andimthedad
And I’m The Dad
Scripts and scraps from my real-life parenting sitcom.
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UN VILLAGE
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Red Flag Detector
Beth, age 15, had to program a small digital device in school — an Adafruit Circuit Playground Express, I think.
“I finished the project today,” she said after she got home from school. “Everyone in class had to give their projects to other students to test them.”
“What did you make?” I asked.
“I made a red flag detector. There are a series of multiple-choice questions to answer, and it adds up your score to let me know how many red flags or green flags are in your personality.”
I looked at the picture on her phone. “Are you wearing this on your wrist?”
“That’s what I wanted originally, but then I felt it was too big with the green/red background envelope, so I made it a large pendant instead.”
“What were the questions?” asked Mom.
“They were folded up on a piece of paper slipped into the envelope behind the circuit board.” She showed us the list:
-----
1. Do you drink at least 64 oz. (8 cups) of water each day?
Yes (green)
No (red)
2. Did you enjoy playing with LEGOs as a child?
Yes (green)
No (red)
3. How do you prefer broccoli?
Roasted (green)
Boiled (red)
Not at all (red)
4. Is $100 too much for a hoodie?
Yes (green)
No (red)
5. Do you shower on a daily basis?
Yes (green)
No (red)
6. Do you floss your teeth every day?
Yes (green)
No (red)
7. How was the Barbie movie with Margot Robbie? Or, if you didn’t see it, then what about Legally Blonde or the cartoon version of Mulan?
Good (green)
Bad (red)
Didn’t see any of them (red)
8. Is any given movie adaptation better than the book?
Yes (red)
No (green)
9. Do you enjoy watching people suffer?
Yes (green)
No (red)
10. Have you committed larceny recently?
Yes (red)
No (green)
Don’t know what it is (red)
11. Do you like dogs?
Yes (green)
Yes, just not Chihuahuas (green)
No (red)
12. Can you cook for yourself? (toasters and microwaves don’t count)
Yes (green)
No (red)
13. Are neon colors better than pastels?
Yes (red)
No (green)
14. Do you spend at least ten minutes outdoors every day?
Yes (green)
No (red)
15. Did you make your bed this morning?
Yes (green)
No (red)
-----
“That’s pretty funny,” I said, “though it’s rather subjective to you.”
“Yes,” said Mom, “and I think you need to weight these scores. Not liking broccoli is one thing, but ‘watching people suffer’ is a whole different level of red flag.”
“Yeah, that’s a few thousand red flags compared to broccoli or neon colors, or even larceny,” I said. “So how did the testing go with other students?”
Beth sighed. “The first group of testers were all boys. They decided to change some of the red flag answers to green flags. Like, ‘Do you shower on a daily basis?’ they decided ‘yes’ was a red flag. Or ‘Can you cook for yourself?’ they decided ‘yes’ was a red flag. So they changed how they answered the questions just to mess up the results. And they didn’t know what larceny was, so they decided that was not a valid question.”
“That’s a lesson in itself,” I said. “If you’re looking to date, other people are going to have very different standards than you.”
Mom rolled her eyes. “And boys are going to try to change the answers on you — and they’ll probably argue with you about why they think you’re wrong.”
Beth shrugged. “They didn’t argue,” she said. “They didn’t really say anything. I think they don’t know how to talk to girls who are already thinking about red flags.”
#red flags#teenagers#green flags#test#relationships#boys#girls#dating#feminist#larceny#water#lego#showering#broccoli#kids#moms#dads#parents#parenting#parenthood#adolescence#adolesncent#high school#programming#coding
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Case by Case
[Scene: Beth, age 15, and I are talking about driving...]
Me: "It's good to be cautious about everyone else on the road. You never know what kind of driver they are."
Beth: "So, I should assume they're drunk, or really tired, or can't see straight, or are stupid?"
Me: "Yeah, that about covers it."
Beth: "I assume that about everybody else all the time anyway."
Me: "Ouch. You're not including me in 'everybody else', right?"
Beth: "Well, you're on a case-by-case basis."
#driving#stupid#drunk#tired#drive#case by case#parenting#parenthood#dads#fathers#fathering#fatherhood#kids#teens#daughters
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Beth (age 15) dug out my original 1980s blue spaceman from our bin of LEGOs and made it into a ring. Some girls like diamonds, but a blue spaceman ring sends a different message.
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Nuke a Vegetable
[Scene: we are discussing options for a quick dinner...]
Mom: "...and then we could nuke a frozen vegetable."
Beth: [age 15] "Nuke?"
