Kobayashi Maru

So I realize that if I had lots of time and an complete lack of need for income, I could regale you with Muppet stories pretty much every day.  So if you love reading this as much as I love living it and sharing it, we can definitely strike some kind of deal.  You give me money, I provide you with consistent enjoyment, amusement, hilarity, breaks from your daily grind.  Just wanted to throw that out there.  Run it up the proverbial flagpole and see if anyone salutes…

Anyone?

Anyone?

Buhler?

Buhler?

Ok, guess not.  Well, then fine.  Have it for free.  But no more bitching about the quality of service on the lido deck then.  And we are moving to well drinks in all the bars now.  All the fine liquor will be in the captain’s quarters from now on…come to think of it, it always has been.  Move along -nothing to see here.

Alright, you know something mush have happened to drag my sorry butt back to the keyboard.  So let me get to it.  Once a month, I have to be in K-town now to do some work.  It’s a good situation, but it does take me away from Ferf and the Muppet for short stints and that part can be trying.  The Muppet has been surprisingly nonplussed about it.  Ferf has been fairly good about it.  I have been accepting all forms of sympathy however and milking it for all it is worth - but that’s just how I roll.  With the advent of such wonderful technology like Skype and internet phones I can all but touch my family while I am gone.  If I could actually touch my family, or at least Ferf, while I was gone then I am pretty sure that this would quickly become a little too personal a post for most of you to read.  That or I would make it a members only site and start making some real money…but I digress.

SO one morning, I got a phone call from Ferf.  This is not that unusual, but normally we do our calls in the later afternoon or right before the Muppet goes to bed so we can stick with the whole bedtime ritual and routine.  But this day I got a call fairly early in the morning.  So I answered it (cause that is the normally accepted response to a ringing phone.  In fact, it has become almost Pavlovian these days, which you would think would mean that I should be able to get my dog to answer the phone, but the best I can do is get him to run to the phone and slobber…).  Anyways, I picked up the phone and seeing it was a call from m ever-lovin’ wifey, answered it.  (cause with caller ID that whole Pavlovian response things is less relevant.  In fact, you shouldn’t even bother trying to get your dog to answer the phone.  If you could get him to read the screen and tell you who was calling however, that would be a neat trick and could probably score you an appearance on David Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks.   Unless he was busy destroying his show by sleeping with people who work for him.  Maybe he might want to sleep with your dog…you know what.  Let’s put this whole dog, phone, David Letterman affair behind us shall we.  It leads to dark, awkward places.)

So, lets go back to the beginning.  The phone rang, I saw it was Ferf and I answered it.  See, that wasn’t so hard was it. There is absolutely no reason to go delving into things like dead Russian psychologists and whether or not David Letterman has a predilection towards bestiality.  Why do you people do this!?

SO I answer the phone with out a single thought outside of answering the phone…and Ferf tells me that the Muppet doesn’t think she should go to school that day.  Now, understand that this is a HUGE thing.  The Muppet likes school.  In fact, the Muppet loves school.  She’s a role model for goodness sake!  She loves the kids, the teachers, the uniforms - she loves it all.  So her not wanting to go is well, huge.  So she gets on the phone with me.  And I ask her how she’s doing the fine morning.  (Cause you don’t want to play into anything unwittingly.)  She tells me that she is not doing well.  I can tell this is going to be a bit of a drawing out process.

Me:  Why are you not doing well?  Isn’t today a beautiful day?

Muppet: I don’t know if today is beautiful  I haven’t seen it yet.  And I probably shouldn’t see it.

