I am a father of two small children, and next to winning the lottery and winning a date with Jessica Alba, the greatest thing that can happen to a father of two small children is to be alone for a weekend. My wife and kids were away in California this weekend visiting the grandparents, and I stayed behind.

(I’ll pause here while all toddler moms and dads reading this take 60 seconds to fantasize about how incredibly phenomenal and awesome it would be to have three, almost four, entire days to yourself. OK, wake up, back to reality.)

Everyone I told about my big upcoming solo weekend got that McAuley Culkin look on their faces when they heard I’d be “Home Alone.” Usually they said things like, “Uh-oh!” or “Look out!” or other things that people say leading up to impending and unavoidable disasters. They were having that same vision of single, freewheeling, 20-something wildness that most guys have when 99% of their responsibilities jump on a plane and fly 1,500 miles away.

The possibilities were endless. Stay out all night? Party? Gamble? Cause trouble? Go to jail? Break out of jail? Break some guys I don’t even know out of jail? Nothing’s off the table this weekend, baby.

As it turns out, my life is a lot more like “The Shawshank Redemption” than “Home Alone.” If you haven’t seen these movies, a) Jesus, where were you during the 1990s?; b) let me break down the themes of these movies for you:

HOME ALONE: “Woo-hoo! Being alone is awesome, liberating and jubilant! An explosion of spontaneous and chaotic fun awaits you the moment your family leaves the house!”

SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION: “Life is prison. You cannot leave the prison. Those rare few who actually get to leave the prison find that freedom is an even worse prison, because they’re so accustomed to the real prison. Then they hang themselves. Now, run along and enjoy the rest of your life.”

Also, Morgan Freeman narrates the entire movie, which actually makes it even more depressing. Don’t believe me? This clip contains the happiest, most uplifting 19 seconds of “Shawshank.”

Not exactly “Hoosiers” now, is it? If only Morgan Freeman could’ve narrated the last 72 hours of my life…

Red: “Five o’clock came, and Josh and his buddies went to Sanford’s for dinner. It was a spartan meal of pasta and vegetables. He wanted to watch ‘The Big Lebowski’ on DVD, but he couldn’t find his copy. So he went to Mr. Movies and signed up for a membership. The store was completely empty, dead silent…things sure have changed on the outside. Time was, there were 40 or 50 people in here every night, fighting over the new releases…”

Let’s fast-forward to Friday night, when the action really heats up:

Red: “Josh bought his movie ticket, and Iron Man was indeed as good as the townfolk had said. It was 9:50, and the night was winding down. He got a hankering for a strawberry sundae, and drove to the Coldstone Creamery…but there were 25 people in line with three employees. So he drove on over to McDonald’s and ordered a strawberry sundae, but the young folks inside said they ain’t served strawberry sundaes for years…Time was, a man could get a fast and cheap strawberry sundae from any McDonald’s drive-thru, but those days had done passed him by. ‘Oh well,’ he thought. ‘Those celery sticks at home will do just fine…’”

You can see where this is going. It gets no better on Saturday.

Red: “He sat at the park, reading a magazine in his car. It was a way to get out in the nice weather without having to interact with other people. He drove 45 minutes to the casino to play blackjack for 45 minutes and turned around and drove the 45 minutes back, $50 poorer. It was 9:02, and he was tired. By 10, he was in bed with the heating pad on his back.”

WOO-HOO, MCAULEY CULKIN! WHERE YOU AT, BROTHER! YEAH! THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!

Sunday — well, that’s today. Today I called my buddy Steve and told him about my weekend. He said, “This is one of the most depressing conversations I’ve ever had.”

But the weekend was not a total loss. I did clean out the refrigerator in the garage, and I straightened up the front yard. I paid a couple of bills, and read the paper in peace. I ate breakfast and had a nice, long conversation with my parents. In short, I remained the painfully boring person that I am, even in the face of complete freedom. A man deserves points for that.

And here’s the kicker — I’m not even sorry or down or regretful. I miss my wife and kids terribly. The happiest part of my weekend will be tonight when I get them at the airport and my son and daughter are overtired and screaming at each other and my wife is cranky from traveling with them. Without them, I’m sorta like that old bastard in “Shawshank Redemption” who just wanders around lost until he offs himself. (Concerned readers may rest assured that I’m not quite to that point yet — I have a lot of DVDs to watch, business planning to do and emails to send. Plus, one of the dogs is always up in my face and licking me, so I don’t totally lack companionship).

You know, on second thought, scratch Jessica Alba — I’d be self-conscious for being out of shape, her conversation would bore me and by 10:30 p.m. I’d just want to go to home and go to sleep. And everyone knows lottery winners are broken in five years anyway.

Now I’m just counting down the hours. After all, prison is lonely without your cellmates.

Hola, students. As a major private-scholarship provider for more than five years now, we get a lot of questions that come in every day about our programs. There are tons of them, but over five years, we’ve heard just about every concern that you guys have (By the way, you’ve also helped us find and fix the occasional technical bug, the occasional typo, etc., which we appreciate very much.).

To that end, I’d like to post some of our most frequently asked questions about our scholarship programs here. Please bookmark this page — I’ll be updating it frequently in the future, as more questions come in. For now, though, feel free to sift through what I’ve got here. If you have a question that needs to be answered and you don’t see it here, feel free to post it in a comment, and then I’ll edit the blog post later with the answer you need.

Thanks!
Josh

How many words does the essay need to be?
There isn’t a minimum or maximum number of words that your essay needs to be. I had a journalism professor when I was at Southeast Missouri State University who told me that my stories should be “as long as a lady’s skirt: long enough to cover everything, but short enough to make it interesting.” That’s good (if politically incorrect) advice about your essays, too. I never liked word limits because they’re arbitrary. Some good stories can be told in 500 words, and some take 5,000. So be it.

Can I get a copy of my essay?
Sure — just fill out the contact form and tell us what scholarship you applied for, along with your full name. And if you’ve got some super-common name like John Smith or Melissa Jones, then you may want to include the approximate date on which you applied. Rob, our scholarship coordinator, will get back to you within a couple of days, usually.

Are graduate students eligible?
Yep. Grad students are eligible for all our scholarships.

I’m an international student, am I eligible?
Yep. International students are eligible for all our scholarships, too.

