Ask the Byrdes!

Tags

marty byrde, netflix, ozark, parenting

In this weekly feature, husband-and-wife entrepreneurs and full-time parents Marty and Wendy Byrde share advice on raising kids, achieving work-life balance and taking time to enjoy what’s most important: family. Note: the opinions expressed are those of Marty and Wendy Byrde, and do not reflect the views of this blog.

Dear Marty and Wendy Byrde,

My husband and I are the proud parents of a four-week-old son! While we’re excited to have a healthy, happy baby, we’re also pretty exhausted. How long can we expect the nonstop routine of feeding, playing with and putting our baby to sleep to continue? No one told us it would be this hard!

— Sleepless in Sarasota

Wendy: First of all, congratulations on your new arrival! That is so exciting! Nothing can top the fulfillment of bringing a little bundle of joy into this world, but I agree that it can be very taxing. What I will tell you is that it does get easier. In a few weeks, your baby boy will be more settled into your routine. He’ll be less fussy, will sleep longer and, eventually, you, your baby and your husband will make it through the night without a diaper change! In the meantime, be kind to one another and make sure you and Hubby are giving each other breaks when you need them.

Marty: I’m just going to echo Wendy’s response and agree that it gets easier – eventually. Full disclosure: the early weeks of baby-rearing were not my favorite. I was recently reminded of this when we cared for a friend’s newborn, Zeke, for a few weeks. I guess the key is knowing that this phase doesn’t last forever, and to try to enjoy it while it lasts. Congrats to you both.

---

Dear Byrdes,

My sister and I are estranged. We’ve been best friends for as long as I can remember, but her dependency on alcohol and prescription drugs has made her erratic and unpredictable. I’m just not comfortable having her around my two children until she addresses her addictions. My mother says I’m being dramatic. Am I? How do I repair my fractured relationship with my sister while also protecting my family?

— Tammy in Toledo

Wendy: Oh, Tammy! Your letter touched my heart as I also have a sibling with substance abuse problems. My brother, Ben, has battled addiction to everything from heroin to opioids most of his adult life. He’s been in and out of treatment centers and, when he’s sober, he is one of the most loving, caring people you could ever meet. Sadly, Ben is currently in a downward spiral and we haven’t spoken to him in months. I’ve tried to reach out, but I have no idea where he is.

Marty: Excuse me, Honey, but what the fuck are you doing?

Wendy: I’m talking about Ben and his struggle with addiction.

Marty: Okay, well, first of all, that’s a lie. Ben doesn’t have a drug problem, he has bipolar disorder. So let’s get that straight. Also, when you say, “I have no idea where he is,” that implies that he is somewhere. And people are going to start asking questions about where Ben really is, and I don’t think you’re going to want to answer those questions.

Wendy: All I’m doing is expressing empathy because I, too, know the heartbreak of a fractured sibling relationship. I know it’s hard for you to understand what it’s like to care about another human being, and the sadness of not knowing when you might hear from that person again.

Marty: I just think that maybe we should focus on Tammy’s problem, okay? Maybe not make it about what happened with you and Ben?

Wendy: My God, you’re such an asshole.

Marty: Okay, maybe we should move on to the next letter.

---

Wendy and Marty–

Do you have some advice on how to deal with an overly demanding, toxic, chauvinistic boss? My supervisor calls me on the phone day and night, demanding that I drop everything to meet his demands. He has no respect for boundaries or for my home life. Sometimes, he’ll just start barking at me on the phone without even saying hello! What do you do when you have a jerk for a boss?

— Frustrated in Fresno

Wendy: I think many of us know what it’s like to work for a difficult, demanding boss. Even though Marty and I own several successful businesses, we understand the pain of those late-night or weekend calls on the cell phone, whether it’s during dinner or at one of the kids’ soccer games. You don’t dare let it go to voicemail either, because that will only make things worse. And there’s no compassion on the other end of the line. No concern for what you’re going through. Just a huffy demand for an immediate answer and instant gratification. Not even a friendly goodbye!

Unfortunately, the only thing you can do in this situation is to do exactly as your boss commands. Do not deviate from what he wants and only very carefully suggest something that may be a better solution. Bottom line: he’s your boss. He calls the shots. You work for him. And if you fail to give him exactly what he wants, when he wants it, your life and the lives of those you hold dear may be in very grave danger. Just put on your brightest smile, do your damndest to make your boss happy and maybe, someday, he’ll have mercy on your soul and the phone calls will end. And then, finally, you will know what it is like to be free.

Marty: Yeah. What she said.

