We're not cool

What makes a cool parent?

I've been pondering this question the last few days because whenever I talk to my friends about our kids -- especially the young, single ones -- I end up talking about all the fun stuff.

"Hey, how are the kids?" begins a typical "cool parent" conversation. "They're great" I say as if I'm auditioning to be the new voice of Tony the Tiger. I chat them up about the concerts our kids go to, the activities they engage in, and how well they're doing in school. All this is true.

"You're such a cool dad, Spartacus!" They say. "I wish my dad had done that for me when I was that age."

Heh. The compliment is accepted, of course, because it's genuine and heartfelt. But would a compliment be paid for saying that sometimes my kids suck, and that they're lazy, self-centered little brats? That would be so inappropriate to the moment, yet sometimes, that's exactly how we feel.

Holy shit. Did Spartacus just say that about his kids? Yeah I did. I don't always mean it, but there are times, when Skippy and I have to come down hard with the hammer; shorten the leash, if you will, and be the autocratic, dictatorial parents we are expected to be. Clearly, Ward and June Cleaver we are not.

From one day to the next, we really don't know how we'll resolve a family problem or dispute. We have our own lives and personal issues to deal with that don't always allow us to successfully referee disputes over who gets to use the family computer first. Sometimes, we let the kids kick the crap out of one another. Sometimes we find them annoying and swear at them when we're really pissed. Sometimes we even slap them on the head. Think of the eyebrows that would get raised if we mention all that in casual conversation. Would someone call Child Protective Services on us? Possibly.

I guess my point in all this is that we're typical parents, raising a very typical family. In this slice of Americana that we occupy, we don't see ourselves as being cool parents, and I don't know anyone who does. We try our best, but don't always get it right. Our kids opinions of us change depending one how nice or mean are to them that day. This is how it really is.

So, no. We're not cool. We're normal. And we wouldn't have it any other way.

I Know That Kid

I know Garrett Quedens. I never met him before, but I know him.

Garrett Quedens is any young 14-year old child of suburban parents. He has lots of friends. He never cuts class. He rarely gets into trouble. Everyone that knows him describes him as a good kid.

Living in the Town of Babylon, which includes the Village of Lindenhurst where I live, I run into lots of Garrett Quedens all the time. In fact, I live with one. You know him as Zeb.

I also know his parents, Thomas and Gizella. I never met them, but I know them. They're not much different than me and Skippy or from our neighbors who work hard to provide a comfortable home in which to raise their children.

That's why this story threw me and Skippy for a huge loop. This could be our story.

No one could have forseen Garrett Queden being found dead in the early morning hours of New Year's Day, much less freezing to death after downing a bottle of vodka with his friend.

But that's how it went down, and now we have lots of questions.

Not so much of how it could happen, but if it could happen to us.

The answer is yes.

We broke down the circumstances behind Garrett's death.

He was out late.
We live in a bedroom community where it gets dark, cold and quiet early in these parts during Winter. So, whether one's curfew is 12 midnight or 8PM is negligible. The streets of Lindenhurst and West Babylon are fairly safe, and most kids know to avoid the trouble spots. After all, our neighborhood is not an idyllic, crime-free community.

His parents did not know where he was.
Like many kids his age, they all have their usual hangouts, and most parents know where they are. Garrett's was in a wooded section at the end of Watson Avenue. Zeb and his pals like to go to the athletic field behind Lindenhurst High School. When they get bored, they move to other haunts. These days, they all carry cell phones, so it's alot easier to get in touch with them. But regardless of whether they're carry a phone or not, when they are out of the house and on their own, they never roam far from home.

He drank a liter of vodka with a friend.
Okay. Garrett did a stupid thing. But that comes with the territory of being 14. As it turns out, this mistake cost Garrett his life. But it's still a mistake. His parents probably had that talk with him about the consequences of consuming alcohol, taking drugs, and premarital sex without making the boy feel like an idiot. That said, he died on a brutally cold night. He could have been hit by a car while walking along a poorly lit street.

The biggest fear of any parent is losing one of their children. Sadly, Thomas and Gizella Quedens fears have been realized. Their realization could just as well be ours.

And there's the rub.

This could have happened to anyone's kid.

So, yeah, I know Garrett Quedens. I never met him, but I know him well.

