Says Me!

Morning Melodies

I was not a quiet child.  Not by a long shot.  Suffice it to say that at one point during my childhood I was forced to literally be silent for a period of days in order to give the nodules on my throat that had formed from screaming time to heal.  On the other hand, my wife is a wallflower.  Who's snickering?  Was that you?  Ok, maybe not a wallflower.  Would you buy shrinking violet?  Primrose?

If noisy is a genetic predisposition, the cacophony of the Hornik household was pretty much a foregone conclusion.  From the moment my kids wake up to the moment they go to sleep, they are making noise.  Sometimes it's talking.  Sometimes it's shouting.  And sometimes it's just good old fashioned noise -- you know, banging, stomping, growling, humming, howling, thumping, smashing.  Most mornings we are awakened by cries of pain or anger or desperation from one child or another.  That wake-up call is usually followed by my good morning greeting to our wonderful children -- "what in God's name is going on down there?"  This good morning greeting can not be delivered softly as it might not find its way to each and every one of my wonderful children that way.  So I deliver it loudly and firmly, thus assuring that the entire clan will be able to bask in the warmth of my sunrise salutation.  While sometimes I am actually looking for an answer to the morning inquiry ("just my piggy bank breaking" "just our heads banging" "just the picture frame falling" -- my children apparently believe that by adding "just" before an extraordinary event it will somehow magically transform it into a mundane one).  Other times the question is as much a formality as putting a Jeopardy answer in the form of a question.  And yet, while it would undoubtedly be more expeditious to shout "Shut Up Already!," my powerful parenting instincts tell me that Jeopardy is onto something -- "What in God's name is going on down there?"  Much better, don't you think.

Despite my daily pleas for quiet, I appear to neither be winning the battles nor winning the war.  Each of my children gets louder by the day and collectively the noise they produce is growing exponentially.  I didn't fully appreciate my double paned windows until now.  They serve two distinct but related functions in the Hornik house.  First, they limit the degree to which our household racket bothers our hard of hearing next door neighbors (to think that I once thought the value of double paned windows was to keep noise out, not in).  Second, the double panes diminish the likelihood that the sheer decibels of sound emanating from within the house will actual burst the windows like a gigantic opera singer living in a champaign glass house (a tertiary advantage is that when a baseball is hurled at a double paned window, while it will certainly break and cost the parents of the ball hurler hundreds of dollars to repair, it will not actually crash through the window and propel shards of glass in the general direction of said ball hurler's brothers and sister).

This morning, like all mornings, was a veritable cornucopia of Hornik children noises.  As each kid finished breakfast, they moved on to their own particular noise of choice.  My oldest retreated to his bedroom to blast the musical de jour -- this morning it was Evita -- on his neon blue boom box.  My second oldest left for the living room to play retro video games at not inconsequential volume (I got the video game from him for my birthday but he seems to have adopted it as his own -- I can't blame him; Galaga rocks!).  My youngest never actually made it out of the kitchen.  He simply headed for the nearest laptop to play the loudest flash game he has managed to find on PBSkids.org (as in "daddy, put on PBS kids dot org for me.").  Last but not least, my daughter added to the fun by interfering with each of her brother's respective noisy activities, creating the additional chaos of screaming and periodic crying ("Get out of here!" "You're blocking my video game!" "Don't touch my computer!" "Ouch, you're hurting me!").  Put it all together and you've got some serious audio ugliness -- a squawking computer; outgunned by pulsating, vibrating, eradicating alien lasers; overpowered by a rousing rendition of "Don't cry for me Argentina"; punctuated by a squealing nomadic agitator.

The noise is all powerful.  It is naturally resistant to interference.  And, thus, when faced with the realization that screaming at kids for making too much noise does little more than add noise to the noise, I am left with only one choice -- admit defeat and retreat.  Retreat behind my bedroom door, behind my bathroom door, behind my shower door, behind a wall of water, where, if I am lucky, I will only hear a few of the blips and squeals and crescendos.  And as the water washes over me and I clear my mind for the day ahead I think to myself how quiet it will be in 15 short years when my youngest leaves the house.

Giving My Kids A Good Licking

It's the rainy season in California.  And with the rain comes every imaginable virus that has managed to spawn from the unwashed masses over the period of the preceding year.  I think that California kids are hit harder by viruses in the winter than the kids in the North Eastern tundra where I grew up.  It probably has something to do with the fact that parents in California are so "laid back" (read "stupid") that they let their kids go to school in shorts and run around barefoot in the dead of Winter.  And while winter here spends most of its time hovering around the 60's, it is amazing how many germs can find their way into an elementary school of foolishly underdressed and classically unhygienic kids.

