The Road to Hell is Paved... That's All It's Just Paved.

There are many things you can do in the span of eight hours. You could take a flight to to France, have tantric sex or wait for a Joe Louis to pass through your body. All of which are way more fun than waiting in a traffic jam on the 401.

Both take 8 hours to pass through the intestines

I live in a province where Family Day is observed, a day off to spend with your loved ones. Suck on it New Brunswick, enjoy your work day.  What better way to spend Family Day then in a car where every idiosyncrasy of your loved ones are magnified to the point where it’s probably best you can’t gain enough momentum to careen your car into the median killing you all.

I blame my parents who were selfish enough not to move from the community they’ve lived in and made lives for themselves for 32 years rather than move to a giant smog filled impersonal city.

Monsters

That, and this mess...

Ironically the transport was carrying a shipment of Weebles

This is what kept us trapped in a car for eight hours, a trip that should take about three-and-a-half. Traffic jams of this magnitude are a true test of sanity. When we first stopped I was steadfast about not moving to another lane. As history and comedians from the 80‘s has proven, that lane immediately stops once you enter it. It was so tantalizing that lane... moving at 10km/hour instead of our 5km/hour. That’s like -15 for you Americans. I didn’t do it though. Then we came to an offramp. I got into that lane and suddenly the highway was clear. It called to me like a siren’s song, “Clear, clear, join me, lay your tires upon my face.” I did it only to discover this around the bend.

Sonabitch!

That’s when we were trapped in traffic for the majority of the eight hours.

When trapped in a car that long you go through all five stages of grief.

1. Denial
“This can’t be that long a traffic jam. Really how long can it take to get to the next exit. If I just restart my phone twenty times to get a connection we’ll see that the next exit is only seconds away.”

2. Anger
“Goddamn it! Why the hell are there so many assholes in front of me? Why is my wife breathing so loudly? I’m going to punch this traffic jam in the throat.”

3. Bargaining
“Okay, so if we start moving right now I’ll stop masturbating for a year...” I left out the part where I said a year on Mercury. You know, just in case it worked.

4. Depression
“If we drove a winnebago I might be able to hang myself and bring sweet relief to this day. Stupid Sedan.”

5. Acceptance
“Okay, if we set the front seats on fire we could cook and eat the dropped Cheerios on the floor as well as stay warm tonight. Once we get internet access we’ll change our mailing address to here. I wonder what the postal code is for the 401?”

The highlight of the trip was when my five-year-old announced she needed to have a poo. I threw on the emergency lights and parked by the side of the road. My wife went to the bushes with her as I watched cars slowly moved past us, jealous of the five car lengths they got before she returned to the car.

It turned out that my daughter has a shy anus and refused to poop in the woods saying she didn’t need to. I merged back into the parking lot and ten minutes later my daughter once again announced she had to poo. It was my turn to go to the woods.

Once we were there she refused again. I begged and pleaded, explaining that I had no idea when we would make it to a bathroom. I offered to hold her up in my arms so she wouldn’t have to squat in the snow. I would have tried to aim at something, using her bottom like a disgusting Nerf gun. No dice. Back to the car we went.

We drove again, and again ten minutes later she made the announcement, with the same results in the woods. As a parent it’s important to not make a big deal about using the washroom for a kid. If you do, you could give them some weird complex later in life. However, panic does start to set in when there is the possibly of sitting in a car with soiled pants. Especially when the wearer of said pants just ate McDonalds food.

We sang her songs of pooping our pants as children and how humiliating and uncomfortable it was. Mine involved an autumn pants pooping at recess and an attempt to clean up before class using fallen leaves. Scratchy and I’m sure a joy for my mother to clean up.

Now do you want to jump in it?

We decided to ignore the issue and continue quietly seething about the traffic. At some point we went off the deep end. My wife started playing ukelele, while I entertained passing motorists with a moose hand puppet that the kids had grown tired off two hours earlier.

