At age 2 we’re hopefully in the back ½ of my son’s diaper years and the beginning of his vocabulary. As a result he has now become some sort of strange excrement alarm clock that grabs its crotch and says “Puupie” when he craps himself.

I will acknowledge this is not a fool-proof system. Things fall through the cracks, if you will. However, something happened this evening which I believe was a Barnum & Bailey sanctioned three-ring circus of body functions.

We’d been playing for a while, laughter, a thud, some crying, then more laughter. Guy fun that results in possible injury, (thus… crying) but is generally the kind of stuff only boys are going to think is a good idea, (thus… laughing). All was well. In fact, there wasn’t even an offending stench to warn of what lay ahead.

Suddenly, my son starts doing a mean Elvis impression. He’s wriggling one leg like he’s got palsy and says “Puupie” right before he lifts his foot and… thump. There on the rug was a little brown log. Compared to his size it was a tree. How that escaped the diaper and Elvised down his pant-leg is unknown, but my son had now shit the carpet while standing up.

I struggled for words for a second. Then promptly handed him off for cleanup while I went for towels to deal with the log. I returned to find the log was gone.

The dog had eaten the problem. I know this because she was standing over the spot and licking her chops. I balked and she looked at me like “What? He dropped it, I ate it, like always.”

Good news: there is no more shit on the rug. Bad news: the dog will want to kiss you later.

Upstairs, the blowout was so immense and its magical journey to the floor so smearing that the only choice was a bath. The water was running and my son was standing on the bathmat awaiting the proper water temperature.

Obviously, this was the perfect moment to pee. He was staring at his penis and concentrating on the task at hand like a senior citizen with a prostate problem. I even heard the faintest grunt as he drenched the bathmat and his socks. The dog was not around to solve this problem.

A lot happened in the next half hour. We ran a bath and the washer. I felt the need to change my clothes. I didn’t get anything on me, but I somehow couldn’t stand to continue in the attire that had seen this episode. The dog curled up on the couch and took a nap. I think we’re better now.

Thank God for soap and water. Too bad I can’t wash out the dog’s mouth.

In 2006 this 19-year-old Israeli boy-soldier gets abducted by the Palestinian Hamas movement. He’s held in isolation and mystery for more than five years while his parents fight tirelessly for his release. Protests, demonstrations, and mentions of his captivity happened all over the world. Finally, in October of this year he’s released. Parents rejoice. Events are held. The press swarms.

Heartwarming. Yes.

But I can’t help the feeling that the difficulties of his life may be yet to come.

He lived in captivity, which I can’t even imagine. He was literally off the map for half a decade and he’ll never get those years back. But on the other hand there was a singularity of purpose in that time. Survive. Live to be released. His parents were living in a similar world of singular focus and laser guided love for their son.

But what now? Real life will have to invade for him and his parents. He’ll need a job and they will need something new to do with any free moment. And all the while I wonder about the elephant in the room:

He wasn’t just released, he was traded. Israel got one twenty-five year old, normal and unremarkable young man by giving up more than 1,000 prisoners of all kinds.

Elsewhere in the world more than 1,000 families celebrated the return of loved ones they thought they’d never see again. New lives were started. Old lives were returned. Because of one kid.

Gilad Shalit is worth 1,027 people. He can quantify his worth in human lives. His life for more than 1,000 others. And I’m left wondering if there’s anyone in the modern time who can say anything like that? Is there anyone else alive who will have to endure that reality?

Is there anyone on the planet who is worth 1,000 lives? Would 1,000 people give up their lives so Steve Jobs could have lived longer? What about Christ? He’s worth more than 1,000 lives and he did the opposite… He gave up His life so we could all live.

Gilad didn’t give up his life, he gained life in exchange for 1,000 others. He didn’t do anything but play bargaining chip for 1,000 other people. If Gilad had died so 1,000 people could live he’d be a hero. Instead he’s just going back to try and live like a normal guy. Years of political posturing and the result is Palestine going… “Okay, for 1,000 people… we’ll give you one guy.”

Now if Gilad goes on to cure cancer, or raise up Israel to newfound glory, or disciple thousands to be better than they were before… what a story that would be. But it’s more likely that he’ll just get an unremarkable job, get married, start a family, find himself out of shape and overweight and pissed at his kids about something. Just another guy.

