The Moment I Realized My Toddler is Cooler Than Me

From Clark Griswold to Dr. Evil, countless movies have been filled with terribly cliché fathers trying to be cool around their children and failing miserably.  Though I was never the coolest kid in my school, or the least, I was friendly enough to at least stay on the fringe. Now I’m at the point in my life where my desire to be popular is greatly outweighed by my desire for the mythical good night of sleep. Still I want to be and have fun with my kids and if they want to view me as more fun like Vince Vaughn in Old School than known terrible father Darth Vader, so be it.  

But a couple recent events have made me realize that maybe I’m not as cool as I think I am, or maybe it’s just that my boys are already breezing past me right before my eyes. Mrs. Dude and I took the boys bowling recently and I never expected that seemingly innocuous experience to open my eyes so broadly. I hadn’t been bowling in many years, other than on Wii where I’m an expert, so I was surprised at how long the lanes seemed and how heavy the ball felt.

As we took our turns gliding our tie-dyed spheres down the slick lane I felt like I was having a good time. It was fun to get out there with the boys at this stage when they still need us and don’t realize that before long they won’t want to bowl, or do anything else in public, with us anymore. As we took our turns, aided mercifully by the raised bumpers denying any gutter balls, I heard a couple of older kids in the lane next to ours calling the Littler Dude’s name. Not paying much attention because his name is not uncommon, after a moment I realized they were indeed calling for my 2 year old.

I looked up but couldn’t place these kids, who appeared to be about 10 years old, so the fact that they knew my son was both perplexing and concerning. Several thoughts raced through my mind as I stood there when suddenly I noticed the Littler Dude’s preschool teacher standing a little further back in the next lane. These were her kids who had taken a shining to the Littler Dude on a couple visits to his school. Whew.

It truly surprised me that these elementary schoolers would turn their focus from a group of 8 or 10 of their friends to even notice a 2 year old, let alone pay even a smidge of attention to him, but then it hit me: my 2 year old son is cooler than me. This is clearly the beginning of my boys’ upward trajectory and my plateau. Hopefully I’ll have another 50 or 60 years on earth, but I’ll likely never again be as hip as I feel like I once was. (Note: using the word “hip” means I’m clearly not.) I’m not suggesting that I need to be put out to pasture quite yet, but as my psyche is coming to terms with me turning 40 later this year, I realize that I’m no longer a kid. Despite feeling a little sore the day after we bowled, I’m not feeling too many aches and pains yet. I’ve been working on becoming healthier because I know I must keep my machine in solid working order to keep it running smoothly as long as possible. I may be getting older but I don’t intend to feel old in the process.

That afternoon, while the Littler Dude napped, (who’s cool now?), I visited my barbershop for an overdue cut. I saw a new stylist who did a great job (and not only because she noted that I have a good thick head of hair), which really reinvigorated me a bit as I’d been feeling a little shaggy. As she used the clipper to clean up my neck and sideburns, I heard the buzz getting significantly louder when it dawned on me that she was trimming the tiny hairs on my ears. I attributed it to my uber-strong hair follicles and Russian ancestry and let it go.  A few minutes later, though, after she applied the styling goop to my hair in a generous effort to make me look a smidge less like, well, me was when I received official confirmation that I’m not as cool as I thought.

“Do you want me to tame your eyebrows while you’re here?”

“Um, OK,” I sheepishly replied, though the real thought burning my brain at that moment was “get off my overgrown over-eye lawn!”

It’s official: my kids have clearly surpassed me in coolness and there’s likely no turning back.

Bushwacked brows & buzzed ears

*********************************

Come hang with me on Instagram 

My Mini Me

One of the great things about taking care of my son is the frequent compliments that he receives while we are out and about. Everywhere I take him the ladies we encounter say “I know who he looks like” or “I know where he got that curly hair”. It’s been said that BC looks just like me. A lot. At first glance you’d probably question it, because he is about ½ my height and about 1/6 my weight, but other than that there is apparently a significant resemblance. Or so people tell me. Personally, when I look at him and look in the mirror I don’t see it.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t look like me. In fact, I think he really looks like me. I know that may sound contradictory to what I just said in the last paragraph, but he does look like me. When I was 3 years old. Given that he is almost 2, I’d say we have a good idea of where he is headed. For better or worse. 

One way that he resembles me is hair-wise. I already told you about the debacle of his first haircut in my blog post: “A Little Off theTop” but what you may not remember is that he has my curls. No doubt about that one.  The weird thing about is that my hair was bone-straight until I was 12. BC’s hair was straight until he turned 1.

I wonder if people would still say that he looks like me if I still had a super short buzz cut like I did just a couple ago. Even at my wedding my hair had been clipped with a #2 guard just a few days before the ceremony.  Now my hair more resembles a blend of Andy Samberg’s & that creepy reporter kid from Glee. I guess the goal is Hip with a hint of Jewfro. 

There is one group of people who do not think that my son looks like me, however.  They make up a tiny percentage of the population that has volunteered their thoughts on the matter. They’ve been adamant since the day he was born when he was still waterlogged and scrunched up like beef jerky. Those people are my wife’s family & friends. They insist that BC looks exactly like her.

I guess I should tell you that as long as she and I have been together, people have said that SS and I look similar. I guess from a distance that’s plausible: we both wear dark glasses, have medium skin tones and thick dark hair. But that’s where the comparisons end. Once when we were first dating, we were out to dinner one night at a nice restaurant in Santa Monica. Toward the end of our romantic evening, the waiter asked if we were brother and sister. Would you like to guess what kind of tip he received?

