A Bowl for Goldilocks

Pasture Cut

Turns out, the difference between a silky cascade of spun-gold radiance three-years in the making, and a jagged, war-torn mop is about five minutes and a pair of children’s scissors. My daughter, Mufus, cut her own hair yesterday. Her initiative was not kind to what had been the most beautiful head of hair in the Buckeye State, a mane so luxuriant and smooth that her father actually enjoyed brushing it.

Uh Oh

In the middle of the afternoon, my wife, Kufus, was busy baking and I was working outside. A prolonged silence in the house caught my wife’s ear, and when she investigated she found Mufus, scissors in hand, sitting in a pile of her discarded locks on the floor in our living room. My son, Rufus, was hiding behind an easy chair, sheltering from the fallout. When Kufus called me in from outside, she was near to hyperventilating and I thought something was ER-scale wrong. She told me to “look at your daughter”, I turned to look, and was only a little relieved to see that somebody had been at her hair with a weed whacker, but miraculously not harmed her ears. Mufus’ new do, was do-do; figurative poop on her head. It looked like a woman’s hairstyle from 9,000 BC, where the teeth of a recently domesticated goat did the ‘dressing’. I laughed quite heartily, to be sure, but was worried for the next step. My wife went into emergency aesthetic management mode, and called her aunt who is a beautician. Arrangements were made, and within minutes of the act, Mufus was whisked away to see how much of the flax-colored silk could be salvaged. We feared a Sinead O’Connor buzz-cut, and had heard extension banks are running very low on tow. If Life Flight did hair emergencies, they would have been involved here. With Mufus en route, Rufus and I waited anxiously. We picked up swatches of hair from all over the house to kill time; this had evidently been a mobile endeavor, and I wondered if Mufus had actively evaded detection. We watched car racing and talked about how weird it would be if Daddy wasn’t the one in the house with the least hair. Finally, a picture appeared on my cell phone, one of a strange little boy grinning ear to ear, a bowl obviously recently removed from atop his head. Caption: ‘After’. The procedure had obviously been much more difficult than we’d hoped. I could hear my wife’s aunt say solemnly in a hallway somewhere, “I did everything I could for her, but I’m not a miracle worker.” When I inquired as to whether or not an actual bowl was used, I learned that Kufus’ aunt made she and Mufus swear to never reveal who perpetrated the hair cut for fear of ruining her professional reputation. Kufus claims a bowl was not involved. Haircut says otherwise.



'After'



My daughter was still lights out cute, just alarmingly different in appearance. When I showed Rufus the picture and asked if he liked Mufus’ new haircut, he got misty and slowly shook his head. It just wasn’t his sister. We sat in stunned silence until Mufus returned home. Her first words on the subject? To her brother, after he complemented her new look, she said with delight, “I look like you!” She didn’t miss her silky strands a bit; they caught everyone else’s eyes, but got in hers. They also harbored massive amounts of syrup on pancake mornings. I began to suspect that Mufus knew exactly what she was doing with those scissors.

Delicate Dog Question

My dog Trotter will turn 10 tomorrow. He’s still as spry and ready as ever, but as he approaches the end of his first decade with my wife and I, a big question has forced itself to the front of our minds: Should we bring another dog into our family while Trotter is still game so he can show the new puppy how to be a great dog?

Trotter at his dirty best

On one hand, Trotter has had ten years to figure out how to be an esteemed member of our family while retaining the noble dignity of his breed, that is, a mostly healthy amount of independent thinking. A puppy would learn how to act in no time with a “father figure” to show him the ropes, and Trotter’s legacy would not be confined to memory; we could enjoy and interact with its sentient form.
On the other hand, there’s this: 3,594 days of Trotter. Just Trotter. He’s the show in our house, and he knows it. Sharing all he knows with another dog may disrupt his next decade (yeah, I know) unfairly. My worst fear is that a new dog would change Trotter in the last half of his life and besmudge the memory of my best friend.

