Angelic
There are lots and lots of transcendently, mind-alteringly good things about having kids, most of which are too sappy to list (but can nonetheless be found prominently displayed on several treacly blogs with pink-themed templates written by someone who describes herself only as "A Mom").

The negatives don't get alot of airtime, mostly because talking about them always comes off as whiny self-pity.

That said, the last time I was able to go to a baseball game was the fall of 2002. The reason? My third son was born in May of 2003. Infants tend to be social cement; they fix you in one place so that all contact with the outside world has to come to you.

Pops is a baseball fan. Don't run screaming from your computer, this is not going to be a long list of re-hashed "takes" on sports-related topics that I heard on some awful sports-talk radio show.

My memories of 2002 are fond ones as they were playoff games my team won. Since then it's been all diapers and breast milk for Pops.

No, that came out wrong. I mean I've been handling diapers and breast milk on behalf of my child. And no, he's not some kind of crazy fetishist, those are just things he needed at the time.

We got tickets through one of my wife's friends and we went. We took our three boys, piled into the kick-ass Family Truckster minvan and drove the 20-minute trip to Anaheim.

As pleased as I was to be going, when you take three children under the age of six anywhere ever, the focus for the parents is not--cannot be--the event itself because your busy referreeing/separating/comforting/Heimlich-ing/shepherding your noisy, distracted brood. Here's a summary on how they all did.

Kid A, age5: Did some serious behavior modeling despite still sporting a swolled-up upper lip and nursing the nasty cold he contracted from the bioweapons lab sometimes called Kindergarten. He watched me very closely. He clapped when I clapped, cheered when I cheered, scratched himself when I scratched myself. A very pleasant young man (for once).

Kid B, age 3: Slightly noise sensitive, physically assaulted me at one point because I dared to contribute to the sudden eruption of sound (cheering) during a sensitive period of the game. I swear, he threw himself on me and started throwing punches, screaming as he fell to the ground and then tried to cover his ears. Because I am a sensitive, responsive parent, I refrained from strangling him.

Kid C, age 16 months: Couldn't have asked for better behavior. Sat there like a lump, ate what was given to him, slept a little. That said, having him there totally sucked ass. Kids this age are zero fun at these type of events as they require constant attention and worry, even when they don't require constant attention and worry. For example, he sat there like an angel, but since it was a day game and about 9,000 degrees (Celcius!), me and Mrs. Pops fretted and fussed about sunblock, his hat, and who would have to carry him off to find shade lest he burst into flame. No fault of his, but it's a chore no matter how good they are.

Except for the part where my team suffered an excruciating loss, I must say we did survive mostly unscathed though exhausted, as we always are every time we venture more than 10 miles away from home with kids in tow.

One final note: the first version of this post had my children named after the three brothers from The Brothers Karamazov, which I am still/will never finish reading. I changed it because it made me look like a pretentious prick. This doesn't bother me too much as I am actually a pretentious prick, but I prefer to keep that to my self as much as possible.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 6.1


Pops

- posted by Pops @ 9:39 PM