The thought of daddy coming home after a long day at work, for me, evokes the happy reverie of children running to the door in warm welcome, shouting “Daddy!” with wide grins as father sets down his briefcase and umbrella and scoops his adoring little rosy-cheeked cherubs into his loving embrace.

What I got from my loving son when I came home tonight: “How did you get here?”

It’s a step up from being totally ignored, so I’m calling it a blessing.

It had been a typical long day at work. My wife was still at her job and wouldn’t be home for a couple more hours.

I’d run the dishwasher, cleaned up the kitchen a smidge, decided I didn’t want to even attempt to clean up the Wii Rockband accessories littering the family room (the ones two teenage girls were able to get out and set up but were somehow entirely unable to take down and put away), and had started making dinner for myself and my wife. I set Michael’s dinner before him (organic chicken nuggets with tater tots and plenty of ketchup) and then plopped myself down in my own spot at the table to keep him company, and maybe even get in a couple of rounds of Solitaire on my iPhone.

With my head aimed down and squarely at the small screen, from the corner of my eye, I see Michael look over and point two index fingers at me, thumbs skyward.

“Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew!” he zapped me, fingers alternately bouncing backwards in mock explosive recoil.

Somewhat annoyed but mostly wounded that he would decide that the best thing to do with me is to riddle me with imaginary gunfire, I turned toward him.

“Michael, why on earth are you shooting me?”

“I’m shooting you with love,” he said, without missing a beat.

“Alrighty then,” I said.

I guess if you’re going to get shot with something, love is probably the best projectile.

Monday night’s swimming lesson did not go well. Michael spent most of his time goofing off with his classmates and making some very bad choices, his antics ultimately escalating into downright bad behavior.

I chided him after he toweled off and dressed.

“Michael, I am very disappointed in your behavior. You did not show kindness to your friends, and chose to misbehave. So when we get home, it’s going to be jammies and off to bed.”

Michael was contrite, and understandably glum on the trip home.

Eventually he broke his silence with one of his typical statements, which is a question that is couched in the form of a negative answer:

“Man. Now I can’t go through the ‘secret passage’.” (Editor’s note: the ‘secret passage’ is a route to our home that winds through an older section of the neighborhood, rather than taking the main roads. It seems mysterious and untraveled, thus he has labeled it as a secret passage.) Michael has this idea that if he states something negatively, his parents will see his plight and will swoop in and make things right. In this case, by saying that he can’t, he figures either his mom or I might say “Why, of course you can!” Thus avoiding the pain of actually making supplication to the higher authority and risking disappointment.

This was confirmed when I pointed out that I was wise to what he was doing.

“Michael, you don’t know unless you ask,” I said.

“Yeah…”

“So, are you going to ask me if we can go that way?”

“But you’ll say ‘no’.”

“How can you be sure if you don’t ask?”

“I’m worried…”

“What’s the worst thing he could say? You ask and you may get a ‘yes’ and you may get a ‘no’. The worst he can possibly say is ‘no’, right?” His mom said, jumping in to encourage him.

“Uh…”

“Michael, just ask,” I said.

“Could we go through the ‘secret passage?’” he asked, tentatively.

“Why, yes, we can!” I said, happily, and turned down the street into the seldom-used entrance to our neighborhood.

“See, Michael?” his mom asked.

“Yes!” he said.

“Any good parent is only going to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a question like that. That’s the worst they would do,” his mom continued.

He thought about that for a long time.

Then he provided this observation:

“You know what a really bad parent would do?”

“No, what?” we asked.

“If the kid asked to go through the ‘secret passage’, and the parent was mad, and he had a gun, then he’d turn around and shoot the kid. That would be a really bad parent,” he said.

“Yeah, that would be a bad parent, for sure,” I said.

He knows how to set the bar low. I must be an excellent parent.

“Mommy?”

“Yes?”

“Can I play with your iPod?”

“Yes, but please be careful with it.”

“I will.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I dunno, just stuff…”

Michael came into the kitchen where I was cooking breakfast. He noticed that his stuffed “Angry Bird” was no longer on top of the refrigerator, where it had been incarcerated for the duration of Michael’s penance (for having, the night previous, recklessly and unabashedly launched it onto a kitchen table laden with breakables and full drinking glasses).

“Where’s my angry bird?”

“It’s on the couch,” I said.

“Oh. How did you do that?”

“How did I do what?”

“How did you do it?”

“How? Maybe you can figure out how,” I challenged, hoping to prompt his critical thinking skills.

“Because I’m not in trouble any more?”

“Well, that’s more of the reason why. You asked how I did it, not why.”

“Uh, because it’s tomorrow and I can play with it?”

“That’s true, but that’s not how I did it.”

“How?”

“Are you asking how I did it or why?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Which is it?”

“How to why.”

“How to why what?”

“Yes.”

“Are you asking me how or asking me why?”

“How you did why.”

I took my eyes off the pot on the stove for just a minute to see if I could discern the essence of his question in his face.

