Break a Leg, It’s Christmastime

     Christmastime brings about a myriad of gatherings, celebrations, revelry and chaos. Among the rushes to random retail outlets to dispose of one’s income on the latest sale, the office parties where someone invariably deteriorates to a level of inebriation that leads them to become the fodder of the upcoming year’s legendary tales and the hobos walking down the streets of L.A. dressed in random Santa Claus garments in varying levels of disrepair, lies the school Christmas pageant.

     To be more precise, it was the pre-school Christmas concert (and I use that word as it’s the closest representation of what actually transpired) that my daughter’s school had put on for friends and family. It became apparent about a month previous that her class had been practicing singing Christmas songs, as she randomly started singing a very garbled version of “Jingle Bells” around Thanksgiving. Shortly thereafter, a notice was posted in her class that they would, indeed, be putting on a show for everyone, which automatically led to words like “precious” and “cuteness” being bandied about our home, with, of course, slight reservations about how the program would actually coalesce.

     The day arrived and we made certain to be at the school as the doors opened so we could try to find a seat which could give us some vantage point to record the night’s events. The three hundred other people in the room had the same idea, and of course, they showed up five minutes before we did, so while we didn’t get the best seat in the house, we had a great view of the embarrassment that was about to pour forth from that little, tiny stage. The show was comprised of exactly five songs, and those were arranged one each by age group. As I’m sure you can imagine, the prospect of trying to get a group of toddlers and pre-kindergarten age children to maintain their composure for more than one or two versions of a single song is much like stacking all of your fine china as high as you can and then attempting to carry it all down a flight of stairs while blindfolded…there will be carnage.

     As my daughter’s class is the youngest, they were the first class to sing, but they were preceded by a brief dance demonstration by the school’s dance troupe.  Dressed as little Christmas hula girls, the tiny dancers performed a totally unsynchronized version of Bing Crosby’s “Mele Kalikimaka”. Half a dozen little girls trying to say mele kalikimaka, by the way, is a comedy in and of itself and they could have spent twenty minutes just on that bit and I think the room would have been happy. There was one little girl, right in the middle of the group who absolutely froze on stage to the point where she wasn't even blinking. Her face was contorted in what looked like the beginning of a scream that never escaped, and there she stood, like a Christmasy hula version of Edvard Munch’s painting, forever aghast at the surrounding scene of onlookers, fake grass skirts and the gibberish Hawaiian that was being shouted from every direction. At the end of their performance, she was gently helped offstage where I’m sure she collapsed into a heap of emotional wreckage. I bet her parents are re-thinking the cost of those dance lessons.

     Then it was my daughter’s turn. Her class was led onstage by teachers at both ends of the line of students, much like a pair of trainers would lead a line of monkeys into a circus performance. Once onstage, my daughter was at first a little overwhelmed and she shrank from the spotlight as if she wasn't quite sure what was happening. Then, she saw Mommy waving to her from the crowd, and all was well with the world. So well, in fact, that her spirits were raised enough to make her explode with joy and start jumping up and down and flailing her arms about as if she were trying to fly away. In her fit of spastic outburst she flailed errantly and smacked herself in the face, which made her erupt in a resounding scream that could be heard throughout the entirety of the auditorium. Then, the music started. She regained her composure again once she heard the jingling of the bells come over the boom box, and each member of the little class started their own random toddler shuffle as the chorus to “Jingle Bells” began to play. At about the middle of the line “Dashing through the snow…”, my daughter decided to embed her finger in her nose at a depth of about the second knuckle and dig for treasure. Her exercise in cranial spelunking brought a roar from the audience, which made my daughter smile and start jumping up and down again. She pried her finger free and began dancing and jumping and spinning and paying no attention whatsoever to the choreography that had no doubt been meticulously planned. Of course, nobody on stage was doing anything that even remotely resembled “Jingle Bells”. A few were dancing the two year old dance, a few were clapping to their own beat, a few were standing still and staring out into the vastness of the audience before them, and of course a few were in tears. My daughter, between bursts of jumping and spinning, would stick her tongue out at the audience to get a laugh. Then, the random, seven foot tall, inflatable Grinch Who Stole Christmas collapsed in the corner by the stage and broke everyone’s concentration.  Finished or not, the music was stopped and the performance was capped by a poorly played Santa Claus who burst into the room (bearing the conspicuous outline of a pillow in his shirt and who, I’m sure, smelled faintly of whiskey) ringing a bell over his head and shouting, “HO HO HO.”  To a group of two year olds, a giant, red, hairy, deformed figure who is ringing a bell and shouting is an object of sheer terror that could only have burst into the room to eat everyone. As the menacing Kringle lumbered towards the stage, the group of children naturally burst into tears and tried to flee for their lives. My wife and I sat dumbfounded and looked at each other in sheer disbelief at the scene that had unfolded before us. It was an absolutely surreal experience.

Apparently a month of singing practice with a class of two year olds is utterly meaningless, and they probably could have started the day before and achieved the same result.  Hopefully they’ll tweak the program for next year’s performance. 

