Advancements in technology are, for the most part, great. Take what I am doing right now for example. I’m sitting in a coffee shop using free internet that somehow is beaming its way to my computer. Full transparency, I have no idea how WiFi actually works or what the hell the difference is between any amount of G’s. All I know is that I have a magic machine that puts the world at my fingertips nowhere where my fingertips are in the world. Such is the relationship with technology of somebody who remembers life before the internet. My kids do not have that relationship.

It has been true of every next generation since there have been next generations, but my kids have only known a world with technology that I had to adapt to. I have to believe there were primitive parents out there telling their children that they didn’t always have the wheel. You had to drag the animal carcass back to the fire, it took 13 hours to get there, and that’s how it was and you liked it. The technology changes but the situation is timeless. Also timeless, is the parental idea that your way was better and your kids don’t know what’s good for them. Insert my kid’s relationship with TV, and my relationship with that.

My kids only know streaming. The idea that a show would only be on a certain day at a specific time that is determined not by them is complete nonsense to them. Telling them that Santa Claus picks what shows people get to watch based on where they rank on the nice list would make more sense to them. (Site Note: that is a genius idea to use to Santa to both manipulate behavior and to limit screen time. Two birds one fanciful stone.) It isn’t like they need to wait for the next episodes of shows to be released either, because for the most part all the shows they watch are several years old. The only new they got into was “Wizards Beyond Waverly Place” and when they watched to the point where the new episodes hadn’t been released yet, I’m pretty sure they thought that was that and they stopped watching. Which brings me to the worst part of how my kids watch TV – they watch a show to death.

Like locusts moving from field to field extracting anything of sustenance or value from the land, my kids move from show to show latching on and devouring every episode over and over until no actual entertainment value remains. For the better part of the last year they have watch, re-watched, and watched again episode after episode of “Wizards of Waverly Place” and “Elena of Avalor.” In a world of nearly endless entertainment options, they watch two shows. Part of me is grateful that despite the vast library of content they have access to, they are content with a small portion. In a way, I appreciate their minimalist tendencies. Though in another way, what the hell is the matter with them? Not only do they watch the same shows over and over again, they watch the same episodes repeatedly. It isn’t like they are cycling through the seasons, they go back and re-watch the same handful of episodes with complete disregard for any plot line that crosses multiple episodes. The idea that shows were meant to be watched in a certain order for the sake of the story making sense is lost on them.

To them, entertainment options are self-contained bits of content. A single song, not an album. A single show, not a season. A single YouTube video, not anything that requires any context at all. If anything, the one they do understand comes in a series devoid of technology – books. Books come in series, and each book has a number. Baby-Sitters Little Sister and Dogman are numbered, and they understand when they have read one of them, they read a different one next. My daughter will spend a considerable amount of time on our library’s website looking for the next book she can request, and will patiently wait days while it is on hold until she can check it out. This is in sharp contrast to the four seconds she spends scrolling through the Disney+ menu until she finds the episode of Wizards where Justin goes on the date and ends up kissing some guy’s belly.

Telling my kids about how I used to watch TV is the new walking to school up hill both ways. A badge of honor for the fortitude that only having seven channels to watch built in me. Though even my example of how good my kids have it is lost on them. They don’t know what a channel is. To them Disney+ is a channel, Hulu is a channel, and PBS Kids is a channel. They only know this because when they ask for a show or movie that isn’t on one of those, I tell them “we don’t get that channel.” That is the only context they have for different sources providing different options. Otherwise, everything they want is always available all the time. I dare not even try to explain the Disney Vault to them, I would only be wasting my breath.

The only hardship of my childhood entertainment that has now been thrust upon my children are commercials. A few months ago we changed from the ad-free Disney+ to having commercials, and oddly enough they seemed to enjoy this novel new disruption in their viewing. They quickly had favorite commercials, and because each ad break usually shows the exact same ads, had them memorized. I’m pretty sure my kids can recite multiple Capital One or Marriott Bonvoy ads word for word. They also view the function of ads differently. I think they think they are supposed to watch them. They will sit and watch the commercials, then ask to pause the show so they can go get a drink or go to the bathroom.

