM PT Last night Tallulah and I went camping in Fairyland. Fairyland is a toddler-sized Disneyland smack in the middle of Oakland. Three times each summer it sells tickets to about 25 parents and allows them to pitch their tents, and their toddlers, inside the park. For the first time in their young lives, 25 small children have a chance to spend the night under the stars or, at any rate, the skyscrapers that loom over Fairyland. A few months ago I mentioned to Tallulah that we might do this, and she has been unable to contain herself on the subject ever since. Every other day she has asked me, "When are we going camping in Fairyland?" or "Can we sleep in a tent up today?" She's never been camping or slept in a tent and can't possibly know what any of it means. That is why she wants so badly to do it. We enter not through the main entrance but through a gate in the back of the place between the miniature Ferris wheel and the bumper boats. Twenty-five parents and their toddlers line up and wait for the gate to open so that they can rush in and find the softest, most-level patch of grass to pitch their tents. In line are Tallulah's friend Matts and his father, John. John is the reason I am here; John told me about camping in Fairyland. John, who has done this once before, also told me that I didn't need to bring anything to Fairyland except a tent and sleeping bags: Fairyland would take care of the rest. But John, I notice, carries many more possessions than I do. I have only three large sacks; he has eight. What is in those other five sacks, I wonder? What does an experienced Fairyland camper bring with him that I have neglected to bring? The gates swing open and the other families rush to find the best spots in the dish-shaped campground. Tallulah is more interested in the fact that she appears to have Fairyland entirely to herself, and she rushes off past the Ferris wheel to pet the donkeys. The great thing about Fairyland, from the point of view of a 3- year-old, is that it is designed with a 36-inch-high person in mind. The horses on the carousel are designed for a 36-inch-high person, the cars in the steam train are designed for a 36-inch-high person, the long tunnel in the Alice-in- Wonderland section is designed for a 36-inch-high person. It's a home explicitly for children between the ages of 2 and 5; any ordinary 7-year-old is made to feel unwelcome. With one exception, it is a Lilliputian world drawn perfectly to scale. The exception is the donkeys. These large animals, which Tallulah claims are "llamas," are also surprisingly aggressive. I rush after her and quickly lose any chance of securing a comfortable place to sleep. By the time I herd Tallulah back into the saucer, all of the soft, level places have been taken. We'll be spending the night on the hard, steep slope just below the rim. All the other fathers have their tents looking very tentlike. These are elaborate affairs, with great huge roofs and fancy walk-in entrances. The man in the tent beside me not only has his tent up and running, he has a fantastic contraption that looks like a giant fire extinguisher and sounds like a pneumatic pump. He's huffing and wheezing over the thing like a pro. He is inflating what appears to be a full-sized mattress inside his enormous tent. I do not own one of these. I have never even seen one of these. My tent is still in its sack on the ground. Tallulah looks around, then at me. "Where is our tent, Daddy?" "It's in there." I point to the blue sack. "Why?" "I haven't put it up yet. You want to help Daddy put up the tent?" "I want to go see the llamas." A bit tensely: "I need you to stay here while I put up our tent." In a flash, she's gone. One eye on the donkeys, I unravel the tent and count our possessions with the other. These are: the tent and two sleeping bags I bought last week at REI, one head-mounted coal miner's flashlight that Tabitha gave me so I could see the barbecue pit when I grilled at night, three diapers, one sack of wipes, a purple and green glow-in-the-dark toothbrush, one tube of strawberry-flavored toothpaste, insect repellant, a pair of what Tallulah calls "my stripey PJs," along with the pink slippers she insisted she could not do without. Finally there is a tattered and yellowing Outward Bound Student Handbook from the last time I camped—22 years ago, when I spent a month wandering about a wilderness area in Oregon. In this tattered Outward Bound handbook is everything I have forgotten about camping. Or so I think. When I open it I see that it is, like Outward Bound itself, more concerned with my spiritual development than my survival. It's filled with aphorisms the Outward Bound student is meant to take to heart: They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock for want of a shelter.—Job 24:8 For the first time in 22 years, I pitch a tent. It has such an odd shape to it, I think to myself when I am finished. John wanders over and stares a bit. "It looks like one of those old Volkswagen beetles with a tarp thrown over it," he finally says. "I'm a little worried the fly sheet isn't on right," I say. He thinks about what appears to be my problem. "I think you'll be OK in downtown Oakland," he says. The man in the tent next door continues to pump away at his inflatable mattress. Sweat drips from the tip of his nose. John leaves. I turn to the sweating man. So far as I can see, his giant inflatable mattress is no better inflated than it had been 20 minutes before. No longer does he seem quite the aficionado. "What are you doing?" I ask. He stops, relieved to have an excuse not to keep pumping away. "Trying to pump this fucking thing up," he says. I peer into his tent at the limp mattress. "How does it work?" I ask. "I'm not sure," he says. "My wife bought it." Pause. "This whole thing was my wife's idea." I sympathize and yet at the same time do not. The truth is, I am pleased by his distress. It means that it is possible, just, that I am not the least-prepared father for the journey that lies ahead of us. Tallulah and I may not survive, but we won't be the first to go. A night in Fairyland divides fairly neatly into two dramatically different experiences. The first amounts to a rave for toddlers. The Fairyland staff lays out a buffet banquet of hamburgers, hot dogs, potato chips, and chocolate and vanilla cupcakes: food that not a single toddler can find anything to object to. Not a single vegetable! Not one fruit! For the first time since I have become a father I dine with my child, alongside other parents and their children, unaccompanied by torture-chamber shrieking. All the children eat happily, greedily, so that they can scramble away as quickly as possible to the Fairyland rides, which stay open until 9 p.m. But there's more! At 8 o'clock at night, when most of them would be in bed, they attend an expertly executed puppet show. They watch the story of Cinderella with giant sacks of popcorn on their laps and their mouths wide open. At 8:30 a woman dressed as a