Danny And The Mess (sorry, Elton...)

Everyone in our house has jobs to do to prepare for Shabbos. Sometimes it's washing dishes, sometimes it's cleaning out the hamster's cage, sometimes it's washing the floor, sometimes it's getting my wife a Valium to deal with the pre-Shabbos stress.

Danny has a set job. His job is simply to clean his room.

Danny, as I have mentioned other times on this blog, is a nine-year old boy. If you look up "nine-year old boy" in the dictionary, you will find a picture of Danny with the following definition:

nine-year old boy
n.
1. A male child of nine years of age
2. A creature physically incapable of keeping his room clean.
3. A creature likely to drive his parents beserk by his inability to keep his room clean.
See also SLOB, SLOPPY, MESSY FLOOR, PIG STY

I don't think I've seen Danny's floor since about five minutes after we moved into the house. Much like the permenant ice cap that floats over Greenland, a permenant "crud cap" rests over Danny's floor. And like Greenland's ice cap, the "crud cap" grows by a few inches each year. We expect it to reach the ceiling in about another ten to fifteen years.

I've often wondered what could possibly be in all that... stuff... that lies on the floor. You would think that I would know, having once been a nine-year old myself (no, I was not born a full-grown comedian - I was born as a baby comedian). But, alas, I no longer remember my room as a child because, as a parent, I've come to block out most of my childhood, including the traumatic parts such as the time that I heard a large growling and slobbering sounds under my own "crud cap" (it turns out I had an alligator under there).

However, I am forced to concede that the tales of my room were not mere family versions of urban legends; there were genuine bona fide facts. My parents, afraid that I wouldn't remember the state my room was in when I had kids of my own, made sure to take numerous pictures of my room. So, every now and again, whenever they hear that I am having trouble getting Danny to clean his room, they smile, hum a little tune and dance their way to the coffee table with the photo album and trot out the old pictures that they have carefully preserved of my room before and after the excavations.

Of course, this is really all their fault. One time, after giving them grief about cleaning my room, they issued the famous "parents' curse:" "One day I hope you have a child just like yourself."

There was one time, I remember when Danny actually got his floor clean. It was in the old house, before we moved. You may remember the day: it was the day that a magnitude 3.2 earthquake struck Brooklyn. I remember it very clearly, because I knew *exactly* where the epicenter of the quake was - and I'm no seismologist.

He surprised us by working very hard that Erev Shabbos afternoon to get his floor clean. He really, really wanted it to be a surprise - so he shut his door, had the police put up the "Do Not Cross" yellow tape outside of his doorway, and went to work. We didn't see him for at least four hours while he toiled away. Finally, about twenty minutes before Shabbos was to start, he called us up to his room for inspection.

When we finally bribed the cop to let us past, and opened his door, we thought we were seeing things. His floor was so immaculate, you could have even licked spilled food off of it with your tongue. His bed was neatly made and his dresser was clean and polished. We wondered where the aliens had taken our son and who was this weirdo who was left in his place? His books were all in the bookshelf and his toys and dirty laundry nowhere to be seen.

We were about to congratulate him on a job well done, when we heard a growl and a bump come from the general vicinity of the closet. Time slowed to a crawl as we all turned toward the closed closet door.

Did you ever do something in your life even though you knew while doing it that it was a stupid thing to do? Well, I have. I reached out to the closet door and grabbed a hold of the handle. Just like a much-parodied scene from a sitcom, I could hear my wife going "Noooooooooooooo" in slow motion as my wrists, apparently not knowing what was good for them, turned the knob.

The seismologists later told us that they had never had an earthquake epicenter so localized to one small point as happened when all that... crud... starting pouring out of the closet. And it all came out - dirty clothes, toys, books, papers, more toys, old food wrappers, old food, the alligator, GAKWOC, his little sister, the pair of binoculors he told me he lost a year earlier, and on and on and on. Sarah Sylvia Cynthia Stout had nothing on Danny. Heck, compared to him, she was a veritable Felix Ungar.

