Devilishly Stupid

A little while ago, I shared my semi-psychotic episode with Dirt Devil with you.  Here’s an update:

 

A little less than a week after I sent that mildly condescending letter and email to Deb Kerner, I heard back from Dirt Devil!  Unfortunately, the woman who called was named Juanita, not Deb.  In retrospect, I should have known that expecting a customer service supervisor (i.e. Deb Kerner) to directly respond to a customer service complaint was entirely inappropriate.  Forgive my naiveté.

 

Juanita explained to me that it was actually impossible to credit me the $52 I requested because the mop heads had shipped by the time of our conversation.  Which, if you think about it, makes sense.  After all, right behind the natural laws of gravity, electromagnetism, and thermodynamics, is the physical law that says human beings are unable to go into computer programs designed and controlled by human beings and make changes to those programs once an order has left the warehouse.  Again, please forgive my stupidity.

"Sir, I told you, I have no control over this computer in front of me unless I actually grab the mouse and start using the keyboard. Which I can't do because your package already left the warehouse!"

But Juanita said she could send me a new mop!  Oh boy!  The mop she was going to send was a deluxe edition, which included a “shag mop head” and even an attachment to mop a carpet (I have no idea how this works, by the way).  I had a moment of inner dialogue where I needed to decide if it was worth accepting her carpet mop and let it go, or if it was time to dig my heels in and go to war.  I’m sure my parents, siblings, and childhood friends are laughing because they think I’m a stubborn asshole who will waste weeks of my life just to prove my point and “win”.  Well, you guys can all go fuck yourselves.  I told Juanita that I’d take the mop and that I had to go prepare for a fantasy baseball draft.  Let bygones be bygones and enjoy spring in Glenwillow, Ohio, Juanita.

Mops with the capacity to clean carpets inspire the best in humanity.

What Juanita didn’t know, however, was that in some of my drama with Dirt Devil, an unnamed disgruntled man had already promised me a replacement mop for our broken one.  Unfortunately, homeboy cut me off before I could receive any sort of confirmation number, so I was unsure if the mop would even come.  In my peace treaty with Juanita, I held out hope that homeboy did, in fact, send me a mop.

 

Fast forward one week and I now have the mop heads I originally ordered (the mop heads that started this whole fiasco), a new Dirt Devil steaming mop, and a new Dirt Devil deluxe steaming mop with fancy triangular plastic carpet mopping attachment.  In their ass backwards style of customer service (i.e. not knowing anything, not communicating to different people, ignoring the customer, and wasting the company’s money), Dirt Devil refused to reimburse me the original $52 I asked for but accidentally sent me two brand new mops, which retail at $49.99 and $69.99.  Kudos, Deb Kerner!

 

I’m loathe to take this internet-sharing experience outside the realm of self-deprecating dad humor, but I’ll do it for a moment anyway.  Next year we’ll have a presidential election.  And, if we can ever actually get to the bottom of the mystery if Obama is even an American citizen or not, we will talk about the economy.  And, surely, we’ll talk about jobs.  And, certainly, we’ll talk about the need to keep American jobs in America.  Well, Dirt Devil is based in Ohio, so theoretically they should be lauded for keeping Americans working.  But what happens when Americans working in America are doing shitty work?  What overall value-add is it to this country when the folks who are pissing consumers off are getting paid so meagerly ($9.00/hr, no benefits) that they’re also probably in need of public assistance to make ends meet?  Why was it that talking to (and being avoided by) Americans working in America made me pine for the days of IT support from someone with a bad accent in Mumbai?

"And together we will ensure that all American companies achieve the excellence that Dirt Devil has achieved! Now, let's go look at Russia together from my house and read all the newspapers."

Whether you want to look at this Dirt Devil debacle as a sad-representation of where we are as a society or simply the tirade of a dad with too much time on his hands, it doesn’t really matter.  What matters now, dear reader, is that you can buy a brand new Dirt Devil mop on Tucson Craigslist for 30% off.  Customer service not included.

 

The Matt Siegel Challenge

Instilling in children one’s own passions and values has been a parental challenge for generations.  How do we ensure that our kids grow up to believe some of the integral beliefs we hold?  How do we teach our kids that some family traditions aren’t negotiable, that they’re not up for debate?  The social-cultural milieu is a scary place where things that are important to parents get drowned out in the cacophonous diarrhea that is Justin Bieber (for example).  How do parents fight back against that while still giving kids the ability to choose?

