Fatherhood the Blog - Week ??

What is Fatherhood? There once was a boy called Andrew. It may have taken him a score of years, and a ridiculous trial of easily avoidable experiences, but he figured our what, "Andrew" meant. What, "O'Dell" meant. Most importantly, what, "O'Dellicious" meant. It takes a series of revelations, disappointments, and self-important destructive tendencies to eventually come to the point where one is at peace with oneself. On my 22nd birthday, when I was still a wandering poet, I penned these lines:

I don't yet fit in
To my own skin
But I'm closer now than I've ever been

           It's been five years. I've figured out who I am, and who I want to be. I know how I want to die, what I want on my tombstone, the song I want played at my funeral, and the type of person I want to be between then and now. But guess what, contestants? It ends up that, "Who are you?" was never the final question. Remember the $25,000 Pyramid? That's small change now folks. The answer is bigger and further and harder to find. After I thought I had it all figured out, suddenly loomed the new question - Who is Andrew the Husband? This took me far longer to figure out than it should have, and caused an immense amount of growing pains and, let's face it, grief, before I had handle on it. Finally, I am at peace. Finally, this boy knows his exact position in the world, measured from any angle. JPLAY BOII. Now it's time to figure out who this new stranger is on the horizon - Andrew the Father.

           Last Sunday (which is our Saturday) Mag made bacon and eggs and bagels, and we began to tackle our, "Totally Arbitrary Honey-Do-Or-Do-Not List." A part of that list was to wash our cars, and we did that with both gusto and a totally inappropriate amount of wasted water spraying throughout the air. At one point I was over at my car, while Mag was at hers, and she stood up, clutching her stomach, and gasped out, "...my water..."  Panic shot through me and my brain tied itself in knots, not having any clue what to do. Her water was breaking this early in the pregnancy? It ends up her stomach was just cramping and she was asking me to get her bottle of water for her. My filthy mind started working in overtime during this process (you know, the Devil's Playground and all that) and I started fixating on the actual birth process. Admittedly, it probably didn't help that Knocked Up was playing on E! all weekend. I don't know what the birth process is like - I've never experienced it! I asked Mag, "When they say your, 'water' breaks, does that really mean there's a ton of blood and goo everywhere?" She didn't know - she's never experienced it either!

             So anyway, I started thinking about all of this. Number One, I've never been anywhere near some sort of medical procedure. Well, except: I had a cancerous mole on my back, and the doctors cut out the customary pound of flesh. Twice. I remember the first time, face down on some sort of table as the doc cut out a hunk of my back. I felt no pain, but I could feel the cold of the scissors cutting through my skin. My dad, present in the room, described the process to me: "Oh, they're cutting through a big hunk of your skin now," his medically trained ass told me. "Please stop talking," my non-medically trained ass replied. The second time  this happened Mag entered the room with me, and told the doctors she wanted to stay as long as she could. They eventually kicked her out, just before their shiny sharp cold blades pierced my skin, leaving a scar I'll carry until my body is worm eaten and buried in the dust below. I love both my wife and my father, but if they went in for a procedure I'd be in the waiting room, Jim Beam hidden in a satchel, tapping my foot wildly while reading Reader's Digest.

                  I started thinking about the actual birth process, and I got more and more scared. I'm going to be in the room as blood is expelled? As my wife hollers for reprieve? As medical professionals run around in some sort of semi-cute tizzy? Someone asked me the other day, "Do you want to cut the umbelical cord?" "HELL NO!" I exclaimed. I am paying a medical professional who spent 8 years in school to do what he/she was trained to do. Why in God's name would I do part of their job for them? If your answer has anything to do with symbolism, go right to sleep and don't bother with waking up. I'm not interested with taking some sort of symbolic step to show that I'm severing my child's connection with his (or hers, but in this case his) mother. I sat on the couch on Sunday afternoon trying to not have an anxiety attack (I've never had one before, but I assume this is how they start. A slow terror creeping throughout your body, your throat beginning to constrict, the only thought in your head is the mantra ican'tdothisican'tdothisican'tdothis) and trying to figure out a way to NOT be in the room when my son is born. I confessed my fears to sweet Maggie May and she bucked me up by appealing to my strongest character trait - my vanity. She began listing the skinny little dumb guys we know that have knocked their girls up, as well as every other father we've ever met. If they can make it through the birth process, she reasoned, how could I not? I'm keeping that in my back pocket to hold my fears at bay, but I still expect it to be quite terrifying. I will survive though - I have the easiest job in the room (besides Flipper).