gypsy leads them in song. At 10 p.m. they stumble, exhausted and sated, back to their tents. There begins the second part of a night in Fairyland. About two years ago, addled with lack of sleep, my wife and I adopted a firmish policy not to further encourage Tallulah to view the middle of the night as the most interesting part of the day. We shut the door on her at 9 p.m. and do our best not to hear or see her until 7 in the morning. And it has worked, so far as we know, though she still tends to get up a few times a week around 3 a.m. and holler at the top of her lungs. But as a result of our policy I know next to nothing about her sleeping life. That changed last night. We crawl into the tent at 10. For the next hour Tallulah amuses herself by punching the roof and racing outside and trying to climb inside other people's tents. When even that gets old, she settles into her sleeping bag and instructs me to read her a book. Eleven-thirty at night must feel to a 3-year-old like 4 in the morning to an adult, but Tallulah lasted, along with every other child in the camp, until 11:30. During the second reading of Harold and the Purple Crayon, she fell asleep. Here is a rough log of what occurred during the next six hours: 12:15. Tallulah pokes me in the head until I wake up. "Wake up, Daddy. Wake up, Daddy," she says. "What?" I say. "I need you to snuggle me!" she says. I curl up next to her. She falls back to sleep. 1:00. "Daddy!" I wake up and find her seated bolt upright inside the tent. "What?" I say. "You forgot to put bug spray on me!" It's true. I apply insect repellant. She falls back asleep. 1:38. "My sleeping bag came off!" "What?" I say. "My sleeping bag!" she wails. I cover her up. "No!" she says. "I want your sleeping bag!" As her sleeping bag is 4 feet long, this presents a problem. We negotiate and compromise on both of us sleeping under both sleeping bags. 3:15. "An owl is in the tent!" Again, she's bolt upright. "What?" I say, scrambling for the miner's headlamp. By the time I find it, she's fast asleep. 4:12. "Daddy." I wake up. This time she's awake, alarmingly alert and rested. I am not. "What?" I ask. "Daddy, I just want to say how much fun I had with you today," she says. Actual tears well up in my eyes. "I had fun with you, too," I say. "Can we go back to sleep?" "Yes, Daddy." Then she snuggles right up against me for what I assume will to be the long haul. 5:00. The fucking birds are actually chirping. Tallulah, of course, awakens with them, turns to me, and begins to sing: There was a farmer who had a dog and bingo was his name, O! BINGO BINGO BINGO And Bingo was his name, O! "It's still sleepy time," I mutter. "Is it time to wake up, Daddy?" "Not yet." Miraculously, she falls back to sleep. 5:45. It's still dark outside. I wake up to find Tallulah standing in her pink slippers at our tent door, which she has unzipped. "Matts!" she shouts. "Are you awake?" I hear a cry from a distant tent: "Tallulah. I'm awake! Are you awake?" "Matts!" shouts Tallulah again. "I'm awake! I'm awake!" Forty-five minutes later, the four of us are all stumbling off to a breakfast of Sugar Pops. John, if anything, looks worse than I feel. And yet neither of us feels deterred; the evening went pretty much as we'd expected. "I just heard that they do this at the Oakland Zoo," he says. "When's that?" I hear myself saying. The Little One By Michael Lewis Posted Monday, July 15, 2002, at 11:40 AM PT The second rule of fatherhood is that if everyone in the room is laughing, and you don't know what they're laughing about, they are laughing about you. A few months ago when I dropped Tallulah off at school I had that peculiar fatherhood feeling, of having just discovered in a crowded room that my fly was unzipped. From the moment I walked into her classroom, my mere presence seemed to remind her three lady teachers of some impossibly funny joke. They choked back giggles and turned away and pretended to be very busy organizing the dinosaurs in the sandbox and counting the graham crackers in the box. After a couple of days of this I finally asked one of them what was going on, and while she said, "Oh nothing," she meant "you don't want to know." But her smile was indulgent; whatever I had done evidently had caused no offense. I should have just let it drop. Instead, I sent in my wife to investigate. "They wouldn't tell me exactly what it was," she said, when she'd returned from fetching Tallulah from school. "But it has something to do with something Tallulah said about your …" "About my what?" I asked. She looked pained. "About my what?" "About your penis." "That's all you can tell me?" "That's it." That evening, as I showered, Tallulah rushed into the bathroom. This in itself wasn't unusual. It's a hobby of hers to open the shower door and spray water all over the bathroom. She likes to watch her naked father wash the soap from his eyes with one hand and prevent a flood with the other. But this time she also had something she wanted to say. "Daddy has a small penis!" she shouted. The phrase came a bit too trippingly off her tongue. Clearly, it wasn't the first time she'd said it. I squinted down at her, menacingly, through soap bubbles. "What?" She took it up as a chant. "Daddy has a small penis!" "Daddy has a small penis!" "Daddy has a small penis!" As the little vixen spun out of control, I considered my options. To protest at all was to protest too much. I was as trapped as an elephant in quicksand or a politician in a gossip column. Anything I did or said in response would only make matters worse. Really, there were only two choices, silence or laughter, and so I laughed—mainly because stoicism is impossible when your 3-year-old daughter is hurling insults more or less directly at your privates. "Ha Ha Ha," I said, with what I hoped sounded like detached amusement. Sure enough, Tallulah instantly lost interest in the whole subject. Surprisingly quickly, my mere presence ceased to amuse her teachers. My vanity soon recovered, as it always does, and I'd very nearly forgotten all about the incident. But then, last week, as I walked through Tallulah's classroom door, the giggles resumed. I went straight to my wife. "Yes, they're all laughing at you," she said. "But it's only because of the way you dress your daughter." Since Dixie was born three months ago, it has been my job to dress Tallulah. I had heretofore regarded my performance of this duty, and indeed any other duty I happen to perform, as little short of heroic. "How do they know I dress her?" I asked. "Because when you were out of town last week, I dressed her. And when she walked into school last week they all said, 'Mama must have dressed you today!' " "What's wrong with how I dress her?" "Oh, please." "She looks fine when I dress her." "She looks like a street person." "Look," I said, pointing to Tallulah's room. "There's a war in there every morning. I do the best I can." "It's a war because she knows you don't know what you're doing." You might