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Originally published in October 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

Last week, our older girl cried while I read to her. The bedtime book had taken a distressing turn, but she didn’t want me to stop.

The book was “Anne of Green Gables” and we’d finally reached “The Reaper Whose Name is Death.” That’s the second-to-last chapter, when the course of our energetic heroine’s life is dramatically altered by the passing of her adopted father.

Never read the book? Neither had I, and we also hadn’t seen whatever “Green Gables” movies and TV shows there may be, so the century-old story was full of surprises. It charmed us right from the beginning, when Anne Shirley is adopted by the lonely Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, aging siblings who intend to take in a boy to help with chores around the house, but end up with a freckle-faced, flame-haired girl instead.

Matthew – who feels almost immediate affection for 11-year-old Anne at the book’s start – is a quiet, amiable character and my daughter was fond of him. Marilla, on the other hand, is hesitant. She resists taking Anne into their home, then treats her more strictly and stand-offishly than her brother. Even though Marilla soon grows to love Anne every bit as much as Matthew does, my daughter remained suspicious of the character’s harder edge.

So when Matthew’s heart gave out toward the novel’s end, my daughter soaked a cloth while crying.

I was glad I’d scanned ahead and warned her about what was coming – having that chapter hit her by surprise might have kept her up all night – but I still wondered whether I’d made a mistake reading this book at all.

My girl was crying not because she’d been injured, not because she was in trouble for breaking some rule, but because she felt bad that a character in a book had died. How could this be a good thing?

Stopping would make it worse, so I slugged through the chapter and her tears had tapered off by the end. Then she went to the living room, hugged my wife, and we returned to her bedroom to read the book’s final chapter so we could finish the night on a more upbeat note. Toward the end, she was laughing in all the appropriate places.

Wow. You girls sure develop into complex beings in a hurry.

It was just five years ago – five years ago today – that I first saw my older daughter. Like every healthy newborn, she was purple and crying. She’d worked herself into the wrong position in the womb and spent the last part of her development with her legs pointing up instead of down, and for weeks after her birth they continued to point the wrong way. I’d have to hold them down to change her diaper, then they’d spring back up when I let her go and her toes would tickle her ears.

Today, she’s tall for her age and quite thin. She loves her ballet classes, princesses and friends, she’s got a head start on the three R’s and she’s almost endlessly patient with the little sister who functions as a second shadow. She navigates Mommy and Daddy’s inconsistencies with enviable adaptability.

As I recall, weekday repeats of the “Batman” TV series and G.I. Joes were my primary concerns when I was 5. I doubt I would have thought twice about the death of any character in a book; maybe not even a death in real life unless it was someone very close. My focus was squarely on whether I liked what was directly in front of me.

Somehow, despite my continuing shortcomings, I’ve got this blessing of a birthday girl in my home, whose biggest infraction is to continue defying me on one persistent demand: Stop growing up.

Originally published in September 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

For parents, there is a twilight zone of existence between the time of having a baby in the house and having a small child. It’s an unscheduled, undeadlined stretch made up of suspicion and repeated questions, then furious motion followed by deadening boredom. It’s a time that challenges what you call taboo as you reach for milestones you never would have thought mattered.

It’s called potty training.

My wife and I are experiencing the parental part of potty training for the second time in our lives. Our 2-year-old recently decided it was time for us to get serious about this with her, roughly a year after her older sister took the final step of rising at night to go to the bathroom instead of wearing “princess pants” to bed.

“Princess pants,” for those unacquainted with the term (which should be everyone), are Huggies Pull-Ups decorated with Disney princesses such as Cinderella, Jasmine and Belle.

Never heard of Pull-Ups? They’re heavily advertised non-recyclable blessings that were bestowed upon parents in the late 20th century. Basically, Pull-Ups are light-duty disposable diapers that can be put on and taken off like regular pants.

Our 2-year-old wants to do, say and think everything her big sister does, and caught on to the fact that she couldn’t accomplish this without learning how the whole “going to the bathroom” thing works. She let us know she was ready to learn by starting to sit on her pint-sized training potty after she’d finished filling her diaper.

