Conversations with Mini-Pirate

I miss loving summer.
I should love summer. I have every right to love summer. My semester is done, I've logged my final grades and my Spring students are already a dim memory. When school is over, I prefer to view my job as a long bad dream I had after eating some bad cheese. My wife, who has repeatedly informed me that lawyers apparently do not get summer vacations, feels strongly that I shouldn't bitch and moan about spending three months hanging out with our seven-year-old daughter. So bitch and moan I won't. Pirates don't bitch anyway.

Mini-Pirate did great this year in school. I actually think she could've been challenged a lot more -- she just wrapped up second grade, and took no prisoners, leaving a trail of burning carnage behind her in all subjects. And with the exception of her tragically psychotic handwriting (which does in fact look like she's writing with a hook for a hand), her schoolmistress says she's all kinds o' gifted. Good girl. Yargh to that.

So every June, I take an oath not to let her brain atrophy into pudding over the summer months. As a summertime stay-on-ship Pirate Dad, the atrophy avoidance responsibility falls to me. And so I vow: "This summer, the best Pirate Daddy ever, I will be. I will spend hours of Quality Time with my daughter. I will not let her lay on the couch and watch TV all day while I sit in my office upstairs and pretend to be writing. I will be Captain Happy Fun Playtime Dad. I will take her places. I will figure out a way for us to do fun/educational science experiments at home with kitchen goods. I will learn how to do crafts."

Pirates do not typically enjoy crafts.

I don't know how other parents kick off the summer, but I always need to muster up a big-ass bucket of Gung Ho if I'm going to maintain momentum for three months.

Here's the conversation my daughter and I had the other day:

Me: You know what, kiddo? I think this is going to be the best summer ever, don't you?

Mini-Pirate: (no response, due to mesmerizing SpongeBob on TV)

Me: (standing in front of TV) That's right. Best. Summer. Ever!

Mini: (blinking up at me) Ok.

Me: You know what we should do this summer?

Mini: What.

Me: Field trips! Lots and lots of field trips! Let's go to the zoo! And museums! There's tons of museums we haven't been to yet!

Mini: Ok.

Me: Ooh! Ooh! And nature hikes! We'll take nets and look for cool bugs!

Mini: Can I play some Wii before we go?

Me: No! And we'll go to the beach!! It's right there, so close!

Mini: Can we get ice cream?

Me: You bet your ass we can!! This is going to be awesome!!! This summer is going to fly by!!!! Let's get dressed and go do stuff!!!!!! TO THE CAR!!!!!!!! WHO'S WITH ME!?!?!?

That keeps us going for about... two weeks. Here's how we'll be in August, lying next to each other on the floor in the family room, staring up at the ceiling fan:

Mini: Daddy, I'm bored.

Me: Me too. Do something funny.

Mini: No, you do something funny.

Me: You know who's funny?

Mini: SpongeBob.

Me: Totally. Make me a sandwich.

If Ever a Wench There Was

My Pirate Clan is very small. One wife, one daughter. Pirates don’t have patience for big families. To keep things manageable, pirates survey their superfluous relatives, choose the ones who annoy them most, and push them out to sea on a dinghy with one oar, a bottle of rum and a pistol loaded with a single bullet.

Keeps things simple. Pirates like simple. Pirates do not like clutter, complications, or any drama that we don’t generate ourselves. Any drama that doesn’t revolve around our own high-falutin’, boot-stompin’ histrionics, is shit we don’t need, frankly.

This is why my family consists merely of one (1) wife -- as fine and saucy a minx as a man can take for a bride -- and one (1) Mini-Pirate daughter, who recently finished plundering all the riches she could from second grade. There were more kids, at one point; we had two boys, another girl, and a set of fraternal twins, but they all bugged the crap out of me with the whining and the feed me feed me feed me Daddy! and the constant 24/7 emotional dependency. Pirates don’t like neediness in others, despite the fact that we’re actually pretty needy ourselves, as a group. So after some easy Pirate Math, we’re down to just the one daughter. It’s way better now.

My Wife is quite the awesome wench, if ever a wench there was. Every morning, she gets up and puts on clothes that make her look pretty as a sunrise over a Caribbean whorehouse. We’re talking Grown-up Girl Clothes: skirts that are all professional/sexy, and shoes that raise her height a couple inches, showing off the gams. Plus lipstick. Then she leaves and drives downtown to go be AttorneyWench at a San Diego law firm. Even when it’s summer she does this. Apparently, not all jobs grind to a beautiful halt for three months starting every June like mine does. Odd.