Mom: "Microwave. It's a throwback term from the 80s."
Me: "Have you never heard me say that?"
Beth: "Maybe, but I thought it was just another one of your old people things."
Me: "Hey now."
Mom: "When microwaves first came out, people acted like they used nuclear power to heat food. I remember when we got our first Radar Range. It was amazing. It didn't have a rotating glass dish in it, though. It just sat there. It had two dials, one for minutes and one for seconds. You could put a slice of frozen pizza in it, and when it was ready, one end was baked to the consistency of leather, the other end was still almost frozen, but the middle was just right."
Me: "We had a Radar Range too, which is kind of a weird name because it's not radar. And sometimes microwave instructions on food would tell you to rotate the food every few minutes."
Beth: "I saw that once! I had no idea why it said that, so I actually stopped the microwave and rotated it."
Me: "You could buy a wind-up rotating platter for it. Purely mechanical. You had to spin it to wind it up."
Mom: "We never had one of those. Too fancy for us."
Me: "But it was all still magical back in the day. Probably why we associated it with atomic power."
Mom: "Hence 'nuking' your food."
Me: "New peace slogan: nuke food, not people."
Beth: "Nobody says they nuke their food anymore."
Mom: "But I just did."
Me: "There we go: Gen X getting ignored again."
#nuke#microwave#nuclear#food#heating#cooking#dinner#generations#gen x#slang#terms#throwback#parents#kids#dads#moms#fathers#mothers#parenting#80s#eighties#80s nostalgia
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This year for Valentine's Day, Beth's anatomically-correct heart cookies included this styling of raspberry glaze and red sprinkles, which she titled, "Microplastics Embedded In Your Arteries."
I think it beats last year's bloody cookies.
#cookies#valentine's day#holiday#heart#anatomical heart#anatomically correct#sprinkles#glaze#arteries#eat#cookie#kids#dads#baking#teenagers
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Beth: [age 15] "I think I offended my English teacher."
Me: "How did you manage that?"
Beth: "You know how we're reading Beowulf in class?"
Me: "Yes...?"
Beth: "It turns out my English teacher really likes Beowulf. He might have even written his graduate thesis on something about it."
Me: "And...?"
Beth: "So he asked me today what I thought of it so far, and I said that honestly I found it really boring. The writing is difficult to read, and things like characters and plot are kind of lacking."
Me: "Did he take that personally?"
Beth: "Kind of. He started arguing with me, and then this other boy did too, and they both kept trying to explain that it's really old literature so it doesn't have a lot of plot twists and things like that. And then I said, 'I've read the Bible. It's got more plot twists than Beowulf!' — and the teacher looked offended, genuinely."
Me: "Well... you're not wrong. The Bible has more plot twists than Beowulf, and it's a lot older too."
Beth: "I don't know why we have to read Beowulf anyway. It feels like we have to read it just because a lot of old white guys have said for centuries that it's great literature."
Me: "You're probably not wrong there, either."
Beth: "But I don't want to offend my English teacher. He's a good teacher. I just don't like Beowulf."
Me: "If you're really concerned, you could apologize."
Beth: "Plot twist: I'm not that concerned."
#beowulf#literature#english#class#bible#plot#plot twist#english class#school#education#kids#dads#parenting#parenthood#books#stories#great writing#high school
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Clatching
Beth: "I think this outfit is clatching today."
Mom: "Clatching?"
Beth: "It's a mix between clashing and matching. Like, it doesn't match, but it clashes with just the right vibe."
Me: "So it clashes... nicely?"
Beth: "Exactly."
Me: "A whole lot of good design is about contrasting different things, but in such a way that they still look good."
Mom: "Another word for that is juxtaposition."'
Beth: "I'm going to stick with clatching for now. It's got the vibe I'm going for."
#clatching#juxtaposition#design#matching#clashing#vibe#clothing#style#fashion#kids#dress#teens#parents#moms#dads#parenting
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Fresh Salad
Me: "Thanks for making the salad. It's really good."
Beth: [age 15]: "Well, I did have to go out and shoot the lettuce myself."
Me: "A hunter and a gatherer too. Nice."
Beth: "Freshly killed salad is always the best."
Me: "You're very brave. I hope it wasn't too aggressive."
Beth: "It was, actually. I almost didn't make it out of the nature alive. This one tried to bite me. It took several shots to bring it down."
Me: "They travel in herds, right?"
Beth: "They do, but they will sacrifice each other to save themselves."
Me: "This conversation is a little creepy."
Beth: "Do you not want to eat the salad anymore?"