On a personal level, how can I teach my children the joys (and, unfortunately, heartbreaks) of loyalty to a sports team?  Specifically, how can I instill in my two daughters that the Oakland A’s are our family’s favorite baseball team and, therefore, they should care about them (besides repeating it as fact over and over)?  And beyond instilling that they’re our favorites, what I really want my daughters to understand are the emotional reactions to the A’s.  Joy, happiness, contentment when they win.  Sadness, anger, stomach pain when they lose.  I want to share with my daughters what it’s like to really love a team, not simply have some peripheral affinity because their dad keeps putting the team’s t-shirts on them and mumbling this about some guy nicknamed “Godzilla”.

The answer is quite simple, actually: Classic Conditioning.  Family and friends, welcome to the Matt Siegel Challenge!

The Challenge's namesake, with a romantic beach backdrop.

Named in honor of one of my closest and most imaginative friends who came up with the premise at the age of 19 (yes, I’m making a long-term parenting decision based off the advice of a 19 year-old who used to take Oreo cookies, break them apart, pour milk on them, and declare it cereal), the Matt Siegel Challenge is really quite simple.  When the A’s win, the girls get a treat.  When the A’s lose, I punch them.  Just kidding!  Well, partially.  When the A’s win, I will give them a small treat or prize (lollipop, pencil, whatever.  I’m open to suggestions…) but when they lose, I’ll simply tell them with an overly dramatic sad face that the A’s lost and that there will be no joy in Mudville, err, Tucson this afternoon.  The idea is that by the late summer, the A’s will become viscerally integrated into their psyches and they’ll feel the drool of saliva when they see this:

"And here's a pound of refined sugar for each of you."

And the pains of sadness when they see this:

"Oh, that's so sad, the A's are losing. Looks like it's celery and tonic water for dessert if this keeps up."

Frankly, I don’t see how this won’t work.  And fortunately for the girls, Vegas has the A’s win total this year at 83.5 (-125 on the over), so according to the bookmakers the girls are good for at least 83 days of reinforced goodness.  I don’t see how this is a bad idea at all.  The girls win because they get happy when the A’s win.  I win because I get happy when the A’s win and I get happy to watch my girls develop a love for the A’s.  Sonya wins because I’m actually teaching our children something worthwhile, for once.

The Oakland Athletics. Welcoming children and the Taliban as fans since 1968.

Maybe you feel this is a bit manipulative.  Maybe you think my children should be free to choose whichever team they like or, perhaps, that they should be able to choose if they even like rooting for teams in the first place.  Maybe they should have “agency” (rolling my eyes and doing finger quotes) over themselves and shouldn’t be subjected to their dad’s “forced” (mocking you incessantly) baseball games.  Maybe you should mind your own business and check in with me in fifteen years when your kid chooses with his own free will to vote for Sarah Palin because she’s the hottest 60 year-old ever and she can use a three-syllable word semi-consistently.

By the time the girls are old enough to tell Yankee fans to “Fuck off,” I’m hoping the conditioning, err, Matt Siegel Challenge will have paid off.  And by then, I’m considering altering the Matt Siegel Challenge to include money for Friday and Saturday nights spent with dad watching the A’s play.  Until then, cue the dum-dums, I suppose (the lollipop, asshole, not me).

This time, a real letter

Mostly you know me as a dad who likes sports.  But today, I’m sharing with you another piece of me.  You see, for as long as I remember, I’ve taken company screw-ups personally.  When I was a freshman in college I spent 20 cumulative hours on the phone with a now defunct phone company because they overcharged me by 50 bucks.  I’ve spent more time on the phone with Cox Cable in the past year than I have with anyone besides my wife and kids.  I take it personally.

"Ok, sir, now, um, do you have any Vaseline or KY Jelly available? Because, to be honest, we're really gonna fuck you this time."

The thing that continues to baffle me is that companies don’t seem to really understand that if you treat customers really well and make them happy then…wait for it…wait for it…wait…wait…they want to keep buying your shit.  Crazy, crazy concept, I know.  Can I now accept my MBA from somewhere, please?

