From the mouth of babes: talking to my kids.

“Daddy you’re a filthy whore! Hahahaha!”

Well that escalated quickly.

While putting my kids in the bath, Frank asked me why they had to even take a bath. I responded with, “Cause you’re a couple of filthy beasts, that’s why!” It took him about 1 second to respond with that little gem above.

You have no idea how much I would love to blame that on one of his friends. I know his three running buddies from the hood don’t say things like that, so they’re out. I’m pretty sure I could pin it on a kid at school. He does the after school deal where he stays for an extra hour on the playground. The whole school is mixed together like yard time at a prison. Has to be a miscreant in that group. Two problems with that unfortunately. For one, he’s been out of school since early May. That’s a little removed to be believable.

The other problem and the ultimate truth, that’s a phrase I have been known to utter on occasion. The occasion is golf and the I’m usually yelling it at my golf ball as it does all manner of things, none of which are what I want it to do. But I have never said that at home and I am pretty good a policing myself when Frank plays golf with me. Apparently not in this case.

I just speak the truth daddy.

Not to be outdone, our two year old has begun to exercise her vocabulary as well.

Whilst changing her diaper, Frank ran in excitedly jumping and yelling something about loving cereal for breakfast. Then he ran out. A hit and run of morning crazy if you will. It was just Life cereal but alright. I looked at my daughter and asked, “What do you think of than Anne Marie?” I absolutely was not expecting a response.

She looks at the door where the crazy little kid just ran out and said, “Frank a chooch.” She put her head back down and looked at me as if to say, “You may commence with my diaper change.” Which of I course I did but not before asking her to repeat what she said. I got a much longer reply. “Frank is, he is crazy. He is a chooch.” Well ok then.

No one to blame this on. Especially in the South. Cooch is indigenous to the northeast, period. It’s made up, as all words are of course, but it has no origin, no Latin, no old world other meaning to track back to. The best guess we have so far is my friend Chris who claims one of his friends from Rhode Island made the word up. Absent of any other evidence, that’s the origin of Chooch. Now the word does appear in the urban dictionary, added in 2006. Entry below.

It’s on the internet so it must be true, right?

The problem with this entry is their translation of the word ciuccio. It does not mean jackass. Ciuccio is the Italian word for pacifier, as in peacemaker not the thing a baby uses. The only way I am aware of to say jackass in Italian is the word Asino. That is a word rarely used here because it has no flow. It doesn’t really translate into a viable english slang.

So Chris, your etymology of the word Chooch holds up for now.

chooch: noun. Origin: Early Rhode Island(Chris’ friend): slang meaning to be a dope; full or in part. i.e half a dope. “I think I’m gonna haf ta slap that chooch.”

Now the only question is, will my kids make more principal’s office appearances than I did because of their mouths. They’re already ahead of the game becasue there’s two of them. I was working solo during my stay at St. Vincent De Paul ~~penitentiary~~ Elementary. Still even working together they have their work cut out for them if they’re gonna take down my single season appearance record.

I wish them luck.

“I want to be called Francis”

Jun25

So we’ve entered a phase. It might be our first one come to think of it. I’m not sure what to name it, or if it even has a name. I do know I need to be recording Frank every second of the day right now. Some of the stuff coming out of his mouth is just unbelievable.

He’s been making a lot of declarations about what he will and will no longer be doing. Hard to explain so here’s the first example.

When we go to The Kroger, the bakery usually has a bin of free cookies out. Our routine is simple, we go for the cookies when we start our final run on the back wall in the dairy section. That takes us past the eggs, butter, cheese and sends us right into the meats and then the bakery. The on to the hippie section (read: organic) for the milk and veggies and then to the check out. By then he’s done the cookie and he gets to work putting the cart stuff on the belt.

So the other day we roll up on paper towel aisle, our last dry goods stop before we bank hard right to dairy, and I realize he has not mentioned the cookies once. Normally he’ll make my ears bleed about how close we’re getting to the cookies. A little running commentary about our cookie proximity that would make a normal man throw himself into on coming traffic. But I’ve become more powerful since Anne Marie has made the scene, so I can repel his annoying. But the silence, the silence about the cookie is now front and center in my head. If Obi Wan Kenobi were here he’d call me a weak minded fool. What’s his angle? Is he gonna work me for ice cream instead? This boy plottin on me somehow someway.

We get to the bakery and the moment of truth has arrived. I reach for his allotment and out it comes. “I will not be having Kroger cookies anymore.” Uh wut? ” I don’t need them daddy.” No one needs cookies Frank. Cookies are never about need. Cookies, much like the pumpkin spice doughnuts that come out at Thanksgiving, are all about want. “Well I don’t want it daddy.” Well OK then Frank, but I’m having one.

The problem was I had already picked up two. Then I remembered the hobos grab three or four and sometime drop one back in. So I dropped one back in the bin. Problem solved. Tip for you Kroger shoppers, never take the weekend cookies. Only the weekday cookies are generally untouched. You’re welcome.

About a day later the big enchilada dropped.