"Both Ends" Is Never Enough

Why AllFourEndsoftheCandle? Because I've always liked the saying "burning the candle at both ends". It says a lot with few words, and makes me think of fun times and Babe Ruth. But lately I've been thinking the saying is maybe a bit of a platitude, too reductive. I wished to add to or twist the saying to make the imagery more dynamic, and have the result be a catchy title for a web log.
So, I did some cursory research into the origins of the saying. Coincidentally, 2011 is the 400^th anniversary of its introduction into the English language (a translation of a French saying) so I am certainly not the first person to think the remark a bit stale (the Fourth Earl of Sandwich likely uttered the phrase over 100-years later, really; we’ll get to him next week). In 1611, Randle Cotgrave included it in his A Dictionarie of French and English Tongues, defined as ‘dissipating one’s material wealth’. As this first definition points out, the original application was financial, the imagery aimed at less than thrifty folks; specifically, husbands and wives who burned through income and/or assets. Through the miracle of living language, the meaning of the phrase evolved away from matters of the purse to become the biting but playful late-night lifestyle allegory most Americans understand it as today. (If you still use it in a financial context, you’re really old, but good for you) It occurred to me sometime ago that a need existed in the Annals of American Idiom for a slightly more complex, updated version of “burning the candle at both ends”, a version that better reflects life 400-years advanced from the time of the original dissemination into English. I settled upon “burning all four ends of the candle” as version 2.0.  
You may say immediately, "well, popular phrases are simple for a reason, it’s what keeps them popular and familiar” or “what kind of candle's got four ends?" or "Four ends isn't much less reductive than two, nitwit",  all fair point points. But I thought we could take the current meaning of the original phrase and conjure up a helpful, modern take that retains the simple imagery of the original and adds a wrinkle of dimension. Consider the potential combinations of four entities versus two; it allows for more complex meaning. Instead of the assumed day-life versus night-life or work versus play juxtaposition of a double-lit candle, my candle can incorporate two additional facets of life—good and bad, or whatever I want them to represent, whenever--that enrich the dynamic of the imagery and, maybe, improve perspective. Why not eight or ten ends, then? Because a candle that looks like a four-point tire iron is about as cool as candles can get, and more than four-points would too closely resemble spokes in a wagon wheel for my taste, as well as complicate the quick-glance benefit of a simple mental framework. Besides, the familiarity and power of four-point symbols hardly needs touched on here (four cardinal points of the compass, the cross, X marks the spot, etc.)
Next time somebody asks you how you’re doing, offer this: “I’m burning all four ends of the candle, but it’s not so bad.” When the status-requesting party looks at you like you’re nuts, explain why you chose your words; and if the party looks at you with deep admiration for the image you implanted in her mind, just nod with a smile.
Who knows, maybe in 400-years some kid on Mars will broadcast a thought to the universe on the stale nature of the saying, “burning all four ends of the candle.”

Go Cavs

Prelude to a sandwich

I recently read The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. Toward the beginning of this emotional bull-ride of a book a terminal character who never had children of her own, but lead a full and influential life, makes a statement that stuck in my brain like one of those popcorn hulls that works deep into the gum at the base of a molar. During an interview to confirm facts for her own obituary, the character says, “the only legacy is genetic material” (p.38).

It's slightly more complicated than this.

I found the scene utterly fantastic, but those six words unforgettable. While I finished the book the image of the woman and her words kept coming back in my head. By the time I’d completed the book that early scene had melted away entirely, leaving just the line scrolling through many a quiet thought like update tickers on CNN...the only legacy is genetic material...the only legacy is genetic material...the only legacy is genetic material...the only legacy is genetic material. Once outside the context of scene and story, the statement took on a life of its own in my head. And pointed me in an unexpected direction.


