How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bob-omb

At right is a "goomba" from the Mario video games made from red Thai rice, homemade naan and rajma masala (red beans in sauce - from a packet.) There are white sesame seeds to separate the head from the feet and the naan is doing double duty since it has light (eyes and teeth) and mottled (eyebrows and pupils) sides.
After the borrowing of the wii, I insisted on a break from Mario talk and got a none-too-subtle reminder to be careful what you wish for.
"Daddy needs a break from Mario for a little while, honey."
***Silence***
"Daddy, are you good at Whac-A-Mole?"
"Um, I'm okay, I guess."
"Have you ever won Whac-A-Mole?"
"I'm not sure I know what you mean."
"Like, I beat mommy at Whac-A-Mole."
"Oh."
"I got one and she got none."
"No, I don't think I've ever beaten anyone at Whac-A-Mole."
"What's your favorite part of Whac-A-Mole?"
"Oh, probably the whacking, I suppose."
***Thoughtful pause***
"What happens if a baby is born with a bad heart?"
***Pause***
"So ... Did Daddy ever tell you about the time he beat Bowzer in four-player Mario Bros.?"

Lost Weekend

At right is Bomberman, a character who briefly wrested Primo's imagination from Mario. He's made of ham, roast beef and turkey on wheat with red and yellow carrot accents, a bomb carved from a BabyBel cheese round and a taro root chip for his body. The black at the lower right is licorice. Bomberman's time at the top lasted about as long as this lunch did.
Primo had a four-day weekend last week and got to borrow his cousins' wii. Sunday night for him was probably like being pulled back out of the light and waking up on the operating table. Maybe with the anaesthesia having worn off, though he was more morose than hysterical. Monday morning saw him returning to school and the wii returning to its owners.
In between the former and latter, though, dad took a turn. Alone.
I had been playing multiplayer Mario with him, at his request, in hour-plus blocks all weekend and my personality needed the closure of beating the thing. Something I just wasn't going to be able to do with him playing. So I took 20 minutes Monday morning, beat the last level and watched the closing cinema screens and credits. Then a message popped up: "your progress has been saved."
This particular Mario game is rather sprawling. It's not something you just sit down and play through from beginning to end at a sitting. More like lots of sittings over a four-day weekend. I'm going to say 1,000 hours worth. Anyway, the programmers know this, and they made it so you have the option to save your game after each level- an option we declined on the rare occasion we'd pass a level that the cousins hadn't (or hadn't saved after.) This time, though, there was no option. It just saved. So, I called my brother-in-law to thank him for letting us borrow the game, to let him know I'd be bringing it by, and to apologize for robbing his family of the sense of accomplishment to which they were entitled.
He, of course, didn't think it was any big deal. "We'd been playing all weekend and I just needed to put it to rest," I told him.
"Yeah, so did you and Primo beat it together?"
"Yeah.. no. We tried and tried, but all it did was make me need to get it done, so I did it without him."
I spent the rest of the school day imagining myself catching a home run ball as it falls toward his glove at our first baseball game. Or painting his pinewood racer while he's sleeping.
Later on, I was telling my wife about the embarassment of the autosave, and Primo overheard and asked what I was talking about. I resisted telling him. "What, you don't want to tell him?" my wife asked. "Tell me what?" came the voice from the backseat. Then there was a momentary silence, because that setup should be followed by something like "daddy spent your college fund" or "daddy's going to have to go away for a while." Or both. So admitting then, after a hushed conversation with his mother and a pregnant pause, that I had played Mario without him because he'd been holding me back ... at a child's video game ... made me all the more sheepish for its rediculousness.
When it didn't seem to bother him, I grasped for some recognition. "Pretty cool, huh? Your dad beat the game!" *Did you ever know that I'm your hero? I am the wind beneath your wings.*
A silence so brief as to preclude the possibility of his appreciating my accomplishment ended, as do so many of the fleeting quiet moments in my life, with the words "One time, [my cousin] was teeny-tiny..." And everything was back to normal usual. No feelings of betrayal or inadequacy. No swelling of filial pride. Just more Mario talk. More *** ******, I-can't-tell-what-day-it-is-anymore Mario talk. It's like we're in a POW camp. Or fugitives shackled together. Or on a life raft. I wonder whether I look like a big, spotted mushroom to him yet.

