Just Call Me Smee

Our youngest just turned 1 and I’m holding out hope that this one will stay enamored with me. At this point, she is the only one of the four who isn’t a professional feelings- hurter.

The other three, however, are lovers of the cold, hard truth. They don’t really have the ‘speaking the truth in love’ thing down. They aren’t malicious, they just like to say whatever is on their minds. I suppose I should be thankful for the truth-telling, but hopefully with time it will be tempered with a smidgeon of sensitivity.

From what I gather from my kids, I am fat and I am ugly. And I smell bad. I didn’t hear these kinds of things when I was a kid myself, the time of life when one expects to be ridiculed and beaten down. No, during my childhood I felt very well accepted by all. It is fatherhood that knocked me down a few notches. I brought these little sinners into the world and they thank me by making off-the-cuff derogatory remarks about my physique.

Wyatt is about to be four. His insults seem to be the most innocuous, mostly because they are simply an unpremeditated, stream-of-consciousness type of degradation. Recently, I went in to my bedroom to get ready for work. Wyatt walked in and inquired as to what I was doing. “I’m about to change clothes.” He responded, “Is it going to be scary?”

I understand I’m no Fabio, but I’d like to think that the prospect of my taking off my shirt doesn’t result in a general state of fear among my offspring. And yet, that seems to be the case. What kind of hellish nightmare must my wife have been enduring all these years?

Blake, our 6-year-old daughter, is the most troubled by my shirtlessness. When the baby was born, she and Blake were sharing a room. During those first few nights when the baby was up all hours, I would go in and get Blake to trade beds with me. She could sleep with her mom and I would sleep in her bed, so that they would be able to sleep well and I could take care of the baby. On the first of these nights, I went in shirtless and woke Blake up, telling her to go sleep in my bed.

Sleepily she asked, “Where are you going to sleep?”

“In your bed,” I replied.

Suddenly, she was wide awake, and the troubled look on her face turned to stark terror as she whimpered, “What are you going to wear?”

Is she afraid of the dark? Monsters in the closet? Chucky? Murderers? Corporal Punishment? No. The greatest fear in her young life is the idea of her half-naked father’s skin touching her Hello Kitty sheets.

Last summer we went to my wife’s family reunion. Her aunt and uncle have a pool so the kids were worked up for weeks ahead of time about going swimming for two whole days. I looked forward to it as well – I have fond memories of swimming with my dad. I had slow-motion daydreams about throwing my kids through the air and seeing their beautiful faces beaming as they squealed with delight, just like when my dad did it to me. Unfortunately, none of us foresaw my attire being an issue. When I got into the pool wearing nothing but swimming trunks, Blake reacted as if I were a 170-lbs. chunk of toilet food floating on the surface and coming to smother her. The boys were only slightly less disgusted and the only reason Wyatt let me touch him was because he can’t swim and he decided that I was a lesser evil than water-borne death. So as a general rule, my children are frightened of me with no shirt on.

They also think I could stand to shed a few pounds. One day, out of nowhere Blake referred to me as Mr. Smee. For those of you still boycotting Disney I’ve found a picture of him.

This is what my little girl thinks of when she hears the word “Daddy.”

Wyatt apparently feels the same way. While trying to get him to eat his vegetables, my wife asked him, “Do you know what’s going to happen to you if you eat nothing but junk food?” He said, “I’ll get fat like Daddy.”

I’ll get fat. Like Daddy. These things aren’t easy to hear.

It gets worse. My wife was on the internet reading the news when our dear little Wyatt pointed to a picture of Michael Moore on the computer and said, “Daddy.”

The only thing worse than agreeing with this man is looking like him.

A while back my wife was trying to get me to wear clothes that weren’t so baggy, so she bought me a long-sleeve tee that was a little more form fitting than I was used to.

And more form fitting than Blake was used to or could handle. She stared at me and said, “Is that mom’s shirt?”

On another occasion with similar attire, she commented, “That shirt looks weird. Why are you wearing that?”

