The Cat's In The Cradle With Scary, Face-Sucking Aliens.

The Boy and I have a serious disagreement about space, and whether it is "cool" (me) or "freaky." (The Boy.) This serious disagreement came to light last night when I was assembling the two new lamps I'd bought while The Boy watched "Alien," but I cannot elaborate on it because we did not get to really explore the disagreement or discuss it for more than a few minutes.

He was watching the part in "Alien" where [GROSS THINGS-ON-FACES SPOILER ALERT!] the crew gets out of the spaceship and walks around on the slime planet and then opens up an egg and the thing jumps on the guy's face and they haul him back to the ship, where it is explained that the crew member did not suffocate because the alien was on his face, but where it is not explained why the crew member did not freeze to death because his spacesuit was opened to the near-absolute-zero conditions on the planet, and where it is also not explained how the crew member did not explosively decompress when his suit was punctured on an otherwise atmosphere-less planet.

While The Boy was watching that, I was putting together the new lamps I'd bought to replace the one old lamp that Mr Bunches had destroyed. We had been down to one lamp in the family room, a tall lamp that stood near the TV, and also stood tantalizingly near the plastic fence that surrounds the TV, turning our TV into a Playskool Gitmo encampment with the exception being that the Babies! try to get in, not out, and also with the exception being that our Playskool Gitmo is not sitting next to a Playskool Communist Cuba.

Mr Bunches cannot resist the allure of the tall lamp, and spends much of his day trying to get to the fence and reach over it and push the lamp over, ideally onto the TV but however it falls is largely okay with him. Yesterday, he succeeded and it was one tipover too many for the lamp, as I could not get the lamp to work again no matter how much I turned the top of it, pulled on the wires, and unscrewed and rescrewed it.

That's what a lifetime of education has taught me about how to survive if civilization were to break down: something can be fixed by taking it apart and putting it back together again, and then doing that a second time if the first time did not work. Also this: blow on it. Blowing on things is a miracle cure for my generation, the way "drink milk" was a miracle cure for my Mom's generation. We used to blow on the Atari cartridges, then we blew on the heads of our walkmen tape players, then we blew into the CD and DVD players, and I would not be surprised if right now there are "apps" you can buy for the iPod and iPhone and iWhatever that will electronically blow on the device when it's not working.

So when civilization finally breaks down -- whether that be because Keanu Reaves comes as an alien in what looks to be the second terrible movie about environmental crises this year, or whether that be, as we all expect, because the Russians invade a small town in the Pacific northwest, or even whether that be because aliens shaped like elephants land on Earth -- I will be ready and willing to help by taking things apart and putting them back together again, as often as necessary.

I will then also be ready and willing to make the critical decision, like I did last night, that having a lamp which does not light up no matter how many times I take it apart and put it back together, and having a lamp that now has alarmingly loose wires, is not a good idea, and I will then be ready to also stop by Wal-Mart and pick up some new lamps when we are out grocery shopping.

Assuming that there are still Wal-Marts after civilization has collapsed. Which I'm pretty sure there will be.

Because of that extra sidetrip to Wal-Mart to get the lamps, I was home later than I had expected to be and had to put the lamps together mostly after the Babies! went to bed. I tried to put the lamps together before the Babies! went to bed, but that was a disaster. Mr Bunches and Mr F were milling around waiting for bedtime while I opened up the first lamp, which was a floor lamp almost identical to the one Mr Bunches had finally broken. Mr Bunches watched me put it together, and when it became apparent that it was a floor lamp, Mr Bunches got excited and began trying to grab this new lamp and throw it to the ground.

Shouldn't there be a whole division of toys made by people who have actually dealt with children? I go to Toys R Us and look around at the toys available, and there are a truly phenomenal array of action figures and trucks and dinosaurs and toy drums and Legos and more, but there are no toys that are actually things that my boys want to play with. If there were toys like that, toys that Mr F and Mr Bunches want to play with, there would be an aisle filled with cardboard boxes, and old discarded cell phones, and an empty plastic coffee canister, and practice golf balls, and my toothbrush. Because that's what Mr F and Mr Bunches actually play with around our house.

We bought them, for Christmas, a new slide/castle thing to go with the slide they got for their birthdays. It's one of those Playskool products, a slide and enclosure and tube to climb on and play with. I'm already skeptical that they'll use it to slide on and climb on and hide in, because they no longer slide on the slide they already have: they've gone from sliding on the slide for hours to their new game, which is knocking over the slide and then trying to throw it.

They actually compete to see who can knock over the slide, sometimes trying to do so when the other one is one the slide. Then they team up to lift up the slide and throw it, usually in the direction of the baseboard heater so they can knock the face plate off the heater and play with that. So instead of a slide, we have bought them a large battering ram which they are using to destroy our heating system.

The new toy, waiting to be unveiled on Christmas Day, may not fare much better, but I am experienced enough to know one thing. When it got delivered, I looked at it, sitting in our garage in a box that was big enough for me to stand in, and I said this to Sweetie:

"They will love it."

Then I said this:

"Also, we should save the box because that's what they'll play with."

In that aisle of Toys My Kids Would Play With, I would also put a toy lamp for Mr Bunches to knock over, in hopes that he would then leave the real lamp alone, something he wasn't willing to do last night. When I insisted on putting the lamp together and not letting him play with it, he got more and more upset until he was lying face down on the ground crying, a pose we call "giving up on life." So I stopped what I was doing and rounded him and Mr F up and took them up to their room, where I tried to console Mr Bunches by letting him hold the remote control while we watched a movie for a few minutes.