Anyway, my wife’s family insists that he looks like her. My family says he looks like me. So I guess the general population has the most unbiased opinion on the matter. And 99% of them say he looks like me. If you think about it, who is more trustworthy than the checkout woman at Ralphs or the random woman on the street walking a dog? (Side note: I said women because only women comment among people we don’t know). At the end of the day it’s not a competition anyway. And besides, my wife was the Prom Queen her senior year in high school, so it’s not like she looks like Chaz Bono (pre- or post-op). No matter who he looks like, BC is going to turn out just fine. As long as he can learn to keep the ladies at bay. As it is, he’s already a chick magnet and he’s not even 2. 

Judge for yourself. Who do you think BC looks like? 

Thanks for reading The Dude of the House! Tell your friends... 

--JJ aka The Dude of the House

Please "LIKE" my brand new Facebook page: http://on.fb.me/o5XWDA

@DudeOfTheHouse

Please check out my previous blog posts: http://dudeofthehouse.blogspot.com/

A Little Off the Top

There were two things that surprised me upon seeing my son BC for the first time after his birth.  The first was how small he was. Well, he wasn’t small per se. He actually weighed 8 pounds & 15 ounces. But we were expecting him to be much bigger based on how big he measured in utero and because I weighed a hair under 11 pounds at birth. 

(Not BC, but rather a Slimy Stunt Baby)

The bigger surprise to me was how much hair he had.  Thick dark hair. And not just patches, he had full coverage.  In retrospect it probably looked thicker than it actually was due to the styling gel-like properties of placenta. 

After a couple months, BC’s hair began to recede and thin out.  I figured it had been a fun ride, but he would soon be just like all the other bald babies out there.  Once his hair started dropping it didn’t stop until it was a mere memory.  It had only been a few months so hopefully he wasn’t too attached to it.

Naturally I was surprised during the second half of his first year of life that when BC’s body grew, so did his hair.  He’s always been near the top of the growth charts in both height and weight (and head size, but that’s a story for another day).  Similar to his birth hair, his “new” hair was unique for its waves and twists.  It was cute, so we let it keep growing. And growing.  And growing…

Shortly after his 1^st birthday, BC’s hair did something interesting. His slightly wavy hair turned into tight ringlets.  Think “Annie”, but not red.  And without the weird bald guy and mangy dog hanging around.  BC had always been a hit with the ladies, but this new hair made him a chick magnet.  I was happy to see he inherited several of my best traits. 

As his hair grew, it didn’t look as long as it was since the curls tightened it up. But some of the curls still fell into his face.  He spent a lot of time pushing it out of his eyes, until my wife convinced me that he NEEDED a haircut.  I was apprehensive but she showed me the websites for a couple of hair salons that specialize in kids and I finally acquiesced. I knew he needed the cut, but didn’t want to see him butchered.

On the following Saturday morning, we headed to one of those kid-friendly hair joints. The place had balloons out front, so how bad could it be?  I’d soon find out…

We stepped inside and saw all of these cool mini sports cars that were barber chairs. There were a slew of 

TVs on the wall to divert the little ones’ attention from the task at hand and colorful murals on all of the walls to distract the bored parents.  There was also the sound of a pediatricians’ office mixed with a haunted house.  Shrieks and wails filled the air of this brightly colored haven of hair.  

A woman with a thick accent and a Sideshow Bob-esque mop on her head greeted us at the front and led us toward one of the Cars of Doom. Or at least that’s what BC must have thought it was. It all seemed innocent enough to me, but then again I’ve been getting haircuts for decades. 

As we approached the chair we heard a kid screaming his brains out, as though the hairs had just been removed one-by-one from his scalp with rusty tweezers.  My wife said to me “Oh, that poor mother. Her kid is acting like a putz!” As the mother led her freshly-shorn kid toward the door, we recognized them as people we’d recently met at a mutual friend’s party. At that party her kids were terrors and made a huge mess all over the friend’s house, writing on the furniture, etc. I figured this was just her payback.  

So I lifted BC into the red sports car chair and said to my wife “see, piece of cake”. Famous last words. Within one one-hundredth of a second of the cape being put around his neck, before the barber-lady even had the scissors in her hand, BC was screaming like Angela from "The Office" at Burning Man. I’d never heard noises like this before. I put the camera down as my wife started to comfort our little man. Sadly, nothing helped. He was miserable, crying and nearly hysterical. The “stylist” looked at us and in her thick accent said “What iz de pro’lem?”.  Um, isn’t it obvious?  The kid isn’t happy. Let’s get this over with, um-kay? 

We tried soothing BC to the best of our ability. Nothing helped. Not even the super-sticky lollipop or the stale animal crackers the place offers as consolation to the miserable kids. If they were smart, they’d also offer earplugs and shots of Cuervo to the parents. 

After 15 minutes of this torture, it was finally over. I’m not sure how the woman knew she was finished, as there was just a curly mess in and around her hands and on the floor, but that was it.  We were released from the torture chamber. Hair samples noting the happy occasion of the First Haircut were slipped into an envelope. We were also handed a “Certifucate of Commemeration” [sic] where BC’s name and the date were filled in by the receptionist.  The certificate was most noteworthy to me because it contained at least six typos. Now I know why the place currently boasts a 2-star rating (out of 5) on Yelp.  

What I learned from this experience is that I hope my son doesn’t mind his hair growing into his eyes in the future, because I can’t imagine going through this traumatic experience again anytime soon. And I do mean traumatic for me and my wife. I’ve brought BC with me to watch me get my hair cut a couple times since then.  He sees that the crying during the actual cut is minimal and once I get my lollipop I’m good to go.  Here’s hoping he feels the same next time. 

Thanks for reading! Your comments are appreciated.  Tell your friends...

--JJ aka The Dude of the House

Please check out my previous blog posts: http://dudeofthehouse.blogspot.com/

@DudeOfTheHouse