Xylophones Played In The Distance

I'm not what you'd call a normal father.  To me, a normal father is more like my own father.  He got up every morning, shaved, drank his coffee, put on his white dress shirt and tie and went to work.  Then he came home, took off his tie, sat at the head of our dinner table, drank his coffee, and talked about serious worky kind of things.  We were all kind of afraid of him, because his word was law, and we either obeyed or paid the hefty consequences.

I'm not that kind of father.  I work out of the house, shave when I have to, never drink coffee, and only put on the dress shirt when I venture out into the cold cruel world.  We don't have a head at our table, and I hardly ever talk about work during dinner.  And as for my word, it's not really the law.  Maybe more of a local ordinance.  Kind of like the one way lanes in the mall parking lot.  Folks only pay attention when its convenient.

My kids don't look at me and say to their friends, "There goes my father.  I respect him deeply."  Instead, they say, "There goes that weird guy who lives with us.  Let's try to avoid him."  That's what they say when their friends are around.  But when it's just us, they secretly like me the way I am.  I bring an element of fun, comic relief and creativity to family life.

For example, when Abbie was younger, we would pass the time away playing several improv games.  We would talk with funny accents and carry on imaginary conversations.

DAD:  "Hiya, Abbie.  What's ya doings?"
ABBIE:  "Milking a cow, daddy.  What're yer doing?"
DAD:  "Hunting squirrels.  There's one. DIE, SQUIRREL, DIE!"

Uplifting things like that.  Sometimes Alec would be with us, but Alec wouldn't participate.  He would just sit there and wish he were somewhere else.  He's so strange.

One of our favorite games was the alphabet game.  In the alphabet game, one of us would pick a letter of the alphabet, and the other would then have to begin a story in which the first word began with that letter.  We'd then move to the next letter, and the next person would continue the story.  It'd go something like this.

ABBIE:  Let's start with U.
DAD:  Unable to put it off any longer, Charlie bundled up in his blanket, and headed out into the cold night.
ABBIE: Very cold and wet, he searched in the darkness for a pair of glowing eyes.
DAD:  Within a few minutes, while the cold crept into his bones, he saw the eyes staring at him from the edge of the forest.
ABBIE: Xylophones played in the distance . . .

Xylophones playing in the distance were a favorite dramatic motif of ours, and found their way into all of our stories.  (What else are you going to do with X?)  We would continue until we had used all the letters and wrapped up the story in a neat little package.  Now, because Alec never played along, to this day, he is still unable to alphabetize his conversations on the fly.

Abbie and I have no problem with this.  Because, as I've explained, we've had so many years of practice.  Creativity now comes easily to Abbie, as evidenced by her many artistic skills.  Drama, music, painting, writing, snowcraft, marshmallow sculptures, and soap carving are just a few.  Eventually, we expect her creative skills to lift her to unimagined heights, or maybe just a brief stint as the first female Blue Man Group member.  For what its worth, that's actually not a bad idea.  Girls should be allowed to be Blue Men, don't you think?  How in the world can we teach our daughters to aspire to greatness when there are artificial ceilings within the BMG hierarchy?  I think she should actually start the first Blue Woman Group.  Just sort of go for it, you know.  Keep the same sort of shtick, but with a female flair.  Lose the blue, maybe, and go with pink or teal.  Maybe some would say that's sort of sexist, but I'm just picking random colors out of the air.  No need to take offense.  Of course, any color would do, except for white, because people might confuse WWG with a wrestling federation, and that wouldn't do.  Perhaps, though, I should get back on topic.  Quietly and somewhat irresponsibly, I've allowed this blog entry to meander and drift into meaningless babble.  Rather than continue in this non-sensical vein, I suggest we somehow try to make sense of all this.  So many times, we tend to go to great lengths to make a point.  Then we realize, that all this talk of blue men and wrestling and snow art was just a side show - a distraction from the true intent of our discussion.  Unless I stop now, though, I think I'm going to disprove my original theory - that years of playing the alphabet game has somehow allowed me to pull off an alphabetic conversation like this one, and that you'd never notice until I pointed it out to you.  Veal, yummm.  Well, on that very sad note, there's only one thing left to say.

Xylophones played in the distance.

Yeah.  Zorry about that.