Dadding

Geek Punditry #131: Summer Morinings at the Movies

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Last Sunday I was out to lunch with the family (as we often do on Sundays) when I got an alert from the AMC Theater app on my phone. “Yo Blake!” the app said (I paraphrase). “We’re showing Minions: The Rise of Gru on Wednesday! Tickets are only three bucks for AMC Stubbs members! You want in?”

I looked over at my son, he and I both off from school for the summer, and said, “Hey Eddie, do you want to see a Minions movie on Wednesday?”

He did.

He posed like at least three of the characters in this image.

I’ve written before – extensively – about my love affair with movies, and more importantly, with movie theaters. Yeah, ticket prices have gone up. Yeah, the theaters can sometimes be filled with rude, obnoxious people. Yeah, I can’t pause the movie to go to the bathroom. Yeah, they show an obscene number of commercials before the movie actually starts. (I do not include movie trailers in the “obscene number of commercials.” I adore movie trailers – they can show as many of those as they want.) And if the movie I want to see isn’t one that I can bring a seven-year-old to watch, that means my wife and I have to arrange for somebody to babysit him, an operation that at times seems to require a level of planning and strategy that could have won the American revolution. But despite all of the problems associated with a visit to the theater, I still wholeheartedly believe that the best way to watch a movie is to do it in a darkened theater with an excited crowd.

Pictured: optimum movie excitement.

When we took Eddie for his first movie theater experience a little more than two years ago (I wrote about it here) I was nervous. I didn’t know if he would like it. Would it be too loud for him? Would he lose interest? Could he possibly stay in his seat that long? Even though we were taking him to see Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, would the movie itself simply fail to engage him? I imagine these are fairly common worries when a parent takes a kid to the movies for the first time, but I also know that I personally have a deeper love for the movie theater experience than the average parent does in this day and age. It was a real concern for me, that the kid I love so dang much would turn out to hate an EXPERIENCE I love so dang much. But I was delighted that the boy enjoyed himself. In the two years since then, we’ve brought him to the movies several times, and only once did we wind up having to leave because he couldn’t sit still. (I do not blame him – he was five years old and it was before his doctor and we managed to find an ADHD medication that really worked for him.) Last summer was the first time he actually ASKED us to take him to a specific movie, and while I may not have necessarily chosen The Garfield Movie as one of my all-too-rare cinematic excursions these days, he wanted to go to the movies! I was happy to oblige.

This summer – this month, in fact – is going to be the big one. The first time he sees a movie that’s not targeted precisely at kids. Next Friday Erin and I are taking him to see Superman. And again, I have felt pangs of nerves concerning this. Yeah, we’ve gone to the movies with him several times, but almost all of them have been animated movies. And the only one that WASN’T – Sonic the Hedgehog 3 – has a cast made up of 75 percent CGI characters, and TWO villains played by Jim Carrey, who is essentially a Looney Tune in human form. (Aside: It’s a shame they never made a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? with him in it – it could have been a masterpiece.) 

“Hedgehog season!”
“Echidna season!”
“Hedgehog season!”
“Echidna season!”

In my younger days, when I had the time to go to the movies two or three times in a week, it was a different experience. My friends and I would arrive at a theater sometimes not even knowing what we were going to see – we’d look at the schedule when we arrived and pick a film that was starting soon. Then after the first movie ended, we’d go out and look at the schedule and do it again. We would each pay for our tickets independent of one another, then go into the theater and sit wherever we wanted. We would get snacks, popcorn, or drinks, and that was the limit of what we could spend money on in a movie theater.

When I brought Eddie to the theater on Wednesday, I had purchased our tickets three days prior. I knew specifically that we were to be seated in Row G, seats 7 and 8. And nearly half the lobby had been given up to merchandise: not just candy and snacks, but toys, collectibles, t-shirts, and the ubiquitous popcorn buckets and drink cups that have become almost required for any tentpole film. I have mixed feelings about a lot of these changes. I don’t really object to the merchandise sales – if it’s good enough for concerts to help keep touring bands afloat, there’s nothing wrong with a movie theater selling stuff to remind people of their favorite films, after all. But like any sort of collectible market, it’s spun off a rather distasteful secondary market of people who swoop in without any particular love of a movie, buy up all the merch they can, and sell it on eBay at a markup. I hate flippers, people who take advantage of the care and affection others have for a film, a comic book, a creator. Although I didn’t have any intention of spending the eighty bucks AMC wants for a Galactus Popcorn Bucket when Fantastic Four comes out, it rankles me that if I WANTED to it would likely be sold out before I could get there, but I could score one for $200 online. 

“I AM GALACTUS! DEVOURER OF SNACKS!”

As for the assigned seating – I actually like this particular innovation. It takes off a little of the pressure of having to get to a movie early to get a good seat, which can sometimes be invaluable when you’re toting a little chaos gremlin like a child with you. Sure, there was a fun sense of camaraderie that developed in those days when we would stand in line for hours waiting to see Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (let’s not debate the movie itself, guys, I’m talking about the fun of spending the day amongst like minded fans, which is undeniable). But if I’m being perfectly frank, I’m not 20 years old anymore. The idea of standing in any line for two or three hours makes my spinal column start to itch in anticipation of the aches that are soon to come.

So I don’t mind at all knowing that I can buy tickets ahead of time (as I’ve already done for Superman) and be guaranteed a seat in a relatively low row, right in the middle, where I like it. The only problem with purchasing tickets ahead of time is when you’re getting a large group together, trying to coordinate it so that you all buy tickets in the same row. Either you all have to have a text chain to ensure everyone is buying the right tickets in the right place before some stranger winds up between you and your girlfriend, or you have to assign one person to buy the tickets all at once and then you pay that person back. In either case, it’s an added degree of hassle. But considering how long it’s been since I went to a movie with anybody other than my wife and son, it hasn’t been an issue for me in quite some time. 

But man, I love these summer bargain matinees. It’s not a new thing, mind you. Movie theaters have long pulled kids’ movies from past years back into theaters for mid-week screenings in the summer: hits from the past few years that are now easily available on a billion streaming services. Perhaps movies that the kids in question have already seen a dozen times. Movies that you don’t actually have to see in a theater, if all you want is to see the movie. That doesn’t matter to them. They get to go to the movies. Eddie loves the Minions. He’s seen all four Despicable Me movies as well as the first Minions film. As it happens, the only movie in the Minionverse he HADN’T watched yet was the second Minions film, The Rise of Gru, which also just happened to be the one AMC told me was coming back to the screen this week. So I bought tickets for the two of us for just $3 each and took him down there. And if you ask him right now, he could tell you all the things he loved about going.

