Around Town

As we drive around town, Magoo, smart kindergartener that he is, shares the facts with me. Sometimes I get the idea he’s making the facts up as he speaks. He’s learning about the world and he wants to instruct others, share the knowledge and the love.

Sometimes he says things like, “Two plus four is totally six,” and then stares out the window with a big grin on his face.

Today we sat parked next to a soaking lawn in the U District, because cars are always stopped in the U District. It is always rush hour there. And he said, “You don’t really have to worry about wet grass.”

“What?”

“Well, you always worry about wet grass and other wet stuff and it’s really okay.” Here I think he must be referring to slugs and I resent him suggesting that I have a problem with wet things when my real issue is with muddy wet grass on my carpet and slime on my feet.

A little later on the drive the song Cruisin’ came on the radio with Huey Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow. There’s a section of lyrics near the end of the song where they sing, “Baby let’s cruise. Let’s flow, let’s glide.”

Magoo is really conscious of lyrics and likes to interrogate me about them/ come up with explanations of what they mean.

Magoo: Why did they say, ‘We’ll glide?’ Because persons can’t glide.

Me: I’m not sure Buddy.

Magoo: The only one that can glide is Batman.

Pause.

Magoo: Because he’s got a glide suit. I mean, come on!

Longer pause.

Magoo: Batman’s not real, is he?

Me: I don’t think so.

Another long pause as he looks very serious.

Magoo: You know what? I bet that guy singing is Batman. THAT makes sense.

Me: So he’s just singing about how he’s going to put on his glide suit and go flying?

Magoo: Yeah. He’s totally Batman.

My kids were going to town fighting on the way to church this morning. Way to bring in the spirit of peace, love and joy! Go team! I’ve often heard cheerleaders yell, “Go! Fight! Win!” Maybe the kids were following that advice and thought they were on the road to some sort of championship, rather than cruisin’ for a you-know-what and a big fat dose of religion. Whatever they were thinking, I was learning a few things about how to hold your own in a fight with a sibling. This brings me to my first post on Sibling Rules of Engagement.

Rule #1 – If your sibling doesn’t agree with something you’ve said, just respond with, ” I wasn’t TALKING to you!” even if no one else is within earshot.

Rule #2 – If you don’t agree with something your sibling is saying, simply grab a stuffed animal, clutch it fiercely to your bosom and say, “Be QUIET! My baby is SLEEPING!”

We were late for church but not because of the fighting, more becuase of my lack of ability to ever estimate how long it will take me to get ready for anything ever. Did I say “ever”?

As we were walking into church, I reminded the kids to be really quiet becuase we were late, to which Magoo responded, “I LOVE it when we’re late because church is sooo long and bo-ring.” Yep. It was a great start to the day.

In Costco today I spotted a man with a ponytail. He was wearing a Harley Davidson biker jacket with the slogan “No Child Deserves to Be Afraid,” across the back and I knew he had to be one of them. For some reason this made me giddy. I was standing behind him in line at the pizza counter trying to keep myself from tapping him on the shoulder to say, “Hi. I know who you are.”

Eventually he got his order and turned around to walk by me, his Bikers Against Child Abuse logo displayed proudly on the front of his jacket. It happened so quickly but I pulled myself together enough to say the first thing that popped into my head, “You guys are awesome.” With this statement, I instinctually raised my fist towards the logo. I’m not sure what I was expecting, a fist bump, a salute, but I only got one word.

“Yeah,” he agreed, almost smiled and swaggered off, leaving me hanging.

I dorkishly let my fist drop but my grin did not fade. I really do love those guys. I like that they take their big scary biker gangness and use it to protect kids. They befriend abused kids and tell them they’re not alone and then make sure that they are NOT. ALONE. They hang around the kid, intimidating the POOP out of the abuser. Who’s gonna abuse a kid whose best friends are a giant group of burly bikers? I ask you, “Who?”

