Bad Roommate

As we race toward a two-kid household—less than a month out at this point—and all the myriad challenges and chaos that will inevitably follow, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on the experience of having this third wheel, our little Doozer, under our roof.

He’s been around long enough now that our differences are pretty clear. Our lifestyle choices, hygiene habits, household preferences. In a way, it’s like having a really bad roommate, only you can’t move out. And neither will he. At least not for many years. How many it is currently too early to tell, and I shudder to consider all the potential increments. You’re stuck. It’s like when you get married or move in with your significant other. All roommates are annoying, but it’s not like you’re going to split up over toothpaste or dirty dishes or laundry.

It’s not like college, where you can just hang in there until the next semester and hopefully end up with somebody else. Or just find another place, like when you were single. And beyond that, you can’t establish normal boundaries the way you would with a regular roommate. There is no such thing as privacy in this situation, no unspoken agreements, as you might have with a college or single, twentysomething flatmate.

“Dada? Why is that sock on the door? What are you doing in there? Dada? Dada . . . ?”

So then, here are some things I don’t always like about my kid—let’s call him the world’s most annoying roommate—in no particular order:

1. Fighting sleep. And then getting super-cranky and overtired. There is a direct correlation there, kid. Figure it out already.

2. When he pretends not to understand me, though clearly he does. Stop being so wily. And crafty. I mean it. Stop.

3. Selective hearing. (See number 2.)

4. We’re still watching the Grinch on January 30.

5. He keeps bringing artwork home from preschool, and though it’s all kind of the same and now there’s way too much of it, I’m unable to get rid of it. The little manipulator is playing right to my pack-rat tendencies.

6. He just requires so much attention. When does he become self-sufficient, so I can just sit here and watch Justified in peace?

7. Diapers. Diapers. Diapers. (And pull-ups.)

8. Unnecessarily early morning wake-ups. Especially on weekends. (I’m pretty sure it's on purpose, though I can’t actually prove it.)

9. His stringent adherence to routines. I mean, stringent. I’m pretty anal, but he makes me look like a Hell’s Angel by comparison.

10. His toys are everywhere. Literally everywhere. If he’d stop being so damn adorable, maybe I’d stop indulging him with all these amusements.

11. Constantly preventing me from listening to songs, or watching shows/movies that feature objectionable material or profanity in his presence.

12. The repeated insistence on hearing five particular songs on extended rotation, ignoring the thousands of others recorded throughout the history of music.

13. I have only seen four out of nine films nominated for Best Picture. (Totally his fault.)

14. I always really miss him when he’s gone. (Jerk.)

15. Repeated, strategic deployment of cuteness to make me forget about all the things that bother me about him.

Candy Land, the Drinking Game

For Christmas, the Doozer got his very first board game. Board games, actually. Got one from us, and one from each set of grandparents. We’d seen a few and just couldn’t decide, so opted for a selection of games, rather than just a single one. We went with the perennial favorite, Candy Land, obviously. Also, Chutes and Ladders, the one with Marvel superheroes on it (the same guys that decorate the kid’s underwear and that he is mildly obsessed with).

This is a bizarre development. When I was a kid, these two games existed in one version: Regular. Original. Now, you can get just about every variation of each imaginable. Dora the Explorer. Winnie the Pooh. Disney Princesses. Seal Team Six. Fox News Edition.

Okay, so those don't actually exist. Yet. So, we instituted game night in our house. A new ritual to go along with family movie night. The final game we picked up for him was one we found most intriguing: Richard Scarry’s Busytown Eye Found It! game.

Since he’s a fan of the Saturday morning cartoon Busytown Mysteries, and several of the author’s tomes, we figured this game would be right up his alley. And it’s interesting. The way it’s structured, all the players work together. As a team. It's not a competition.

But yes, Candy Land remains as cutthroat and ruthless as you remember. And kids learn fast. They don’t like to lose. It’s kind of amazing how quickly this instinct kicks in. Sure, for one or even two losses, the kid is gracious and even congratulatory to his opponent (the wife or me). But then he realizes it’s not quite as fun to lose. And so then he wants to keep playing, until he reaches the end of the board himself. We explain to him that it doesn’t work that way.

