Fathermucker by Greg Olear Read Free Book Online Page B

you both want to watch,” I tell him.
    This isn’t good enough. He spins around, rage ruddying his cheeks, and swats at me with both arms. “No! I don’t like that. I don’t like sisters. I don’t want Maudes. No Maudes allowed here. I’m mad at her!”
    He swoops by her like a bird of prey, arms extended, smacking her on the head as he races by.
    â€œRoland,” I holler. “Stop it. Jesus Christ.”
    My swearing has increased both in frequency and severity with each day of Stacy’s absence. Today’s over-under on “F-bombs With a Child in Earshot” is five. Especially if we drive around a lot. The whole “blinker” concept is not much known in these parts.
    â€œStupid Christ,” he shouts, as I suppress giggling at his botched attempt to swear. Then he gets one right: “Stupid Daddy.”
    Ignoring him—this is, after all, not unusual behavior—I turn to Maude. “ LazyTown ?”
    â€œNo. I want to watch . . . ummm . . . Max & Ruby .”
    Figures she’d pick the show I dislike the most. That’s her job as a kid, right, developing tastes antithetical to mine? Rankling my sensibilities? I shudder for the teenage years. I really hope the whole tattoo fad is done by then. “Does that work for you, Roland? Max & Ruby ?”
    He lets out an exaggerated sigh, but calms down, like a possessed villager post-exorcism. “O-kay,” he says.
    Catastrophe averted.
    â€œLet’s go down. I’ll make bagels.”
    â€œI don’t like bagels!”
    N OGGIN, THE MORE OR LESS COMMERCIAL-FREE CABLE STATION programmed for little tykes it’s like preschool on TV , in an apparent attempt to assuage your guilt for plopping your pride and joy in front of the zombie box, displays, before each offering, info-graphics that extol the educational virtues of the show you’re about to suffer through.
    Max & Ruby , for example, which concerns the diurnal goings-on of a pair of corpulent bunnies, a bratty two-year-old (the former) and his prissy seven-year-old sister (the latter) who doubles as his de facto legal guardian, enhances preschoolers’ understanding of INTER- and INTRAPERSONAL DYNAMICS .
    LazyTown , featuring the athlete/superhero Sportacus, Iceland’s second most important export after Björk, enhances preschoolers’ understanding of KINESTHETIC SKILLS and awareness of HEALTHFUL BEHAVIORS .
    Yo Gabba Gabba! —the title refers to the incantation D. J. Lance Rock, the orange-garbed host, intones at the top of each episode to bequeath life to his five deformed playthings— enhances preschoolers’ SOCIAL SKILLS and SELF-AWARENESS and uses interactive games to expand their MUSICAL and KINESTHETIC SKILLS .
    And Olivia , a show about a family of pigs whom I can’t tell apart, and who look, to my jaded East Village eyes, like the blown-up photographs of late-term aborted fetuses the pro-life crazies used to wave around at tourists in Washington Square Park . . . Olivia , for the love of God, enhances preschoolers’ understanding of the CREATIVE THINKING and imaginative PROBLEM-SOLVING that support imaginative play and the development of INTER- and INTRAPERSONAL AWARENESS .
    I’ve heard the porcine program also turns loaves into fishes and helps O. J. find the real killer.
    There is a pervasive belief among parents, particularly crunchy parents, which constitute an overwhelming majority in New Paltz—mommies who subscribe to both Mothering magazine ( Judgmental Mothering , as Stacy calls it) and the doctrinaire philosophies therein; mommies who eschew diapers for Elimination Communication; mommies who practice Attachment Parenting; mommies who “fight through” a baby’s natural instinct to wean and continue breastfeeding until Little League—a tenet clung to with such zeal that it may as well be a Zen koan, a papal bull, a lost commandment, that