think that I have would come away from this conversation relieved. It obviously could have been much, much worse. But a similar nerve had been struck, the one that is somehow more fully exposed in the male who must constantly defend his self and habits in a house of females. There was a time not very long ago when I didn't think twice of wearing the same hiking shorts for a week at a stretch, or even once of going a year wearing only the shirts that happened to be stacked on top. This was not sloth; this was not indolence; it was efficiency. A minute more spent dressing than was absolutely required was a minute wasted. In the three months that her appearance has been my problem I have done my best to instill Tallulah with the same ideals. "Daddy, I'm awake!" she screams at some bleak hour when she is the first in the house to rise. I stumble painfully over the barricades and into her room and throw clothes on her before she has a chance to wake up everyone else too. It's true that I'm not thinking much about what clothes I'm throwing on her, but that's because she's 3 years old. She's not supposed to care how she looks, so long as she does not look wildly dissimilar to every other 3-year-old. Plus, my theory is that so long as she's dressed to get dirty, the way small children are meant to, no one will notice that I haven't the first clue how to do her hair. But a fact is a fact and I can't deny this one: In the past month or so, Tallulah has become increasingly difficult for me to dress. Every morning for a month the first conversation I've had with her has sounded like this: "Daddy, I want to wear a party dress." "It's cold outside. Brrrrrrr! You should wear pants." "I don't waaaaaaant toooo!" "But I'm wearing pants!" (Spoken cheerily.) "No! I hate you!" With which she collapses howling in the corner of her closet, forehead pressed into the carpet like a Muslim at prayer. It's been an odd experience. Tallulah has throughout this difficult period acquiesced happily to her mother's aesthetic judgment, but the moment I walk into her dressing room she revolts. If it's 45 degrees and foggy, she insists on wearing a skimpy dress. If it's 80 degrees and sunny she demands wool tights. When a day calls for pants and a T-shirt (as every day does, in my view), she calls for her hula dancing costume and hollers until she gets it. By my lights, she is wildly unreasonable. By the lights of the women in her life, her mother and her teachers, she has finally and justifiably decided to resist my incompetence. I have a tendency to prove, at least to myself, that whatever I happened to do in any given situation was exactly the right thing to have done. (Small penis syndrome, my wife now calls this.) This time, I surrender to a force greater than my opinion and try a new approach. "I want to wear a party dress." "Sure! Pick a dress!" "OK, Daddy! And Daddy, I want to wear mama's lip gloss." "Sure!" "Great Daddy!" And from there it couldn't have gone more smoothly, except that the party dress hung awkwardly, the lip gloss wound up as face paint, and her hair remained far outside my abilities to cope with. The truth is Tallulah didn't look any better than she did when I muscled her into pants and a T-shirt. The origin of vanity is not the desire to be admired by others but the need to be in charge. The other thing just follows from it. Eek, Mickey Mouse! A low-rent cartoon character drives six hours to scare the crap out of my daughter. By Michael Lewis Updated Monday, July 29, 2002, at 2:38 PM PT I once went to visit Roald Dahl at his home in the English countryside. The author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and other macabre tales for children had just publicly denounced The Satanic Verses as an irresponsible piece of self-promotion. He didn't exactly endorse the fatwa that had just been issued against Salman Rushdie, but he came close, and I used this as an excuse to go and talk to him. He wasn't well—he was more or less confined to an upholstered chair and wasn't long for this world—but he could not have been better company. I remember next to nothing of what he said about Rushdie. What I recall was lunch. Several Dahls gathered, and a plate of ham cold cuts arrived at the table. Dahl said something about how closely the cold cuts resembled human flesh, and how he once thought of writing a story about children who are served cold cuts from the corpse of a missing friend. I expected someone at the table to complain but instead his daughter giggled and told a story about how she had witnessed, first hand, a butcher slice off his palm while running a shank of ham over a meat slicer. She went on to describe, to the delight of the entire family, how the slice of butcher's flesh fit perfectly on top of the stack of ham. Exactly like the ham we were about to eat! Sixty seconds into the meal the Dahls were vying to out-gross each other with tales of severed limbs and pulsing pink flesh, while happily munching ham sandwiches. With the possible exception of Mrs. Dahl, the entire family had preserved into adulthood a childlike delight in the grotesque. Once you have a small child you can see the full appeal of the Dahlian imagination. To a small child the adult world is grotesque. For a start, it's all ridiculously out of proportion: To a child every grown-up is a monster. Then there are all these events that occur in the grown-up world that a child, in trying to get her mind around them, distorts wildly. I went out of town on business last week. "Are you going on an airplane?" Tallulah asked, before I left. "Yes," I said. "Are you going to an airport?" she asked. "Yes," I said. "Are they going to put chickens on your luggage?" she asked. I had to think about that one. Then it struck me: check-in luggage/chickens on the luggage. How strange the adult world must seem when filtered through the child's vocabulary. Even those aspects of the adult world designed explicitly to give innocent pleasure to a child are often, to a child, either weird or downright horrifying. Which brings me to Mickey Mouse. I had taken Tallulah to a birthday party around the corner from our house in Berkeley. The highlight of the birthday party was to be the appearance of Mickey Mouse. Mickey was meant to be kept a secret. The children would gather and play for a bit and then Mickey Mouse would burst through the doors and surprise everyone. But it's hard to keep a secret, especially a good one, from Tallulah, as it is so tempting to use any prospective treat as a bribe. To coax her into her car seat I had told her that if she ceased to struggle she would get to meet Mickey Mouse. In the flesh. She seemed pleased by the idea. We arrived at the birthday party. Tallulah overcame the shyness she always experiences when she enters a crowded room and was soon playing with the other children. But there is no such thing as equilibrium in a room full of toddlers; something bad is always about to happen; and what happened was that the father of