Couch Fishing

Hair

How do we keep getting golden-haired babies?

Hair now covers Felicity’s entire head — a feat for her.

Her sisters got their hair earlier. And it was much darker. Ellia’s hair lightened over time to the dirty blond highlights she now wears to her shoulder.

Felicity’s hair looks even lighter than The Extraordinary Ellia’s. Bewildering because both MomBrain and I have dark hair.

Hair Ties

Speaking of Felicity The Fair, she has given up crawling back and forth across my lap and then sitting near the edge of the couch and leaning backwards towards the drop-off and the cold, unforgiving floor below.

I freed her to roam the floor.

She found her sister’s toothbrush and brushed her gums. Then she attacked the TV remote with her drool. And overturned the dog bowl.

I put her back on the couch and The Felicitator is now couch fishing.

Couch fishing is where you reach behind cushions and bring forth the treasures buried within. Since we are considering giving this couch over to the sanitation department, the treasures therein have grown vast. Why, just now Felicity has found:

• popcorn,

• peanuts,

• tiny rubber bands marketed as hair ties,

• Legos,

• dried playdough,

• a raisin,

• a frog, and

• ice cream.

  (These last two are toys.)

As soon as I take one thing away, she grins and begins to breath rapidly in exhilaration. As if on fast forward, she speed scoots to the crevice, shoots her arm into the couch, grabs the first thing her hand touches, and stuffs it into her mouth.

Hair-Raising

Felicity has learned a new cry. Outside of a game of Couch Fishing, when you take away something she wants, she shrieks. The more life-threatening the object, the shriller the shriek.

DadFace Directive

Herein lies a lesson about using what you see as trash or common place as the subject of your writing.

When I was growing up, I heard, “Write what you know.”

But what did I know?

I finally decided my plan would be to do something interesting and then document the experience. And I did do several interesting things… without documenting a single one.

Now looking back, I can see things I could have easily written about. My parents turned our house into a foster home when I was 16. We had over 40 kids come through our home, as I recall. That’s interesting.

But so too were the leaves I raked and the lawns I mowed and the interactions with the widows who paid me to do so.

How about you?

1. Share an opinion, a philosophy, a belief.

I don’t know if any life is boring, but let’s pretend yours is. That doesn’t mean the way you view your life needs to be boring.

2. Offend people, naturally.

Stop worrying about what people think. People don’t get offended about boring things. If I was being a good little hypocrite, I would have left out the part about the refuse in our couch. Oh wait, that’s the whole story.

(I added the word “naturally” because you don’t have to be antagonistic if you don’t want to be. People get offended all by themselves when faced with declarative statements that don’t hem or haw.)

3. If it’s mundane, explain.

Unlike me, maybe you have a boring job. Unlike me, maybe you have money in the bank. But why do you have that job?

Alas, where is the humanity in your mundanity?

Explain why the boring thing is important.

Maybe you took a position so you wouldn’t have to travel as much and could spend more time with your family. My dad did that. I’ll go further. I’ll tell you one of the things he did because he made more time to be with us. He helped me practice for my driver license test by making me parallel park over and over and over… And the test official still docked me points for my parking.

See? Now the job change is interesting.

Those 3 ideas should get you started.

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What’s left of the flock of ducks says, “Hi.” Oh you didn’t hear? Stay tuned for the next installment in their tragic saga…

Later,

—DadFace

P.S. — If you liked this letter, could you forward it on to someone who might get a kick out of this sort of thing? Let’s make Aunt Bertha proud and bring back email forwarding!