Is there an age minimum or maximum?
No, and thanks for asking this one, because it gives me a chance to vent a little. Before I established our scholarship programs back in 2003, I had zero experience with giving scholarships, administering them, or anything about scholarships at all, really. I had no idea that there were so many scholarships out there that specifically excluded older/nontraditional students and, for that matter, community college students. But over the years, students have clued me in on this. Frankly, I think it’s idiotic to offer scholarships that are ONLY available to recent high school grads, and those attending a four-year university. Why are non-traditional students less worthy of financial support? And good lord, excluding community college students? They make up around half of all college students in the United States. Why on earth would you exclude those folks from applying and earning money to finance their education — especially when stats tell us that community college students are much more likely to be squeezing their courses in between full-time job and family responsibilities? Hey, I’ve got nothing against your traditional four-year college students — I used to be one of those, after all — but there’s enough money to go around for everyone, isn’t there?

Do you send the check to me or to the school?
Actually, we send the check directly to you. We used to write the checks to the schools, until one lady at a bursar’s office at a college in New York City really, really pissed me off and drove me to change the policy. It was a few years back. It went down like this: it was a busy time here at the agency, and apparently I waited a few weeks longer than usual to send the check out. Shortly afterward, the student called me and told me that his office would not “accept” my check, because it had come after some deadline after which — well, after which they stopped accepting American dollars in exchange for education, apparently.

I called the school’s bursar’s office (or financial aid office, or something like that), and was told by an extremely rude lady that our winner would *not* be able to receive my scholarship for the current year, because the deadline had passed, and therefore he could *not* receive any more money. I was irritated to no end, but also amused — amused that this lady didn’t understand that my money was my money and I could do whatever the hell I wanted with it, morning, noon or night, and on whatever day of the calendar year I chose to do it. So that day, I sent our scholarship winner a check made out to him personally, and from that day forward, we’ve sent checks to students, rather the bloated bureaucracies who pretend to serve them. We’ve even sent a check to Zimbabwe before — which you should avoid at all costs, by the way, because it’s expensive and apparently the postal service is extremely unreliable.

For how many scholarships can I apply?
You can apply for as many as you’re eligible for. First of all, we have three general scholarships that absolutely everyone can apply for — the Dale E. Fridell Memorial Scholarship, the Mesothelioma Memorial Scholarship and the Helping Hand Scholarship (used to be called the Get Out of Debt Scholarship, but we’ve recently changed the name, since “Get Out of Debt” sounds like the subject line of a spam email). In addition to those, we’ve got a variety of other programs that are specific to your area of study. You can review those here.

When will the winners be announced?
This is probably the most commonly asked question, and the answer is: It depends. There is no hard and fast date for scholarships to be named, but roughly speaking, it’s about three months after the deadline passes. It takes time for our judges to read and evaluate all of the applications that come in. And our judges have full-time jobs and lives of their own — they’re not sitting in their easy chairs all day, reading essays through a monocle while smoking a pipe and stroking their chin whiskers. Long story short: It takes time to get through the essays we receive, and our committee members choose the winners as fast as they can. If it sometimes takes longer than other scholarship programs, then I apologize. On the other hand, we’re talking about giving away free money here, people, so good things come to those who wait.

Can high school juniors, sophomores, or freshmen apply?
No — you’ve got to be one of the following: a) a current college student; b) a high school senior; or c) an adult planning to attend college next year (think of nontraditional students, folks who are “going back to school,” etc).

I live in (insert foreign country here), and we don’t have GPA. What should I enter in this field on the scholarship application?
Chances are that even if you don’t have the four-point scale we have in the U.S., your school still has some way to measure your overall performance as a student, and to rank you among your peers. If your system is different, just put “NA” in the GPA field and tack a paragraph onto the ending of one of your essays explaining your rank and your school/country’s ranking system.

OK — what did I forget? Let me know in the comment section.

I got a text message from our babysitter, Sheena, while I was eating my microwave pizza for lunch at work Thursday. It said:

“Mia said the ’s’ word …ha ha.”

Mia is 3, and she won’t be four for another few months. In most families, this would be a cause for concern. In my family, we call her a “late bloomer.”

This is where I suppose I’m obligated to bring up the story of my own dirty mouth, and how I myself burst into the world of adult language. It was back in North Dakota in 1976, and to hear my dad tell it, I’d quietly snuck up on him while he was hammering a nail into something. Probably something wooden. Anyway, as I drew nearer, he missed the hammer and hit his thumb, and that’s when he yelled out “you BASTARD!” as many of us do when crush our own digits with blunt metal objects. I’m not sure if Dad was talking to himself or the tool, really, but on that day, one of them was a bastard, and the two-year-old version of me thought that was hilarious.

“Bass Turd!” I sung out, triumphant, as if cars ran on bastard fuel and I’d just struck bastard in the backyard under the swingset. “Bass Turd! Bass Turd! Bass Turd!”

And on that day, the torch was passed. My dad was able to quiet any sort of profanity volcano that may have been bubbling up under the surface of my polyester boy-suit on that particular day, but this was a stopgap measure, and he knew it. Pandora’s Box was open, and it was only a matter of time. My folks valiantly tried to keep my mouth clean and succeeded up until about the 7th grade; after that, though, the Curse Fairy apparently stopped into my room one night while I was sleeping and swapped out my tongue with George Carlin’s.

It’s funny when you tell those stories about yourself, because in those stories, you’re just the innocent kid. Even if you get in trouble, you’re not in *actual* trouble, because everyone knows that your dirty little mouth is just the fault of your parents — you know, the ones right next to the little pottymouth, looking around red-faced saying exactly what every parent says the first time their kid shoots out a swear word: “I have NO IDEA where he got that from!”

But when you’re the parent, there’s a little more to it. It’s still hilarious, but you can’t admit it’s hilarious except to your close friends and family. Certainly you can’t admit it to her preschool teachers, you don’t brag about it in business meetings, and most importantly of all, under NO circumstances can you admit to your foul-mouthed offspring that it’s anything but a totally not-funny, not-to-be-repeated, better-not-ever-happen-again transgression against all mankind.

But first things first. I wanted clarification here. This is my daughter, my flesh and blood, a reflection on me. If she’s cursing, I’d like to know that she’s doing it well, appropriately, and such that it flows off the tongue the way a good swear word ought to. Also, I’d love it if her chosen language was a phrase that only her mother uses, making it possible for me to escape from the entire situation blameless.

So I texted Sheena back and ask for some context. She replies:

“She hit her leg and said ‘Ouch, shit that hurt!’ I asked her what she said — and she says ‘I don’t know.’”