What if some of those 1,027 released decide to cause more damage? I have no interest in getting into a Palestine vs. Israel discussion, I’m just acknowledging reports that some of those released were in prison for murder and/or terror attacks.

Yet I never saw this question in the Press. No one seemed to ask “Wait a minute…is this kid worth 1,000 lives?”. Does the family have a counselor prepared to talk to Gilad when the weight of this comes crashing down on him… cause I bet it will.

I’m reminded of the film “Saving Private Ryan” where Matt Damon is finally rescued but the entire squad that went to get him has now been killed. Tom Hanks, the last of the squad, is dying and he looks up at the kid and says “Earn this…”.  Then we return to present day and the kid is now an average grandfather who turns to his wife and says “Tell me I’m a good man….”. Cause how do you do enough to make your life worth the life of someone else?

As a father I ponder “Is my son worth 1,000 people?”. I don’t mean emotionally, as I’m sure Gilad’s parents would have (and did) anything to get him home. I mean intellectually, realistically. In one room, 1,000 people. In the other, my son. What’s the better call?

God chose the room full of people. Gilad’s parents chose their son.

What am I worth? What are you worth? And I’m not looking for a Sunday School answer here. If you were going to be traded for 1,027 other people… hell, 27 other people… would you feel worth the cost? Could I do anything over the course of my life to be worth 1 person? Or 27? Or 1,027?

Gilad Shalit will have to live with that question, and I bet it will be far harder than his time in isolation.

Diapers are one of those constantly improving products, yet I’ve never heard of anyone who actually works in diaper development. Who are these secret refiners of the disposable shit-catcher? Do they work underground? Is there a bunker somewhere filled with diarrhea plagued toddlers and a haggard group of lab-coated scientists? Seal teams are publicity whores by comparison.

No matter who is busy improving the diaper, experience has brought me to great appreciation for their craft. Anything that can hold my son’s waste at bay and be thrown away like Kleenex is probably made with some kind of witchcraft.

Now there seems to be a growing revival of the reusable diaper, and I simply can’t make that compute. I’m not reusing toilet paper. And considering some of the things I’ve seen in a diaper, keeping it around for any reason is madness. I realize children and parents survive without disposables, but find some indigenous parent with a crap covered child and I’m certain they’d horde a box of pampers like it was the holy grail.

Even my son is aware of the wonder of his diaper. I’m not claiming he fully understands the concept, but he knows when things aren’t right in diaper-dom. Recently he was sitting happily on the floor watching Elmo-Einstein-Train, or something, and decided it was time to get up and come see what all the big people were doing. I happened to see him take two steps, pause and reach down between his legs to adjust his diaper. What followed was a few steps of the best John Wayne impersonation I have ever seen. The mini-duke swaggering across our kitchen.

I headed over to him and quickly saw the problem. He was leaving a trail of gooey heinous breadcrumbs from an over-worked disposable crap-catcher. He didn’t know what was happening, but he could feel that something was very wrong. My wife cleaned up the boy. I cleaned up the trail.

And I marveled anew that the human body can make things which defy categories. I thought only puke was able to occupy that bizarre space between solid and liquid, slick and sticky. I was wrong. This substance also possessed these impossible to classify traits. When faced with such a problem, any thoughts for the environment or concerns about consumption go straight out the window while you run for the cost-co tub of paper towels.

Of course I could have used a washable rag. But honestly, if we sat down to make a list of things which most belong in a landfill I’m certain most of us would say “things with shit on them.” And so, thanks to the diaper-design ninjas of the world we are more likely to see a John Wayne impersonation than a stain on the rug.

Thank you, strange hidden Pamper warriors. This is some serious shit.

These days I can be flying down the freeway, notice one out of the corner of my eye, and slice across three lanes of traffic to get our little man some slide time. He loves these places, but the adult in me only sees the vile plastic, wobble construction, and mats which were probably washed when Reagan was in office. Yet these places have revealed something much more interesting and unknown; playgrounds of all kinds have their own social order. Adults beware.

I first noticed this phenomenon when visiting an great indoor kid-gym in Park City. Since most places are 2 & up, but our little guy is pretty fearless, I have spent a fair amount of time following him down the twisting tunnels. Other kids do not like this. I have entered their sacred domain and I am not wanted. In one especially tight space, as Bodie navigated a stair half his size, a girl of about six came flying up behind us.

