Have you ever watched the Olympics or some other sporting event like Wimbledon, where they pan the camera through the spectators and pick out some star athlete’s parents? Invariably, the Dad is wearing a baggy short sleeve Hawaiian shirt and a goofy hat with little metal grommet holes for hanging his fishing lures. When we launched our family nearly 15 years ago, that was my aspiration. One or both of my kids was going to be a world class tennis player or track star and I could join Mr. Blackwell’s “10 Worst Dressed Men” list, while bilking millions of dollars in personal fees from my kids. [Read more...]

In “Pirates of the Caribbean,” during a sword fight, Johnny Depp’s opponent says, “You cheated!” Johnny, as Captain Jack Sparrow, responds with “Pirate!” in a masterful “what do you expect” tone of voice. It’s hilarious.

Children often have the same sensibilities about their parents and their methods of conveying such expectations can be just as funny, even without professional comedy writers.

I make reference to an incident this week in the Malgeri home. Like many families, we have our share of web-enabled devices, the count doubling when our kids both hauled in iPhones and laptops for Christmas. While children are excellent at mastering the intricacies of Mindcraft and creating Oscar worthy videos from a free iPhone app, their system administration skills leave much to be desired. As a result I quite often here the words, “Dad! My computer won’t connect to Facebook!” [Read more...]

A few weekends ago I cashed in a Groupon offer for two jetski rentals with the intent of taking our kids on a wild ride across the Redondo Beach South Bay.

“Stay away from the pier and don’t jetski more than six miles from the coast,” said the rental guy.

“SIX MILES FROM THE COAST! Do you think I’m Columbus?!” I didn’t really say that but the thought of having a jet ski stall, leaving my kids and me bobbing around on a heavy piece of plastic six miles from the beach was a little disconcerting. [Read more...]

Do you guys remember the character “Q” from the James Bond movies? Q was the head of Q Branch, the research and development division of the British Secret Service, which produced all the cool cars and gadgets that James Bond used to beat the bad guys. I always thought the initial stood for “Quincy” or “Quentin” but as it turns out, it stands for “Quartermaster,” which in this case is a job role for the individual who specializes in distributing supplies and provisions to troops.

“For once, please bring the car back in one piece, double oh seven!” [Read more...]

When you have a difficult child, you sometimes find yourself in much the same position as Sadam Hussein must have been in… that is, between Iraq and a hard place.  This is particularly evident when trying to get him to break a habit.  It’s been years, and I mean years, that we’ve been trying to get our son to stop saying, “are you mad a me?” as well as refrain from wiping his mouth on his shirt collar after putting anything in it.  You can imagine what spaghetti sauce does to a white polo.

Countless techniques, from bribery to banning him from wearing shirts, have failed. In the end my wife and I decided to just let him deal with the consequences.  If he ever becomes President, his state of the unions will be with a big blotch of ragu…but there’s hope. [Read more...]

‘Twas the month before Christmas, the year is just flyin’
We went to Yosemite, Bryce Canyon and Zion
A stop in Las Vegas, we gave them our token
We left quite relaxed and Lisa’s foot broken

But she’s doing just fine, likes to read, walk and write
Thanks to her love, Mikey’s Eagle is in sight
Yes he’s finding his way, scouts and friends, he’s so lucky
He runs 8 miles a day and eats more than Kentucky [Read more...]