Oprah

Does it make me a bitch that I get misty watching Yahoo replays of Oprah's holiday giveaway? Don't answer that, but I do. I watch the faces of out-of-work, middle-American housewives and gay men in her audience light up like a Busby Berkely dance sequence upon winning a year's supply of candles. Those are some great smelling fucking candles.

I don't blame Oprah. She probably feels like shit for being so wealthy for so little reason and, once a year, with the full cooperation of every corporation involved, she buys her guilt by giving away household items to people without houses. The candle is gonna look great on the middle of the tent floor; thanks Oprah.

We are broke and broken as a country. Game shows were fun when I was a kid, people won money in the hundreds of dollars, which made them as happy as winning $100,000 today. Montey Hall would slip a $50 into the hand of a blue-haired old lady because she had a paper clip in her purse--and we all smiled. Why? Because back then, $50 was mildly life changing. This woman who won it lived in a functional society. She didn't need, or really want much beyond the life she had. Her parents didn't have indoor plumbing, television, etc.. Life was good, and $50 could buy a fuckload of Manhattans.

I get why these people in Oprah's audience act like they just got the call from the governor when they win a lifetime supply of boxed Mac-n-Cheese. Things are that bad. We are that broke. Oprah is our only hope.

Yosemite

There are few things as impressive as Yosemite National Park, even with kids and a monster-in-law in tow. I get a bit of a charge, a sense of my insignificance and a nose full of clean air (which is welcome after driving through Fresno. Jesus, what a shit hole), every time I go. The wife, family and I stayed at the "Scene better days" Pines Resort in Bass Lake. The cabin was clean and full of furniture that Elvis would have bought. The fold out couch, where my wife and I were to sleep, was little more than an oddly placed group of steel bars covered by a cocktail napkin thin "mattress". We ended up sleeping downstairs in the bed next to the MOL, so I can check that off my bucket list. The boys, 14 and 11, are getting too old for these kind of trips. They fought the entire weekend when they weren't bitching about the trip, me, my wife, God, etc. I only hit the older one, a quick, attention getting punch to the forehead, on the trip home--so all in all, I did well.

It turns out that it's hard for me not to hit the kids. That's all I knew as a kid. You don't where underwear, talk back, look away while being spoken to, wham--not the scar inducing, shrink necessitating, life-ruining kind of wham, but the kind you write about in a blog thirty-five years later to be sure. Every time my kids act like idiots, which is their genetic disposition, I want to smack them, which is mine. I do pretty well, but the oldest one, as I said, got me on the way home. He chased his brother out of a gas station mini-mart, screaming something about tiny's having stolen $5 from him. I call the younger one "tiny" because he's not. Get it? The little fucker's 11 year old feet are bigger than mine. Anyway, I digress. The Toehead chases Tiny out of the mini-mart and is losing what's left of his 14 year old rational mind in public. I tell him, with utter calm, to relax and explain the situation--he escalates. A fourteen year old boy's temperament is measured by a Richter scale and Toehead went 7.2 in 2 seconds. I tried repeatedly to get him to calm down, eventually whispering between clinched teeth to "shut the fuck up." He didn't comply, that is until I punched him (25% strength) in the head. After that, he climbed into the back seat, his brother (undoubtedly feeling responsible) gave him the $5 and everybody shut the fuck up for the next 50 miles. I'm not drawing any morals from this episode. For one thing, even Toehead will be able to kick my ancient ass when I'm 90, but I can't say I feel real bad about this moment.

As I kid, I could count on getting my ass kicked at school if I said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Shit, our principals could paddle us in public schools. I'm not asking for a return to corporal punishment as the main method of dealing with kids. For a ten year period, I recoiled every time my dad scratched his head. Still, I do wish something else worked on a young boy the way a quick punch to the head does. I haven't found that something but I haven't given up and I don't plan on increased punching. Besides, every parent is allowed to punch every one of his children once on a trip over two days in length. It's in the manual.

Twenty years from now, Toehead probably won't remember the punch to the head, either from the concussion or simply from passage of time. He may not remember that I took him to see a tree that is 2700 years old either. He will remember that I took him places and that he should take his kids places too, even if he has to punch one in the head to bring him in line.