Right concept, wrong execution. Lisa and I were happy to see she was trying, though, because we can finally envision a time when we no longer have to carry a supply of diapers and wipes everywhere we go.

Between nirvana and now, there’s a lot of work to be done.

Going to the bathroom with a potty-training child generally involves five steps:

• Parental awareness of suspicious behavior (for example, a particularly pink face and half an inch of tongue puffing out between her lips).
• The question, “Do you need to go potty?”
• If she says yes, get her to a bathroom as quickly as possible.
• Await success or failure. This step, which can sometimes take half an hour, is the hardest for a parent. Ever tried to find a comfortable place to settle in a bathroom while keeping a little one company (and preventing her from pulling all the toilet paper off the roll)? It’s SO BORING, but you’ve got to do it or there will be consequences.
• Heavy praise. If you finish up with success, praise the child for her accomplishment. If it’s a failure, praise her for trying.

This process is hard enough at home. Experience with our older girl showed that it will get more interesting for me when I take the little one away from the house without her mother. No need to get into a lot of details. Let’s just say I went through a lot of pre-moistened wipes doing impromptu bathroom cleanups.

I’m 40 years old; not the oldest father of little ones you’ll meet, but older than many. I wonder, could I have handled this when I was younger and even more selfish?

My parents, my in-laws, my big sister and her husband, they all started having kids in their early 20s. When I was their age, I flew into a rage whenever my cat made a mess digging in the potted plants. Who knows how I would have reacted if I had a potty-training youngster demanding my attention? I might have thrown myself from the balcony of my second-floor apartment.

If age hasn’t mellowed me, then it has at least sapped me of the energy to throw fits.

Originally published in August 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

Lisa is my wife, my soul mate, my perfect match. For 16 years there’s been no one I’m more comfortable with, no one I’m more excited with. She completes me.

Boy, can she be irritating.

Any idiot knows conflict comes with relationships. Lisa and I have been together since 1989, married since 1995, we’ve got two kids – it would be unnatural if we didn’t fight. Sometimes, though … wow.

It often begins in an environment thick with Lisa’s expectations. I congenially roll into the living room ready to stretch out, spend some pleasant time mostly unconscious in the presence of my family, and find out this doesn’t work for her.

She asks me what my plans are. I don’t have any, but to indulge her I try to come up with some. It’s vital to go easy on my poor, overtaxed mind, so naturally I don’t put much thought into these plans. They spill out of my mouth and I await approval that doesn’t come.

Instead, Lisa invites me to try again.

Aha! I’m being tested! My beloved wife is waiting for something and I’m supposed to figure out what it is. Well, my report cards prove I didn’t much care when I was actually being graded on tests, so what makes her think I’m going to try any harder now?

Don’t have any further plans, I say, sinking deeper into the couch. If you have suggestions, feel free to share.Questions start working their way out, piling one on top of another.

What about the girls? They’re bored. How do you propose to get them out of the house so they can burn up energy and not drive you crazy by bouncing around the living room at bedtime? She mentioned two days ago she needs to weed the garden. When will she get time to do that? Our daughters need machetes to cut paths through the yard; who will watch them while she mows? Oh, and have you considered that the children haven’t given her time to go to the bathroom yet today?

I raise my eyebrows as far as they’ll go, then lower them in a scowl and turn slightly to stare down the curtains.

We spend awhile with her talking and me not. If I’m lucky, Lisa won’t need more than a couple of grunts from me while she works out my side of things to my satisfaction and blames herself. If I’m not, she’ll start reaching unacceptable conclusions and I’ll actually have to speak. When I’m forced to participate in these conversations, I slowly build sentences out of one-syllable denials while fantasizing about getting up and stalking out of the house.

Often, while watching me struggle, Lisa can’t take it anymore and tries to retreat. I can be big about these things; I agree it’s all silliness and decide to take out the trash, even though that doesn’t need to be done.

Outside, I yank the lid off the can, fling it like a Frisbee and shred the garbage bag while throwing it away. Then I turn pink with indignation while going after the lid because I don’t want Lisa to see it in the overgrown grass. Back inside, I’m torn between my continuing desire to be lazy and my inability to stop curling my lip.

