Tashi Got New Tooth Brushes with Suction Cups

This is my commentary on the stupidity of blogs and social media.

Ted Kennedy Dies and Tashi Misses Friends from School

I opened the New York Times website this morning to see that Ted Kennedy died. That’s so sad.  He was probably the most progressive legislator we’ve ever had.  And Obama called him “the greatest United States Senator of our time.” That’s huge.

In my world, Tashi started kindergarden.  All seemed smooth until going to bed last night.  She was already tucked in when I heard sobs from her bead room.  She cried hard.  She said she missed her friends from last year.  She said she’d never see them again and all I could think was, yep, she probably never will.

No. 36: Front Row Center

I took my 15-year-old daughter, Tashi, to see Hamilton. Our seats were in row W, which was W rows back. They weren’t bad seats, but they were all the way on the side, and for $350, I wanted the best. Before the show started, I walked to the front and spotted two seats in row G, right in the middle — the only two open seats in the entire theater, as far as I could see. / Tashi and I had tried for better seats before, in a movie theater. We bought shitty seats in the first row because that’s all that was available online, but when we got to the theater, there were only a few people there. We sat in the middle and ate our popcorn. A few minutes later, the seat owners showed up so we moved back a row, which was entirely empty. Then just as the trailers were ending, a huge group came in and filled up our whole row. Tashi and I laughed. We looked around and by this time, the only seats open were our two in the front. / At Hamilton, Tashi shot up and we went for it. We rushed past two ushers who asked if we needed help. I said, “No thanks, we know where our seats are.” Our butts hit the chairs and the lights went down. (READ FULL ESSAY HERE…)

No. 26: Jewish Christmas

On Monday, after dinner, my wife, Vicky, our son, Sebastian, and I went to the Firefighter’s Christmas tree lot and picked out a tree. Tashi, who’s 14, stayed home to do her hair.

Sebastian, who’s nine, dragged the tree inside and Vicky directed him to put it in the corner of our living room, right in front of a giant window facing the street. Sebastian closed the wooden blinds to make more room for the tree. The blinds have never been closed before, but I haven’t opened them. I don’t want the neighbors to see our tree.

I found a box of Christmas decorations stashed in our garage. There were kid-made Santas and a Rudolph made out of popsicle sticks, even a popsicle-stick Star of David. We also had a string of lights, we’d never used, and an unopened box of ornaments — quarter-sized animal faces.

Sebastian got to work. Tashi came down the stairs and with none of her usual teenage snark, she said, “Smells so good.”

For once, our house didn’t smell like dog. (READ FULL ESSAY HERE…)

No. 19: How Do I Teach My Children?

There are some things I’ve had a hard time explaining to my kids. Not the obvious things, like how babies are made. That was easy. / When my daughter, Tashi, asked me at nine, I said, “I went to a sperm bank and bought sperm. Then I went to a nurse who put the sperm inside my vagina to meet my egg. That’s how you were made.” / At the time I thought I should explain it to Sebastian, who was four. I said the same thing, except, “The nurse put the sperm inside Mami Vicky.”

A harder thing to explain was why Sebastian had to stay close to me at the airport. When he was around five, Sebastian bolted away from the luggage carousel. I ran him down through the crowd and grabbed the back of his shirt. I knelt down and out of breath, I said, “You have to stay close to me.” / He said, “Why?” / “Someone might snatch you.” / “Why would someone snatch me?” /“Sometimes people aren’t nice,” I said. (CLICK ANYWHERE TO READ FULL STORY)