The Game Show

And now it’s time for every parents’ favorite game show “Do You Hear What I Hear?”

“Hello again and welcome back for another exciting round. Today’s contestants are Veteran Mom, New Dad and Grandmother. Welcome to you all. Now you all know the rules so let’s get down to identifying these sounds. The first one is up for grabs.”

“Slunk. Slunk. Bunk a bunk a bunk pttttttttttah. “
Buzz!

“Yes! New Dad?”

“That would be a football falling down the stairs Bob?”

“No, I’m sorry that is incorrect. Grandmother? Veteran Mom?”

Buzz!

“Is it the sound of a Halloween Pumpkin Candy Holder falling down the stairs?”

“Ooh. Very close. Very close. Contestant Veteran Mom, do you have any idea?”

Buzz!
“Yes?”

“Yes Bob, it is a Halloween Pumpkin Candy Holder, but it was kicked, it didn’t fall.”

“That is correct! Veteran Mom, take fifty points. For a bonus point, identify Why it was kicked.”

“His sister ate all the reese's pieces and left only the lime flavored tootsie rolls and candy corn.”
“Correct!”

“Excellent work. Excellent. We’ll start the next round worth one hundred points. Okay, contestants will have thirty seconds to identify this sound.”

“ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! Huhhhhhhh! ZZZZZZZZZ! Huhhhhhh! ZZZZZZZZZZZZ!”
“Buzz.”
“Buzz. “ “Buzz.”
“New Dad was first on the buzzer. What was that sound?”

“Bob, it was Snoring. It wasn’t me because I don’t snore, but it was snoring.”

“Sorry, that was not the correct answer, we move on to Grandmother. “

“Snoring and the baby was crying Bob.”

“I’m sorry, we have to turn to Veteran Mom.”

“Snoring and the baby crying and the Toddler just climbed out of bed and is staggering around the house looking for his stuffed lion and a sippy cup of water.”

“That is 100% correct! I see we now move to the speed round where we will play a sound. Your job is to identify the situation and whether it requires a run or no run parenting response. Remember, you must indicate the severity of the situation if there is any.”

“Slishhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Drip. Drip. Drip. Slisshhhhhhhhhhh. Drip. Drip. Drip.”
“Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.”

“Okay, we have a three way tie between the Veteran Mom, the New Dad and the Grandmother so I’ll have to ask each of you to write your responses, along with run or don’t run.”

“Okay, Grandmother, what was your response?”

“It’s a sink Bob, a child was brushing his teeth and turned off the sink when another child came in and did the same. No run.”

“Ooh. No. I’m sorry, that’s incorrect. New Dad, what was your answer, did you correctly identify the mystery sound and run/no run response?”

“That’s the ice machine in the kitchen, being used to pour drinks for the neighborhood by a five year old and a three year old. Run.”

“I’ll have to check with the judges to determine if they’re willing to give partial credit but in the meantime, let’s check with our final contestant.Veteran Mom?”

“Yes, Bob, that is the sound of a toddler getting a drink out of the toilet. Run and scream at the same time.”

“That is correct and congratulations to our winner Veteran Mom! She gets to move on to the bonus round, while we say good bye to Grandmother and New Dad, thank you both for playing.”

“Now Veteran Mom, you know how this game is played, we give you a sound and you identify the danger level and its origin. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Here is your mystery sound.”
………thirty seconds of silence pass.

“Bob, it is a code red emergency, there are three children upstairs trying to create a bridge out of a sleeping bag, two chairs and a toy box and the youngest has a hammer she is preparing to tap on the window. If an adult does not intervene in the next four seconds, someone will be hurt and something will be broken.“

“Congratulations, Mom is our grand champion!“ Balloons cascade onto the stage and credits begin to roll. A voice over is heard, “There are no prizes awarded in “Do You Hear What I Hear?” other than the peace of mind that comes from knowing what your children are up to all the time and being able to put a stop to it.”

Bob turns to the camera. “Tune in next time when contestants will be asked to speed round mate all white socks and assemble lunches with no white bread available.”

Mom's Middle Name is Icarus

Motherhood is a lifelong lesson in humility. In the beginning, you surrender your body. When you first see the child face to face, any part of your heart still your own gets engulfed. But the ego takes a while to whittle down to nothingness, and that comes with the long haul of raising a human being.

I’ve lost two pounds of pride in the past week.

Monday, I was supposed to feel smart. After all, I had an article in the Washington Post. It was my second ever.

Then my nine year old son asked me to play Stratego.

He schooled me.

I didn’t get even close.
The first game, he found my flag in three easy moves using scouts.

The second game, I snapped at him for watching as I arranged my pieces, certain I was telegraphing the location of my flag with every flick of a hand. I tried doing a shell game as I shuffled pieces but then I got confused. He mowed down one row and just flooded the back side, destroying my carefully laid defenses. I believe my casualty rate was 80% and 20% for him. Maybe General Custard had it worse, but few can chalk up such appalling numbers on a field of battle in such consistent play and not be removed from command.

My son tried to console me. “Maybe next time, you’ll do better.” He smiled. “It’s the first two times I’ve won.” He grinned again. He had been playing his dad and older brother. I wondered if the Stratego skill was on the Y chromosome. My son eagerly set up the game again.

“How about chess?” I offered.
No.
“Scrabble?”
Nyet.
“Go Fish?”
He gave me a pittying look and shook his head.

The phone rang. Desperate for a reprieve from another beating, I pounced on the receiver. I would have consented to hear a sales pitch for timeshares at that point but as luck had it, it was my husband. “Hey Honey, I got you several papers. The article looks good.” I temporarily basked in glory again. “She was smart once.” I thought.

My son jumped on the phone. “Dad! Dad! I crushed Mom! It was beautiful! She never had a clue where my flag was and I Won!” Back to Earth.