“I don’t like this game,” he replies.

But then, surprise surprise, we play again. And again. And again.

Soon, he starts playing on his own. Regularly. Is this what Bobby Fischer was like? Playing chess all by himself, figuring out the angles? Although, with Candy Land, there really is no strategy, no way to improve. The game is completely random. And so simple (ages three and up) that it soon becomes somewhat mind-numbingly boring to the adult participants. I won’t puncture his ambition by telling him that he won’t get better with practice, that this particular game doesn’t quite work that way. It keeps him busy, I suppose.

But then again, losing is good. Losing is important. He needs to learn the world is crappy like that. There’s no way around it. Better start learning now. Of course, during one marathon session of games, I ended up cheating. I slipped a picture card to the top of the deck that vaulted the kid toward the end of the board. So I did it in his favor. I'd won several times in a row and felt like he needed a win. Plus, this would allow the game to speed to its conclusion. Probably because I wanted to stop playing and watch American Pickers or something.

Then he became obsessed with the Busytown game. The board is six feet and really detailed (like any Richard Scarry depiction of Busytown). I suppose I should appreciate the curiosity and investigative instincts. Wait until you see Where’s Waldo, that shit’ll blow your mind. Anyway, the point of the game is to advance all the way through Busytown before Pig Will and Pig Won't eat all the food at Picnic Island. (Trust me, it makes sense in context.) So, the spinner has eight options: 1, 2, 3, or 4 moves, two chances for the pigs to eat, and two chances to solve a Goldbug Mystery. This is where you search the board for items like ice cream cones or ladders.

And this swiftly became his first choice, always. So much so that he will keep spinning (if we don’t catch him and tell him to stop) until it lands on where he wants.

If it’s on the line between solving the mystery and something else, he will look up, his face hopeful, imploring, to ask, “Goldbug mystery?” Yes, fine, Goldbug mystery. He is very keen on finding things. Then quickly loses interest. And it's back to Candy Land. Which he can apparently play for hours. And it’s really not that kind of game. It's not like it's Trivial Pursuit. Or Dungeons and Dragons. (Not that I've ever played that.) So to make it interesting . . .

Introducing: the kids’ board game drinking game. No, really. It's simple. Here's what you do. You take a drink:

When you get a double move in Candy Land . . . or a single move . . . when the kid asks detailed (yet inane) questions about the characters on the board . . . when he suddenly decides you should start over because you’ve used up all the picture cards . . . when the kid sprawls on the board and knocks all the playing pieces from their spaces . . . when you win and crush your kid’s spirit just a little bit more . . . when he vehemently contests your win . . . when the kid says he doesn’t like this game anymore . . . when the kid says he doesn't like you anymore . . .

Now . . . I'm a little tipsy. Okay. Perhaps I should wrap things up here.

Don't judge me.

Family Movie Night

Lately I’ve discovered my new favorite thing in parenting: family movie night. Sure, it’s an old concept and so was probably an inevitable development, but as an avid movie watcher, it’s really exciting to share this experience with the Doozer.

In a way, it’s something that definitely brings me back to my own childhood. I remember the momentous occasion that was the opening of the first Blockbuster in our neighborhood. Or how my parents finally caved and bought our first VCR when Raiders of the Lost Ark was going to be on TV and I perhaps threatened hari-kari if I couldn’t record it and re-watch it one thousand times.

When I was young, Friday night was often all about pizza and a VHS movie borrowed from the library. It’s where I learned to love the genius of Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther flicks and the inspired insanity of Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein (“I’ll block the bookcase with my body”). And later, when I was a little older, when my parents let me watch my first R-rated movie: Midnight Run. It was just too funny, they argued, I would enjoy it too much, for them to keep me from watching it because of some extra profanity.

