Getting malled

“Can I ask you a question?” the girl at the mall pagoda asked as she matched our pace for a few steps, simultaneously asking for permission and granting it to herself.

“Sorry,” I said as we walked past. I knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to squirt lotion on us, like Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs.

“It rubs the lotion on its skin!” she might just as well have been saying as she chased after us with her bottle of Exfoliating Pear-Infused Lightly Salted Cocoa Butter Extract with Vitamin E and Tuarine Pustules.

She was barking at the wrong rube. I’ve always hated lotion. Even as a small child, Mom would chase me around the beach with sunblock.

“It’s slimy!” I’d yell. Then two days later, she’d chase me around with Solarcaine for my sunburn.

“That’s slimy, too!” I’d yell, bolting out the door, a cloud of skin flakes hanging in the air where I’d been standing.

Now the tables are turned, and I have to hold down our son Evan as my wife Kara slathers lotion on his dry skin after bath time. Then it’s my job to dress him, which is like trying to put jammies on a greased pig, except with more thrashing and squealing.

We passed a few more stores before another girl jumped out from behind another pagoda.

“Have you thought about getting him into modeling?” she asked, pointing into our stroller.

I was struck by her bravery at guessing Evan’s gender after just a glance. Babies are a notoriously androgynous bunch, and guessing a baby’s gender outright is like asking your co-worker if she’s pregnant. You’d better be sure before you say anything.

Of course Kara and I had always thought our baby was beautiful, but we’d neglected to consider how we could use his looks to enrich ourselves.

Born to be a star

According to the America’s Next Top Model episodes that Kara forces me to watch (a la Clockwork Orange, minus the eye clips, barely), the best models need to be self-centered and screechy, which is why babies make such obvious candidates.

We passed by the pagoda, politely shaking our heads, which is probably what Lindsay Lohan’s mom should have done.

Still, the question remained: When did our malls turn into street bazaars, with peddlers accosting you beside every booth? At this rate, it won’t be long before snake charmers sit outside Pottery Barn, coaxing cobras out of Havana Lidded Baskets, with their eye-catching texture and functional nesting design.

After navigating the pagoda gauntlet, we finally arrived at Sears: the Home of a Thousand Screwdrivers, and Also Zero Screws. Kara had been reading online reviews of washing machines and dryers for several days, and had memorized the model numbers of the machines we were considering.

“BDZ004A got better reviews than BDZ004,” she told me.

After a couple hours of dithering, when both Evan and our salesman were at times close to tears, we finally bought a couple of front-loading machines to replace our old appliances, which were functionally one step up from a clothesline, a washboard and swift-running creek.

We’re now the proud owners of a front-loading washer and dryer, which are apparently all the rage in Europe. Kara and I feel so European now, it seems like we should be eating baguettes at a sidewalk café under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, pretending we don’t speak English to lost Nebraskans.

As we walked out of the mall, Kara said, “These machines use a different kind of detergent. I need to read some reviews.”

It occurred to me that there is nothing that can’t be researched online. This soap cleans better. This gum chews chewier. Someday, after people begin rating their spouses online, I hope my review reads like this: A++++ husband!!! Pleasure to do life with. WOULD MARRY AGAIN.”

You can review Mike Todd at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Pine Knob Loop (now with 100% more Uncle Ed!)

Last weekend, we headed out for a hike at Pine Knob Loop in western Connecticut. My Uncle Ed drove an hour and a half to meet us at the trailhead and wander around the woods for a few hours. It felt like a little vacation, since vacation is usually the only time we get to hike with Uncle Ed.

What I'm trying to say is, Uncle Ed is the man! And not the kind of The Man that takes your money or tells you to do stuff.

Anyway, thanks, Berkshire Hiking website dude. You came through for us, once again. Very nice spot that we never would have found otherwise.

Some pics:

In the road again

As I lay on my back in the gas station parking lot last night, dazed and checking the back of my head for blood, I thought, “Is Henry Winkler a good pet name for a spouse? It just sounds so cute. Come here, my little Henry Winkler.”