My painting job.

                    Oh yes! Flipper! I guess I could talk about him some. Really though, what is there to say? This blog is called Fatherhood and it's about my experiences of being a father. It's not called Sonship and about the experience of swimming around in fluid in the pitch dark and kicking wildly in rage and jealousy whenever your father dares to have the gall to lay his hand upon the belly of your mother! Flipper just lives much as he has for the past while without any effect on me, asides from the psychological of course. He's developing rapidly, but I can't see it! I'm desperately wanting another ultrasound, but we have to wait another two weeks to see one. By then he'll be huge, staring straight at the camera, wearing a fedora, holding a suitcase, and tapping his watch impatiently. Margaret can't see him either, of course, but since he's inside of her she's much more attuned with him on a day to day basis. He's been getting hiccups, which is hilarious, and which Margaret can feel.

One of the pillows Mag covered.

                  We're trying to prepare every little thing we can for his impending arrival (well don't let me exaggerate here, we still have another ten and a half weeks, officially, but everyone knows time travels much faster during football season). I painted his dresser drawers with the colors Mag picked out and I'm quite content with the job that I did. Mag, having caught sewing fever from working on the window treatments in Flipper's nursery, has since made pillow covers for his room as well. After that she made a curtain for our bathroom, and then two more window treatments for our bedroom. We even have packs of diapers stacked on his changing table and in his closet. We're looking online for damned FAN CHAIN PULLS just to add the finishing touches to his nursery. Everyone says you just do this for the first child, and practically ignore the next one (trust me, as a second child, SOB, I know this to be exactly and precisely true) but even if that is the case, who cares? At least do it for the first kid!

The curtains Mag made. I didn't take the best picture so you
really see the clever little fold in the middle.

                    Today I started thinking, as I drove down the road - what if Flip was born with no eyes? This is ridiculous, and impossible, and we've already seen his eyes via ultrasound, but still that random thought popped into my head. I could picture a little baby with just smooth skin where his eyes should be and I thought, "What if I knew right now that that's how Flip would be born?" Without really having to think about it, the answers began pouring into my head - I thought about how I would describe sight to him, about seeing-eye dogs, about the type of life he could have and the type of life I would want to help build for him. Of course he has eyes - he's actually far enough along in development that he can open his (traditional beautiful O'Dell) eyes, is growing (the traditional beautiful O'Dell) eyelashes, and I know he is totally fine and healthy. It was a weird moment for me though. Not only the obvious weirdness of the thought, but the fact that my first reaction was solution, not panic or fear. I reckon that means I love the guy (for now, at least). Speaking of the way he's developing, did you know that he now has the capacity to breathe oxygen? There's no oxygen for him to breathe at the moment, of course, but if he decided to hop on out, or if Mag self induces labor by her violent jumping and screaming once college football starts, he'll get to experience that beautiful tasty thing we call air.

              Speaking of air, on Sunday Mag and I went hiking (and breathed air - that's the segue). I didn't think that it was possible for pregnant women to hike, but evidently it is. If you've never hiked (and a surprising amount of people haven't) it's like walking, but a lot harder. There are hills and trees and lizards and stuff. AND NO BATHROOMS. But anyway, we did 4.3 miles, which is a lot further than 4.3 miles on paved streets. If you exist (and the fact that you're reading this means you probably do) than I'm sure you realize there was a string of tornadoes throughout the southeastern United States this Spring. One of them skipped merrily along Pine Mountain and managed to take out approximately eighteen thousand trees. The trail we hiked we've hiked a dozen times already, but this time it looked totally different. There were huge swaths where there were no trees left standing and you could see far across the mountain and the sun beat down unmercifully upon our poor shorn heads. It was a sad and terrible sight but an unforgettable one, which it should be if it's BABY'S FIRST HIKE!