Airdog

This was, admittedly, more topical a week or two ago. It's gold medalist Shaun White in pepperoni, cantaloupe, grapes, carrot, cherry tomato and Cheez-It on a hot dog snowboard. There is some provolone cheese behind him for contrast. The rings are zucchini, pepperoni, egg, nori and yellow squash. The finger food beneath is Cheez-Its, goldfish, strawberries and carrots and the snow is egg.

When the Olympics started, Primo remarked to us that it isn't important who wins as long as everyone has fun. China agrees wholeheartedly. Still, if we were to choose an event that would affirm his faith in that philosophy, snowboarding would probably be it. So that's where we started, and he really liked it. Especially the Half Pipe. From there we branched out to other events, including "one where people wear two skinny snowboards and use sharp sticks," but none matched the appeal of snowboarding.

A father's eyes

I used broccoli to define Big Bird in this dish of macaroni and cheese. His beak is a sweet yellow pepper, his tongue is sweet red pepper and his eyes and detail feathers are Swiss cheese. Big Bird's pupils are tiny bits of nori.

There are a lot of things i couldn't imagine myself saying before I had kids.  Not so much in the sense of giving voice to a feeling I never expected to have. Not like "I don't remember my life before you came along and I don't know what I'd do without you." More in terms of words that I didn't- couldn't, really- foresee coming together in a cohesive, topical and appropriate sentence. Like "Please stop swinging the Sword of Wisdom at me."
That one popped out of my mouth a few weeks ago as Primo waved a foam sword in my face and repeated: "The Sword of Wisdom. The Sword ... of Wisdom."
As my children have grown, so has my fondness for, and desire to protect, my eyes. Just days prior to staring down the Sword of Wisdom, I had been down on all fours digging for one cleanser or another under the sink and had turned to acknowledge Primo's "hey dad," to find him standing at my side, swinging his arms in a wide sweep around his body, a fork in each hand, their paths bringing them within inches of my face now that I had turned.
And that's what he wanted to show me. "Hey dad, look at me! Watch me swing these forks around! Wasn't that a cool last thing to ever see?"
Maybe it's been too long since I've read them Oedipus Rex. I'm supposed to end up dead, not blind. You couldn't tell it by my sons, though.
The latest effort was by Secundo as I was buckling him into his car seat recently. He punched me in the eyeball. That may seem like a sentence that came back from Babelfish. I know the phrasing is usually "hit me in the eye" when concerning kids, maybe "punched me in the eye" when there's intent. Well, it's a considered description. I was leaning over him, buckling his harness when he swung his little fist at me and said "punch!" milliseconds before it hit my open- though directed at the task of ensuring his safety- eye. There was a little wet squishy sound and everything. Like dropping a fish onto a cutting board. Not a tuna or anything, maybe a goldfish, but still. I jerked my head back and banged it on the doorframe. If only he could have winged his sippy cup at my groin when I finally reared up outside the car and started trying to blink my vision back... Rule of Three, son! Well, comedy's something you have to work at.
Maybe that's what kept him from laughing. Oh, he had a big smile on his face, to be sure, but he didn't laugh the way he usually does when someone gets hit with something or falls over. Just the smile a guy gets when he realizes he can finally take the old man.
Things were still blurry enough a minute or so after dropping heavily into the driver's seat that I considered going to the hospital.
"Can you tell us what happened?"
"Oh, I walked into the door. Clumsy!"
"We both know there was no door."
"Okay, he hit me. But it was my own fault. We were already late for his nap, but I just kept pushing. I..."
"Mr. Wilken- Kai, this time it was just his endearingly tiny fist, but next time it could be a crayon, or scissors, or..."
"Toy car keys? A handful of gravel? A plastic pterodactyl? I know. He's not my first son."
"Then why do you keep covering for him? We can find someplace safe for you. Somewhere he could never find you or hurt you again."
"I love him, alright? And he... he loves me. Hang on, did you say he'd never be able to find me? Maybe let's talk about that part."

As my eye slowly returned to normal, I thought of my own father. And of his glasses. And I wondered, for the first time, whether he actually had a prescription.