Though, why wouldn’t they just pause the show that everyone is watching because it fits their entertainment need of the moment? They live in a world where content is consumed completely on individual terms. If my daughter doesn’t want to watch what everyone else is watching on TV, she’ll get out a laptop and stream something else. In the same room with headphones on. Just because she doesn’t want to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to be part of the group. It seems that is what advances in technology have brought about – being included in the group, yet having your group experience completely customized to your needs.

Well, my wife and I have instructed a new rule to bring back how it was before such individualized entertainment. The kids are only allowed to watch Wizards of Waverly Place on Fridays. In our house, that is now the only day it airs. It took a few Mondays and Tuesdays of reminding, but they caught on. My kids have never been more interested in what day of the week it is. It is summer, so they don’t have the schedule of school to mark the days. Their only point of reference is now being allowed to watch Wizards or not. Technology has taken man from measuring the passage of time with complex arrangement of rocks to viewing Selena Gomez on demand. Somewhere in between kids forgot how to read an analog clock and watch episodic TV in the appropriate manner.

A good apology goes a long way. A bad apology is worse than none at all. An apology from my children is essentially none at all. My kids are terrible at saying they are sorry. An apology from them falls into one of three categories – forced, insincere, or forced and insincere.

For young kids, I get that most apologies are forced. Much like most thank yous, you’re welcomes, and excuse mes, I’m sorry’s are almost all prompted by a “What do you say?” from mom or dad. However, the teaching tool of a gentle prompt has seemed to transform to a cattle prod. Figuratively, of course. Though, note to self – invent kid-safe cattle prod and become billionaire. The Kiddle Prod we’ll call it. Or perhaps the Aprodogy? Patent pending. Anyway, apologies come from force in our house, not from any feelings of guilt, empathy, or regret.

If anything, the apologizer becomes the victim. As if we are the ones inflicting some grievous harm on them by making them admit that they did something they weren’t supposed to do. How dare we make them consider the feelings of another person. Especially when the other person is crying so loudly. I mean, all they did was wack them in the face with a toy, but the other person is the one making a whole thing out of it. So an equal parts forced and annoyed “sorry” gets spat in somebody’s general direction. Then we play the game of “say it like you mean it”, in which now the apology comes off as even more fake and sarcastic because it has been doubly forced. Or triplely forced. Or how many ever times we need to go through this charade until something resembling a real apology is muttered under defeated breath.

However, I find the more annoying terrible apology from my kids to be the one they try to pass off as real but is really just them trying to get out of trouble. They aren’t sorry for what they did, they are sorry they got caught. Whatever the behavior was, they will do it again, and apologize again, and do it again, and apologize again, and so on, and so on. When I told my daughter that I didn’t need her to apologize, that I needed her to not do it again, she took the first half of that to heart. When of course she repeated the behavior, she seemed off-put by the fact I expected her to apologize. “You told me not to,” she said. How quickly she disregarded the second half of my instructions.

I get that giving a real apology can be hard. Even for adults. How many times do you hear the “I’m sorry if…” or “I’d like to apologize,” instead of a real “I’m sorry.” Perhaps my kids are bad at apologizing because it hasn’t been a behavior properly modeled by me, just something I make them say? Not that I am too stubborn or proud to apologize, or even too arrogant to think that I’ve never done anything to apologize for. I just don’t know how many times the situation has come up where I need to give my kids an apology more meaningful than “sorry I at the last cookie.” Which, to be honest, we both know I’m not sorry for.

I just don’t do the kinds of things to my kids that they do to each other which require apologies. The next time I ruin a game of pretend school because I want to be the music teacher but I was the music teacher last time and I never have a turn being a kid and always have to be the teacher or the mom and it isn’t fair that I always make the other kids be students but never give them a chance to be a teacher, will be the first. Also, is it just me, or is there just something odd feeling about a parent apologizing to a kid. I don’t know if it is the power dynamic, or the sense that the parent is always right, but the bar for what a parent needs to apologize for just feels higher. Does it not? Or is that just me and I’ve been glossing over times when I should have said I’m sorry to my kids?