Ooh, plus, check this out: she’s an Attorney Wench who specializes in Maritime Law. Get it? How ironic is that? Thar she be, defending justice on the high seas, and here I be, a former salty bandit with no regard for the law, on land or ocean. You know, before I got into teaching.

When I call SaucyWench at work, she typically sounds really busy. Especially during the summer, which is when I call a lot. Craving some of that ol’ adult human contact, as it were. If I keep her on the phone too long, her voice takes on a tone that says, “Just because I love you doesn’t mean I want to actually talk to you.” Which is weird, because even though it may sound like I’m calling with nothing to say except “So….watcha doin?”, I obviously wouldn’t call unless I have something really really really interesting and pithy to share. Like how, when I shaved my head that morning, I felt a new weird little bump that may or may not be a scalp zit. Or how Mini-Pirate just learned that when mixed together, orange juice and syrup a hearty grog do not make.

For example, last week I called Saucy Wench around mid-morning:

Me: Hey there!

Saucy: What?

Me: It’s me.

Saucy: I know.

Me: So… what’s going on?

Saucy: I’m working.

Me: I know, duh. What are you working on?

Saucy: You wouldn’t understand it.

Me: You don’t know that. I bet I would too understand.

Saucy: Trust me.

Me: Come on, try me. Just give me the gist.

Saucy: Why?

Me: What do you mean, why? Because I’m thinking about you, maybe? And I want to know how you’re doing, and--

Saucy: I’m doing busy.

Me: --and because I take an interest in your job. You know? It’s like, I want to know what you’re doing because I care. I’m not one of those jerk husbands who's just, you know, too self-involved to pay attention to what his wife is doing and never even thinks to ask.

Saucy: I know. That would be awesome.

Me: Marriage is a partnership based on mutual respect.

Saucy: Hm.

Me: Come on. Tell me what you’ve been working on today.

Saucy: Fine. I just spent three hours compiling a document production in response to a court order rendered on a successful motion to compel further responses to discovery.

(crickets)

Me: Um.

Saucy: Anything else?

Me: I think I got a mosquito bite on my ass today.

As of last week, we have a new rule where I’m not allowed to call my wife at work more than once a day. And I have a five-minute time limit.

We’ll see how long that lasts. Pirates have no respect for rules.

One "Yargh" for Michael Jackson

Regarding Michael Jackson’s death:

I’m conflicted.

Not in the “Am I Happy or Sad About It?” way. I doubt anyone, pirate or otherwise, will be leaping about the bow of their vessels feeling blissed-out at the news of Jackson’s death.

I’m just not sure about the appropriate level of mourning here.

On the one hand, this was someone who decided to crown HIMSELF the King of Pop. Cheeky move, I say. There’s a rule about titles: if you have to bestow it upon yourself, it doesn’t count. For example: I recently crowned myself “High Commanding Galactic Supreme Pirate Potentate of the Household.” Yet my wife still gets to tell me when I have to go out and mow the yard instead of staying inside and playing Wii for three hours with Mini-Pirate. Plus I have to make my own lunch after. What’s THAT about?

And on that same one hand, Jackson has been out of his heyday for a long time. Read articles about his death and you’ll see they don’t actually have a whole lot to say, other than. “Gone. Sad now.” Let’s face it – it’s been a while since Jackson has contributed anything other than a heaping batch of Crazy to the tabloids every couple years.

Yet on the other hand… it’s Michael Jackson, in all his flash, sequins, and eccentric one-glovedness. And the fact is, once upon a time, the guy could take a pop song and charge it with 1000 megawatts of talent. Plus his death was unexpected, at least to those of us who aren’t his pharmacist.

So. Maybe the best way to acknowledge his death is to explain what he gave me personally:

In the summer of 1982, I was 12 years old in Boulder, Colorado. One afternoon I rode my bike down to Crossroads Mall, went up the escalator to Rocky Mountain Records & Tapes and bought my copy of Thriller. Vinyl, obviously. I slung the plastic bag containing the record over my handlebars and rode home, taking care not to lose my balance and drop it.

At home: we had cable, so I had discovered MTV by then. I had also discovered Rolling Stone magazine, CU Buff football games, and Phoebe Cates. This was the summer before I was to start 7^th grade (O Wretched, Wretched 7^th grade, grade most foul, the start of Junior High.) In other words, at 12, I wasn’t discovering one Brave New World, I was discovering several, every day.