“Excuse me.” She said. “Excuse me” She barked. “Excuse me” she almost yelled as I pulled Bodie aside and she darted past.

Technically she was being very polite, but based on tone and body language she actually said “Get out of my way.” Then “You’re not supposed be in here”. And finally “Move or I’m going right over the top of him.” I may have been the closest adult, but she was my superior.

It’s not all bad, of course. Only a cursory glance at any kid-world will reveal the girl with the mommy complex – helping random toddlers whether they like it or not. Once I nearly thought one of them was going to carry our little man away. He paused at a stair and she took it upon herself to hoist him up and then try for the next one. Never mind that I was telling her we were on our way down at the time. It was like I was on mute.

Apparently playgrounds are also not a place for contemplation. When faced with a new piece of equipment or ride it is never acceptable to size up the activity and then decipher your next move. The correct response is to hurl oneself at the equipment and if it should give you a gaping headwound then cry hysterically until someone else fixes the problem. I learned this because my son is an observer.

At the moment, our little guy views slides with fascination. He’s a big fan of fast motion and understands what slides do, but there are steps to follow: First, approach the slide. Second, with feet square and one hand for support, slowly lower yourself to a seated position. Third, move both feet in front of you – which generally takes a struggle because you sat on at least one of them in step two. Four, inch yourself forward on the plastic until you begin to slide. Five, enjoy. However, the impatient kid behind him has a far simpler routine: First, run like you’re about to ignite. Second, slide when the world falls out from under your feet. Contemplation only pissed this kid off. He sat behind Bodie, put his feet in the middle of his back, and pushed for all he was worth. Bodie looked at me and then him with a toddler equivalent of “Dude, what the hell?”. And when I grabbed my little guy and pulled him aside this kid hurled himself headfirst through the tiny gap.

So the next time you see an eyesore of bright plastic tangled into slides and tunnels, know that it isn’t a haven for little people but an incubator for the future’s social issues. And look close enough and you may see what’s in store for the kids involved.

NASA will probably need astronauts who are up for a good ride to Mars but would like an extensive checklist first. Kids like my son will be a great match for that.

And somewhere a destruction derby will need someone to grow out a mullet and commit vehicular massacre for a case of bud and a lot of “Whoo-hooo…”. I’ve met the perfect kid for that as well.

As a seventeen year old senior, I remember thinking that I’d be thirty-seven at my twenty year reunion, and that was really old. There were two large errors in that assumption. First off, thirty-seven is far from old. And secondly, there’s no twenty-year high-school reunion on the horizon. Which brings me nicely to my point.

My High School experience was a lie. The perspectives it gave me on the world. The things it taught me. The people I spent time with. Ultimately, they were all proven irrelevant for my adult life. I realize that High School is a rite of passage and a necessary evil, but I experienced it at a fever pitch of breathless importance and it was wasted anxiety and breath.

I went to a small private school, and even in this secluded world our class was singled out as special and uniquely important. Teachers, Parents, and eventually other students talked about how close we all were. We were the class with no cliques. Real friendship and love for each other. I remember looking around at the time and thinking “Really? Cause I can tell you who the popular kids are and they aren’t looking for new members.” Now I look back and see how it was completely untrue. Other classes have stayed in touch. Had reunions. Kept up to date. We’ve never had so much as a dinner in twenty years. By the time I left college even the people I was good friends with in my HS class had dropped completely off my radar.

Until Facebook, of course, which ultimately closed the importance of High School with the smack of a pine-coffin lid. Because the only reason I can think of to reunite with people you haven’t seen since High School graduation is to see who got bald, who got fat, who succeeded and who failed. Morbid? Sure. But I’m yet to meet a single person who hasn’t obsessed over their weight, their outfit, or their story for an upcoming walk down the memory lane of High School. And wasting so much effort to impress those people is just High School all over again. Facebook nicely removes the hassle and expense of traveling to the event and the awkwardness of standing around trying to find something to say to someone you haven’t seen in two decades. Yet you can still tell the folks who bettered themselves, and those who are looking back on High School as the best time of their lives.

Seeing High School as a season, and not a milestone, is the main thing I’m pondering in all this. I know people who look back on it fondly. I know folks who hated it and look back with disdain. Obviously, I’m on the board of directors for the second group. But either way it’s four years which are given huge importance by our culture and then fueled to greater heights by the hormone addled, selfish teenagers who fill the hallways. I spent a year in Norway as part of the popular athlete crowd. I spent three years in Houston as part of the lower-society weird folk. And neither one of them offered any satisfaction or clear picture of the person I would become.