He loves that it’s “like nighttime” in the theater, even in the middle of the day.

He loves getting to pick out snacks (it was Gummy Bears this time) and share a bucket of popcorn with his dad. 

He gets CRAZY excited when Superman shows up on the screen. (There wasn’t, technically, a Superman movie trailer on Wednesday, but we DID see commercials which used clips from Superman to promote Toyota, Dairy Queen, Progressive Insurance, and Milk-Bone Dog Biscuits, and that made Eddie happy). 

He liked the end of the movie, which happens at a Chinese New Year parade, complete with an impressive CGI fireworks display – and this kid loves fireworks. 

And ever since that one “bad movie” – the time when he couldn’t handle it and we had to leave – he gets very proud of himself for making it through a movie. He was beaming and smiling as we walked out of The Rise of Gru, terribly pleased that he’s grown up enough to go through a whole movie without having to leave. As we walked through the lobby towards the parking lot, he waved back and said, “Bye, AMC! See you next week for Superman!”

You’re ding-dang right, we will.

This doesn’t happen when we watch a movie at home. And I’ll never get tired of it. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He’s all a-tingle waiting for next Friday, and if Eddie wants to, he wants to take him to see Fantastic Four: First Steps, too. 

Geek Punditry #68: The Importance of Being Bandit (or) Yes, I Am Taking Advice From a Cartoon Dog

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A few weeks ago I had one of the scariest nights of my life. My son was briefly hospitalized, and my wife and I were told he would probably have to have his appendix taken out. The idea of someone cutting open my little guy terrified me, not the least because I knew he wouldn’t really understand what was happening, and I got very little sleep sitting in that hospital chair. The story had a happy ending, fortunately. In the morning the doctors reexamined him and determined that the discomfort he was feeling was not caused by his appendix after all and was most likely a particularly nasty viral infection, and we were sent home later that day. But the night before was horrifying. I want to tell you, though, about the bright spot. That actually came early on in the process: Eddie had been sick all day and in the afternoon began throwing up with alarming frequency, prompting me to take him to urgent care. There, the doctor on call examined Eddie and advised me to take him to the emergency room.

For a parent, this is way scarier than any haunted house.

Those two words, “emergency room,” sent me into a total PANIC. I started to tremble. My hands were shaking as I texted my wife, who was at work, to meet us at the hospital. I was shaking harder when I searched for the hospital with the Pediatric ER on Google Maps – this despite the fact that I myself was a patient at that same hospital some years ago, and I knew perfectly well where it was. At that moment, though, I didn’t know much of anything and I could feel myself babbling, with questions spilling out of my mouth as frequently as Eddie gives them to me on a good day. At that moment the doctor seemed to realize that – right then and there – his primary patient wasn’t the one in the most need of immediate care. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Hey, I have kids too. He’s going to be okay. Nobody knows the pressure on a dad, do they?”

I could have cried right then and there. If I didn’t have to get Eddie into the car to take him to the ER I probably would have. But that moment of strength and compassion from this doctor meant more to me than I could have possibly told him, because he’s absolutely right. Society has bizarre and, frankly, contradictory expectations of fathers. On the one hand, we are often seen as the “disposable” parent. Mothers are considered primary caregivers, stores and restaurants frequently neglect to put diaper changing stations in the men’s restrooms, in custody battles the final decisions overwhelmingly favor the mother, and never once has anyone seen my wife with our son and asked if SHE was “babysitting.” On the other hand, fathers are expected to be the provider, to give the family everything that is needed, to push their own needs aside up to and including their mental health, and to never, EVER allow a crack in the armor to show lest it be revealed that they are anything less than a demigod who always has it together and can do anything all by themselves and make everything turn out in the end. It’s a cocktail of unreasonable expectations and toxic disrespect.

This is not to say that it’s easy to be a mother, of course – nothing could be further from the truth. Moms are looked upon as the nurturers and the caregivers, the emotional core of a family, and there is an immense amount of pressure associated with that role. The difference, to me, is that mothers are usually (justly) celebrated for their contributions and sacrifices, whereas fathers are made the butt of jokes. Think about the difference in our respective holidays. On Mother’s Day, flower shops are emptied, restaurants are packed, and everyone reminds you to celebrate Mom. On Father’s Day, the punchline is about which crappy tie Dad will be given this year.

My wife is wonderful. My wife couldn’t be more supportive. That’s not where this pressure comes from: it’s all about the pressure that we’ve been told all of our lives to bring on ourselves. 

All of this is to say that Bandit Heeler is the best father on television.

Pictured: What I want to be when I grow up.

I shall try to keep my statements in praise of Ludo’s cartoon Bluey brief, but in case you don’t know, Bluey is an Australian cartoon about a family in Brisbane, Australia: six-year-old Bluey Heeler (seven after a birthday episode), her little sister Bingo, their mother Chilli, and their dad, Bandit. Creator Joe Brumm based the show on his own daughters and the way they used to play when they were little, and the majority of episodes focus on the games the children play and the way their parents (and, often, other assorted grownups) get sucked into the amazing fantasy worlds they create. The fact that the Heelers and the rest of the sentient inhabitants of this universe are all dogs is of utter irrelevance. 

Over the course of three seasons and over 150 seven-minute episodes, Bluey has become that rarest of phenomenon: a show that is loved by children, but absolutely adored by parents. Bandit and Chilli love their children completely, and what’s more, love each other just as much, and none of the Heelers are shy about showing it. In an era where so many TV families are made up of characters who seemingly can’t stand each other and remain together only because of a vague description of “family” that the thesis of the show often works to destroy, the Heelers are, to put it bluntly, Squad Goals. And Bandit in particular is the father that every father who watches it wants to grow up to be.

…usually.

TV dads, historically speaking, have largely fallen into one of two categories. In the early days of TV they were bland, plastic paragons of virtue like Ward Cleaver or Ozzie Nelson. Even by the 70s, when shows were beginning to allow a bit more of an edge, Howard Cunningham from Happy Days was a faultless (if loving) font of strength. Then a switch flipped and dads went from being carved out of marble to sculpted out of mud. TV dads in the 90s and 00s were buffoons. Either they were obnoxiously indifferent to the needs of their children like Al Bundy, or they were so stupid and vapid that they should probably, legally, not be allowed to have a child in their custody without adult supervision. Even the best dads of this era, like Home Improvement’s Tim Taylor, may have genuinely loved their kids, but were also often dangerously negligent in their actions and did incredibly boneheaded things in the name of comedy. It was good for a laugh, sure, but awful for the portraiture of dads in pop culture.