<Now, to be fair, and in the interest of full disclosure, she did have a bit of a cough - and evidently a tickle in her throat judging by the horrid sound she was making that was more than clearing one’s throat, but less than anything else I could imagine.  I realized that at some point it would be my fatherly duty to teach my little princess how to “hock a loogie”.  I have come to understand that this is not a practice that girl daddies normally participate in.  One doesn’t see a lot of little girls all dressed up in frilly lacy pinky things spitting hocked up snot onto the sidewalk like they might see a teenage boy doing.  But even if one is reviled by the concept, one must admit that said teenage boy had to have been taught how to both hock and spit said loogie at some point - either through intentional tutelage or by personal practice from mimicry.  However it happened, there was a definite exchange of knowledge, and as I am less inclined to allow others to teach my daughter things “on the playground” I figured that it probably fell to me to cover that particular portion of the life curriculum - mostly because I know for a fact that her mother doesn’t have the knowledge to share with her.  I know this because her mother once asked me to teach her how to do it.  We were already engaged, so I guess the gloves we off and she figured I had made enough of a commitment that she did not have to fret over whether or not I would call her the next day if she asked me how one does it.  Being the good and kind fiancee I was, I acquiesced to her query.  We were sitting in Queeny Park in Vancouver - overlooking the entirety of the place, which by the way, is gorgeous. That fact plays little part in the story, but it does help with setting and sometimes context matters.  It was late morning, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves.  We were sitting on a park bench that was placed with a perfect view of the city, but probably not with loogie hocking practice in mind, but hey, you cannot anticipate everything.  So Ferf got the hocking part pretty quickly.  (She does have a younger brother and I know for a fact that ScottyBear can bring up quite a loogie, so I assume that she learned the internal portion of the project from mimicking him.)  Evidently, though, she never had really “gotten” the concept behind spitting.  So there was a gap in her learning that she desired to close.  I showed her a couple of times with what were, I must admit at the risk of sounding prideful, beautifully arching blobs of the perfect mixture of saliva and mucus that flew no less than 7-8 feet before impaling themselves on the blades of grass on the lawn before us.  I talked at length at the importance of rolling the tongue, the science of creating an airtight seal with your lips until the last moment to achieve maximum velocity, and the art of the perfect trajectory.  In fact, it might have been one of my finest off-the-cuff lesson plans.  When she finally worked up the courage (and the loogie) to try, she was giddy with anticipation.  We were sitting side by side and both looking forward in order that we might together view her first successful attempt so we could do an after action review of her performance.  I counted it off for her….three…..two….one….GO!

The sound that emanated from her cheeks, as well as the flakes of spittle on the side of my face gave me instant informational feedback that she had indeed not made an airtight seal like we had spoken of.  It was then that I felt the delicate pressure on the top my shoe.  That perfect amount of pressure that only comes from a dainty loogie being deposited by gravity onto the top of your foot.  I looked at her briefly before looking down to survey the carnage that was my Nike Air.  I knew two things instantly.  One, the girl before me who would become my ever-lovin’ wife, was not going to “get it” when it came to this activity.  And two, she was getting a cold.  But I digress…>

So the Muppet had a tickle in her throat that she was unsure how to scratch, but the noises she made suggested that she was not going to scratch that itch before she made anyone around her with a half decent sense of auditory awareness really uncomfortable.  Also, she had a bit of a dry cough.  Not quite Swine Flu, but evidently annoying enough to her to be worthy of a “I can’t go to school today” intervention.

Me: Muppet, what’s the problem?  Are you sick?

Muppet: Oh yes daddy.  I am SO sick.

Me: How sick are you?

Muppet: Too sick to go to school!

Me: How sick is that?

Muppet:  Well daddy, I have a cough.  I couldn’t sleep last night because of the cough.

Me: Baby girl, Daddy went to school lots after not sleeping all night.  You can do it.

Muppet:  Daddy…<sniffing like tears were beginning to well up in her puppy dog eyes> you don’t understand.

Me: What don’t I understand baby girl?

Muppet: I am exhausted and catastrophied!!!

Me:

Muppet:  Daddy, did you hear me!?

Me: Ummmm, yeah.  I got you there chief.  Exhausted and catastrophied.  That sounds bad.

Muppet: Oh it is bad Daddy.  So very bad.

So Ferf let her stay home from school.  The cough was not very nice and the sounds she was making would have been distracting even to the most dedicated kindergarten student.  And through it all, I got a new vocabulary word.  One that I am certain we have all felt at one time or another.  Catastrophied.   Yep, we’ve all been there baby girl…we’ve all been there.