Actually, I’m not exactly sure what was going through my mind, but that’s as good a guess as any. All I really remember is the sound of skull smacking on pavement, which has a much cocunuttier tone than I would have previously expected.

The reader(s) of this column may remember that I recently documented a nose-exploding faceplant that I took in the woods a few weeks back, while teaching my son Evan, who was riding in a backpack, a valuable lesson about putting too much trust in someone whose brain may or may not be purposefully causing catastrophes so that it will have some decent column fodder before deadline day.

Something I’ve learned in the past couple of weeks is that the ground only acts like your best friend, being all supportive. It’s more like a middle school best friend, one that might be your worst enemy tomorrow. You never know when it’s going to sneak up behind you in a gas station parking lot and smack you right on your bald spot.

Evan has a similar precarious relationship with the ground. He’s just starting to think about taking his first steps, and when he lets go of the coffee table, swaying like a Jenga tower just after someone puts the second-to-last piece on top, you can tell he’s worried about what shenanigans the ground might be thinking about pulling on him.

Last night, my problems with the ground began when I agreed to run down to the gas station to pick up some milk for the baby and some ice cream for the apple crisp. We had a few friends over, so when I saw that my car was parked in, rather than bother anyone to move their cars, I dragged my dusty, trusty bike out of the back of the garage and hopped on. It was only a mile down to the Mobil, almost entirely on residential streets, so what was the worst blunt force head trauma that could happen?

As I coasted into the busy parking lot, I felt like I was back at Penn State again, biking somewhere with purpose, the wind blowing through my remaining hair.

The cool way to dismount a bike is to lift your leg over the backseat while you’re still moving and standing on one pedal for a few beats before you stop. Here’s one apparently very critical question to ask yourself before attempting such a maneuver: Have I, or have I not, recently installed a giant infant seat on the back of my bike?

To a bystander, it probably appeared as though I purposefully reached back and kicked my own bike out from underneath me in one smooth motion.

After Fosbury flopping onto the pavement, I got up and pretended that I wasn’t hurt, casually feeling the pterodactyl egg growing on my head.

Later that night, on the phone, my sister Amy asked a trenchant question, “Dude, why weren’t you wearing your helmet?”

“It’s a good thing I wasn’t! I hit the ground so hard, I might have cracked the plastic. That thing cost fifty bones,” I said.

“I think that’s missing the point, Bro,” she replied.

“Wearing a helmet is like washing your hands in the men’s room: You only do it when someone’s looking,” I said.

Silence.

“No, I wash my hands,” I said. “And I’ll wear my helmet next time.”

“Good. And I hope you’re sure you really didn’t hurt yourself,” she said.

Of course I didn’t. If I really got hurt, I’d probably still be losing my train of. Um. Was somebody just talking about Fonzi?

You can play in the concussion section with Mike Todd at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Livin’ la vida locavore

“If there’s anyone dressed like an air traffic controller in the parking lot, I’m turning around,” I said as we rolled into a pick-your-own apple orchard last weekend.

Our experience at a different orchard a couple of years ago had turned me into a sour apple on the idea of pick-your-own, as the emphasis at that place had been less on picking fruit and more on picking pockets. Men in reflector vests waving fluorescent batons parked cars, tour buses lined the parking field and a giant line of sweaty humanity snaked out of the booth where you waited twenty minutes to pay the entrance fee for the privilege of paying for the empty bags which imparted the further privilege of performing your own manual labor.

But last weekend, we found a nice, quiet little farm with nary a reflector vest in sight, and we gladly forked over a few extra bucks for the privilege of roaming the orchard for an hour, trying to get our son Evan to pick an apple from his mount in my backpack.

“Go ahead, Little Man, grab that one,” I’d say to Evan, backing up until an apple bobbed off the top of his head. My wife Kara stood poised with the camera as Evan reached out, plucked a leaf and stuck it in his mouth. He has excellent survival instincts, for a giraffe.