---

Dear Marty & Wendy,

Our 16-year-old son lies about everything. He lies about who his friends are, where he’s going to be on Saturday nights, and when we can expect him home. We recently caught him lying about his grades. In fact, he forged an entire report card and then tried to get us to sign it! What should we do? Do we have a budding sociopath on our hands?

— Troubled in Tennessee

Marty: First of all, “Sociopath” is such a strong word, and a little overused these days. Teenagers lie about a lot of different things. That’s not unusual. The question I would ask you is, how good is your son at lying? How often do you catch him in his lies? The fact that he went to the trouble of forging a report card intrigues me. That takes a certain amount of skill and initiative. Maybe, instead of looking at the downside, you should consider that your son might have a rare talent for deception, for which there are many career opportunities. I’m not saying you should encourage the lying, I’m just suggesting it might not be an entirely bad thing.

Wendy: What Marty isn’t telling you is that he has a 14-year-old son who recently devised a very complex scheme of diverting money across a web of different shell companies. And Marty is actually proud that our sweet Jonah is committing about a dozen different felonies. So, consider the source when Marty tells you about the pros and cons of lying.

Marty: Again, Honey, this isn’t about us. This is about helping people with their problems.

Wendy: Oh, so you weren’t a little excited that Jonah invented software allowing him to launder millions of dollars in offshore accounts?

Marty: Well, I was surprised.

Wendy: Don’t give me that “I was surprised” bullshit. There was a goddamn gleam in your eye as you watched him transfer funds on his iMac Pro.

Marty: As I was explaining to the people in Tennessee, sometimes these predicaments our children get themselves into can create some interesting opportunities. It’s not all bad if you look at them as teaching moments, and a chance to do better the next time.

Wendy: In other words, get better at lying.

Marty: No one’s better at lying than you, Honey.

Wendy: Aww, that’s kind of true, isn’t it?

Marty: Next letter.

---

Dear Byrdes,

How do you balance demanding careers and parenting, while still finding time to spend with each other?

— Curious in Columbus

Marty: Well, you have to work at it! I think we do a good job of mixing it up and keeping things interesting. Even after all these years of marriage, Wendy often will say or do something that just completely floors me. “What in the hell is that woman thinking?” I’ll ask myself. “This time, she’s going to get us all murdered for sure,” is another thought that enters my mind.

Wendy: Life’s an adventure. If you don’t take chances, you’ll never get what you really want.

Marty: Ultimately, I choose to back her in whatever crazy thing she decides to do next. That’s what marriage is all about. We’re in this together.

Wendy: True. He’s my partner in crime.

Got a question for the Byrdes? Drop them a line at MartyandWendy@LicketySplitz.com. Also, enter a contest to win $50 in gambling chips at http://www.TheMissouriBelle.com.

My 10-Year-Old’s Work-From-Home Summer Schedule

Tags

2020, coronavirus, covid-19, kids, parenting, quarantine, summer school

Sometime between 7 and 8 a.m. – Wake-up time. Roll out of bed and instantly turn on iPad.

8 a.m. – Breakfast: choice of Strawberry Pop-Tart, re-heated chocolate chip pancake, or Dad’s Grape-Nuts cereal.

8:10-9 a.m. – Back to iPad. Check in with friend on Facebook Messenger about cool new iPad game in which you create your own iPad games.

9-9:40 a.m. – 40 minutes of reading time.

9:20 a.m. – Negotiate with parent to do 20 minutes of reading time now, then 20 minutes after dinner, knowing that parent will be too distracted by Entertainment Tonight after dinner to enforce the agreement.

9:30 a.m. – Log on to school iPad to touch base with teacher and begin the day’s agenda of summer school assignments.

10 a.m. – Summer school assignments are completed. Run upstairs to complain about how there’s nothing to do and summer is boring.

10:15 a.m. – Draw a picture of a Fennec fox or a mythical creature.

10:20 a.m. – Stare emptily at half-finished Lego set that hasn’t been touched since 2014.

10:25 a.m. – Briefly contemplate changing out of pajamas.

10:30-11:45 a.m. – iPad games on Messenger with friends.

11:45 a.m. – Lunchtime, consisting of either PB&J sandwich or microwavable mini-pizzas, accompanied by chocolate milk, off-brand chips and applesauce left over from school lunch pickups.

12 noon – Outdoor time! Wander the neighborhood sidewalks with Dad. Climb a tree. Put on roller blades and skate around for about two minutes.

12:30 p.m. – Change out of pajamas into shorts, camouflage Crocs and a “Weekend Warrior” T-shirt.

12:45 p.m. – Pester parents about going outside to play with friends.