Below is a letter that I just mailed and emailed to Dirt Devil, the newest proud member of the “Fucking Phil Over Because We Don’t Understand Customer Service and Would Rather Save $20 Today Than Lockdown a Customer for 20 Years” club.  I’m thrilled to share this adventure with you.  Enjoy reading and rest assured that I will share every bit of correspondence from Dirt Devil with you.

————————————-

Deb Kerner

Customer Service Supervisor

Royal Manufacturing Company

7005 Cochran Rd.

Glen Willow, OH 44139

March 25, 2011

Dear Deb Kerner,

It is with great annoyance and frustration that I write to you about my recent experiences with a Dirt Devil order (order number WDD2D39380365, confirmation number 4518127) and many contacts/attempted contacts with Dirt Devil customer service.

Below is a sequential explanation of my experiences with Dirt Devil:

1. On March 1, 2011, I placed an order online for four mop heads for our Dirt Devil steam mop (model number K09K).  While I cringed at paying upwards of $50 for four mop heads, I must admit, a steaming mop is pretty cool and very effective.
2. By March 18, 2011, the mop heads hadn’t arrived and I hadn’t received any communication from Dirt Devil.  So, on March 18, 2011, I called Dirt Devil customer service (1-800-321-1134).  I was on hold for over 15 minutes, so I hung up.  You know, because I have other things to do than wait on hold, regardless of the assurance from the friendly automated lady that my call was important.
3. On March 20, 2011, I contacted Dirt Devil electronically through the online contact portal (https://www.dirtdevil.com/contact.aspx).  I requested to actually receive my mop heads as well as to have the total order cost of $52.75 cut in half, with the credit going back to my credit card.  I never received a response to this inquiry.
4. On March 23, 2011, I contacted Dirt Devil customer service.  I was told that the mop heads were on back order and they wouldn’t ship until April 29, 2011.  I asked to speak with someone in the corporate office.  I was transferred to corporate, where I spoke with a woman who told me the mop heads would ship on March 28, 2011, but she couldn’t authorize a 50% credit on my order.  I asked her to speak with someone who did have that authority and she transferred me to a voicemail.  The man’s voice on the voicemail was unintelligible.  I left a message explaining the problem and asked for a return call.  I never heard back.
5. On March 24, 2011, while using my Dirt Devil mop, the plastic handle snapped.  I looked around for the Candid Camera cameras to pop up and for everyone to start laughing but, alas, that didn’t happen.
6. On March 25, 2011, I made five phone calls into the Dirt Devil customer service line.  Every time I requested to be transferred to the corporate office.  At the corporate office, I explained my situation to a man who listened and then offered me free shipping on my mop head order.  As you might imagine, I turned that offer down.  To his credit, he did offer to send me a free replacement mop for my now broken mop.  I asked to speak with someone who could authorize a 50% credit on my order.  He transferred me to voicemail of a woman named Lisa.  Unfortunately, Lisa’s voicemail was full and I couldn’t leave her a voicemail.  I called back and upon reaching the same man, he immediately transferred me back to Lisa’s full voicemail before I could get a word into him that her voicemail was full and, therefore, ineffective for resolving the issue.  I called back again and was finally transferred to your voicemail.  I left a message telling you I had a problem with my mop head order and asking for you to return my call early next week (the week of March 28, 2011).

Obviously, this has been an extremely frustrating customer service experience, to say the least.  At this point, in order to rectify Dirt Devil’s lapses in product availability as well as customer service (and to restore good faith in the company), I’m requesting to have this entire mop head order for free (in addition to actually receiving the free mop to replace my broken one).

In more informal words, here’s the deal:  I’m 29 years old with two kids.  We’re planning on having more kids.  Kids are messy.  They throw food.  They drop things.  They draw in places they’re not supposed to.  And, to boot, I really like to have a clean house.  You know what that means?  I have years and years of mopping ahead of me.  In the next twenty years, at an average of one hour per week, I’ll spend 1040 hours mopping.  That’s over 43 days of mopping.  But I have a mop with a broken handle and four new mop heads that aren’t here.  And, I’d really like to stay a Dirt Devil customer.  I like the mops.  They work.

