To All Furniture Artisans: I don’t mean to complain, but would it be too much to ask when you’re crafting all the ornate scrolling to your heavy-ass oak furniture to actually put in some decorative, yet functional handholds?
I mean do all four sides of every piece have to be smooth and flat, leaving cephalopods the only creatures able to grip them sufficiently?
Do you specifically design things so that when you’re hauling a bookshelf up the stairs it scrapes your shins to a bloody mess?
Really?
There isn’t a better design?
I find that hard to believe.
If the Incas can build wicked cool booby traps to try and kill Indiana Jones, I’d like to think American furniture artisans can build a pretty looking bookshelf that human beings could move easily without actually growing tentacles.
Just a thought.
Okay.
Obviously you’ve noticed lately that my blog has been a bit unfocused. See I started this on a whim. And if there’s one thing you take out of this blog entry today, never start things on a whim. Always roll the idea over in your head for a while before you begin. Two days after starting this “be a kid again” blog, I had the idea for a much cooler blog. A blog the chicks would dig. See two days after starting this blog, I began playing my guitar again.
You see where I’m going with this.
Think about it.
A blog about learning a new song every day. A forum to discuss music roots and artist influences. Taking a look at musical history and its impact on today.
See. That’s way cooler.
I could be writing about learning Paint it Black by the Stones, struggling through a Pink power ballad, the joy of finger-picking through Hotel California.
But now I’m too busy to learn a new song every day.
I’m too busy to plan on doing things that make me feel like a kid again.
Though, coming back to this blog and hacking out a few words, makes me feel like a writer again. Finishing a science-fantasy novel made me feel like a writer again. (Notice I’m not saying good or great writer…that’s on purpose.) I’m reading more - The Book Thief – by Markus Zusak. It’s humbling. Humbling in the way you hold your finger painting up to the Sistine Chapel. That might be hyperbole, but you get my point.
Tonight, before helping some friends move some furniture (thus my soliloquy earlier), my girls and the neighbor kids got into fight. Not a real hair-pulling, shin-kicking, brazen-new-swear-words fight, but a fight with “hurt feelings.” So-and-so won’t play with such-in-such and whosit said something about me to whatsit. An upset parent intervened. More parents collected. In our driveway we had the Great Dresden Circle Child Peace Treaty, with 5-6 kids all saying each other did it and no one did anything wrong.
Where was I? World’s Greatest Dad? Parent of the Year? I was twenty feet away, leaning against the house, smoking a cigarette in a completely unintentional James Dean pose – only I’m built like Kevin James (Not a pretty sight). I listened to all the “PC” speak about “getting along” and “playing nice” and yadda, yadda, yadda.
Do these parents not remember when they were children?
I do.
If someone wasn’t crying at the end of the day you weren’t trying hard enough. I still have bruises on my shins from the neighbor girls on Strese Lane kicking me and my brother with their wooden clogs. Yeah, you heard right. And I don’t even think they were Dutch.
Point is kids will be kids will be kids.
They play.
They fight.
They swing baseball bats at each other.
They spray paint each other.
They do REALLY, REALLY stupid things sometimes.
They say REALLY, REALLY stupid things sometimes.
Guess what? They’re kids. At the end of the day or week, they’re laughing together and playing together again.
Do we really need huffing parents fuming over some kids “hurt feelings?” Come on? Really? Isn’t that the equivalent of crying over spilled milk?
“Your kid made my kid feel bad!”
Well join the group, sister. There are a million things in this world that send fully grown adults into depressive spirals each day. And the topic that has you in such a thunder is “hurt feelings?”
I’m sorry.
I gotta pull a dad card. Pops, if you’re reading this, thanks for telling it like it was when we were kids. So you stepped on a board with rusty nails. Suck it up. So you crashed your bike. Pay attention next time. So you tripped and fell. Watch where the hell you’re going.
Dads always have a way to see the simpler sides of life.
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