The bad news: “Ouch, shit that hurt!” could very easily have been yelled by me or Christina, so I’ll at least have to share culpability. The good news: It wasn’t something native to me and me alone. If Mia had yelled out, “Jesus Christ, why does my goddamn back hurt so bad when I’m only 34?” or “That sonofabitch cop could’ve just given me a warning ticket,” then I would’ve been hung out to dry all by my lonesome. Like I was the first time Mia dropped a cuss word on us, about a year ago.

On this particular day, I was changing her diaper on the changing table. I was steadying her with one hand and ripping open a new pack of diaper wipes with the other. I ripped open the diaper wipes too hard, and the sterile solution inside the wipes sprayed all over both of us.

“Gawd DAMMIT!” Mia yelled. I just froze.

“What did you just say?” I asked her. As if it wasn’t clearly intelligible to anyone within a mile of that room. If Helen Keller was standing behind me, she’d have leaned in and signed “I BELIEVE SHE JUST SAID ‘GOD DAMNIT,’ SIR”.

“Gawd DAMMIT!” she yelled again. Because, well, I did just ask her to repeat it.

This is not an uncommon phrase, I know, but Mia’s pitch, intonation and overall delivery gave it away as 100% inspired by Daddy. So the blame was all mine, and I explained to her that it wasn’t something a kid should ever say, and that words like that were for Daddys to use when — well, when the dogs jump up on the table and eat the last piece of pizza, or when the Chiefs draft another stupid running back when they’re already loaded at running back and obviously need help on defense, or when the cop in the rearview mirror is stopping to turn around in the median and come back toward Daddy, and we’re not close enough to the house to hit the gas and make a run for it, plus your mom’s not even home to open the garage door for us.

And it worked, because her mouth has been clean ever since, until Thursday. But the world is the world, and I guess it creeps in no matter how hard you try to keep it out. At least we can laugh about cussing. In the battles against drugs, sex, rape, teen pregnancy, abduction, molestation, bad guys and all the other stuff I’m trying to protect her from, there are no funny do-overs to chuckle about. You just do or you don’t. You win or you lose. You protect them like the hero you’re trying like hell to be or you let them down like the failure you pray you’ll never have to stare back at in the mirror.

If you look a bit closer at her answer, Mia gave me a couple more glimpses into the future with her short response to Sheena. She’s already slippery enough to play dumb when she needs to: “Me? What did I say? I don’t know? What did I say when, exactly? I’m not altogether sure what you mean?” Just like both Mom and Dad in that regard. And on the plus side, she’s smart enough to realize she did wrong and try to wipe away the evidence ASAP. Perhaps she has a future in politics.

When I got home, I asked Mia if anything interesting happened today.
“Nope.”

Did she get in trouble today?
“Nope.”

Did she say anything she wasn’t supposed to say?
A thoughtful skyward glance, and a measured repsonse: “Hmmm….I don’t really remember.”

Yeah, sure you don’t. You little bastard.

Back in the VHS vs. Beta video-format wars of the 1980’s, my family put all its ill-fated chips on Beta. More recently, I went all in with an HD-DVD player instead of Blu-Ray, and about four seconds after I did, Toshiba threw in the towel and stopped supporting HD-DVDs. I also thought Ryan Leaf would make a better NFL quarterback than Peyton Manning, and argued with my childhood friends that Dominique Wilkins would accomplish more in the NBA than that Michael Jordan guy ever would.

In short, I have a long history of taking the road less traveled — the one that ends up dead-ending off a cliff. But one of the rare times when I came to a crossroads and actually made the right call was when I ditched my first love, newspapering, in favor of an Internet career. It was 1999 when I left the University of Missouri’s graduate program, master’s in hand, with a variety of prospects. Could’ve gone to a newspaper, magazine, TV station, even a radio station — but I chose the Web. For once in my life, it seems, I heard the train coming before it ran over me.

These choices and the evaluation of their prescience are complicated, of course, but let’s stick to some basics: newspapers aren’t dying, but they’re a withered, palsied shell of what they once were. And the Internet — especially search-engine advertising, my agency’s exclusive area of focus — is booming. Making matters worse, newspapers by and large have done a very poor job of extending their businesses on the Web. Even today, watching newspapers’ Web efforts reminds me of a Saturday Night Live sketch back in the early 90s called “Carsenio.” Dana Carvey plays a Johnny Carson character so desperate to be hip that he tries to mime Arsenio’s hip-hop clothing, culture and speech — and the result is very painful to watch, because it’s clear that Carson comes from a completely different era and mindset, and has no clue what he’s doing.

Lots of Internet guys delight in the misery of newspapers, and I’ve not always been able to hold back in that department myself. Let’s face it — short of politicans, no one does hubris like newspaper execs. But the fact remains that, as a consumer, I love newspapers. I subscribe to several, and I can’t imagine a day when I don’t “take the paper,” as the older folks say.

In an age where the number of new stories available to me is literally infinite, I’m happy to let the editors keep that gate for me. I’m also grateful that, in a smaller community like mine (Rapid City, S.D.), there’s a common, affordable, accessible source of news and information that the community can rally around. Don’t get me wrong; I have an abundance of beefs and griefs with the Rapid City Journal, but I don’t ever want it to go under.

So it’s to the end of bolstering newspapers’ presence in the 21st century, rather than to poke fun at their difficulties, that I present my very simple revenue idea that I think most midsize-and-larger papers could easily turn into a profit center. Actually, to be completely honest — this is a completely selfish exercise. As an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal, I really, really want them to pursue this idea, and I think other papers could easily follow suit. First, a little background:

I subscribe to and voraciously read the Wall Street Journal because I believe it’s the most useful and relevant newspaper in the country, without a close second. I read the Rapid City Journal because it’s my hometown newspaper. I read USA Today because sometimes I want an eighth-grade summary of what’s happening in the country.

But here’s the thing — three papers a day is a lot of reading. I work all day, and I have two little kids to spend time with as soon as I get home. Then, my wife naturally would like to spend some quality time with me as well. And as mindless as modern television has become, there are still a few shows that I consider can’t-miss (The First 48, I Survived, The Office, etc.) that I want to watch. Oh yeah — I’m also beat-down dog tired at the end of every day.

So, what usually happens is this: An intimidating mountain of newspapers stacks up at my house throughout the week, and by the time the weekend rolls around, I’ve got about 9 hours of newspaper-reading to do. But I don’t have nine free hours (I do, technically, but I prefer to spend those hours with my family), so I end up having to skim each section of each paper, reading only the articles that I feel are absolutely essential. Sixty or seventy others that I have a passing interest in and would like to read — tossed away in the trash. Just no time for them.