                   I lay my head on Mag's belly today and talked to Flip (as he repeatedly punched me in the face) and I threatened to pay him back punch for punch when he was born. Two more months little boy. It's going to be crazy.

Clayton's LV/ H8: The Commercial-Free Edition

 I will not take the initial paragraph of this blog to make amends or excuses for my absence. Instead I will rail and rant and rave at the very few readers of this blog even in its wonderful regular-posting days who have not only failed to note my absence but further have failed to repost and comment on Andrew's amazing blogs. I blame this all on you! I sat down last week and read the last fifteen or twenty of these blogs and was thoroughly astounded at the quality of the posts. Yes, they meander wildly and puff themselves up with self-important humdrum, and yes, I most likely connect with them because either I my big brother have written them, but there's a nugget of something very promising and fulfilling in these blogs. They make me laugh but think; roll my eyes, but only to cover the tears in them. This blog is a very good one, and I hope that even with periodic and erratic updates the quality continues to impress at least me.

 I have had sitting on my desktop for the past four or five months a glorious electronic sticky note. It lies pinned toward the upper right corner, only slightly blocking my current desktop image of the cast of America's Next Top Model: All-Stars, untouched and unrelenting. It has housed the list for my next LV/ H8 update, the one that is months in coming. The note reads as follows:
 H8:

 "Too cool" commercials
 Radio commercials
 Men are dumb commercials
 Gum commercials

 Local commercials
 Dragon Tattoo preview

wtf: reaction videos

 Inspiring, I know. If in a few hundred years poor yuppie college kids are reading through my dreary prose and taking copious notes only because I'll be on a mid-term, I hope they somehow discover this handtyped note and realize that there is nothing brilliant about me. And then I hope they fail their midterms.

 Without further ado, I present to you my LV/H8 post (of the week? month? season?), dedicated fully to Andrew's specific recent H8: commercials.

 Hate #3: Radio commercials.

 I have never owned an Ipod or even an MP3 player. The closest thing I ever had was my old Juke phone (a phone that I have once more), but I only used it when taking baths. I mostly listen to music only when driving, and for that I have about 20 or so of my particularly favorite CDs, and when I get bored with those, local radio stations. The radio is a very foreign world that does not seem to have grown or upgraded even slightly in the twenty years since I was a child, but in between all the odd screaming DJs and prank calls and contests and celebrity interviews is the thing least foreign and most comforting to us listeners: commercials! We all know the commercial drill and have learned to tune them out on TV, but there's something about radio commercials that I can never get over, or forgive.

 

 Most radio commercials don't seem to realize that they're on the radio. I've heard multiple commercials that sounded like exact copies of TV commercials, except without the visual supplement, resulting in a frenzy of sound effects and dialogue that makes zero sense unless you're either familiar with the brand or product, or have seen the TV commercial. It's pure laziness. Engaging a potential customer through audio only is an entirely different ballgame than engaging them through visual stimulation, but unfortunately it seems that most advertising agencies simply come up with one idea and tweak it only minimally to stick it on the radio. However, to supplement the audio-only approach, the strategy seems to be to come up with wild and crazy voices that are more grating than engaging. If I want to hear a shrill harpy, I'll go visit my mother - there's no need to unleash a cacophony of obnoxious voices just because I can't see the faces. There's absolutely nothing about radio commercials I like. They infuriate me. I H8 them.



 Hate #2: "Too cool" commercials.