So, Danny's job for Shabbos is to clean his room. Occasionally, he might get a square centimeter or two clear, but that's about it. And of course, just like the Greenland ice cap, the "crud cap" eventually reclaims the empty space.

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Glossary
Shabbos - Sabbath
Erev Shabbos - Sabbath eve
wife - a female creature who, if she has young children who don't co-operate (which is every young child) will go bezerk on Erev Shabbos trying to get the cooking, cleaning, fight-refereeing, taskmastering, garbage disposal and ten thousand other tasks done.
GAKWOC - a household acronym that my wife invented when packing to move. Whenever we threw a bunch of odds and ends into a box that box was labelled "GAKWOC" which stood for "God Alone Knows What Other Crud."

Cootie Central

I love my little Channahleh. I really do. Channahleh is my six-year-old daughter. She is very much the typical six year old girl in that she causes random destruction wherever she goes, can be very sweet when she wants to be, can manipulate adults to the point where some would give her thermonuclear weapons if they had them, and, oh yes, most of all... she loves dolls.

I remember dolls growing up. I have one sister, who is three years younger than I am. She had - and I am not exaggerating - tons of dolls. Dolls of every imaginable size and shape - Barbie dolls, Barbie-lookalike-dolls, Barbie-knockoff dolls, dolls that were being sued by Barbie for patent infringement, dolls that were snubbing their noses at Barbie over the lawsuits, etc.

However, I've found from my sister and speaking to other alleged females, that many such dolls end up in a horrible state - namely naked, with cut or frizzed out hair and sitting in the bottom of a closet collecting dust. Of course, growing up, I never got too close to the dolls - I didn't want to catch Cooties, which, to a young man, are potentially fatal (or at least might cause him to lose esteem among his peers - which is pretty much the same thing as fatal).

Anyway, to you bring you back to the present, Channahleh loves dolls. And when I say loves, I mean "won't-go-anywhere-without-them, won't-go-to-sleep-without-them, won't-eat-without-them, won't-get-have-a-tonsillectomy-unless-my-doll-gets-one-too" loves them.

A few years ago, some marketing genius came out with a new line of dolls called "American Girl" dolls. These dolls are (to my doll-untrained eye) very much like Barbie. The exception is that they have created some back stories for these girls, putting them in different periods of American history (one helped out with the Revolution, one helped free some slaves in the antebellum South, one was eaten by a coyote in the American Southwest, one became a moonshine runner in the prohibition-era New York City, etc.) Oh, yes, and they also cost about twice to three times as much as Barbie does.

So, naturally, whenever there is a new doll craze on the market, advertisers know that they have a mission to accomplish - get every little girl between the ages of two and ten to mercilessly harass their parents until they give in and buy them the doll. A friend of mine told me a story that happened to a friend-of-a-friend of hers where her daughter held her favorite crystal bowl hostage until she got her American Girl doll. Another case involved a child who took automotive classes and uninstalled her father's carburetor until the doll was delivered.

Fortunately for me, Channahleh was never the sort to do that. She doesn't threaten - she just whips out "the eyes." You know what I mean, don't you? The big "sad puppy dog" eyes that look to say "Daddy, if you don't give me what I want, why, I just know (sob) that the whole world is going to end right now. You don't want the world to end now, do you Daddy (sniff)?"

Well, truth be told, her birthday was approaching. I really wanted nothing to do with getting this doll - I had too many traumatic images of naked dolls floating in the bathtub growing up to want to deal with it. Fortunately, my wife agreed to take her to the American Girl store to get her doll - sparing me a trip to the American Girl store; the place that is no doubt Cootie Central.

Alas, my luck was short lived. "Honey," my wife started the other day, "Channahleh wants to get a new outfit for her doll. She's even saved up her own money for it." I knew giving her an allowance would come back to bite me one day. "Since you work right near the American Girl store, can you please go get the outfit for her? She wants the Marisol ballet outfit."