My son is too young for school, and still young enough to not really have friends or play-dates to give him social pressures. And if I can only offer him one thing as he marches into and through his school years, I hope I can help him find perspective. He won’t listen most of the time, I realize, but if I can just get through now and then maybe he’ll realize that who you are in school doesn’t dictate who you can become.

My accomplishments, struggles, and daily life are nothing like I imagined or believed they would be when I was seventeen. I’ve seen and done things which would probably seem impressive to that acne-plagued version of myself, but they would also sound like the life of someone else. High School was a bubble with poor ventilation. Real life and fresh air came later.

Am I a good man? Am I a success? These are questions other people will have to say. I’m happy. I’m blessed. I’m very different than High School suggested, and far better. Maybe everyone feels that way, but I suspect they don’t.

Life isn’t perfect, of course. There are things I’d change. Struggles I face that would have made my high school head explode. But I’ve lived more than twice as long as that kid in High School, and it’s the perspective that makes all the difference. I hope and strive to revel in the highs of my daily life. They are there, even when I ignore them to obsess over something that seems important but is actually irrelevant.

Like High School.

We’re thrilled that our son is so fascinated by books, and he often grabs them and sits, happily flipping through each page and speaking in gibberish. He understands the concept, he just has no vocabulary or actual retention. Supposedly this is a good sign at this age… as opposed to doing it later in life when it involves help from people in lab coats.

All of this mock-reading has exposed me to all kinds of children’s books. And as a writer I’ve been struck by the fact that writing for children is mostly inane and completely lacking in an actual writing talent. Suddenly I understand why random celebrities become moms and then make the talk show circuit as a “new children’s author”. It’s like getting your driver’s license and then going around calling yourself a race driver… operating at the lowest level doesn’t make you an expert.

Don’t believe me? Let’s break down the basic tenants of literature available for the under 3 reader. Pages as thick as a laptop. Bright colors. A story which can be broken into simple sentences and mentions the following: Animals. Colors. Body parts. Basic social concepts. Textures. Shapes. And possibly family. And the real award winning kid-lit does something amazing… it combines things from the list!

Plus, if laid out in simple sentences, the average book could go out as a Tweet. 300 words is the equivalent of War and Peace among children’s books.

Some of you might be saying “I think it’s a lot harder than it looks…”. But I just can’t shake the fact that some actresses who can’t put a thought together without a script in front of them start breeding and decide “I’m the Hemmingway for toddlers.”. These are the same folks who can’t tell you how to get from Hollywood to Disneyland without a GPS.

So, I’m thinking of becoming a children’s author, and I present to you my first work, “Something on your finger”. But without the proper pictograms and industrial cardboard pages you’ll be able to read it quite rapidly.

Something on your finger, Yellow, Green, & Sticky

Touch it. Squeeze it. But it’s awfully Icky.

Don’t wipe on your sister, that’s not where it goes.

Wipe it in a Kleenex, that’s where you put stuff from you nose.

See? Body parts, colors, textures, family, social lessons, and even brand awareness. I forgot shapes, I suppose, but I’ll include that in the sequel “Something in your Closet” – It’s a toddler-horror and it’s gonna be the Twilight series for the under 2 reader.

Watch for me on the talk show circuit.

So since my son has been born he’s flown many, many times. Frankly, I’ve lost count, and I applaud my wife for surviving the recurring madness. However, I have only taken one flight with the two of them and it established airports and airplanes as places where new and exciting things can happen with your child.

When we all flew a couple of months ago my son wasn’t walking yet. He’d stand up, sway like a drunken sailor, and fall to the floor with a spine-shattering violence. Then crawl away at a speed which defied logic. So, as we waited to board, our little man was crawling around a bit. He found an empty bit of carpet and stood up. And people noticed.

Then he tried to take a step, with much swaying and falling over. But he kept trying. Standing. Falling. Stepping. Swaying. And before long it only took a cursory glance around the terminal to see a good number of people watching our little guy try and walk.

And walk he did. Right there in the Southwest Boarding Area of the Salt Lake City Airport. He stood up and defined the term toddler as he tromped around in circles. I actually heard “ohs” and quiet applause when he put it all together.