A few days ago a real opportunity came up for a real apology. My daughters were being too silly at bed time – a common source of them only being sorry they got caught – and my 6 year-old daughter was just too wound up. So I went in the room and put her back in bed with something less than great vengeance and furious anger, but enough to really scare and upset her. Honestly, my reaction was overkill. It wasn’t her, it was me. It wasn’t about what was going on in that moment as much as it was the culmination of the five hundred or so other other times that they were doing whatever they wanted to do instead of listening to their parents. She cried herself to sleep. I genuinely felt bad about it. Especially knowing how my daughter is. She is a delicate soul.

Hearing her cry in her bed, part of me wanted to go in there and calm her down and apologize right then. But, part of me wanted to just let it be. She was in bed. They were quiet. Mission accomplished. Sure, with some collateral damage, but accomplished none the less. And what is the better lesson to teach? That if dad is mean he’ll come back and make it ok, or that if you don’t do what dad says he’ll make you cry? Debatable, but I let her, and me, sleep on it.

The next morning I still felt bad about it. While the kids were getting ready for school I called her over, knelt down to her level, and gave her a real apology for reacting the way I did. I asked for hug, and she gave me the biggest hug she may have ever given me. The kind where I would ease up to signal the end (multiple times), but she stayed clung to me. That little peanut is all heart.

She felt better. I felt better. We got on with our days on a positive note, and hopefully I instilled some kind of lesson the proper way to say “I’m sorry.” Now, I say this next part with the disclaimer that I love all my kids equally – differently – but equally, and that they are all great in their own way. However. Naturally, of my three kids, she is the one who needed the lesson in how to apologize the least. Yesterday, my 8-going-on-16-year old daughter gave me an eye roll and a sarcastic thumbs up in place of an apology. Whelp, guess I gotta make her cry now.

While writing fiction is not my sweet spot, I do have something of a soft spot for it. I’m pretty sure anybody who has ever put pen to paper has had at least some small aspiration to write the next Great American Novel, and I’ve always wanted to write a screen play. While I’ve not yet started a novel, I have worked on some short fiction from time to time. I recently entered a story into a local competition, and while it wasn’t selected as a finalist by the judges, I want to get it out there for be the people.

Isn’t the people who writing should really be for any? Any creation should never be made for the critics. Though I did get some positive feedback from one of the judges – “What a gift you have for writing! Your story is funny, sort of sad, snappy, and just a good time!…I was really enjoying reading it when I hit the cheese section and couldn’t stop laughing. Brava!”

That’s right folks, come for the short-form fiction, stay for the cheese puns. Safe to the say the other judges don’t share my sense of humor. Anyway, I present to you my story – enjoy.

Scenes from a Private School Pick-Up Line

The only other place I’d see so many white luxury SUVs in one place is a dealership lot. Come to find out, the official vehicle of the at least moderately affluent suburban mom is a white GMC Yukon Denali. Or Chevy Suburban. Or Grand Wagoneer. It seems the make and model can change, but the color is a must. Red SUVs are for the nouveau riche. Black SUVs are for the common rabble. I’ve yet to see a car with a piece rusted off or one door that is a different color than the others. I suspect I never will. Silver minivans are society’s lowest common denominator. Some drive them out of necessity, some in a millionaire next door kind of way. My van is necessary.

As is my child’s attendance at private pre-school. Two working parents require a five days-a-week, all day childcare option. Just my luck it also happens to be the most expensive option in town. I try not to think about working only to pay for somebody to take care of my child while I’m working. The math only makes sense if you don’t think about it. The school does offer financial aid, but we don’t qualify. We make too much money. Maybe one of us should quit our jobs after all? I get the feeling that not all the other parents in the pick-up line made the decision to send their kid here based on the same determining factors. This is a tradition crowd. A downright legacy crowd. They look forward to thirteen more years of an exclusively priced education. I’m counting down the days of working to pay more for preschool than I do for my mortgage. Their interest is compounding, my interests are confounding.