the birthday girl came over to say there was a problem with Mickey. The company that farmed out Mickey to children's birthday parties had just phoned: Mickey was ill. The company had called around looking for a substitute. They had found one, but he lived six hours away. He was on his way, but he'd be late. You had to admire the commitment. In six hours you can get from our house in Berkeley to Reno, Nev. Some poor guy who lived, in effect, in Reno had tossed his Mickey Mouse costume in the trunk of his car in the wee hours of that morning and was now hauling ass across the country to humor a room full of 3- year-olds. And he wasn't even the real Mickey Mouse. He was an understudy. An hour or so later Tallulah was off on one side of a large deck playing with a doll house. The other kids and adults mingled on the other side. I was munching a raw carrot and glancing across the deck every four seconds to ensure Tallulah hadn't fallen off. Suddenly, onto the deck, between Tallulah and everyone else, burst Mickey Mouse. He wore all the official gear. But still there was something off about him. In the first place, he wasn't alone. Trailing him was a ghoulish assistant, clutching balloons and sweating so profusely that one of the children turned to his mother and said, "Mommy, the man went swimming!" Together the two of them looked as if they had jogged, not driven, from Reno. But the real problem was Mickey himself. He wasn't the cute little Mickey you think of when you think of Mickey Mouse. He was a large man, stuffed into a small costume that didn't quite fit. His giant mouse head tilted this way then that, as if partially severed. His white gloves failed to disguise the thick black hair on the backs of his hands. Even his black mouse slacks looked to be loaners; bending over hurriedly to greet the first child he saw, he flashed a rear vertical smile. The first child he saw was Tallulah. I tried to imagine this scene from Tallulah's point of view. The fact is that while she had pretended to be delighted that she was going to meet Mickey Mouse, she had never actually heard of the creature. God knows what she thought she was getting into, but it wasn't a 6-foot rodent with a greaseball sidekick. Instantly—so quickly that Mickey didn't have a chance to lay his hairy mitts on her—her face dissolved in terror and she began to scream. Not a playful scream, a Janet Leigh in the shower in Psycho scream. I raced across the deck, clutched her in my arms, and spent the next five minutes consoling her. When she'd calmed down she squirmed away from me and ran into the house. "Where are you going?" I hollered after her. "To find Mickey Mouse!" she said. For the next hour or so she enjoyed Mickey Mouse in a way that was new to me and I assume also to Mickey. Mickey Mouse, to Tallulah, was not an endearing character. He was a serial killer. This was Disney with a twist of lime. She'd sneak right up to him and then, when he noticed her, dash away screaming bloody murder. It was strange to see. Her mother and father can't bear scary movies, and I'll bet money that when she grows up she won't like them either. But in her current state of mind she likes nothing more than the toddler equivalent of a horror flick. If she weren't so much like every other small child, she'd be considered insane. Daddy Fearest I am new father, hear me wimp out. By Michael Lewis Posted Tuesday, August 13, 2002, at 10:11 AM PT One of the many surprising things to me about fatherhood is how it has perverted my attitude toward risk. It is true that there are many kinds of risk—emotional, social, financial, physical. But I can't think of any I enjoy taking more than I did before I had children—unless you count the mere fact of having children as a kind of celebration of emotional risk. Otherwise, I'm rapidly becoming a wimp. There are little risk-averse things I do now that I never did before and little risk- averse feelings that I have now that I never had before. To wit: Item: The other night Tabitha and I went to see Minority Report. It's the sort of movie that just a few years ago I would have cheered and Tabitha would have at least tolerated. But in the middle of the film a small child is abducted from a public swimming pool. That was enough to ruin it for Tabitha and to make me feel we ought to just skip dinner afterward and go home and make sure nothing terrible had happened to our children. This is obviously neurotic. I don't know a single case of a small child being kidnapped at a public swimming pool in Berkeley, Calif., while his father holds his breath underwater, much less from her bed at night while being guarded by baby sitters. But I am no longer rational on this subject. My emotions are easily manipulated by cheap dramatic tricks involving the suffering of small children, and by the current media hysteria about what is in fact an ordinary rate of child murders. I think I could still sit through the scene in Richard III when the villain has the two little princes smothered in their beds. Anything closer to 21st-century American life ruins my day. Item: I no longer enjoy rolling the dice in the stock market. I never enjoyed it all that much, but what pleasure I took in it vanished with Tallulah's arrival—well before the stock market collapsed. With her arrival, for the first time in my life, I began to worry a bit about money. I have no reason to worry about money but that doesn't stop me from doing it. When people talk about the mood in the financial markets they tend to assume that the market drives that mood. But of course it doesn't, not entirely. A few years ago a piece in the University of Michigan medical journal argued that the reason the Internet bubble reached such ridiculous heights was that huge numbers of investors were now taking drugs that lowered their inhibitions. With a third of the U.S. investing population on Prozac or some other mood-enhancing drug, the paper concluded, it was no wonder that so many people believed the market would simply keep rising. Small children are also a mood-altering substance with financial consequences. Their effect on the human mind is the opposite of Prozac. At any rate, my own current financial taste for cash and bonds seems to be at least partly a response to parenthood. Item: I am no longer as open as I once was to helping out people I don't know, especially when those people need a bath. Several times a week I have a vaguely hostile response to a stranger that I would not have had if I didn't have children—for instance, when I see a bum loitering in the park near our house. I find it less amusing than I once did when people knock on my front door to ask me to join some religion or sign some petition. I used to pick up hitchhikers every now and again, but I wouldn't think of doing it today. In general, the probability that I will extend myself to a stranger in need, always slight, is now zero. Item: Not long after our first child was born, but well before Sept. 11, I began to experience