Act now

Prepare for my triumphant return to the stage.
You see, the curtain is about to be lifted on my moving performance as Jean Valjean in the Broadway production of “Les Miserables.”
Or I’m the dad in “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.” I get confused.
It all started a few months ago when my daughter decided she wanted to audition for a play. She was in a play last year and had a really good time doing it. When she mentioned wanting to do it again, I told her that would be a great idea, since she and her brother have until their teen years to financially support their parents. It doesn’t matter the career path you take, so why not try acting?
Tryouts were over two nights, and after the first night, Allie came home and asked me if I would try out for the play, too. “You could be the daddy!” she said excitedly. I explained to her that I would not be typecast, and that, thank you very much, I would try out for the role of the mother or perhaps a baby angel.
So fast forward to my getting the part of dad (Allie stole my baby angel role). I will be stepping on-stage for the first time in nearly 20 years, as my last performance was in 1989, in the Aiken Community Playhouse production of “A Merry Medieval Christmas.” The main thing I remember from that was that I played the part of God and got to sit atop a ladder and eat popcorn.
But I have not acted in years. Well, not actually acted. I was an extra on a television show when I lived in Orlando. But 20 hours sitting around in full alien makeup so that you can walk in front of Peter Deluise on “SeaQuest” does not an acting gig make.
For those of you not familiar with “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” it is the story of the Herdman family, the rough and tough bad kids of town, who take over the church Christmas pageant. It’s a great story and a great family play. It’s a huge cast, with nearly 40 people in it, most of them much, much shorter than I. I think it goes without saying that if you go see one play this year – check that, if you decide to venture out of your house just one time this year – go see this play. (Editor’s note: Not even putting a thin veil on that shameless plug, huh?)
At the first rehearsal I was really impressed with how well most of the kids knew their lines. I was sitting with a fellow actor, watching the kids sling their lines left and right. We looked at each other and gave an “Uh-oh, we REALLY need to be studying our lines more” exchange of glances.
On a few occasions, I would rehearse my lines at home with Allie. She doesn’t have a speaking part in the play, but certainly was eager to feed some lines to me. This was both good and bad. On the one hand, I had a good rehearsal buddy I could practice with. On the other hand, she apparently has a glue strip for a brain and has now memorized all of my lines, and, after each rehearsal, has a laundry list of where I missed a word here or a word there. She’ll turn to me and say, “Daddy, during the dinner scene, you said ‘two days.’ You’re supposed to say, ‘three days.’” This is from the little girl who can’t remember where she left her shoes. Don’t have room in your craw for where you keep the basic necessities in life, but plenty of space for my play lines? Yeah, that makes sense.
One of the things about memorizing lines that you learn quite quickly is that you don’t just memorize your lines. Kinda helps to know what lines yours come after. I know that seems like a no brainer, but there would be times during rehearsal where I would be sitting there thinking to myself, “OK, I know my line perfectly. Uh-oh, when do I say it?” Randomly blurting out a line for no reason is not only bad acting, it makes people think you might have a medical condition.
As opening night approaches, we are still working on our timing and costumes and props, etc. Each time we rehearse, the play gets a little more crisp and things come together a little more. I am sure by opening night we will be clicking on all cylinders, and it will go off without a hitch. There will be zero flubbed lines, no missed entrances and flawless prop transitions. It will be, quite frankly, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.”
If it’s not, just pretend it was. You, too, can act.