So I’m fat and ugly. These in themselves are bad, but not crippling. Character is what matters, right? Well, Jackson, our oldest, dealt the heaviest blow by mixing the physical flaws and character flaws together. We went to the Columbus Zoo. We were having a good time.

Until we went to the gorilla exhibit. We were treated to the site of a huge silverback eating his own poop. In front of a large and diverse crowd, Jackson announced, “That lazy gorilla looks just like you, Dad.”

The large and diverse crowd howled.

I have to wonder if my first-born really thinks I eat my own poop. I mean, that’s the epitome of lazy, is it not? You don’t even get up to get new food, you just recycle what you had yesterday. You see, this particular insult, though devastating, has a beauty to it. It addresses so many issues. With one sentence, my son compared me to a lazy, hairy, smelly, poop-eating primate.

But the baby loves me. For now. How long will it last? 6-9 months based on previous experience.

Then it’ll be time to have another.

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I'll Believe Anything

This is a guest post from my wife, Shelby. (Not to be confused with my sister, Shelbi.) I'm afraid every word of it is true. Not that you'll trust me.

I love my husband more than anyone in the world. He makes me laugh out loud on a daily basis, and we have been blissfully married for over twelve years. He is the head of our home, a scholar, a gentleman, a comedian, a great dad, a wonderful husband, a gifted teacher and preacher, and a talented drummer, guitar player, and singer.

He is also an accomplished liar.

Well, “liar” may be too strong. “Storyteller” or “tale-spinner” is probably a more appropriate description. Or maybe “one who will say the most off-the-wall, ridiculous things, just to see if his wife will believe him.”

It started early in our marriage. He never told lies to try to get away with things—it wasn’t like that. He just thought that it was funny that I believed everything he said.

I worked in an office for a short time and dressed up for work each day. It was a Wednesday and we had choir/orchestra rehearsal at church and I wasn’t going to have time to go home first to change clothes. I called Greg and asked him if he would pack a few things that I would need and he agreed. I started to give him the list, and he told me to wait while he got a piece of paper.

Greg: Okay, I’m ready.

Me: Okay, I need my dark blue jeans.

Greg: Daaarrrk...bluuuue...jeeeeeans. Got it.

Me: White t-shirt.

Greg: Whiiiiite shirt.

Me: Socks.

Greg: Sooocks. Next?

Me: Long-sleeved shirt.

Greg: LSS. ‘K?

Me: Please don’t forget my brown boots.

Greg: Boots...Got it. Anything else?

Me: Um, yeah, go ahead and bring my toothbrush and some toothpaste, please.

Greg: Toothbrush. Toothpaste.

Me: Thank you.

Greg: You’re welcome. Did you really think that I was writing all of that down?

Not long after that we were with my family. My sister and I were discussing the breaking news story about how JFK, Jr. had died in a plane crash. Search teams were still combing the water for his body, so my sister and I were speculating over the possibility of recovery when Greg said, “Didn’t you hear? They found his body.”

“Oh, they did?” we asked.

“Yes. I can’t believe you didn’t hear this. It’s so weird. When they found him he was still sitting in the plane on the ocean floor, and he had a lit cigar in his mouth,” he replied.

I know this is so stupid, but we actually sort of believed him. “What?! That is so strange,” we said.

Greg just started laughing and shaking his head.

A couple of years after the JFK incident, we had moved to our second apartment in Nashville . Not too many weeks after we moved in we discovered that the area of town in which we were living had a bit of a cricket problem. I hate crickets. All bugs, actually, but I have a particular distaste for bugs that can jump up and try to kill me. Only these were not your everyday crickets. They were camel crickets. They were brown, they were huge, and they and all of their friends had a fondness for our unit.

One particular Sunday morning as we were preparing for church, I was standing in front of the open refrigerator trying to decide what to have for breakfast. In my peripheral vision I caught sight of a monster crawling out from under the fridge, right by my bare feet. I screamed like a banshee, slammed the fridge door, and ran into the living room, jumping up and standing on the couch. Greg had been sitting at the table in the kitchen and had witnessed the whole event, but I still was shaking and crying and begging him to kill it.