a mild fear of flying. There was a time in my life when I could, fairly blithely, hop out of an airplane with a parachute on my back; now I can't get onto an airplane without melodramatic feelings of doom. When I travel, I carry pictures of my children for the sole purpose of having one long look at them the moment after the engine dissolves into flames and the plane enters its final dive. These occasional spasms of terror are as pathetic as they are undeniable. The only explanation I can come up with—other than that I've become a pussy—is that I can now imagine an elaborate narrative triggered by my tragic death. Before I had children I had no particular reason to fear dying, because I had no particular notion of the consequences of my death. If I had died in some absurd accident it wouldn't have mattered all that much. Now, because of the children who would be left without a father and the wife who would be left alone to care for them, my life seems more important, even though, in some respects, it is actually much less important (having as I do, fewer years to lose). I am aware that all these feelings are more or less nuts. But they are also more or less true. I know for a fact that my children are insane. Or, at any rate, I know that if an adult behaved as my children do, he would be institutionalized. Is it possible that they are contagious?


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VIEWS: 14 PAGES: 7 CATEGORY: Art & Design POSTED ON: 1/28/2012
The Art of Garnishing Whether you realize it or not, cooking is an art. You don't necessarily have to study to be a chef in order to turn out great dishes and to be able to make food that people enjoy. Many home cooks who have a great time cooking realize that their plates lack something, but they aren't sure how to bump the quality up a notch. You see, no matter how incredible the food, presentation is everything. Let's take a look at the art of garnishing and how to make your dishes look stunning, just like in a high class restaurant. There are many forms of garnishes. You can use outside elements which are not edible, such as decorative plates, or food itself, like the traditional lemon or orange slice. Another way to garnish is with sauces, which is probably the most art-like method of all as the liquid allows you to draw forms on the plate. Decorative, inedible elements come in a variety of forms. The plate upon which the food is placed can be a garnish in itself, simply with the patterns that are already etched on it. For many chefs, the plate is the base of all their garnish art. Most prefer a plain plate, of a single color, usually black or white, to form the background for the food and all other décor. Other inedible garnishes include sauce bowls, hollowed out leg bones that form a container for soups and stuffings, and fluted paper cups that may be used occasionally to present small portions of food separately on one plate. Edible food garnishes are an art form all on their own. You can go with the simplistic, useful garnish, like a lime slice or an orange wedge on the edge of a plate, or a sprig of parsley atop the rice, but there are plenty of other great ideas that really don't take that long to do up. For example, you can make some very elegant carrot curls by just using your vegetable peeler to make long thin strips that you then drop into ice water for 5 or 10 minutes. They curl right up and can be arranged around the edge of a plate or used to decorate a salad. Last, but not least, a squirt bottle filled with gravy or a herb-infused oil (to give it color) can be the cook's best friend in the art of garnishing. Just swirl or dot the colored liquid around the plate, before or after the food has been arranged. Elegant zig-zags or simple wavy lines add a whole new dimension to the food as well as lightly seasoning it. Garnishing is fun, and it adds to the art of cooking great food. Once your family has seen a plate with a drizzle of green chive oil around the edge and a sprig of basil in the center, they will be more than happy to eat what you have made! So go ahead and try adding some art to your dishes tonight. Motivate Your Students with Awards It can be difficult as a teacher to get your students motivated in class. You might manage to get them hyped up to a certain point over a project or two, but in general, the interest lags after a few days. There is another way to get your student interested and in a competitive mood and that is with awards designed specifically for them! Classroom awards are among the most popular for students and it is very easy to add them to your daily teaching life. You can make up absolutely any type of award that you want, which is especially handy with young children. Inventing a fun award like "Best Smile of the Week" is the perfect way to get kids laughing and working harder. Start by planning out several general awards such as "Hardest Working Student", "Most Helpful", "Best Behaved", etc. These can be given out every week or month, as you see fit. Although you could have awards that are given out at the end of each semester, it is usually better motivation if you choose smaller time periods. This allows the children to compete more and they have more chances of "winning". For this reason, you want to reward good behavior, so everyone will be doing their best to behave well and try harder at their work. There are lots of different certificate papers available, you can choose one that goes with your theme. For younger kids, a certificate with balloons is fun, while older children will prefer a more professional look. The idea is to give out a certificate for all the awards at the end of each judging period. Hold a semi-formal ceremony, where each child is praised and called up in front of the class to receive their certificate. Have everyone clap for the winners and you can teach them a little something about not being sore losers as well. If you want to take things a step further, include photos in your awards ceremonies. Take a shot of each winner with their certificate and for the next time period, that child has his or her photo hung on the bulletin board with the name of their award above the photo. Kids absolutely love being famous and this is a good way to cater to that interest. Make up fancy frames with the award names on top. You can make this a class project if you like and have all the children team up to decorate the photo frames. Invent a special, unique award at the end of each time period, something like "Best Dressed" or "Funniest Jokester", according to what you see fit. This is a good way to include the children who might figure they have no chance at winning a good behavior award, so they automatically try to be bad. These awards are one-time only affairs and should only be given to one child in the class. Using awards to motivate your students is not a new idea, but it is one that has not been used enough. As you begin to incorporate it into your classroom routine, you are