The bad news is that you guys have screwed up tremendously in your customer service.  Nothing personal.  My suspicion is that it’s a systematic problem.  Regardless of the source of the problem, it’s egregious to make speaking with a customer service supervisor so difficult.

The good news is that you have a great opportunity to effectively remedy the problem.  And you can do it in front of an audience, to boot!  You see, I’ll be sharing the contents of this letter, as well as every future correspondence with Dirt Devil, on my exciting internet-sharing site (some people call it a blog).  You can visit it at www.desertdad.wordpress.com.  I like to link my internet-sharing site to both my own Facebook account as well as my wife’s to optimize viewership.

So again, to summarize:  I like the Dirt Devil product.  I don’t like Dirt Devil’s customer service.  I am requesting a free new mop (which sounds like it’s already in the works) and the four mop heads I ordered online on March 1, 2011 for free as well (please credit the entire cost of $52.75 to my credit card you have on file).  I am optimistic that you can accommodate this request and that I can continue to be a Dirt Devil customer for as long as there is crap (literally and figuratively) on my floor.

I will send this letter to you both in the mail as well as to your email account.  I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Philipp Miller

Dear Justin Letter

Dear Beloved Reader,

I need your help.

You may remember that our house was in the midst of a serious Justin Bieber outbreak. Well, we are still in the midst of a serious Bieber outbreak. In fact, it’s gotten worse. Where previously the Bieber sores were limited to Nayezca’s brain, they’ve now spread to Adayah, who walks around the house proclaiming, “I love Justin Bieber.” And, to boot, when I mock Justin Bieber with bad dancing when his music comes on (which is, you know, like four hours a day), Adayah runs up to me and punches me. I wish I were kidding.

This was back when I still loved my children.

The good-natured family tension surrounding Justin Bitchface boiled over recently when Nayezca returned from a trip to the mall with Sonya with a Justin Bieber t-shirt. Sonya did well when she briefed Nayezca that I probably wouldn’t let her out of the house with the shirt on (true, she got rejected the other day) but goofed when she coached Nayezca not to tell me she even got the shirt in the first place. (Sonya’s defense was, “I didn’t tell her to lie, I simply told her to not divulge that she got it.” I’m becoming more convinced that my wife was once a defendant in some terrible crime.) That’s ok, because for a while I coached Adayah to not tell her Mommy that we were making weekly trips to Nogales and coming back with hundreds of pounds of “spices and leaves” in our trunk and to smile and wave at the nice men with automatic rifles at the checkpoint.

Most recently, Nayezca put a picture of Justin Homewrecker on the wall in her room.

"I'm cute and easy to have a crush on now, but just wait until I blow a pound of cocaine and pass out on stage when I'm 19 because I never had a childhood."

If I had any balls (which, if you’ve been reading this internet-sharing site even infrequently, you’ve surely realized I don’t) I’d simply take it off the wall, wipe my ass with it, and call it day. But since I can’t stand up to my seven year-old daughter, I’ve taken to the passive-aggressive method of slyly putting imaginary first-person quotes next to the picture instead. Yesterday’s quote read: “I punch baby cows in their tails because I hate them,” while today’s reads, “At the zoo I like to throw rocks at the elephants because I hate them.” Is this immature? Yes. Is this self-defeating and further encouraging more Biberitis? Most likely. Is it a fun way to deal with the fact that I’m losing my daughters to a Canadian eunuch who doubles as an incurable sexually transmitted infection? Indeed.

Sonya shot me one of those death looks the other day when Adayah quipped, “Justin Bieber hits dogs.”

"I'm going to hit you."

Before I could congratulate my daughter and reward her with candy, I caught Sonya’s divorce-stare from the kitchen and quietly retreated to my bowl of cereal. Sonya quickly let me know that this whole Justin Bieber thing has gone too far and that my disdain, mockery, and passive-aggressive attempts at brainwashing are pushing the limits of fun and bordering on cruelty, insensitivity, and, gasp (!), poor modeling. And while I’m not convinced that my behavior has been over the top and inappropriate (you want inappropriate parenting behavior? I’ll show you inappropriate parenting behavior!), I do concede that perhaps Sonya’s point of view isn’t totally demented and psychotic.