I can’t help but notice the other parents here match their vehicles. White suburban luxury. A women whose athleisure wardrobe implies that she came right from yoga class but hair and nails that indicate she came right from the salon to pick up her equally Lululemon-clad children. I get the sense that her life is more leisure than ath. The children are active, of course. Travel baseball, hockey, lacrosse, competitive cheer, a mix of anything that requires expensive equipment and league fees. Though what are league fees when the team is sponsored by the business one of the parents owns? A tax write off, that’s what. Junior gets a new uniform and senior gets a loophole. 

Sometimes I’ll catch parts of conversations between another parent and whoever is on the other end of their newest iPhone.

“I reserved a boat for the Bahamas.” Of course she did.
“Grandpa is going to meet us at the club for dinner later.” That sounds lovely.
“No, we won’t be home. We’re going to the cabin this weekend.” Why wouldn’t you?

Occasionally there is a woman who pulls up in a Mercedes Benz G Wagon. In the nicest possible way, I hope our kids don’t end up becoming friends. I don’t think I could take it. I am sure she is a very nice person, which actually makes it worse. It would be much easier to be ok with feeling out of place if the place was filled with careless people. However, I get the sense that these people actually care a great deal. Except for maybe the guy who drives a Cybertruck. I have to assume he is the actual worst. The rest of these people donate to charities and they sit on boards of non-profits. I bet they even respond to the school’s requests for donations with checks, where as I respond with wondering why they are asking for more money if I already pay tuition. First they eat my lunch then they ask me if I’m going to finish my crumbs. Perhaps that is why I’ll never have a library or gym named after me.

It isn’t all white suburban moms in white Suburbans, there are a few dads sprinkled in. Taking time to pick up their kids as their commitments to mastering the universe allows. There is a father who is always in a suit, but somehow never looks out of place. He belongs, and he belongs in a suit. He stands out from the other fathers, most of whom are in the unofficial uniform of the backbone of suburbia – a corporate logo emblazoned polo shirt, uncomfortable looking khakis, and expensive looking shoes. The modern man’s gray flannel suit. In addition to a cabin near a lake somewhere, these men possess a certain everyman quality. They barbeque and they drink in their backyards, it is just that they grill grass-fed steaks and drink expensive bourbon. Though to maintain their relatability, they’ll tell you they didn’t actually buy the steaks. The steaks were a corporate gift from one of their company’s vendors. Logo polo men take care of their own.

If the American public school system is a melting pot, private school is a fondue pot. A carefully curated, artisanally crafted, and delicately blended flavor. Organic goat cheese folded in with aged cheddar. French brie melted together with Swiss emmentaler. Queso blanco adds a little excitement to the palate. Afterall, they do have a Spanish immersion program. However, this is no place for a Kraft single.

And what am I? A block of store-brand cheese, sliced and placed out before company arrives so the wrapper can be discarded and its origin obscured. The best I can do is try to present the best I can, but my kid’s hand-me-down pants that are at least an inch too short and visibly worn through in the knees give us away. Now I feel more like a hardened rind left behind after the best part has been grated away.

Watching the kids bounce out of school into their lines waiting to be picked up does bring me hope. They are all mostly the same. Little bodies filled with energy and cheeks filled with pudge. The other little kids don’t seem to care that the threads of my kid’s pants are hanging on for dear life, or that we’ll head home in a vehicle that doesn’t have any HD screens inside. Maybe my kid actually belongs here. Maybe my kid will exist inside their sphere of influence, even if I never will. When my kid stands among their classmates, they stand with friends. When I stand among their parents, I stand alone.

Oh look, a Porsche

I think I may have under-estimated my kids. One thing I (and probably a lot of parents) worry about when their kids to go school, is if and how they’ll make friends. Or even worse, if they’ll get picked on. Much to my delight, it seems my kids have had no problem making friends. Whenever I see my kids around other kids, its been a pretty limited and un-natural sample of birthday parties and organized play dates. However, after seeing them in a more natual setting at some school events I now have to ask myself – are my kids popular?