And I because I know him, I grieve his loss.

Street Games

An old blogpal of mine once told me that my best posts are when I tell stories of my past. Okay, I'll indulge. After all this "happy dad" crap I've been posting, it's time to go into the Spartacus Way Back machine.

What inspired this entry is a recent post by MauiGirl about the New York City Public Schools Athletic Association's inclusion of Double Dutch as an officially sanctioned sport. Like her, I remember this activity fondly; but only because I was always one of those jackass boys who would try and jump into the moving ropes while my sister and her friends were taking their turns. Hey! What brother wasn't a jackass or an asshat or some kind of an *ass to his sister?

But Mauigirl also laments the fact that these games have lost out to more passive activities like video-game playing, chatting on AIM, and hitting social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. (Sorry, but those sites don't need any linking here...)

She wrote:

Making something a competitive sport doesn't mean it will result in more kids getting exercise. What happens is they get driven to the site where the sport takes place; parents must provide snacks for their kids and their friends to eat afterward; kids jump for a short period of time and then their round is over. It's not like the old days when a bunch of friends would gather in a seldom-used street and jump rope all afternoon just for the fun of it, and get real exercise.

She makes a good point here. Even though my kids get out of the house plenty, it's nowhere near the amount of time I spent outside the house playing games back in the 1970s. And growing up poor in the East Village of Manhattan, you learn to get pretty inventive with the games you play.

Some you've heard of before -- Stickball, Handball, Whiffleball, Red Rover and Spin The Bottle are but a few.

A staple of many of the games I played was a pink rubber ball known as the Spaldeen, made by the Spalding®. But spaldeen games are all variations of baseball, so I'll leave those for another post. The games I'm covering here required a great deal of skill, balance, ingenuity, speed, agility, and a tolerance for brutality.



Ah, Let the games begin. Shall we?

Skelsies - I played this game quite a bit in the summer. I lived in Jacob Riis Houses where the skelsie boards like the one on the right were painted onto the asphalt yards between buildings. All you need to play is a ketchup bottle or pickle jar cap, and a good eye for angles. The caps were typically filled with melted wax or crayon. The crayon melts were cool because you could make some pretty neat designs with them.

The object of the game was to shoot your cap into each succeeding box, the winner being the first to reach box 13. The cap must be completely inside the box before you can shoot to the next one. But the game's not as easy as it looks. For one, you can prevent opponents from reaching a box by knocking them out of the way. The way we used to play at Jacob Riis was if you called "kicksies", you can kick someone's cap across the yard if happened to be near yours after a successfully entering a box. Another challenge was avoiding the trapezoidal areas around box 13. Those were the penalty boxes. Land in there with your cap and you lose a turn. We didn't use numbers in our boxes. As I recall, you had to wait a turn or two before you can shoot out of the trapezoid, or you can resume playing if someone was stupid enough to knock you out of one.


Kick The Can - I have a special place in my heart for this game because of kid I knew named Edgardo who was always "it." This game is very similar to hide-and-go-seek except that it's played with a beer or soda can. The game starts with everyone rushing to find a can; the last one to find a can (usually Edgardo) was "it." The first person to find a can was given the honor of being the first to kick or toss the can far enough away for the rest of the group to hide while the "it" person retrieves the can. The "it" kid would then try to find the players who were hiding. The "it" person captured you by tapping the can on the ground and saying "Tap, tap, tap, I see Spartacus behind a tree. One, two, three. One, two, three. Once found, you sat on the "base" bench and waited for someone to rescue you by kicking the can. The "it" guy wins by capturing everyone hiding; the new "it" person being the first person captured. What made this game a hoot for us was when Edgardo was "it". My friends and I would always hide together in the same spot, allowing one or two of us to be captured, before we'd all come out and bum rush the can. I swear, you had to see the desperation on Edgardo's face as he tried to tap us all out. We tortured him. He's probably going through some serious therapy sessions from all those times he was "it". Oh Edgardo, I'm sorry. But damn it what a pisser this game was when you were it.


Okay, you can stop reading here if you're not into brutal acts of violence committed in the name of fun. The next two games make scenes from Los Olvidados look tame.