He got there eventually

We were especially glad to find a pleasant place to pick an apple because Kara’s sister Jill and her husband Kris were visiting for the weekend. Not only are Jill and Kris vegetarians, but they’re also locavores (translated from Spanish: crazy eaters), which means that they try to only eat things that are produced locally.

“Like Tastykakes?” I asked.

“More like seasonal items from the farmers’ market,” Jill said.

I have great respect for the extra effort Jill and Kris put into being responsible consumers. The very notion of having to be aware of when a fruit is in season seems like way too much work. I’m pretty sure that the Founding Fathers intended for all Americans to have access to bananas, whenever we want them, year-round. I mean, if the Founding Fathers knew what a banana was.

Jill and Kris cook their own meals every night, using the freshest of ingredients, all locally grown: kale, peppers, beans, broccoli. I know! I’d starve to death, too.

“What do you do in the wintertime?” I asked them.

“We eat a lot of squash,” Kris said.

“And sweet potatoes,” Jill added.

“What about lunch?” I asked.

“We go through tons of peanut butter and jelly,” they replied.

At first, that sounded relatively normal, but then I realized they were probably talking about the kind of peanut butter that you grind at the store, like coffee beans. Kara and I tried that once.

“Ew. It just tastes like peanuts,” Kara said, wrinkling her nose. Thinking that she sounded insane, I dipped my finger into the plastic tub and tried a small taste. It tasted exactly like peanuts that someone had already taken the trouble of chewing for you.

“Yuck. I like Skippy better,” I said. We learned something new about ourselves that day, namely that we like fake things better than genuine ones. Apparently, we are also big fans of partial hydrogenation. If we were allowed, we’d probably go for full hydrogenation.

In any event, we all enjoyed the apple crisp that came out of the oven after we got home on Saturday. Going to a pick-your-own orchard is like visiting a casino: you’re going to lose a good deal of money, but hopefully you enjoy the experience anyway. On that front, the trip was a great success, and now we have enough apples to keep the doctor away well into Evan’s teens.

You can check if Mike Todd is in season at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Things that Elmo does in the night

As I strolled through the downstairs in near-total darkness, checking the door locks one last time before heading to bed, a voice from the living room shattered the stillness, letting me know that I wasn’t alone, and sending my heart ricocheting off of various lesser organs.

“Elmo will be there soon!” the intruder announced.

My son’s Sesame Street jack-in-the-box sat in the center of the floor, speaking of it own volition. Nobody had asked it to say anything, but like a congressman, it went on anyway.

“What’s going on out there?” it asked before playing a few notes of Pop Goes the Weasel.

I breathed a sigh of relief and continued across the kitchen, where the remains of my Great Shame sat spread across the counter. My wife Kara had ordered a bookshelf from Pottery Barn Kids, and after I’d removed all the pieces from the box, a quick skim of the assembly instructions had seemed sufficient for throwing the thing together. As I tightened each shelf onto the frame with the supplied Allen wrench, the bolts made a satisfying wooden snapping noise, letting me know that I’d put them in nice and tight.

I turned the half-completed bookshelf upright to see that it was actually half-destroyed. The outer side panel looked like Frankenstein’s neck, with three bolts shooting through the splintered wooden veneer. At least the mystery of “How Come I Still Have All These Parts Left Over?” was solved. Some of those parts were apparently of some importance.

“Oh, I understand the problem, but we don’t sell replacement parts,” the customer service representative explained.

“I just need Part C from the assembly instructions. Can you put me in touch with the manufacturer?” I asked.

“They don’t sell them, either,” she said.

“And also, you’re the first person in the entire universe to mess this thing up,” she continued in the ensuing silence.

“So the only way to get a new side panel is to buy a whole new bookshelf?” I asked.

“Or you could call a carpenter,” she advised. “They do really nice work.”