"Hi I'm Morton Moose. I'll suck your cock for a helicopter ride out of here."

Madness sure does make the time fly by. At once point I went on a diatribe of how I had become one with the car. My hands permanently fused to the steering wheel, my eyes changing shape to that of headlights. I was to be known as Sedanson from this point on. “Put the gas nozzle in my bellybutton and feed me premium you cheap bastard!”

To my daughter’s credit she made it to the next exit another three hours later. Where a Tim Hortons was overrun with bulging bladders.

Come to poop and stay for the Tim Bits, they look the same.

I changed the baby in the front seat of the car while my wife took the eldest into the restaurant. She pleaded with people to let her cut in line as it stretched out the door. Most adults were sympathetic and let them go ahead, until she reached the first two women in line who said they had to go too. My wife explained the situation, that my daughter is five-years-old and has had to go for hours. One woman said she was forty-five, “Forty-five, five, what’s the difference?” I believe the answer is that the five-year-old was more mature.

We got home in time to put the kids to bed and lay down ourselves, our bodies still contorted into sitting position. We can’t wait for our Easter trip to visit family. I know it will be different. For one we will all be wearing diapers...


**special thanks to Jen Hendriks at My Sensitive Girl Hole for the picture of Morton Moose.

Walking in A Winter Wasteland

A few weeks ago Toronto had the largest snowfall in five years. Air travel was cancelled, businesses closed and people gave up and carried their Smart Cars under their arms the rest of the way to work.

Both my wife and I grew up in areas where large snowfalls were commonplace, so for us it was business as usual. I’m happy my oldest daughter is only five-years old and still enjoys school, because when I was a kid, the sentence, “Busses are cancelled, but schools are still open,” would have sent me into a tantrum not seen since God turned that dude’s wife into salt, thus dooming us to worry about our sodium intake forevermore.

A herd of deer and cows devoured her moments afterwards

For us it just meant bundling up and heading out. I do sometimes feel bad for the baby. I bundle her up in a fleece onesie, a snowsuit, boots, hats and bubble wrap, only to take her out of it again twenty minutes later. We do this four times a day between errands, shoveling the walk and taking her older sister to school and back. She does tend to get crabby after the third time it happens.

"For the love of God help me up, I don't know whose hands those are that are reaching for me."

"Enough of this shit. I'm moving to Florida."

When there is this much snow, traveling with children can be difficult. I heard many stories of strollers abandoned in neighbor's front yards, like a toddler version of an apocalypse movie where cars have been abandoned and the passengers either eaten or fled. I have a million dollar idea for parents. A snowblower with a baby carrier on it. This would clear the snow as you walked your baby. I call it, “The Baby Blower”. On second thought I may rethink that name.

Trust me, this will sell better than my baby wood chipper/stroller

I didn’t attempt the stroller, instead opting for the trusted carrier which goes on my back. The only issue with the carrier is that it acts like a roofie making my daughter fall asleep instantly, with her head hanging at unnatural angles. I’ve been often told by strangers that my baby must be dead as necks aren’t supposed to bend like that. I normally reply by shrugging and saying, “Oh well, I guess I’ll just go sex up the wife to make another one. Babies are the ultimate renewable natural resource after all.”

Whoops broke another one. This is why we can't have nice things*

When my oldest was under two years old and before I became a pro baby carrier, I only wore her on my front. In the winter I would wear a large coat and zip her up inside it. This opened the door for old men, who likely only ever carried cigars when their children were born and never an actual child, to comment that I was obviously smothering my child and that I should be ashamed of myself. My only retort was to flick their varicose veins and run away.

I can't help it is she keeps dropping her breathing tube!

With the heavy snowfall I got a new concerned citizen comment regarding the baby on my back. “Snow is gathering on her face.” Sure enough a small drift had formed on her sleeping face that was pointing straight up at the sky. I did not have a snow scraper and had to ask strangers to help clear her face. Had I been thinking I should have salted her face before leaving the house.