I heard him close the cabinet where our trash can was contained, and he calmly reassured me that it was okay, he had killed it.

It took several minutes for my nerves to settle down and the shaking to subside, but I was able to gingerly step back into the kitchen, my eyes darting about the room in search of any of the cricket’s wicked relatives. I was certain that the coast was clear and walked back over to the refrigerator to resume my hunt for breakfast. As I stood there, déjà vu of the worst kind took over, and I looked down to see yet another cricket emerging from beneath the fridge.

I’m assuming that my screams woke up every tenant in our building.

My vision blurred as I ran out of the room, crying like a baby. I waited for my knight-in-shining-armor to rescue me once again, when I heard him say the words that would forever stain our bond of marriage and cause me to never trust him again:

“It’s okay, Shelby . It was the same cricket.”

Every muscle in my body tensed up and I froze half-way to the couch. In slow-motion I turned toward him, and with a voice that I can only assume sounded like I was possessed by an evil spirit, I seethed through clenched teeth, “it...was...WHAT?!”

Greg shrugged and said, “It ran under the fridge and I couldn’t get to it. I didn’t think it would come back out.”

Needless to say, every single time in the last ten years that he has killed a bug for me I have made him file a report on the incident and show me the corpse.

Stop me if you can stomach no more, but on we go to lie number four. (Hey, that rhymes...)

We had gone to bed particularly late one night, and Greg needed to rise early the next day for work. We were talking about needing more sleep, and Greg said, “I’ll be okay as long as I wake up after 6:00.”

“Why 6:00?” I asked.

Greg replied, “Oh, I just read about this. It’s called the ‘Threshold of Rest.’ They say if you sleep until 6am you will have rested thoroughly, even if you didn’t go to sleep until, say, 3am. But if you wake up at, like, 10 ‘til 6:00, you haven’t reached the Threshold of Rest.”

I was intrigued. “Hmm. That’s interesting. I’ve not heard that before.”

“That’s because I just made it up.”

I’m sure that I could tell you stories all day, but I won’t. Let me conclude with this: as exasperating as the love of my life can be, I can tell you that every day is an adventure and no one on the face of the earth could ever take his place.

Believe me.

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The Rolodex

Guest Blogger: Christi Harrison

Let me say from the very beginning that I am not as talented a writer as my brother. I will not be incorporating imagery into this blog entry and I am pretty certain that the word onomatopoeia will not be used either. Who uses that word except college English professors who read War and Peace for fun on the weekends and have pictures of Emily Bronte taped to the inside of their briefcases? But I digress.

My name is Christi Harrison. I am Greg’s older sister, although, many people have thought that he is the oldest. This tickles me. For those of you long-time readers, I am married to the West Virginian, who is the love and joy of my life! We have four beautiful, precocious little girls. Yes, all girls! My husband has told them that they can either go to college or have a wedding, we can not afford to do both. In addition to spending time trying to look younger than my brother, I also spend a great deal of energy trying to blend into the woodwork. So it is rather ironic that my claim to fame is that I have the most embarrassing moments on record-bar none!
We have all been there; the Sunday school social, the office or dinner party where someone stands up and says the dreaded word "ice breaker". Then he or she goes one step further and suggests that everyone tells their most embarrassing moment. Why is it socially acceptable to emotionally strip ourselves bare in order to make it easier for people to talk to us? Why not just get naked and complete the nightmare. But that isn’t the part that stresses me out, because while everyone else is trying to come up with one embarrassing moment, I am mentally pulling out my rolodex of embarrassing moments and trying to decide when the host was wanting said incident from. You have to be more specific. Do you want it from elementary school? A holiday? From September of ‘84? Or maybe you want a specific genre; dancing with a midget (actually happened), passing out naked, or peeing in front of an audience. You have to narrow the scope of your search people. So, for the interest of time, I have narrowed the field to my top four.