The question, then, is what to do? Give in to my desire to consistently mock Justin Fuckface (and relish in my righteousness in four years when he gets busted in a heroin orgy?) or take one for the team and ease off? And if I ease off, do I ease off completely, or just partially? Stay with the sticky note quotes and refrain from verbally berating him? Pretend I’ve had an epiphany and act like I love Justin Bieber hoping the reverse psychology will drive my daughters away from him? Drink a bottle of scotch and pass out on the living room floor like I did when my brother-in-law visited? Write an asinine internet-sharing piece that has a complete paragraph in which every sentence ends with a question mark?

Listen here all you 30-something ladies: I want your advice, but before you get too high on that horse, remember that these were the guys you were swooning over a while back.

Please, help me. You might have grandkids, you might have kids, you might have dogs (equivocal to kids most of the time), or you may just have the good sense to be only responsible for yourself. Regardless of who you are, I need your advice. How do I maintain my own sanity, keep marital harmony, and avoid psychologically abusing my children all at once?

Cordially,

Desert Dad

The Monstrosity

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  When your wife throws a sack over your head, gives you horse tranquilizer, and disappears you to Arizona, well, take her eldest daughter to see monster trucks.  Right?

I suppose it’s not entirely fair to say my trip to see monster trucks with Nayezca and her grandpa was retribution for being relocated to the land of the white Taliban.  In fact, it’s not fair at all.  Nayezca and I have been dreaming of going to see monster trucks for nearly two years, long before we left the fields of gluten-free soy chorizo for the desert landscape of Wienerschnitzel. (did you know you can get 5 chili-cheeseburgers at Wienerschnitzel for $5?  They throw in diarrhea for free, too.)

Regardless, Nayezca, Lolo, and I found ourselves in a sea of mullets, obesity, and tattooed-neck grandeur in the Tucson arena a couple days ago to exercise our 11^th amendment right: monster trucks.  (In totally unrelated news, the price of crude oil has surpassed $105 per barrel.  Experts are confused as to why the price of oil continues to skyrocket despite Americans most earnest attempts to conserve fuel and act more responsibly with natural resources.)

Amendment XI, Article I: "Congress shall not infringe upon the rights of the people to watch enormous trucks jump over broken yellow cars. Nor shall Congress infringe on the rights of the people to resurrect such shitty groups as The Offspring and Oasis at said Monster Jam."

 

If you’ve ever been to watch monster trucks, you know several things:

1. It’s really, really loud.
2. You’re essentially taking bong rips from a truck’s exhaust pipe for two hours.
3. The “clientele” aren’t there as an ironic commentary on America.
4. It’s pretty boring (except for Megasaurus).

Unfortunately, this wasn't me at Monster Jam. Maybe next time.

Monster Jam wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be.  First off, I anticipated being drunk and intentionally spilling a full can of Miller Lite on an old wife-beater and then farting.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t drunk, and, therefore, still had enough shame that I didn’t want my daddy-gut hanging out of a clean tank top (no qualms, however, with gratuitous farting).  Secondly, I wanted to be rowdy with Nayezca and scream every time we saw one of those trucks come out and drive over rusted cars.  There wasn’t any screaming, however.  Rather, we would lean in real close to each other and yell into the other person’s ear-plugged ear every time we had to communicate something.  (“DO YOU HAVE TO PEE?”  “WHAAAT?”  “DOOO YOUUU HAVE TO PEEEEE?”)  Finally, I thought it would be, well, more fun.  Something about an arena full of amped-up homophobes dancing to “YMCA”, however, left me feeling more depressed and confused than jubilant.

As with almost everything you do with kids, the true success isn’t about you, it’s about the kid.  Nayezca had fun.  She left with a smile on her face and genuinely liked Monster Jam.  Which is precisely the problem.  I’ve created, well, a monster.

"Remember, in 20 years when we're reconstituting Qaddafi's corpse to procure more oil, it's all worth it."

Two years ago, when we lived in Oakland, the prospect of going to a monster truck show seemed so ridiculous, so outlandish that I felt fine hyping monster trucks, watching them on ESPN, and promising Nayezca that we’d go see them together one day.  I felt like the irony would explain itself.  (Yes, I was relying on a five year-old to intrinsically understand irony.  Don’t worry, I once took a class on child development, I got this.)  But as my father-in-law and I exchanged furtive glances over Nayezca’s guardedly enthralled face at Monster Jam, I had my worries.  And when the five year-old in front of me held his pinkie and index finger up in the shape of devil horns while Gravedigger jumped over cars, my worries increased.