I protested, I pleaded, I pulled out every excuse I could think of. I couldn't go because I only had ten minutes for lunch; I couldn't go because my company (which has nothing to do with dolls) was a competitor of American Girl; I couldn't go because I didn't have my Cootie shots; I couldn't go because there were huge packs of wolves roaming through midtown Manhattan. She wasn't buying any of it; I was off to the American Girl store. Of course, buying it online didn't occur to me until after it was all over. D'oh!

I walked into the place feeling like a salmon at a bear convention. I nervously walked around the store looking for Marisol's ballet outfit. I certainly didn't want to ask anyone where to find it since (a) they might think I was some weirdo for wanting a doll's outfit for little girls (b) I might catch Cooties from them. On the other hand, I was determined to limit my exposure to the Cooties by spending as little time as possible. Carefully walking so as to avoid stepping on any of the little girls that were littered around the store and their insane mothers who were simply reliving their own childhood, I eventually found the required outfit. I was almost afraid to touch it at first, for fear of catching Cooties here at Cootie Central. However, in the end, I was determined that my love for my daughter meant more to me than getting the Cooties. Besides, I probably had some immunity anyway - after all, I'd been exposed to Cooties plenty of times as a child and never really got it. I grabbed the outfit, marched straight to the register, paid for it in cash (I wasn't going to have this traceable to me by credit card!) and hurried out of the store.

I'm currently posting from the Cootie ward of Beth Israel hospital. The doctors tell me I'll be fine in another week or two, after the testosteronectomy.

The Difference Between A Dog And A Child

Don't take this post the wrong way; I love Danny more than I could ever love any pet. But there are times...

Danny is my nine-year old son. He's a joy to have around, and a delight to know. But, as with most kids, they have their moments. Take this scene from the Shabbos table.

Danny was eating some cholent. Being a nine year old, it is his sacred duty to eat in the messiest fashion possible. There is not a single clean tablecloth east of the Mississippi that he has not defeated and sent cowering for the nearest washing machine. They have all come before him and he has sent each one down to defeat and Clorox.

So, naturally, this Shabbos was no different. As befits his status as a nine-year-old boy, his place was suitably arranged with bits of cholent, challah, grape juice, soda and other assorted bits of unrecognizable foodstuffs all over the table in front of him. As Danny was gesturing wildly, a nice chunk of cholent falls off the table and lands on the floor with an audible plop. Everyone at the table freezes and stares at Danny. It's almost as if time itself has frozen. He looks guiltily for a moment and utters the most illogical words one can utter under these circumstances. He looks at us all and says, in a completely straight face:

"I didn't do it."

Now, if not for the fact that everyone at the table saw him gesturing wildly with his fork, and if not for the fact that every single person at the table saw the food doing it's best impersonation of a catapult stone being flung from his fork, and if not for the fact that the table had fallen to complete silence by this, so that when the hunk-o-cholent hit the ground it landed with a highly audible PLOP, he might have gotten away from it. It seems that Danny still has yet to learn the meaning of the phrase "plausible deniability."

"Danny," I say, in my best exasperated-father voice, "please go clean up the mess you made."

"But I didn't do it!" he countered. And we spent the next five minutes arguing about whether or not he could have done it. Once we convinced him that everyone at the table had seen it happen, we spent the next twenty minutes arguing about the possibility that an advanced alien civilization kidnapped him, replaced him with a duplicate, caused the cholent to be tossed on the floor and then his being returned back to us without any of us noticing. After all, we can certainly understand why aliens would need to travel thousands of light-years across space just to put cholent on our dining room floor. Galactic peace might have just depended on that piece of cholent being on the floor at that moment.

Got to hand it to the kid, he's quite a salesman, trying to sell us anything. I wouldn't have been surprised if the next tactic would have involved time-travel from the future.

Enter Dusky. Dusky is a three year old German Shepherd who will eat anything. Well, almost anything... I don't think he'd eat himself - but anything else is game - dog food, people food, bugs, rodents, slippers, newspapers, tires, the Mayor, whatever...