There HAS to be some sort of middle ground between these two.

(In the interest of painting a comprehensive picture I should mention that there WAS at least one great TV dad of this era, Heathcliff Huxtable, but real world circumstances have sadly made it virtually impossible to look upon him as a role model anymore.)

Bandit isn’t an idiot. He’s often a step ahead of his kids, playing their games but also using them to teach. In the episode “Bikes,” for example, he has Bluey observe the kids around them to learn perseverance, whereas in “Hotel” he teaches her how to compromise with her sister. Bandit is willing to become whatever is needed to keep the kids happy, and not even just his own kids. In “See-Saw,” he realizes that Bluey’s friend Pom Pom is feeling excluded because she’s so tiny (she’s a Pomeranian, you see, a small but hearty breed), so he sets himself up as the villain, sitting on the titular see-saw and refusing to budge until Pom Pom gets a chance to “save the day.” 

This is actually what I look like any time my wife says, “We may as well finish this pizza, it would be silly to just have them box up two slices.”

He’s a fantastic dad, but…and this is the most important part…he is not flawless. “Magic Claw” is about trying to teach his girls the value of hard work, only to have his efforts hilariously collapse around him as all they’re really interested in is playing the game. (There’s a great line in this episode where he says that the girls are learning a lesson AND cleaning the house at the same time, only for Chilli to snarkily reply, “Neither of those things are happening.”) In “Ice Cream” the girls each want a lick of the others’ dessert but spend so much time prevaricating over how big a lick they’re allowed to take that their ice cream melts away. Bandit hopes they’ll learn a lesson from this but, like a dad, he feels bad for them and winds up giving them his own ice cream instead.

Every Bluey parent can quote this scene with absolutely no help from my captions.

And sometimes, the world gets to Bandit. In “Stickbird,” as the family plays on the beach, Bandit is completely preoccupied. Something is quite clearly bothering him and he’s struggling so badly that he’s not entirely present for the childrens’ game. Although the show never tells us what, exactly, is eating at him, every father who watched that cartoon saw themselves that day. We don’t know why Bandit is struggling, but we DO know that he’s trying to contain himself for the sake of his family, and I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so seen by a TV show. 

The moment when every dad in the world saw themselves.

Many fans feel like the “Stickbird” mystery, the question of what was bothering Bandit, was solved in the most recent episode, the quadruple-length “The Sign.” I’m going to spoil “The Sign” now, so stop reading if you’re trying to avoid it, but I feel like pretty much everybody who cares has already seen it. And those who have seen it know that in this 28-minute blockbuster, Bandit Dadded the hardest he has ever Dadded. 

In “The Sign,” the Heelers are planning to sell their house and move because Bandit has found a new, higher-paying job in another city, which he says multiple times throughout the episode will allow him to give his children a better life. Already, every dad in the audience is nodding in understanding. The trouble is that none of the Heeler women want to move. Chilli puts on a brave face, but you can tell that she’s upset, Bluey openly campaigns against the move, and Bingo is perfectly happy with the whole thing until Chilli realizes that she doesn’t actually understand what “selling our house” means, after which she is devastated. Bandit struggles through the whole episode with this decision, believing that moving will mean a better life even though the message is clear that the rest of the family is happy with the life they have and they don’t want to chase some abstract idea of “better.”

What are you gonna do, Bandit?

In the final moments of the episode, the family that was planning to buy the house cancels the deal after finding a home they like more (it has a pool, you see). Bandit, taking this as “A” sign, rips “THE” for sale sign out of his yard and tosses it aside just before he’s tackled by his wife, who is sobbing with joy and adoration.

THIS IS A SHOW THAT IS OSTENSIBLY FOR PRESCHOOLERS.

Bluey is the most heartfelt show on television, and although there are several episodes that have left me in tears, there has never been one that left me unsatisfied. And for me, at least, it’s because in Bandit Heeler I see someone who I wish I could be, somebody I can be on my best days and someone I can turn to for strength on my worst days. And I’m not alone. Fathers all over the world have taken up Bandit as the role model we need – someone who loves his family unconditionally, is not afraid to express those emotions, and shows us that sometimes it’s okay to not be okay. We don’t have that. The world has told us for decades that we’re not allowed to be human, that feet of clay must be hidden, that we are to have no Kryptonite. Bandit tells us that’s BS, and because of that, there are a lot of dads reaching out to talk to other dads who understand that pressure the doctor told me about.

Um…not this doctor.

When Eddie was in the hospital, after the doctors told us that it wasn’t his appendix after all and that he was going to be okay, I felt awash with relief. I texted my own father and the rest of the family to let them know the news. I sent messages to concerned friends, to those English Teacher Friends I mentioned last week, and called my grandmother to let them all know that the cause for fear was over. 

And then, because I’d been holding the emotion in for nearly 24 hours at that point, I got on Facebook and went to a group I’m in called “Bandits.” And I started to type. “Fellas, everything is okay now, but it’s been a rough night…”

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, now complete on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform, and hitting print on May 4th! He could write a dozen columns about how great Bluey is, but right now, he’s in a Bandit place. 

Geek Punditry #8: The Magic Candle

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The digital revolution has made it easier than ever for people to make movies and TV shows. You can do virtually every job that’s absolutely necessary to make a film with nothing more than a smartphone and the right apps, and people have begun to do so. This does nothing to increase the talent of the people involved, of course. Even that doesn’t seem to be a hard obstacle, though, if the YouTuber my son watches called “Granny” is any indication. (She’s a nutcase who puts on a wig and a muumuu and rides an adult tricycle to fast food joints and orders food in a horrifically cloying voice. Although I do not advocate this behavior, I guarantee you she’s gotten a lot of saliva in her food.) What’s more, there are thousands of avenues to share the content – dozens of streaming services, almost as many social media platforms. For an entire generation, consuming media in bite-sized tidbits on your phone is not only the norm, it’s the preferred method of being entertained.

God, do I hate that.

Pictured: Evil.

I know I’m going to sound like a crotchety old man, but there’s a good reason for that: I am a crotchety old man. I don’t like watching stuff on my phone, not when I’ve got a perfectly good television. And I don’t like 30-second bursts of “content.” I’m a storyteller, and when I watch something I want to watch a story. And while telling a satisfying story in 30 seconds is certainly not impossible, it is tremendously difficult, and there are very few people on TikTok who have proven themselves up to the task. No, while my students may swarm around a clip of someone sending a pizza to the wrong house and giggle as though there’s something clever about that, I’d rather watch ten episodes of a science fiction epic telling a serialized story that gives time to develop character, theme, and an entertaining arc. 

