Six days....

For those who enjoy lists about books that were good:

Against my better judgment I'm considering making it a goal to work my way through the combined list by the end of 2010, so I'll be ready for the next ten years. Chances this will actually happen are verging somewhere just above zero. And, one more essay by someone who didn't exactly love the wildly inappropriate review B.R. Myers gave to Freedom in the Atlantic.


Dance music that doesn't suck.



According to my mother I've been excited about being a parent since I was three years old. She claims, claims, that I used a truck to drive my older sister's dolls around the house occasionally crashing them into the walls, which clearly shows a boyish lust for mayhem. However, according to my mother, I was merely giving all of the dolls a ride in my truck, and it was probably, my insertion, an early onset of me being a little remiss in attending to the details, and perhaps, as well, an early sign that I was unable to calculate angles and turns as they related to the corners of walls. Like most things in life, I've no earthly clue if this is true.

I seem to remember, lord only knows how many years ago, making some sort of claim that I wanted to be a young father. And though I'd like to credit that moment when I was still a pre-teen or young teenager, and I hope we're not interpreting it the wrong way, I merely meant I would be excited to have kids one day not impregnate someone at fifteen, as proof that I've always wanted this to happen, I also remember saying hundreds of times to Steph that I didn't want children, that I thought I'd always be too selfish. It's really a matter of deciding which of those memories to indulge and impose as true.

After college I spent three years doing child care work for kids aged 3-10. In many ways, I loved it. Working with children allowed me to indulge my own inner child, and now I was big enough to win at any game that I wanted, minus connect four against a five year old recently immigrated child from China named George who is probably going to end up as a world champion, and the ability to make a connection with kids. You see, the great things about kids is that they'll say things like, "You're my best friend," hell, they'll tug on your arm and insist that you come play with them. When was the last time you had someone literally begging for your company? In fact, in a lot of ways I remember those long sunny afternoons in Santa Barbara, CA quite fondly. And if I allow myself to step through the thin veil of memory and into the scene, I watch myself tossing a basketball back and forth with a little blond haired girl who is telling me what it feels like to be left alone. I remember wishing that I could one day have a daughter like her.

Or, I could remember that miserable year spent in Ann Arbor, Michigan, caring for rabid snot nosed kids while listening to inestimably annoying thick Michigan accents. I can remember sleeping in my car during my lunch break, shivering with a full coat on, dreading a return to ABC's and bowls of crackers and cheese. And again, you see, you can stand at the crossroads of two memories and decide, which of the two paths that diverge you will take, realizing that you have taken them both.

Years from now I'm fairly certain that I'll be looking back, God willing, at the life of a child nearly grown up, and I'll long for the days when I was not yet packing for college or buying cars. I'll long for the days before I'd even changed a diaper, when I was still waiting in the dark for everything to change all at once.