So, while Danny is trying to convince us that the piece of food on the floor is irrefutable proof of extraterrestrial life, Dusky comes along and quietly, but efficiently, takes care of the problem. So much for proof of alien life - the dog just cost my son his Nobel prize.

And that's the difference between kids and dogs. Dogs will fix your problems for you without being asked. Kids will be ever-creative in finding ways to get out of fixing messes they've caused. Now, if only the dog could do Danny's homework...

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Glossary
Shabbos - Sabbath
cholent - a mixture of beans, meat, barley and spices usually served at the Sabbath meal. In many cases, it can also double as rocket propellant.

Reason and Kids (Did I Say Those Two Words In The Same Sentence?)

When I was growing up, one of my "guilty pleasures" was reading the Peanuts comic strip every day. It was almost a daily ritual: go to the store, buy the newspaper, turn to the comics page, look for the Peanuts strip, find that I bought the wrong paper, curse, go back to the store, argue with the storekeeper until he will allow me to return the paper I bought for the other local newspaper (which did carry Peanuts), go back home, sit down, open the paper, find the comics section, read the Peanuts strip and then find out that I spent so much time arguing with the storekeeper that I missed my school bus.

One of my favorite characters in the strip was Linus. Linus was clearly the most intelligent, wisest and philosophical member of the group. He was always ready to offer advice (good advice, not the type that Lucy offered for a nickel and overcharged for) and was able to quote an aphorism or quote for almost any occasion. Not too shabby for a five-year old.

I always figured that if I had a kid someday, I'd like him to be somewhat like Linus. Sure, we could do without the crazy blanket hang-up, but otherwise, he was the one - smart, wise and respected by his colleagues. He always struck me as the type who would gladly accept the wisdom of his parent's experiences when they offered him advice about life. That was the kid I wanted.

Man proposes, God disposes. Let me introduce you to Danny, my nine-year old.

Danny, it sometimes seems, has a one-word vocabulary; and that word is "why?" Sometimes I may get some elaboration and get a "but, why?" Typical exchanges around our house go as follows:

Me: Danny, time to do your homework
Danny: But why?

Me: Danny, please don't eat your peas with your hands, use your fork.
Danny: Why?

Me: Danny, don't dump that bucket of red paint over your sister's head?
Danny: Why? (splash)

Me: Danny, it's not safe to run around the house with that thermonuclear device! Put it away!
Danny: But why?

You'd think that after having proven to Danny about a thousand times over that, as parents, we often know what we're talking about, we would have attained some prestige in his eyes and become recognized as, is not experts at life, at least someone whose learned their lesson from their stupid mistakes. Alas, that isn't the case. Allow me to present exhibit A: The chore procrastination. One of Danny's chores is to prepare lunch for himself for school the next day.

The date: Any Wednesday evening.
The time: 7:00 PM
The setting: The family living room - a place occupied by two other siblings doing homework, a parent reading a book (but only getting to read a line at a time because of constant interruptions for homework help, bickering or bleeding), a hamster chewing peacefully in his cage (why can't all my kids be as quiet and well-behaved as the hamster?) and assorted books, papers, snack tables, toys, bric-a-brac, etc. strewn around. And that's on a "clean" day!

Into this peaceful tableau walks Danny, holding an electronic game in his hand. "Danny, m'boy" I say in my best awful imitation Irish accent, "maybe y'should be making y'r lunch fer temarrow?"

"Huh?" is the super-intelligent reply.

"Lunch. Have you made your lunch for tomorrow yet? If you don't you're going to be hungry come lunchtime."

"Yeah. I'll do it in a minute."

It's at this point that I'm reminded that children do not know how to accurately keep track of time. When a child says he'll do homework or a chore in "a minute," he really means that he'll get to it - just as soon as the sun runs out of hydrogen, goes nova, extinguishes all life on earth and crumples up into a ball roughly the size of a barbeque briquette. On the other hand...

Parent: You can have ice cream in "a minute."
Child (without missing a beat) : "OK, a minute's up!"