12:50 p..m. – Parents insist that friends are still busy with school work and it’s too early to bother them.

12:51 p.m. – Doorbell rings. Friend wants to play. Tear out of the front yard with friend like a pair of escaped inmates from a Victorian-era lunatic asylum.

12:51 – 2:50 p.m. – Splash around in friend’s inflatable pool from Menards. Cross the street and splash around in another friend’s inflatable pool from Menards.

2:50 p.m. – Come home to badger parents about turning on sprinkler system to run through, “Because it’s summer, Mom.”

2:55-3:30 p.m. – Run through sprinklers with friends. Lay on Minion towels stretched over the hot driveway. Talk ruefully about those lost days when kids had to leave their homes to sit at a desk inside a concrete building for eight flipping hours.

3:30 p.m. – Parent emerges to announce that online tutoring lesson is in 30 minutes and that, no, he hasn’t forgotten about the 20 minutes of reading after dinner.

3:30-4 p.m. – Complain about the unfairness of tutoring during these precious, fleeting summer days.

4-5 p.m. – Slap on a happy face and plow through another soulless tutoring session.

5-6 p.m. – A brief window of freedom, dragging friends up and down the sidewalk in Dad’s collapse-able red wagon with the fancy cup holders.

6 pm. – Tonight’s dinner: pork chops, mac & cheese, and sweet potato fries made in Mom’s new air fryer oven.

6:30 p.m. – Parents consumed by talk about Trump, coronavirus, then Entertainment Tonight.

6:30-8:30 p.m. – iPad games with friends, then curl up next to Mom to watch a silly network program about mini-golf.

8:30-9:30 p.m. – Bedtime-ish.

 

 

 

 

Facebook and the First Day of School

Tags

childhood, Facebook, first day of school, parenting, school, social media

Facebook Posts About Little Girls on The First Day of School:

• “Ready for another exciting year at Taft Elementary! Our little Kimberly missed all of her friends!”
• “Gracie loves her Paw Patrol backpack! So psyched about kindergarten!”
• “Third grade, here we come! Kelsey is growing up so fast!”
• “No fears about second grade. Sophia couldn’t wait to get on the bus!”
• “Math is fun! Here’s a video of Olivia explaining the Pythagorean theorem. Look out, first grade!”

Facebook Posts About Little Boys on the First Day of School:

• “First day of kindergarten for Tyler. Wish us luck.”
• “This is the best photo we could get for Jacob’s first day of second grade. We practically had to drag him out of bed.”
• “If nose-picking is a 1st grade subject, Declan will sail through with flying colors—all of them gross.”
• “That blur you see is our son as we attempted a back-to-school pic. Prayers for his teacher and classmates.”
• “And, so it begins…”

I am NOT a Granddad!

Tags

aging, author, children, grandparents, humor, parenting, Stephen Roth

NOT a photo of me and my child.

It’s only happened a few times, but I remember each one vividly and painfully, the way you might recall a bee sting or getting a really bad spanking when you were a kid.

The first time happened when my son was just a few weeks old. It was a warm, spring evening and I was pushing him around the neighborhood in his new stroller when we passed a plump, platinum-haired lady who lived across the street from us and whom we knew slightly. In fact, my wife had just purchased a photo print from the lady at her garage sale a few days earlier.

The lady stood before us, stooped toward the stroller to inspect my child, and cooed, “Oh, what a beautiful little grandson you have!”

My mouth dropped open. This batty old bird lived a hundred feet from our home. Surely she knew we had just had a baby. At the very least, she must have noticed the cardboard stork and blue balloons in our yard.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I stammered before pulling the canopy over my son and hurrying back home, frightened and ashamed.

The second time happened just a few months later. I was at home awaiting a service appointment, and I answered the door with the baby in my arms.

“Sorry I’m late, Mr. Roth,” said the handyman with the ripped Dale Earnhardt Jr. T-shirt and the slight stench of marijuana smoke. “Oh, hey, nice grandkid!”

“He’s my son,” I said tersely.

“Wow! My bad! I guess I just—”

“—That’s okay,” I replied. It really wasn’t, though. I felt a strange panic invade my body. Being a new dad in my late 30s, I expected to be the oldest person at my child’s Gymboree music circle and at all the daycare holiday parties. But did people really think I was a grandfather? Was this how it was going to be for me throughout my son’s growing-up years?

“It’s because you’re bald,” one of our less-tactful friends advised, giving me a pitying little pat on the shoulder.

Thankfully, several years passed before another well-meaning stranger mistook my perch in the family tree.