Getting the five-year-old to school was another issue. I thought I was brilliant in pulling her and her friend to school in a toboggan. Two five-year-olds in a toboggan, me pulling and carrying a baby on my back and fresh soft snow did not make for an efficient trip. I imagined that I was a part of an avalanche rescue team saving three people from a fresh slide.

Exactly like this, but with Baby Mum Mums.

When we arrived there was dozens of other parents who walked their kids there in hopes of an afternoon nap while they were in school. I saw one mother coaching her child who was making snow angels. She instructed him to "wave your arms like you are on fire." This lead to a lot of thoughts for me. First, how is being on fire in his frame of reference. Was he once on fire, and if so why would this mother make him relive that? Second, when on fire you stop, drop and roll, not lie on the ground and wave your arms up and down.

I swept away the ashes before taking this picture.

*Thanks to Jen Hendriks for the photo. See her blog at My Sensitive Girl Hole

Daddy's Night Off

As a full time parent it’s important to to find time for yourself. Time to reflect on who you are, what your goals are, how you are going to get that shit stain from an explosive diaper out of your pillow. Suffice to say I find it difficult to separate myself from home life.

Fact: Pillows can hold twenty times their own weight in bodily fluids. Don't believe me, try it at home, or better yet a Motel.

I try hard to find small moments in the day for myself. The 45 minutes between bedtime and the first wake up, in the shower (cut out masturbation and I gain a good three minutes of thinking time), or after being knocked unconscious from banging my head on the changing table while picking up a feces filled diaper that’s fallen poop side down on the floor.

Injuries like this should occur only when picking up awesome things like gold or jelly rolls.

My wife is very good about urging me to, as she puts it, “get the fuck out of the house.” I suspect I get tedious to listen to. My wife will ask my daughter questions about her day, which I will answer like it’s some sort of sick game show where adults are pitted against small children. Imagine how much an adult of average intelligent would dominate over a five-year old at Jeopardy, let alone a hylee intelleigent persun like me.

"Seriously kid, you are an Troglobite."

Every few weeks I take a night to go out on my own. I normally try to go see a movie, but have recently become super focussed and worried about how bad a night will be with children waking up. The youngest has recently had a few weeks of bad nights which means my wife and I have bad nights, which means we have bad days, which will eventually lead to a bad divorce.

So a movie has to be close to the house so that travel won’t take much time and it has to be close to an hour and a half, so I can get back home to bed for a snooze before the festivities of waking children begin. Quentin Tarantino obviously does not care enough for his audiences who have children.

Hates children and silence.

On Thursday I decided to skip a movie and do some window shopping. Before kids I was able to wander the streets of Toronto for hours on my own, window shopping at used book and record stores with no issues. The first sign that this was not going to be a satisfying evening out was noticing that I was standing on the subway platform rocking back and forth as though I had a child in a sling attached to me.

Next I was walking the streets and started to miss being asked a million questions about everything around us, “How do all those lights work,” or “Tell me about the olden days, when you were a kid,” or “Why is that man sleeping in the alley with a belt around his arm?”

"His sleeves are too loose sweetie."

I don’t care for eating at restaurants by myself. This stems from years ago, where I went into a sit down restaurant by myself and they sat me directly in front of the entrance and ceremoniously removed all the plates and cutlery from the opposite side of the table. I was left trying to avoid eye contact of people entering the restaurant for the entire meal. If I was in a speed eating contest I would have won that night.

So instead I opt for fast food, that I can either eat while walking, or sit in silence with numerous other people sitting in silence. All of us judging each other while wishing someone would start a conversation. Fast food joints are a gathering place for the introvert who wishes to be an extrovert.

On this day out went to a fast food place that I had never been to before, let’s call it Hero Certified Burger, because that’s it’s name. Also, if they wish to sue me, they won’t get much unless they are interested in my vault of cloth diapers and Penaten riches. This place has been around a while so I imagine most people in the city are familiar with it. I was not. The cashier asked if I wanted “Hero Certified Sauce”, this meant nothing to me. She might as well have asked me if I wanted “Monkey Doodle Frazenbutt” on my burger.

