Growling, Cooing and Nyuck-Nyuck-Nyucking Through the Generation Gap

Katie and I went down to the Margaret River area over Easter. There we spent a bit of time with her sister, Sal, and three-month-old nephew, Jacob. At one point Katie had asked me if I wanted to hold the baby and my response was, "I don't know... I'm okay with my own kids; I don't feel funny cooing or growling at them, but not other kids."

Maybe it was a case of jitters prior to our own baby's arrival, but I started wondering if I had lost my touch with babies. Now, given the villain I have become post-divorce, I'm sure my ex-wife would say that I never had a touch with babies and that I was much more of a growler than a cooer, but when I was growing up I seemed to be pretty good with babies and people would say things like, "You'll be a good father some day."

Being entirely candid, I know that I was, for various reasons, quite depressed when my younger son Mac was born and I had offered up a spicey soundbite or two in regards to fatherhood and my tenuous connection to him. Thankfully, I grew close to him after I found a job and started settling on the new continent, but the pangs of guilt are still there. I figured if I held Jacob he'd pick up on my failings with babies in the past and would just wail.

Don't get me wrong, I like many babies, and I certainly don't dislike them on principle. My stepfather, Harry G. Nicoll, on the other hand, would often make the pronouncement, "I. Don't. Like. Babies." In a movie, you might have a central character say such a thing several times throughout the flick only to see him awkwardly cuddle-up with his grandchild during the last reel, but Harry's story, as far as I can tell, didn't have such a moment. My mother had the whole situation nicely pegged: "He just hates the fact that babies take the attention away from him." In his defense, Harry was great with older kids, teenagers and young people in general. But he really didn't like those beings that, in his words, "did nothing but eat, shit and squawk."

Getting back to me and babies and away from the digression, some babies I like and some are just okay. I certainly don't view all of them as adorable little angels, nor do I view them with the passion that some have for, say, a specific breed of dogs. Although you can't accurately say that a baby has a personality, you can say the little one has a presence. Some harmonise with us, others not so much.

Anyway, Katie is very persuasive. I held Jacob for a few minutes. He's too young to be bounced or tossed (to name just a couple of stereotypical guy-baby activities), but he was pretty cool with make believe dancing coupled with a mild invisible elevator sort of movement. I even got a few smiles out of him and a proto-giggle. In my book, that counts as bonding with Uncle Greg. We're pretty cool with each other. All of this bodes well for September and the arrival of Little Walker-White (whose sex is to be discovered in five days, by the way).

Moving up a few stages in the life cycle, last weekend Firstborn Cal and I were cruising through YouTube. Somehow we got to The Three Stooges.

"Oh, Cal! You're gonna love these guys! I used to watch them all the time when I was your age."

I explained to him how they were known for their particularly violent brand of slapstick. "But it's not the kind of violence you see in your video games or in, like, The Lord of the Rings." The clip we watched (linked above) was described as the "most violent sequence ever," but I knew no one was going to be killed and that it would be bloodless. Certainly it wouldn't be as bad as The Itchy & Scratchy Show, which he's seen tons of times on The Simpsons.

Well, was I surprised by Cal's reaction (picture at left)! Not only did he not laugh, but there were a few times when his eyes widened in disbelief. When Moe put Curly's nose to the grinding wheel he said something like, "Oh, my God, Dad! That is so violent!" He was really taken aback! At that point, I was more amused with the difference in tastes between the generations than I was the video clip. This kid (and all of his peers, lest I come off as the least-discerning father in Australia) has seen Orcs beheaded, Indiana Jones bloodying Nazis, Luke Skywalker have his hand amputated by his own father, King Kong chomping on Skull Islanders, hordes of the Na'vi wiped out on Pandora and Spider-Man receive plenty of graphic ass-whippings by deranged supervillains—but he was slapped out of his complacency by Moe Howard!