That’s exactly what I wanted to do, call a master craftsman, someone who could mold wood to his will, and show him the bookshelf I destroyed with an Allen wrench.

In my defense, it does take a special kind of talent to destroy something with an Allen wrench, but it’s the kind of talent you’d only share in certain company, like making biological noises with your armpits.

I passed the wreckage of the bookshelf on my way to the thermostat, to see if Kara had punched the down arrow enough times for our house to reach equilibrium with the fridge. If a CSI came to our house and dusted the air conditioner’s thermostat for prints, they would find no record of Kara’s existence on the up arrow.

“I don’t understand. You’re always turning the AC warmer in the summer, but then you turn the boiler colder in winter,” Kara said to me recently, after we’d completed our millionth discussion about the temperature in the house, causing balloons and confetti to fall from the ceiling.

That’s when I came to realize something about myself: I don’t like it colder or warmer. I like it cheaper.

After quietly punching the AC up a degree, I headed towards the stairs, my nighttime checklist complete.

“Elmo will be there soon!” the jack-in-the-box called into the darkness, and it began to sound less like a promise and more like a threat. What does Elmo want, and why is he coming here?

Fortunately, I don’t get scared by much anymore, since I started keeping an Allen wrench in my pocket. I’m a menace with that thing.

You can punch Mike Todd down a degree at mikectodd@gmail.com.

Taking one for the team

“Careful, Mike!” my little cousin Clara yelled as our extended family shuffled down Saddleback Mountain in the rain during our Maine vacation, my son Evan perched behind me in his big red backpack, quietly misplacing his trust in his dad.


“Don’t worry, Clara, if I fall, I’ll do my best to fall on my face,” I said, patting Evan’s hand. “I fully intend to take one for the team.”

Eleven of us, including six kids, hiked to the summit that day, and when we got to the top, exhausted and exhilarated, we turned around to see the 20% chance of isolated showers heading straight for us, a wall of dark clouds replacing the sweeping view that had been there moments before.

“No rest for the wicked,” my Dad said, and we all began hustling down the mountain, throwing the trail mix we’d been saving for a lunch break into our mouths as we went.

A few hundred yards from the summit, the rain swept in, soaking everyone except for Evan, who watched the proceedings with interest from under his rain bonnet. My little cousins were troopers, apparently not yet having realized that half the fun of hiking is whining about hiking.

Baby-stepping down the slippery trail, the heel of one foot never passing the toe of the other, we all arrived at the parking lot soaking but unscathed. Evan had just completed the longest hike of his life, raising his father’s confidence beyond the recommended safety parameters.

“Be careful,” my wife Kara said two days later, back home, as I left to take Evan and our dog Memphis for a stroll in the woods near our house.

“I’m half mountain goat,” I replied.

The first forty minutes of our walk passed without incident.

Then I started hurrying, worried about getting Evan home past his bedtime. And you know what they say: Haste makes waste, and also makes blood shoot out of normally placid orifices.

Out of nowhere, a miscreant root accosted my right foot, then my left.

I’d like to think that I consciously decided to take the brunt of the fall, but there wasn’t really time to think about heroics, much less unhook my thumbs from the backpack’s shoulder straps. The ship was going down, quickly.

Fortunately, the ground was there to arrest the increasing velocity of my face.

On impact, two water bottles shot down the trail like backpack-mounted rockets as something in my face made a sound I hadn’t heard since my last viewing of a Cap’n Crunch commercial.

The next noise I heard was Evan crying by my ear. Dazed, I wriggled out of the backpack and set him upright.

“Daddy’s so sorry, Daddy’s so sorry,” I said, frantically giving him a once-over. The bag had admirably passed its first (and, I hope, last) crash test, and Evan was without harm, except perhaps to his sense of paternal infallibility, if he had one to start with.

I took a moment to inspect my teeth, confirming that I still had them all. It was then that I noticed Memphis standing in the trail, looking at us with a cocked head as if to ask, “Why would you do that?”