Lisa has the nerve to notice and call me on it. Then…

Ah, really, no one who has or who’s had a significant other needs the details. Emotions run high, voices get really loud or really quiet. It’s understood the children aren’t stupid, they know things are happening with Mommy and Daddy and their concerns must be taken into account.

Sooner or later, it ends, hopefully with an understanding and almost always with a measure of exhaustion. If we’re lucky, we’ll even feel pretty good and won’t have to do it again anytime soon.

Originally published in January 2006, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

There’s this series of TV commercials airing on channels around the clock, showing people who’ve purchased a cell-phone service being followed around by a crowd.

Naturally, the people are initially concerned when they see this smiling bunch, but when they find out it exists to keep an eye on their new phones – to make sure they can use the devices to reach or be reached anytime, anywhere – they figure they got a good deal and are happy to let the herd follow wherever they go.

Man, that’s creepy.

Turn it from color to black and white, add some ominous music, wide eyes and a shriek, it would make a pretty decent classic “Twilight Zone” episode. Heck, take off his thick glasses and you’ll see the “can you hear me now” guy even looks kind of like Rod Serling.

Privacy has become a confusing thing for me. I want to be able to say to the world, “You can know this much about me and no more.” There’s a public version of me and a private one. I even have what I call a “secret identity” of sorts because the name I use in everyday life isn’t exactly the same as the one I use to endorse my paycheck.

That’s all I’m going to say about that, although I doubt many would really care to know more. Believe me, I recognize I’m not all that interesting, and I sure don’t have anything worth stealing. The most valuable thing in my wallet is a tooth-shaped reminder note for my next dental appointment.

Like most people, I prefer to keep to myself.

But I also have Internet access both at home and at work, and now I read that Google might have some kind of record of every search I’ve ever made. I use a handful of e-mail accounts. I’ve registered to participate in several Internet forums. I have a credit card and a bank account. I’ve bought music from iTunes. Much as I loathe them, I even have one or two store loyalty cards.

Of course, all of this means I’ve entrusted strangers with information about myself I’d think twice about sharing with some shadier extended family members.

How odd it is that while our love of technology connects us in uncomfortable ways to strangers, we’re so often disconnected from the people who’d traditionally be friends: Our neighbors.

The first house my wife, Lisa, and I owned was a brand-new place in a brand-new subdivision. The first thing you saw as you approached our place – and every other home in the area – was the great big garage. Ours held two cars, some of our neighbors’ were big enough for three, and the walls of those garages were as much as we saw of the interior of most of their houses.

Our yards, without exception, were small.

The neighborhood was so claustrophobically spaced that the people there did everything they could to hide from each other. We all built tall privacy fences and it seemed that on the rare occasions we actually saw our neighbors outdoors, they were determined not to notice we were there.

We’d go weeks in which the most we’d see of the folks next door was when they drove past our house, keying the remote control to activate their garage door opener. If we watched, we might catch a glimpse of a lower leg stepping out of the car as the garage door closed again.

How odd to think that every day these strangers slept, ate, laughed and cried less than 50 paces away. They seemed like nice enough people when we actually spoke, but I don’t even remember their names anymore.

Originally published in August 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

Kids teach almost as much as they learn. Next week, my wife and I will finish our second year of lessons with our younger girl.

Our daughter’s lessons include the obvious (language, potty training, getting dressed, “please” and “thank you”) and the not-so-obvious (don’t sit on the dog’s tummy, dancing with big sister is a great way to blow off steam, grabbing Mommy’s ear like that will slowly drive her crazy). She takes in knowledge so fast it’s intimidating.