Even a television is not the optimal way of viewing a story, though, although that’s how I do most of my viewing. It’s fine, don’t get me wrong, especially in this day and age when your home system can have an amazing picture and stereophonic 4-D quantum sound, if you’re the kind of person who has the sort of money to burn on such a system. But that doesn’t do it for me – nothing does it for me – like sitting in a movie theater. 

Optimally with these guys.

I know all the arguments against going to the movies, of course. Yes, it’s expensive (and just getting moreso, with AMC’s recently-announced scheme to charge more for better seats). Yes, the concessions are overpriced. There are frequently rude people in the theater as well: people who talk during the movie, people who come in late or trip over you while spilling their popcorn, people who (and this should be a criminal offense) turn on their phones, the glare blinding you at a critical moment of the narrative. And damn it, you can’t pause it to go to the bathroom. There are dozens of very solid arguments in favor of watching movies at home instead of in a movie theater.

My point is: I don’t care.

All of those complaints are true, valid, and they annoy me as much as anyone else, but the long and short of it is that when I’m excited to see a motion picture, there is no better environment in which to do it than in a darkened room with minimal distractions surrounded by other like-minded people who are there for the same thing. The first movie houses were just vacant vaudeville theaters with a screen put into place, but from the very beginning they found the perfect way to experience a film. When you watch a movie at home, it’s far too easy to get pulled out of the world of the story. The sun is coming in through the window, you’re getting Facebook notifications and text messages, your child keeps handing you his magna doodle and telling you to draw a picture of the Burger King logo. Those things don’t happen in a movie theater – or at least they shouldn’t, if you turned your phone to “do not disturb” like a civilized human being. 

What’s more, no matter how great the home theater experience becomes, the “home” part will never be able to match the thrill of being in a theater with hundreds of other people who are there for the same thing as you. Think about the first time you saw Avengers: Endgame. When Thor’s hammer lay on the battlefield and was picked up by a mysterious figure, the room grew silent. Moments later, when it smashed Thanos in the face and returned to Captain America’s hand, the theater exploded. I have never experienced a simultaneous eruption of joy in a movie theater to rival that moment, and I don’t know that I ever will again. 

A moment this awesome cannot be replicated at home.

Think about Attack of the Clones. It is, if I’m being honest, my least favorite Star Wars movie, but I will always treasure the memory of the midnight screening I attended and how the fans roared when Yoda took out his lightsaber for the first time. Even bad movies are made more fun with an audience. Nobody is going to argue that the Green Lantern movie was great cinema, but there was a load of fun to be had in my New Orleans-area screening because the movie was filmed in our area, and we all laughed together as we saw familiar streets and landmarks that they tried to pass off as being in California.

I’ve seen a lot of great movies in my life, and I’ve seen a lot of them at home. But every great movie experience I can remember happened in a theater. It’s like being in a more benign version of Plato’s cave, a magic candle shining excitement on the screen. You can’t do that at your house.

Movies serve as landmarks in my memory, too. I remember, as a child, going to the movies with my parents, my brother and sister, and each time considering it a treat. I know that I saw Ernest Goes to Camp, Santa Claus: The Movie, Batteries Not Included and Masters of the Universe that way. I remember seeing Forrest Gump with my dad in a sadly-defunct dollar theater the week before I graduated high school. I wish I knew what the first movie I ever saw in a theater was, but unfortunately my memory isn’t that good.

I got older and my friend Jason and I started going to the movies almost every weekend, sometimes two or three movies a week. Jason ran a video store back when those still existed, so it was market research for him, but we both just loved the experience of going, of watching, of holding out our thumbs to indicate approval or disapproval for the trailers that flickered across the screen. It was with Jason, watching the wrestling movie Ready to Rumble, that I started to think about superheroes being run like the WWE, a germ of an idea that eventually led to my first novel, Other People’s Heroes. Thanks, awful movie! 

If you love my writing, thank this movie. If you hate my writing, blame this movie. I do.

I know the first movie Jason and I saw at the local Palace Theater the weekend it opened (The Lost World: Jurassic Park.) I know the first movie I saw with my girlfriend Erin (Madagascar), the movie we saw the night before I asked her to marry me (Skyfall), the last movie we saw before our son was born (The Dark Tower) and the first movie we left Eddie with a babysitter to watch (It Chapter One – my history with Erin is inexorably tangled with the works of Stephen King, a story which will probably be its own column at some point). 

All of this is to say that on Tuesday I added another memory to the cinematic roadmap of my life: the first movie we took our child to see in a theater.

I need to explain a few things to help you understand just how significant this is to my family. I don’t know that I ever really believed I would get to be a father. It just wasn’t something that I thought was in the cards for me, and I’ve never been happier to be wrong. Being Eddie’s dad is the greatest thing in my entire life. But it hasn’t been free of challenges. Some time after Eddie turned one year old and he still wasn’t talking, we started to get concerned, and we eventually managed to confirm that he’s on the autism spectrum. Any child comes with challenges, but his were different from many others. He started reading early and he’s terribly smart (this is not just a proud parent talking, we’ve been told this by numerous doctors and teachers), but he also tends to fixate on things like logos and clocks. His obsession with time in particular is perplexing to me. And of course, there was the talking, which for the longest time he simply was not interested in doing.

He talks now, he virtually never stops talking now, but there are a lot of milestones in his life that have come later than usual. It’s terribly difficult to get him to sit still, he has trouble with disruption to his routines, and sometimes he has trouble with extreme stimuli. When he was two years old, for instance, we took him to my niece’s Christmas pageant at school. As soon as the audience applauded at the end of the first number, he began to scream in terror. I had to take him out in the lobby and sit with him there until the show was over. (Jason was actually there too, keeping us company, as his wife was one of the teachers at that school.)

So we were nervous. I was worried that he wouldn’t be able to deal with crowds and the stimulation of a movie screen, which would have made me terribly sad. Like I said last week, I don’t want to force my fandoms on the boy, but from the moment I knew we were going to be parents I wanted to share the things I loved with him.The idea that it might not be possible was heartbreaking.