Somehow, I need to communicate to Nayezca that our trip to Monster Jam was supposed to be fun, certainly, but was also supposed to be a sort of cultural anthropological field trip.  I don’t know how to do that.  Or, at least, I don’t know how to do that without hurting Nayezca.  I don’t want her to think that I was somehow deceiving her into liking something that isn’t likeable, or wasn’t genuinely excited to go with her.  Because that’s not the case.  I think I simply didn’t prepare myself for the inevitability of the event and what that meant for the years of hype.

Megasaurus, the tamed robotic monster from a remote Polynesian island, however, was legitimately exciting.  Ironically.

 

If you don't think this is amazing, you have a problem.

Mine Time

As a parent, it’s important to expose your kids to and educate them about the world around us.  I do my best.  For example, we’ve been listening to a lot of Kanye West and T-Pain recently.  I’ve already told you about my ever-present campaign against McDonalds.  And when we go to the supermarket, we talk about which foods are in season and why it’s best to buy those and avoid the foods that arrive on a cargo plane from the Southern Hemisphere.

(Incidentally, Sonya has been keen on exposing my kids to Justin Bieber recently, as evidenced by her recent excursion with Nayezca to the movie theater to watch “Never Say Never”.  I tried to “educate” Nayezca about Justin Bieber’s exploits, sharing with her such morsels as, “Did you know Justin Bieber spits on puppies?”, “Did you know Justin Bieber kicks horses in their hooves?”, and “Did you know once Justin Bieber cut in front of an old person at the supermarket because he was selfish and didn’t want to wait his turn in line?”  Nayezca shrugged it off.  In other news, I’m now looking for an experienced divorce attorney who can get me full legal custody.)

So, in the spirit of exposing my kids to the world, we went with my brother and his two daughters today to explore the ASARCO Mineral Discovery Center, aka that big ass copper strip mine off the freeway in Sahuarita.  I wanted Nayezca to begin to understand what copper is, how we use it, and where it comes from.  I figured Adayah would be ok as long as I brought a cattle prod and a gummy bear.

As we queued up to get on the bus to go up to the “vista point”, I looked around and realized that we were surrounded by 30 old people doing the old people shuffle onto the bus.  Let’s be clear, I’ve got no beef with old people.  My dad is an old person and he’s good at the old people shuffle.  It was just a moment where I realized that this probably wasn’t going to be the exciting, invigorating trip to the copper mine I anticipated.  I know, you’re shocked.  How could a copper mine not be invigorating and thrilling?

"I know we could have gone to the movies or mini-golfing, but look! A strip mine! Aren't you having fun?"

The bus ride went smoothly, and I held onto hope that this would, in fact, be a life-changing event for Nayezca.  We looked across the vista into the open pit hundreds of feet deep while our guide rambled on about the volume of rock and ended every sentence with, “Oh, I got a story about that!”  And then I swiveled the little stationary binoculars and squashed Adayah’s finger.  In my zeal to show her the truck that can move 320 tons of rock, I forgot to notice her finger in the little gap between the base and the swivel.  She yelped, and then gave the scream where her mouth was open for twenty seconds but no sound came out.  That’s the, “I’m really hurt this time” scream.  I hurried her away from the rambling and tried to distract her by showing her the 8,000-pound tire on display, but to no avail.  Again, shocking that an 8,000-pound tire wouldn’t comfort a two year-old.

Adayah eventually regained some semblance of being a human being and we got back on the bus to go to the mill.  As our guide extolled copper’s virtues and berated the “environmentalists” opposing the next copper mine in Tucson, I tried to show Adayah the slurry tank but she was more interested in trying to nap on me.  I looked over and saw Nayezca and her cousins chasing each other, ignorant of the wondrous slurry tank on the other side of the fence.  I wanted to stop them, to point towards the slurry tank, and say, “How can you be playing right now when there’s an enormous tank of copper slurry right there?”  Instead, I looked back to the tour group and was subjected to an old person’s butt crack peeking out from his pants.