While I can only guess about some of the things our little girl is learning from us, here are a few things I’m sure Lisa and I have learned from her:

• You can never have enough small blankets, washcloths or bibs.
• Parents need night-lights more than little kids do. They save us from tripping over toys between our bed and the crib.
• Get used to the idea of completing tasks without complete privacy or they’ll never get done. This includes going to the bathroom.
• It’s only fair to learn to enjoy looking at pictures of other people’s kids because you’re going to want them to look at pictures of yours someday.
• Musicians who make music that appeals to both parents and small kids are rare jewels. A couple of our favorites are Trout Fishing in America and Sweet Sunny South.
• Watch the shows your kids do or they’ll be exposed to stuff you don’t like. That goes with every so-called kid-friendly station, including PBS, the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon and Noggin.
• Teething hurts. A lot.
• Infant formulas of Tylenol and Motrin are a gift from God.
• Pumping your kid full of sugar and then expecting her to behave like an angel is folly.
• Pumping your kid full of sugar and then letting her run wild in a crowd of strangers is stupidity.
• Crayon usually washes off, but not always. It’s not the end of the world when it doesn’t.
• If you don’t want it to get stained, don’t consider new carpet until the kids are at least 5.
• Don’t expect a child to sit still and pay attention in church or anywhere else if you’re not prepared to do it yourself.
• Small kids don’t get embarrassed.
• Never glare at people who are struggling with a noisy toddler. At least they’re trying to deal with the problem. The ones who deserve your scorn are the ones who appease their kids by releasing them to wander without supervision.
• If you leave your shoes where your little girl can find them, she’s going to put them on, stumble around, then leave them somewhere peculiar.
• Girls develop a fascination with dressing up and getting their hair done early in life. Get used to it and focus on teaching them to put away the princess outfits as they finish with them instead of piling them on the couch.
• Buy loose-fitting clothes for your child or she’ll outgrow them in a month. Once she’s outgrown something, take it out of her dresser and either get rid of it or store it because it’ll never fit her again.
• Finally, a hard one: A child of 2 isn’t a baby anymore and she’s not going to stop growing no matter how much you order or plead. The cliché is true: Enjoy it while it lasts or you’ll miss the most important thing you’ll ever be a part of.

Happy birthday, my little one.

Originally published in August 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

It’s untelling how many peculiar words and phrases we Powells have adapted over the years. A lot, maybe. I happen to have a few minutes of privery, so let me pour myself a piece of water and share a few.

First, I’ll go back a bit to Granny Powell, my father’s mother. Granny is unable to commit to stating even the simplest thing as unqualified fact. So, if I asked her something like, “Granny, where are the fried apple pies you made this morning?” her answer would be along the lines of, “They might be on that plate on the kitchen counter.”

This is a woman who has faced – and continues to face – some serious hardships in her life, so it’s possible a certain timidity came from that. This is too bad, but it’s also probably part of what inspired her loyalty to her children and grandchildren.

My father (who could never be accused of being timid) grew up in her house, and I’ll bet her example is part of what inspired him to never fear saying exactly what he means … occasionally including when he shouldn’t.

Dad and Mom are my source of the phrase “it’s untelling,” which means the same thing as “there’s no telling.”

I presume they acquired this phrase in their hometown of Hazard, Ky., but I didn’t catch on to its uniqueness until years after I’d moved out on my own.

Nowadays, I don’t ask about “untelling” for fear of making my parents overly conscious they’re saying something few others would. If that happened, they might stop doing it, and I don’t want that.

For the same reason, my wife and I will probably never correct our 4-year-old when she uses the words “lasterday” (yesterday), “lasternight” (last night) or “lasterweek” (last week).

Lisa and I couldn’t point to the moments these words were created, but we flat adore them. I’m serious, these “laster” words our daughter created, for whatever reason, are musical to us and we’d be delighted if she never stopped using them.

We know, though, it’s only a matter of time before she catches on, the way she caught on to the fact that it’s commonly accepted to state a mundane “I’m cold” instead of the more colorful “I’m brrr-ing” she used for so long.

Luckily, she continues to refer to the hospital as “the Popsicle,” a name she created in her first couple of years. These days, however, she does it as a joke.

Our younger girl is about to celebrate her second birthday and her vocabulary grows by the second. Sometime in the last few weeks she started asking for “a piece of water” when she’s thirsty. She’s also taken to saying “I do” or “I don’t” in place of yes or no.

Once again, Lisa and I love these developments.

There’s so much we save from the people in our families. The letters, pictures, drawings, toys and some of the clothes will be around a long, long time, ready to be taken out of storage and admired anytime.