My son wasn’t even with me a few days ago when I purchased a little something for my wife for Mother’s Day.

“What a cool gift,” said, the chatty, 20-something clerk with onyx studs the size of nickels in both of his ears. “Somebody is going to have a very nice Grandmother’s Day!”

My first thought when I heard this comment was to say, “My grandmother is dead.” Then, it dawned on me that he wasn’t talking about my grandma. The clerk was implying that my wife was a grandmother—and I was a granddad.

I just smiled and nodded, anxious to complete the transaction and return to my office, where I will likely toil for 20 more years before reaching the age when most granddads can retire.

This case of mistaken identity is probably going to happen more frequently as I continue to age. Hopefully, at least, people will perceive me as one of the cool grandpas, like the Dos Equis’ “Most Interesting Man in the World,” or one of those grey-haired guys in a Cialis ad, driving his classic Camaro home and always finding that the light is on in the upstairs bedroom window.

Spiders! In the bathtub!

Tags

children, fears, kindergarteners, parenthood, parenting, spiders, tarantulas

According to several articles I’ve read on the Internet, it is fairly common for Kindergarten-aged children to develop intense fears that have no basis in reality. Our six-year-old son has a couple of these.

One fear is being left alone in a room in our house, particularly the basement. Our son loves playing in the basement, where we keep most of his toys, but is deathly afraid of being abandoned down there by himself. Sometimes we will be able to talk him into taking the dog downstairs with him, but he usually insists on human companionship. A typical after-dinner conversation goes like this:

“Daddy, can you go downstairs with me?”

“Not right now. I’m doing the dishes.”

“Can we go after you finish doing the dishes?”

“We can,” I say. “Or, you can go downstairs now and I can join you in a little while.”

My son nods as if giving this some thought. “That’s okay,” he decides, heading to the living room couch. “I’ll wait for you.”

Our son’s fear of the basement is nothing new. He has never felt comfortable being alone in most rooms, even when surrounded by stuffed animals and other toys. I am told he will gradually grow out of this. My wife and I pray this to be true.

A newer development is our son’s fear of spiders—specially, spiders in the bathtub. This started a few weeks ago, when our normally mild-mannered son broke into a screaming fit and emphatically refused to take a bath in the tub he has been using since he was one week old. When pressed on the issue, he explained that he was afraid of spiders in the tub, even though he admitted to never having seen a spider anywhere inside our house. He had, however, seen a picture book about tarantulas at school. What could be more terrifying, really, than to be relaxing in your tub and to open your eyes to find a palm-sized, hairy spider swimming toward you? Do spiders even swim? Well, it doesn’t matter. The image alone is just horrible.

All the child-help literature instructs us to sympathize with—not belittle—our child’s fear, no matter how insanely irrational it might seem. We tried a few different tactics to get our six-year-old to wash himself. We let him use our shower. We let him use the “big” tub in our master bathroom. One of us took a bath with him to ease him into using his own tub again. We made a big deal about how cool his bath toys were, and now much they seemed to miss him.

After a few nights, our child seemed to conquer his fear of spiders in the bathtub. A washcloth under his rump seemed to help, for some reason. Bath nights were, if not exactly fun, at least tolerable again.

Then, a few nights ago, it started all over again. Our son, who used to love splashing around in the warm water of his tub, again refused to set foot inside its fiberglass shell. “I’m scared of the spiders!” he sobbed.

We know enough other parents who have kids our son’s age to understand that every child has his or her own quirks. This fear of spiders, and other bugs, confounds me, though. Like any other overprotective parent versed in the trendy psycho-babble of the day, I wonder what our son’s unprovoked fear of arachnids really means?

Conversations in the Car

Tags

boys, children, dinosaurs, fathers, kindergarten, parenthood, parenting, sons, stegosaurus, Stephen Roth, summer, winter

“Daddy, do you wish that dinosaurs were still around today?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”

“But if you thought about it, would you want them to still be around?”

“I don’t think so,” said the middle-aged man. “It would be kind of scary, having those big dinosaurs stomping all over the place.”

The little boy sighed, as if frustrated by always having to explain everything to his imagination-starved father. “But it would only be herbivores stomping around. No meat-eaters allowed.”

“Okay. Well, that makes me feel a little bit better.”

“What’s your favorite dinosaur?”

“Hmmm,” the man said, looking both ways before pulling onto the main road. It was a question he’d gotten a lot recently, so he should have been ready with an answer, but he wanted to come up with something flashier this time. “I’d have to say my favorite dinosaur is…the Stegosaurus.”

The boy giggled. “That can’t be your favorite dinosaur. That’s mine!”