But he’s older now, and he’s dealing with things better than he used to. He’s no longer scared of fireworks, for example, and this school year we brought him to another Christmas pageant and a band concert with no problems. So this week, with Eddie and I both out of school for Mardi Gras and assuming it wouldn’t be too crowded, we decided to finally try our hand at taking him to a movie theater. 

The only kid-appropriate movie playing was Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, so we got our tickets, which with my Stubs membership and the “discount Tuesday” promotion meant  the three of us got to go to the matinee for less than $20. This, Erin said, made it easier to accept the fact that if Eddie wanted to leave, we’d have to just eat the ticket cost. What bothered me, though, was less the ticket price and more the fact that I have never walked out of a movie in my life. No matter how atrocious the film may be, I soldier on so that I can sound informed when I call it a piece of crap. It’s a matter of honor.

But for my son, I would take that risk.

Eddie’s first theater experience.

Anyway, we got to the theater, we bought the boy some Sour Patch Kids and an apple juice, got a bucket of popcorn for the family, took our seats, and crossed our fingers.

I haven’t seen all of the movies in the “Shrek Cinematic Universe,” but The Last Wish is far and away the best of those I have seen. I never would have expected it from this movie, but the film turned out to be a serious meditation on aging and mortality with a positive and uplifting message about the importance of family and living life to the fullest. It was deep and meaningful, but without sacrificing moments of genuine comedy. The animation was gorgeous as well. Rather than giving us the plastic CGI that early Dreamworks movies sported, Erin pointed out that director Joe Crawford was borrowing visual cues from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, with the same sort of staccato motion and faux-painted look to the imagery. It was lovely to look at and fun to watch.

More importantly than any of this, though, is that Eddie watched the whole thing.

He doesn’t always “watch” things at home. We’ll put on his cartoons and he’ll laugh and dance with the music, and his ability to pick up on a tune is wicked sharp, but he is easily distracted (even without text messages coming in) and wanders around the room, bouncing from one toy or activity to another, often oblivious to the entertainment on the screen. Here, with the lack of distractions, he kept his eyes on the film most of the time. He laughed at some of the funnier bits. He smiled a lot (I know this because I was watching him as much as the screen). And yes, he got a little antsy, looking at my watch frequently, although that is as much because of his obsession with clocks and time as it is anything else. He did ask “How much is left on the timer?” three times, but he never complained.

It’s warming my heart. Because again, I don’t want to force him to do things he doesn’t want to do, but if he enjoys going to the movies, I’m going to take him as often as I can. Sure, not as much as I went to the movies back in the day, I mean…I’m not going to take him to see Scream VI no matter HOW big a fan he is of Courtney Cox. But when there’s a movie for him, I want to bring him. He seemed into the trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie, coming in April. Pixar’s entry this summer, Elemental, looks cute. Heck, by the time Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse hits this fall, he may even be ready for that.

These were the things that went through my head as we watched the movie, of course. The real litmus test would be how he felt after the movie was over.

After we walked out of the theater, I asked him if he had fun. He said he did. I asked if he liked the movie with the cats. He said he did. He often agrees with random things, though, so I wasn’t sure if he was happy about it until later when asked to recap his day.

“What did you do today, Eddie?” we asked him.

His face beamed like it was washed with the light of that magic candle and he proudly proclaimed “I went to AMC Palace! I went to the movies!”

“That’s so great! What did you see at the movies?”

“Cats!”

Okay, so he’s still got some learning to do.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He promises that this column won’t be about his kid EVERY week, but…hell, it’s gonna be about his kid whenever it feels appropriate. It’s his blog, after all.

Geek Punditry #7: Sharing the Love

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Italian really is the language of love…and billionaire ducks.

Earlier this week, some of my students asked me what I got my wife for Valentine’s Day. They seemed to approve of my answer (tickets to a concert she wanted to go to) and then asked what Erin gave me. At that point, I paused for a moment, trying to decide how to answer the question. The answer was wonderful – my wife went on eBay and found the recently-released 3500th issue of Topolino, the Italian Disney comic book series, which came bundled with a figure of my favorite Disney character, Scrooge McDuck. The thing is, how do I explain this to a group of high school seniors without coming across as a gigantic nerd?

Then I got over myself, because…hell, just look around. On one bulletin board in my classroom is a collage of superhero and sci-fi images clipped from magazines and catalogs. There is a shelf of Superman-family Funko Pops, a set of Eaglemoss Enterprise models, several magnets from the LEGO Minifig of the Month Club, and a Star Trek: Lower Decks calendar on the wall. There is literally no denying my heritage as a geek. It is, in fact, something I have long since decided to embrace.

I challenge you to come up with an adequate definition of “Geek” that does not apply to the person in this picture.

That’s part of what being a geek is, really. Sure, the dictionary may say something about biting the heads off chickens, but in the modern context I propose the following definition for the term. “Geek (noun): One who loves a particular fandom to the extent that it becomes an element of their personality.” You should note that this definition passes no judgment, nor does it specify the type of fandom. It can be a movie, a TV series, a comic book, or a video game. It can be music or sports or science or history. You can be a geek about pretty much anything you love, so long as you love it wholeheartedly. Nor does it imply exclusivity: one is fully capable of being a geek about multiple things. In truth, I think almost everyone is a geek about something. It’s just that those of us in genre fiction have chosen to fully embrace the term.

Geekery is contagious as well, spread through casual contact. It happens when you tell your friend how much you liked a movie, when you walk around in public wearing a T-shirt for your favorite band, when you get in someone’s car and they’re listening to a podcast, or when enough of your students are carrying around the same book that you finally break down and read it to find out what all the fuss is about. And like any germ or virus, the longer you are exposed to any particular strain of Geekery, the more likely you are to begin exhibiting symptoms yourself.

Which brings me to my five-year-old son, Eddie.

Any kid of mine would, by virtue of the fact that I’m there, have grown up in a house full of comics and books and movies, watching cartoons and seeing superhero T-shirts almost any time I’m not dressed for work. And when kids are very young, before they start exhibiting their own preferences and fandoms, we as parents have a tendency to dress them in our own. From the beginning, my kid had onesies and pajamas featuring superheroes and spaceships, his plates bore the likenesses of characters from the cartoons that we liked, and he had pacifiers featuring the logos of both the New Orleans Saints and the Pittsburgh Steelers. And our friends and family just fed the monster – two of the gifts we received at Erin’s baby shower included a Batmobile walker from some of my aunts and uncles and a lovely toy chest handmade by our friends Jason and Andrea, decoupaged with panels from Superman comic books. 

What I’m getting at is that Eddie never had a chance.