That backfired, because Mr Bunches took the DVD player remote and began hitting buttons -- and succeeded in changing the channel on the DVD player, which caused Mr F to start crying because the TV was showing only static. I tried to get the DVD remote from Mr Bunches, who started crying and retaliated by taking the TV remote and hitting buttons on that, so that he changed the channel on the TV, too, leaving me unable to determine if the buttons I'd hit had fixed the DVD player, all while Mr F was getting more and more upset that the TV was not working and as a result of his upset was crying and trying to kick me.

I eventually got that sorted out and then had to watch more of the movie to calm them back down, which meant I was running even later than usual when I got downstairs to put together the second lamp I'd bought and set that up. It was while I was doing that that The Boy began what could have been a very interesting and fruitful discussion except that I was (a) tired and (b) putting together a lamp.

I tend to think that it was because I was tired and putting together a lamp at 9:45 at night that The Boy tried to talk to me. That's the conclusion I've had to come to, that the kids only want to talk to me when I have a hard time talking to them. I've come to that conclusion because it's the only explanation for what they do. It's like there's a switch in their heads that clicks on whenever I can't really sit and talk to them, clicks on and says start talking to him about things he cares about NOW.

The existence of such a switch would explain why one Saturday morning, from the moment I got up on, Middle did not say a word to me. Not a word. She came down and ate breakfast, saying "hello," and did not comment when I asked her what was new, whether she had any plans for the day, if there was anything interesting in the paper, how her job was, how school was going... all nothing. In fact, I heard maybe three syllables from her, total, all morning, three syllables that constituted the only communications from her that entire morning right up until the moment Sweetie and I were trying to get the Babies!, who were crying and screaming, out the door and into the car so we could be on time for their haircuts.

It was at that moment, as I tried to pick up Mr F, who was having a tantrum, and trying to help Sweetie hold on to Mr Bunches, who was having a tantrum, too, with the garage door open and the cats trying to get out and us running late for their appointment, it was at that moment that Middle, from the kitchen, called out to me that she had been reading an article about George Orwell and wondered if I had ever read anything by George Orwell because she thought it was kind of interesting and had a few questions about it.

That was not an isolated incident, either. Yesterday, I got home from work and we sat down to eat dinner. I talked a bit about the news of the day, and then said "So, what's going on with you guys?" Middle shrugged, The Boy shrugged, Sweetie mumbled something, and the Babies! threw their chicken nuggets on the floor. For the rest of dinner, I struggled to fill the conversational void with something other than Middle and The Boy arguing, and nobody, nobody offered up anything to talk about, period.

But come 9:45, when I was trying to get the lamp put together so I could get to bed because I was exhausted, The Boy was ready to talk. I came down from the Tragedy of the Remotes and said I was going to quick put the lamp together and go to bed, and The Boy began talking about how it was kind of creepy that space was so big and there might be aliens out there. He added that he and his teacher had been talking about black holes and he didn't quite understand them, and then asked: "Would you want to explore strange planets even if there were aliens on them?"

Those three topics: Black holes, aliens, and space exploration, occupy the 1% of my brain that is not devoted to lyrics to jingles from old commercial and awesome TV show ideas, which means that those three topics are something that I would constantly talk about, if given the chance. Or at least, if given the chance at a time other than 9:45 at night, when I'm trying to put together a lamp and get to bed.

So I tried to talk to him for at least a bit before telling him we'd have to talk it over more when I wasn't exhausted because I had to go to bed. I knew that we'd never, ever talk about this again, at least not at any time I could actually talk about it, but I at least had to try to give the conversation some attention, make an effort to put together a lamp and explain why it is that a black hole can be a superdense object whose gravitational field is so powerful that not even light can escape from its pull, because if I don't do that, don't make an effort, then all I hear in the background is that "Cat's In the Cradle" song.

The song "Cat's In the Cradle" is on many occasions the primary, if not sole, motivating factor in me doing something. Haven't called Mom in a while? And the cat's in the cradle...and I call her up on my way home from work instead of listening to sports talk radio. Dad calls me at the office when I've got a brief due? And the silver spoon... and I talk to him for a half-hour and leave the office late and get home late and then realize that I've got very little time to spend with The Boy and Middle and The Babies! when you coming home Dad I don't know when... and the cycle continues.

What society needs is a song that would work in reverse: a song that would play in the background of the kids' minds when I sit at the dinner table and ask how their day went and what's new, and they respond with shrugs and grunts and a fight over who didn't pour the milk that one time and who therefore should have offered to pour the milk tonight because the other one was getting the ketchup out of the refrigerator and wouldn't have had to get the ketchup out of the refrigerator if the first one had just gotten the ketchup out when he or she was in the refrigerator getting the mustard...

... at which point some violins and maybe an acoustic guitar and one of those little wooden sticks that people tap to make that hollow tapping sound would swell up behind and some poignant lyrics would be sung in a thoughtful manner, poignant lyrics along the lines of how if they do not seize the opportunity now, this chance might be lost forever. Lyrics like this:

I had a question during dinner tonight,
But instead of asking, I started a fight.
I argued with my sister about just who
Had a worse life because of chores to do.

And then before I knew it, dinner was done,
There was Cloverfielding and baths to be run
Cloverfielding and baths to run.


And now the lamp needs fixing and the movie's on TV,
the babies! are crying and nobody can hear me
When can I talk about space dad?
I don't know when, but I'll explain to you why it's likely that there's intelligent life in the universe and why that would be such an interesting thing to discover even if it turned out that the aliens were scary face-sucking creatures then, son.
You know I'll explain that then, son.
You know I'll explain that then.

Like this? Read more about The Boy In "Instant Karma Has The Boy On Speed Dial."

Did you know a short horror story of mine, Don't Eat My Face, will appear in the upcoming anthology "Harvest Hill," available next fall from Graveside Tales? Go to their site to find out more and order your copy! And don't forget to read my other horror stories on AfterDark.