As a result of the neglect of those parents around us -- I can assure you it isn't our fault; we would never send our children out into the freezing cold rain without at least a long sleeve shirt and sometimes even socks -- my kids do not manage to escape the winter unscathed.  They come home with every combination of headache, fever, stomach ache, vomiting and diarrhea you can imagine (for example. one kid might come home with a headache, fever and vomiting; while the next might come home with a fever, stomach ache and diarrhea; the next may have fever, stomach ache and diarrhea; and the last kid may come home with a head ache, vomiting and diarrhea; at which point the first kid comes home with stomach ache, vomiting and diarrhea and the next kid comes home with . . . ok, you get the picture . . . did you really think that I was going to go through all 1082 combinations?).

Despite the rampant virus farm that lives under my roof, I usually stay pretty healthy throughout the rainy season.  How do I manage to avoid getting sick with so many kids in my house all winter?  I lick each of them before they go to bed at night.  There's nothing better for your immune system than forced exposure to every germ in the Bay Area.  Ok, I don't really lick my kids before bed, but I do often kiss them, which is pretty close.  Then again, it's usually a peck on the cheek or the forehead, which is not nearly as efficient an exposure to germs as is a good solid lick under the nose.  I think I'm going to start actually licking their noses before bed.  Just a little insurance against what's been a particularly bad flu season. 

Now that I think about it, I can tell you why parents don't usually get sick from the germs their kids bring home each day.  And I think it is pretty close to licking your kids before bed.  According to the international parenting handbook, the appropriate behavior at virtually all meals (and most snacks) is to finish your child's uneaten food.  It's in the manual.  It's what we all do.  Why let a half eaten ear of corn go to waste?  or a practically untouched bowl of soup?  And who else is going to eat the top of the ice cream so that your kid can enjoy the cone more quickly?  It is our right and it is our obligation as parents to eat our children's left over food.  Until now I didn't realize that this was an evolutionary adaptation, yet clearly it is.  Leftovers turn out to be a fantastic delivery mechanism for small levels of viral agents -- and more appealing than, say, eating your kids' boogers.  So parents through the generations have snacked on the fetid refuse off the plates of their progeny.  Next time my wife gives me a hard time about foraging on the kids partially eaten dinner plates I'm going to make clear that I can't help myself -- its in our DNA.

Halloween Costume Confusion

Halloween has come and gone and I lived to tell the tale.  But barely.  It was pretty touch and go for a while there.  Our biggest problem this year was costume confusion.  No one could seem to figure out who the Horniks were supposed to be.  If we had fragile egos, it could have sent us to therapy.  Luckily, fragile egos are not our problem.  Bad costumes, yes.  Fragile egos, no.

"What do you mean 'who am I?'  I'm Danny Zuko.  Danny Zuko!"  Apparently the only thing worse than people hating your costume is people not knowing what the heck you are.  That was my 9 year old's problem this year.  He went to school for the Halloween parade dressed as Danny Zuko.  You know, John Travolta's character in Grease.  Unfortunately, his classmates were not up on their modern musicals to quite the same extent as my son.  What's more, rather than going with the classic 50's look -- rolled up jeans, white t-shirt, high tops -- my son is a purist and insisted upon going in a black t-shirt and black pants with a black belt.  Why?  Because that's what Danny Zuko wears.  I too was a doubter once, but my son showed me the error of my ways.  Through the power of the Internet, he could show me numerous pictures of Danny Zuko (not just Travolta but the many other wanna be's who've played Danny on and off broadway over the years) and they all wore black pants, black shirts and black belts.  That's just what Danny Zuko wears. 

The only problem is that if you are not a Danny Zuko aficionado, you look at the black pants and black t-shirt and think to yourself "Terminator?" "Matrix?" "stagehand?"  I tried to explain to my son that the best way for him to combat this costume confusion was to sing "Summer Loving" or "Grease Lightning."  This didn't seem like such a stretch to me.  I can't tell you how many times I've had to say "enough already" in the face of yet another rendition of "Popular" at the top of my son's lungs.  So, what's so hard about singing?  Apparently singing is even more humiliating than appearing in a nondescript costume and having to answer the question "what are you?" over and over again.  But my son is not one to be deterred that easily.  He's a creative problem solver.  So come Halloween night, he employed a two step plan for being recognized as Danny Zuko.  First, he put on a white t-shirt.  He realized that while it was not, in fact, true to the movie, people just expected (foolishly) Danny Zuko to be in a white t-shirt.  So while my son is often a purist, he was willing to make a compromise this time around.  Second, while he was not willing to sing for his supper (or for his candy, as the case may be), he did acknowledge that the Grease music would pretty quickly put him in context.  So instead of belting out show tunes, my son and his Pink Lady friend, pushed around a stroller with a boom box playing the Grease soundtrack.  Turns out that's all it took.  Halloween night he was greeted with "what a cute Danny Zuko you make" rather than, "and you are?"  Mission accomplished.