I was awash in thoughts and feelings about this moment. Of course, I was damn proud of the little guy. And I enjoyed the irony of sharing this very personal family moment with a horde of other people.

But I kept thinking that he’d been able to stand for weeks. He’d toyed with the idea of walking and never really dedicated himself to making it happen. He waited. Then, when he had a captive audience… showtime!

Which means he’s like his Mom.

By the time we got to his latest plane-ride, walking had become a well refined part of his life. The downside is that sitting still is now deemed completely unacceptable and he wants to walk everywhere he can… right now. My wife took on the task of flying with him anyway, and I watched her pack things to try and keep him occupied instead of climbing the seat in front of him.

A portable DVD player has made him an easy-going car traveler, so she packed the player and a set of noise-cancelling headphones for the plane. I scoffed at this, because even though he likes to watch “the glowy box” in any form, he won’t leave anything on his head for more than 30 seconds. And he has a bad habit of dropping or throwing anything which begins to bore him.

When they landed I got this picture from my wife:

He sat for more than an hour and watched his DVDs. Meaning my wife had one of her least stressful plane rides with the little guy. And again I was awash in thoughts on this moment.

Yes, I was proud of him again. And the picture made me laugh. Then there was the thought that we’ve done him a great favor by helping him engage with screens at such a young age. The whole world is screens anyway. Or… maybe we’ve scarred him for life… Anyway, no matter what, the kid was stuck in a boring situation and was perfectly content to kick back and watch a movie.

Which means he’s like his Dad.

This is your in-flight entertainment. But fasten your seat-belts. It’s gonna get bumpy.

It’s difficult for me to remember the last time I saw something completely new. I mean something so decidedly different that it left me without a similar experience to draw upon and compare. Yet everything in our lives was once as mind-freezing as an alien encounter. This is the constant experience of a toddler.

The strange side-effect of witnessing this, is the way it cuts loose the bonds of cynicism and allows an adult the chance to live on two planes at once. In one universe you know all about the crazy new discovery made by your little person, but in the other universe you’re able to look at it and marvel along with them without excuse.

We adults have to have an excuse. We need a reason to get excited. We can’t stop in the Starbucks line and poke the saran-wrapped sandwiches just to watch the dressing bulge. People would stare. Someone would sigh or yell at us to get moving, and after enough time people with either badges or white coats would come and take us away. Yet stand in the same line with a toddler and the whole world lets you poke and prod and marvel at the squishy goodness of it all.

I’ve been having this experience with animals. At this point in life I’ve seen a good example of just about every creature, so I find them fun to watch, but never shocking. Meanwhile my son has gained an obsession with elephants. We watch countless elephants go by on video and in books and he’ll raise one arm and make a weak and warped elephant noise over and over. (The truth is it looks like he’s doing a child’s version of the Hitler salute, but we know what he means and just try to keep our little Aryan masterpiece from doing this in public.) He can’t say elephant, but it fascinates him beyond all other creatures. To my son, Elephants are like Justin Bieber with better hair.

What I’m most enjoying about this elephant-a-palooza is the chance to notice the following:

Elephants are freaky and fascinating. I mean, really… legs like trees but they can’t run well. Ears like satellite dishes but they aren’t known for their hearing. (By the way, why do we associate elephants with great memories? They seem to get stuck in the same mudhole every year without remembering it happened before). And of course, the strange fact that an elephant’s most dexterous limb… isn’t a limb at all. Try grabbing your next meal with your nose.

And don’t even get me started on giraffes. Longest necks in the world, but no voicebox. What’s going on there?

I guess it just proves that even God gets bored. After making every possible permutation of quadrupeds, riffing on the basic ideas of cat, dog, and horse until he was pulling out his beard…

“Hey Gabriel… come look at this one. It’s nose is it’s arm… “
“That’s awesomely strange and wonderful, your Almighty-ness.”
“Yes. I know.”

And He went off to make a platypus and follow up with an ostrich.

So now here I am like a strange guide into an alien safari. It’s all new stuff, and it’s all cool enough to get stared at, touched, turned over, and maybe even chewed on. And really, how much can you say you know about something if you’ve never put a handful of it in your mouth? Or at the very least, paused and marveled.

Poor kid got cynical me as a father. Which leaves me scrambling to find the wonder in everything… and pass it on.

