As Tyler played with his Buzz Lightyear toy, Sarah and I caught up with each other. I had been in New York for the last few days, and wanted to know how things had gone in my absence. The conversation was a difficult one, because Tyler liked to interject his thoughts every ten to fifteen seconds.

“Mommy, you Woody,” he said, placing the Woody character into her hands. “You go sleep now.”

“Well, will you tell me a story?”

She placed Woody onto a pillow. The conversation that her and I were trying to continue was put on hold for the time being. We both waited for the story that Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger, would tell to Woody, the rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the Wild Wild West.

“Upon a time. A big bad wolf not eat you. The end.”

It’s my new favorite story.

The radio chatter sent a chilling message. Invasion. Chaos. Extinction. I flipped the radio to the secure comm frequency and listened. All combat-ready personnel were being summoned to Sector 7 for an emergency briefing. One look at my partner told me we weren’t going to be there. Just as well, I thought. It’d be nothing more than a pep rally. Some patriotic speech about freedom, life, liberty, and their continued pursuit of their inflated paychecks, to get our blood boiling and adrenaline flowing. The orders would be the same, though. Gear up and protect this rock we call home. The resistance had somehow penetrated the outer forces that we all foolishly believed were impenetrable, and now it was up to us grunts to stop, or maybe only slow down, the attack. There were two things that the resistance didn’t prepare for. The Space Rangers, and our taste for blood!

“Tyler! Help me with my wings!”

Tyler rushed over and helped lift the carbon-fiber, TJ-0628 Flight Enhancement unit onto my shoulders. In a flash, he secured it to the anchor points on my space ranger armor. He verbalized each step, something we were trained to do years ago, to prevent any detachments during flight. “Buckle buckle buckle buckle.”

“Thanks, bud! Sounds about right,” I cried over the sound of machine gun rattle. “Where are your wings at?”

“Over dare,” he shouted. In a burst of speed, he retrieved the TJ-0628.

Moments later, the two remaining members of the Space Rangers were ready for war. In a room that typically housed hundreds of biologically modified men, capable of superhuman strength and speed, only two men stood. We were the last. Earth’s final hope. But we were also the best.

“To infitty… n bond!”

Space Ranger Tyler rocketed into the clouds, and I was quick to follow. With uncanny precision, he dived into a valley.

I keyed the mic on the secure communications radio. “Tyler, where are you going?”

“I find a bad guy, over here!”

“Ok, let me come help you,” I replied. But it was too late. I barely had a chance to circle back when I spotted him through my visor. He was already headed towards the prison – which looked surprisingly like a dog’s crate.

I caught up and pressed a code onto the keypad. The prison door swung open. Tyler threw the bad guy in and the door clanged shut. He grunted, “You tay in dare, bad guy!”

“Yeah,” I snarled. “You stay in there, you bad guy!”

The hours turned into days. Progress was being made, and the bad guys were quickly filling the cells. The sound of the prison door banging closed over and over again was satisfying. And each time the door locked, Tyler rocketed away, looking for his next capture. His mission was clear and time was against us. Collect the bad guys, collect the bounty, and protect humanity. I turned to take Tyler’s six and heard a low growl in the shadows. I wheeled around and readied my weapon, but it was too late. In an instant, I was paralyzed in the bone crushing grip of something big. Something very big. Tyler was merely a blip on my visor and I had no hope of freeing myself. Still, the grip tightened, and simply drawing air into my lungs became strained. I activated the comm channel and allowed the fear to come through in my voice.

“Tyler, Tyler, help me! I’m caught. A bad guy has me!”

With no delay, Tyler’s flight path arced back towards my position, and his voice boomed in my helmet. “I get ‘im! I catch a bad guy!”

He zipped past me, out of my sight. A moment later, I was pulled backward. Then, the pressure weighing on and around my body relaxed. And then, it disappeared entirely. The HUD overlay on my visor blipped out and a soothing, computerized voice surrounded me. “Warning. Space suit integrity compromised. Systems check initiated. Ten seconds remaining.”

Any movements beyond rolling my eyes or sticking my tongue out were a virtual impossibility with the approximate weight of a pickup truck on my shoulders. Still, this was a walk in the park compared to the 45 seconds it took for the predecessor of the TJ-0628 armor to recalibrate its biometric sensors and reboot its core processes. The voice never returned to inform me that the checks were complete, but the weight suddenly lifting from my shoulders told me I’d either been lifted in the air by a massive force, or the servos and hydraulics in the suit were operational again. I spun around to see Tyler closing the prison gate.

“Thanks, Tyler. That bad guy really had me!”

“Yeah.”

“It looks like we’ve caught all the bad guys. Thanks for your help buddy. Let’s go back and take these wings off.”

Tyler’s eyes shifted to look over my shoulders. “I see anudder un! I go get him!”

I turned to follow his flight path, but couldn’t see the bad guy. “Where is he, Tyler? I don’t see him.”