As a tongue bothers at embedded popcorn, my brain worked at the statement for days, tumbling meaning, and considering it from any angle I could think of. Initially, I found such a distillation of life sad but wonderfully natural, along the lines of the fierce scenes in nature documentaries where predator captures prey; disturbing, but beautiful as nature’s design. After a day or two of on-again, off-again consideration braided among interactions with my children, appreciation for the hard simplicity of the statement began to wane and ‘comically reductive’ became my interpretation of choice. I could not accept the statement, no matter how I tried to see it. It's simply too insulting to any person who has ever earnestly interacted with another human being. Anybody who’s witnessed learned mannerisms in a child that exactly matches those exhibited by a close adult knows genetic material cannot be the extent of legacy. A piece of the double-helix does not make a little girl crinkle her nose and rub her hands together vigorously when she’s excited; she learned that from her mother. Conversely, watching the slow, layered process of a child heeding endless small lessons—deduced from observation or directly taught—then employing what she has learned in order to not be like her parent may be the genetic antibody, and if you doubt that consider the countless parental laments along the lines of “I think there was a mix-up at the hospital.” I’m certain that my daughter, Mufus, possesses the force of will necessary to not only be as different from me as possible, but to actually alter her DNA. So, because I'm sure it takes some time to harness such a talent (I've seen X-Men), when she starts to get really proficient at re-mapping her sequences she'll be in middle school, when girls can't get enough of their fathers. Around that time, I plan to be a "relative" only in the legal sense, ie. I'm listed on her birth certificate, and ride out being a non-relative until she likes me again. College, maybe? When I first realized Mufus' special, um, talent for willfulness may present a problem, I raised the issue of mutating children and how they affect parental burden to a lawyer at a dinner party. He gave me the name of a colleague who specializes in the field.  
A ring-side seat to the bout between child-trying-to-be-their-parents and child-trying-to-avoid-becoming-their-parents is the finest perk of early parenthood (I doubt I’ll be so happy with the tickets when puberty rears its ugly mug, but who knows) and genetic material certainly plays a part in the back-and-forth, but so do an unknowable number of factors contributed by an unknowable number of people. I’m thrilled that lots and lots of people have legacy equity in my children, not just the genetic contributors. And, that conclusion put a halt to the six-word ticker line in my brain.  
As for the unexpected direction I wrote of earlier, that looney off-shoot of thought came somewhere in the middle of my consideration of the six words. I thought about what, beyond younger homo sapiens, might be an ideal legacy, and that caused me to consider…
John Montague, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, and his chef, circa 1762, for another time.

Inexcusable Super Bowl XLV Performance

I cannot fathom how a performer can butcher such an iconic masterpiece, and on that stage. She’s a professional singer, should know her capabilities better than anyone, and should never have allowed herself to be talked into such a monumental spot. That song, 111 million viewers, better know you can knock it out of the park. Didn't happen, but at least she got the words right.
Huh? Yeah, I’m referring to Fergie’s version of Sweet Child of Mine, not C.Ag’s National Anthem. In fact, it would have been much better if Fergie had jumbled some words but put everything she had into the song instead of mono-toning on stage there next to Slash. In the face of such a heartless cover, I started to wonder two things. First, if Fergie’s ever really heard Axl sing Sweet Child, and more importantly, what must have transpired to get her to agree to do a piece so painfully out of her “range”? By that I mean a real song with notes and stuff that her legs can’t co-sing on.  I don’t wish to be excessively harsh (too late?), I’m probably a little tired of The Black Eyed Peas ubiquity, but a Speak & Spell would’ve equaled that performance.
Aside: how much buzz would there have been today if Slash had slammed on his axe leaning against a giant Speak & Spell doing Sweet Child, then, song complete, crowd freaking out, turned and put his top hat on the S&S? Uh, yeah, A LOT. And it would prove, once again, that Slash makes anything cool.
To answer my “how did this happen?” wonderment, because we'll never know for sure, I dreamed up the following interface between The Peas and a SB producer/NFL executive over mimosas and platypus-egg omelets in the lusciously gilded dining room at NFL headquarters. (You should know that I only know Will I Am and Fergie from The Peas and refuse to look up the names of the other two. And I doubt anybody eats platypus-egg omelets.)

Nooooooo!