The Tarantino-esque blood spurts emitting from my nose settled down after a moment, and we headed back down the trail slowly, like a car getting back on the road after a fender bender.

Back home, after Kara had a moment to digest our adventures of the past hour, she graciously poured on the sympathy.

“I might have whiplash, too” I said.

“You should go see a doctor,” she replied.

I whined one step too far. A good whiner whines just enough to get sympathy, but backs off before someone tries to send them to the doctor.

Anyway, my nose seems to be healing up just fine on its own, and I was right about being half mountain goat. It just wasn't the half I was hoping for.

You can have a nice trip and see Mike Todd next fall at mikectodd@gmail.com.

The curse of a new generation

I’ve often seen the quote “May you live in interesting times” passed off as an ancient Chinese curse, as if the worst thing you could wish upon someone was a greater historical event affecting his or her life. Based on recent personal experience, though, I think the curse would pack a lot more punch if it were updated to say something more like: “May you drive to Maine with a constipated infant.”

My wife Kara and I lived through this curse last weekend on our drive back home from a family vacation in Maine. You might have noticed that my proposed revision to the curse mentions driving to Maine, not from Maine, but if the curse reflected our situation exactly, then you could only use it to curse people who were already in Maine, which would severely limit its usefulness as a curse, unless you ate a bad lobster and wanted to get back at the lobsterman.

“I think I’m going slowly insane,” Kara said as our son Evan wailed across the entirety of New Hampshire. We’d stopped multiple times to see if anything we could do would put him in better spirits, but nothing worked. I don’t know for certain whether his constipation had anything to do with his foul mood, but it seemed fairly clear that Evan was feeling as if Mozart had performed a movement more recently than he had.

A reasonable person might wonder why a family with an infant wouldn’t just fly to Maine, rather than attempting an automotive traverse of the Eastern Seaboard. This person would clearly have never visited Rangeley, Maine, a remote mountain town whose charm owes in part to its inaccessibility. Flying to Rangeley would be a fine option, if JetBlue offered pontoon flights. The only airports for hours in any direction are tiny little rich-person, bring-your-own-airplane airports. Rangeley doesn’t even have a McDonald’s. It is the Land That Ronald McDonald Forgot, or Avoided on Account of the Mosquitoes.

The drive home from a vacation is never as much fun as the drive there, with excited anticipation replaced by a grim determination to get home and chase off the fruit flies that moved in while you were gone. Evan, who had been on his best behavior on the drive to Rangeley, seemed to sense the difference, and both Kara and I would gladly have chosen to live in interesting times over spending another half-day in that car.

As we pulled back onto the highway after one of our sanity stops, Kara handed me a bag of Sour Patch Kids and said, “Happy anniversary.”

I responded by pulling a large bag of Twizzlers, her favorite candy for some reason, out of my pocket.

“Happy anniversary,” I replied. I’d scratched the price tag off the front of the bag because I didn’t want her to know that I’d blown $1.29 on her gift, even though she’s worth every penny.

The sixth anniversary is traditionally the iron anniversary or the candy anniversary, depending on whether you ask a blacksmith or Willy Wonka. Kara and I discussed it ahead of time and decided not to buy each other big iron monstrosities that we’d feel compelled to display.

The iron anniversary is a tough one. If you’re not married to an actor at a Renaissance fair, what can you possibly buy your spouse that is both made of iron and a decent present? If you get your wife a cast iron skillet for your anniversary, you should probably also get yourself a good helmet.

Instead, we decided to keep this anniversary simple, with my parents volunteering for a babysitting shift so Kara and I could go out to a nice dinner, a precious rarity for us. As we rolled into our driveway early that evening, Evan’s screams finally turned to smiles, and our times got a little less interesting. Though it was tough to tell the difference with the Sour Patch Kids stuffed in my ears.

You can curse Mike Todd at mikectodd@gmail.com.