Only Scary Cake Could Make This Kid Hustle

The Boy plays baseball. He's decent at it. He hits, usually, and he typically catches the ball when he's not tumbling backwards like a drunk sailor. The tumbling, apparently, is a hazard of being a six-year-old. Not that being six makes one clumsy. Rather, it gives six-year-olds an irresistible urge to roll on the ground.

And the urge to roll around is directly proportional to the newness, cleanliness, expense and niceness of the clothes being worn. If the kid is wearing a beat-up pair of old jeans with more holes than jeans and a musty-old tank top, he'll likely sit inside and play video games and use napkins. If he's wearing a nice pair of khakis and a polo shirt, he's outside mud wrestling while having water gun fights using red Kool-Aid filled Super Soakers and eating mustard-coated hot dogs. Actually, make that mustard coated mustard dogs. And don't even ask what he'd do if he were wearing a tux.

(That's because I don't know what it'd be like if he were wearing a tux ... but I'm going to find out in two weeks when one of my nieces gets married; both my boys are to be ring bearers, and thus we had to rent two tuxedos. Ever try getting the measurements of a toddler? The kid acted like the measuring tape we were using was white hot. The Sequel went so crazy trying to avoid being touched by the tape that an experienced waterboarder would have fallen to his knees and surrendered and became a nun, even if he were a dude. I still haven't recovered from that episode, and it was about a month ago. But we got the measurements. Sure, his coat will likely be big enough to fit the shoulder pads of a linebacker and the arms will be different lengths and the pants will be long enough to fit Dirk Nowitzki, but we got the measurements. As God is my witness, we got those measurements.)

In any event, The Boy is good at the baseball, with one key exception: he is not exactly gifted on the basepaths. And when it comes to hurrying from one spot to the other. Truth be told, The Boy prefers to leisurely stroll toward first base. And when a ball is coming in his general direction, and then when the ball gets past him for a base hit and he has to chase it.

The problem with this is that, in baseball, coaches always talk about something called "hustle." Attend a baseball game of any sort, and you'll hear that word at least 100 times being yelled at by various coaches, fans, parents, and random passers-by. Players may be out by 45 feet, but if it looks like they ran their fastest, they'll be lauded for their "Nice hustle!" Those who look like they'd prefer being in a library reading Tolstoy are screamed at to "C'mon, hustle!"

Because I'm a dad, I've adopted the language of the ball field, and find myself repeatedly urging my boy to hustle. Actually, I usually just tell him to "RUN!" But sometimes I tell him to "HUSTLE!" And other times I tell him to run to first base like his mom is chasing him with a huge piece of carrot cake that she wants him to eat. That usually gets him to run like Usain Bolt. Or some reasonable, 6-year-old facsimile.

(My eldest, for those not in the know, is famous for his dislike of cake; I've learned to embrace his confection resistance wholeheartedly, mostly because it means that I get more cake; in any event, though my boy loves carrots, putting them into cake tends to make his head explode, so being chased by Mom With Cake is something of a nightmare scenario. That's right: this joke took an entire paragraph to explain. I'm officially the worst blogger in history.)

The problem with me adopting the Hustle Mantra is that The Wife is usually sitting next to me when I say such things. And my wife, having been married to me for 15 years, knows full well this one fact:

I absolutely, positively DO ... NOT ... HUSTLE.

"Maybe you should hustle," she says.

I don't run. I walk fast, sure. In fact, I'm usually the faster walker whenever I'm in a walking group of two or more. And at fairs or the mall or along downtown streets, I usually find myself grumbling as I search for ways to walk past annoyingly slow people who quietly stroll side-by-side-by-obese side as if walking one block an hour would give them a heart attack, blocking the entire sidewalk or mall hallway and half the nearest street and/or parking lot in the process.

But this speed walking rarely evolves into actual running. This is because I have an abject fear of looking stupid, and I'm convinced that the sight of me, a middle-aged white dude, running at any speed looks ridiculous. So I choose not to. If my choice is between running or missing my bus and thus my plane flight, I'll just miss the flight. I have a personal motto: I only run when chased, and even then it depends on who or what is chasing me. The IRS man? I'll pay you whatever, just don't make me run. A man-eating Tiger? I've had a good life. My mother-in-law? OK, I'll run.

