Apologize, Jerk

No. 3 on the list of the Top 10 "Don'ts" from the Father's Handbook (unfortunately not handed out at most hospitals upon birth of a newborn) is Don't Be a Jerk. This includes a subordinate commandment that if you are a jerk, don't do it in a way that affects your kid and MOST OF ALL don't do it in front of your kid.

James Willie Jones of Lake Mary, Fla., broke those commandments. Crumpled and mutilated them when he went on his handicapped 13-year-old daughter's school bus one morning and lost all self-control in what in his own mind had been initated as a defense against her bulliers.




Fortunately, Jones has had sense enough to comply with subordinate clause two: If you are a jerk apologize and do all that you can to make it right with the hope that it will somehow show the strength of character you want your child to emulate and be enough for him or her to recover from the trauma. So, Jones has apologized and, hopefully, it will be enough for his daughter who is currently under a suicide watch in a Florida hospital and on her way to a new school when she gets out.

The Give and Take of Death

It's good to read that fathers' deaths make a difference in the lives of their children. It is a mite disheartening sometimes to read how that happens.

For example, Kentuckian Denton Cooper managed in death to saddle his daughters with a step-mom they didn't know much about while he was living. Now they say she married him while he was in a coma on the edge of his demise. A lawsuit has been filed, but as of now, the girls have almost half a year to get their thoughts together about purchasing next year's Mother's Day presents.

Unfortunately, his father's death didn't give Yorkie Sean Watson, 5, anything. It even took away a school treat. It seems The Ryecroft Primary School has a disco extravaganza for kids with perfect attendance, but Watson's absence due to the family's grieving for his father disqualified him from strutting his inner Travolta.

Such is the give and take of a father's death. It seems usually to change his childens' world, but rarely for the better.

We'll Get to "Kidnapping" by School Week 16

As sweet as it is that Oak Grove Primary School kindergarten has a whole week devoted to a "Date with Dad," it is a bit worrisome that the class is scheduled to only master one letter a week (DwithD is the fourth, "D," week of school). Are these Mississippi kids no tgoing to be able to spell and use in a sentence the word "dumb" until the 21st week when it's "U's" turn to be mastered?

Unfortunately, fathers coming to school and being a special part of their childrens' lives is something Tennessean Christopher Savoie can currently only dream about. He frets in a Japanese jail while prosecutors work out what the punishment should be for attempted kidnapping of his own children (assuming he actually did). It's a bit complex, but he's married in the US to a woman who is not his ex-wife/mother-of-his-children, but still technically wed to the Japanese woman who claims full custody and tried to cut him out of his son and daughter's life by hieing with them back to her native land of the rising sun (n.b, for Oak Grove Primary: it's "u" not "o").

Check

It's PICTURE DAY here in Whinydadville. Apparently this is a big deal for Things 1 and 2.

Hair: check. Makeup (i.e., acne scrubbers): check. Coolest outfit that does not look like you're trying too much: check. Check from WD for pictures that can be taken better at home: check. Father's mystification: check, check, check, checkmate.

On the First Day

Once again this year The Black Star Project is encouraging fathers to be part of the Million Father March, walking their child(ren) to school on the first day as a sign of commitment and involvement.

Walking is always a good idea. Involvement should be a given in a father's life. If, however, you happen to have a helicopter handy, and think you are involved enough in your son or daughter's education, there is also the way of Bart Sutherin to — as he put it — "...make a positive impression on the other students." He and son Joseph, dropped from the sky via helicopter on the boy's first day of high school. The administration, not having been informed, was quite unhappy with the landing amid temporary classrooms.

While the helicopter is out, Thing 1 and 2, being standard kids of the suburbs, would likely be content with the stretch hummer limo dropoff. Let me give it a moment's thought ... and, now, over and done with. Walk safely kids.

Mislearned Lessons

When life thrusts something in your direction use it to instruct your children. Teaching moments, after all, are what we are all about. Just don't count on your lesson taking.

To be fair (unfortunately), it must be said that the instruction taken isn't always what was intended. For example, when one dad decided he could run the family Christmas as well as mom, the lesson the kids seem to take away was that he was a boob, rather than the one he intended, which was [well it was on his list, but it seems he didn't get a chance to send it, because he was doing all the stuff his wife insisted was important].

And when a father instructed his daughter in the social grace of introducing herself — so that she could report back to him the name of everyone he was supposed to remember — what she took away was that she had to have kids herself so that they could learn people's names at parties so she could avoid embarrassment as an adult.