The buzz on fireplaces

Ah, the first fire of the season — the embracing warmth, the comforting glow, the shrieks as your wife sprints away from wasps.
Yes, the first fire made for good times, as we discovered that a family of nasty little buggers had taken up root in our chimney. And, we found, they either really hated smoke or really loved what we were watching on TV.
Before you get an idea that it was like some B-movie with a six-foot swath of hornets streaming out, let me assure you — it was far worse. I am clearly the bravest man you have ever encountered.
OK, so maybe they kinda trickled out one or two at a time, but regardless, it was no joy.
It started he other night when my wife and I decided to sit down and watch one of our shows together. We don’t watch a lot of TV, but we do have a couple of shows we make a point of watching. This night was “Grey’s Anatomy.” The other show we watch is “Desper...Uh...Monday Night Football.” Yes, that is it.
My wife was in the den and I had just started the fire. It was a cold night, and what better way to top it than by a warm fire, a good TV show, and a big bowl of chili? As I was bringing dinner out, I saw a flash go by me. Trying to figure out what was going on, I turned to see my wife sprinting out the door and scaling the back fence.
Perhaps I am being a wee little bit overdramatic. Truth is, she came at a rather brisk pace and said, “MICHAEL!!! A WASP JUST CAME OUT OF THE CHIMNEY!!” And she said “MICHAEL!!!” in a way that implied it was somehow my fault, as though I had trained it to come out at just the right time.
So I put down my chili and went in to assess the situation. I turned to her and said, “Are you nuts? I don’t see anything. Are you sure you’re not hallucinating or going crazy or something?” Poetic justice would have been had the wasp stung me at that point, but instead I just got my wife coming in and pointing to where the wasp was on the ceiling.
I made several requests to the wasp to return outside, and he showed defiance at each request. Finally, I said, “Look, this is your final chance. Go outside, or I beat you to death with a rolled-up Sports Illustrated.” He just stared at me with his waspy eyes. Unacceptable. WHAP!
So after I dispatched the first intruder, we sat down and started dinner. When my wife climbed over the couch and threw the Sports Illustrated at me, I sensed something might be wrong. Indeed, another wasp had made an entrance. I didn’t make small talk with this one. My show was on and my chili was getting cold.
After about the 20th time this happened, I was pretty much at a loss. My first thought was, hey, why don’t I close the chimney flue? My second thought was, hey, why don’t I NOT fill my house with smoke since there is a fire going and it is kind of essential to have said chimney open?
The easiest course of action was to let the fire slowly burn out and send the death WHAPS! to any wasps that decided to head out in the meantime. Once the fire was out, I closed the flue to keep any more of them from coming out.
The next day, my wife asked me what I was going to do about it. We had this conversation:
HER: So should we call the pest control company or a chimney sweep?
ME: (rubbing my chin, looking thoughtfully at the fireplace): Hmmmm.
HER: Hmmm what?
ME: (turning to her, still rubbing my chin): I think I need to get a flashlight and take a look..
HER: And what happens if you see a big wasp’s nest?
ME: Hmmmm.
HER: ARRRG!!!!
For what it’s worth, this is not the first chimney animal encounter I have experienced. A few years ago at my parents’ house, my dad was preparing the first fire of the season when we saw him lurch back. Then we saw why — he was dodging an owl that flew out of the chimney. It flew right up past his face and proceeded to land on my mother’s china cabinet. We eventually used a butterfly net to get the owl out.
A second time, I was at my parents’ house when I stuck my foot in to jostle a log. I don’t know if I had super great timing or what, but just as I put my foot in, something plopped down on it. “Uh, Dad,” I said, pulling my foot out of the fire and extending it toward him, “there’s a mockingbird on my foot.” Sure enough, this thing fell right on my foot, and was apparently dazed enough from the smoke to just kind of hang on my shoe for a few minutes. I was able to get him outside before he flew off.
So I am sure you are wondering what my final decision is. Well, guess what — so is my wife. I have not done a thing, because, quite frankly, I’ve been busy. Maybe if I give it enough time, an owl or a mockingbird will take care of it.