Honestly... I'm guessing it's Moe's bullying ways that did it. The guy really does have a nasty attitude and his expressions are genuinely mean when he whacks the other two. As far as I know, Cal has never been slapped before, so maybe that has something to do with it. When I was growing up, bullying was a fine art during recess at Avery School. I should be grateful that my boys are growing up in an age when grabbing another's nose is worse than decapitation, right?

Note to self : For pure entertainment value, invisible elevators have a greater shelf life—across generations—than The Stooges. You oughta know that by now, you chowdahead—crack! crunch! boink!

Little Moments with the Big Screen

I had a wonderful weekend with my older son, Callum, whom I see two weekends a month. Sometimes Cal is accompanied by his younger brother, Mac. Lately, though, almost-six-year-old Mac often doesn't feel like coming over. I can't blame the little guy for this; he was only 14 months old when his mother and I divorced and he started calling another guy "Papa" not too long after that. My guess is he's a little confused. I'll leave it at that.

Upon arrival, Cal said something about almost seeing Avatar earlier but the idea had been nixed in the other household because it was felt that the aliens in the movie might scare Mac. Fair enough. Since Mac wasn't with us, Cal and I had our opening to see what's being likened to a similar cinematic experience many of us had in 1977.

A great many people are going to catch the reference to '77 without any explanation—and I tend to get along with those people very well—but for the rest of you, I'm talking about Star Wars. Star Wars before there was anything about episodes or "A New Hope." Magic that's been talked about and referenced so much in pop culture in recent years as being magical that a lot of the magic has been washed out. I was 12 years old in '77 and I was one of the target audiences. Another member of another target audience would have been my 50-year-old stepfather-to-be Harry G. Nicoll. Harry read tons of science fiction, worked on some of the early space projects and could remember the Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s.

I'm almost certain that we saw the movie in early September of that year. Either that or late August. At the time the flick was just becoming a phenomenon and no one knew enough to keep and frame the ticket stub, but I can pretty much nail my initial viewing of Star Wars to the three-week window of late August to the first half of September. As a kid who spent a lot of time drawing and zero time playing baseball or other such sports, the movie hit me hard. I was Darth Vader for Halloween that year, collected the cards and kept a Star Wars scrap book.

That was the superficial stuff.

Three years later and the Empire Strikes Back comes out. When I discovered that Vader was Luke's father, the mythology knocked me for a loop and I found myself in a subset target audience of the original target audience: I had not seen my wheezing (he died of emphysema years later), villified and absent father in many years... and I would not see him ever again. All I can say is that I felt Luke's cry of "Noooooooo!" when he discovered his parentage. To put it simply, no one wants to be of bad stock; you feel damaged from the git-go. With that flaw, bullies and empires are hard to defeat.

Okay, let's get back on track. Harry didn't take my sister, Meg, and I to too many movies, but we saw the three original Star Wars movies together. I was not athletic like Harry and I'm sure I was generally pretty pesky, but we shared those movies. For me, they were honest-to-goodness father-and-son experiences (or, more correctly, stepfather-and-stepson experiences).

Every now and again I will try to kick the Aussie Rules footy around with my sons, but talk about feeling like an imposter. That's a sport that's indulged in the other household. I tried tennis with Cal yesterday because he had just finished a tennis camp and my amazing Katie thought it would be a fun thing for all of us to do. Still, my kid isn't coming away from our hour on the court knowing something about what his Dad does or likes.

Dad takes him to the movies and draws with him. A lot of the time we draw stuff from the movies. I'm sure to many it's not as worthy or authentic an experience as playing catch, experiencing the great outdoors or riding a bike. I can see the merit in those viewpoints. But it's also nice to see a kid's imagination fired: after the movie, Cal was wondering about the lives of Pandora's animals, the cryosleep required to travel from Earth to Pandora, having an Avatar, imagining a sequel.

When the house lights came up Cal said, "Thanks, Dad." I don't have a snappy and tidy way to end this entry. I just felt great when my boy said that, that's all.