bound to see results. Tips for Writing Children's Books So, you have decided to write children's books. Many people think that this is a very easy market, since young children's literature tends to be so simple, but that is far from the truth. Rather, you must select each word very carefully because there are so few! Here are more tips on writing books for children. Read as many children's books as you can get your hands on. This is vital if you want to writer your own quality stories that children will enjoy. Take note of how other authors use words to describe the pictures in the books for very small children. Now that you have read all those picture books, try reading them to some little kids. If you have your own, perfect, but if not, don't let that stop you. You can easily borrow some friend's kids or volunteer to read to a day care group or in a preschool. Watch to see how the children react to each book. When you feel prepared, you are ready to go ahead and write your own book. Selecting a topic is key to writing the perfect piece of literature for small children. There is no point in choosing something that will be completely out of their league, so you want to go with common, every day issues that face little kids. These might include welcoming a new sibling into the family, traveling, divorce, starting school or dealing with their mother going back to work. These are all very important things that affect their lives. Don't underestimate children. They can spot badly written books a mile away and you won't have their attention for long unless you write something interesting that captures their imagination. While the pictures and drawings in a picture book are important, so are the words and they are the introduction to reading and writing for many small children. Think back to when you were small. The feelings that you pull up from those distant memories will help you write the books that you are working on now. Can you remember how it felt to be jealous of your big sister because she had more juice than you? If so, incorporate that into your book, make your primary character feel what you felt. This is the best way to get kids truly involved in your stories, by including emotions that every one of them has felt at some point or another. Join an online or offline book writer's group. They can provide invaluable feedback on your writing and it is worth having some constructive criticism when you are writing something so delicate as books for children. Try to find a group that specializes in juvenile literature and remember to give as much as you take. Once you actually have your manuscript in hand, it is time to revise it. Not once, not twice, but three times. This is very important. You might figure you don't have much to edit, since it is only a 300 word picture book, but every sentence needs to be as tight as possible. Test the story out on children that you know and see what they think. They are great critics and will tell you the truth straight out. Finally, you are ready to submit your books. Follow the publisher's guidelines or you will be rejected right off. And be prepared to be rejected, since even the best writer's don't always get accepted on the first try. Making Your Divorce a Friendly One Divorce is considered to be such a nasty word, the angry splitting apart of two people who once loved each other and now hate each other. However it doesn't always have to be that way and there are many couples who actually manage to stay friends throughout the divorce process as well as afterwards! If you think that keeping your split relatively friendly is a good idea, whether for the kids or just because you are tired of fighting, this article will give you a few pointers on doing so. The benefits of a friendly divorce are many. First, neither partner gets into a heated argument and the negotiations tend to be far more reasonable, based on wanting things to be resolved instead of focusing on revenge. Children are also happier when their parents are splitting amicably. The tension in the household, while still in existence is not as strong and the children of friendly splits tend to be better adjusted than those who suffered through their parents´ hatred and badmouthing. The first step in creating a friendly divorce is to decide things between the married couple. Don't just hand everything over to a judge. If you are capable of making responsible, adult decisions, do so on your own turf, not in the court room. This includes such decisions as how to share custody of the children, splitting up the assets that you both own, etc. These are all things that are commonly left to the judge, but you will avoid a lot of problems if you can work it all out between the two of you. Setting goals that both of you want to achieve is another way to help your friendly divorce along. These goals might be something that you want for your children, that both of you are willing to work towards. It is a good idea to figure out ahead of time how you will both work things out, if there will be a process. Some couples find that it is far better to take a couple of hours per week to sit down at a coffee shop and discuss things, while others will call each other up as soon as they think of another problem. The choice is up to you and really depends on how friendly you remain with your ex. Most couples had a joint way of raising kids while they were together and this should continue after the divorce. Just because you are now separated doesn't mean the children should suddenly be allowed to watch TV all day when they were limited to an hour before. Neither parent should give in to demands raised by the kids if they wouldn't have as a couple, since this only causes problems between the divorcing pair. If you are having difficulties resolving an issue, but don't really want to involve lawyers, you might consider hiring a mediator who is able to gently help you both sort things out. This is a good way to keep the divorce peaceful since the mediator will be looking at what is best for both parties. Divorce is never an easy process, but by keeping it as friendly as possible, you can ease the transition. Follow the steps above and try to stay civilized and you should be able to achieve your goals. Pros and Cons of Home Education The whole home education movement began back in the sixties, with the hippies rebelling against all things government run, but since then, it has grown into a legitimate method of schooling. In fact, home schooling has become so big that colleges and universities now accept applications from children who have never been to school without question. But like any major decision involving your child, you have to weigh the pros and cons before deciding if home education is the right choice for you and your family. Over the years, home education has received a bad rap due to parents who keep their kids at home, but don't actually teach them anything. These children often emerge from the cocoon of their home