Monkey Doodle Frazenbutt

I asked what exactly the sauce was. She looked at me like I was the one speaking another language and answered “a sauce”.  Good enough for me! Shoot some of that undescribeable goo on my food please. It tasted like undescribeable goo too.

With goo in my belly and boredom in my heart I headed for home. Knowing my wife would be concerned (read: annoyed) that I had returned home within an hour and a half, I was smart and brought home a magnum of the finest wine a twenty dollar bill can buy.  

Daddy Voice

“With great power comes great responsibility”
        -Martin Luther King, or Spiderman's Uncle Ben, I’m not so good with history.

In a course of the day I would estimate I need to use a loud voice about 10 times. My neighbours use theirs once, but as it appears they are going for a Guinness World Record for yelling it hasn’t stopped since the day we moved in. A loud voice is used either to gain a child’s attention, “It’s time for lunch!” to stop shenanigans, “Get your butt out of that  Cheerio box!” or to stop danger, “Put Daddy’s gun down, that’s his last bullet and its earmarked for something!”

Can someone explain why my cereal tastes like anus?

I’m not usually a loud or angry guy. Most would describe me as a calm patient man. When you meet men like me just be aware that we swallow all the little annoyances of everyday life (stubbed toes, undercooked fast food, stubbed toes in undercooked fast food, etc.). These little angry swallows form a dark black oily ball of “pissed off” that sits on our livers growing and festering just waiting for any moment to explode all over the the face of someone in front of us.

I used to be able to channel this anger into something productive back when I was a famous actor (famous in my immediate family). My angry Cyrano De Bergerac was quite well received. Then when I was working, it would come in handy when asked to host events without a microphone.

I DECLARE THIS MOTHER FUCKER OPEN, YOU MOTHER FUCKERS!

Now that I stay at home it’s become known as the “Daddy Voice”. It’s a voice that says get your shit together or this man will turn green, grow ten times bigger and destroy the house like the Jolly Green Giant.

For sure he trampled a house in anger at least once.

Sometimes its hard to remember not to bust the voice out at everyday annoyances. Listen to this: 
That’s the noise of our stools being pushed around the kitchen and to me it’s like setting my ears on fire. It is difficult to keep from using the Daddy Voice to stop it.

There are modulations for Daddy Voice. If there is potential extreme danger that will be made more possible by being startled, the Daddy Voice become softer, sterner and more in control, but it still holds the same weight. It might even be worse because now the child knows the regular sonic boom of Daddy Voice is going to come after they are safe. If I were a kid I might consider staying in the danger to avoid the screaming.

Nah, that's cool. I'll just stay up here thanks.

I hate having to use Daddy Voice in public. It’s happened just last weekend when we were babysitting someone else’s kid and spent some time at a local park where all our neighbors and their kids were playing. I gave the traditional five-minute warning to signal the end of play. The five-minute warning is pretty pointless to children who can’t tell time yet. Five-minutes can be deemed a bat of an eyelash to a child playing in the park, or an eternity when in the car heading to the zoo. I’ve even had children so bereft of time knowledge that they’ve bartered me down to four minutes. Fools.

At the end of the five minutes I announced that it was time to go. Neither this child nor my own got off the jungle gym. I said it again with heart, “Come on guys, it’s time to go.” My kid got off, the other child did not. I got a little louder, “Okay, I’m serious. It’s time to go.” The child then got off the equipment, looked at me, smiled a devilish smile and ran. I followed. She ran again with the same smile. That’s when I picture myself like an anime character inhaling everything in sight and explode. “GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!” Everything on the playground stopped, people stopped moving, birds hung unmoving in midair, there was no sound. It was as though time itself stood still except for me and this child. Because of course she was still running away smiling.

I am about to lose my shit people.

