Rambling Rhodes

How to love your child?

Last week, I was walking through the buildings at work, when I happened to pass through an area that specializes in pediatrics. For those of you who aren't up on medical jargon quite like I am, pediatrics means healthcare for Peds, which is Latin for "small proto-adults," otherwise known as children.

Anyway, as I was passing through the pediatrics area, I happened to notice a poster on the wall, and I noticed the poster featured a long and rambling poem of sorts entitled "How to love your child."

Now, even though I don't actually have a child, I figured it might be helpful to learn how to love one just in case one materializes in front of me holding the hand of one of my ex-girlfriends.

At the risk of basically second-guessing the poet who penned the advice regarding how to love your child, I have to say, quite frankly, that I believe the poet was either extremely wrong, extremely high, or a combination of both.

For example, consider some of the following actual love advice ladled out in poem form:

"If they're crabby, put them in water."

Notice it doesn't indicate how deep the water should be. Ankle-depth? 20 feet? Are you supposed to hold the child under the water until they're not crabby any more? For that matter, it doesn't even specify the water temperature. Ice cold? Boiling hot? What's the best depth and temperature to hurl a crabby child into to ensure an adequate amount of love?

"If they're unlovable children, love yourself."

Excuse me? How do you get to deem a child unlovable? What's the criteria? Is there an expert out there who hands out labels that read "Lovable Child," and "Hateful Brat?" This whole snippet of advice just basically makes it really easy to give up on a difficult child, lock yourself in a room with a naughty magazine, and love yourself like crazy.

"Hug trees together."

Because nothing says you love your child more than walking around embracing trees and making everyone around you super uncomfortable. "It's that tree hugging weirdo with the tree hugging kids."

"Go find elephants and kiss them."

Right, then. Well, you might somehow manage to score love points with your child by slipping through the zoo bars to peck pachyderms, but the child endangerment alone would probably negate the love gains. Say what you will about hugging trees; at least they don't trample you or gore you with a tusk.

"Make loving safe."

This coming from the same person who advocates smooching Dumbo.

"Plant licorice in your garden."

Show your child you love them by practicing non-productive gardening methods. Sure, you'll starve come winter, since that licorice just didn't germinate like you'd hoped, but the love between you and your child should take the edge of the starvation pains.

"Paint their tennis shoes."

If child services has not intervened by this time, there's something wrong with society. After snogging elephants, embracing trees, planting licorice and chucking crabby children into the local pond, there's a pretty solid dossier of evidence that you might just be an unfit parent. As if any more proof is needed, now your children are running around the neighborhood with tennis shoes painted with "Unlovable Child."

"Invent pleasures together."

I think I caught "Inventing Pleasures Together," one night on Cinemax. It wasn't much of a storyline, from what I saw of it, but it most certainly didn't strike me as the best way to show love to a child.

16 Years later

Okay, the class pictures are now exhausted, which is regrettable. Thankfully, my mother was nothing if not an insistent photographic record-keeper. Therefore, I'll be posting all sorts of scanned images from my childhood that will paint me in the most self-deprecating light I deem acceptable.

Hopefully, it will be a vast repository for new blog/ThunderJournal posts.

In the meantime, remember, you can still contrast my last post with this:

Losing my mind

A funny thing happens when you uproot a 17-year-old mid-western lad who lived his entire life in a town of 1,100 people, and you plop him in an Asian metropolis of 23 million people. The funny thing that happens is, he loses his mind. Believe me, it's not pretty.

This picture was the perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances. Obviously, my face is riddled with stress acne, and my smile has all the combined concerns of the last three weeks etched upon it. Also, that very week, I had been touring Kamakura, and I lost a damned contact lens (keeping in mind, this was back in the day when you had one pair, period). So, I had to rely on the "Twin Windshields of Doom" to get me by until new prescription contacts could be sent from the States. The only way I could have looked more uncomfortable in this picture was if there was a ninja standing behind me about to lop off my head.

As horrible as this picture, it really drives home just how out of my element I actually felt. Try to imagine, a gawky, overwhelmed teenage boy walking around Tokyo with his jeans pinned around his ankles. I stood out, man. Like a sore thumb just struck by a hammer.

Oh, also, I was in an all boys school, with a dress code. So, you know, keep that in mind.

Senior Pictures, Yo!

Ever since the movie "The Prophecy," I haven't been able to look at this picture the same way. It always reminds me of the way the angels "perched." At this point in my development, I had a permanent tooth in place, which remains to this day. However, my mouth hadn't stopped growing quite yet, so I had to have an extension glued onto the tooth back in 2002. For the most part, the photographer did a decent job of airbrushing my acne, which was pretty rampant at this point in 1992, what with me battling with the decision of whether to go with my family to Tokyo for my senior year.

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Alternatively, you can think of this picture as a kind of "James Bond In The Crosshairs" sort of way. Regardless, I can still fit into that damned sport coat. Oh, and I still wear that exact same tie to work occasionally.

Check out the jeans. If you were any sort of perceived "cool" back in 1992, at least in Harmony, you either pinned or rolled your pants. Also, you wore anklet socks, which is something I still do to this day, although I do it now more for comfort than anything else. The pose was something the photographer relied on almost too much. The pictures shown here were the ones we decided on; there were dozens more rejected ones that featured the same pose.

Although I had graduated on up to contact lenses, my mother insisted I keep the "twin windshields of doom," and further insisted I wear them for at least a couple senior pictures. Why I needed to pose next to a step ladder is anybody's guess. What amazes me about these pictures is the lack of arm hair, and really body hair in general. Puberty really didn't finish up with me until I was 25 or 26, so these images are totally not representative of the hairy beast I am today. When somebody yanks your lower back/butt hair as a joke in jiu-jitsu, you know you may very well be the missing link between man and monkey.

And finally we have the creepy kid-toucher image. I was so sick and tired of wearing a sport coat and having my picture taken, I was reduced to weary insta-grins, which always look fake and creepy.