And while we’re a long way off from the Doozer’s first R-rated flick, that doesn’t make our own family movie nights any less significant. Of course, the Doozer is kind of a bookworm and it’s often difficult to get him to commit to viewing a full film. His modern mind prefers the quick hits of YouTube videos and 22-minute TV episodes, like Dora the Explorer or How the Grinch Stole Christmas. But I think we may have found our first movie night staple: Winnie the Pooh.

It was meant to be the Doozer’s first movie in the theater. It opened last summer and has a crazy-short running time of something like 63 minutes which made it seem like the perfect first movie to take him to. But he wasn’t having any of it. We talked it up for weeks and then let the idea die a slow, quiet death, because the Doozer had no interest in going to a theater, no matter how much we encouraged it or explained how much fun it would be.

When the movie hit DVD, we got it from Netflix and he was a big fan, once we convinced him to actually watch it. At first, we were unsure of his reaction. It ended and he seemed non-committal. Did you like the movie? Yes, he said. But he didn’t sound very enthusiastic.

But the next morning there were what seemed like a hundred questions about the movie. A continual conversation that seemed to have no end. Though we were mostly done with our Christmas shopping at that point, we decided we’d better pick up the DVD and have it handy, because his interest was definitely piqued.

No dice. The Doozer was not impressed that Santa brought him the Winnie the Pooh movie, that he had his very own DVD copy of it. I don’t like that movie, he told us. Oh, great. I should have known this would happen. He talks incessantly about it, then you hand it to him and tell him he can watch it whenever he damn well pleases and suddenly he’s no longer interested.

Eventually we coaxed him into another viewing. We dimmed the lights a bit (not too much, the Doozer didn’t like the change in environment . . . such a finicky little thing) and made some popcorn. I think that’s his favorite part and perhaps the reason we get him to sit there and watch; he gets to hold a very large bowl of popcorn in his lap during the show.

But he learned the songs and sang along ("Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh . . ."), he asked the same questions all over again, he even laughs at some of the jokes. Our kid gets jokes. Kind of. Sometimes. This just kills me.

Anyway, the film is awesome and I just know the older he gets, the more he’ll get out of it. It has all these jokes about the story being told out of a book and the characters sometimes interact with the text on the pages of this book. There’s a great Raiders of the Lost Ark joke in there, too (things come full circle). The Zooey Deschanel songs don’t hurt either. And the credit sequence that recreates the scenes from the movie using stuffed animals in Christopher Robin’s bedroom is great.

And the whole movie, the entire plot, is based on a mix-up of words. Words. I can’t say enough about how great this movie is and how glad I am to be able to share it with my kid.

If I have any complaints it's that the film itself doesn’t feature this track from Keane, which so beautifully captures the tone of the flick and its simple pleasures.

Man, I love family movie night . . .

Holiday Television Special Review Spectacular!

Ed. Note: This post was originally composed in the weeks leading up to December 25 and should have been posted at that time. However, the author fell headfirst into the black hole of the holiday season and finds himself now beleaguered, unshaven, and unable to button his jeans, with a sizable holiday hangover and a to-do list a mile long. Including uploading this post, which he winced and did just now, still not certain it was quite finished. Merry 2012, everyone.

It’s that time of year again. The season of joy, giving, familial obligation, and excessive gift-giving. Not to mention, holiday season TV specials. One of the special joys of my own childhood, as well as my wife’s, and pretty much everyone else I know that is my age, is that yearly two- to three-week period when the networks roll out the old standby kids’ holiday specials, occasionally tossing in a few new ones, which invariably pale in comparison to the so-called classics of the genre, particularly those produced by the geniuses of Rankin-Bass.

Of course, like everything else Christmas-related, the slalom of holiday-themed television specials has grown increasingly frenzied over time, to the point where this cycle of shows begins as early as Thanksgiving and spans the entire month of December. And where in the past we typically viewed an average of three or four such specials (from experience and memory, I’d say How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Frosty the Snowman were the main attraction), it seems everyone has gotten in on the act and there has been an explosion, not necessarily of creativity or quality, but definitely of quantity, when it comes to these holiday specials.

