Fashion Sense

My daughter's fashion sense can be summed up in two words: Punky and Brewster.

If you love something, let it go?

After a long respite, my daughter has suddenly, without any warning, rediscovered the song "Let It Go" and is now, as I type this, singing it with as much off-key, wrong-worded fervor as she had when it first gained popularity not so long ago. Please send help. Please send help now.

The Forest

Ever since we saw The Force Awakens this past Christmas, my 5-year-old has been constantly trying to use "the forest" on me. I can't tell if he's trying to be a Jedi or a Lumberjack.

Hockum

My 10-year-old's favorite word is "hockum." As in: hockum the moon looks like it's following us? Or: hockum you have hair in your armpits? Or: hockum girl parts are on the inside and boy parts are on the outside? Every day is chock full of a never-ending, rapid-fire barrage of hockums.

STOP!

My kids were being uncharacteristically (ha) loud and crazy today which caused my wife to finally yell "STOP!" at the top of her lungs and the 10-year-old, without missing a beat, followed it up with "Collaborate and listen!" Yeah, in retrospect, I don't think my wife appreciated my involuntary chuckle, but what do you expect when your child unexpectedly quotes Vanilla Ice?

Sunblock

My wife discovered my 10-year-old taking the initiative to protect her skin this weekend by liberally applying sunblock to herself. I say liberally because I overheard my wife say to her, "Hey ... um, no ... I don't think you don't need to put sunblock on in your armpits."

The Countdown

It always amazes me how the act of counting down is such an effective parenting tool. It happens so often in our house you'd think we live at Cape Canaveral and have had successfully launched about two and a half million satellites into orbit by this point.

The Hard Rock Cafe Sweatshirt and the Irony of Life

Every workday, on my walk to and from the parking garage where I park my car for work, I walk past a Hard Rock Cafe. It may seem ridiculous and/or really hard to believe now, but for a brief moment in time when I attended middle school in a small town in southeast Wisconsin, the Hard Rock Cafe logo sweatshirt was the epitome of coolness. It was a status symbol that was only rivaled by the Lacoste polo shirt (collar up, of course). If you were really cool, you’d pair the two in an epic display of tween superiority. And the further away your Hard Rock sweatshirt’s city of origin (which was displayed directly below the logo) was from your own hometown the better. That meant you were that much cooler, because that showed everyone else in school that your family was well off and had the money to splurge on lavish vacations.

For whatever reason, be it for lack of finances or interest (or both?), my parents were never into going on family vacations … anywhere. Actually, we did go camping a few times, but to the best of my knowledge there were never any Hard Rock Cafes located anywhere near the campgrounds we went to. So, that said, for that brief window in time, I coveted one of those damn Hard Rock Cafe sweatshirts. Back then I was a chunky kid in thick glasses with buck teeth who wore J.C. Penny’s Lacoste knockoff polo shirts with a fox instead of an alligator. I was the furthest from cool as you could get. I know, shocking right? For these reasons, I’m pretty sure I professed my desire for said sweatshirt to my Mom on multiple occasions, as if one would magically make me one of the cool kids at last.

A few years later, long after it’s coolness had faded away (because we all know how fickle fashion is), my Mom finally got me one as a surprise. It was from Chicago, the closest Hard Rock Cafe to us and it was purchased by a relative who had visited there. I still remember my mom excitedly giving it to me. I can only imagine how disappointed she must have been upon seeing my incredibly unappreciative, typical teenaged reaction to receiving it. Over the next couple of years, I think I wore the sweatshirt two, maybe three times. It mostly it hung neglected, deep within the recesses of my closet until it no doubt became garage sale fodder only a few short years later.

Flash forward to 2013. The very day I was to start a new job at a building located on Hollywood Boulevard, the one I’m at now and the one with the Hard Rock Cafe that I walk by every day, my Dad had called me early in the morning to tell me that my Mom was rapidly losing her battle with cancer and that I needed to fly home immediately. She passed away within the week that followed.

So now, as I walk by that Hard Rock Cafe every single workday, I’m reminded of that sweatshirt … that stupid sweatshirt that seemed so incredibly important to me at the time. Of course, it never occurred to me to apologize to my Mom about it before then and now, obviously, its too late. The irony of life stings sometimes.