I tried to address with problem by taking my papers with me wherever I go, so I can get some reading done in my “down time” — waiting-room reading, parking lot reading, etc. — but there’s not enough of that, either. That actually makes it work, because papers accumulate in my car also, and the recesses of my car is where things go to disappear forever under sippy cups, school book orders and half-spilled Ziploc bags of Cheerios.

Let me contrast, then, the perceived problems with newspapers vs. the real problem with newspapers. The perceived problems is that they aren’t relevant enough, they aren’t substantive enough, they aren’t detailed enough, they aren’t helpful enough. Here’s the real problem: They’re probably just as relevant and substantive and detailed and helpful as I want them to be, but I will never know because I don’t have time to read them. However…

There’s one block of time that looks promising. Even for a small-town dweller like myself, this block adds up to about 50 minutes. For you folks in larger cities, it’s a couple of hours. If you’re one of those unlucky saps who lives in an exurb and works downtown, it could be 3-4 hours. Guessed it yet? Yep, it’s the commute to and from work.

I can’t read the newspaper while I’m driving, though. But I would be delighted to listen, word for word, to a great deal of the stories in the newspaper while I’m driving to work. The writer could read them. A dedicated, velvety-voiced newsreader could read them. Hell, you could have HAL from 2000: A Space Odyssey read them, I don’t care. I’d just love the opportunity to have the stories read to me every day while I drive to work, drive to lunch, drive back from lunch, and drive home from work.

But to my knowledge, no newspaper has done this (and feel free to correct me in the comments section below if I’m wrong). They’ve jumped into the audio/podcasting game, all right, but they’ve again done their best “Carsenio” act by cranking out ill-conceived and mostly ignored podcasts containing supplemental info, bonus interview footage, and other “bonus” crap that no one cares about. But audio versions of their stories that dedicated subscribers can listen to on the go? Nope. Couldn’t do that. That’s not innovative or “out of the box” enough.

And you know what? It’s not particularly innovative; it’s damned obvious. The only other alternative is that it’s not obvious at all and I’m just extraordinarily brilliant for thinking of it, and while that would please me to no end, I doubt it’s the case.

So, ideas are a-plenty, but what’s the business case? Well, I imagine that the additional work involved is minimal if you assign the “reading” job to the reporter who writes the story. Reporters are already being asked to do more with less, I know, but I’m guessing four extra minutes in a recording booth to guarantee that a lot more people “read” their story would seem worth it. Also, if nothing else, it gets their voice out there and heard by a greater number of people, including those looking to schedule reporters on radio or TV talk or news shows — good exposure for the papers themselves and extra money for the reporters. If you didn’t want to use reporters, you could have a dedicated person or two reading and recording the stories, but I foresee problems there with name pronounciations and misinterpretations of certain phrases, etc.

How to charge? I’d probably offer an add-on price to print subscribers. The people interested in this product are fairly hardcore newspaper loyalists; personally, I’d be more than happy to pay double what I pay now per month if the WSJ offered this service. You could offer a standalone subscription to the audio stories as well, if for nothing other than to attempt to upsell them to the print product later on.

How to distribute them? In a subscription podcast, password-protected. Digital delivery of podcasts is quite simple — visit iTunes if you haven’t already seen this in action.

Thoughts? I’m a trained journalism guy who’s been out of the business for a while, so I could be missing something. I just prefer to throw my ideas at the feet of the public and let you guys do with them what you will.

I know there are lots of students on our site who are here to apply for scholarships, so I wanted to take a second to address a problem that some of you are having when you apply online here on the site. We know that some of you are having a problem getting to page 2 of the scholarship application (the one with the essays on it). It’s a very small percentage of you guys who are having this problem, but it’s still happening consistently, so I want to bring you up to speed on what . From what you guys are telling us, the problems takes shape in one of two ways:

1) You fill out the information on page 1, hit “submit,” and the second page just waits and waits and never loads; or

2) You fill out the information on page 1, hit “submit,” and the second page loads — but the rest of the form doesn’t appear.

Here’s the deal: First of all, don’t worry — you can still apply and have your essay considered along with everyone else’s. If you’re having either of the problems, you can email Robert, our scholarship coordinator, and tell him which scholarship you’re applying for. He’ll email you the questions personally. When you’ve completed them, email them back to Robert and he’ll be sure the committee receives them, and that your name is attached to the essays you’ve written.

Just to keep you all in the loop — we’ve had trouble fixing this bug in the application process because, unfortunately, we can never replicate it. It never happens to us — never. And completed essays are rolling in briskly, so most students aren’t experiencing it either — which is a good thing overall, but not so good for trying to pinpoint the problem. Here’s what we know: It happens with all of our scholarships, but it seems to happen more frequently with the Fridell scholarship than the others. We’d love for you guys who are, in fact, having this problem, to send us an email and let us know the following information:

What platform are you using? (Windows, Mac, etc.)
What operating system? (e.g., Windows Vista, Mac OSX, etc.)
What browser and version? (e.g., Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2.0, etc.)
What country and state/province are you in?
What page were you directly before you got to Page 1 of the application? (Please provide a URL, if you can — if you can’t or you aren’t sure, then don’t worry about this one)

I apologize for this problem; I’m sure it’s annoying as hell to be all good and ready to fill out a scholarship application and then be stopped by a technical bug like this one. I just wanted to let you guys know that it annoys me too, and we’re trying to get it fixed as soon as possible. If you have any questions or comments, you’re welcome to post them below. Thanks again for your patience while we try to figure it all out.

Best regards,
Josh Barsch
CEO, StraightForward Media

UPDATE: After I sent out the email about this blog post, we experienced a wave of traffic that knocked out our servers for a good 30 minutes (shouldn’t have been nearly that long, but our hosting company, Rackspace, was very slow fixing the problem). Apologies to all of you who tried earlier to access this blog post!

So I’m out on the deck Sunday afternoon reading the paper while the dogs and kids frolic in the yard, and I notice that this week’s Parade magazine is the “What People Earn” issue. You know the one — the one with about 100 mugshots of regular folks and their jobs and salaries, with the occasional celebrity and her 8-figure salary tossed in every now and then, just to keep us awake. (Gisele the supermodel made $33 million this year. I wonder if she and Tom Brady split the electric bill right down the middle, or if she pays a heftier share because she makes more.)