But we slowly lose the sounds of our loved ones; lose the quirkiness shaped in their vocabularies as they grow up and out of it, or as they grow old and out of touch with their surroundings.

We often don’t even recognize these kinds of changes until long after they’ve happened. Some of the quirks in our kids, I’m sure, came and went so quickly and subtly we didn’t even have time to appreciate them before they were lost.

Just last week, my older girl asked for a few minutes of privacy and a little bit of my heart broke. Not because she didn’t want me around, but because she used to call it “privery.” I’m gonna miss that word.

Originally published in July 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

21st century Schwinn proves I’m not man enough to be a boy.
“The rebirth of cool has arrived,” the company claims in ads for the new Sting-Ray Electric. Yep, “electric,” as in a battery-powered motor.

Touting this bike as “the one your mama warned you about,” Schwinn says the motor working by itself will get a rider up to 14 mph. “Leave your buddies in the dust,” an ad says. “They’ll catch up. Maybe.”

Riders have the option of also pedaling, but leg motion is obviously uncool, so why do it? It’s not like they need the exercise; plainly, the proper attitude is all that’s required to develop muscles.

Then there’s the TV commercial, which I discovered during recent Disney Channel viewings. People who think of Disney in terms of “Snow White,” “The Jungle Book” or “Beauty and the Beast” see only part of the modern company. Those films earned a place in the heart of oldsters like me, but Walt’s company targets our kids with shows such as “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody,” “That’s So Raven” and my older girl’s favorite, “Kim Possible.”

Sadly, my wife and I have decided much of the channel’s allegedly family-oriented fare has no place in our living room, but we’ll let Kim in every now and then. We just wish she’d find a shirt that covers her belly.

Anyway, the commercial that has aired during “Kim Possible” shows a bunch of blank-faced boys bicycling in a rural area. All are probably riding Schwinns – maybe even the traditional, pre-“Rebirth of Cool” pedal-powered version of the Sting-Ray – and they’re joined by a roundish kid with thick black curls framing his face under his helmet.

The boy pumps the accelerator on the handlebar and moves through the others, taking his rightful place at their lead without moving a leg.

I’d say he was born to be wild, but no way, this boy’s too composed for that. He was born to cruise and take it seriously.

None of these kids so much as frowns, and I doubt they even know how to smile. The closest thing anyone shows to actual emotion is a vague scowl of envy at the boy whose electric motor gets him where he’s going without the risk of breaking a sweat.

Me, I laughed when I rode my bike as a kid. Gritted my teeth and pumped my legs. Cruising at 14 mph was OK for coasting down a hill, but I wanted dirt paths and jumps, and every now and then I even let myself look like a jerk by falling.

My friends and I were never told that instead of having fun, we could look tough.

These days, on the rare occasions I do the work needed to get my bike out on the road, I’m still too immature to ride it as coolly as those boys in the Schwinn commercial. I growl and work at it, sweat, chuckle, pant … whatever happens, I let it come.

Bike helmets – which I’d never even seen before high school  – are a good thing and I’ll force myself to wear one. I also put one on my older girl while I walk along beside her on the training-wheeled cycle given to her by our generous neighbors.

Now, Schwinn has me wondering if I’m doing my daughter a disservice by teaching her to ride a bike in a way that requires actual movement on her part. In fact, my wife and I may be doing the wrong thing with both our girls, letting them outdoors to play on the swing set (I haven’t seen a swing with a motor yet, but it’s only a matter of time) and encouraging them to enjoy other forms of self-propelled entertainment.

If we’re not careful, neither of them will be prepared for the day when they’re called upon to take their place among the electric-powered elite.

Originally published in July 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

After four decades of mostly reliable service, some important parts of my body have demanded maintenance work.

The list of requirements isn’t complex. Eat healthier foods. Find a way to get more exercise, every single day. Have a few mystery parts checked out and, if necessary, repaired. Expect to pay – possibly a high price – if you refuse.

Problem is, when one part of me says it needs something, another part starts shouting objections.

My tongue doesn’t like going more than 12 hours without cheese. It enjoys cheese, it’s used to cheese, and it doesn’t give a rat about cholesterol. Fatty foods make it happy, and it’s used to being happy.