There were bigger problems afoot for my three year old.  And they were all my fault.  My 5 year old daughter reported early on that she would be dressing as a Stanford cheerleader for Halloween.  It was a cute little costume and she was thrilled to carry those red pompoms.  But it just didn't sit right with me.  Cheerleader is such a plebeian costume.  Plus, the Stanford cheerleaders hold a pretty tenuous position with the students and alumni.  Stanford just isn't your classic cheerleading kind of a school.  And as someone who periodically played with the Stanford Band (more years ago than I care to think about), cheerleading was a little bit like fingernails against a chalk board.  So in an effort to make my daughter's costume tolerable, I decided to dress my 3 year old son as the Stanford Tree.  The Stanford Tree is the greatest mascot ever.  Why?  Because it is a tree.  Ok, it's not just a tree.  It is a tree with big eyes and a smile.  It is an anthropomorphic tree.  It is right up there with an anthropomorphic clock or an anthropomorphic candlestick.  The Stanford Tree rules.  Thus, by the commutative property of rulership, a Stanford Tree costume would also rule.  I got to work.

It turns out that making a Stanford Tree costume is harder than you might think.  It is entirely unclear to me whether I was in fact thinking?  Why would I want to make my own costume in the first place.  Look at all the spectacular store bought costumes available.  He could have been a Power Ranger or Spider-Man or some other over-commercialized, soulless super hero.  And I would have saved countless hours and something like a hundred bucks.  But, no.  I couldn't do that.  I was too intoxicated by the idea of a little Stanford Tree helping give some character to my over-commercialized, soulless cheerleader daughter (cute but soulless and over-commercialized). 

For those of you thinking of making such a costume in the future, here are the steps.  First, you need to make a paper mock up of the costume.  This is no small task in and of itself.  I still don't think that I quite understand the geometry of a cone with the top cut off.  but through trial and error I got something that was more or less cone shaped and more or less fit my son.  Once you have created the paper template you march down to the House of Foam (no lie, there is literally a House of Foam in Palo Alto) and buy $50 worth of foam and $10 in adhesive spray.  If you don't have a little skill-saw like the guy at House of Foam has, the best way to cut your foam to size is either an electronic carving knife (no such luck) or a Ginsu serrated knife (bingo).  After cutting the pieces, you glue them together trying not to glue your fingers, deck, clothing, hair, etc. (harder than it looks).  Let the glued pieces dry then pray they actually fit your child (ok, I got a little lucky here).  Once the foam pieces have dried, go down to your local hardware store and buy $15 in appropriately colored spray paint.  Lay out the pieces on your sidewalk and commence spray painting.  Don't forget to put down paper under your costume or the sidewalk will soon take on the appearance of the South Bronx (Doh!).  Let the spray paint dry.  Realize that it looks like crap.  Go back to the hardware store and buy $15 more spray paint for a second coat.  Paint the costume again (this time with paper down, although it is way too late for that to matter).  Let the spray paint dry.  See some spots that could use another coat and decide how much of a perfectionist you are.  Go back to the hardware store and buy $15 more spray paint for a third coat.  Let the spray paint dry.  Try the costume on your child.  Muse at how adorable he looks in the costume you have just created and revel in the glory of it actually fitting.  Declare victory.  Go to bed.

Unfortunately, my victory, like George Bush's, was declared a little prematurely.  First came the problem of costume identification.  When the kids, Pamela and I arrived at a Halloween dinner before trick or treating, I put my son in his tree costume to shoot some pictures and take in the adulation associated with actually making my own spectacular costume.  I did get the obligatory "oh, he's so cute," but it was followed quickly by "what is he, a Christmas Tree?"  Are you kidding?  Have you ever met me?  I'm the guy who proposed naming his son Shlomo.  Shlomo Hornik.  Would I really dress my son as a Christmas Tree?  For Christ sake.  Plus, why would a Christmas Tree have big eyes and a smile?  That's just silly.  "He's the Stanford Tree."  "The what?"  "The Stanford Tree.  You know, Stanford's mascot."  You would think that I had dressed my son as the Stanford Tree in Chattanooga Tennessee.  This was Palo Alto, California.  There are more Stanford alumni per square inch in Palo Alto than there are jack asses per square inch in the White House.  And so it went, person after person.  "He's a tree?"  "The Stanford tree?"  "The what?" 

Misidentification wasn't the worst of it.  Even if everyone had recognized him as the Stanford Tree and been absolutely blown away by how adorable he was, and even if it had not cost me as much as an iPod to make, the costume would still have been a complete failure.  It seems logical that costume design may be one of the rare instances in which it makes sense to pursue form over function.  It's a costume.  It is all about form.  But it turns out that function stuff is pretty helpful.  So here are a few additional hints when designing a costume.  As a general matter, it is helpful for your child to be able to walk in the costume.  And if your child can not walk in his costume, it is all but imperative that he be able to ride in a stroller in his costume.  And, if your child can not walk in his costume and he can not sit in a stroller in his costume, he had better be able to ride on your shoulders in his costume.  I suppose if none of these conditions apply, it would be possible to make your child a little float and wheel him up and down the parade route trick or treating.  But that seems like a long way to go in the name of a cute costume that you have simply designed foolishly.  My solution was to remove the costume altogether and have my son trick or treat in his sweatpants and t-shirt.  He was dressed as Son-Of-Idiot-Who-Didn't-Think-About-The-Fact-That-A-Tree-Is-Actually- A-Really-Stupid-Costume-For-A-Three-Year-Old.  He got lots of candy and no one asked him what he was.