Of course when the mother of the child showed up later in the day to pick her up I  came clean and told the whole sordid story. With so many witnesses, there was no way I could risk her not finding out I yelled at her kid. She highfived me. That was a relief.

Later that evening we were all at a neighbourhood party and people kept coming up to her and saying, “So I saw your kid at the playground today...” leaving the sentence hanging in the air to see if she knew. Some people even said that other people had told them that, “they saw your kid at the park today...”

Great now I have a reputation. If you’ll excuse me I have to go scream at some kids in the yard about a Frisbee...

Your Frisbee is mine now! Gonna start a Frisbee store!

 

New Year's Heave!

When I was a kid I had a book called “School Years” which had pockets to put report cards, photos and other documents for each grade. For each year there was a place to write what you wanted to be when you grew up.

It's called an "Author" you stupid fuck. And why no new friends or achievements?

Ah, sweater vest, plaid shirt and bowl cut, now I understand.

It’s amazing how goals change through life especially after having children. When once I wanted to be a film auteur or famous comedic actor, now I want to sleep undisturbed through the night or watch a movie from the start to the end in one sitting.

Most movies are interrupted at least four times by my youngest daughter waking up and needing rocked back to sleep. Four times might not seem like much, but after that many we typically give up trying to watch it that night. Watching a movie in the span of two nights is always disappointing. Due to fatigue, I forget major plot points, characters and the name of the movie. Like I'm an old man at the movie theatre jabbering questions to his equally confused young mistress (in my simile I'm a rich old man).

Wait, is this a Moonlighting/3rd Rock From The Sun cross over?

Neither my wife nor I like to choose what movie we watch. Since it is a true time commitment of two days you do not want to be the one that chose a shitty movie. For the next three rounds of movie choices you will be reminded by your partner of the time you wanted to watch Johnny English because you heard “good things.”

"Really darling, I heard a guy behind the paint store saying this was hilarious. He had paint all around his mouth so he must be an artist and knows of these things."

Even worse would be picking a bad movie and having the kids sleep through it. Oh boy, that would be like winning a tropical vacation and then spending the entire time vomiting  because you insisted on eating at the airport Taco Bell before take off. 

My girls are notoriously bad sleepers, as previously written about here and here. Now if we have a decent night sleep it’s as if we’ve won $5,000 in the lottery. Not enough to set us up for life, but enough to feel a little relaxed about our debt.

Thousandaire!

Recently the baby has been waking up in the middle of the night and is ready to party. I have the most chance of a nap during the day, by this a number of factors align: while the eldest is in school the baby falls asleep, and no dinner prep or chores need to be done. The same equation brings about the apocalypse according to the Mayans. Anyway due to this I get up with the baby and have a “Bagel Party” with her. This consists a blurry eyed me putting cutting a bagel in two, putting said bagel in the toaster, buttering the bagel with butter, having the bagel flatly refused by the baby, and tearily eating that bagel myself.

I don’t recall seeing a New Year’s Eve for the past four years or so as a result of these children. While others are watching fireworks or Dick Clark’s balls drop (snicker and of course R.I.P.) I stare at this:

The hypnotic eyes of the Scotty dog command you to stay awake!

It’s no wonder every year my New Year’s resolution is to dust the ceiling fan more. This year we gave up trying to get her back to sleep and she partied with us.

Baby's resolution: Knock that drink out of Daddy's hand.

AGO a Go-Go

I live in a world class city that is vibrant with music, art, culture and heroin needles. When it was announced that the elementary teachers would stage a walkout exactly one week before Christmas I knew I had get my kid out of the house. My child had become a raging cyclone of hyperactive destruction due to the very idea Santa was coming soon. Where better to take her then a place filled with priceless art?

It's better then her knocking over our IKEA lamp I’ll tell you this much. So, I took the kids and my eldest daughter’s friend to the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Family Heirloom

My youngest daughter is only 14 months old at this point and if she starts sleeping at night I may let her advance beyond that, but for now we stay at 14 months. This means she needs a mode of transportation. My favorite being the baby carrier which I carry on my back since it’s the least spine compressing option. This carrier is also like a roofie to her and she usually passes out while in it.