Hot Peas And Butter - This was one of those stealthy games best played at night. The game required a leather belt, a place to hide it, a safe location called the "base" and lots of speed. If you owned the belt, you got to hide it first while the other players waited at the base. Once hidden, the belt-hider would call out "hot peas and butter, come and get your supper" to begin this masochistic search. The hider would then direct seekers to the hiding spot by telling them whether they were hot or cold. The closer they got to finding the belt, the more animated the hider became. "You're cold. Your getting warmer. You're hot. You're hotter. You're BOILING!!!!!" Can you guess what happens next? Yup! That's right. The person finding the belt gets to chase and whip the shit out of anybody who can't make it back to home base. The best part about this game was the sheer terror derived from seeking the belt. I swear this game was like a urban version of lions hunting antelope on an African plain. It's easy to see why this game fell out of favor. It was sanctioned corporal punishment. But damn it, if you didn't get a good cardio workout out of running from a good ol' ass-whoopin.


Johnny On The Pony - I saved the best game for last. This is the quintessential "ball-less" team game. It required about five players a side for it to be worthwhile; the more players the better. I recall playing this game as a high school in my junior and senior years in the yard at lunch with as many as 12 kids a side. And these were big kids, too. The team designated as the pony would line up, perpendicular to a wall. One player would stand resting his (or her) back against the wall and act as the pillow allowing the next player to bend at the waist and brace against the "pillow". Each succeeding player would do the same, bending over to wrap their arms around the waist of the player bent before them. The opposing team would then run, one at a time, from a distance of 20-30 feet and vault onto the pony in an attempt to break the pony or ride it until the words "Johnny On The Pony. One. Two. Three." can be repeated three times. Break it or ride it and your team wins. Fall off and your team becomes the pony. Believe it or not players fell off the pony as often as the pony broke. And that's where it gets bloody. Like I said, some of these guys are big. Can you imagine having a 200-pound behemoth fall on a 140-pound 11th grade body? I can because this happened to me. Alot. Thankfully, I suffered no broken bones, but many happy lacerations, scrapes and bruises.

That's all I got for tonight kids. There are more games I played as a kid. These just happened to be the ones I remember best. I would love to hear about your kid games stories.

(h/t to Mauigirl and my special blog friend...)

Zeb and The Boys

He's a high-schooler now.

Last Thursday, Zeb and his running buddies graduated from Lindenhurst Middle School where they were the BMOCs. Next year, they'll be the little shits terrorized by the Class of 2009. My how their worlds will change.

Zeb and his friends are game. After all, the kids have been friends since kindergarten. They'll stick together. They'll stick up for each other. Oh sure, they'll make new friends along the way. These handsome devils may even find themselves a girlfriend, or two..or three. But I get the sense that they'll never be so occupied that they can't get together for a pick up baseball game or for placing a prank call to a science teacher. (Yes, Zeb really did do this recently.)

There are about 10 or 12 kids in this posse. They call each other by their last names, even though none of them shares a first name. You figure that with names like Van Floerke, Sanchez, Zuppel, and DeRosa, they would stick with their given names. Not so.

"Zeb, why do you guys call each other by your last names?" I ask him one day in passing.

" I dunno." And he skulked off back to whatever it was he was doing.

I'm jealous of Zeb for the friends he has. I had friends like that, too, when I was his age. But I had to leave behind my running buddies in Jacob Riis Houses, when my parents moved us to Richmond Hill, Queens. I hated it. I got into six fights in one weekend because the new kids I met weren't like my old pals. I was homesick, and once you move out of an old neighborhood, you're dead to your old friends. That's just how it is.

But my jealousy lives and dies in those memories from 30 years ago. I look my son now and marvel at how much of a young man he's become and how loyal he is to his pals. I'm fascinated, too, at how unglued they are from their X-Boxes and PlayStations, instead opting to be outdoors riding bikes, skateboarding, or playing baseball. Several of them have developed an interest in a musical instrument, and want to form a band. I can't wait to drive Skippy crazy when I let them jam in our basement.

Congratulations Zeb. Welcome to high school.

Life's a Beach...

...when you're 16.

The Eldest is on the right. Her BFF is on the left. What they're staring it at is anyone's guess. Boys perhaps? Maybe other girls? Who knows.

What I do know is that The Eldest won't be having too many of these moments with her BFF this summer now that she got her first job.