Me: "Nah, it's even more delicious now."
Beth: "Now that's creepy."
#salad#nature#hunting#gathering#garden#fresh#creepy#food#dinner#kids#dads#parenting#parenthood#fathers#fatherhing#fatherhood#lettuce
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All Theology
Luke: [age 18] "One of my classes got into a discussion about the sacraments."
Beth: [age 15] "The sacraments?"
Luke: "Yeah, like communion, or baptism."
Mom: "Or marriage."
Luke: "Oh, I guess that's a big one."
Mom: [to Beth] "A sacrament is a specific action or event that the church says has special spiritual value. Like taking communion to symbolize the sacrifice of Jesus. But different churches have different sacraments or think about them in different ways. The Catholics have a lot more sacraments than others."
Beth: "OK. I know what those things are, I just didn't remember the word 'sacraments'."
Me: "I still don't understand how Catholics think communion bread turns into the flesh of Jesus when you swallow it."
Beth: "That's called something... trans something...."
Me: "Transubstantiation."
Beth: "I remember hearing about transubstantiation around the same time I first heard about genetic engineering. Somehow I got the picture in my head that God just manufactured more of Jesus."
Luke: "That's one thing we talked about: If you added up all the flesh of Jesus that all the Catholics have eaten, how many bodies of Jesus is that?"
Me: "Seems like a lot. According to Beth's theory, there are vats of genetically-grown Jesus somewhere. A big Jesus factory."
Mom: "Years ago I had a conversation with a Catholic friend who believed in transubstantiation. They said it was different from my belief that the bread just symbolic, that it actually turns into the body of Jesus."
Me: "Exactly at what point in the esophagus does it transform?"
Mom: "Well, right. I asked when it changed, and they said it didn't. I said, so it's still bread when you digest it? No, they said, it's the body of Jesus. But it's still bread? Well, yes, physically it resembles bread but spiritually it's the body of Jesus. So how is that different from me believing it's symbolic? It just is, they said."
Me: "So it's not literally flesh at any point?"
Luke: "If it were, could vegetarian Catholics take communion?"
Me: "It just feels like playing with words."
Luke: "All theology feels like playing with words."
#theology#religion#christian#jesus#sacrament#blessed sacrament#communion#body and blood#jesus christ#catholic#symbolism#kids#moms#dads#parenting#transubstantiation#christianity#faith
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Chomp chomp chomp.
I might not be making lunch notes much anymore, but I ran out of gift tags for my young nieces and nephews, so I broke out the old Exacto knife and cut up some blank index cards into dino tags.
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Hold Together
[Scene: Mom is making fishcakes from leftover fish...]
Mom: "Hmmm. These need something else to hold them together."
Beth: [age 15] "Have they tried therapy?"
Mom: ...
Beth: "Anti-depressants?"
Mom: "I was thinking eggs and a little flour."
Beth: "I guess that works too."
#fishcakes#hold together#salmon#therapy#antidepresants#mom#daughter#kids#mothers#cooking#eggs#flour#motherhood#parenting
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Red Flag Socks
Beth: [age 15, at breakfast] "Last night I achieved a small personal goal: I managed to fall asleep without wearing socks."
Me: "Why was that a personal goal?"
Beth: "All my friends said if someone had to fall asleep wearing socks, that was a red flag about their personality, so I've been working on it."
Me: "I don't think that's a thing. I mean, I usually fall asleep wearing socks."
Beth: "You do? Now I know for sure it's a personality red flag."
Me: "HEY NOW."
Beth: [sipping coffee] "If the sock fits...."
#red flags#socks#sleep#fall asleep#personality#kids#dads#teenagers#bed#parenting#parenthood#fathers#fatherhood
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Gift List
[Scene: our family shares a few notes across a notetaking app on our phones, including a grocery shopping list and a gift idea list for whenever we think of things we (or others) might want for Christmas or birthdays. Beth, age 15, has opened up the gift list on her phone...]
Beth: "What is going on with this list?"
Me: "What?"
Beth: "The first three items on the family gift list are: suitcases, knives, and shovels. That's kinda suspicious."
Me: "Soooo... there's some family business I need to tell you about, kids."
Mom: "Not funny."
Me: "Those are not listed under my section, right?"
Beth: "No, they're not under anybody's name. Those items are for the whole family."
Mom: "It is a rather suspicious combination of items."
Luke: [age 19] "We just need to add guns and that'll be a party."
Me: "Hmmm...." [takes out phone, opens list app]
Beth: "What are you doing?"
Me: "I added something."
Beth: [looks at her phone] "You added cannolis?!"