In a final moment of Halloween costume confusion, my wife decided to dress up to go trick or treating as well.  She put on the bright pink bridesmaid dress that had hung on the back of our closet door for a year, puffed up her hair to near wedding-like proportions and put on enough makeup that you couldn't miss it in the dark.  She had on an apron and carried with her a bottle of Vicodin in a Tiffany's pouch.  She had intended to be a Desperate Housewife, right out of one of our favorite new TV shows.  To her great dismay, however, all Halloween night people kept telling her how great she looked.  "Did you do something to your hair?"  "What's different about you tonight?"  "Wow, you look great with your hair like that."  And on and on.  I guess the irony of Pamela trick or treating in suburbia as a Desperate Housewife was lost on suburbia.  But it amused me.  Next year we are all going as a Power Ranger or Spider-man or some other over-commercialized, soulless super hero.

Pray For A Cure

I'm not sure precisely how to break this to all of you but I recently contracted a pretty nasty illness.  I am hopeful that it is curable or at least goes into remission.  But for the time being please forgive me when I display somewhat antisocial behavior in group settings.  You see, I seem to have come down with sudden onset Tourette's Syndrome.  Ever since last Tuesday I can't seem to control my language.

The End Of Irony

Ok, I've been completely remiss and am well overdue for a SaysMe post. I swear I'll finish my Halloween post some day soon. In the mean time, I received this email from my friend Jen the day after the Presidential election and thought it was worth sharing:

After the past few months of the campaign, I feel a bit like the character in the Christopher Durang play who's clapping and clapping to show he believes in fairies, when Peter Pan suddenly turns to the kids and says, "That wasn't enough. You didn't clap hard enough. Tinkerbell's dead."

I was planning to take refuge from the news by hanging out in Cam's first grade classroom this morning, but all the kids were arguing about the election. At some point, I had to manage the whole class while the teacher took off two students. One had crowed that Bush's "team" got all the popsicles in the world (today was "popsicle day" after school at Marin). The second child replied that Bush was a cheater, and that everyone who voted for Bush would be killed. Yup, these are six year-olds.

Oh, well. Good thing we still have a president who's a uniter and not a divider.

That was irony. I plan to use it as much as possible before it's outlawed.

Jen's email reminded me of the very best advice I received when my wife got pregnant for the first time. I was told to go see as many movies as possible because soon I would not be able to see movies again for a substantial chunk of my life. How true it is. With the birth of my children came the death of the movie theater. I am still living in the movie dead zone. I suspect that the Bush administration will outlaw sarcasm at the same time as irony. So like Jen with irony, I am going to use as much sarcasm as possible in the coming days and months. Not that I blame the Bush administration for outlawing such powerful language -- next thing you know we might go out and use it.

Geek du Soleil

I spent a couple weekends ago with a wonderful group of entrepreneurs, technologists and artists at something called The Gathering. While the name conjures imagines of Crop Circles in my mind, in reality it is a geek confab. This years Gathering took place at the mansion of Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque Du Soleil. His home was intensely cool (right down to the swimming pool in the living room) and we all pretended that we were the embodiment of that coolness. Alas, as cool as the house was, we remained geeks.

Don't get me wrong. I love geeks. In my world geeks are cool. But my world is the world of high tech startups and it is ruled by geeks, so geeks get to write the definitions (I'm pretty sure that's the advent of the WikiPedia -- only geeks would create their own encyclopedia so that they could literally write the definition of cool). In the words of my wife, Silicon Valley is all about "geek chic" -- so far as I can tell, geek chic is best defined by those squarish nerd glasses that once were a source of ridicule but in Silicon Valley are a source of admiration. That's Silicon Valley. In the rest of the world, geeks are geeks and cool is cool and never the twain shall meet. But that didn't stop us from brief delusions of coolness at The Gathering. In the comfort and support of other geeks, the geek is king. Like girls at an all-girls school or Jewish "athletes" at the Jewish Olympics, geeks thrive at Mac World, the Math Decathlon and The Gathering.