Eddie’s favorite part of every episode.

In my defense, though, it’s not just my geekery that he’s been exposed to. I may be the reason he jumps up and giggles at the sweeping vistas of outer space in the beginning of every Star Trek episode, but my wife is the reason that when he started learning to identify shapes he could pick out the circle, the square, the triangle, and the Millennium Falcon. Erin is a geek too, you see, and fortunately the Venn diagrams of our respective geekeries have a lot of overlap. We both love genre movies and TV shows, we both enjoy musicals, we both like sitcoms. That concert I got her Valentine’s tickets for? It’s the music of John Williams. We blend.

Even in those places where the overlap isn’t perfect, there’s enough that we enjoy what the other is bringing to the table. She’s a little more into horror movies than I am, I’m a little more into comic books than she is, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t each appreciate the other’s fandoms as well. We just, like any two individuals on the planet, lean a little more in certain directions than the other, and that is reflected in our parenting. When Eddie was a baby the joke was that you could tell who dressed him on any given day based on whether his clothing featured the Grateful Dead or Spider-Man.

“Svengoofie!”
“No, it’s…you know what? Close enough.”

Over time, he started to express his own love for our things in various ways. For example, when I turn on the FreeVee app, he begins to sing the theme to Night Court. He’ll walk into the comic book shop with me and immediately identify the logos for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Superman, Batman, etc. At only five years old he sings along to the opening themes for Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax, a feat that Albert Einstein himself never accomplished in his entire lifetime! And if you ask him what we watch on Saturday night, he will proudly exclaim “Svengoolie on MeTV!” (Actually, he pronounces it “Svengoofie,” a misarticulation I believe Rich Koz himself would greatly approve of.) 

I couldn’t let the fact that this should not exist prevent me from getting one.

It’s not that we want to force our geekdoms on our child, it’s just an inescapable byproduct of having us as parents. Even once he got old enough to express his own preferences, ours tended to creep in. For instance, when he was two or three years old we learned that Eddie loved cars, and since then he has amassed a Hot Wheels collection that would make Jay Leno jealous. And although he is not picky about what cars he gets, with us as parents it is inevitable that assorted Batmobiles would work their way into the fleet, to say nothing of things like Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine, vans with Justice League murals on the side, and the occasional USS Enterprise (which is Hot Wheels brand even though it has no wheels. It doesn’t make sense to me either. I bought one for Eddie and one for myself.) If you go through his books (which he loves) you will see an extensive library dedicated to Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Bluey, and trucks, but also a Little Golden Book starring the Universal Monsters and an alphabet book based on Jaws. 

The job of a parent is to teach their child how to be a kind and functional adult, even for those of us whose own functionality is questionable at best. Part of that, I sincerely believe, is being able to choose those things that you love, and that you love them without fear. And sure, sometimes that may result in your kid latching on to something you don’t like. This is especially true when your child is very small and they discover something like Blippi. (For those of you fortunate enough to not know what I’m talking about, “Blippi” is a guy in orange suspenders who prances around indoor playgrounds in a manner that any reasonable judge would consider grounds for a restraining order, then puts videos of it it on YouTube. Blippi is the opposite of entertainment. He is like a bad Saturday Night Live parody of a children’s show host. His videos run on an unending loop in the darkest level of Hell. My son loves him and he is now a millionaire.) 

But that’s okay. Because it’s his thing, so I suck it up and tolerate it and even read the stupid Blippi alphabet book when Eddie asks me to, because I know that once I’ve washed my hands of it he’ll come back later with something like his Ghostbusters Little Golden Book, and that makes it better.

The way I see it, if my son grows up able to demonstrate his love for a fandom in a healthy way (read: not on Reddit), I’ll have done my job.

And as long as he knows that Saturday night is for “Svengoofie,” so much the better.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. In addition to the Uncle Scrooge figure, his wife also gave him the idea that led to this week’s column. If it weren’t for her you may have just read 1500 words lamenting the Ultraverse or something. Thanks, Erin!

Dadding: Not All Kids Are Cute

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Nobody wants to admit it, but the truth is, not all kids are cute. Let’s be frank here: YOUR kids are cute. And when I say “your,” I don’t necessarily mean only the ones that sprang from your loins. Nieces, nephews, grandchildren, any kid you have a personal connection to is adorable. Until they learn the skills that keep us alive, such as fishing or filing an expense report (neither of which I can do), cuteness is their primary survival trait. But the truth is that for most adults, this benefit is limited when it comes to children not within our immediate sphere of community. The rest of them are a crapshoot, and most of them may as well be an uncooked meatloaf in the cute department. 

If you think I’m exaggerating, I invite you to go to a dance recital some time. The hall will be packed to the gills, but every single person in the audience is there to see exactly one kid. The other kids are just people who may potentially be standing in front of your little darling when the time comes, the asshole. The only people who care about more than one kid are families with multiple children in the show, and these are easily spotted outside the hall begging for gas money once they’ve finished paying for the lessons.

Dance recitals are one of America’s biggest rackets, after insurance companies. Think about this: parents give these studios hundreds of dollars — perfectly good dollars, dollars they could use to buy their children food, or meth. In return, the studio spends the entire school year taking the kid for an hour a week and teaching them the same three dance moves. (Those moves, in order of performance, are the hula hoop, the toe tap, and the walk off the stage waving.) After ten months of intensive training, you get to watch your kid do this for six minutes, then sit for three hours through everybody else’s children doing the same thing. Granted, I am speaking mainly of the younger children here. Older students get more intricate dance moves, such as the alternating toe tap and the gyrating hips of a nature that got Netflix in trouble because eight-year-olds were doing it. Eventually, the ones who don’t quit dancing because a new game came out for the Switch may reach a level of legitimate performance, even of — dare I say it? Art. Unfortunately, by the time these older students take the stage, the audience has seen so many hula hoops and toe taps that they have completely checked out and are thinking about what the score of the game is, because for some damn reason they always do these things during the finals. 

This is not to imply I have any sort of moral superiority here, of course. Anyone who follows me on social media knows I am a complete whore when it comes to talking about my kid, because unlike all these wieners on stage I’ve never even heard of before, my kid is awesome. It’s that survival trait I mentioned before. Parents are biologically predisposed to believing their own children are the most amazing thing that has ever been placed on the Earth, which is fortunate because otherwise we would yeet them out the window the first time they somehow manage to take the bathroom door off its hinges. Parenthood is, in fact, a sexually transmitted disease that carries with it a mild mental disorder: not a dangerous one, just one that inclines you to be more charitable when your child stares at your bowl as if he doesn’t have a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios from the same damn box, so why does he want to shove his filthy hands into yours?

