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Memoirs of a Failed Step-Dad:
Dancing in Public

Bedtime Stories

Every night before Jack goes to bed his mother or I read him a story.

Most nights, as we are about to turn out the light and close the door, Jack will call me back.

"Will you make up a story?"

"It's late, Jack. Bedtime. We just read a story."

"Your stories are better."

I don't mind being manipulated, when it's done by a master. I turn out the light, lie in bed next to Jack and say, "Pick a number."

"Number seven five hundred two thousand."

"That story is too scary. Pick a different one."

We began this routine when a Jack was four. He was amazed that I knew an infinite number of stories, each assigned a number and a place in my memory. Now that he's six, I suspect he only pretends to believe. "Umm. Number eighty-two hundred hundred."

"Oh. Excellent choice. Did I ever tell you about the time when I was a little boy, about your age, and I used my older brother's chemistry set?"

"Tell me."

I lie beside Jack, amazed at how much heat his small body can generate. I tell him how I mixed three chemicals, nose-a-drene, bombast and hyperbole-- to make a magic gas. I filled a balloon with the gas, then breathed it all in.

"Do you know what happened?"

"What?"

"I started shrinking. I got smaller and smaller until I was the size of--" I'm about to say I was as small as a gnat, but Jack doesn't know what a gnat is. I think quickly. "Until I was the size of a flea!"

"Whoa!" Jack sits up in bed. He has watched his mom comb through our Golden Retriever's fur, hunting for fleas. He's watched the tiny black specks she casually grinds between her fingernails. "That's really really tiny," he announces.

"Know what happened next?" I ask.

"Your mom stepped on you!"

"Well, almost." I quickly incorporate Jack's idea. "She almost stepped on me, then almost swept me up with a broom, even though I was yelling up at her, "No, Mom! Don't do it! It's me, your son! I'm the size of a flea!" She couldn't hear me because my voice was so small. I had to run."

"Where?"

"I ran into the living room. I saw my father sleeping in his favorite chair."

"Was he snoring?"

"Yes. Of course. He was snoring so loud he made the windows rattle." You can use a cliche when your audience is only six years old; it's the first time they're hearing it.

"And do you know what happened next?"

"You climbed up your dad's leg?"

"Exactly! Are you sure I haven't told you this story before?"

"No. No. Keep telling."

"Well, that's what happened. I had to use mountain climbing ropes and grappling hooks because I was so small and his leg was so huge."

"What's a grappling hook?"

I explain. I resume the story, with Jack as my collaborator. We work it out that, after scaling my father's pant leg, I climbed over his face, passed beneath the giant bristles of his mustache, bounced on the wet trampoline of his tongue, and was blown out onto the carpet when he sneezed. Then the magic gas wore off and I grew back to my full, six year old size.

As I leave his room, Jack says, "Write that one down!"

Being An Artist

One day, when he was five, Jack sat at the kitchen table intently coloring.

He asked me, "Do you think I'll be an artist when I grow up?"

Read this and 12 more equally self-absorbed, hyper-personal essays in the ebook, Quo Vadis, Dude?

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