Here goes:
Producer: “Hey, Peas, do Sweet Child with Slash at the Super Bowl.”
Will I Am: “Money. What song? Who? Money. Fergie’ll do it. Money.”
P: “Great. It’s a rock song from way back. Guns N’ Roses.”
Fergie: “I’m not really familiar, and I’m an artist so I need specifics. What real music does it sample? What’s the line?”
WIA: “Attention. This is the worst plat-egg omelet I’ve ever had. Lights.”
P: “We’ll get you another. New chef. Ferg, it’s a whole song, with a few lines, no sampling, but not too complicated. I think it has two verses, about familiar stuff like smiles, the sky, hair, pain, and rain, but you probably won’t have to do it all.”
F: “Two verses? Damn. So, I can rap it?”
WIA (mouth full of rare eggs): “Money. Let’s talk about my lights. Attention.”
P: “Will, I have some bad news for you. We can’t sign off on the lexan protective shield for your hair.”
WIA: “Attention. The one molded to my hair, that lights up? Money.”
P: “Sadly, yes. You and the other two guys are taxing the Dallas/Ft Worth grid too heavily already, we couldn’t make it work.”
WIA: “Attention. Without that shield and lights on it, the show’ll be ruined. Nobody’ll see lights on my head. Money.”
P: “Sorry, but I like that I know what’s important to you. Ferg, what do you think about my pitch?”
F: “I really prefer to rap and maybe sing a word or two when I jump. It helps me stay real with the audience. You know, connect without a bunch of thinking on either end getting in the way.”
P: “That’s why the NFL chose you guys. You’re so real, so organic. Your audience interface
is flashy and quick, but not so memorable as to overshadow the game. Like a confidence man. In a good way…for us.”

WIA: “Attention. Ferg, they f*&king with my head wardrobe and lights. What the f&*k? Lights.”

F: “We’ve been around, you know? I’ll play ball and do the “song” or whatever, but you’ve got to give Willie his hair shield and lights.”
P: “Mmm. Hardball, eh? It’ll be a tough one to get through committee. Goodell’s head is already about to explode from the costume sketches he’s seen, and he just thinks the hair shield is too bizarre. He says you all look alarmingly like that freak Dynamo in The Running Man, and do you know what could happen to you guys if it rains?”

WIA & F: “Money. Who’s Dynamo? Lights.”

P: “Ambiguously sexed singing bad guy from a Schwarzenegger film who harnessed electricity for weapons…and to seduce the audience. Hmmm. Incidentally, made the same year Sweet Child of Mine was released.”

WIA: “Lights? Sounds awesome. Money. Can I meet him? Lights.”

P: “No. He’s just a character, and Erland van Lidth, who portrayed Dynamo, died the year the movie came out.”

F: “Get Will his hair shield and I’ll do the children’s song.”

P: “Sweet Child of Mine. Not a children’s song.”
F: “Does Willie get his plastic hat?”

WIA: “Lights. ‘Lettuce Wrap’. Money.”

F: (With crinkled eyebrows) “Right, his Lettuce Wrap.”

P: “He may have the lexan lettuce wrap. No lights.”

F: “Will?”

WIA: (in mopey voice)“Attention. Fine. No lettuce lights. Pout.”

P: “Grand. We’re settled. Ferg, I’ll have somebody get you the particulars, and help you get those vocal chords ready to rock. Though, scream is probably a more apt term.”

F: “Wait, what?”

P: “Oh, and we’ll get you in touch with Slash.”

F: “Who’s Slash?”

P: “Oh, f&*king hell.”
WIA: “Money. Where’s my omelet? Lettuce.”

That’s the BWTrotter version of how Fergie came to destroy one of the finest rock songs ever produced for a whole generation of kids. At least they got to see Slash.

Congratulations to the Green Bay Packer organization, Packer fans, and all the former Buckeyes on the roster. Sleep tight.

Bar Stools & A Four-year-old

Rufus & Mufus in Cleveland Metroparks, 2010 (No, not really)

First, BWTrotter is a pen name; a combination of a nickname from my past and the name of my dog. That's for purists.

Second, allow me to explain how I came to start this web log.
I have two young children aged 2- and 4-years. The other morning my four-year-old, Rufus, dressed himself, went downstairs, used a counter stool to procure a bowl from the cupboard and grab his favorite cereal from the high shelf in our pantry, poured the cereal, retrieved milk from the fridge, poured his milk, ate his cereal, rinsed the dish, and put it in the sink. All while I read upstairs unaware. I didn't know my son had crossed the Rubicon until the boy called up to his sister, Mufus, playing in her room, and asked if she wanted him to fix her cereal for breakfast. I went downstairs, realized what Rufus had done, and knew my role in my children’s lives had changed significantly. It was a watershed moment, for the father at least.