“Why can’t we have the same favorite?”

“Because it was my favorite first,” he said. “I like how Stegosaurus has spikes on his tail, so he can use it against his predators.”

The father nodded, having seen his son demonstrate a Stegosaurus “tail sweep” more than a few times in the downstairs TV room.

The child looked out the window at the beige winter landscape. “Daddy, do I have to go to school today?”

“Yes, you do.”

“I wish it were summer already.”

The dad chuckled, thinking how the swimming pool would open in just three short months, which would have seemed like an eternity back when he was in Kindergarten.

“It’ll be here before you know it,” he said, trying to sound hopeful.

The Words Get in the Way

Tags

boys, children, communication, fatherhood, four-year-olds, humor, parenting, words

I’m a word person. I work as a copywriter during daylight hours, and I write creative prose and essays in my spare time. I have also been told – usually by a supervisor who is trying to find something positive to say in my performance review – that I have excellent verbal communication skills.

In short, I am good with words.

Why is it, then, that I struggle to communicate the most basic things to my own four-year-old kid? Last night, my son was in the bathtub, and he wanted to get out. I have been trying to teach him that he needs to pull up the plug before exiting the tub, allowing the water to drain. For some reason last night, the right words weren’t coming to me.

“Pull the thing! Pull the thing!” I commanded as my son dangled a wet leg over the tub.

“What thing?” he asked.

“The, um, the metal thing that holds the water in,” I stammered. “The plug! The plug!”

He smiled at me and started singing a song he had made up about his favorite colors. Then he wrapped his arms around my legs and got my jeans wet. He loves doing that.

Even the king knew how to talk to his children.

A few minutes later, as I was coaxing him to put on his pajamas, he asked me what the term, “inside-out” means.

“Well,” I said slowly, trying to conjure up the right words, “It means that the inside of your shirt is on the outside, so your shirt looks funny when you wear it.”

He gave me a puzzled look. He was standing naked in front of the TV, clean pajamas and underpants scattered around him on the floor.

“It’s the opposite of the way you should wear your shirt,” I tried again.

“But what does inside-out mean?” he asked.

“You know what it means?” I blurted. “It means you need to put on your pajamas by the time I count to three, because you know what happens when I get to three?”

He looked down. “I go to Time-Out.”

“That’s right,” I said, feeling a little bit more in control.

“But what does inside-out mean? You still haven’t told me.”

I know why I sometimes have trouble communicating with my son. First, when I am around him during the work week, in the early morning or after six o’clock at night, I am often tired and my brain is not functioning at its sharpest. Secondly, shifting gears from interacting with adults all day to breaking a concept down so a small child can understand it takes a lot of thought and patience. Finally, I have never been comfortable issuing directives, which, unfortunately, is a big part of managing life with a four-year-old. Sometimes when I tell him what to do, I talking haltingly and sound unsure of myself. The right words do not always flow naturally off my tongue.

It bothers me that much of the time I spend with my child occurs when I’m tired or, if it’s near the end of the week, exhausted. I also worry that my son sees his father as this tongue-tied guy who stammers to express even the simplest, most rudimentary thoughts. As the week winds down to Thursday and Friday night, I feel like a middle-aged Forrest Gump, a kindhearted but mentally feeble man, struggling just to get his kid out of the bathtub and off to bed. Sometimes, when I’ve turned off the bedroom lights and my child looks up at me, eyes wide open, and asks one of those Troubling Questions, (“Why do people die?” “Why do I have to go to school?” “Why can’t we have a cat?”), I actually wish I was Forrest. He always seemed to know how to tackle the big issues with a little metaphor that sounded simple, but had a more depth to it once you thought about it. “Life is like a box of chocolates,” sounds more profound than “Life isn’t fair,” although they both pretty much mean the same thing.

Forrest Gump: a man in command of his words.

Hopefully, when my kid reaches the age of 10 or 12 or 25, he and I will able to sit down and have a conversation that doesn’t revolve around finishing his dinner, brushing his teeth, or watching very carefully while I tie his shoes. We’ll sit down and have a real, heartfelt, man-to-man talk (in between whatever programs he has queued up on Netflix, of course). Then, my son will realize how thoughtful, wise and articulate his dad really is.

That’s the hope, anyway.

