Yeah, I’m a bad Dad

I know homework is important, but I only get him after school, no weekends, no overnights.

So today we finally had some snowfall that stayed. I met him at the bus stop next door. We played around in the snow, he wanted to use my ice scraper on my car windows.


Next we worked on his locker project. A wood kit that looks like a small school locker. On previous days he painted it and we put it together. He wanted a lock on it, so I bought a hasp, he told me where the lock should go, I drilled the pilot holes, and we screwed it on and he put the lock on it.



He didn’t get enough nailing on the locker project so I said let’s nail the back on your bookshelf. I showed him how to do this over a year ago on his craft cart. So after I laid the shelf on the floor, lined up the back, he nailed away. He got them in straight and evenly spaced along the six foot height. He did it quickly but didn’t hit his finger. One or two were going in crooked, he pulled them out and put them in straight. He put in the shelf supports in just the right spot and put the shelves in.

I’m bad. Oh he could hurt himself. I have instructed him on this before, he has seen me do it, I was supervising it, and he was using a 7 oz finishing hammer. He was very proud of his work, and so was I.



My switch broke on my whirlpool tub a while ago. I removed the cable from switch and connected it to a breakout box, and showed my son how to test each of the possible combinations to see which pair would turn on the tub. While the side was open my son used my Halogen light to look around on how it goes together, the plumbing, the concrete base, the re-enforcing joist plates, the water jets, the air intake, the pump. My son watched while I soldered some leads onto a momentary switch (using a cold/heat gun), then we screwed the switch leads into the breakout box and he did the honors, 1-2-3 press the button, jets on full, jets on half, jets off. OK it works. I also explained about the low volt/amp switch that made it safer to work on, the dedicated high amp circuit that is more dangerous, but protected by a GFI.

I’m bad. Electricity, wires, oh my. She should thank me, he’ll be able to fix stuff for her, just like I did when I was a kid. But she’ll probably complain about how dangerous it was.

Well we have the lights, we’re upstairs, so he wanted to go up into the attic and look for “aliens”. While we were up there he wanted to cover the attic opening with something. He pulled some wood and drywall across the opening. He wondered how strong the drywall was and how it worked. I warned him that it couldn’t hold weight. I showed him how easy it was to score and break it to the size he wanted to cover the last section. Then he took some tools and said they were alien weapons we needed to put in our belts as we went from top to bottom of the house making sure there were none.

I’m bad. Ladders, attic, dark.

Next we figured out where to put his wall maps and cork board. I moved it up & down until it was at the right height, he marked the wall. He showed me, mommy’s poor rushed spackling job on the wall, she didn’t even scrape the excess off, it’s lumpy. He was laughing at it, I told him that one of the tools he found before was what you used to smooth it out.

He wanted to play with the motion detector webcam software, but I had my laptop connected to my home office hub doing some things and couldn’t move it around. Besides it was time to eat. Get him dinner. He ate a lot.

I’m bad. We should have done his nightly reading (as homework) earlier. Well I got him reading. Opps, I interrupted his reading with a question and that got him curious, he went to my room. He found some neon paint I had bought for him. He got excited, he told me he got a blacklight for his birthday (I knew that) and that Mommy had it & wouldn’t let him use it because it could break. Well I guess it could, but it wouldn’t be too hard to use it in a safe way.

I’m bad. I shouldn’t have interrupted his reading, he was about 5 minutes short of his nightly reading assignment. And here she was at my door at the new court ordered time, 30 minutes earlier than my previous time. “What !” she says indignantly, “You couldn’t finish his reading in four hours !”

[ Well, JSM (just shoot me), I made a mistake, I’m sorry. I can only have fun with him after school, I don’t get any weekends at all. ]

I usually get him to do all his homework. I incorporate practical lessons in our activities over and above the homework. Probably a habit I picked up from working as professional staff at a University for 19 years and as part time faculty for 10 years (while working as full time staff).

So, whatdaya think. Am I bad? Hang me at dawn? Lotta poor judgment here according to my wife and the court.

Ya know what, who are these a—holes who would judge me?

I’m not bad, she’s nuts !


Photos added 01/30/07