At this point I should apologize to those representing the arts at The Gathering. The artists and musicians were not geeks. They were artists and musicians and, thus, were inherently cool. Unfortunately, while coolness will not rub off on geeks, geekiness will unquestionably rub off on cool people. It seemed (and still seems) completely incomprehensible that the fabulous Christina Courtin and her ultra-cool compatriots Kyle Sanna and Johnny Gandelsman would drive up from New York City, the land of cool, to hang out with a bunch of aging nerds. In reality, they wouldn't. But they had no idea what they were getting into. Frankly, they were duped into joining us. They were invited to The Gathering by the very coolest among us -- Juliette (a former VJ, one time Miss Canada, and now all-powerful media guru with more style in her little pinky than the rest of us could muster in our entire bodies with the help of even the most talented personal shopper). We used Juliette like a fishing lure -- these cooler-than-cool musicians drove up to Montreal expecting a room full of fashionistas like Juliette and found a room full of fashionleastas like me. You could see the fear in their eyes when they arrived at dinner after a long day of driving, looked around at this dubious crew of hacks and hackers and thought to themselves, "holy crap, what have we gotten ourselves into?" But there was no turning back towards NYC so late at night. So they did the only thing they could possibly do under the circumstance -- they began drinking heavily. And continued drinking heavily throughout the weekend. Because only through that alcohol induced haze could they forgive Juliette (who had betrayed the cool team and turned double agent for the geeks) and make the best of a weekend with the nerd squad.

Despite all this talk of the dichotomy between geek and cool, if it isn't already abundantly clear, let me say this -- I do not use the term geek pejoratively. I use it descriptively. There's a difference. A geek is a geek. Nothing wrong with that. Shoot. I'm a geek. And ghastly proud of it. (I was recently chatting with the creator of AdultFriendFinder (the leading online dating site for "swingers") and made the mistake of using the term "porn" to describe his website. He got surprisingly defensive and pointed out that he doesn't use the "P word" but rather likes to refer to it as the "adult industry." I tried to explain to him that I had by no means meant the "P word" pejoratively, merely descriptively, but he took little comfort from my admonition.) To my mind a geek is someone who zealously pursues the study and furtherment of technology. What's not to like about that. Without geeks there would be no car, no TV, no electricity, no cell phone, no Tivo, no iPod, no AdultFriendFinder, no airplane, no camera and no Roomba the robotic vacuum cleaner. Geeks make the world better for all of us. In geeks I trust.

The nice thing about a weekend with geeks is that, despite popular belief, geek conversations are by no means limited to discussion of math and science. Quite to the contrary. My experience is that geeks feel fully qualified to opine on anything and everything. It reminds me a bit of my childhood. My mother thought that it was boring to ever say "I don't know" when asked a question and, thus, when faced with a question to which she had no answer she would simply make something plausible up. My childhood became a bit like that game on "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" in which a contestant has to guess which of the three definitions for a term is the actual definition and which two are made up. Sometime my mother would admit her ruse after learning the actual answer. Other times my brother, sister and I were left to discover the misinformation in less advantageous ways -- "what do you mean the back scratcher wasn't a tribal instrument first used in East African rituals during the dry season?" (It turns out that the ability to not only sniff out a plausible but technically inaccurate statement but also come up with one should the need arise is a pretty valuable skill when practicing law.) This is not to say that we spent the weekend making stuff up. We simply spent the weekend opining on things on which we were not necessarily qualified to opine. As a result, we had some really interesting conversations that made me think instead of just talk.

Among the topics of conversation at The Gathering were evolution (as reflected in the eyes -- and behaviors -- of one of the cutest little Gerber babies you've ever seen), sexuality and submission under repressive regimes (as embodied by Tweetie Bird thong underwear haggled over by women in Berkas), the power of "and" over "but" (as demonstrated in improvisational theater games and extreme programming), the future of politics (does technology make it possible to move past partisanship?), the future of education (what will inspire girls to pursue technical careers?), the future of movie making (is that background real or is it a 3D matte painting?), the future of medicine (the age old question of socialized medicine with a technology twist -- will body monitoring cure all woes?), not to mention some of my favorite everyday geek conversations about things like RSS, cell phones, PDAs, thin clients vs. thick clients, Web 2.0, the commercializability of nanotechnology, recreational space travel and the list goes on. To my mind these were some seriously cool conversations and while they may not have made us cool in the pages of Style Magazine, there is no one cooler in my eyes than a room full of geeks who are willing to listen, open up and share. I'm counting the days until next year's Gathering.

Preschool Orientation: Fashion and Food

I really don't mean to harp on the kids' schools. My kids go to great schools. I wouldn't want them anywhere else. Which is not to say that I love everything about them. That's just not in my nature. I believe it is very much in the Jewish cultural tradition to complain about that which you love (ask any Jewish mother). I suppose it isn't technically complaining. It is more like kvetching. What's the difference? Kvetching is Yiddish and somehow that just makes it sound more acceptable. (When was the last time you heard a Jewish grandmother call someone a "dick"? you just don't hear it (much). But I suspect you've heard that same Jewish grandmother call someone a "putz." What's the difference? Putz is Yiddish and somehow that just makes it sound more acceptable.) Given the Jewish historical precedent, I'm sure that the JCC won't mind when I raise a few little issues here and there. I hope my kids' elementary school will be as forgiving. If not, I may just have to send them to Jewish Day School so that I can bitch . . . excuse me, kvetch with impunity.