Stephen Roth is author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore. Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

Afternoon Lunch

Tags

job loss, parenting, short prose, t-rex cafe

It was cool and overcast on the Friday they made him turn in his ID badge
and laptop computer, and gave him a cardboard box to collect his things.
The dashboard clock read 2:05 as he pulled out of the parking garage.
Twenty minutes later, he walked into the daycare classroom to surprise his son.
“We can go anywhere you want,” he said as he strapped the 3-year-old into the car seat. “Where to?”
“T-Rex Cafe,” the son murmured, groggy from his nap.
A life-sized, snarling dinosaur greeted them as they walked into the empty restaurant.
They dug for rare bones, wore paper T-Rex hats,
and wandered around the dining areas to marvel at the animatronic beasts.
The cheeseburger was overcooked, but the Dino-Nuggets weren’t too bad.
“I want this,” the son said, holding up a spiky plastic toy. “It’s a Stegosaurus.”
“What do we say?”
“Please?” the son asked.
The long drive from T-Rex brought wind and rain.
It was dark by the time they got home.
For months afterward, the son recalled that afternoon as the best one of his life.

Herbie Goes Bananas

Tags

1980, boys, childhood, golf, growing up, herbie goes bananas, parenting, Stephen Roth

My best friend in third grade was a ginger-haired, freckley kid named Rob Fairchild.

Even at nine years old, Rob had a swagger of someone who expected success. He won at every sport he played, and was one of the best golfers for his age in the state. He was a straight-A student who finished his homework each afternoon before getting off the school bus, and whose diorama book report on Charlotte’s Web was something the teachers raved about for years after the fact.

He was a good-looking kid, a kind of a 1970s, bowl-cut version of Ronnie Howard, whom you could easily imagine yelling “Hey Kool-Aid!” in those ads than ran between our after-school cartoons.

The teachers loved Rob. The parents admired him. The girls wanted to do the Hokey Pokey with him at the Skate Inn every Saturday afternoon. The boys liked Rob as much as you could possibly like someone who towered over you in every measurable way.

“Sure,” they’d say, eyes twitching around the schoolyard to see where he might be lurking. “Rob’s pretty cool.”

We didn’t have a term for it back in third grade, but Rob was an Alpha Male. Years later, he applied all that charisma and confidence toward becoming a successful entrepreneur. He patented a bath towel with a Velcro strip that make it easier to wrap around your waist. He called the invention The Belly Hugger. Rob sold millions of Belly Huggers on late-night television and became a minor celebrity in the process. I understand he now has his own island now somewhere near the Caymans.

Rob and I had little in common in third grade. I was a “B” student whose mind wandered into a world of talking cars and space adventures at the first mention of multiplication tables. I played soccer, which in those days was the sport of choice for kids not coordinated enough to throw and catch. I also took piano lessons, which was not real high on the coolness meter back in elementary school.

We were best friends mostly because our dads had management jobs for the same company, and we were the only two kids our age in the still-developing neighborhood between the local golf course and the lake. Nevertheless, Rob and I shared a bond. We used leftover lumber from the home construction sites to build a network of little forts in the woods that surrounded our houses. We stockpiled pine cones to hurl at Rob’s sister on the rare occasions she tried to play with us. We fished, we swam, we rode our bikes and we built rock dams in the creek beds. We often played until sundown and then got yelled at by our moms for tracking red clay into the house. It was a Tom Sawyer-Huck Finn kind of life, and it didn’t seem to matter that Rob could already drive a golf ball 120 yards while I was lucky to get mine past the ladies’ tees.

Things were different between us at school. Rob was aloof and standoff-ish around me. During recess, he was more interested in playing sports than Kick The Can or tag with me and all the motor skill-challenged kids. Then he got mean, heckling me when it was my turn at the plate in kickball, teasing me when a teacher caught me not paying attention in class. Of course, he managed to do all this in a disarming, Opie Taylor sort of way that made the teachers want to do little more than squeeze his freckley little cheeks.

I didn’t get it. Rob and I were best friends back in the neighborhood. We were “blood brothers,” like Bo and Luke Duke. Why would he turn on me in front of the other kids? Many times I wrote the friendship off, certain that Rob Fairchild wanted nothing to do with me, and I with him.

Every afternoon after school, however, my phone would ring. Even before picking up, I knew it was Rob.

“Whatcha doing?” he would ask.

“Nothing,” I’d say, still miffed about the latest schoolyard indignity.

“Come up to the house,” he’d say. “I just found my dad’s Playboy.”

Or something to that effect. I usually went because there wasn’t much else to do but watch a re-run of “Happy Days” or play with my Star Wars figures. And each time I went to Rob’s house, it was good times again: exploring the woods, jumping our bikes off rickety ramps, snagging lumber from a construction site to build our latest fort. Rob and I, to borrow a phrase from America’s most beloved simpleton, were like peas and carrots again.