 Blame it on Old Spice. There was an Old Spice ad campaign that began last year, if I'm not mistaken, in which a muscled gentleman randomly hops from scene to scene doing bizarrely manly and cool things because he uses Old Spice, or something along those lines. The original commercials were a bit odd and I wasn't a big fan of them, but they were original enough to be memorable at least. Unfortunately, this set of commercials has inspired some trend that only Dairy Queen is shameless enough to plagiarize blatantly; a trend I've dubbed "too cool" commercials.

 "Too cool" commercials showcase a narrator talking directly to the audience about how very cool and how very amazing they are, insinuating that the advertised product is what makes them so inimitably flawless. Even with Old Spice, the connection is ludicrous and everyone knows the product has nothing to do with how supercilious the narrators are. There's no drive to buy the product because the selling point is that if you do buy it you'll be as cool as these caricatures are, who we all know really aren't cool because we're laughing at them. It's as though we're being pushed to drive a product that will only make us a laughingstock who thinks they're better than they are... and why would I possibly need to buy something to be that way??? I don't understand the concept of these commercials, and the Dairy Queen ones especially make me want to go and pop young field mice on the head in an uncontrolled fit of rage.



 Hate #1: Gum commercials.

 I know it may be difficult, but in just a moment I'm going to ask you to stop reading this blog. I want you to take a moment and reflect upon why you do or do not like gum. What is it that makes you chew it (or not), what are some things you look for when you buy gum, where do you chew gum, why do you chew gum, etc, etc? Stop and think about that now.

 Okay, ready to go? I don't know for you exactly what you think about gum (but you do now!), but for me, I chew gum because I need to erase a flavor or smell from my mouth, because I want something minty or fruity, because it gives my mouth something to do when I can't be talking incessantly, or because I need to get revenge on someone by use of the classic Gum in the Hair method. There is nothing in my motivations for chewing gum that has to do with social acceptance, with the way I feel or perceive myself, or with how awesome I am. Yet gum commercials prey upon those motivations and I cannot for the poor little life of me UNDERSTAND WHY!!!!

 

 The Five brand of gum is the biggest offender in this category. Their commercials depict people in futuristic test labs doing amazing things like flying and floating and being generally modern and awe-inspiring. The commercials claim that chewing their gum is akin to these random Mission Impossible-esque scenes, a claim that is both nonsensical and obnoxious. When does gum make anyone feel this way? Why would anyone want to feel this way when chewing gum? What happened to the simple appeal of showcasing the gum's flavor, how long it lasts, or how impossible it is to get out of enemies' hair? I don't know anyone who chews gum because of how awesome chewing the gum is, or how awesome it will make them. But if you do find someone like this who these commercials would apparently work on, please let me know. So I can stick some gum in their hair.

  

 
  LOVE: Local commercials.

 It seems like it was a few years ago when local businesses discovered the empowering process of advertising their businesses on real cable channels. I won't pretend to know the simplicity of such technological advances that made this possible, but I will revel in it and doff my hat to those who came up with the plan. The only local anything that people watch is the local news, which is broadcast on major channels, whose commercial blocks are bought up by national companies. Local channels were an ineffective way of advertising, but when local providers got smart and offered up commercial space for local vendors on cable channels, the world as we knew changed.

 I had heretofore seen only the fewest of local commercials, if any at all, but now I have seen enough to convince me that the world of advertising is not dead. Most local businesses are small and have equally small advertising budgets, so the commercials are unable to showcase flashy graphics or popular music, or even use cameras with any form of quality. Likewise, actors are plucked from within the business or in the back alley, resulting in a hilarious combination of amateur production that is a welcome shock from the sleek and streamlined shows and commercials we've grown accustomed to. I love watching television and having random heart attacks when my senses are assaulted by local commercials: the horrific lighting, bad sound, and acting so terrible is has to be a parody, all are far cries from the national and money-fueled commercials, and that is why I love them so.

 And that, my friends, is my LV and H8: The Commercial-Free Edition. Read it, repost it, talk about it. Or I'll be coming over to your house... with a piece of gum.