The first one occurred my freshman year of college. It was a Saturday night and I was going on a group date to the football game. The cute sophomore who sat beside me in my Western Civilizations class finally asked me out and I was so nervous. All of us girls who were going, lived in a high-rise dorm with a lobby that you had to walk down about five stairs to get to the couches and T.V. This was where we were meeting our dates and because it was football night the place was packed! When the guys got there we exchanged small talk and decided to head out. My date and I were the first ones to the stairs. On the very last step, I tripped. As if that were not bad enough, I had enough momentum going to fall and actually slide 10 feet and hit my head on the lobby desk. As you can probably imagine, I never saw that guy again.

The next one also took place in college, although it was a different school. This happened during my junior year at Cedarville College. It was finals week and I was stressed out trying to maintain my place on the Dean’s list. It was the only time I had even come close to being on a Dean’s list, thus, my stress. I admit that I had not been sleeping and eating properly, if at all, and it had started to get to me. The morning of a particularly hairy final, I woke after a minimal night’s sleep and went to the showers. In this dorm there was just one large community bathroom and shower area for roughly 25 girls and all of us were there that morning. Upon getting into the shower and starting the bathing process, I began to feel light-headed and the room started to spin. About the time I figured it might be a good idea to sit down, I went down like a tree in the forest! Once again, it was not enough to fall down. No, I fell out of the shower and onto the floor in front of 24 girls. Luckily, I came to about the time that they said the word "squad". The "squad" was composed of the male nursing and pre-med students there on campus. I was panicked! I managed with some help to make it to the side of the bathroom and cover up with a robe in time for Cedarville’s finest ( and most handsome) to come and check me out. Needless to say, I didn’t date much in college. One small blessing was that my future betrothed was also a nursing student, but luckily was not on the squad.

This next story is my sister’s favorite. So, Shelbi, this is for you. Fast forward a few years after college and I was working as an assistant-manager in the fragrance shop at Victoria’s Secret. It was the last Saturday before Christmas and the store was beyond packed! As my dad would say, we were stacked in there like cord wood! I was there dressed to the nines in my beautiful, black suit and perfectly coifed, when a very handsome man comes and asks for help finding a gift. I tell him I have the perfect item and as I am telling him to take a whiff of the scent I have just sprayed on the card, the loudest fart you have ever heard comes ripping out of me from nowhere. I can honestly tell you that you have never heard a room get so quite so fast! To this day I have no idea where it came from. You can ask anyone who knows me, I am not one to actively participate in this kind of behavior. My own husband has only heard me fart twice in the 12 years that he has known me. I was beyond embarrassed and managed a very meek, "I am so terribly sorry". What happened after that is a blur.

This final incident took place at the rehearsal dinner the night before my wedding. Whenever I bring this story up to my husband, he gets a very nervous look on his face and tells me I had to have dreamed this some night because it never happened. Unfortunately for him I have MULTIPLE eyewitnesses, most of whom are dear loved ones. My husband’s best friend was a ventriloquist. After telling said spouse that Nathan absolutely could not perform at the wedding reception, I decide to compromise and let Nathan perform at the rehearsal dinner. BIG MISTAKE!! Everything was going quite smoothly and Nathan was doing very well until he asks Aaron (my husband) and I to come up and stand with him. My sister says that what happened next was the most painful thing she has ever had to watch. Nathan tells Aaron and I that he is going to put his hand on our backs and we have to be his dummies! We have to move our mouths and arms in time to him. He then proceeds to sing , but I can’t tell you what the song was because I was trying to decide how to give Aaron the ring back. The West Virginians that were there look back and describe it as a delightful memory. My mother, on the other hand, still can’t talk about it.

Well, that is me in a nutshell, a shy, quiet wife and mother with a past that is anything but. Maybe sometime I can tell about the time I danced with the midget.

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Intermission

I know its been over a week since I last posted. The Spring semester has begun and I'm pastoring a new church - I'm swamped. I will do my best to keep things up, but I'm afraid the frequency is going to decrease a bit. I intend to get some guest bloggers to put some content up. If you get sick of checking the site to see if a new post is up, you might consider subscribing to the blog by email or RSS feed (the links on the left side of the screen).

Those of you who are new to the blog, the archive has a few posts that you might enjoy.

Take it easy, everyone, and I'll talk to you soon.