Like every parent who has ever lived I conjure up scenarios in my brain into which I place my kids and try to play out how they would react or survive or think. It can be a downright horrifying exercise, but it is the very essence of parenting. The vignette that pops into my mind most often is of the 'what if I become incapacitated when my wife is out of town and my kids have to fend for themselves for a day or two?' variety. Like if I brained myself cold on a countertop bending over to pick up a dropped grape, or suffered an embolism watching an Ohio State game. Rufus and Mufus couldn’t run to a neighbor because of child-proof doorknob covers, and as far as I know, they don’t know how to turn on and dial a phone. In my mind I watch them try to wake me up and cry and plead with me to stop joking around. For comic relief, I suspect, in the throes of such a taxing train of thought, my brain inserts lots of footage of my son jumping on me like a big time wrestler, giving me a wet willie, and as a last resort, a giant wedgie; simultaneously, my daughter plasters my face with make up and pulls my leg hairs; all techniques that have forced me to quit faking sleep in the past. I don’t wake up in the scenario, but get a laugh in real life. After the tears and pain-based resuscitation attempts end, my children begin to wander around the house, perhaps playing with stickers or trucks, they go potty, they act fairly normal. To work the heart strings like Huckleberry Fox (see Terms of Endearment if you have not), my mind always throws in bits of one of them calling to me—always in the brutally haunting voice of that little girl in the beginning of The Rescuers. “Who will rescuuuue, me?”--to announce a need or ask for help, forgetting that I’m out cold or comatose on the floor somewhere, and the other child has to respond, “Daddy’s hurt”. Depending on the time of day I go out, they may spend the night on the floor next to me, or curl up together in my son’s bed, an especially emotional thing to imagine. Really, what can be more messed up and dark than observing your children put themselves to bed parentless, hungry, and scared in your own house? After many hours--just seconds in my brain--the moment comes when they realize they’re unbearably thirsty or hungry. The climax. In my mind’s eye I watch them behave about on par with their capabilities at the time of the exercise. At their ages that lately has meant they rummage the lower shelves of the pantry, perhaps find some goldfish or raisins to eat, they drink out of the bathroom faucet; enough to survive a day or two, barely.
Through this dark—unhealthy?--modeling behavior I gauge my day-to-day value to my progeny, particularly my son, and until a few days ago the exercise invariably validated how I’ve spent the vast majority of my time over the last two-and-a-half-years. In the wake of The Bar Stool Incident a few mornings back, however, the brainware that runs the Necessity Simulator crashed spectacularly: a colossal display of sparks, falling pipes, exploding servers. The NS doesn’t work anymore because now my children can survive as long as cereal, crackers, string cheese, apples—anything that’s ready-to-eat—remain in the kitchen. (I do have this one vignette variation that surfaces in the NS occasionally where Rufus expertly mixes a perfect Gin & Tonic. Two limes.) Of course, the harshest consequence of my son’s use of a bar stool is not the crash of a nutty, oft-used brain app, but the powerful blow delivered to my sense of import in my children’s lives. Rufus did not merely master a task convenient to our household like buckling his car seat straps or putting on his pants tag-in-back for the first time, he executed a basic survival maneuver. Clearly, Rufus and Mufus do not need me as they used to. Tough to deal with, that.
I know my kids still need parents. They’re only two and four, after all, and remain firmly dependent. Still, it was the moment all parent’s work hard to reach, but dread the arrival of, the one drop in the pool that releases an unceasing cascade of moments that relegate parents to bit players. I relished being a rock basin that contained my son’s life and, before I was ready, with the help of a bar stool, the water spilled over the rim and now I am the canyon through which my boy’s life runs, a channel directing the path of a trickle that will soon become a torrent. And anybody who’s ever studied geology understands that over time rock is powerless against running water. It will go and do as it pleases. So will Rufus.
Melodramatic? Over-blown? Maybe. But it was my Moment, one that made me proud and small.
So, that’s why I started AllFourEndsoftheCandle (a name I’ll explain in future posts). I all of a sudden felt like I could start doing stuff I want to do that maybe I’d been hesitant to do before in case it conflicted with responsibilities to Mufus and Rufus. And maybe it’ll help me deal with the transition from basin to canyon.
Still, I might burn the bar stools.