As we entered the gallery this was the case. A security guard, who obviously is not a parent asked me to put her on my front. I looked at him incredulously and said, “no”. He wasn’t used to this answer and sputtered for a moment. I explained that removing this sleeping baby is akin to pulling the wrong wire on a time bomb. Everyone in a three block radius would feel the shock wave. He allowed us to enter.

Before going in to look at any art I gave the two five-year-olds a lecture on behaviour in the gallery.

What I said: “No running, no touching the art, no wandering off.”
What they heard: “ There is a candy cane in the snack bag, a delicious candy cane. One for each of you!”

Christmas crack

We started in the European section of the gallery where immediately one of the kids decided it was super important that we all be aware the women in the picture was showing her boobies. She did this by using a gallery map to reach up to the painting and touch it. I quickly wondered if the AGO was like going to a movie and if you have to leave within the first twenty minutes you got your money back. Instead a stern looking security guard appeared.

What he said: “Don’t touch the art!”
What they heard: “Candy canes are still in the snack bag!”

The thing about European art is that they loved their bloody Jesus. Everywhere you turn you see a tortured bleeding Jesus. My daughter decided she couldn’t stomach Jesus (as an non practicing atheist this made me proud) and refused to look at any of the crucifixion paintings, going so far as to enter each room with her eyes shielded until her friend told her there were no Jesus pictures.

This lead to the following conversation:
“Jesus was scary when he was nailed to wood.”
“They nailed him to wood as decoration.”
“People as decoration is gross... except at Halloween.”

Boo! Happy Halloween!

Next we went to the The Dr. Mariano Elia Hands-On Centre an area where kids can do their own art, sculptures and in a bit of a stretch dress like princesses and row a boat.

It’s a good place to go with a baby if you enjoy moving scissors out of reach for an hour.

The Baby Alligator Pit is also a good draw. "Behind you!"

Then it was lunch time, otherwise known as “If I Get Through This Gross Food I May Just Get That Candy Cane Now” time. The great thing about the AGO is not only do kids five-years and under get in free, but they also eat free in the cafeAGO. So my tip to you, order yourself the cheapest thing on the menu and wait for your kids to declare they suddenly hate Mac and Cheese and eat theirs. Word of warning though: the Mac and Cheese is delivered to the table hotter then molten lava, ensuring that a hungry child either goes crazy waiting for it to cool down or gives themselves third degree burns.

One of the kids waited until everyone else was finished their meals and then announced they didn’t like their Mac and Cheese, a food I’ve watched them eat roughly 10,000 times with no issues. She was hungry and wanted something else. So back to the line we went and ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. I was surprised to find I didn’t have to pay for a second selection for the kids. I felt like loading my arms up with kids selections and asking for a to-go bag.

After lunch I took the kids to the Contemporary area, which is my favorite area. There is currently an exhibit of Evan Penny’s work, who does amazingly lifelike silicon human sculptures.

The girls looked at the above work “Aerial” and started snickering at the penis. I launched into my lecture of how it’s just a body part and not funny. In truth penises are of course hilarious. Just ask anyone who has seen one.

I then saw a sign that read, “Line drawing class in session, no photography allowed.” I saw people sketching one of the sculptures. The girls wanted to go over and ask if they could help. Recently during a trip to Allan Gardens, a greenhouse conservatory, a woman let the girls use her pastels to fill in some sky for her, and they now assume every artist will be welcoming to a five-year-old scribbling on their work. I was about to say sure they could ask when I saw the sculpture’s penis jiggle and realized it was a nude model they were sketching. I quickly turned the girls around and headed back to bleeding Jesus where there were less questions for me to answer.

Whoops, this isn't the cafeteria!