As I wrote my last diatribe about Open School Night, it got me thinking about another annoying artifact of having too many children. I have to attend too many preschool orientations. Luckily, thanks to the fact that we employed the "one year pregnant, one year not" method of family planning, I have not had to endure more than two preschool orientations in any one year. Thus, while not quite the intense reaction I had as a result of three open school nights in a two week period, my reaction to preschool orientation has built up in my system over time a bit like an allergy -- with more exposure grows a more acute reaction. This year I attended two preschool orientations in less than a week and for everyone's sake, they should probably be my last. Ever. Again, it's not the fault of the preschools. They're both great places. But after more than a dozen preschool orientations, I think I'm pretty much at the end of my preschool learning curve and my next reaction may be anaphylactic.

Preschool orientations are certainly not without their purpose (and, thankfully, they are less about fund raising -- they save that for Open School Night). They help lay out the ground rules for the school and set parents' expectations. That's important because all preschools are not the same. For instance, snack varies from school to school. At one of our preschools, snack items are brought in by the kids, dropped in the "Sharing Basket" and distributed in an egalitarian manner. No matter how much you covet your particular organic peach or designer cheese, there is no guarantee that it will be served as snack at your kid's table (I know this for a fact because one parent in that school's orientation asked for a clarification on this particular point -- "So, is there no way that your child can designate her particular fruit for snack at her table?" "No. We want the kids to appreciate the fact that others can enjoy their fruit as much as they will enjoy the fruit of others." Duh. That's why it's called a Sharing Basket. I feel better about the social education my child is getting already). On the other hand, at the JCC preschool you get to horde your food all you want, just make sure it is vegetarian (again, a clarification appeared to be needed. The new director of the preschool -- who is a a great, smart guy -- had to spell out what that meant. "Lunches don't need to be Kosher per se but they need to be vegetarian. So, no meat and no shellfish. Please don't bring meat or pork or chicken or anything like that." Holy crap. Does this community really not understand what vegetarian means? I'm pretty sure that was in my son's third grade curriculum).

While some things about eating at my kids' preschools are different, some things remain the same. No matter what you do, at either preschool, don't even think of bringing in the most dangerous of all toxins -- THE NUT. Preschool is all about playing, sharing, exploring and learning to revile the evil nut in all its forms (shelled, spread, as oil). The nut is so pernicious that we must not only shun the nut family itself but any food that has had the misfortune of being manufactured within the same facility as any tainted nut product. Our elementary school has taken a somewhat less drastic position with respect to the evil nut. Rather than ban it altogether, the school has created a nut free lunch table. It is sort of a separate but equal strategy. Sure, kids are ostracized and humiliated for eating at the loser nut table but at least they won't die. I suppose that's a reasonable tradeoff. I may just have to petition for a dairy and egg free table for my absurdly allergic son. In the alternative, I may just tell him not to eat other people's food or he will die.

Another great preschool mystery that is clarified at every preschool orientation I have ever attended is what children should wear to preschool. This is another speech that grows old fast. Ok, think for a second about how you should dress your kid for preschool. Should he wear a tuxedo? Should she wear a "party dress"? Should he wear a jumpsuit? Should she wear a leotard? Should he wear a fedora? Should she wear a tiara? I'm guessing that you can answer these questions correctly. Yet, every year I am instructed to send my child to preschool in clothing that I don't mind my child getting dirty and that is easy to get on and off to minimize pee accidents (but, just in case, bring a second set of clothes in case difficulty unrobing isn't the primary cause of your child's incontinence). Now I've heard this speech going on twelve or fifteen times and I'm pretty sure they're missing the boat. The correct clothing in which to send your child to school is that which causes the shortest tantrum. These preschool directors have met preschoolers, haven't they? There is no telling them anything. If my son really wants to go to preschool in a leotard and a tiara, no orientation program on the planet is going to change the fact that he'll be arriving in a leotard and tiara. So sorry. If you're lucky, maybe he'll pee himself.

Here's another issue I have with preschool orientation. What value is there in having us introduce ourselves and describe our preschooler in front of the group? I'm sure it will come as no big surprise that no one ever says, "Hi. I'm David Hornik and my little guy is frankly an ill-tempered nightmare of a child. I'm pretty much sending him here to get a couple hours of peace in a day that is otherwise filled with parenting misery." Oh no. The kid descriptions are filled with flowery praise of these wonderful little angels -- happy, jolly, engaging, loving, adorable, precocious, precious, outgoing, charming, funny, intelligenct, and on and on. But every now and again a parent can't handle the bad karma of out and out lying and then you get a description something like, "my little guy is a really spirited, energetic child with an insatiable curiosity." Mark my words, that kid is a pain in the ass. At my most recent preschool orientation, I couldn't be a party to the festival of sugar coating. I introduced myself and my son like this, "Hi. My name is David Hornik and my son is a fourth child, which means he is pretty independent otherwise he probably wouldn't eat." While I amused myself (I always do), I watched a couple of first time parents pull out their cell phones and call child protective services. The investigation is ongoing.