Me: "Leave the guns, take the cannolis."
Beth: "What?!"
Mom: [rolling her eyes] "It's from The Godfather."
Me: "OK, but seriously, why are these items on there? It sounds like we're planning a hit."
Luke: "I think I added the suitcases back when we were talking about travel and how our suitcases are older than me. And then Dad wanted new kitchen knives but I forgot to put those in his specific section."
Mom: "OK, but what about the shovels?"
Everyone: ...
Me: "Nobody remembers adding shovels to the gift list?"
Beth: "It's not even just 'shovels' — it says 'good shovels'."
Luke: "Do any of you want good shovels as a gift?"
Mom: "I don't think so."
Beth: "This is still suspicious."
Me: "I'm leaving the cannolis, though. Those always make a good gift."
#gift ideas#shovels#guns#cannoli#suitcase#knives#gifts#giving#suspicious#family#kids#dads#moms#parents#parenting#parenthood#mafia#the godfather
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It's been a while since I posted a lunch note, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten my lunch note Tumblr.
Now that the kids are in high school and college, I almost never pack a lunch anymore, which is why this Tumblr is dormant nowadays.
But today Beth, age 15, wanted to take some of our Thai leftovers for lunch, so it was time to break out the lunch note vibe and sketch one to toss in her lunch bag.
Yes, I know, I misspelled axolotl. I was in a hurry, and she didn't notice until I pointed it out. Focus on the meaning, folks, not the spelling.
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“If tomatoes and avocados are technically fruits, then is guacamole really just a fruit salad? A savory fruit salad?!”
— Beth, age 15, while making guacamole
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Ferry + Foot
[Scene: I'm driving and Beth, age 15, is the only passenger, when we are stuck at an intersection for awhile...]
Me: "Jeeez. Did the ferry just dock?"
Beth: "What does that mean?"
Me: "It's when there are suddenly a whole bunch of cars, as if a ferry just docked and let its load of cars onto this road."
Beth: "Oh. I thought you said 'duck'."
Me: "Uh, no. Dock."
Beth: "I had no idea what a fairy ducking might have to do with traffic."
Me: "Haven't you heard me say this phrase before?"
Beth: "Not that I remember. Maybe you just mutter it under your breath."
Me: "Maybe. It's kind of an old phrase. Like the restaurant menu that said '86 the beef' and you didn't know that meant they eliminated beef to make something vegetarian. But people don't say it much anymore."
Beth: "OK, so, Mom was talking about somebody and used a phrase that I don't get."
Me: "What?"
Beth: "What does it mean to stick your foot in your mouth?"
Me: [laughs] "You've never heard this before?"
Beth: "No."
Me: "It means to say something embarrassingly stupid, and maybe it was also kind of insulting to someone else."
Beth: "Uh... that makes sense in the conversation but... it's weird."
Me: "It's not like actually sticking your foot in your mouth, although I suppose if you somehow managed to trip yourself so badly that your foot ended up in your mouth, that would probably be embarrassing. And painful."
Beth: "Babies put their feet in their mouths. Maybe feet taste good."
Me: "Not adult feet, I'm pretty sure. And embarrassment sure doesn't. I know that too well."
Beth: "Your old phrases are kind of weird, you know?"
Me: "That's the pot calling the kettle black."
Beth: "Huh?"
Me: "Never mind."
#idioms#phrases#culture#foot in mouth#ferry#pot calling the kettle black#kids#dads#age#parents#parenting#parenthood#fatherhood#youth#adult#language#communication#words
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15 Times
Me: [undoing a twist-tie on a bread bag] "Why do you twist these like 150 times?"
Beth: [age 15] "It's not 150 times."
Me: "It's a lot. Might as well be 150."
Beth: "Maybe 15 times. I don't want the bread to escape."
Me: "One or two twists would be enough to contain the bread."
Beth: "You don't know that, Dad. Really determined bread might get through that."
Me: "If we get a loaf of bread with the intelligence and agency to escape its bag, I say it deserves its freedom."
Beth: "Unless it's murderous."
Me: "This sounds like a 1950s horror movie." [faux movie announcer voice] "Attack of the Killer Loaf! Is a murderer lurking in your breadbox?!"
Beth: "15 turns on the twisty would stop the rampage."
Me: "That's exactly how the movie ends."
Beth: "15 times, Dad. 15 times. The life you save could be your own."
#bread#twist tie#twist#horror#horror movies#intelligence#escape#kids#dads#fathering#fathers#parenting#parenthood#child#teen#adolescent#food
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