So, he's already put off his lunch making for a half hour and is looking to put it off longer.

"Danny," I tell him, "you're not staying up late to make tomorrow's lunch. And I know that if you don't have lunch tomorrow you're going to be hungry and miserable. Why don't you make your lunch first, get it out of the way, and then, afterwards, play with your game."

"Why?" There goes another white hair.

"So that you'll have something to eat tomorrow."

"OK, I'll do it in a minute" AARGH!

About an hour later, at bedtime: Me: Danny, bedtime!

Danny: But I didn't make lunch yet!

Me: Too bad. I warned you about it an hour ago. Now you have to go to sleep.

Danny: But why?

Me: Because it's bedtime.

Danny: But why?

Sigh. Can somebody please tell me where I can adopt Linus?

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Stay Away From Me

RINNNNNNNG!

I was busy working on an article when the phone rang. There's nothing like a good interruption to derail a good train of thought. The ringing of the phone brought my brain to a complete stop, where it jumped the track and spilled all those poor thoughts all over the messy landscape of my brain. Initial reports indicate that there were no survivors of the derailment.

The phone call was from Debbie, one of our local matchmakers. Whenever Debbie calls, the first thing that goes through my mind is an image of Bea Arthur trolling for dates for her clients. The second thing that goes through my mind is the song "If I Were A Rich Man" because, if I were rich, they'd ask me questions and it wouldn't make one bit of difference if I answered right or wrong...because when you're rich... ah, you know the rest.

Anyway, so Debbie is calling trolling for information about Ari. Now, Ari's a nice enough guy, but I don't know him all that well. He davens in my shul, I wish him a Good Shabbos on Shabbos and a Good Shabbos on Yom Tov when I'm too drunk to know it's not Shabbos. Of course, there was the time that I wished him a "Good Yom Kippur" on Simchas Torah, but we won't go into that now.

So, she's got some questions about Ari. Nah, I don't mind answering them - after all, my work for the day is already lying in a chaotic heap of twisted and managled ideas somewhere at the back of my brain. Another few questions isn't going to harm the salvage chances.

She wants to know what color tablecloth his family uses on their Shabbos table. Well, let's see... I've never eaten by his house, so I can't say for sure. Wait, wait! My little Channaleh is friendly with his little sister and has spent Shabbos over at their house! Maybe she knows! Now, then, where did I put that kid? Isn't that the way it is... you put a six year old someplace and they just wander off! Channaleh! Channah! Oh, there she is. Channaleh, do you remember when you went to Rivki's house for Shabbos? My daughter says that the tablecloth was white until Ari's little sister spilled her grape juice. Then it was purple.

Shoes or loafers? What difference could that make as far as a shidduch is concerned? Oh, I see - if he wears loafers he doesn't waste time tying his shoes. Well, then, do I earn him extra points if I say he goes around barefoot and saves even more time?

If he was a girl, what kind of haircut would he have? Are you kidding?! I have no idea. Why not ask that if my bubby had wheels, would she be a trolley car? He's not a girl. If he was a girl, however, you wouldn't be calling me for this shidduch, that's for sure! So, let's just pretend he's a boy, OK?

Does he listen to non-Jewish music? Well, I know that when he walked into a Macy's last December he heard Christmas music. No, that's not what you're looking for? You want to know if he listens to non-Jewish music for recreation? Oh, well, I don't think so. I know that his favorite music is from Shlock Rock, which is 100% Jewish. No evil goyish tunes there!

Does his grandmother light oil or candles for Shabbos? Well now, I can't say that I know. I'm fairly certain that she lit one or the other. What difference does that make anyway? Oh, if she uses oil there might be a chance that she's using olives from Israel and that they weren't properly tithed... I don't know about that. I know she probably used oil for latkes, does that count?

Anything else? No? OK. Just out of curiousity, are you interested in whether he learns daily, or how he davens, or the chesed work that he does? No? Why not? Oh, those questions are old hat... I see, I see.