Yet Another Open School Night

Last night I attended my third Open School Night of the season. By the grace of God, this was the third and final installment of Open School Hell. Next year I may not be so lucky. If we play our cards wrong (and, if the past is any indication of future stupidity, we very well may) I will potentially face four or even five such glorious community gatherings. Don't get me wrong. I love my kids' schools. I truly enjoy the company of my fellow parents. And I appreciate the hard work of my kids' teachers. But the novelty and charm of Open School Night wears off quickly in bulk.

Of all the uninformed decisions I've made in my life, having four children must be pretty darn close to the top of the list. I am not saying that I made the wrong decision. I would do it again without a moment's hesitation (ok, maybe a teeny tiny moment). In fact, I'd count it among the ranks of my very best decisions (including escaping New York, attending that Devo concert against my parents' better judgment, changing my mind about playing rugby after my buddy returned with a broken nose from the first practice, going West young man, buying a house in Silicon Valley before the Google IPO . . . ). But my decision to have a forth kid was unquestionably uninformed. I just didn't do the math. 4 sets of friends with weekend birthday parties. 4 little league teams, AYSO teams, karate lessons, music lessons, school plays, chorus concerts. 4 little bodies to share all illness, one after another (God forbid they should all get sick at the same time and just get it over with -- and God forbid just one of them should skip any illness involving vomiting). And, above all else, 4 Open School Nights!

I don't know if this is the case throughout the nation but in the Bay Area, Open School Night is more like a telethon than an academic endeavor. After meeting the teachers and seeing the classrooms, the conversation quickly turns to fundraising. Parents, teachers and principals stand up and pitch their wares -- wrapping paper drives, candy drives, eScrip (the perfect fundraiser for Silicon Valley; all you have to do is shop and you make money for your school). Each new opportunity to help raise money for the school is promoted with the flare that only a former Vice President of Marketing for some high tech company or other could bring to the task. Banners are unfurled. Balloons are launched. Slogans are employed ("a sweet way to help the school" "let's wrap up school funding and put a bow on it" "do your part or you will be marked as a miserable free-rider, scorned by the community, and your children will be appropriately ostracized in the playground" stuff like that). And demonstrations are employed to great effective. I particularly enjoyed the principal carrying out the leaning tower of 20 some odd boxes that had been wrapped with A SINGLE ROLL of the fabulous fundraiser wrapping paper. And while I don't know if the dropping of the 20 some odd boxes that had been wrapped with A SINGLE ROLL of the fabulous fundraiser wrapping paper was in the script, it was an excellent touch ("there are so many here it is too much for one little old principal to handle..."). But if none of those ploys work, the schools resort to good old fashion begging. "We're looking for 100% participation. The amount doesn't matter, just the fact that everyone gives what they can." "And what's the recommended amount this year?" "Ideally we would like to see each family donate $470 per child." Holy crap. There goes that 4 kids thing again. $470 is a lot of cash to supplement the public schools but $1,880 is, well, four times as much.

If you aren't a fan of wrapping paper or chocolates or giving away your hard earned money for nothing (nothing except the better education of your precious children, but who cares about that), the schools are incredibly flexible and accommodating. They will find something that you're willing to buy for the benefit of the school if it kills them. Thus, the advent of the school auction. This year I will be attending 3 school auctions. Next year perhaps 4. That pretty much wraps up my Saturday evenings for the Fall. The auction festivities goes something like this. Go to auction venue. Get plied with free alcohol to lubricate the evenings transactions. Commence silent auction bidding to get warmed up for the real event (silent bidding includes the less expensive items like a weekend at the Ritz, a Joe Montana autographed football, or a foot massage from the principal). Once every is sufficiently versed in bidding on things they don't really need or even necessarily want, and once the alcohol has had sufficient time to impact the better judgment of the attendees, the live auction begins. The live auction is all about playing on the brutal competitiveness of the Bay Area and about the raw demonstration of obscene wealth. It is a blood sport and it is big fun. A week in someone's Hawaii house will go for tens of thousands of dollars. Use of a private jet is a big crowd pleaser. Dinner with a movie star -- big cash. Breakfast with a university President -- big cash. Lunch with the CEO of a fortune 500 company -- ho hum (no one's going to admit they couldn't set that up with a simple phone call). When all is said and done, the kids' schools will raise hundreds of thousands of dollars at these charity auctions and I will likely be the proud owner of a half dozen tickets to random events (like the San Jose Sharks and Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat), a night away at some third rate hotel, and, if I'm really lucky, the latest Tivo box. Imagine what I'd come home with if I drank.