I was summoned to the bedroom where my oldest child was sitting in a very serious manner with a very serious look on his face. His mother had a rye smile. I was entering a mine field of which there would be no safe passage. Well no point in tap dancing. Let’s get to it. “What’s up Frank?”

“I don’t want to be called Frank anymore.”

Oh shit. My first thought was he’s on some kind of cosmic self awareness journey. He’s been acting strange. He’s on some minimalist bent. No cookies at The Kroger, wouldn’t pick any toys from the toy store after a bit of a harrowing doc appointment because he said “I don’t need it.” and now a name change. My hope was we wouldn’t have to call him moon unit or just some sort of crazy symbol. Then I thought maybe he wants to go by Oso or Lambie or Rocket or Deputy Peck or some other character from Disney Jr.

“I want to be called Francis.”

Oh.

Turned five – went bonkers. Note the minimalist cake.

Well that is his legal name. The first born male in an Italian family is named for his grandfather. My grandfather’s name was James so my oldest brother’s name is James. My dad’s name is Francis and goes by Frank, so my son’s name is Francis and we call him Frank. This wold not be a big shift to call him Francis. Or so I thought.

I tried it out a few times. It felt weird. Now I’m thinking he’ll get over it before bedtime so just go with it. “OK Frank, it’s your name and you…” “It’s Francis.” “What?” “It’s Francis daddy, you called me Frank.” “Sorry bud OK, Francis. Like I said, it’s your name and you have the right to be called by your name. Francis it is!”

He seemed happy.

Mrs Frank’s Place on the other hand…

There is a reason we call him Frank. Tracy doesn’t like the name Francis very much. It happens to be my name and I go by that. I’m not Frank or Franny or Michael, my middle name, I have always gone by Francis. So while Tracy was assaulting my entire heritage, Frank or Francis, was happy with his name change. No idea what’s spawning all this but we were both hoping he’d get over it after a few minutes.

Took two days. He corrected us every time we called him Frank for the next two days. Then it went the way of the Dodo.

He’s back to Frank. For now.

If you see him in the next few months and he’s wearing Jedi robes and goes by the name Knarf O’dranil, remember you’ve been warned.

Give a little – it means a lot.

Jun24

If you been following Frank’s Place for any length of time you know I’m not much of an activist. Not much meaning I’m absolutely not an activist of any type. Way too lazy, way too unconcerned for all that nonsense. So when a dude pinged me on Twitter to join this dads blogger group on FaceBook I was skeptical to say the least. I just don’t do issues. But Oren seemed genuine enough.

For whatever reason I checked it out. Oren, the guy who invited me, was running this FB page with the tag “A blogging dads group, so crazy it just might work.” I had no idea what that meant but ah what the hell, click. I’m in. It was easy. Took me a while to go from a lurker to actually joining in on any of the conversations, but when I did it was worth it. Joining the group has been worth it. Yeah, they get bat-shit crazy over stuff that seems trivial sometimes but when real crazy hits the fan that impacts someone in the group, those guys rally round. And man do they know how to rally round someone in need, be it financial, emotional, whatever. These dudes can move the needle when they want to.

The group had maybe 300 dads when I joined and is right at 800 now. Guys in the same city meet up for dads night out, go to conferences, etc… You know all the stuff I’m way too lazy for. I’m not even sure I qualify as a by-stander cause, you know, that requires standing. I’m retired, sue me. Anyway, Oren Miller has been herding these 800 or so cats, me included, since he started the page. He’s a good leader. He’s really is the common denominator that holds the whole thing together.

The man, the myth, the cat herder, Oren MIller.

A month ago maybe, Oren went to the doc for some back pain and found out he was in stage 4 lung cancer. It has his liver, kidney and brain. Probably eight months to a year left with his wife and two young children, ages 6 & 4. I have never met the man face to face and I still get choked just thinking about it. I’m sure Oren is battling some serious demons right now, but in between all that he penned this blog post about the whole thing. Read this and be edified by a guy who stares his mortality in the eye with a grace not seen in most: Oren Miller – Cancer

While I was getting worked up the boys in the group got to work. They started a page on the Give Forward web site to raise money for Oren and his family. You can see it here: Give Back To Oren. A modest goal of $5000 American was in the rear view mirror a few hours after the site went active. With 800 members that number was never gonna be high enough. The goal was reset, and reset, and reset. It now stands at 30,000 beans. With $26,025 in the hopper as of this writing the goal is in sight.

What has struck me about this fundraiser is its bluntness. I dig bluntness. Look, there’s no time to dance around. Being modest about getting help seems pretty ridiculous when you realize you have no need for next year’s calendar. So some guys in the group took the bull by the horns and have really got things rolling in an effort to get Oren and his family some help, relief, assistance. Oren, to his credit, has accepted this outpouring with the grace he has displayed since I first “met” the guy.

Well, I may not even pass for a good by-stander, but I can’t sit this one out.

If you’ve been following this blog at all you know where this is going. Time for the big ask, the squeeze, the shake down. Go to the Give Back To Oren site and drop some coin in the tip jar. I won’t snow you. It probably won’t make you feel any better about yourself. Hell it might even make you feel angry cause another jerk-weed is asking for your money.

No matter, angry money spends just as well.