life as adults with severe disadvantages. They are not able to interact well socially and their knowledge of basic academic subjects is very low. When people see this, they assume that home education is not a good thing. Also, many people are against home education because they believe that the school teachers are better equipped to teach children than parents. The facilities in the school are better in many areas, particularly the lab and the library. For obvious reasons, gym class is quite different in the school environment as well. However, not all home education is badly done. There are parents who are very well equipped to teach their children and as long as they realize when they are out of their league, there is no problem, as a tutor can be hired. Also, there are several very good curriculums available specifically for home use that are easy to follow both for student and parent. As long as care is taken, there is no need for social ineptness in the average home education student. There are a multitude of activities and classes that children can take to provide them with a social experience. In fact, many areas have home education groups where families who home school get together for various activities. The parents can discuss children and teaching difficulties while the students play games and sports and just generally interact with other young people their own age. While it is true that classes such as phys. Ed. and science can be more difficult at home, there are ways around this. One way is to invest in lab equipment as a group, with several families pitching in to buy the required equipment. Also, many schools allow students from home educated families to participate in just one class without problems. This depends on the school and the area it is in, so it's best to ask first. Home education can be a very rewarding venture for the right people, but you do need to realize that it is not a vacation. Studying at home means a lot of hard work and less motivation, since you have only your own family to spur you on. For those who are not very disciplined, home schooling is not a good option. Weigh the choices, talk to other people who are already teaching their kids at home and then make an educated decision. Online Shopping Safely With online shopping revenues going through the roof in recent years, the need for safety while making your purchases over the internet has also risen. Most people are unsure of how to stay safe, protect their identity and credit cards while buying from online stores and vendors. And websites are struggling to create newer and better methods of online protection for their consumers. Online shopping shouldn't have to be dangerous, as long as you know what to watch out for, which is explained right here. Using a secure method of payment is always the best option. Look for websites that use PayPal or BidPay, etc. These sites are specially designed to prevent fraud and protect both the buyer and the seller from potential problems. If you are using a credit card, you are at risk for theft every time you give out your card number. Although experts agree that using a credit card is far safer for online shopping than a debit card (credit cards hold extra protection against fraud, but debit cards don't), you still need to take care. One way to avoid problems in this area is to buy a virtual credit card. These prepaid gift cards are the best way to go because they come with a preset limit, which you have already paid, whether that be $10 or $500. There is no way for anyone to spend more than the limit, even if they steal your number. Virtual cards also offer special online shopping protection. Bank account numbers, passport or other ID numbers and passwords should never be kept on your computer. Some websites utilize spyware to enter your computer and search out this information to be sent back to unscrupulous people, allowing them to rob your identity. Instead, keep this information on a burned CD or a USB memory stick which you can remove easily. Better yet, just write it down in a handy notepad that you keep beside your desk. Hackers haven't yet figured out how to get to offline materials! When paying for something during your online shopping spree, avoid using services like Western Union or any other payment method where you are not protected. With systems like PayPal, if you don't receive the goods after sending payment, you have ways to reclaim your money, whereas with a check, or certain other payment methods you have no proof. Whenever you are asked to enter private, personal information, check to see if there is a privacy policy on the website. This should just say that they promise to keep your information safe and will not sell, rent or give it away to anyone else. If there is no privacy policy, do not submit your information since it will then become public property. Also, when doing your online shopping, you should always have an anti-virus and an anti-spyware program installed on your computer and running. Online shopping while unprotected is a very dangerous venture! You can pick up all sorts of nasty problems while searching for that perfect Christmas gift! Online shopping is convenient and in most cases, secure. Just make sure you use the above tips to keep it completely safe.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
further adventures in Jed York being unsuited for his position
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- Is a Harbaugh.
- He's already won a Super Bowl, so what does he have left to gain in the NFL?
- Mattison was his DC for a time in Baltimore, so Harbaugh would be able to re-unite with him.
Date | Title | Body |
5 days 22 hours ago | What about |
Future metals? ;) I invested in a precious metals mutual fund in early 2012 and the bottom has dropped out on that (I'm sitting on about a 50% loss right now). Horrible timing for me, but I went into it with a long-term view, so I'm holding out in the expectation that it'll turn around eventually. |
5 days 22 hours ago | Roth IRA |
Is a Roth advisable even if you have a 401(k) through an employer? Seems like whatever money you put into a Roth could also be put into the 401(k). Is it just a way to further diversify investments? |
5 days 22 hours ago | Fees |
If you don't mind sharing, what sort of fees do you pay your advisor? And are they monthly, annual, or an hourly rate whenever you meet with him? I've never met with a financial consultant, but am starting to think that may be wise. |
1 week 22 hours ago | What is this |
Refund you speak of |
2 weeks 1 day ago | ? |
I thought they were trying to make a song. Seems a bit overkill for that. |
6 weeks 5 days ago | I still don't get it |
If you bet on the favorite to win by at least 7.5 points, then you really need them to win by 8 points. At that point, you're betting on the same margin of victory if the line is set at 8, since it's a "greater than or equal to" proposition. I'm sure the nuance is significant (otherwise nobody would set half-point lines), but it's lost on me so don't waste too much time explaining it. |