My son Brooks is in pre-school, and they had a “donuts with dad” breakfast. Walking into his school with him felt like I was walking into Cheers with Norm. As soon as we entered the building teachers and other people who worked at the school were thrilled to see him. Which I get, he’s a neat little guy. But these weren’t even his teachers. Pretty sure at no point in my academic career did any teacher who wasn’t my own give me any kind of enthusiastic greeting, or even know my name for that matter. My other brother had a few teachers before I had them, so at most I got a few “Mr. Kose” acknowlegements because they knew we were related, but my son walks down the hall and is getting high-fives all the way like its a basketball team intoduction. “At 3 feet, 6 inches, from NorthPointe Pre-School 4’s – at power forward it’s Brooooooooooooooks!!!!”

Recognition from teachers is one thing, but of course popularity comes from recognition of your peers. The other day while I was picking him up, a little girl ran up and gave him a hug and said bye. If that’s not the definition of popularity, then I don’t know what is.

The same holds true for my daughters. Just this morning while I was dropping them off at school a girl ran up and gave my daughter a hug with an enthusiastic “Hi hi hi!” (Not a typo, there where that many hi’s.) My daughter was neither caught off guard nor taken aback by this up close and personal greeting on a random Wednesday morning. As if it wasn’t actually random at all, but a normal occurrence. I don’t think I’ve ever been greeted with that kind of warmth and enthusiasm by a friend on my birthday, let alone your run of mill weekday. Honestly, if I was I would probably be weirded out by it. But my daughter was not weirded. It was like getting hugged by your peers upon arrival at school was the most natural thing in the world.

I didn’t know that girl, maybe she’s just a hugger, but I do know my girl. Not to say that my girl isn’t the most huggable kid in the world. I give her plenty. But if I wasn’t her dad I don’t think I’d feel compelled to greet her when she entered school with a warm embrace and multiple greetings. I mean, she’s nice, but she’s not Dolly Parton.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen this though. Every time I pick up or drop off my kids it seems like somebody is coming over to give them a hug or shouting hi or bye at them from across the parking lot, as if their school day wasn’t complete until the departure of my child is acknowledged. I get that kids are generally much more open and friendly than grown ups, but even for kids this feels a little excessive, does it not? I don’t ever remember anybody going out of their way to greet me or bid me farewell at school. Maybe because I’m a boy and all my friends were boys? Not sure if that holds true based on hte fanfare my son receives. Was I a dick when I was a kid? Were my friends dicks? Did I actually have friends? Or was I just surrounded by kids who became accustomed to me over the years?

Perhaps it is the school environments they are in. I went to Catholic schools all my life. We were a shirt and tie wearing, standing quietly in line kind of crowd. Not so much a run over and give kids in my class a hug before we walk in the building kind of group. Was my elementary school existence inherently more reserved? Perhaps. Or, and I don’t know why but this one feels like more of a stretch – maybe my kids really are popular?

My younger daughter was recently elected to a leadership position. She was voted to be leader of “The Kitty Crew.” Not quite class president, but for the first grade being voted to be in charge of a recess play group is pretty prestigious. Her election was legit too. When I asked her who she voted for, she didn’t even vote for herself. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times – that little peanut is all class.

Earlier when I said “Much to my delight, it seems my kids have had no problem making friends,” I almost typed “much to my surprise.” I don’t know why I was so disappointed with myself that my first reaction would to be surprised that other kids like my kids. But the more I thought about it, it makes sense. The version of my kids that I see everyday is not the same version of my kids that their friends at school get. I see the kids that don’t clean their rooms until we threaten to throw it all in a garbage bag, that fight with each other over who gets to use what color cup, that use all the tape, literally all the tape, that make each other cry simply because they know how to. I see the real them. And yes, sometimes it is surprising that somebody who didn’t create them could be so happy to see them.

Though I suppose I’m glad they take a different, more socially appropriate version of themselves to school. Kids are going to be misbehaving gross little weirdos, and I’d rather they be that way at home than in public. So I don’t know if I’d say my kids are popular, but they are likable, which I think will serve them better in the long run. Popular is fleeting, likability sticks.