And since the advent of basic cable, they now play in an almost constant rotation, with networks like ABC Family touting their 25 Days of Christmas programming, featuring multiple showings of each holiday special or Christmas movie, and TBS featuring 24 hours of A Christmas Story, on December 24 and 25 (admittedly, perhaps the single greatest idea in the history of television).

And so, we have begun the indoctrination of the Doozer into the tradition of holiday special viewing. We watched a few last year, but his memory is hazy, and so we started again this December. So far, here are some random observations from our family viewings, a rundown of the kid-friendly, parent-approved (somewhat) programs we have watched (or repeatedly been subjected to). Merry, merry!

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer — There's a pretty dark moment in this one where Yukon Cornelius goes over the side of a mountain with the abominable snow monster and everybody thinks he is dead. Burl Ives, in voice-over, says, "They are all sad at the loss of their friend." This is dark for this kind of show, right? Luckily, the Doozer has never asked. Obviously he knows now that Yukon is okay. But that first time? What was he thinking when this happened?

How the Grinch Stole Christmas — Okay, so when the Grinch realizes that the Whos are still celebrating, even though he took all their stuff, he has a line where he says, in disbelief, that Christmas came without packages, boxes, or bags. Every time he says this, our son completely loses it. Who knew this was the funniest line ever written by old Theodore Geisel? I mean, if the Doozer’s reaction is anything to go on, it’s a one-liner on par with anything Woody Allen ever produced.

A Charlie Brown Christmas — Is it just me or is that little shoulder-shrugging, feet-shuffling dance they all do just about the greatest bit of animation ever committed to film? And what’s the deal with Woodstock? He’s in the Thanksgiving show, but not the Halloween or Christmas one. Where did he go? Did he fly south for the winter . . .?

Curious George: A Very Monkey Christmas — The Doozer is a big Curious George fan. There's a moment in this where the Man in the Yellow Hat says that George is really thoughtful. Which is weird to me. Because he’s a monkey. This is a weird relationship. The Doozer, however, sees nothing strange in the cohabiting of the Man in the Yellow Hat and George. At what age will he question this arrangement?

Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town! — Another Rankin/Bass one, this one featuring the Burgermeister Meisterburger, perhaps the greatest named character in the history of television. But alas, it is stuck in DVR limbo as we are unable to rouse the Doozer’s enthusiasm for this one. I tried telling him Fred Astaire was in it, but he just stared at me blankly.

Mickey's Christmas Carol — You forget what these stories are like. You see Disney characters and you’re like, This is fine. Then Tiny Tim dies and Scrooge McDuck is thrown into an open grave, about to be engulfed by flames, while a maniacal, cigar-smoking dog looks on and laughs. And your kid says, “What is that mouse doing?” as Mickey Mouse (as Bob Cratchit) sets Tiny Tim’s tiny crutch by his grave. And you’re like, “Umm, well, he’s . . . oh, look it’s Christmas morning and Scrooge is back in his room!”

Dora’s Christmas Carol Adventure — Much like the regular Christmas Carol, they travel through past, present, and future. In the past, there's an entire sequence of babies crying that we must always fast-forward through. Every time we watch. Which is now . . . too many times to count. Look, kid, I have some bad news. That little brother we keep telling you about, the one that’s in your mama’s belly? Yeah, it’s going to be kind of like that.

On second thought, maybe we’ll put a pin in that conversation for now. We'll talk about it after Christmas.

One (Silly) Step Forward

There are mysterious things locked inside the heads of toddlers. Their thought processes, emotions, likes, dislikes, allegiances, imaginings, and interpretations are endlessly fascinating and almost impossible to predict, or categorize, or sometimes to even comprehend.

For instance, what will make them laugh? What will truly tickle them, to the point of being overcome by excessive giggling? You can spend countless hours devoting yourself to acting silly, to trying to find the Holy Grail of toddler humor, whatever it might be, in order to keep them amused, to ensure that they like you, to ward off violent meltdowns and temper tantrums.