My other son came into the room, looked at my reactive set up to the prior game’s obliteration and started giving me pointers. Proof that it really had been as bad as I thought; my victorious son did not protest my getting help. He even offered some strategic tips. Fifteen minutes of tutorial on feints and defenses, strategic losses and the effective use of the spy and I still lost splendidly. Again. And Again. And Again. Now I know there are games where you have to lose multiple times to grasp the concept, games like Chess and Go, Hearts and Spades, but after a perfect record of 0 and 6, my son must have felt bad, as he didn’t ask for another game.

Maybe I wasn’t enough of a challenge. He disappeared for a while. Just when I was starting to feel perky again about my piece in the Post, my son returned with a new game board under his arm. “You need to work on strategy Mom. So I thought maybe we should play checkers instead.”

I’m not telling who won, but the scale says I lost another pound.

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Aren't we all on the B-team Most of the Time?

Growing up attending Catholic elementary school and high school (and college and grad school too, but that’s another matter), there was only one extracurricular activity available for social outlets in the seventies. Sports. This worked well if you were tall, athletic, coordinated, had stamina, strength, popularity or hustle. Nowhere in that list are the qualities, sense of humor or good with words. I dreamed of making the “A team.”

Then eighty’s television sort of hijacked that phrase to connote a black and red van with a Mr. T.

But the status of “B team” has remained unchallenged. Living in a county where birthing is considered a competitive sport, there have been systemic attempts to destroy the very essence of a “B-team.” These parents worry their kids self esteem will be irreparably damaged if they suffer the humiliation of knowing someone else is better at something than they. These attempts have failed even more impressively than the b-teams themselves.

Method #1: Not keeping score. Like that worked. Anyone who has ever been at a pee-wee soccer game where the parents don’t keep score was not paying attention. Just go up to a parent of a kid who does well. “My kid scored six goals!” Just go to a parent of a kid who did poorly. “She tried really hard. That team was tough. “ “She let in six goals!” the dad will whisper with hints of despair while mentally planning on going to the nearest sporting goods store to buy a net and a new soccer ball and spend the rest of the day coaching his offspring on how to be a goalie. The parents can deny the reality on paper by not writing down a score, but they and the kid doing the end zone dance after snack and the one moping in her cupcakes know the truth.

Method #2: A Team by any other name. Team I and Team II, that didn’t work for obvious reasons. Apples and Oranges? Red and Blue? Naming the teams as equals never worked. Why? Because the instant a scrimmage starts up, Everyone knows who the athletic kids are. This is an American oddity, that we fear acknowledging excellence for fear of putting down everyone else. We don’t want a kid to be a ball hog. However, the kids on the team know “He can shoot, he can score.” Guess what they do, feed the ball to the hog.

Method #3: Revisionist Theory in Application. Twenty first century values demand that all heroes be fallen ones, and all lesser or supporting casts be simply as of yet undiscovered vastly underrated prospects. I've seen people on the sideline praise the slightest moment of competence by a poor player stumbling down the court as being "Michael Jordanesque" while the true ace player of the team hustles to capture the bad bounce pass from said teammate. The mental yoga that these adults engage in is amazing. It’s like parents doing a high five with a kid for bringing home a “C.”

Then, reality reasserts itself. With two minutes left in a tight game, the kids on the bench were shouting, “NO, pass it to Her! HER!” Ball sharing was for when you were up by ten or more with no time left.

Method #4: Marxism. Some people at my son’s school tried doing an even exchange, in basketball. Each coach got two prime players, two decent players, two coachable players , one headache and one hopeless. Both teams had losing seasons. Losing seasons are okay. The kids will live. The pizza at the end of the season party still tastes as good. In the adults, however, there is a note of desperation in that creeps into even the most zealous advocate of communism in the sporting world as they stare at the prospects of another 0-8 season.

The problem with "A teams" is they require a High Physical standard. It's intangible but identifable. Today in America, we are discouraged from even acknowledging anything but excellence. Some parents unfortunately swallow this Kool-Aid. Children and their accomplishments have become part of the adult resume. "Hello, my name is ....and my kids are currently learning German, Russian, Sanskrit, making mock replicas of the seven wonders of the world out of toothpicks and training for the Olympics. They performed tap dance at the State House last year for the Easter Egg Roll and are ranked amongst Who's Better than Who in American Parents' Magazine. Want to see my web site? It has a day by day documentary plus commentary on their struggles to write the next great American novel."

Parents, being obsessive in their love for their children, often fail to recognize that a C is not an A, no matter how much you love them. Someone who can't shoot, can't dribble and can't pass should not be on the A team any more than someone who spells "towards" twoard should be given full points on a spelling test. We can't helicopter/spell check our children out of all their faults and weaknesses. If we do, we'll fail them morally and academically, as surely as "The Dairy of Anne Frank" can slip by Microsoft Word's spell check in a book report.

Fortunately, reality has a way of correcting these issues, even if it takes a season to do so.

No one wanted another perfect losing season. After that year, the coaches reasserted themselves in the draft picks, calling them A and B teams and everyone was clear on the matter.

Some parents were fuming mad that their kids weren’t on the A teams.

Intervention Time Out

The head coach/director however was having none of it. Rather than talk to irrational people rationally about being reasonable, he tacked up a picture of “Mr. T” with the caption, “I pity the fool who argues with me. You’re on the team, be it A or B! Anyone who argues will take the blame. He or she will be banned from the game. “

Both teams had winning seasons. Eating pizza in celebration, I swore I heard the coach/cyo director say, “I love it when a plan comes together.”


EDITOR'S NOTE and LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Please remember this is a humor blog. Any resemblance to reality is unintentional except to the extent it makes you laugh.