Toys R Me

It was me versus the toys. And I finally won.
For years, I have waged this war with the toys. They multiply. They spread out around the house. They attack you in the middle of the night (I am CERTAIN that a Buzz Lightyear was not in the middle of the hallway when I went to bed).
I often complain about the toys, and I often do it in one of the most annoying ways possible for a spouse. I mumble under my breath and start talking about the toys and kinda stomping around occasionally raising my voice enough so that my wife will hear me say, “...might as well just flush money down the toilet...” The first few times I did this, my wife would engage me in a conversation about the toys and what we could do to corral them. These conversations never went well, because it always culminated with my suggestion that we remove every toy from the house, along with ever other non-essential item in the house. We each get a bowl, a fork and a cup. And one towel each. Pick out a shirt you like, because THAT IS IT. (When you’ve got a Buzz Lightyear stuck to your foot, you tend to go for drastic measures.)
My wife ends these conversations by making this noise that, I think, might have been what small dinosaurs sounded like. Whatever it is, it is definitely the sound of exasperation. She will sometimes roll not just her eyes, but her whole head, and leave the room.
So the other night, my entire family was asleep. I’m a bit of a night owl, so I am often the last one up in the house. And there I was, standing in the playroom, looking at toys and toy pieces and thinking, “...might as well just flush...” when it occurred to me -- hey, everyone is asleep. No one can stop me. It’s me versus the toys, and they have NO ONE here to protect them.
After about 30 minutes, I had thrown every single toy that my kids had in the trash. Gone.
I will now pause to allow for you to offer me an apology for the nasty thing you just said about me. Of course I didn’t throw out my kids’ toys.
In our playroom, we have a closet with some shelves and also a large cabinet that holds a bunch of other toys. Over time, these storage areas have become less than organized, much the way homes become less than organized after a tornado tears through them. So the first order of business was to pull all of the toys out of both areas. After a few minutes, the room was knee-deep in toys. I am not sure where some of these toys came from. I know some were gifts, some were bought and some were hand-me-downs. But the only other explanation for some of them was that they randomly formed over time. Despite the debate that rages in the toy community over toyvolution, it is an undeniable fact. There is simply no way to explain how, in a closet cut off from the rest of the world, two-thirds of a train set that I have never seen in my life can suddenly appear.
As I surveyed the room, it occurred to me that I might have bitten off WAY more than I could chew. However, I knew it would be very bad form to go wake my wife up and say, “Uh, yeah, I pulled every single toy the kids have into the middle of the room for some reason. Could you clean them up?”
I decided the best approach to try and dig out of this mess was to start organizing things in piles. I had a pile for dress-up clothes, a pile for trucks, a pile for dolls, and a pile for puzzles. The final -- and largest -- pile was a pile for everything else. I quickly learned that this approach was not going to work, as the pile for everything else was taking up the better part of the room.
I shifted gears for a different approach. First up -- hang all the dress-up clothes up. If you have a daughter and cannot find a princess dress for her, I apologize, as it is clear that we own them all. My daughter could dress up as a different princess every 15 minutes and would MAYBE be done by the time she’s 40.
The next step was to tackle the trucks and trains. My son loves to play with trucks and trains, but he clearly likes tearing them apart more than driving them around. I weeded out the ones that were no longer functioning toys but rather awkwardly shaped stabbing devices and found we now had a much more manageable group that fit nicely on a shelf.
I continued to tackle individual section of the toy populace, and after a few hours, I noticed that the room was actually coming together. When I came to bed at nearly 2 a.m., my wife awoke and asked why I was coming to bed so late. I told her it wasn’t late, and that she’s dreaming. I was too tired to have to defend my toy tackling.
I awoke the next morning to my wife getting ready. “Hey, go check out the playroom,” I said. She looked at me with concern, as she immediately knew I had done something that could be very bad.
A few minutes later, she came back into the room. “Uh, do I want to know what you did with all of the toys?” I assured her that I had not thrown out anything that was not comparable to a homemade weapon, and gave her the grand tour of the new and improved organization system. She seemed pleased, as did the kids, who were able to find their toys and put them back where they belonged. I am sure this will only last a short while, and things will collapse back into toy chaos soon enough. But that’s OK, because I now know what I need to do. I’ll just throw everything out.