I cannot tell you how many nights I have gazed upon my sleeping child and said to my wife, “He’s beautiful. He’s perfect.” It’s as if I have completely forgotten that two hours ago I was embroiled in a bitter argument with him because he has learned to spell the word “B-L-U-E,” which is great, but now he is taking violent exception to my collection of Blu-Rays for failing to live up to his standards. 

The good news is that this is a social contract most of us have cheerfully agreed to abide by. When a parent shows us a picture of a child who has utterly failed to properly place spaghetti in their mouth instead of all over their face, we smile and say, “Aw, that’s so cute!” instead of what we’re actually thinking, which is “Aw, he’s FOURTEEN.” So as a parent, I would like to publicly thank all other decent human beings for pretending to be interested when I begin to wax poetic about how awesome my kid is, even though I know a large percentage of people could not possibly care less. In exchange, I promise to continue to do the same when you tell me about your kids, and I won’t even bring up the fact that my kid can read The Monster at the End of This Book out loud (he does a great Grover impression, by the way), whereas your husband can’t even do that. This is the way that we will survive as a society. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He had to tell his son to stop climbing the windowsill four times during the composition of this piece. 

Dreams, y’all.

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Dreams, y’all.

This is kind of long, but read to the end. It’s worth it.

I had a dream where I was pushing Eddie’s stroller through a transportation center; we’re waiting to meet some people and then catch a bus or something. Erin is on her way there. And as we’re standing around talking, I feel somebody squeeze my butt. Underneath, like REALLY intrusive and uncomfortably. So I look at the person who did it and I tell them to stop — that it’s not funny, you’re a grown adult, cut it out. I turn away and resume my conversation.

And it happens again.

I spin back on the person who did it and I start yelling. This is NOT right, this is NOT funny, it’s embarrassing and invasive and you–

And while I’m yelling… It happens AGAIN.

I reach down and grab it and I’m holding on to a kids toy fishing pole. The person poking me with it works there and is laughing. I grab the pole and break it over my knee and I start shouting at him, while at the same time trying to apologize to the person I thought had done it in the first place. I’m fuming. I walk outside to calm down and call Erin and tell her what happened. After a few minutes I go back inside and I’m apologizing to the people we’re with for causing a scene, while the manager of the place is scolding the guy who was poking my ass.

And it happens AGAIN.

I grab the hand of the person who is doing it and, without even looking to see who it was, I PUNCH THE GUY SQUARE IN THE FACE. This is something I have never done in my life, but at this point I’m so angry and hurt and violated that I don’t have any other option. I smash his face in, and while I’m whaling on the guy…

IT HAPPENS AGAIN.

Now EVERYBODY in the place is grabbing my ass in the SAME SPOT, laughing because they think it’s funny that I’m reacting this way. I start to run and they keep after me, grabbing and laughing and laughing and grabbing and–

And I wake up. It’s one of those times you’re glad to be awake but confused and a little shaken up by how vivid and strange the dream was, but at least it was over–

AND. IT. HAPPENS. AGAIN.

Well now I’m FREAKING out, because the dream is over but WHAT THE HELL. And I reach behind me to solve the mystery–

And I grab Eddie’s foot. The little squirt was in bed with us, and sometimes he sticks his feet under us because it’s warm. And his foot. Was. Twitching.

And that’s how my adorable, precious, angelic little son nearly gave me a panic attack while we were both asleep.

Children’s Programming

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If you have a child in your home, this means you will eventually be subjected to… drumroll please… children’s programming. Parents have had to deal with this since the advent of television, and while it’s easy to declare that today’s children’s TV is the worst of all time, the truth is that most kid shows have always sucked. I still occasionally apologize to my father for all the hours he spent sitting through episodes of He-Man when I was a kid.

Are there exceptions? Of course. Animaniacs was brilliant. Phineas and Ferb was a gem. But just like there are a thousand composers we’ve forgotten about for every Mozart, every Voltron has dozens of Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills.

tiny beatsErin recently discovered a show on Hulu’s “baby” channel called Tiny Beats. In this show, bugs hear a strange sound and investigate it. Wordlessly. Every episode. While the same music plays. Over and over again. I am certain that when a sinner arrives in Hell, they hear the music from Tiny Beats on a permanent loop.

After I pointed this out to her, Erin flipped through Hulu Babies for an alternative. We wound up on a show called Hungry Henry. When she clicked play, a cat in a sombrero appeared on our TV and said, “Who is huuuuuuuuuuuungry?”

I looked at Erin. “I already like this better than the last show. I relate to Henry.”

HenryOn the show — and I must warn you, there are spoilers here — Henry went to a restaurant where the menu only has pictures and ordered “hot corn.” The chef then prevaricated for a few minutes until he confessed that — this was the dramatic act one turn — he had no corn. Henry, undaunted, set out on a quest to discover where corn comes from and bring it back to the restaurant instead of just going home and making it himself.

“I want this to be the whole show,” I said. “I want every episode to be Henry going to this same damn restaurant and ordering something, and they’re out, and he has to go find it.”

The second cartoon began. Henry went back to the restaurant. He ordered orange juice.

“Oh Henry, I’d be happy to make you orange juice, but I’m all out of oranges.”

“That IS the show!” I cheered. “This is BRILLIANT!”

So I highly recommend Hungry Henry for all you parents out there. And stay tuned next fall when I premiere my new show, Dumbfounded Douglas, about a dog whose wife sends him to the hardware store for a different mechanical part each episode, but the dog has no idea what he’s looking for and has to get an employee named Larry to help him. It’s going to be a smash.

You may have heard, Blake and Erin have a baby, so he hopes you’ll allow him to remind you he’s got a bunch of books and short stories for sale on Amazon, and suggest you follow his author’s page on Facebook.

Dad Drain

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Hey, all — a quick update. I certainly haven’t forgotten my vow to fill you all in on the tumultuous week of Eddie’s birth, and I’ve got every intention of talking about the ups and downs of parenting (for example, the fact that a loose nipple wound up soaking both the baby and myself in formula at 3 in the morning today.) However, as anyone who has ever had a newborn can certainly attest, those first weeks are draining. Erin and I have been about as tired as we’ve ever been, and even now that Eddie is sleeping a bit better overnight (a bit, I stress), between taking care of him and keeping up with the day job, I’ve been too pooped to pontificate lately. Fingers crossed that this will change soon, because heaven knows I’ve got an awful lot to talk about. In the meantime, all is well.