This is the only time of year I read Parade, because I don’t really care what Hilary Swank’s favorite cheat-food is. I don’t want to know why Aretha Franklin chose “maple scone” for her bedroom paint color, and I already know that Marilyn vos Savant is so smart that she could stick an 8-ball under her armpit and squeeze out a unicorn’s paw (You know what? Screw you, Marilyn.).

But the “How Schlubs Like You Are Scraping Together Your Meager Existence” issue is one of my guilty pleasures, and if you’re reading this, it’s probably one of yours, too. You comb through the thing like crazy, looking to validate yourself against other chumps out there doing a similar job and making less than you. Or, even better, doing a really crappy job that pays squat. “Hey,” you say to your reassured self. “At least I’m not that guy,” with “that guy” being:

Herman Beckwith
Dog shit picker-upper
$6.75/hour

I’ll be honest: I was cruising right along, shaking my head at sucker after sucker and cursing their bad luck, until I was stopped dead in my tracks by Bridget Matarrese. Bridget is a regional airline pilot, and she makes $31,000 per year.

I don’t know Bridget or which airline she works for, but I’m going to make some assumptions here:

* Bridget flies airplanes.

* Terrorists are licking their chops at the site of Bridget and her pilot brethren, since you can kill a lot of people with one airplane. A few guys actually did this in New York back in ‘01. You may have read about it.

And for her trouble, Bridget makes $31,000.

I’m not quite ready to sing the praises of pilot unions just yet, but is this really what the market bears for even a first-year airline pilot? I live in Rapid City, South Dakota, and I can’t fly anywhere without hopping on a regional jet just like the ones that Bridget presumably flies. And I have to be honest, I felt a hell of a lot safer before I read that the pilots make significantly less than a Starbucks manager. Or a bartender. Or a magician.

I’m not trying to get all Che Guevara on you here, but it seems that a man or woman who knows how to fly a big-ole airplane full of people safely from one point to the next deserves a little more than barista money. Even a drunk pilot deserves a good $50k, I think, huh? I think that inflatable autopilot from “Airplane” even got paid $25k, and that’s still more than what Bridget’s making when you adjust for inflation from 1982 (although you could make an argument that he was worth the additional money for keeping the flight going smoothly while everyone got sick from eating the fish and Leave it to Beaver’s mom got into a scrap with those jive-talking guys.).

Seriously, though: we’re already on the subject of bartenders and baristas, and you can’t talk about either of those guys without thinking of tips. Tipping a bartender is second nature, and you can’t find a barista in a Starbucks or otherwise who doesn’t have a full tip jar sitting on the counter (even if they spike it full of singles from the register at 5:30 a.m., just to mindfuck you into shelling out a little bit more of your own cash than you were planning on spending).

So I ask you, good people of the United States: Why the hell aren’t we tipping our airline pilots? If anybody deserves an extra few bucks for a job well-done, it’s the guy who gets me back to my family in one piece. I’m not saying you’ve got to shell out 20% of your ticket price or anything, but as for me, I’m fine with slapping a five-spot to the pilot in any circumstance that doesn’t end with me pinned underneath the fuselage in a forest clearing, chewing on the seared leg-flesh of my seatmate to stay alive for another 10 hours. Seriously, man — take this $5 spot, and thank you very, very much for a job well-done.

Even if a mere 20 passengers did this per flight, that’s $100 per flight. I read that regional jets fly somewhere between 3 and 5 flights per day, so let’s settle on four, and that makes $400 per day of flying. And if the pilots are flying, say, 15 days per month, that’s $6,000 extra per month. Even if you split the take 50-50 with the copilot, that’s an extra $3,000 per month, $36,000 per year. That doubles Bridget’s salary, and, quite frankly, ought to make you feel a lot better about Bridget staying focused on doing her job well and not fretting about the rent and the electric bill and her kid’s college tuition and getting her car fixed and funding her 401(k), etc. (For the record, I don’t know Bridget — she could be the wealthy great niece of Leona Helmsley for all I know, but it’s all about the principle).

Would you be willing to tip your pilot? Sound off if you see fit. And if anyone out there knows Bridget, send her my appreciation for unwittingly serving as my guinea pig in this post.

I was in a Phoenix bar one time, and after several gallons of beer, I started wondering about what I would do if I ever had to battle the devil to win back my soul (That’s the thing about alcohol…if nothing else, it really gets you thinking outside the box). I’m a business owner, a husband, a father of two, a friend to many — simply put, I take care of a lot of people. So I try not to let anything catch me by surprise, and I admit, I cast a pretty wide net.

Anyway, I’m not sure how the real battles with the devil proceed, because all the ones I’ve ever seen have been on TV, and they’ve usually involved a rotund blues guitar virtuoso, string ties, top hats and at least one dusty crossroads in Mississippi. But I’m not very good at music, and Mississippi terrifies me.

On that particular night, I decided that (and I concur today), to preserve the high drama involved in these sorts of showdowns, the devil would probably let you choose the actitivity in which you’d like to compete with him to salvage your soul. I mean, he’s probably really good at everything, and if you let him choose and he chooses something like short-program ice skating, then that’s just not even going to be a contest. Honestly, it’s just unrealistic and unworthy of even holding a competition. So, I chose typing. I’m past my typing prime, mind you, but I can still bang out 85-90 wpm when I’m on fire. Plus, see, the devil has hooves, not fingers, so — yeah? You see where I’m going, and all of a sudden I’m looking solid versus Old Scratch in a type-off.

But now, I’m thinking I should go with Ms. Pac-Man. Still a distinct fingers-over-hooves advantage in play there. Typing for me was an acquired skill. And acquired skills will eventually diminish as time goes on, you practice less and you regress to your regular skill set. Ms. Pac-Man, though, is in my blood.

You don’t know this, of course, unless you were down with the mid-1980’s Wichita, Kansas, Pizza Hut scene. That was where I got down and did my thing. Stand-up machine or coffee-table style? Bring ‘em both and I’ll shove ‘em down your gullet if you’ve got the balls to go two-player with me. Seriously, I’m 11 years old in 1985 and more than willing to go snag high-school kids out of their seats by the neck of their shirt and ask if they wanted a piece. I’d let them watch over my shoulder, but if I heard any sighing or complaining of the “I wish this guy would hurry up and die so I can play” nature — bam, elbow to the dome while I’m camping out next to a power pill waiting for Pinky, Inky and crew to get up in my business.