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Glossary
shul - synagogue
Shabbos - Sabbath
Yom Tov - (literally "good day") a holiday
Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement
Simchas Torah - holiday where Jews complete the annual cycle of Torah readings
shidduch - a match
bubby - grandmother, who, if she had wheels, might be a trolley car
Shlock Rock - a group that takes non-Jewish songs and paradoies them with Jewish lyrics.
goyish - non-Jewish, somewhat derogatory
latkes - potato pancakes fried in oil, customarily eaten at Channukah time.
davens - prays
chesed - charity, good deeds

Who Can Make My Kids Crazy... The Candy Man Can

Many shuls that I know of have a person who is known as "The Candy Man." The Candy Man is usually an elderly gentleman who sits in the corner of the shul. He's always pulling candies out of his tallis bag for all the little kids in the shul like some Bizzarro-Jewish version of Willy Wonka. He also usually has a son who is a dentist.

The purpose of The Candy Man in any shul is twofold - firstly, he's there to try to have the children enjoy coming to shul. After all, what four year old wants to listen to a bunch of grown-ups stand around, mutter prayers, read from some ancient scroll and listen to some boring rabbi's sermon? They'd much rather run around, cause chaos, and, under the right circumstances, flood the bathroom. However, The Candy Man is there to give them candy, so as to make them happy. He relieves their boredom and brightens up their day. He also gives them more than enough energy to run around, cause chaos, and, under the right circumstances, flood the bathroom.

The second purpose of The Candy Man is to torture the parents of young children. The Candy Man has no young children of his own, so he knows that there is really no way you can get back at him for loading your children up with so much sugar that they'll have enough energy to launch the next space shuttle mission. He knows that he doesn't have to deal with your kids when shul is over - you're the ones who have to take them home. Didn't you ever wonder why he had that constant smile on his face?

In every shul that I know of, The Candy Man is trying to perpetuate a form of immortality. Fifty years from now, no kid is going to remember some random old man who sat in the back of the shul, muttered to himself and smelled funny. But if he starts giving out candy, well now, you can bet the house that he'll be remembered fondly well over a half-century after he's gone. Where else can you buy such immortality so cheaply? Of course, the fact that The Candy Man still mutters to himself and smells funny only adds to the memory; sure it might otherwise make the kids wary of him - but candy conquers all such personality defects to a little kid.

I have fond memories of The Candy Man in my shul when I was a little kid. He was a kind old man who (of course, muttered to himself and smelled funny) loved nothing more than to give children candy. Of course, like many old people, he also loved to tell stories - and heaven help you if you got stuck there when he started to tell a story! I know one kid who spent the entire Carter administration listening to a story of his - trapped by the old man's side while he retold over the story (for the 463rd time) of how he, singlehandedly, chased a stray cat up a tree.

It's always been my experience that The Candy Man knows of a place to get candy really, really, really cheap. That's the only explanation for some of the candy he manages to come up with. Some of it is so old and hard, it's a wonder that it's not petrified. Last week, my little Channaleh got a piece of candy from him from with a wrapper that read "Congratulations on Your Inauguration, President Taft!" Now, I have nothing personally against President Taft, but I think that candy from ninety five years ago is certainly past it's prime and best not eaten. At the very least, one should not consume candy that is eligible to collect Social Security. There should be warning labels attached to candy which read: WARNING! DO NOT CONSUME CANDY OLDER THAN YOUR GREAT-GRANDPARENTS!

All this talk of candy reminds me - it's time to schedule an appointment with the dentist for my little Channahleh. The dentist is a nice guy and his father davens in my shul, sits in the corner, mutters to himself and smells funny.

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Glossary
shul - synagogue
tallis - a four-cornered garment worn by most Jewish men during prayers
President Taft - 27th President of the United States and the one (by the looks of him) to have most likely interacted with The Candy Man in his shul.

Animals and Animals and Six-Year Olds and Animals...

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!"