I put Thriller on in my room. I listened to the title track first, which I think was at the end of the first side. It was spooky, hooky, and when he hit that high note in the chorus (“Cuz this is THRILLLLAHHHHH”) I felt a jolt of electric current. Then I went back and listened to the entire album, start to finish. Then I listened to it again. Then again. I don’t even think I’d seen any of the videos yet – hadn’t seen Jackson strut down that Billie Jean sidewalk and light up those squares. (But come on. That sidewalk thing was cool. You know it was.) I didn’t like the record’s ballads, but the faster songs ran from mesmerizingly rhythmic ("Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’") to vaguely shreddin’ ("Beat It") to pure pop effervescence ("P.Y.T.").

You know you have a record that defines at least one summer in your youth. Thriller did that for a lot of people my age. Yes, he did other stuff. But frankly, I wasn’t a big fan of Captain EO. And by the time songs like "Black and White" and "Remember the Time" came out, I was almost out of college (Pirate College, obviously) and my friends and I were too cool and edgy to appreciate them. Still, I want to pull out my old Thriller album and listen to it again. But it has to be my old album, not the Special Bonus 25^th Anniversary Edition with Extra Tracks on Amazon. Do I need to hear the Special Freaky Awesome Remix of Beat It with a “special” appearance by Fergie? Really not.

In fact, I think I’ll only really be able to appreciate Thriller if I go back and listen to it in 1982.

So yes, there is mourning in order, regardless of how long it's been since Jackson was musically relevant. I send out one "Yargh" to Michael Jackson.

What is a Didactic Pirate?

What is a Didactic Pirate? A quick consult with ye olde dictionary(.com) illuminates:

Di-dac-tic [dahy-dak-tik] -- (adj.)

1. intended for instruction; instructive.
2. inclined to teach or lecture others too much; a boring, didactic speaker.
3. teaching or intending to teach a moral lesson.


Pi-rate [pahy-ruh t] -- (noun)

1. a person who robs or commits illegal violence at sea or on the shores of the sea.
2. any plunderer, predator, etc.: confidence men, slumlords, and other pirates.


Combined:

Didactic Pirate --

A bloodthirsty buccaneer notorious for teaching or lecturing unsuspecting victims, on land or sea; particularly when uncalled for. The Didactic Pirate preaches, spouts, orates, rambles or "goes off" primarily in the subjects of English, Writing, Academia, Parenting, Pop Culture, Being Male, and Any Other Subject That Might Bore Its Way Into His Grizzled Pirate Head.

There you have it. How did the Blogosphere survive without one for so long?

Yargh.

It's Hard Being a Pirate in the 21st Century

Yargh. This is The Didactic Pirate's first post. 'Tis a grand and glorious day indeed. Your loyal Captain is fresh on the shores of Blogdom, never having set foot on such exotic land before. 'Tis exciting and frightening for a salty dog such as myself. It's crowded, to be sure, with scalliwags and reprobates who have come before me. Many blogger footprints already lie in the sand. But over the next fortnight, I'll be laying my claim, settling in, fortifying the fortress walls and posting more information about myself, and exploring topics frothy as a mug of fresh grog.

As for the moment, here's what can be said about The Didactic Pirate:

1) He is scurrilous yet stout of heart.

2) He currently reserves his plundering and pillaging energies for the classroom by teaching writing at a California State University. You can recognize him trudging across campus by his grizzled jaw, his blackened teeth, and his pegleg. And an eyepatch when it's notably sunny.

3) He loves the King's English, even though he often misuses it. Frequently in front of students, no less. Yet no student would ever dare correct him in class, for fear of getting hung from the yardarm.

4) He carries a yardarm with him from classroom to classroom. Yardarms are heavy.

5) He is in his late 30s, married to as proud a wench as ever was, with whom he'll soon be celebrating a 10-year-anniversary. Despite rumors to the contrary, pirates are big fans of Monogamy. Cuts down on the port-to-port veneral diseases.

6) He has a seven-year-old daughter, in whom he is deeply proud. She frequently makes him proud by taking up the cutlass by his side, helping him rampage retail outlets around their city.

7) The Didactic Pirate loves pop culture. Loves sci fi television, great literature and vaguely ominous goth music. He DOES NOT like most reality TV. He hates American Idol. In fact, he's often considered blasting cannonball-sized holes through his TV rather than be subjected to one more season of power ballads.

This blog will be about all which is dear to a salty dog's heart: Education, Academia, Parenting, and Pop Culture for starters. I hope I connect with you soon -- there must be other buccaneers and freebooters out there who are finding it hard to be a pirate in the 21st century.



"The average man will bristle if you say his father was dishonest, but he will brag a little if he discovers his great-grandfather was a pirate." --Bern Williams