Safety last

So with the turn of the screwdriver, I left behind a stage in my life.
Yes, just one turn, and I closed the chapter known as the “OMIGOSH DON’T PUT THAT IN YOUR MOUTH!!!” You see, I recently removed all of the safety latches from our cabinet hardware.
When I grew up, I am pretty sure the kid safety market consisted of those Yuckmouth stickers on bottles of things that you weren’t supposed to drink. Of course, having three older sisters, I thought it was far more entertaining to try and stealthily place one on their backs and run through the house shrieking “YOU’RE A YUCKMOUTH!!!” Hmmm. Wonder why my sisters would often tell me that Han Solo was outside and then lock the door when I went out to find him...
Anyway, the safety market today is a billion-dollar industry, based on a statistic I guess could be true. There are safety products for safety products. My wife and I stuck with the basics – cabinet locks, door knob locks and outlet caps. My mother once tried to get me to get the padding that goes around coffee tables. I told her that the kids live in a world with corners. Time to adjust. And I also asked her why she was so suddenly concerned with kids’ safety. Where were the corner pads when I was a kid? She responded by telling me Han Solo was outside.
The doorknob locks are these plastic caps that fit over the knobs, and you had to squeeze them to get the door open. Both kids mastered these around age 2. When Allie was little, she got around those by standing at the door and knocking over and over and over, saying, “LET ME OUT. LET ME OUT. LET ME OUT.” Pretty sure that after about 10 minutes of that, the neighbors might start to think you have caged your child, so you let them out of their room.
Parker, meanwhile, took the more guy approach. He just broke them apart. He would grab them and pull on them, hang on them, hit them with a book ... whatever it took. He would bash his way out, and then come out holding the two pieces, grinning, as if he was very pleased that he had solved the puzzle we had put forth.
The outlet caps always served a good purpose, namely countering that innate human inclination to see what happens when Mr. Fork meets Mr. Outlet. Be totally honest with yourself – you’re either very curious about it or already know what happens. There is something hardwired in us that makes us really want to do it. It’s like touching a hot plate or touching an electric fence. And it kinda makes you wonder how we managed to scramble to the top of the food chain. Eventually, you learn to control the urge. Even though most of our outlets still have the caps, we have pretty much convinced the children to stay away from them. My wife opted for the calm, discussion approach, explaining that you could really hurt yourself, etc. She rejected my plan, which started off with “Here, take this fork...”
So the last protection item in my house were the cabinet locks. The stated intent is to keep kids away from harmful products such as cleaners, which is noble. We, however, keep our cleaning supplies in a cabinet above the sink, so this is really not an issue. But the safety latches did serve two very valuable purposes:
1. They kept kids out of the food.
2. They kept kids out of the cabinet with the pots and pans.
The first issue was the food. We don’t keep a lot of junk in the house, because our children need something to complain about when they get older. (“We had the most horrific upbringing – not a Twinkie to be found...”) But, on occasion, we do allow for the occasional fruit snack or bag of Skittles. But let me tell you – those little critters are like raccoons when it comes to going through food. On the off chance there are fruit snacks or Skittles or something else in the pantry, you can believe they will find it. There is nothing like coming into the kitchen and seeing bread and peanut butter jars and canned goods strewn on the floor while a 3-year-old sits on a shelf and tries to gnaw through a Skittles bag.
As for pots and pans, those locks were used to keep the pots and pans safely stowed, rather than as part of a band ensemble. We are all for getting loud and having fun and throwing an impromptu parade, when the time is right. But it’s no fun to have to delay dinner because you have to go search behind the couch, under the bed, in the shower, etc. for the pots and pans. Also, those who suffer from migraines will tell you, pot-and-pan parades are only a notch above boxing on the desirability scale during a headache.
But alas, Parker has now mastered entry into the cabinets, meaning the locks serve little more purpose than to frustrate me when I try to open them. So, off they came.
Hopefully, the kids are now getting old enough that we don’t have to worry about pots and pans being spread about, or food being torn through as if they were starving bears. My wife and I will just have to remain diligent in making sure we teach them that they are not to enter the cabinets whenever they want, and that they need to ask Mommy or Daddy before getting something. And, if that doesn’t work, I’ll just tell them Han Solo is outside to see them.