That line of quarters lined up on the ledge? That’s right, they’re mine. Go ahead and do the math — each of those quarters equals one hour. Add up that time, add it to what you see on the clock right now, and that’s when you might get a chance at my machine. Uh-oh….Pizza Hut will be closed then, won’t it, chump? Right. Now, walk your ass back to your checkered tablecloth and take a stab at the maze on the back of your Care Bears placemat. It was not uncommon for me to take down an opponent and let out a “Yeah, CHUMP! That’s what I THOUGHT! DON’T BRING THAT WEAK GAME IN HERE!”, and that’s when I was playing my own mom.

Speaking of my parents, I have to say their instincts were brilliant here. When we went to the Hut, they’d:

* get rid of me for the entire meal, because I’d be camped out at the machine until well after the pizza had arrived, been eaten and gotten cold. It was like a date, except there was an 11-year-old hyperventilating jackass in the car on the way there, and a gloating 11-year-old shithead in the car on the way back; and

* entertain me for an entire hour for 25 cents, which is a better return than anything Peter Lynch ever saw in his wet dreams. My mom and dad should run a hedge fund.

Anyway, I was dangerously good. Every few years, we’ll bump into an old machine, and if my mom’s around, she’ll immediately start rubbing her hands and fingers, talking some arthritis nonsense, so she doesn’t have to relive the beatings of my youth (and anyway, she’s a good woman who’s put up with a lot, so she deserves better). So I’m thinking that maybe this is a game I can win against the devil, if for some reason I should find myself in a situation where my soul is in the balance.

I get more practice with typing, but the devil is known to be wily; I don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect him, if I chose typing, to pull out a “hoofboard,” as it were, each of whose keys was the size of his hoofs. Then my competitive advantage is out the window. Thoughts?

For what it’s worth, I was also good at “Track and Field,” but there’s no way I could button-mash again Satan.

Throughout her childhood, I’ve been a little conflicted about when to begin teaching Mia to read. When I was a kid, I read very early — I was reading at 3 years old. My daughter is a very sharp kid, and I’ve always just assumed that she would read as early as I did. This is a pretty tall assumption, though; 3 years old is damned early for a kid to be reading, and I didn’t want to be overbearing and force her to read before she was ready, or to place expectations on her that were based on nothing more than what I did as a 3-year-old. Then again, if the kid was ready to roll, then I definitely didn’t want to hold her back. Decisions, decisions.

A couple months after turning 3, she started twice-a-week preschool, and after a few months of that, she knows all of the letters of the alphabet and what sounds they make. If you know all those, you’re pretty much ready to start learning to read, so I asked her if she was ready. She said yes, so we now have our hats in the ring.

Something occurred to me shortly thereafter: I didn’t really have a clue how the hell to teach anybody to read, let alone a 3-year-old. I just pick stuff up and read it — I don’t remember the steps involved in getting to this point. This realization alarmed me, and not only for Mia’s sake. In the back of my mind, I always figured that if I ended up in prison somehow, I’d survive and earn protection from the tougher inmates by teaching them to read. What was I going to do now if I ended up on the inside? Back to the present, though — where would I start with Mia? (Note to self, though — buy a good radar detector, and check for warrants in other states)

That’s when I started checking around for software that could maybe help me out. Interactive stuff wasn’t really a part of the game when I was learning to read (although my Speak & Spell enabled me to lay several ass-whoopings on the other kids in spelling bees throughout my youth). Educational CD-ROMs starting coming out in the 80s and 90s, and they’ve given away to full-blown online learning programs. The first one I came across was
ClickN’Read Phonics, and I must say, I’ve been extremely happy with it so far, so I thought I would share with all you parents out there who are contemplating teaching your child to read.

First, a warning: You’ll be less than impressed when you first see the Clicknkids.com website. Its design is cluttered and primitive and, generally speaking, very unattractive. But don’t give up on it; this is one site whose product is much more valuable and impressive than the marketing which surrounds it. The company provides 100 reading lessons, and you can lead your child through them at his/her own pace. The lessons I’ve been doing with Mia (we’re on Lesson 17 right now) take about 15 minutes apiece, and that’s with Mia running the touchpad and keyboard. One hundred lessons, then, is a lot of material. All the lessons are done online, so there’s no software to download, and you can do lessons from any Internet-connected computer in the world (so long as you remember your password).

A lifetime membership will cost you a one-time payment of $59.85, or three monthly payments of $19.95 (which equals exactly $59.85, so you don’t pay any extra for spreading it out over three months). There’s a 60-day, no-questions-asked refund policy, and the site says it’s never refused a home-use refund request (they also sell to schools, and claim to have never even received a request for a school-use refund). I can’t personally touch for any of that, of course, but I’ll just say that I won’t be asking for a refund.

So, about the software and curriculum itself: Simply put, Mia really loves it, and enjoys her lessons. Again, the sophistication of the graphics, audio and animation is definitely NOT up to the quality that you may be used to seeing on Nick Jr., Noggin, but the fact is, you don’t need bleeding-edge multimedia to teach a kid to read. You don’t need any, actually. Everyone from the beginning of time until now seems to have done just fine without it, and so will your kid.

The lessons are broken up into about 6 or 7 different different sections, so Mia’s attention span isn’t at all put to the test. The lessons ask her to:

• identify the letters that make certain sounds
• identify the words that start with certain letters
• identify the words that end with certain letters
• identify certain words by sight (sightwords)
• Identify certain letters, and find them on the keyboard
• Identify very basic words on the screen, just by hearing them

For Mia, some parts are easy, and some are very challenging, and that’s exactly how it’s supposed to go, in my opinion. We’ll do each lesson two or three times, and I usually see marked improvement from her with each repeat of the lesson. (Fair warning: Mia was good with a touchpad before she ever started this program, and she uses the touchpad throughout the lesson. If your kid doesn’t use a touchpad or a mouse yet, that’ll probably need to come first. Or, you can just have your kid point to the letters on the screen, and you can run the mouse/touchpad for him/her. In my opinion, you don’t want to hold up your kid’s reading development just because his/her skills with a computer mouse aren’t up to snuff yet).

The most important measure of the ClicknRead Phonics software is, of course, whether it really helps Mia learn to read. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I really think it will. Also critically important here is that she enjoys doing the lessons. She actually asks me if we can go do a reading lesson — I don’t have to pressure her, or even ask her, to do it. Time will tell, and I’ll update you as she progresses. I’m optimistic, though.