And then, other times, you simply stumble upon something unexpected, something that will delight your child to no end, make you seem a like a comic genius in their eyes, and keep them rolling with laughter until they are red in the face, with tears streaming down their cheeks, begging for mercy—and simultaneously begging you to do it again.

This is actually a story about potty training. Or using the potty, I suppose. Which our son now does, about 50 percent of the time. Well, for 50 percent of his functions, shall we say. Anyway, the whole process is like any other development in your child’s life, which is to say, daunting initially, stressful, trying, exasperating—and after a while, not nearly as bad as you imagined it to be, nor as horrendous as it appeared to be in the early going.

Lately, though, he has taken to sitting on the potty for quite a long time, insisting on privacy, and continually informing us that he is still going, even though he clearly is not. And so one night, recently, as he sat upon his throne, contemplating the vastness of the universe, or whatever it is that he does while he sits there, I absentmindedly began doing something silly, perhaps to stave off the boredom of waiting for him to complete his business, or to keep myself alert until he was done with his little bathroom ritual. In a few brisk steps, I walked past the bathroom door in an exaggerated, nonsensical fashion. The moment I was out of his sight, he erupted.

And I mean, erupted. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him laugh so hard or for so long (outside of being tickled, which seems to do it every time). Gasping for air, he immediately demanded the act be repeated. Again. And again. Casting a sideways glance, I could see him tottering precariously on the toilet, overcome with laughter, in danger of falling sideways onto the floor at any moment. I did another funny walk. Hysterics continued.

And though I was not initially doing a direct homage to the geniuses of Monty Python, I immediately thought of this classic sketch:

Finding that it contained no real objectionable material (as it easily could have), I decided to share it with the Doozer. He has become a serious YouTube fan (junkie?) of late, and I’ve begun to wonder what parents did before every single video image their kid could possibly want to view at any single moment was available in such a readily-available, easily-searched repository.

So the Doozer and I watched his very first Monty Python sketch together, at the tender age of three. And guess what? Hysterics. Again. Cleese was an even better silly walker than Dada. Let me pause to revel in the triumphant nature of this moment. My three year-old and I watched Monty Python together. And he really liked it. As far as his pop culture education is concerned, I'm thinking that this is pretty advanced. I figured it would be years before we started tackling stuff this heady. I mean, we're barely into Star Wars. He is definitely on his way.

Of course, on the other end of the spectrum, we took him to a theater to see The Muppets and didn’t even make it through the trailers before the whole experience became overwhelming and we had to leave without seeing the flick. I’m trying desperately to overlook this.

He likes Monty Python. That's good for now. Although I was tempted to also show him Upper Class Twit of the Year, another favorite of mine. But I'm pretty sure they all commit (or attempt to commit) suicide at the end of that one.

Not something I’m keen on trying to explain to him at this time. (Or explaining why it's funny that they do.) In a few years, perhaps. For now, we'll just take it all one (silly) step at a time.

Bedtime Story

Success!

It occurs so infrequently these days that I’m going to savor it.

Parenting is a series of failures. No, really. This is what I’ve found. It can be measured by what you get right and what you get wrong, situations you misjudge or flat-out bungle. It could be described as an evolution, a learning experience, but really, it’s a steady line of failings, occasionally interrupted by the blips of minor successes.

It’s like a post-game analysis show that never ends, that just runs 24/7 in your mind, as you lay awake at night, second-guessing your instincts and your maneuvers, questioning your fitness as a parent, and pessimistic about your ability to improve your game as time goes on.

But then, every once in a while, you seem to do something right. Something more than just keeping your child alive and free from harm. Something that makes you look at your spouse and high-five each other, or simply say, “Nailed it.”

We recently transitioned the Doozer to a big boy bed.

While many kids move out of their crib earlier (he is now 3 years, 4 months), we were lucky to be saddled with a child who never showed an aptitude for climbing out of his crib. Or an interest. We’re not sure what it was. He tried once, around 18 months maybe, and my wife yelled at him that he’d get hurt. He apparently took it to heart.

