Author: Andy Affleck

Reading to Jack

Published on by Andy Affleck
Half Magic by Edward Eager

This post over on Wired’s GeekDad blog was very well timed. I am currently reading Half Magic by Edward Eager, a childhood favorite of mine, to Jack. He’s loving it. I wasn’t sure how a book set over 80 years on the past would go over but he gets very upset ever night when it is time to close the book and turn out the light.

I was casting about for what to read him next. We’d just finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling. We’re on a schedule with Harry Potter: he gets one book every six months. This is mainly because the later books are too old for him now and we wanted to pace them so he would be old enough by the time he reached them. Sure, we could have just waited to start them altogether, but we couldn’t help ourselves. And it was hard to keep him away from them when Ann and I were both re-reading books 1 through 6 to get ready for book 7 last summer. I couldn’t think of anything to read him and then I rememberd Eager’s books on magic. The problem: where on Earth were they? I told Jack that I’d be right back and to get into bed to wait and then tore downstairs. I checked the collection of paperbacks in the front hallway (moving a pile of catalogs out of the way to get into the cabinet). No dice. I checked the armoire in the living room. Nope. Went into my mother-in-law’s room and pulled out ever box Ann stuffed books into on the shelves (Books in boxes on shelves. Go figure.) No luck. Dejected, I went back up to Jack’s room resigned to reading him one of the many other books there. I told him I was sorry, I couldn’t find the book I wanted to read him and proceeded to look at his shelf and wouldn’t you know it? There they were. On his shelf. In his room. Right in front of my face.

Prior to Azkaban, I read him the complete Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander. More than any other books, these were my all time favorite books. My sister sent Jack a complete collection of hardcover editions (with the old-style covers) and we read through them over the next five or so months (a little at a time).

Meanwhile, my wife has been reading her favorites to him including Watership Down by Richard Adams, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, and is planning on seeing if he’ll like Ann of Green Gables or the Little House on the Prairie books.

Anyone out there have their own favorites we should consider?

On God and Lotion

Published on by Andy Affleck
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Men and women communicate differently. We all know that. Not to overgeneralize (but I’m going to anyway) men tend to ask direct questions based on what we want or need at a specific moment. Women tend to ask questions which seem to be needing honest answers but actually have subtext which, if you are paying attention, you can pick up and realize that it wasn’t actually a question that was being asked in the first place but a request politely phrased.

As an example, let’s use what just happened here a few moments ago. My wife works part-time in retail which means that after she gets home, her feet are killing her. So, I give her foot rubs on those nights. As I started rubbing her feet she asked me, “Do you want to use lotion?” and I answered without thinking, “No, I’d rather not get my hands slimey.” As the words left my mouth I saw that look of immediate disappointment cross her face and realized that I just gave the wrong answer.

And then it struck me. My wife just proved God’s existence.

I’ll explain.

I have often railed at the seeming strangeness of the supposed grand plan. The idea that if you do not subscribe to a particular sect of a particular religion (and woe unto you if you choose the wrong one) then you are doomed forever. The idea that Jesus (or whoever) is sitting in Heaven (or wherever) checking a clipboard and seeing if you filled out every form correctly like some divine DMV seemed absurd to me. I always subscribed to the idea that if you do right by your fellow man, followed the Golden Rule, and were generally fair, kind, and truthful, it didn’t matter at all what you actually believed. It’s a spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law situation. So, the idea that God created people with free will and then got upset if they exercised their free will in a way that displeased God made no sense to me. Why not just create people to always be good and follow a specific path? Why give free will if you’re just setting us up to fail?

And tonight my wife proved God exists. She did exactly the same thing. She could have said, “Please use lotion,” and that would have been all that was needed. I would have said, “Sure thing,” and used lotion. But she asked if I wanted to use lotion which is an entirely different question. She gave me free will and then was upset when I exercised it in the wrong direction.

Now religion makes sense to me. And God is, of course, a woman. And now I know I am truly doomed.