I am a stickler for rules, within reason. I am the type of driver who grumbles at everyone else’s minor traffic sins, even though I find myself adopting a more casual attitude to my own driving recently. I am trying to be less concerned with the rules other people are ignoring, because there’s no value in being angry with the whole world. But still, the rules are the rules. I was not prepared, however, for my 3-year-old to become so adept at logical reasoning and persuasive argument that I find myself outmaneuvered. That fellow is clever. We were sitting on the couch this morning. I was checking  my email and twitter feeds on my iPhone while he was watching Mickey Mouse  Clubhouse,  and I started singing along with ‘the hot dog’ song. It’s very catchy, I assure you. The little dude  interrupted my singing and told me to stop. When I asked why I should stop, he explained it to me. “You’re playing your game, so it’s not fair for you to interrupt the show I’m watching.”I’m paraphrasing (it was early in the morning, pre-coffee, so my recollection is fuzzy) but that was the gist of it. It was a well-thought out argument built on existing rules and earlier precedent. I stopped singing immediately.
He also has an outstanding decree against all participatory singing along. When ever the wife or I try to sing along with a song on the radio, or to one of the little dude’s cds, we get a very cross look from the boy and the admonishment “Dad/mom, stop singing.” Evidently, he believes that only the performer should be singing and the audience should listen. I have tried to voice the counter-argument about singing along making you feel happy and fun, but in my heart I agree with him, so I usually shut up. If he likes the music enough to want everyone else to be quiet, then who am I to stifle that? I will still belt out a song just for the sake of it, even if he complains. I have to have some fun too.

In unrelated news, we’re still waiting for a bunch of things to happen. I’m still waiting for my ebook to get approved for distribution on itunes/amazon,  the wife is still waiting for job news,  I’m waiting for payment for  a bunch of magazine articles I’ve written, we’re all waiting for money to be less tight than it is.Lots of waiting=lots of stress.

Well that was a speedy, non-blogging week. But I have reasons! Or for the less charitable, excuses! I started by forcefully slamming the top of my head into a rounded rivet on the bottom of a playground structure. No, not on purpose. I didn’t lose consciousness or get dizzy, but it hurt with a persistent and impressive intensity. Sometimes it’s daddy that gets the bonk. So, that took the wind out of my sails on Wednesday. Thursday, I marshaled the lad off to school even though he resisted and kept claiming he was too tired. He had woken up at 5:30, so tiredness was to be expected, and I thought he would snap out of it. When the school called me an hour later and told me he was running a fever of 101, I felt like the worst parent ever. I brought him home, kept watch while he slept the day away, and finally was able to get some children’s tylenol and ice cream to make the rest of the afternoon and evening easier. He recovered almost entirely by Friday around lunchtime. When he gets sick, though, I lose my mind with worry and emotional upheaval, so I was no good for blogging Thursday or Friday. Saturday was family stuff, which I enjoyed immensely, and it was my night to do bedtime. By the time I was free and clear to hit the old computer, I was a tired puddle of unenthusiastic apathy. So now we’re here! You people have waited for a topic, and a topic you shall have. Karma! During one of our ramble-arounds through the neighbourhood this week, Max and I came across various bits of litter on the lawn. I grumbled at first to myself, blaming no-good teenagers and boozed up slackers, but then I got tired of my own complaining and I picked the stuff up. If I think about it, I was not a bastion of civic cleanliness during my youth, so I probably owe the city a fair amount of garbage collection. And that’s an aspect of the maturation process: accepting that you may have run a karmic deficit in the past, and realizing you can start balancing your own metaphysical budget right here and now. I was a pretty big fan of “My Name Is Earl” at least for the first few seasons, and it did a very good job showing a man trying to make amends within the limitations of his own life. The man trying to fix his mistakes didn’t suddenly become a transformed person, changed in every way. He was the same guy, with the same family and friends, and the same drawbacks. The only difference was that he wanted to live a better life and try to do the right thing. The biggest challenge to anyone trying to live a more ethical and compassionate life is shouldering the weight of your previous misdeeds without being crushed by your past. So now, I pick up trash when I see it. It doesn’t matter how the trash got here, it needs to be cleaned up.

(Did anyone else assume ‘messenger’ would retain the ‘a’ that ‘message’ has? Just me? Really? I am usually a fairly competent speller, but I was wrong on this one).

I used to be an enemy of implied communication, where information is being broadcast through indirect, non-verbal methods. It always felt manipulative, the idea that the person I was talking to wanted me to pick up on their clues and hints, instead of just saying what they wanted in plain english. As I think about it now, though, I can see it’s mostly my own insecurity pushing that decision. Human communication is complicated, convoluted and sometimes bafflingly contradictory, but it’s they way we do things. I had no confidence in my ability to receive these subtle missives and interpret them correctly, so I outlawed them. And when you’re already overly sensitive and afraid of any criticism, the subtext of any conversation will sound accusatory to you. With the near-normal levels of self-esteem I’m enjoying now, I don’t hear accusations in everyone’s voice or in their body language. Example time!

The little dude, the wife and I took part in the Alzheimer’s Walk For Memories fundraiser on the weekend. The wife’s grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s, so there is a personal connection to  the event and an additional level of emotional response. Last year, we didn’t attend the event and my sister-in-law went on her own. Before this year’s walk started, the SIL and the wife were talking about how moved and affected the event was already making them, and the SIL said ‘it was like this for me last year and I was all alone’. Before, I would have become really defensive at this statement and the implication that we should have been there (if she was even implying that).  But this time, I took stock of what she had said and I thought about it. She wasn’t unfairly manipulating us, she was being honest about her experience, and instead of defensive guilt, I felt empathy and happiness that we were all there together this time. Felt pretty good about how things happened.

Trying to force someone to be absolutely explicit and abandon the more subtle communication techniques is pretty unfair. There’s a time for bluntness (the kitchen is on fire!) but when it comes to sharing your feelings and emotional reactions, there’s a lot of room for subtlety. I’m really glad that I can listen to those quiet messages now. And in the off chance someone is giving me negative information, I have to keep my ears open and listen objectively. There is always the microscopic chance that I may in some way, at some time in the distant future, be a teeny bit wrong about something.