She'll making minimum wage ($7.15) working the rides and concessions at Adventureland Amusement Park in Farmingdale. (Great website, eh?) I know it's not a whole lot of money, but when you're 16, $100 a week after tax is pretty damn good.

So, enjoy these days at the beach while you got them my baby girl. Or figure out what you'll tell the boss when you show up to work with a sunburn after calling in sick the day before.

NYC Through The Eyes of Rickdiculus

He writes essays. He makes films. And now he takes pictures.

This past Friday, I took him and The Eldest into work with me as part of my department's holiday family day. It's an annual event that makes an otherwise slow week exciting, if not for the parents, then for the kids. Rickdiculus is no exception.

Yeah, he played nice with all the other boys and girls and participated in all the events, but damn if I couldn't keep him away from the conference room windows to snap these gems. Here's a sample of his work.































You view the rest of his set up on my Flickr page. Enjoy!

1st Grade Blues

I had a problem walking the straight and narrow as a kid. I just couldn't do it. In this day and age, I would have been considered a "special needs" child, diagnosed with ADHD and any other mental disorder worthy of a seat in a smaller classroom, a daily ride on a short bus, and a year's supply of Ritalin.

Until I entered 1st Grade in Our Lady of Sorrows (Roman Catholic) School in 1969, I was a cute kid.

Before then, I was known to get in all manner of trouble. Don't believe me? Ask my older brothers. They'll tell you. One of them once found me with my head caught in a wrought-iron fence begging to be let out of jail. Another time, I walked out of my kindergarten class at PS 140 to hang out with my brother George's 7th grade class because I was bored. What boy wouldn't get excited by a bunch of giggling and fawning pre-teen girls?

But life completely changed for me in September 1969. I no longer got away with the same crap I did the year before. Discipline was the order of the day, and no form of misbehavior would be tolerated. I got no quarter from Sister Patricia who did not appreciate my "artistic need" to draw my sentence-ending periods the size of golf balls. Nor would my brother Joe tolerate my wanderlust. He walked me to and from school every friggin day with his hand gripped around my neck for two years until he graduated OLS.

For the first time in my life, I was learning those lessons that can only come through the experience of pain. I've already described the physical kind. Now let me tell you about the emotional kind how I came to know the joy and the pain of love....


The little girl you see seated in front of me in this 2nd grade class photo is Maria. I fell in love with her on sight the school year before. This photo does her no justice. She was stunning. However, being the naive young lad I was, I simply had to tell my family about my new special "friend". Big mistake.

For the next two years my brothers teased me mercilessly about my "relationship" with Maria. As teasing often goes, the more you cry the more it happens. My mother would intercede every now and then with a well-meaning but ineffective "déjelo quieto." But recall that this is the same mom who wanted to me experience the pain.

Still I would not be denied my huge crush on Maria, even after she left our school following the 1970-71 school year. In fact, I never really got over her until I penned this poem a few years ago.


Johnny and Maria

Oh what cruelty it is
To have an unblemished six-year old
Find the first love of his life;
To see his vision of beauty standing before him
In all her honey-haired, blue-eyed,
Forty-pound splendor.

Oh what horror perpetrated
On that poor young boy
To have his brothers learn
Of his new-found love;
To suffer the taunts of “Johnny and Maria”
And shrink in the embarrassing truth.

I know that booger-nosed kid.
He still cries somewhere
In the depths of my past;
Not just from the hurtful teasing,
But from the immense loss he felt
From the day Maria left his school.

Damn his brothers, all of them,
For making him keep quiet and
Filling him with shame.
He never shared with Maria
His longing feelings and
How she made first grade bearable.

I’m not exactly sure how
A kid so young
Can be so passionately resolute;
To stamp a petulant foot
In the face of so much hurt
And hold true and faithful
To such a fleeting dream.

So…Jesus can come back to life,
Moses can part the Red Sea,
Mohammed can command mountains to move,
But a six-year old discovers love –
An angel sitting two rows over –
And it’s not possible?

In the end, we believe in
Those miraculous notions that ring true.
Yours are in gods and prophets;
Believable absurdities from centuries past
That hold on strong
For the irresistible promise of heaven.

Johnny's is Maria.
And tho’ he knows not
The state of her Grace
She lives on in that place
Where he goes
To find the joy first love brings.

(2005) All rights reserved.