Sorry. I just figured if I had to deal with it today, so do you.

Our tour ended, the girls got a small piece of copper-rich rock, and we stopped to eat what remained of our lunch at a picnic table.  It was only then that the girls really perked up.  They ran around, they took silly pictures, they ate yogurt tubes, and poked jumping cholla cacti with sticks.  My brother and I talked about copper mining and the girls talked about how boring the copper mine was.  Apparently this wasn’t quite the trip I hoped for.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that if you asked Nayezca what copper is she would have no idea and if you asked Adayah about strip mining she’d associate it with intense pain in her finger (not necessarily a bad thing).  Nevertheless, I’m not going to give up on these expository trips.  They may not be “fun”, or life altering, but they’re important because they do, in some way, give kids an idea of where everyday things come from.  Next time, however, I’ll bring a Dora book.

"Hey, Daddy, thanks for taking us to the copper mine. It was so interesting. Next time, can you please take us to watch paint dry?"

I Am Afraid, I Think

Nayezca and I were listening to more rap this afternoon.  Fortunately, the Eminem song on the radio carried a positive message with it.  That meant that instead of making Turrets-esque sounds during bad words and sex and drug references, I felt empowered to discuss the song with Nayezca.

Me:  Wow, this song is amazing.  Do you know what he’s rapping about?

Nayezca:  No.

Me:  Well, he’s saying he’s decided to not do drugs anymore and that he wants to make some positive changes in his life.

Nayezca:  (distractedly looking at her bag of Valentine’s Day cards from school)

Me:  Hello?  Hey, is it really true you already ate the Nerds?  That sucks, that’s my favorite candy.

Nayezca:  Oh, what did you say Daddy?

Me:  I said he’s singing about not doing drugs anymore and becoming a better person.

Nayezca:  Oh.  What are drugs?

Me:  They’re those really fun things you fool around with in your late teens and 20s but keep you from getting government jobs if you don’t stay on top of your pee.

That whole sequence was true up until the last sentence.  What really happened was I stammered around with a bunch of “umms” and “wells” until I said something along the lines of, “Drugs are chemicals that do things to our bodies.  Some drugs are good, like medicine if we’re sick.  But sometimes people take drugs just because they like the way they make their bodies feel even though the drugs are really bad for them and their bodies.  And sometimes people can act really different if they’ve taken certain kinds of drugs.”  I feel like Danny Tanner.

"Just Say No to drugs. Can someone please pass me my Ambien?"

And now I’m stuck.  Nayezca is seven, so I’m pretty good with the implicit message that the drugs Eminem raps about aren’t good.  The problem, however, is that I don’t totally agree with that.  While I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you that drugs are great, I don’t buy the whole Nancy Reagan “Just Say No” bullshit either.  It’s a grey area.  Like I said, I’m stuck.  How do I communicate that drugs are, actually, a pretty complex issue and that experimenting with drugs doesn’t necessarily ruin people’s lives but still make sure Nayezca doesn’t do any experimenting herself?  (or at least not until she’s about 38)

"No I don't know anything about what you're asking me and, no, those googles don't make everything 'trippy'!"

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but Nayezca has whole-heartedly embraced my ethos of “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it”, as evidenced by her recent proclamations of, “I want to go to McDonald’s because I’ve never eaten there so I can’t actually say it’s gross.”  The best I can do is look at her and mutter, “You ate there when you were three.  It’s nasty, we’re not going.  And it made your friend Josh throw up once.”  This ethos is particularly problematic surrounding drugs.  Nayezca is also wise beyond her years, so I grimaced to myself while we were having our little drugs conversation because I thought she’d drop a “How do you know they’re bad?” or “Daddy you can’t say they’re bad unless you’ve done them.”  Fortunately, she didn’t.  Today.  But those questions will come, I’m afraid.

Given the amount of sports on television that I expose Nayezca to, I wouldn’t be surprised if she also throws out something along the lines of, “Daddy, remember when you said bad drugs do bad things for your body?  Well, how come the television says Viagra is a good drug but you need to go to the hospital if you have an erection that lasts for more than four hours?  And, also Daddy, what’s an erection?”  And that will be when I push a bong into her hands and run away screaming.