But the school days were bad, and I tired of my friend’s split personality. The sensible thing would be to ask him to stop being such a jerk. But you just didn’t do that in the Boy World. It was much better, I felt, to conspire against him and plan his eventual demise.

The summer of 1980 was a troubling time. There were hostages in Iran. The oil crisis was looming. Dudley Moore and Burt Reynolds were considered major box-office attractions.

It was also the summer I declared war on Rob Fairchild. It started with a phone call.

“Watcha doing?” Rob asked.

“Nothing.”

“Come up to the house. I got a new tetherball set.”

“No.”

A pause. “What did you say?”

“I said, ‘no.’”

“Why ‘no?’”

I took in a deep breath.

“Because,” I said. “I don’t want to.”

He let out a little gasp, as if this were the first time anyone dared defy him. Then he hung up.

Oh, it was on after that. Rob and I recruited foot soldiers from around the neighborhood for the inevitable showdown. I got Marcus McLaughlin, a soon-to-be-second-grader whose chief skill was screaming at an intolerably high pitch. Curt got Aoki, whose family just moved in from Japan and who spoke about three words of English.
Marcus and I struck first, trashing a fort in the woods behind Rob’s house. Then Rob and Aoki ambushed us with a brutal pine cone attack. Then we had a wrestling match near the creek bed, which ended with Rob hurling a large rock at me and Marcus as our moms called us home.

It was a high point in the campaign, to be sure. But to claim total victory, I wanted to beat my enemy at something he held dear. Rob played 18 holes of golf almost every day that summer, usually with boys much older than him. He was becoming something of a local legend, and he almost won his age group in a statewide tournament that year. If I was to bring Rob down, it would have to be on the links.

I was under no illusion that I could do that myself, of course. But I had a friend, a ringer, whom I knew Rob despised and couldn’t resist playing. I set up a four-hole tournament between Rob and Jason Payne, with the prize being a packet of orange Titleist balls. My ace-in-the-hole was a little rule that, for every cuss word one of the players uttered during the event, a shot would be added to their score. Rob’s cussing addiction was well-known by then, even by the adults. I was confident he couldn’t play four holes without swearing.

I was right, sort of. He said, “God-dangit,” after teeing off on the third hole, which cost him a stroke and the match. There was a hot argument at the final green over whether or not this qualified as a true cuss word before Rob pinned my friend to the ground, grabbed the tournament prize and ran home.

Furious, I marched over to the Fairchild residence to retrieve my golf balls.

“You know, Rob won the tournament fair and square,” Mrs. Fairchild said when she answered the door.

“Yes ma’am,” I replied.

“He’s upstairs crying right now. He’s very upset.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“I’m giving you your balls back because I don’t want any more trouble between you boys. You used to be such good friends.”

“Yes ma’am. I know.”

I felt bad about the tournament. If I could have articulated it in my soon-to-be fourth grade mind, I would have said the whole thing made me feel petty and foolish. I had taken things too far, and I thought that maybe it was time to make peace with Rob Fairchild. Beside, another school year was looming around the corner, and I soon would be in the same room with him seven hours a day.

A week or so after the tournament, I bumped into Rob at the swimming pool, waiting his turn to go off the high dive. He sat on a concrete bench, making little white marks on the armrest with a spare golf tee.

“That’s pretty neat,” I remarked. “I didn’t know you could draw with a golf tee.”

“That’s because you’re stupid,” he said. Then he climbed the diving board and made the coolest back flip anybody had ever seen.

A few hours later, I was at home, watching an old episode of “F-Troop,” when the phone rang.

“Watcha doing?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Wanna go see a movie?”

I paused before answering. “What’s playing?”

“Herbie Goes Bananas.”

In those pre-cable, pre-Internet, pre-everything days, you didn’t turn down an invitation to a movie, even from your nemesis. It just wasn’t done. Besides, I had always liked ol’ Herbie and had seen multiple advertisements about the new movie on TV. For a night, anyway, Rob and I could be friends.

“Okay,” I said.

Sitting in the front row of a theater watching a movie about the Love Bug breaking up a counterfeiting ring in Mexico might not seem like quality entertainment to you, but to a nine-year-old boy in 1980 it was about the most exotic thing imaginable. Rob and I ate our Sweet Tarts and chewed our Lemonheads, and there was no mention of our three-month war as we took in the talents of Cloris Leachman and Harvey Korman. Afterward, Rob and I sneaked into The Blues Brothers and got to watch the scene where the National Guard and about 50,000 Chicago police chase down Jake and Elwood. The car crashes, we both agreed, were top-notch.

“Whatcha doing tomorrow?” Rob asked before his mom dropped me off at my house.