As we hit the elevator someone who works at the gallery looked at us and said, “Just to warn you, there is a line drawing session happening on this floor.”

I answered, “Thank you, but we’ve already ran into it. And as a suggestion you should change the warning sign from reading ‘line drawing’ to ‘real live naked hairy man around corner’ in order to be clear.”

Throughout the day there was plenty of questions to be answered about the various art work. Such as this piece:

“Why is that man pooping out a head?”

Or this Piece:

Five-year-old: “I would put a sink, a bathtub and a toilet on the wall.”
Me: “Your art would then be three times better than that one.”

The AGO has plenty of places for kids to try their hand at art. At this time there was the Frida and Diego exhibit where you could try your hand at Frida’s style.

"You call this inspired by Frida? I call it inspired by bullshit!"

Best Exhibit: The Elevator. A study in vertical movement

In the end it was a good day and yes, they did get their candy canes on the ride home.

Well played AGO, well played.

Common Street Trash

They say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. When it comes to a five-year-old everyone's trash is their treasure.

Happy Birthday Darling

Recently my eldest daughter and her friend have started picking up any litter they find on the ground and proclaiming it “precious”.

A fine role model

It started with things that I thought wasn’t that odd, a torn out page of a calendar with a bunny and a kitten, or a broken Transformer left on the curb for taking.

The cat later devoured the bunny

Then things started to get strange. Bus transfers were deemed worthy of collection (but only the ones on stiff paper that come from subway stations, the flimsy paper ones on buses and streetcars were below the girls. Then things got ridiculous, pine needles, wrapping paper and flyers for sales. It’s as though they are making a disgusting nest in a tree somewhere.

A good day of hunting

Anytime we walk by a stand with free pamphlets its like they won the lottery. Going to the passport office with me was a super special treat as they stuffed their bags with documents outlining duty free amounts and shouting, “I’m going to decorate my room with these!” If they ever followed through with putting these things on their walls they would look like every conspiracy theorist depicted on television ever.

Weekly on the way to swimming lessons we pass a bank of newspaper boxes. This is most exciting. Can you guess which of the four boxes in the below picture two five-year-olds would most want to pillage?

That’s right the pink box! Xtra, Canada's Gay and Lesbian News.  I think even the editors of these fine publications would have to agree that the contents are probably not suited for their age group. And I don’t want to have to answer their questions about some of the pictures in there.

Well, the chimney gets hot, so sometimes Santa has to take off his shirt while he goes down... I mean enters the house!

I dictated that they only take from the green, blue or orange boxes. Given how outspoken I am for my dislike of Barbie, I think they must believe there are magazines in there all about her and her pink convertible.

I’ve gone to keeping my eyes on the ground ahead of us as we walk to spot anything I don’t want them picking up. The other day while walking to school I spotted something hiding under the bushes. It was bright orange with little pink spikes. In my head I was begging them not to pick it up and decided it was best not to point it out. Sure enough one of the girls picked up a penis tickler sleeve. I screamed, “Put it down! Drop it right now!” with my best Daddy voice. A parent I was walking with asked me what it was. Not wanting to profess my knowledge of the specific names of such things I spelled out, “c-o-c-k-r-i-n-g”.

I had to look at a lot of penises to find this picture. Then I remembered the Internet and looked at even more.

The girls immediately wanted to know why they couldn’t have it, or even touch it. I was stuck. I find reverting to the “Because I said so,” never works. I had to give an excuse. My mind raced, then crashed and failed me, “People put it on their privates.”
“Why?” my daughter asked.
“For decoration,” I answered, while in the back of my mind I knew this answer would only raise more suspicion and questions.
“It looks like it would hurt.”
“Nope, it’s quite soft.” Then I ran away forever.

The other parent both laughed at me and said it was very brave of me to actually answer the question.  The bigger problem is that the damned thing is still there and every day we walk by it I see the girls glance at it full of curiosity. That’s why I am hoping for a teachers strike only to give me a break from the daily awkwardness.