Having never been a decent sleeper, and recently having taken to singing, chatting, and calling for us repeatedly after being put down for the night, we were naturally concerned that he would take the opportunity to get up every night, to wander about and possibly come downstairs. We tried to remain hopeful that this would not happen. Lest he appear out of thin air in the living room while we watched TV, perhaps during yet another Paz de la Huerta nude scene on Boardwalk Empire (seriously, what, is she allergic to clothing?).

Dada? What is that lady doing? Ummm . . .

So far, though, thankfully, no such awkwardness has occurred. Perhaps it hasn’t yet dawned on him to try and get out of his bed at night and run around like a maniac, or disturb us while we’re trying to enjoy an adult beverage and some fine HBO programming. He’s done it in the morning. In fact, on the first morning in the new bed, he called out to us, as he is wont to do, and requested to be brought downstairs for the customary juice and Curious George.

Finally, I got up and walked into his room to retrieve him, only to discover that we were suddenly players in a French stage farce (or perhaps a production of Noises Off!), since there are two doors to the Doozer’s bedroom and while I entered one, he slipped out the other and wandered it into our bedroom, proud as a peacock, thrilled with this new dimension to his life.

It’s now been about a week and so far, it is far smoother sailing than we’d imagined it would be. Far smoother, for instance, than the Take-Away-the-Binky Debacle of Fall 2010. Though we employed the same tactics, did due diligence, talked endlessly about the impending change, got him excited for what awaited him on the other side (as he was given the opportunity to trade in his binky for a new toy—a remote-controlled train, which was pretty cool, if I do say so myself). We were ill-prepared for the epic meltdown and the long, lost weekend that followed.

By comparison, moving out of his crib into a big bed was miraculously issue-free. At least so far. (I’ve probably just completely jinxed us.) And so for the moment, we’re going to revel in this minor success. We did it at the right time, we did the proper amount of preparation, we got him prepared, nay, excited, for the move and so when it occurred, it was not traumatic—for him or us. Well, maybe for us. A little.

I mean, come on, he’s not in a crib anymore. He’s in a bed. A regular bed that a full-grown adult could sleep in. This struck me immediately upon constructing the bed and assembling all the bedding atop it. I looked at this suddenly large object in his room and realized, he might still be sleeping in this when he’s a teenager. When he’s in high school. He’s going to be in high school someday . . . he’s going to be a teenager.

This thought was almost enough to make me want to tear it down and go right back to the crib and keep him in there forever.

Oh well, the crib will be occupied soon enough, when the next addition of the family arrives, when the Doozer’s new brother, the Doozer Jr., will be spending his naps and his nights there. And the new little one will undoubtedly remind us of the first little one, the one that lived inside that crib, sleeping every night alongside a yellow ducky and some grapes. Of course the Doozer’s still got the ducky. Still got the grapes. Some things don’t change as quickly as others.

He’s still my little guy. For now. He’s just a little guy in a big bed.

A very big bed.

Good night, my sweet boy.

I Hate My Generation

In the giant time suck that is life with a child (or children), it’s quite easy for two people to forget that they were once childless, that they had an entire existence as a couple, that they were two people in a romantic relationship, who were routinely well-rested, properly groomed, and—let’s admit it—fun to be around.

You often read about the importance of “date nights” for old, boring, married couples who spend most of their waking hours entertaining the whims and catering to the demands of a miniature human being. People often think they’ll escape this fate. That won’t be us, they’ll say. We won’t forget. Our kid will fit into our life, we won’t reshape ours entirely around him.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

The wife and I have, sadly, fallen headfirst into this trap as much as anyone else. Parent ends up becoming such an all-encompassing, all-consuming role, that you forget there are other facets to your personality, other facets to your relationship with your spouse. And so you resort to the tactic of date nights. The occasional night off from parenthood, to remind yourselves that you’re still relatively youthful and fun and spontaneous and capable of having a good time. And so it was that last Friday night the Doozer was packed off to one set of grandparents for the evening, so the boy’s mother and I could stay out past 8:30 and partake of a social ritual that we had not experienced for quite a long time: a rock show.