He just beamed at me with smiling blue eyes.

“I think SpongeBob is on,” I said.

“Okay!” and he trotted off, happily.

How To Get Dressed In The Morning

in thirty easy steps!

Step 1: Notice that your mom has brought your clothes downstairs and put them directly in front of you.

Step 2: Draw a smiley face on your Magna-Doodle.

Step 3: fling your stuffed dolphin into the air five or six times. build nest for dolphin.

Step 4: Acknowledge your father’s loud imperative with a grunt, drop nest pillows.

Step 5: Consider removing your pajama shirt.

Step 6: Notice depleted glow-stick lodged between couch cushions, remove and wave about.

Step 7: Take off pajama top.

Step 8: Ask to watch SpongeBob.

Step 9: Complain about the unfairness of not being able to watch SpongeBob until after getting dressed and finishing breakfast.

Step 10: Take off pajama bottom.

Step 11: Attempt to turn pajama bottom right-side out, abandon project after succeeding only in repeatedly turning it out half right, alternating between one leg and then the other.

Step 12: Ask where clothes are.

Step 13: Prance around naked until father redirects you.

Step 14: Notice large orange ruler nearby, insert into strap of dolphin pillow pet.

Step 15: Hunt for underwear.

Step 16: Ask where clothes are again.

Step 17: Notice clothes are underneath pillows and blankets that you’d just strewn around back around steps 3 and 4.

Step 18: Pull on underwear, complain of them being tight. consider father’s words about how the tightness might be due to them being on sideways.

Step 19: Re-orient underwear.

Step 20: Place socks on hands, put on a sock puppet show for parents.

Step 21: Put pants on. backwards.

Step 22: Ask father how much three plus three plus four plus four plus six plus twenty plus a billion plus a billion plus one thousand is.

Step 23: Ignore father’s dictate to finish putting on clothes.

Step 24: Drape shirt over arms and tuck under chin to make it look like it you’re wearing it.

Step 25: Repeat math question.

Step 26: Insist to your father that you’re actually wearing your shirt, therefore you’re done getting dressed.

Step 27: Actually put on shirt.

Step 28: Repeat step 22, tucking chin to chest to make it look like you’re trying to fool your father into believing that you really didn’t put on your shirt.

Step 29: Mutter that your father has no sense of humor.

Step 30: Place socks on feet.

See how simple that is? In a matter of a mere forty-eight minutes, you’ll be fully dressed and ready to go.

Next time I’ll cover the thirty five steps to eating your Wheaties.

Daddy: “Michael, I need you to put your jammies on. It’s almost bedtime.”

Michael: “All right, all right. I’ll listen to your words and do it.”

Daddy: “I’m really glad to hear you say that. That makes me happy to know you’re listening.”

Michael: “…because you’re the boss of me.”

Daddy: “That’s right, I am.”

Michael: “…and Mommy is the boss of you.”

Michael’s just started taking swimming lessons at an indoor pool, one he isn’t used to.

The locker room was full of kids getting ready for lessons, and just as full of grown men toweling off and dressing back into street clothes.

I could tell he was a little anxious being around so many strangers. So it made sense that he’d want to stick close to me when I went to use the restroom.

It was his second statement that really made me wonder:

Daddy: “Keep getting yourself changed, while I go use the potty.”

Michael: “I think I’ll come with you.”

Daddy: “Okay, that’s fine.”

Michael: “Don’t worry,” he said as he sidled up to where I stood. “I won’t laugh at you.”

Actually, I wasn’t really concerned about that possibility until he mentioned it.

While brushing Michael’s teeth last night, I became acutely aware of a foreign object in his mouth; one I think he’d been hoping I wouldn’t notice. I set the brush down and leaned in for a closer look, to see a wad of indiscernible foodstuff that had been masticated beyond all hope of recognition, enrobed in a minty froth.

“Spit that out!” I said, urgently. He complied. “For crying out loud, have you been chewing that all night long?” The answer was obvious. For whatever reason he was not able or willing to chew up and swallow whatever it was.

My brow furrowed in disbelief at his re-working a bite of food for hours on end.

And then the memory came back. A similar incident. Twelve years ago. While running a bedtime bath for sister L, who was not quite three at the time, I noticed she was still working on a bite of food from dinner. Frustrated, I demanded that she chew it up and swallow it. Her expression immediately changed to one of frantic determination as her wide-eyed gaze focused on a fixed point in the distance, her fists clenched and her jaws ground that bite at top speed. After a minute of this fruitless endeavor, I heaved a sigh of resignation and told her to just spit it out, which she happily did.

Returning to Michael’s tooth brushing, I smiled, having been gently reminded that Michael has a twin, and that it’s only a phase.

Michael decided to make his own lunch today.

He was pretty busy in the kitchen, working hard on fixing his meal.

“Do you need any help in there, Michael?” I asked.

“No. I got it.”

Yes, he’s got it.