Also, what is there to say about the lessons from golf that Greg Norman taught son Gregory other than it's a good way to pick up the hot wife (in this case tennis legend Chris Evert) off an old, now-ex-friend (in that case skiing star Andy Mill).

Kids dont' learn what they're supposed to. At least when dads are instructing. Even the brilliant lesson plan outlined by new facebook star Sam Burt — who made his kid walk miles to and from school after junior was tossed from the bus for bonking the driver with an apple core — didn't take. Apparently, Jack Burt was in trouble within three stops of being returned to bus privileges. He gets more press that way. Not what dad intended him to learn.

Never what dads intend the kids to learn ....

More than Reading, Riting and Rithmetic

Just a quick for those potential businessmen and woman out there who are down on their luck in these economic times and are thinking of marketing fatherhood. ("Why?" you ask. I don't know, ask them.)

It could be a trend, but it also seems like an turnoff for a large part of the audience to make prepping for daddydom like having to go to school. But the school metaphors do seem to rule these days as Duncansville (Pa.) pop Matt Good enrolled in a four-week "Doctor Dad" course — at least he'll get an advanced degree.

Also along school lines, Chicago dad Harlan Cohen has just released a sort of Sparks Notes version for those studying up on fatherhood. His new book, Dad's Pregnant Tool, pulls on his experience as the father of a newborn son and that of a few others to push out an overview of other people's experiences that (hopefully) will be of use to student daddies.

And, finally, it is not as if the learning ever stops as veteran dad Tony Hicks offers with his melancholy paean to how he has to "relearn" everything, now that he's got a six-week old daughter.

Alas, that's dad, the perpetual student.

Connect Grad and Dad

June is the month for "dads and grads." But don't forget that there is a right way and a wrong way to merge the two.

The wrong way is to show up at school, driving behind your daughter, who is riding a pony to combine celebrating her last day in high school with protesting something or other about gas. The police charged the two — but not the 20-year-old, blind in one eye equine beauty &mash; with breaching the peace. The father Ronald Friedson, 50, of Westport, Conn., claims it was about free speech. [Here's free speech: shut up, pay the fine, and don't make every dad look stupid.]

The preferred way to to be the ideal gift recipient, both dad and grad, like Robert Bucarey of Victorville, Calif. After years of wending his way through the halls of academia, Bucary, 45, got busy, got serious and received his diploma in the same ceremony as his son and daughter.

** Smart, not stupid. **

People, Not Just Places

They (the omniscient "them") say that there are two sides to every story. But the tales of dads are polyhedrons — a shoutout to Thing 2 who is now mathing them at school.

So when the Country Music Hall of Fame wanted to celebrate his father as a way to bring in a bit more tourist business, Hank Williams Jr. became a hard son to romance. His dad's musical legacy claimed many children, but his biological offspring were left with some more difficult issues to deal with in life. [Earlier: Embrace, Escape, Repeat]

But the study of one father's family tree was grown in Nashville and "Family Tradition: The Williams Family Legacy," will be available for vacationers and others through December 2009.

Not that every vacation has to go somewhere to be joyfilled. Some vacations can be ecstatic celebrations of simple love, as when Ohio's Andre Sanders took his place among fathers with their children when he took a vacation day to build a Rain Gutter Regatta sloop with daughter Andrea.

** And now Things 1, 2 and Me are off. **

Some S/B In Custody, Others Should Have It

Dads are not well represented in the public eye by David Hasselhoff. But it is equally true Britney Spears doesn't do moms proud. The point is that while individual cases vary, why should men have to hoot, hyperbole and haul signs around in a circle to attract legal and judicial attention to what should be obvious: individual men can be as bad or good as individual women as a parent and, unless evidence shows otherwise, should be granted equal custodial rights in a divorce.

** And gentlemen, I have a dream that if we get that, maybe, someday, we'll even be allowed by the moms to head up a school bake sale... and maybe the sons of our sons will be in the running for the class mom position. I have a dream. **

Happy (School) Days (Almost) Here Again!

Be your kid's escort on his/her first day of school, maybe win a prize.

The organizing idea is that a father's presence offers safety, support and encouragement. And, according to Phillip Jackson, executive director of Chicago's Black Star Project, which spearheads the annual Million Father March, “...children whose fathers take an active role in their educational lives earn better grades, get better test scores, enjoy school more and are more likely to graduate...”

It's almost back-to-school day, one of the year's most glorious. Walk the talk in celebration.

** But isn't dropping them off at the door prize enough? **