Tyler dived, grabbed something, and swooped back into the air. How he was able to see such a well-hidden baddie was beyond me. “Good job, Tyler! I didn’t even see him!”

“I got him. I’m a eat him in my belly,” he said. A moment later, he put the bad guy in his mouth. “Om nom nom nom NOM!”

And with that, our mission was complete. We landed and assisted each other with the removal of our gear and armor. The supreme high commander approached us and asked, “Did you boys have fun?”

Tyler spoke for both of us, and said, “Yes Mommy!”

Tyler has an imagination, and it truly amazes me…

I’ve wanted to write this post for a couple weeks, but couldn’t bring myself to do so. Sarah reads to Tyler at least ten times more often than I do. I’d actually put it closer to twenty times more. When Tyler wakes up in the mornings, he wants to read. I’m already at work, so Sarah sits on the floor with Tyler and reads book after book after book, until Tyler decides he’s hungry and must eat right now! They may read ten books one time, or they may read one book ten times. Tyler also enjoys story-time before his nap. And after his nap. And before bedtime. I find it difficult to sit here and complain about reading books over and over again, often to the point of inadvertent memorization – I don’t need to reference any books to tell you that Ichy Ichy Ichabod starts with I, I, I, or that the Three Bears never saw Goldilocks again – when I know that Sarah feels the pain exponentially worse than I do.

But that damned Apple Tree Farm (Farmyard Tales) is driving me bonkers.

Apple Tree Farm chronicles the adventures of a farm family, ran by Mrs. Boot, the farmer. I won’t detail it here, so hop on over to Amazon.com if you’re curious or interested. I admit that the stories are not bad. They aren’t too short and they aren’t too long. Imagine if baby bear had written the stories; they are just right. But when you read about Ted and his runaway tractor for the 10 to the nth degree time, well let’s just say that it starts to get old.

We have a thick book that contains the entire collection of the Apple Tree Farm stories. It helps that, when Tyler brings the book to us saying “Boot, Boot, Boot”, we can select whichever of Mrs. Boot’s stories we want to read. It doesn’t help that we’ve read every single one of those stories countless times. Countless.

There have been a few occasions where Sarah and I both have said to Tyler, “No thank you Tyler. Let’s pick a different book.” Sometimes, Tyler protests, but he usually just grabs another book. That is precisely what happened a couple weeks ago.

Pulling the blue Apple Tree Farm collection book from Tyler’s hands, Sarah told him to pick out a different book. And he did. He brought us this book instead:

That’s right… first, he wanted to read The Complete Book of Farmyard Tales. We told him to pick a different book, so he DUG AROUND in his bookshelf and brought us The Little Book of Farmyard Tales, which is the exact same thing, but a little smaller, and with a few less stories.

He’s learning. That little booger is learning.

Like most stories, the series of posts did not go as planned. What was originally planned as a three or four paragraph post turned into 4 posts of a three part series, where I explain some things that I’ve never really shared with anyone before.

I figure that my readers may be interested to know a little bit about my past, and how I got to where I am now, but since I’ve already published the posts over there, I wanted to create this snippet to point you over there for the story. I’ll try not to do this in the future, but, like I said, the story went in an entirely different direction than planned. And, frankly, I think it’s written pretty well and don’t want them to go completely unnoticed.

The “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo” series:
Part 1 of 3
Part 2 of 3
Part 3 of 3… maybe
Part 4 of 3

As I write this post – or at least begin to write this post – I am flying, I don’t know, about 30,000 feet above the Earth. If the plane crashes, I’m going to be very unhappy. I don’t enjoy thinking of my own mortality. But, now that I am responsible for both a wife and a son, well I just can’t help it. So what did I do when the friendly stewardess told us to “turn off and stow away all electronic devices until further notice”? Did I turn off and stow away my phone so that it wouldn’t cause any electronic disturbances with the flight equipment and gauges? Nope, I continued to blog from my Blackberry Smartphone. And what did I do while she demonstrated how to use an oxygen mask, and what to do in case of an emergency? I continued to blog, of course. It’s ok, though, right? I did turn off the wireless antenna afterall.

I guess we’ll find out in a little over an hour.

I love reading books to Tyler. I fully admit that I don’t do it enough, and have resolved to correct that. But, all the reading I do, I do silently. I haven’t read out loud in ages. I’ve read news stories to Sarah on occasion, but not very often. When it’s booktime with Tyler, I read 5 books to him, some books more than once. That’s a lot of reading out loud.

When I’m reading to myself (newspaper or internet), I read fast. I don’t exactly consider myself to be a speed reader, but it’s close to that. So, when I’m reading out loud to Tyler, my eyes are trying to move much quicker than my mouth. I keep getting tongue tied, and mixed around. It’s frustrating. I have to consciously slow myself down because I sound like the nervous kid in school who stumbles on every third or fourth word when reading to the class.