The high-pitched squeaking voice you're hearing is that of my six-year old daughter, Channaleh. Channaleh is like most six-year olds in that she is part angel, part Rosemary's baby, part tornado and part Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame). Today's she's come bursting in the door after school and, as is standard practice, begun to tell me everything that's happened to her.

"DaddyDaddyguesswhat,welearnedallaboutNoachtodayand alltheanimalsthathehadontheTaivah andhowhecaredforthemall. Do you want to know which animals were on the Taivah Daddy?"

Of course, six-year olds have the knack for knowing *exactly* the moment at which you cannot be disturbed. And they have the knack of going ahead and disturbing you anyway. Channaleh, in that regard, is in the 98th percentile. She's far better than almost any other six-year old at finding that perfect moment when you're in the middle of a project and cannot be interrupted without the risk of losing several hours worth of work.

Oh, no. She's wearing her "angel eyes" today. I'm helpless, I can't resist. "OK, cutie. Tell me what animals were on the Taivah."

"There were aardvarks and alligators and antelopes and armadillos and African warthogs and albatrosses and anacondas and ants and apes and Asian Elephants and African Elephants and..."

Did she just name off twelve animals that all start with "A?!" I'm doomed, she's going to name every animal in creation. Maybe I can cut her off...

"... and babirusas and babboons and badgers and bald eagles..."

"Channahleh?"

"...and bats and bees and beetles and bears and beavers..."

"Channeleh?"

"... and Bengal tigers and Black Howler monkeys and bluebirds and boas and bobcats and brown pelicans and..."

"Channaleh!!"

"...and buffalo and bison and camel spiders and camels and canaries and caribou and capybara and cats and centipedes and chickens and chiggers and chimpanzees..."

That's it. She's tuned me out. She's not going to shut up until she's finished or until someone binds her and gags her and throws her into the ocean. I'm tempted, but I think I just have to ride out the storm. Maybe I can continue working while I'm "listening" to her.

"...deer and desert tortises and dodos (but there's not alive anymore) and dogs and dragonflies and dung beetles and donkeys and dingoes and daddy-long-legses and... DADDY! YOU'RE NOT LISTENING! Where was I?"

"Zebras," I say, hoping to get her to finish quickly.

"No, I wasn't Daddy. Now I have to start over again. There were aardvarks and alligators and antelopes and armadillos..."

Man, oh man, it's days like this that I regret buying her that big book of 10,000 animals.

"Come on Channaleh, follow me into the kitchen while I get something to eat."

"... and caribou and capybara and cats and centipedes and chickens..."

At least I can eat while she recites. I just hope that I don't lose my train of thought for what I was working on before.

"...and falcons and fire ants and fireflies and fleas and flies and foxes and fur seals..."

Couldn't God have told Noach only to save only every tenth species? But nooooo... He had to go tell Noach to save them all so that 4000 years later my daughter would keep me pinned down with a list of thousands. Boy, does He have a sense of humor sometimes...

"and harbor seals and harp seals and hawks and hedgehogs and herons and hippopto... hippopotom... hippopopomees... hippos and horses and hummingbirds..."

Maybe if I play dead she'll stop. Nah, she'll just continue reciting animals over my cold, stiffining corpse. Maybe if I bribe her...

"...and kanagaroos and koala bears and kestrels and king penguins and kiwis and komodo dragons and..."

"Say Channahleh, how'd you like some candy?" I say, holding out a candy to her.

"...and ladybugs and leeches and leatherback turtles and leopards thank you Daddy and lions and lizards and llamas and lobsters..."

Oh well, that didn't work either. I guess I'll have to just sit it out. Come back in a few months and check on me. By the time Parshas Noach rolls around, she should be done.

Oh, no! Then she'll have to start over!

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Glossary:
Noach - the biblical character of Noah
Taivah - Hebrew for "Ark"
Parshas Noach - The Torah portion that contains the story of Noah and the flood.
dodo - a flightless bird that went extinct because it, no doubt, had to listen to it's youngsters chirping forever.