That’s right, we were hipsters again for a night. Or at least, trying to be. We started our adventure with dinner, at long last a grown-up meal with adult beverages, no chicken fingers on the menu, no dangerously teetering booster seats, no crayons on the table. It was a tapas place (just typing that out makes me feel more like an adult than I have in forever) and we reveled in our goat cheese this and calamari that. The restaurant, a place called Small Plates, is a great part of the growing downtown dining scene in Detroit.

And not a child in sight. Although, inevitably, the conversation did eventually (and by eventually, I mean within moments) meander back to the subject of the Doozer. It’s Machiavellian, almost, the way the kid has us wrapped around his little finger, how he manages to dominate our life even in his absence. He is nefarious.

Anyway, after dinner, we took a short walk on that brisk November night (moving at a normal pace, as opposed to being slowed down by a curious toddler reluctant to hold hands or be carried to speed up the process) and arrived at the second destination of our adventure, St. Andrews Hall, renowned music enclave, a place neither of us had visited in years (not that we’d visited any other concert venues, mind you). Glorious, it felt, to enter that space, to be transported back to our more youthful days, to late nights and loud music and cheap beer and being carefree and no kids whatsoever. Our tickets were scanned, we entered the hall, we looked around.

And immediately wanted to sit down. But the only seats were in a restricted balcony section overlooking the stage. Needless to say, we were not allowed up. “But we were up early this morning with our son and it’s been a long day,” though true, did not seem like the kind of thing that would get us what we wanted.

So we stood. And waited. And grew tired. And waited. And yelled over the pre-show music. Talk turned, yet again, to the Doozer. What was he doing? Was he in bed yet? When would we get a report about him?

And then, what time was it? How long had we been standing there? When would the opening act come on? When would the headliners actually be on stage? My feet are getting tired. My neck hurts. My lower back is starting to twinge.

Of course, in hindsight, taking your pregnant wife to a rock show where there is no seating is probably not the wisest idea. And so the notion that this evening would invigorate us, remind us that we’re still relatively young, the result was actually the opposite: to make us feel incredibly old.

Eventually, the headlining band hit the stage. Sloan was pretty big in the ‘90s when we were teenagers. My wife had owned more of their music than I had, but I distinctly remembered them getting airplay on 89X, back when it was a decent radio station that played a lot of music that you didn’t typically hear on the radio. But before I’d heard a story on NPR a few months back about Sloan celebrating its twentieth year as a band, I didn’t even know they were still around. And that they’d recorded ten albums over the course of their career. I’d missed that.

It was loud. I mean, really loud. (God, we are old.) I’d said something about ear plugs and my wife was like, Who wears ear plugs to a rock show? But I could see them sticking out of people’s ears all around us. (Maybe we’re not all that old.)

In the end, my wife said she was familiar with maybe 40 to 50 percent of the songs they played that night, I was at about 10 to 15 percent. In fact, it was not until the final song of their set that I found myself singing along. “The Good In Everyone.” I’d forgotten that was even a Sloan song. They did not play “I Hate My Generation” or “Coax Me” the two songs I am most familiar with.

Though we made it through the encore, we barely made it home. Falling asleep standing up, achy and suffering from tinnitus, we trudged back to the car and headed home. We were in bed before midnight (though up far later than our typical bedtime) and slept soundly without interruption or an early-morning Doozer wake-up call. Huzzah.

We’d done it. We’d gone out and partied like rock stars. Kind of. Sort of.

But soon enough, the concert was a memory and we were off to collect our Doozer. We’d missed him. Terribly. Machiavellian, I tell you.

But maybe not all is lost. Maybe we are not so old and pathetic as we seemed. I read just today that Ryan Adams will be headlining the Ann Arbor Folk Festival in late January and it got me thinking. The wife will only be about eight months pregnant at that point.

I’m sure that won’t be an issue.