Another thing I have to note in the review. I purchased the software subscription from my work computer, and when I got home to do the lessons with Mia, I didn’t have the password. I used the “forgotten password” process, but the email was caught by our corporate spam filter and could not get to me. So, it was Saturday afternoon, Mia was ready to do a lesson, and I was SOL. On a whim, I called the help number, expecting absolutely nothing, since it’s a miracle to find customer-service folks working on the weekends just about anywhere. But I called the number, got the automated greeting, and pressed the customer service extension. Sure enough, a guy just picks up the phone and says “ClicknKids, may I help you?” No wait time, no nothing. I was amazed. I told the guy my problem, and he looked me up and gave me my password. The whole ordeal took about 60 seconds flat. I’m still amazed. I’d like to hug that guy if I could find him.

Overall, then, the program gets my hearty, if early, endorsement. Happy reading, and feel free to weigh in if you have comments or experiences to share.

Unless you’re particularly interested in green computing (i.e., computers that don’t use much energy) or the Linux operating system, you probably haven’t heard of Zonbu, a small computer company in California that sells ultracheap laptops. I came across them in one of the tech/business magazines I read (can’t remember which one) and was intrigued by their unique proposition. At the time, they sold one product — a tiny CPU that was about the size of the Bible that the Gideons leave in every hotel room. It didn’t run Windows (great for security!), but its system emulated Windows for the user (great for usability!). It came preloaded with about 20 open-source alternative programs, so you could pretty much do any sort of basic computer use that you wanted to do (email, Web browsing, word processing, etc.). Its operating system supposedly updated itself, there was some online storage that came with the package, and it was only $99. You had to pay $14.95 or something like that per month for their online updates/no-hassle service, etc. Oh yeah, and it’s also apparently very earth-friendly, uses a tiny fraction of the power that a normal machine uses, is a “zero-emissions” computer, and every time you buy one, an environmental necromancer hurls a windpower-generated lightning bolt into the sky and God throws a dodo bird back from the dead. Or something to that effect.

It was an interesting proposition, to say the least. At the time, though, it didn’t meet my needs. I need a powerful machine to do my work, and although it was an intriguing idea for my young daughter, Mia (she’s almost 4), the desktop model wasn’t going to work for her. She’s the type to lug a machine around with her, rather than be attached to a desk for her computer use. Alas, though, I checked back a few months later, and Zonbu is offering a laptop. It’s $279 for the machine, same monthly price for the software updates. Mia can use a touchpad perfectly and has been using my home laptop for months, so I figured I’d give Zonbu a go, if for no other reason to slow the accumulation of animal-cracker crumbs in my keyboard.

That was a mistake. An even bigger mistake was prematurely telling Mia that I’d bought her her own computer, and getting her hopes up before I bothered to receive the computer and be sure it was going to be a reliable machine. (If you’re scoring at home, this is what they call “foreshadowing,” kids.) It’s one thing to have your own expectations dashed by a crappy product; it’s quite another to do that to a 3-year-old. Not only because they hurt worse, but because you can’t pass the buck to the manufacturer. It’s all on you, Daddy.

To Zonbu’s credit, the machine arrived in record time. I live in South Dakota, and I think it arrived from California in three days. I would later put two and two together and realize that one reason it came so fast was because no one had bothered to put the most recent operating system software on the machine. It was several versions and many bugs older than the current version. But let’s not digress…

I fired up the machine, and it asked me for a username and password in order to activate or use the computer in any way. I didn’t know what the hell that was, and I had to go to another computer and dig out my purchase-confirmation emails to find out what that was. Apparently they’d told me in one of those previous mails that I’d need this username/pw to unlock the machine. That’s my fault for not reading them closely, but also partially their fault, for knowing damned good and well that no one reads those types of emails closely, guaranteeing that a host of buyers will have the same problem. But I got the username and password in, and the machine started up, found my wireless connection instantly, and we were off to the races.

I showed my daughter the machine. She loved it. She attacked kid websites so hard that she reminded me of Shawn Fanning on his 40-hour Napster coding binges. We had to pry her off it at dinnertime. The living room TV blared “Dora the Explorer” to an empty living room, and I actually felt sorry for the TV. Mia wasn’t interested in hanging out with it anymore, much the same way she’ll turn on me when she’s about 12, in favor of god-knows-what the middle-school kids will be doing 10 years from now.

It worked for three days, and then my wife called. “What’s wrong with Mia’s computer?” she said. I said I had no idea. I thought it worked fine. But, out of the blue, Zonbu lost its Internet connection. I would say that it lost the wireless signal, but that’s not right — it was only looking for hardwired connections. The entire wireless option was gone completely. Again, this sort of thing is frustrating to adults, but at least we can comprehend it. Try telling a 3-year-old who was in the middle of a hot game of Backyardigans Super Spy Adventure that “something seems to have gone wrong with the wireless hardware, or maybe the software that controls it, and that it’s looking for Ethernet connections only.” Yeah — she just wants to know where in the motherloving hell the Backyardigans went, and what you’re going to do to bring them back. Right goddamned now. This is Instance One of Zonbu Making Me Look Like An Asshole In Front Of My Daughter. (More foreshadowing there, kids.)

Mom defused that, though, and I got home to check it out. Sure enough…no connection, and no ability whatsoever to even entertain a wireless connection. I restart the machine — no change. I’d try to update the software, but I have no connection, so I can’t. I Google the error message, and find a Zonbu FAQ page. It says I should update my Zonbu software — you know, that software that supposedly updates itself automatically whenever it needs to be updated? Like, perhaps, it could’ve done anytime during the initial three days during which I had no problems?

I’m discouraged at this point, but I realize that you get what you pay for, and that it’s a new technology and a new idea, and I’m willing to tolerate the hassle for a bit longer. This machine is for my daughter, after all, so I have to try harder, go the extra mile, etc. I plug in to an ethernet connection, which the Zonbu finds, and attempt to download the updated OS. Zonbu tells me it’s downloading, and that I’ll be notified automatically when the download is done. After an hour, I’ve been notified of nothing. I give Zonbu the benefit of the doubt and consider that the patch I’m downloading may be absolutely huge, hundreds of megs. I leave the computer, and come back a couple of hours later. Nothing. My specific complaint here is this: Zonbu says, in effect, “hey, we’ll let you know when the new software is downloaded!” and did no such thing. So I restart the computer, and I restart the download process. I leave it overnight. Like a turkey on Thanksgiving.

