( 1:52 AM )
The other day I was peed on by my 2-year-old son, one of the standing dangers of having a boy. It hadn’t actually happened in probably 8 months, so I had thought that perhaps my days of changing out of a urine soaked shirt were done, at least until the next kid. It was all innocent enough – just after his bath, I was on the floor looking for something when he climbed on my back for a horsy ride and, splish-splash, there was suddenly a mini fountain going off on my back.
The incident reminded me of an old family story. It took place when my brother Paul, who’s 12 years my senior, was a small boy. My late father – who I haven’t mentioned in any of this but was a bookie that went about 6’6” and 270 lbs. – was asleep in his bed when my brother came into the room and told him that he needed to “wee.” Half asleep, my Dad thought that what his first-born son said was “whisper.” So, he replied, “Well, do it in my ear then.” “OK,” small Paul answered. Sure enough, a moment later my Dad was much wider-awake and trying to dry out his ear.
Apparently a lot of things about parenting don’t change no matter how much time goes by.
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( 9:15 PM )
As I was flipping through the channels this evening, trying to find something to leave on the television while I was doing dishes (from our sink, you can see into our living room), I ran across too different things that brought back a bunch of memories. I know that given the time of year, you’d expect me to say that I stumbled across Snow Miser and Heat Miser or something else along those lines, but these were on the polar opposite end of that scale.
The first was a PBS retrospective of Lawrence Welk and his long-running TV show – you know the one with the bubbles, the ultra easy listening big band tunes, and the cheesily wholesome singers and dancers. The second was an infomercial for a series of DVD’s featuring the best of “Hee-Haw,” the also long running country variety show featuring Roy Clark, Buck Owens, Minnie Pearl, et al.
When I was a little kid in the 70’s, all of my friends and I would frequently be stuck at our respective grandparents homes while our parents did more interesting things. In almost every case, everyone’s grandparents spent their Saturday nights watching “The Lawrence Welk Show” and “Hee-Haw.” All of them. And, even though you can’t think of any two shows that were less hip, back in those multimedia deprived days you had no choice but to watch along with them, because if you left the TV they might think you weren’t interested in it and turn it off. With shows like “ChiPs,” “The Love Boat,” “Starsky & Hutch,” “Emergency,” “Fantasy Island,” and “The Carol Burnett Show” coming on later, depending on the year, you just couldn’t risk it.
Consequently, there are a lot of people in their mid-to-late 30’s walking around right now that know a little too much about their grandparents favorite shows. “Hee-Haw” in particular seems to have been retained since it at least had some goofy humor and well-endowed women, which became more and more of a selling point with the boys the closer we got to puberty. I’ve been in groups of guys where this has come up and all that is needed for a bunch of grown men to simultaneously blow a raspberry is for one person to start singing, in a fake cornpone drawl, “Where, where are you tonight? Why did you leave me here all alone?”
Our generation and the generations that proceeded us all had stupid touchstones like that – things that you were made to do as a child because there were no other options and no one was all that worried about what the kids thought of it. Makes me wonder what some of the subsequent generations – many of whom haven’t been forced to do anything they haven’t wanted to, aside from maybe going to school – will have to connect them.
(Quick note for those of you that didn’t get or don’t quite remember the whole “Hee-Haw” song referenced above: it was a quick skit that was always done with two guys standing in a fake corn field, usually in straw hats and coveralls. The complete song goes “Where, where are you tonight? Why did you leave me here all alone? I searched the world over and thought I found true love. You met another and THPPFT you were gone.”)
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( 12:30 AM )
One of the things about expecting a child that's unexpectedly difficult for me is finding a name. Part of the problem is my last name, McCullin. Three syllables and a "n" sound at the end means that not everything flows with it...at least not as far as I'm concerned. Throw in a middle name and it just gets ridiculous. Call me picky, I guess. Even my wife's name, Annette, I think is a bit awkward with my last name.
When we were trying to find a name for a son, we went around and around trying to come up with a decent boy's name. It's not that I don't like boys names, per se, it's just that I'm against using any name that belongs to at least five of my relatives. Pick a strong Irish name (Sean, Patrick, Brian) or any decent Catholic name (Paul, John, Michael) and I've got a ton of male relatives with that name. I'm not close to my family -- which you would think would lessen the issue, but instead it makes me not want to have many reminders of those family issues.
Then there are certain names that just bother me. Like Diane/Diana. I don't have anything personal against them, the issue is that I can never remember whether someone is a "Diane" or if they're a "Diana." Any time I meet anyone with one of those two names, I almost always stop using any pronouns around that person within five minutes of meeting them. If I had a daughter with either of those names, I know for a fact that I would have to look at something in writing -- envelope, Christmas stocking, name tag, etc. -- to remember which one we had gone with. I would have a similar problem with Michelle and Sara, not because of any spoken issue but with written communication. I've never known one woman with those names that I've been able to remember if they use one or two "L's" for Michelle or if they put an "H" at the end of Sara. I don't want to name my child anything that makes me think that much.
It's for that reason that I would never make up a name for a child of mine, like I know has become popular in some quarters. I'm terrible with names and I need some sort of association to remember them -- and just being my son or daughter isn't going to be good enough. If we completely made up a name, I'd never be able to stick with it. I'd have to make up a totally different name each and every time I addressed the child. By the time they were 5 that would just be horribly confusing.
I'm also not one of those people that can wait to see the baby to decide what name they "look" like. Thankfully, neither is my wife. I need some time to get used to any name that's going to be used. I need to roll it around a little. See what kind of cruel nicknames kids could come up with from it. Check out how it looks in different fonts. Make sure that there isn't some mass murderer with the same name. I don't see how you can think of any of that once the kid has been born. I had trouble remembering my own name for the first three weeks of my son's life.
I could probably wait until there's an ultrasound to confirm the sex before getting all worked up about all of it, but I don't like leaving things to chance. If you don't have an acceptable option for both sexes then you end up rooting for one or the other during the ultrasound. Maybe that's not a big deal, but I know that my incessant chanting kept throwing off the technician's concentration last time. The phone call from my bookie trying to get the results probably didn't help much either.
While we're not locked into anything yet, I do think that we've managed to settle on a solid front runner for each sex -- Caroline Rose for a girl and Quinn Thomas for a boy. It's still open for discussion and there could always be a darkhorse name that comes out of nowhere and strikes a chord. Still, it's a positive step from last time when I needed the inspiration from a celebrity photo in an L.A. pizza place to come up with our son's name.
It's just a shame that there aren't companies out there willing to purchase the naming rights to kids, like they do with sports stadiums. That would totally make this sort of decision much easier. After all, for the right amount of money I'm willing to think that anything fits just perfectly with my surname.
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