“I dunno,” I said. “Watching TV, I guess.”

“Come over to my place. I got a new Sea Monkeys set.”

I pause for a moment, suspecting that we were falling back into a familiar routine.

“Okay,” I finally said, “that sounds cool.”

The Dean and the Sociopath

Tags

failure, grades, greenville, high school, lying, parenting, report cards

People who know me in my adult life often act surprised when I tell them I was a screw-up in high school. I guess it is a good thing that most of them find that surprising. They didn’t know me my freshman and sophomore years, which I was, at best, a “C” student and, at worst, an “F” student.

I once got a zero on a biology test when my teacher caught me looking at my notes. Another time, in freshman English, I got a zero on a test because I somehow forgot to read A Raisin in the Sun. I was so panic-stricken during that test that I pretended to “forget” to turn it in at the end of class. Instead, I rushed into the school library, desperately searching for a paperback copy of A Raisin in the Sun so I could scribble down a few answers. Sadly, I never found the book and have not read it to this day.

During sophomore year, I found chemistry to be completely out of my realm of understanding. I somehow mustered a 70 average in chemistry for the year. Yes, I just barely escaped having to repeat my sophomore year.

The lousy grades were not a big deal with my parents because, for the most part, they didn’t know about them. For half of my freshman year and all of sophomore year, I went to a private school Greenville, South Carolina. We were new to town and my parents didn’t know any of my teachers or the other kids’ parents. It was easy for me to hide the fact that I was regularly racking up failing grades in Latin, chemistry and geometry. I covered it up in a way that would make Richard Nixon smile. Every eight weeks, when it was time to bring home another report card, I went to the school computer lab and invented my own report card, awarding myself A’s and B’s where there should have been C’s and D’s. I forged my parent’s signatures on the real report card, and they unquestioningly signed the version I gave them. They had no reason to doubt its authenticity because they had never actually seen a real report card from my school.

I felt horrible about this. I wanted to tell my parents the truth but, like Watergate, I guess things kind of spiraled out of control. I was not a complete monster. however. My dad and I had a deal in those days that, if all my grades were 85 or higher, he would help me get my own used car. I made sure that at least one of my doctored grades fell just shy of an 85 because getting a car based on a pack of lies was an ethical bridge that even I was unwilling to cross.

No cover-up lasts forever. Mine ended on a spring day in 1987, which I got a 1050 on my Pre-SAT. My mother was so elated by the score that she wanted to talk with the school dean about my future college prospects. The dean of our school was a lanky, bespectacled man named Dean Dingledine (pronounced: “Dingle-DEAN”). Because he was the dean, his full title was actually “Dean Dean Dingledine.”

“You know,” my mom said over dinner one summer night. “I really do need to set up a time to talk with Dean Dingledine about your SAT score, and what kinds of colleges you should apply to.”

I took a little extra time chewing my pizza. I knew the dean would find this conversation ridiculous, based on the grades I had been making. He might hand my mother a couple of brochures to a community college or a vo-tech school and suggest that we start there.

“Mom,” I finally said after a long swig from my glass of milk. “I need to tell you something about my grades.”

I told her everything. Well, most of everything. Mom kept the appointment with Dean Dean Dingledine anyway. The dean was incredulous when she handed him one of my forged documents.

“This doesn’t look anything like our report cards!” he said.

“Well, I’ve never seen your report cards,” Mom replied. “What does one look like?”

Even though it was summer, the dean and my mother agreed that the school should administer some form of punishment. So for one week in July, I reported each morning to the dean’s office for a chat, then spent the rest of the day pulling weeds and picking up rocks on the school softball fields. My first conversation with the dean was uncomfortable. This was the summer of Ollie North and the Iran-Contra hearings.

“Lying gets you nowhere,” Dean Dingledine explained. “Just look what happened with Watergate. And now we have Iran-Contra and it’s like, ‘Here we go again.'”

I nodded, not knowing what to say.

Later that month, my parents sent me to a therapist. She had me do a series of personality tests. One test suggested I might have a future in teaching. Another test wasn’t quite so positive. The therapist told my parents there was a strong likelihood that I was a sociopath. My parents laughed, thanked her for the analysis, and we never saw her again.

Later that summer we returned to my hometown of LaGrange, where my parents knew many of the teachers and most of the other parents. I decided to stop lying and misleading my parents or anyone else. I managed to turn my grades around and eventually attended the University of Missouri.

I don’t know what became of Dean Dingledine, but I have to thank him and my parents for the roles they played in turning my life around. Otherwise, who knows what I would be doing today?