The Octopus, for example. Eight legs and no bones. Did God skip a step? Was there a bet in Heaven? Was this the result of a creation themed game of ad-libs? Forget area 51… aliens are already here.

And my son hasn’t even seen one yet.

However, I’m talking about lessons – observations, really – I would not have come to without our little guy around. So, here are my top five for year one:

1 – Cattle Roping was invented by parents

I grew up in Texas, so by default I’m supposed to know how to rope, ride, and chase critters. Or so they tell me. But I have to admit I’ve always wondered why there’s so many theatrics when it comes to roping a calf. It’s a small, dumb animal. The roping horse is like Steven Hawking by comparison. So, for the even more intelligent human to come sailing off the already superior horse, tackle a calf, and tie its legs together kinda feels like you’re picking on the little guy.

Bear roping. Now that’s a fair sport.

But now I’ve realized that some cowboy with a little one at home got an unruly calf one day and figured… “Wait, I know how to handle this”. Thus, calf roping was born.

Don’t believe me? Try putting a diaper on an infant who can crawl. They no longer want to lay on their back. To them, everything is more interesting than lying there while you, quite literally, deal with their shit. So I’ve held both wrists and ankles in one hand while I perform the world’s fastest and least graceful diaper change with the other.

I’ve also said, screw it, and diapered the little minion while he’s crawling away. Which was about the time I realized the purpose of cattle roping. In fact, I’d probably be damn good at it.

2 – Hardcovers are awesome

Somewhere in this world of valuable space, scarce finances, and ebooks I decided that hard covers are a complete waste. I realize that is supposed to be sacrilege for a writer, but I see no purpose in a brick of reading material when it’s easier in softback, ebook, or audio file.

But Hardcovers are the greatest thing to happen to infants. You become thankful that your DVD collection is in those bulky, unnecessarily-large cases. “Sure, son, beat yourself in the head with Citizen Kane. Hurts, don’t it!”.

And the books children read are as thick as Science textbooks. But, they’re only six pages long. Each page is made of an individual two-by-four with rounded edges. Why? So that papercuts are impossible, and the pages won’t fall prey to the fate of normal paper which is…

Ripping. This is the natural pastime of unreading toddlers everywhere. My son loves flip books – they have handy flaps on each page which make tearing especially easy. And Dad’s car magazines exist for the sole purpose of creating confetti balls.

Which leads me to a new measure of childhood maturity, it’s not handing them the car keys, but actually reading a magazine.

3 – You will make noises

Ever looked at a parent and wondered how they became insane enough to repeat an annoying noise over and over while they sit at a restaurant? All it takes is one child discovering their voice or timing out and you’ll turn into a master of stupid sounds from an annoying made up language.

These little ones discover noises they can make and use it like a new toy until something else gets their attention. That leaves only a frazzled parent between you and a restaurant filled with an infant’s screaming. Suddenly, the parent turns into a makeup-less clown on a no-sleep bender. Faces. Chirps. Tongue out shenanigans. Partial words said over and over associated with jerky rocking motions into the child’s face. The only other place this happens is in the nice quiet hospitals with the white coats and straight jackets.

“Honey, is that man insane?… Oh, no wait… he has an infant.”

And this ewok noise I’m making is keeping him quiet. So go back to your dinner.

4 – Born to Dance

What makes us human and above lower forms of life? Complex thought? Tool building? Or maybe our construction of huge systems and cities?

I’ve come up with one. Rhythm. Not just the sense and awareness of the beat, but the uncontrollable urge to shake your ass. A part of me always thought you learned to really hear and appreciate music. But my son has been bobbing in time with sound since he could sit up. Give him a tune and he’ll shake and flail with abandon, a trait we all lose at some point when we get self-conscious. But for now, he’s a sucker for a good beat, and he was born that way. I lost it. I hope he never does.

5 – The Matrix exists.

No, I don’t mean we’re all living in a huge constructed program being used for batteries. I’m talking specifically about the “download” in the Matrix where a person doesn’t know how to fight one minute and then a moment later has all the knowledge to take down an army of Bruce Lees.

I’ve watched my son learn in this way. I don’t know where the huge brain needle is when this happens, but one minute he can’t do something and the next it just… clicks.

Clapping was this way. No idea. Can’t get it. No awareness. Then, literally, he woke up one morning going “Hey guys, look what I can do… applause.” I didn’t upload the program. And my wife wants to kill every nurse that approaches him with a needle, so I don’t think she did it either.