So it was indignant when I collaborated with other body parts to introduce nasty things like whole wheat to my daily intake, and it’s flat outraged by current attempts to replace cheese with vegetables.

In principle, my feet are all in favor of my heart’s demand for more exercise. They spend a lot of time dancing and kicking under my desk, anxious to get up and get moving, so they responded enthusiastically to the initiation of a daily family walk.

Then they started hurting. Throbbing, even, and complaining of scraping around too much inside my shoes. We can’t walk today, they complained after less than a week. If the heart wants to walk, let it walk. Leave us out of it.

From its throne at the top of my body, my brain looks down on my parts’ squabbles and laughs. I am above such things, I hear it saying inside my head. I am here to THINK and not be concerned with the foolishness of lesser organs. That’s why I’m separated from the rest of you by a neck.

Last week, my oh-so-cool brain just about jumped out of my head in a moment of panic. I fear only sedation kept it where it belonged.

That’s the first time my brain, working with my eyes, got an up-close-and-personal look at the table side of an operating room. It had been in on operations a couple of times – both of my daughters had to be delivered by C-section – and had seen my wife’s discomfort, but made it through by keeping the eyes focused on faces and newborn babies … not at the area where the actual work was happening. That area, my brain figured, was the responsibility of the midwife and doctor.

But last week it was my turn to be on an operating table. After way too much time ignoring an extra bump in my stomach, I’d asked a doctor about it and confirmed it was a hernia that needed to be repaired.

It’s not a big deal, the surgeon told me. In gentle terms, he explained that he’d basically cut me open, push everything back where it belongs and sew in a piece of mesh to keep it there. My brain sat on its throne, nodding my head and not worrying about it. Not even thinking about it, really.

My brain stayed cool the morning of the operation. It hates needles but paid little attention when one was inserted for an IV. It frowned at the hospital gown (modesty issues; for the sake of others, my brain is always concerned about keeping me covered) but figured it would all be over soon.

Then, the whole collection of me was wheeled into the operating room. My brain, looking out the eyes at the darkening edges of the bright, cold room as the drugs took effect, grasped the reality of what was about to happen and didn’t like it one bit.
Get me out of here, it ordered my legs. Do it NOW.

And that’s the last thing I remember before waking up at the end of the operation. I guess I didn’t really try to get up and run, but I’m not certain. I’m afraid to ask.

Originally published in June 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

Some years ago, I took a call at work from a gentleman who wanted to talk for a long time about why the 7:30 television programs didn’t all start at the same time.

His logic was sound. Seven-thirty, he reasoned, happens at the same time for everyone, every evening, so all the shows scheduled to start at 7:30 should begin at the same moment. If they fail to do so, then plainly the people at the networks either don’t have their watches set correctly or they don’t care.

This bothered the gentleman, and he thought I, as a journalist, had a responsibility to do something about it. He wasn’t specific about what he wanted, but his implication was that I should use the power of the press in a campaign calling for television organizations around the nation to synchronize their clocks

What could I do? Not much, unless I felt like beating my head against a wall in a frustrating “prime time at the same time” cause. But the fact is, he just wanted to get something off his chest and chose me to unload on. So I said I’d keep it in mind (I’ve never forgotten, so I kept that promise) and thanked him for calling.

This isn’t the kind of stuff I expect when a phone rings, but it is a call I often bring to mind. Because it’s funny, see, and it helps me laugh about a device I’ve seldom gotten along with.

In college, when a ringing phone was a reflection of popularity, mine was quiet. There it would sit on my dorm-room desk, mutely reminding me I was reading a magazine, watching TV or even occasionally doing homework not because I chose to, but because I didn’t have anything better to do.

I resented my phone for its silence. Sometimes I even grew suspicious of it. Was the ringer not working? Were people – maybe even girls – trying to call and not getting through?

Occasionally I’d pick up the receiver to make sure the dial tone was humming OK (it always was), then I’d leave it off the hook until the louder alert beeping started … just for something to do. After hanging it back up, I’d wonder if I missed a call during the two minutes I’d been playing.