I suppose it could be worse. I'd rather go to a charity auction than a charity ball. And at least I don't have 5 kids. Then I surely wouldn't have time to write this. I'd be stuck at yet another Open School Night.

Fat And Happy

Today, as I ran into the Apple Store to try (yet again) to visit a "genius" in the Genius Bar, I passed by a weight loss clinic on a Palo Alto side street. Coming out of the clinic was a rather heavy woman and I found myself thinking "wow, that place sure doesn't work." And then it struck me (along with the fact that my inner voice is a real jerk), weight loss clinics are stuck in a terrible Catch 22. They want to attract excellent customers. And those customers, by and large, will be noticeably overweight. Thus, the weight loss programs are inevitably going to be populated by fat people. After all, that's why they're there. But the constant presence of fat people at the weight loss clinic will inevitably suggest that the program doesn't work -- if it were working, wouldn't the building be full of smiling thin people? (if the multi-billion dollar diet industry teaches us anything it is that "fat and happy" is pretty much just an expression).

This is, of course, ridiculous. Success will breed apparent failure. For every fat person you turn skinny, there will be a dozen fat people ready to line up in hopes that they too can lose the weight. Plus, your best customers will be the ones that no longer need you and move on to greener pastures. Thus a nation full of Atkins lemmings (myself included) is still be a nation of obesity. It's not Atkins fault (although the heart disease certainly is). It is just a statistical reality. No matter how successful any weight loss program, there will always be a greater influx of overweight people than outflux of thin people. Thus, no weight loss program will ever appear to be succeeding.

The same problem undoubtedly holds true of Hair Club For Men and your local toupee shops. Baldies, comb-overs and Ted Koppel will inevitably be noticed coming and going from such fine establishments as The Piece Makers or Wiggin' Out. But folks with really great implants or a natural looking weave will blend right in with the teaming masses of hirsute comers and goers. What's The Rug Gallery to do? More apparent failure -- "good God, I don't want my hair to look like that!" Ditto for tanning beds, prosthetic shops, hair colorists, plastic surgeons and the like. At the end of the day, if the goal of your establishment is to make your customers look like something they aren't, chances are you had better have a discrete back entrance. Because without a multi-million dollar ad budget, Jared isn't a walking billboard, he's just another sub eating nebbish standing in line between a couple of fatsos.

Insult To Injury In The Shoe Department

When we returned home from vacation this summer, my wife decided that she was going to start exercising. She encouraged me to join her but that would require me to actually leave the house and, frankly, I can't be away from my computer that long. I suppose I could use the web browser on my Treo in a pinch but it's so hard to walk and type at the same time. So Pamela had to recruit another victim of her ill-fated desire to combat our sedentary existence. That victim was our good friend Julie who made a similar pledge some months ago and, by the power vested in her by the almighty Dr. Phil, has gone from tuber to triumphant.

It was clear to me from the get go that this foolhardy desire to exercise was not going to end well. But it was not for me to say (and, for once in my life, I didn't). Julie arrived at our house to pick Pamela up for the first day of the rest of her life. Julie was prepared. She had sneakers with lots of support, comfortable clothes, a determined look in her eye. Meanwhile, Pamela came down the stairs in breathable but fashion forward clothing, holding a pair of sneakers that are perhaps only called that by virtue of their striped sides. They were marginally more sneaker-like than her brightly colored driving shoes, but I suspect the driving shoes would have been a better bet. When questioned about the prudence of her "athletic" shoes, Pamela offered up a pair of Puma wrestling shoes as an alternative. Truthfully, it was six of one, a half dozen of the other. So off she went in the original shoes, drunk with the idea of getting in shape.

I can not say what precisely transpired between when she left and when she returned but I can tell you that the aftermath wasn't pretty. After thirty minutes worth of walking in the Stanford foothills (she'll argue that it was more like an hour but I believe that's just because it takes much longer to limp up a hill than to walk), Pamela developed two of the largest blisters I've ever seen. She came home with half dollar sized abrasions on the backsides of both her heels. As the day went on, her blisters continued to grow. But Pamela was undeterred by the Pinocchio act going on on the back of her feet. She rushed off to Nordstrom to buy new sneakers (commerce in the name of health and well being). Unfortunately for Pamela, rather than sell her a pair of suitable walking shoes, the sales guy called over his buddy to see the worst blisters he'd ever seen (having the shoe sales guy tell you that you've got the worst blisters he's ever seen is a little bit like having the lady who sells birth announcements tell you that you're the biggest pregnant woman she's ever seen -- and Pamela's lived that too). To add insult to injury, Pamela couldn't even buy a new pair of shoes to bring her solace on the first and last day of her fitness kick.

Pamela's feet are well on the road to recovery. But it may be quite some time before she heads to the hills with Julie again. Which is fine with me. No matter how hard I type, I've never gotten a blister.