Thanksgiving: A Terror in Three Parts- Part 3, Friday: Welcome to Thunderdome

     When it rains in L.A., you might as well assume that the world is coming to an end. I spent most of my life in Florida, the land of the afternoon thunderstorm and home to monsoon like rains that could easily wash Los Angeles into Davey Jones' locker. But, because rain in L.A. is such a rare occasion, the slightest sprinkle not only generates news reports for days before and after (the question normally posed to the random public is some variation of “What are you planning to do/ What did you do during all of the unimaginably terrible weather”...it's like the L.A. version of interviewing trailer park dwellers after a tornado) but it sends Angelinos everywhere into a frantic survival mode. I'll refrain from detailing how after such inclement weather the freeways are always littered with the hulking remains of cars whose drivers haven't the comprehension of how to navigate wet streets, mainly because they have no idea where the switch that operates the windshield wipers is located and their misguided logic dictates that the best way to get through the rain is to drive faster.

So, when it rains, mommies and daddies have to have a place to take their children to play, since children, especially toddlers, can develop cabin fever and transform into raging maniacs of destruction in the blink of an eye if their attention is not held or they are unable to expend the apparently limitless superhuman energy that they possess. The answer to this, of course, is the indoor play place. This is not the type of play area you find in a questionable fast food restaurant where unfortunate, sweaty people dressed as some overstuffed mascot try to coerce you into eating coronary inducing synthetic food, but a large and elaborate indoor area with various structures, pits, swings and slides on which children can potentially cause grievous bodily injury to themselves or those around them. This was our Day-After-Thanksgiving adventure, our own personal Black Friday. This particular play place was crafted by an ingenious sadist (a Japanese business man, who according to my wife, “rocks a Kung-Fu mullet”) who walks around in workout clothes apparently making sure that the play structures are still standing and that no children have been maimed on his watch. This place offers an interesting opportunity for adults as well, as there is a café inside where mommies and daddies can enjoy lunch while they watch from a safe distance as children go careening about.

As my daughter is two, she thinks she is capable of anything, especially if there are other children doing it, regardless of how big they are. She was quickly shown otherwise by the “Swinging Palm Trees of Death” as I like to call them. The device in question is a large rotating set of swings that spin around a central post and the whole thing is cleverly disguised as a giant palm tree with branches that hang to the ground. Instead of seats, however, the end of the swing arm is what looks like a medicine ball that the children sit on whilst holding on for dear life. Once it gets going, it resembles a beach themed G-Force simulator like one would see in an old NASA training video. My daughter thought it would be great fun to try to grab onto the ball as it was spinning, and she held on just long enough to build up the momentum required to fling her toward the nearest wall, where she smacked into it Wile E. Coyote style.

After a brief fit of screaming, she moved to the ball pit. This ball pit is only accessible by climbing a steep ramp, then crawling through hamster-like tunnels on the second level and then by descending several platforms down to where the pit awaits. Of course, everything on that particular structure is toddler sized, except for the distance between the platforms one must navigate to get to the ball pit. Two year olds are adept enough to climbs down the platforms, but they aren’t quite tall enough or strong enough to pull themselves back up when either they or their parents want them out. Since the ball pit is surrounded by mesh and separated from the rest of the play area, the only way in or out is to traverse the aforementioned labyrinth. Slightly overweight and out of shape fathers are not best suited for this particular environment. As two year olds are want to do, they may spend anywhere from five seconds to ten minutes in the ball pit before trying to fruitlessly climb out, which then results in screaming for mamma or dada who must come to the rescue by climbing up the ramp, squeezing through the baby tunnels, then contorting themselves so they can lower themselves down, level by level until they reach the ball pit of doom, there I would then pick up my screaming child who would absolutely refuse to walk and carry her back up the ridiculously narrow passage of levels, through the tunnel of despair until we reached the opening where the ramp leads back down to main floor. This junction of tunnel and ramp is often where my screaming daughter would decide to break free and run down the tunnel to the other end where a giant slide would offer her an escape route back to the carnage of the play floor. Then I, shaking my head, would have to continue to crawl on my hands and knees toward the ramp opening before I could stand up and walk upright again and then down the ramp where I would pass my daughter as she was careening back up the ramp to make her way back to the ball pit where the process would start all over again within just a few minutes.

Three hours later when my wife and I had decided we had taken enough abuse, it was time to go. My daughter, of course was in the ball pit again and I thought, foolishly, that I could ask her to come out since it was time to go home. A few moms had taken up residence in the ball pit as they apparently got tired of making the trek and were sitting on the ledges, so my daughter thought that since they must live in the ball pit, she could ask them if it was ok to stay and that would overrule my decision. They were kind enough to look at me and chuckle as I made my way back to the pit to fetch my daughter who was now in full melt down mode as making her leave the pit was tantamount to a death sentence in her mind. My wife collected our things and met me at the base of the ramp (taking pictures, of course) as I hauled my screaming daughter out of that infernal maze of insanity and took her home for her nap.



It was a busy Thanksgiving week, indeed.