I come back the next morning, and there’s still no message whatsoever indicating that new software has downloaded. After an overnight download, I’m no longer considering the possiblity that I haven’t waited long enough. I restart the machine, and bang! Zonbu says…it has automagically (their not-cute and not-funny word, not mine) updated the software for me! I laugh at this, since Zonbu’s definition of “automatically” apparently includes me having to hook up an Ethernet connection, make multiple manual attempts to download the software before having to leave it overnight to do so. Automatic! Presto change-o!

But when I fire it up, it does indeed see the wireless connection, and we’re back in business. I head back upstairs, the conquering hero, cradling the freshly repaired laptop as if it were a unicorn foal left on my front porch in a basket of woven purple silk. Mia, your computer is fixed! Mia nearly explodes with joy. She would’ve traded at least one of our dogs for that laptop to be working again, and possibly both of them.

Literally 30 seconds later — no wireless connection. I manually re-establish the connection — success! And less than 30 seconds later — no wireless connection. Connected! Connection dropped. Connected! Connection dropped. This is Instance Two of Zonbu Making Me Look Like An Asshole In Front Of My Daughter, and it’s worse than the first time. She’d already played with the computer and loved it, and was patiently waiting for me to fix it — to once again deliver the good times. And the moment I got her hopes up — they were dashed. This is from the Zonbu website:

The perfect addition to any child’s life without the hassle

and also, this:

Zonbu makes the perfect addition to any child’s life. It’s easy to use and virtually indestructible. Its compact and sturdy structure allows it to take the occasional knocks kids can deliver. And since Zonbu software is unbreakable it can handle stray keystrokes from little fingers, too. In the worst case scenario, just reboot Zonbu and it repairs itself.

I don’t know about the keystrokes and little fingers business (You mean toddler fingers don’t crush the keys? Eureka!), but my experience with Zonbu refutes every other sentence here. It didn’t repair itself worth a damn for me when it was broken, it wasn’t easy to use, and it most certainly does not make the perfect addition to any child’s life. In my opinion, it is a terrible thing to buy your child, and you should never buy it for yours.

I emailed for my RMA, and got one. That was easy enough. They told me to send it back in the original packaging, which I (again, foolishly) had destroyed, assuming I had bought a product that was as trouble-free as its manufacturers advertised it to be (Go ahead, laugh at me. I deserve it.). They said they were gonna charge me $10 for the packaging. At this point, I couldn’t care less, really — as long as the cursed object is out of my house. Because of the 100%, absolutely, positively hassle-free guarantees plastered all over the site, I will assume for now that I’ll get my money refunded swiftly and without difficulty (although most of my Zonbu assumptions have been faulty, I’m trying to stay at least a tiny bit positive). I’ll update this post when I hear more.

Oh yeah — I bought Mia a pink Dell to replace the Zonbu paperweight. It hasn’t arrived yet, so the TV isn’t lonely anymore.

It’s official: my daughter is the Queen of Devastation.

The fistful of people out there in the world who know me extremely well would all probably agree that I’m someone who, for the most part, doesn’t take personal criticism very seriously. The words of others just don’t bother me much, even if they’re really, really nasty words that are intended to be hurtful. I admit it: there is a little dollop of arrogance about me that insulates me from this sort of thing, and it’s a very simple system. Here’s how the system works: If someone who doesn’t know me decides to tee off on me (usually this happens in print, rather than in person), then my natural reaction is: Why on Earth would I care about the opinion of someone who doesn’t know me? I mean, thousands of strangers could be cursing my existence behind closed doors at any given moment, and what’s to be done about that? Just because I happen to hear or read the comments of one of those strangers is no reason to get myself in a twist.

But if it’s someone close to me letting me have it, then in most cases, they’re probably right about whatever I’ve done wrong, and I’m OK with hearing it. I mean, if I’m being a selfish jackass, I really don’t mind being let in on that fact, and the most efficient way to do that is to just come on out and call me a selfish jackass. My wife is very good at this.

But on rare occasions, I will get cut to the quick by a random comment, and that happened yesterday. Leave it to a 3-year-old. My daughter and son were in the car with me, and we’d just dropped Mom off at Safeway for a quick moment. We were circling the store, and Mia caught a glimpse of the ice cream store that we frequent. She wanted ice cream; I said no. She immediately started crying — real tears! — and demanding ice cream. Not unusual for a 3-year-old, although Mia isn’t particularly prone to such outbursts. I told her that crying and fit-throwing wouldn’t get her any closer to ice cream, and told her that crying was fine if you’re hurt or sad, etc., but not getting ice cream wasn’t cause to “cry like a baby.” Those were my exact, poorly chosen words.

Mia took exception immediately, and got mad that I called her a baby, but she calmed down soon enough. While we waited for Mom to come out of Safeway, she reminded me that she was certainly not a baby. I said I was sorry, that I knew she wasn’t a baby. And then I thought I was out of the woods, until I heard new tears bubbling up in the backseat — tears of sadness, not tears of anger. “Do you…” she sniffled, but choked herself up on tears and couldn’t finish the sentence. Second try: “Do you still love me when I cry?”

I don’t know exactly what sound the tip of an arrow makes as it rips through your chest and actually tears through the valves of your heart, but I’m pretty sure that’s what I heard at that moment. Good god, I thought — where did that come from? I literally got sick to my stomach for a moment when I realized that my daughter was unsure, even for a 3-year-old’s half-second — about whether I loved her unconditionally. I stammered a bit, told her “of course,” but realized that assurance via the rear-view mirror wasn’t going to cut it in this case. I pulled into the parking lot of the adjacent motel, and hopped into the backseat.

I wanted to grab her and tell her that she could push me off a cliff and I’d still love her all the way to the bottom. I wanted to tell her that rough men could rip my limbs apart, demanding I renounce my love for her, and I would just laugh and drift away. I wanted to tell her that loving her is as unchanging a part of the world for me as the daily sunrise or my April tax bill. But you can’t tell a 3-year-old that stuff, so I just held her face, kissed her between the eyes as hard as I could, and said, “I will alway, always, always love you. No matter what.”

And then she let me have it.

“YUCK!” she said, laughing and swatting the side of my face. “Your kisses are YUCKY! I’m gonna wipe ‘em off!” Laughs, laughs, laughs, all around.

And boom, we were off to another subject, and none too soon for me. I don’t know how many seconds passed from the beginning of the Daddy devastation to the reprieve — 60? 90? — but here’s hoping it was the longest time you ever wonder whether Daddy loves you, Mia.