The Name Game

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20170830_162250Our son, Edward Wallace, was born on August 30. But I’ve still got several “Dadding” blogs written during the pregnancy period. Before I get into the new stuff about active parenthood, I’m going to finish the saga that got us here. Including this post, which I wrote back in February, but that I wasn’t ready to share until now.

Name Game
(In which Erin and I prove that naming your child does not necessarily require an executive order)

Frankly, I don’t know why some people act like naming a child is a big deal. Erin and I did it over dinner. And that wasn’t even the purpose of the dinner, it just happened to come up in conversation while we were waiting for our Copeland’s King Cake Cheesecake (which we highly recommend, by the way). It was probably less than an hour from the time we started discussing it until we had settled on our choices. Already, we decided, we were amazing parents.

It’s odd — when it comes to choosing a title for a story I’ve written, I agonize for days, but naming a kid? No problem! Erin said I was the same way when it came to picking our wedding date. “I just said ‘When do you want to get married?’ and you said ‘How about June 14’?” she said. In fairness, though, once you settle questions of venue and availability, your actual wedding date doesn’t really matter all that much unless you’re choosing it for sentimental reasons, like the day you first met or Stan Lee’s birthday. Picking a name — that’s a more substantial decision.

When my sister was most recently pregnant, she chose a name in a very traditional way. She got a book (To Kill a Mockingbird, I think) and started highlighting all the names she liked, then she gave the book to her husband so he could do the same thing, then she grew increasingly frustrated as it became more and more apparent that he’d totally forgotten the book existed. She finally settled on her baby’s name when a time-traveler from the future appeared and begged her not to name him “Ethan.”

“Why? Will he become an evil dictator or something?”

“No. There are just way too many people named ‘Ethan’ 20 years from now.”

Despite the brevity of our conversation, I know that choosing a child’s name is significant. You’re setting the tenor for their entire life, after all. You don’t name a kid “Jarvis” unless you want to lock him into a future as a butler. “Bambi” has a 79 percent chance of becoming a stripper. Any Wu-Tang name will either land them in jail or on the Billboard charts, so you’re rolling the dice there. All I’m saying, though, is that once we eliminated names we definitely didn’t want, it wasn’t too hard.

The only real point of contention between us came when Erin suggested the name Patrick. It’s a fine name with a proud legacy and it wonderfully represents her family and her Irish heritage, and I would have been fine with it except for the fact that our last name is Petit, and there’s no way in hell I was going to send a kid to an American public school with the initials P.P. Erin said I was overreacting, I said she had too much faith in the goodness of children. She brought up Spider-Man, I pointed out that there may once have been a time when a child could be nicknamed “Beaver” with no repercussions, but today is not that day. She asked if my cousins Philip or Patricia ever had problems, I said that if they did, maybe they just didn’t want to talk to everybody about that time John Harris stole my hat and threw it in a urinal. She said I must have been majorly damaged in elementary school, and I had to concede she may have had a point there.

Any other objections I had were all teacher-based. Every teacher mentally keeps a list of the most obnoxiously frustrating students we ever teach, because we can never give one of our own children those names. It would be like giving a kid the name of your ex-boyfriend, except people are generally more forgiving if you tell them a name makes you want to put their face through a windshield if you say it’s an ex instead of a student.

Finally, again as a teacher, I insisted our kid have a name his or her future educators could pronounce. We’ve all heard of the twins named Lemonjello and Orangello, or the girl with the exquisite name “Ladasha” (spelled “La-a”). I cannot verify that these names ever really existed. Very likely, these children are apocryphal. I’m just saying, based on some of the names you people do give your children, I wouldn’t be surprised. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone named their child “Apocryphal Jones” because they read it in this post and thought it was pretty.

I’m just saying, speaking as a teacher, it’s really frustrating to have to guess what to call a child whose name looks like somebody spilled a bowl of Alpha-Bits just because their parents didn’t want them to have the same name as any other kid in the class. I have no problem believing someone would write “Phr3q’trwilli-HenryKissinger” on a birth certificate and say “But we pronounce it ‘Frank’.” Yeah, I know you like those designer names because they’re “unique.” Well I gotta tell you, naming a child “Adolph” in 2017 would be pretty unique too, but you ain’t finding that name on a novelty license plate at Six Flags either.

All that covered, we started to talk about names that didn’t make us wretch. The girl’s name — which I’m not going to share here because it’s still a little personal — took only mild deliberation. The boy name was easy. I’ve wanted to use my grandfather’s name, “Wallace,” as a middle name for a very long time. Erin wanted to use one of her father’s names, “Deen Edward.” Since her brother is also named “Deen,” I suggested taking her Dad’s middle name to avoid any confusion. Plus, I just liked how the name rolled off the tongue. Sure, “Edward Wallace” may sound like a hard-hitting news reporter from the 60s, but as the world is sorely lacking in those these days, it’s okay with me.

“Did we just pick our baby names?” she asked me.

“I think we did.”

“We are awesome at this.”

And then we high-fived.

While driving.

We still need to work on a few things.

You may have heard, Blake and Erin have a baby, so he hopes you’ll allow him to remind you he’s got a bunch of books and short stories for sale on Amazon, and suggest you follow his author’s page on Facebook.

Early arrival

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Meet Eddie!

People who have been following along with our adventures in pregnancy may be a little surprised by this post. You know that our Little Guacamole wasn’t due to make his appearance in the world until September 20. We thought we still had three weeks to go. We hadn’t put together his bassinet. We hadn’t installed the car seat. I still had three more pregnancy blogs written that I hadn’t posted yet. Oh yeah, and there was a tropical storm going on.

But when it’s time, it’s time.

Edward Wallace Petit was born on August 30 at 8:02 a.m. He weighed in at 7 pounds and was 20.25 inches long. He’s named after his grandfather, Deen Edward Blash, and his great-grandfathers, Chester Edward Blash and Wallace Faucheux Sr.

We’re still in the hospital as I write this, but mom and baby are both doing well. There’s a lot more to tell in this story — so, so much more, which won’t surprise anybody who follows this blog regularly — and I’ll tell it to you soon enough, but that will have to wait.

For now, I’m just happy to spend time with my little family.

You may have heard, Blake and Erin have a baby, so he hopes you’ll allow him to remind you he’s got a bunch of books and short stories for sale on Amazon, and suggest you follow his author’s page on Facebook.