6 weeks 5 days ago | Noob question |
Why do line-setters use half points (ie, Seattle being favored by 7.5)? How is that any different than setting it at Seattle by 8? If the rule is that the favored team must win by a margin greater than our equal to the line, I don't see the difference since there aren't half points in the NFL. |
6 weeks 5 days ago | That's right |
Red and Blue Iguana are completely separate. And yes, Red Iguana has two locations. I've never been to Blue Iguana, but a coworker of mine went and spoke highly of it... but still inferior to Red Iguana in his estimation. |
6 weeks 5 days ago | SLC |
I spent a lot of time out there this summer for work. This summer was the first time I'd ever been out there, and I have to say, SLC is one of my favorite cities that I've been to now, and I don't ski and am not Mormon (which seem to be the two primary draws to SLC). I don't know that I have any new places to add, but some highlights: - Red Iguana for sure I never made it up to Park City, as I never stayed over through a weekend, but a lot of people talked very highly of it. Also, you're a few months late now, but for some reason SLC loves them some Halloween festivities. |
7 weeks 3 days ago | This was news to me |
Glad he posted it. |
8 weeks 21 hours ago | Excellent analysis |
Would read again. |
10 weeks 2 days ago | Moe Rons |
Never heard of him. Think he gets a lot of heckling for having a name that sounds like morons? |
10 weeks 5 days ago | You're wrong |
He is still figuring things out. Seems like he's an excitable kid though, which has made his mistakes more public. People need to quit being dicks toward him. If his misinformation bothers you so much, ignore him. |
10 weeks 6 days ago | Couple things |
This stretch of rough games is helping me realize a couple things: 1. Just how special the teams from the past couple years have been. |
10 weeks 6 days ago | Shows |
How far basketball has come. Would not have seen anyone saying this 5-10 years ago. |
11 weeks 13 min ago | SkyZone is amazing |
Went there last winter and had a blast (I'm 26). After playing trampoline dodgeball, I just don't think there's any other way to play. |
11 weeks 15 min ago | This is so cool |
What an awesome exchange. You're the man, Vince, and not just because you rock the finger guns. |
11 weeks 1 day ago | Looks like the link is to |
Looks like the link is to Facebook, which is blocked at my office - what is his "news"? |
11 weeks 1 day ago | 100% seriousness |
I would fear for the well-being of some on this board. |
11 weeks 2 days ago | First thought |
First thought: whoa, it's happening LeBron-style? Second thought: should this have a NSFW tag? Third thought - :| |
11 weeks 2 days ago | What does FBScoop have to say |
What does FBScoop have to say about this though? |
11 weeks 2 days ago | Who? |
Who? |
11 weeks 2 days ago | The |
The Mochigan difference? |
11 weeks 4 days ago | No. I don't think he was ever |
No. I don't think he was ever really in it though. I know some people in the media floated the idea around, but I think the only reasoning was: |
12 weeks 1 day ago | Porcello is the very |
Porcello is the very definition of a pitch to contact, ground ball pitcher. His K rate is usually in 5-6 K/9 range. I think 2013 was his career best year in that regard with around 7 K/9. That was not sustainable for him. Very low walk rate; usually less than 2 BB/9. He's a heavy sinker-baller, typically in the 50%+ ground ball range. He's at his best when he's generating tons of ground ball outs. If your infield is good, then he'll be a great fit. |
12 weeks 1 day ago | Cespedes for Giancarlo |
Cespedes for Giancarlo Stanton, because DD is a wizard. |
12 weeks 3 days ago | В советской России, едоки привести в |
В советской России, едоки привести в прошлом. |
12 weeks 4 days ago | Двое мужчин вошли в бар |
Двое мужчин вошли в бар |
12 weeks 4 days ago | Вы дурак, и твоя мать бабуина |
Вы дурак, и твоя мать бабуина |
12 weeks 4 days ago | Мне нравится использовать |
Мне нравится использовать Google Translate тоже! |


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Easter devotions are here! Sign up for our Lent and Easter email devotions.
4:21–27 By presenting the rejection at Nazareth at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, Luke highlights certain main characteristics of that ministry: (a) the response of wonder at His teachings coupled with persistent unbelief and rejection (vv. 22, 28); (b) His ministry as the fulfillment of Scripture (v. 21); (c) His concern for the poor and oppressed (vv. 18, 19); and (d) His ultimate aim of including Gentiles among the people of God (vv. 26, 27).


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Imbler has 2 schools. Some of the best schools in Imbler are Imbler Charter School with a GreatSchools rating of 6/10 and a parent rating of 3/5 stars, and Imbler Elementary School with a parent rating of 4/5 stars. The average GreatSchools rating for Imbler public schools is 6/10, with an average student/teacher ratio of 15:1.
School data provided by National Center for Education Statistics, Maponics, and GreatSchools. Intended for reference only. GreatSchools Ratings compare a schools test performance to statewide results. To verify enrollment eligibility, contact the school or district directly.
The supply of housing inventory exceeds demand. Buyers have the advantage over sellers due to the abundance of homes on the market, with homes often selling at reduced prices. Price drops are common as sellers compete to find buyers.
Not enough data to determine market type. Consult a local REALTOR® for up-to-date market summaries
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Trend data coming soon.
For Sale: 2 | New: 1 | ||
$261,067 | $237,625 | Recently Sold: 4 | Reduced: 1 |
Average Home Price | Average Sold Price | Property Records: 128 | Foreclosed: N/A |
The average home price in Imbler is $261,067, which is 9.9% lower than the average sold price in Imbler ($237,625) . The average home price per square foot in Imbler is $130 and about 3% of all homes in Imbler sold in the last 6 months. For Imbler home values, real estate prices, and city market trends, research the 128 property records or search our 4 recently sold or 2 homes for sale listings. The listings and properties in Imbler are only a part of the 1,254,716 properties and 19,147 homes for sale in Oregon. Because of this, the average home price and average home value of Imbler also influence the average home price $229,000 and average sale price $282,605 of Oregon. Listing counts, Imbler home prices and home values in Imbler are sourced daily from listing and property data on realtor.com®, which is the most up-to-date and accurate aggregation of real estate listings in the industry and includes approximately 800 regional MLSs and is the official website of the National Association of Realtors®.