BACA Mission Statement
(From the BACAUSA.com)
Bikers Against Child Abuse (BACA) exists with the intent to create a safer environment for abused children. We exist as a body of Bikers to empower children to not feel afraid of the world in which they live. We stand ready to lend support to our wounded friends by involving them with an established, united organization. We work in conjunction with local and state officials who are already in place to protect children. We desire to send a clear message to all involved with the abused child that this child is part of our organization, and that we are prepared to lend our physical and emotional support to them by affiliation, and our physical presence. We stand at the ready to shield these children from further abuse. We do not condone the use of violence or physical force in any manner, however, if circumstances arise such that we are the only obstacle preventing a child from further abuse, we stand ready to be that obstacle.

Rock on, my friends.

I’m not talking about The Weathermen, although bombing public places is also sinister. I’m talking about the men and women who predict the weather and then talk about it on television. I’m talking about exhibitionist meteorologists.

These people are way too excited about carnage-inducing destructive weather patterns. During the heat wave, you could tell that from their air-conditioned studios it was the best week of the year to date. They got top billing on all the advertisements leading up to the news that night. Then they got to pop in throughout the broadcast dribbling out bits of weather information with a wink and a grin and the infamous, “Is this heat wave EVER going to end? I’ll tell you coming up later in the broadcast.” (As though maybe it wouldn’t ever end and if you didn’t watch, then surely it wouldn’t.)

And if a heat wave is good for business, the windstorm 2 years ago was probably the single best thing to ever happen to Seattle weather people. Sadly, most of their viewers were without cable or power so they had to take to the radio, offering up their cheerful gloom and doom without the inconvenience of makeup or wardrobe or having to stand outside wherever the weather was most severe, pointing to cars, ACTUALLY IN THE PROCESS OF BEING SMASHED BY TREES, while trying to look like they felt bad about the occupants.

When the big much-anticipated earthquake hits the Northwest and their weather reports are picked up by the national news organizations, I think their heads will explode.

I don’t blame them. It’s their job. They have the blood of newsmen running through their veins and we all know how the news industry works. The greater the destruction, carnage or pain, the greater your audience, the higher your ratings and the more money you make.

Even as a not news person, I’ve sure gotten a lot of mileage telling stories of the Big Freeze or the Catastrophic Wind Storm or the Flood of Oh-Six. Stories of peril and narrow escapes are the stuff of good drama. I think we all enjoy being the news anchors of destruction from time to time, which is possibly what makes this sketch so funny to me. Then again, maybe it’s just the eyebrows.

I love how it doesn’t matter on local news if they have any information to share. It WILL NOT STOP THEM FROM TALKING. They say things like, “We have a situation here and what we do know is that an incident has occurred,” and gesturing over to the meteoric inferno of emergency vehicle lights, “The police action appears to have occurred over in that region there where you see those lights.”

On Friday night in Seattle all the network stations were hi-jacked by news people anxious to share the details, of which there were none, with the citizens of the Puget Sound area. Two men had been shooting guns and running across a major freeway. By the time I caught up with the Breaking News, both suspects were in custody and the reporters were at that awkward place where they start interviewing every person within a 3-mile radius about the event and asking them what they think might have happened, even if they were unaware of the incident until the cameras and lights clamped on their faces.

Which direction did the men come from? How tall were they? What were their names? If you can’t release their names, then just tell us what their mothers would say if they wanted to call them in to dinner. Were they shooting at the nearby college? You don’t know? If you had to guess, would you venture to say that they had been shooting at the nearby colleges? (Shooting by colleges is much more tragic than, say, random drunken shooting in the woods.)

I kept waiting for them to get back to the regularly scheduled programming but eventually decided to play a little Dr. Mario with Dan before bed. It’s fun. Nobody gets hurt and it causes my little giant baby oven to contract. All good things. None of them news-worthy. I guess that’s why I need a blog.