     

Thanksgiving: A Terror in Three Parts; Part 2- Thursday: The Home Invasion

     I don’t really have hobbies, per se. In my mind, hobbies are things that require a hefty investment of both money and time (neither of which I have in excess), and from what I've seen, hobbies are, in many instances, a means to escape one’s family. I suppose if I were to try to categorize my interests and label one a hobby, I would have to say that cooking probably falls closest to that mark. It’s something I enjoy doing, something I grew up doing, and I even did it professionally for several years. So, when Thanksgiving approaches, I normally start gearing myself up for an epic cooking marathon.

     It was not to be this year. We were invited by some very close friends to spend Thanksgiving with their family, a change from the norm as we normally host the Thanksgiving festivities at our house. My wife literally danced a jig at the prospect of me not disappearing into the kitchen like some mad scientist, only to emerge days later covered in rendered turkey fat and having bits of exploded cranberries lodged in whatever facial hair had grown during my self-imposed exile. I, however, was not as enthusiastic about the prospect. As the days crept closer and closer to Thanksgiving, I felt more and more uneasy. Two thoughts weighed on me with an almost unbearable persistence: first, I had no idea what to do with myself since I wasn't cooking (Playstation 3 solved that pretty quickly). And secondly, what would be the ramifications of unleashing my daughter in someone else’s home for a major holiday? My wife had the same thought, so being the resourceful, organizational mommy that she is, she did some research (I was busy venting my frustration over not cooking with the latest Batman video game). The answer she came up with was a bag of new toys from the dollar bin at Target. The thought was that new toys would grab her attention and keep her focus on something other than waylaying destruction on a very nice home in a very picturesque Los Angeles neighborhood.  

     The car ride to our destination was without incident. It reminded me of a scene in any random suspense or action film where the protagonists are approaching their enemy’s secret lair, basically unimpeded, and one says to the other, “It’s quiet…too quiet…” and it turns out to be ambush of epic proportions. It was indeed an ambush. People without children don’t really grasp the fact that young children will get into EVERYTHING… especially your antique Peruvian charango because it looks like a really cool guitar and it makes noise (I really do hope that it isn't broken). And your piano because, hey it makes noise when you hit it. And, look, you left your laptop open, let’s see what you’re working on and how it can be improved. And, oh, what cute kitty cats you have. Oops, they ran upstairs, I shall run upstairs after them and scare the bejeezus out of them. Ooooh, there’s the kitty cats’ litter box…let’s look for buried treasure. And oh, Mommy brought bubbles…I WANT BUBBLES, I WANT BUBBLES, I WANNA GO OUTSIDE. It was an absolute nightmarish tornado of toddler and cats and pretty blue cat litter and the accompanying musical score was performed by the striking of random musical instruments. And we hadn't even sat down for dinner yet.

     Finally, dinner was served (really only about half an hour had passed since we arrive, but it felt like days) and everyone took their places at the table. My daughter sat in my wife’s lap with her own little plate of food placed before her, and we made it about three seconds into the blessing of the meal before she burst into a chorus of “I WANNA GET DOWN I WANNA GET DOWN I WANNA GET DOWN I’M ALL DOOOONNNNNNEEEEE,” which burst through the moment of solemn quietness like a rock through a stained glass window. I let out an embarrassed chuckle in an unspoken attempt to apologize to the rest of the party, and my wife and I exchanged exasperated glances. My wife then quietly carried our daughter into the living room and busted out her secret bag of tricks. Our daughter plundered through the bag like some little Viking who was ransacking an unfortunate village’s treasure box. She found her prize and exclaimed, “I WANT PWAY-DOUGH” as she pulled it from the bag and held it up in triumph like she had just won the gold medal in crazy at the toddler Olympics. Why we would bring Play-Dough into someone else’s home when we know what happens when it rears its mushy little head in our home is beyond me, we might as well have brought plastic explosives. When you’re two, what do you do when you have a handful of Play-Dough? That’s right, you tear it into little bits and chuck it everywhere. And what isn't launched around the room is formed into Dali-esque shapes and deposited on the dinner plates of those who are attempting to enjoy their Thanksgiving meal. My wife and I are used to living in chaos, but for some of the other guests who hadn't spent a significant amount of time around our daughter, I assume they felt that the experience was akin to trying to eat a turkey dinner on an active battlefield.

     Dinner was enjoyed, for the most part, despite being peppered with interruptions from a toddler who would crawl under the table at one end and emerge at the other holding a randomly shaped chunk of Play-Dough which would then be shoved towards someone’s face with the explanation, “I MADE DIS FOR YOUUU…EAT IT!!” Everyone was a good sport about it and pretended to eat whatever concoction was being thrust at them. We decided it would be best to take our dessert to go and get our circus of rambunctiousness packed up and headed toward home so that everyone else could talk about us as they enjoyed the rest of their evening. As our host was generously packing our dessert for us, I slipped under the table to collect the neon blue shrapnel that had been littered everywhere. I emerged from beneath the table to our host’s surprise and befuddlement.

“Watcha doing down there?”

“Picking up bits of blue, I didn't want to leave it for you to find later.”

“That’s very nice.”

     It wasn't nice. It was the responsible thing to do. And it was the least I could for the reign of mayhem we unleashed at his family’s holiday gathering. Thursday was waning to its conclusion, but we still had Friday to contend with.