For a while, in early adulthood, I achieved a sort of balance with my telephone. Thanks to family and friends in the state I’d left, and even more to my future wife in my new city, the phone rang enough to let me know I was wanted.

Lately, I look upon the phone as a bully. Not at work – it’d be a bad sign if people didn’t call me there – but at home, where it’s often the conduit for the rudest interruptions.

Answering our home phone is no fun. Despite being on every conceivable “Leave us the flip alone!” registry, we get regular calls from mercenaries trying to trick us into buying something. For the longest time, I’d give such callers an opportunity to pause before politely declining, but courtesy to strangers on the phone is a thing of the past. Now I’m ready to bark “Take me off your flipping list!” and hang up the second I hear a voice I don’t recognize.

Yes, I really do say “flip.” It’s a word I latched onto in the last year to substitute for most of the profanity I tried to swear off when kids became part of our household.

If my wife gets a call, I’ll just about make that person pass a lie detector test before either handing over the phone or taking a message. Heaven only knows what I’ll do when our girls start getting calls.

My relationship with my phone reached its all-time low during the election season, when four or five candidates a day were using it to send us recordings. I got the message and didn’t vote for anyone who intruded on us that way.

Originally published in June 2005, The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo.

Last week, our older girl did something unusual: She woke me in the middle of the night and said she was afraid.

I tried to say, “What are you afraid of, sweetheart?” but I’m sure it came out more like “Whum fraiduv, swettert?” That’s OK, she’s lived with me more than 4 years now and understands all my languages.

“I don’t know,” she told me, which meant she’d had a bad dream and was working on forgetting it.

What she usually needs when this kind of thing happens is for my wife, Lisa, or me to keep her company a few minutes while she goes to the bathroom and back to bed, rub her back a little and tell her everything’s all right, then check on her a couple of times while she gets to sleep. That’s how it worked last week.

She’s my daughter, though, and has my hyperactive imagination, so once in awhile she gets so worked up that returning to sleep isn’t an option for an hour or more. She’ll go to the bathroom every 15 minutes and want to be walked back to bed every time.

I’m shamelessly selfish when it comes to sleep; once I’m under, I don’t want to resurface until I have to. Even so, I’ll spend much of that hour groggily awake, and my wife (who also still handles most of our younger girl’s nighttime wakeups) will be alert the whole time.

Frustration is a natural part of such adventures, but I can hardly get too aggravated. To be honest, our girl is bolder than I was at her age.

There’s not a lot I remember real well about being 4 years old, but I do know I was often wide-eyed when I should have been asleep.

At least one night – there were probably more but I only recall the one – I made my parents miserable with my anxieties. It must have been warm because my bedroom window was open, and the blind was moving in a slight breeze. This in turn caused a soft scuffing sound as the blind rubbed the wall, and I was electric, alternating between hiding under the covers and running out to get my parents.

What was wrong? I don’t remember much except thinking those scuffing noises sounded a lot like the shoes of someone creeping around the room, possibly trying to be quiet as he completed his mission to capture a little boy for his oven.

Scary things simply scared me, and continued to do so until I learned they could also be fun.

Our big girl is facing such fears earlier than I did, and so far she’s doing better with them. Last month, when a carnival set up in the Mesa Mall parking lot, she saw the haunted house ride and wanted to go in. I managed to distract her from it one day, then she spent the whole week discussing it. Lisa and I explained that the point of carnival haunted houses is to scare you. It would have ghosts in it, skeletons, witches and lots of noises. It would be fake, we said, but still scary.

She understood and still wanted to go. Lisa and I decided to respect her wishes and the next weekend I joined our girl for a ride through the haunted house.

It was all we’d told her it would be, beginning with some kind of shrieking banshee thing with flashing red eyes and ending with a roar from the masked ride operator as we came out. After seeing that first creature, our girl held tight to my arm and buried her face in my shirt. She was shaking at the end, truly scared, but she still managed to thank the man operating the ride as we left. On the way to the next attraction, she said “Wow, that was scary,” and started laughing about it.

That night she drifted off easily and slept soundly. But I had bad dreams.