The most impressive one has been climbing the stairs, cause unlike clapping you can get injured if you do it wrong. The first few attempts were more like lucky falling and fumbling, finding himself atop a stair, maybe two, before getting bored of the whole enterprise. Then a few months ago, my wife looked around to discover our little guy had vanished. Where was he? Completely upstairs and still on the move.**

But going down the stairs eluded our little guy for quite some time. We tried to help. We moved him through the motion. We sat by him and let him try different things. However, as you may have noticed, there are a lot of limbs and coordination involved when you’re crawling down something. Then, a few days ago as I watched… he simply did it… no explanation or trial runs, he just coordinated all his limbs and climbed down the stairs.

So I began to wonder where this chair is he gets strapped into for a download. There’s a few things I would like to learn this way and save all the pesky practice and failure. After much thought, I think the key is naps.

**(As a side note, she told me this story with fear for his safety and concern that her moment of looking away was proof of terrible mothering – and my gut reaction was… “Awesome… good for him”. – which encapsulated the difference between men and women. I suppose it also labels me as one of those “hard knock” parents – “Yeah, let him stick his finger in the socket, he’ll only do that once!”. Thankfully he does have his mother.)

I have no doubt there will be many more revelations of the world through my son’s discoveries. But for now the little guy needs to be roped, and then he’s going to chew on a hardcover book. Eventually, he’ll go down for a nap while we make a series of strange noises, at which point I intend to sleep as well because I’m hoping to wake up speaking French.

“Oh, that’s such a great age….”

This declaration brings me to one of two possibilities; the person speaking either has no recollection of a child this age, or they are being factious.

Imagine for a moment you have a long-term houseguest. They don’t speak a word of English, so your communication consists of guesswork based on their emotional responses. Laughing? They like what’s happening. Shrieking? Try something different. This may seem black and white on first glance, but if an activity has many variables then you’re left to guess which one is the offending party with only these on-off / happy-sad responses to lead you. This is the vocabulary of a one-year old.

Many well meaning people attempt to mask the fact that there is no telling what’s wrong with your screaming child by informing you that they are either a) tired, or b) hungry. Except when you look at the life of these one-year-olds you’ll find that 14 hours of the day is spent sleeping and two or so is spent eating. For you math prodigies out there, that leaves eight hours when the only think they definitely don’t need is a nap or something to eat!

But it’s a great age.

Honestly, I wonder how the human race has survived this long. My dog was born knowing how to walk, eat and even designate a place to crap all by herself. Yet, little humans are born only knowing how to wail and sleep. Even the laughing comes later. And while animals understand grooming without reading fashion magazines or looking in a mirror, my son lets snot roll down his face in pencil thick lines and then freaks out when anyone attempts to wipe them clean.

I am no better. I have an early memory of my mom saying to me “Don’t you feel the snot when it rolls out of your nose?” Apparently I didn’t, because this happened more than once. Obviously I was older than one at the time, since she knew I understood and was expecting an answer.

You wanna know a great age? Twenty-five. Or how about Thirty! We can walk, talk, eat, crap and drive all by ourselves. Theoretically we can carry on intelligent conversations, deal in complex problem solving, and maybe even keep the snot off our faces.

I realize people think fondly of the infant phase because of little shoes, little hugs, and little laughter. But those in no way counter-act little productivity, little quiet, and little sleep.

My wife recently heard the first two years of a kid’s life described as the “Dead Zone”. That’s the first real description I’ve heard, as it encapsulates the walking-dead, what-day-is-it, cloud of early parenting. Of course… this will be followed by the terrible twos, which obviously won’t get grouped into the “great age” camp any time soon.

In fact, the mid-thirties is a great age… except my wife and I have jumped right past it into some time a decade from now. We had seemed frozen in time for much of our marriage, only looking fractionally older than the day we married. Yet, parenthood has brought the time machine along with it and overshot us past our real age to something needing black arm bands and over-the-hill joke balloons.

I’d like to think things will settle out at some point, but by then our little guy will probably be packing for college. At least he’ll be able to tell us what’s going on in his head by then, and hopefully he’ll keep the snot off his face.

For now, though… we’re in the dead zone. And when the next person tells me it’s a great age I may sit down suddenly, cry inexplicably, and blow snot bubbles. Meanwhile, my dog just borrowed the car keys.