I got Michael Lewis’s book, Home Game, for my husband for father’s day. Yes that was in June and it’s now November, but the book is down right hilarious and worth a review. And, you know, the holidays are coming up….
So, the first night my husband began to read the book I fell asleep only to feel, what in my dream state I believed, was an earthquake. Having never felt one before but having the thought of an earthquake constantly within reach, I bolted up right.
But no, it was my husband, desperately trying to stifle his laughter, so much so the entire bed was shaking and tears were pouring out of his eyes. Each and every night he crawled in to bed to read, the same thing happened.
As exhausted parents, we could all use a little comic relief. Here’s an excerpt, just to whet your appetite. But first, to set the scene, Lewis, his wife and two daughters are at a resort in Bermuda, lounging in the pool. Four older boys descend to make mischief, stealing the pool noodles and whacking the water around the girls. Just as Dad thinks he should intervene, his younger daughter beats him to it (note, the abbreviations are mine):
“TEASING BOYS!” she hollers, so loudly that grown ups around the pool peer over their Danielle Steel novels. Even the boys are taken aback. Dixie, now on stage, raises her voice a notch:
“YOU JUST SHUT UP YOU STUPID MOTHER F-ING A-HOLE!”
To the extent that all hell can break loose around a baby pool in a Bermuda resort, it does. A John Grisham novel is lowered: several Danielle Steel’s vanish into beach bags. I remain hovering in the shallows of the grown-up pool where it enters the baby pool, with my entire head above water. My first thought: Oh…My…God! My second thought: No one knows I’m her father. I sink lower, like a crocodile, so that just my eyes and forehead are above the waterline; but in my heart a new feeling arises: pride. Behind me a lady on a beach chair shouts, “Kevin! Kevin! Get over here!”
Kevin appears to be one of the noodle-wielding eleven year old boys. “But Mooooooooommmm!” he says.
“Kevin! Now!”
The little monster skulks over to his mother’s side while his fellow Orcs await the higher judgment. I’m close enough to hear her read him out. It’s delicious. “Kevin, did you teach that little girl those words?” she asks.
“Mooomm! Noooooooo!”
And that’s just a few paragraphs out of an entire book of vignettes of parenthood. Michael Lewis is alarming in his honesty and poignant in his recognition that parents very often don’t know what they are doing until their children teach them how to parent. I loved this book – if you get a chance, read it, or at least buy it for your husband so he can laugh too.
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