By the way, I HATE flying. I feel nauseated right now.

Back in school, when we had to “read aloud in class” (I question whether aloud is really a word, but I can’t look it up right now. But, that is how the teacher said it), I did so, and I did so pretty well – as far as enunciating and accuracy go. What I didn’t do was care. I was completely monotonic. I had no inflection in my voice. I sounded like the teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, kinda like a robot. When I had to read as Mercutio in Romeo & Juliet (in-class reading, not a live play, thank God), every one of my sentences ended as a question because I couldn’t understand that crap. I remember feeling quite uncomfortable and stupid once, while reading as a character in class. I don’t remember the character or the book, but he was Canadian. Most of his sentences ended with “eh?”, which I now know is pronounced as “ay”. I didn’t know that then and kept saying the short E sound, like in the word “kept”.

What should have been, “You’re going to the store, ay?”

Instead was, “You’re going to the store, ehhh?”

The kids laughed and the stupid butthole of a teacher didn’t correct me. And were there many lines that ended like that, eh? Yah, dere were, donchaknow.

Anyway, when I read to Tyler, I find myself giving each character their own voice. My vocal impersonation of Grover isn’t even close to what it should be, but Tyler doesn’t seem to mind (yet). I also try to put emotion into their statements. And it’s extremely strange to me for 2 reasons. The first is the simple fact that I never thought I would do something like that. I honestly didn’t think I had it in me. The other reason is that it felt completely natural. It may not make sense to you that I’m saying that something that feels quite natural feels quite strange BECAUSE it feels natural, but it’s true. It must be the next natural step into fatherhood, but knowing that I’ve never been like that previously is what made it strange. Clear as mud? Good, because I’m moving on. Stranger yet, to me at least, is that I don’t mind doing the voices or putting character into the story when Sarah’s with me. I expected that I would get nervous and shy, but it was fine. I can’t go so far as to say I wouldn’t feel slightly awkward out in public doing something like that, though. Part of me thinks that the general populous wouldn’t pay any mind, because I have a baby, and that’s what you do when you have a baby. But then I’ll read something like this, and wonder.

Another dilemma with giving each character their own voice is not always knowing which character is talking. If you’re going to write a children’s book, take note. Instead of:

“Let’s go to the park and play on the swings and shoot down the slide”, said Baby Bear, gleefully.

Use this:

Gleefully, Baby Bear said, “
Let’s go to the park and play on the swings and shoot down the slide”.

Written the former, I will possibly use the wrong voice or tone, embarrassing myself and confusing Tyler. Either that, or I’ll need to read ahead silently to see who’s speaking, creating uncomfortable pauses in the story, causing Tyler to think I’m “a little slow”.

Written the latter… NO CONFUSION, unless you don’t know what “gleefully” means. And in that case, you need help from someone with the letters “PhD” at the end of their name, not from me.

Just landed in Detroit. One more plane to Nashville now.

I honestly couldn’t tell you if my mommy or daddy read me stories when I was a baby. I have trouble remembering what I did 3 days ago. Trying to remember that far back is just not possible. They could have read to me hours and hours each day, but I just don’t know. It is completely possible though. I have no memory of being potty trained, but I’m sure I was. Aside from aiming issues here and then, I’m pretty versed in the ways of the toilet. Too much? Sorry.

The benefit of either not having story time, or not remembering story time, is that I’m reading all these stories for the first time. I’m reading Curious George to Tyler, secretly wondering how he’s going to get out of the mess he’s in, and wondering if the man in the yellow hat is going to find out about George’s shenanigans. Or, while reading Horton Hatches an Egg, wondering if it’s appropriate to read a story to him about a mother that abandons her baby. I guess it can’t be worse than old time favorites like Hansel & Gretel and its dabbling on cannibalism, or Goldilocks & the Three Bears where the entire storyline revolves around trespassing, burglary, theft, and destruction of private property.

At the end of the day, I’m fine with all of those stories. What I am not fine with is all the censoring that’s going on nowadays. I am appalled that Cookie Monster is no longer a Cookie Monster because cookies are a “sometimes food”. When I watched Tom & Jerry, they chased each other with hammers and knives and guns even. Not anymore though. That kind of content can’t be allowed to be seen by the impressionable children. Nevermind putting responsibility on the parents to teach their kids right from wrong; let’s have the television raise our kids and teach them morals. Pretty soon, sporting events will be taken off of daytime television because one team will be the loser, and you can’t have that. You just can’t let a child see somebody lose because “everybody’s a winner”, just like you can’t use red grading pens on kids’ papers now. Gimme a break.

But I enjoy reading to Tyler because we’re both hearing the story for the first time. That’s esentially the point of this post.

I’m getting ready to land now. I don’t want the landing gear to malfunction, so I guess it’s time I shut my phone off. I really would hate to be the subject of the news story “Man refuses to turn off phone on plane. 172 perish as a result”.