So The Boy comes by his lack-of-hustle naturally, and to be perfectly honest, that's OK. He's not likely to make it to the major leagues, anyway, given his genetic makeup. So he'll just have to pay extra attention to bus schedules and avoid tiger-infested areas. Or perhaps he can just have Mom show up with some cake.

Shopping For Boxers, Waiting For Our Doom

I never imagined that my doom would occur while I stood surrounded by men's underpants.

We were on our way home this evening, hoping to beat some oncoming storms, when The Wife realized that we needed something:

Butter spray.

She had started using the stuff years ago, when Fabio was the Butter Spray spokesman. She said that it was because the ad was funny. I think it's because she's a secret fan of romance novels with shirtless hunks on the cover. Suffice it to say, it's become a staple of our household. We've grown accustomed to its convenience. Plus it provides enjoyable moments such as the time when The Wife went to spray her asparagus but instead sprayed her face--the nozzle was pointed in the wrong direction.

Being a household staple also means we never have it around. And we've been dangerously low for days now, putting us in danger of using actual butter for our vegetables or toast. Hoping to avoid such a horrible, frightening fate, we made the decision to go to Target, even though we had both kids with us.

We're stupid.

Taking kids to Target, especially when one of them is a toddler, is idiotic. And as veterans of toddler parenting, we know that it's idiotic, yet we repeat this mistake over and over again, even for menial trips.

But we really needed butter spray! BUTTER SPRAY!

We got into the store, just as the raindrops were beginning to fall from some ugly, gray clouds.

(By the way, it was only a few days ago that such clouds were producing snow -- today it was in the mid-80s and humid, which after our winter felt like it was in the mid-8000s and deadly; and of course it results in big thunderstorms. This weather is weird.)

Anyway, the kids head straight for the toy section. They know the Target by heart because, as I said, we've taken them there before. And, as we stood there as the kids tried pushing any button they could find, we heard this:

Sirens.

Not the sirens atop of police cars headed to the Target to investigate child-related toy vandalism, but the type of sirens heard before imminent nuclear war or tornadoes. We considered the options for what the sirens could mean, and concluded that they must mean a tornado was bearing down somewhere in the county.

I started herding the kids out, because if I was going to sit through severe weather, I'd much prefer to do so in my own basement where my kids can break their own toys, rather than ones belonging to Target or one of its future customers. But then the nice person on the overhead speaker told us that we wouldn't be allowed outside, and directed us all to head in back, away from any windows.

So we did. And we went straight for the toy section, figuring that it was "in the back" and was "nowhere near windows." We also knew that the area was filled with "stuff we'd like to look at," because at this Target the toys were right next to the electronics area, otherwise known as Toys For Dad.

Besides, keeping kids occupied as we're waiting for our imminent doom is probably wise, given their ages. But, apparently, we were dead wrong, for soon a Target employee came walking past, proclaiming that "there are lots of people near the electronics and toys, having way too much fun. We must put and end to it right now." She thus demanded that we all congregate near the fitting rooms.

So that's where we went, because we always listen to Target employees, unlike one of our fellow shoppers who insisted that, twister or no, she was going to get some shopping done, dammit, and no two-bit college kid in a red shirt was going to stop her.

I and my family followed the herd to the fitting rooms. Actually, I was looking at my phone the entire time, posting the event on my Facebook profile, because I figured that being trapped in a Target by a tornado warning was sufficient fodder for said profile. (NOTE TO OTHER PEOPLE: Being at Target WITHOUT the tornado warning is NOT sufficient Facebook fodder.)

So there we were, standing amid men's underpants and women's workout clothes, waiting for the cyclone to come and take us all to Oz. The red-shirted Target workers standing amid the rainbow colored customers. I nearly decided to buy a pair of boxer shorts emblazoned with acorns because they were on clearance and because nuts on underpants is funny. But then I figured that I wouldn't be around to wear the boxer shorts, anyway.

The boys, by the way, were having a blast. The Sequel used the aisles between undergarments as his own personal running track. So he ran and he ran, giggling, probably because it's a rare event when he gets to run around a Target without a parent picking him up and cursing under his or her breath.

And then a mysterious voice could be heard on the walkie talkies attached to the red-shirts' hands, saying that an "all clear" has been given by the weather service. And then the message was repeated over the loudspeaker. HALLELUJAH! WE'RE STILL ALIVE!!

But I still didn't buy the boxer shorts.