The Smell of Weakness

11:09 PM Posted by Knox McCoy



He smells the weakness.

His nose and feet twitch instinctively as the mechanical mongering of the garage is faintly heard and he knows that my wife - his mother - has left us alone together. This is his cue, his summoning to awake and pounce on the weak one left behind.

The attack begins with a muffled cry. I have come to know that cry as a scare tactic. A taunt meant to send my blood pressure sky high much like a coyote circling his prey from a distance.

I scurry about the house collecting paciphers, blankets, gripe water, and any other items that may temporarily stifle his unrelenting outbursts.

Deep down, I see these props for what they are. They are my water guns and he is the inferno.

His muffled cry now becomes a full on battle cry. He is eager to engage me and shame me into running my hands through my hair and dialing my capable and competent wife for rescue. But I am eager to meet his challenge.

He is not to be taken lightly. I am 26 and a salty veteran at life compared to my formidable opponent, but what he lacks in experience he more than makes up for in unpredictability and shriek-ability. He has the is stubborn and merciless.

I enter the bedroom, the oft-chosen site for many of our clashes. He flails his arms from within his bassinet and begins cooing and giggling at my entrance. His laughter ridicules my presence and his cooing is no doubt some form of infant trash talk berating me before we've even begun.

I pluck him from his bed and he stares at me wide-eyed, no doubt shocked at my willingness to endure the spittle and ferocious screams he will direct at me.



He laughs.

It is a laugh borne from disdain for me, entertainment at my attempts, and relief that he will not meet the iron will of his mother.





He waits.

He bides his time before striking and we continue circling each other as though we are sword-wielding combatants directly from King Arthur's round table.

The tension is palpable and unyielding against the back drop of Praise Baby and Baby Einstein but I see the first subtle signs of his coming attack.

He yawns.

He waits and again he yawns. The yawns grow stronger and less concealable and soon it is clear that he will be striking soon. He begins fussing like a pent up bull in anticipation of his entrance into a rodeo. Emboldened, I make the first move in an attempt to catch him off guard. I shift him against me so that he quickly finds himself in a sleeping posture against my chest. My plan is to sneak-attack him and hope he is too tired to retaliate. I have grossly miscalculated.




He screams.

He is irate over my surprise attack and launches a full-on assault on my ears and spirit. I shift him into several different positions that I have learned from the master, Ashley, but it is to no avail. I have angered the bull with a bright red cape and he is intent and making me pay quite possibly with my sanity.

He doesn't not waver in his assault. He will not be reasoned with nor is he interested in surrender. He will not relent until he has wrestled my dignity away from me, because Rowe does not take prisoners.



As he settles into a berating rhythm I find myself becoming systematically worn down as he drops the hammer on me. I have no counter as he has successfully defended all my offensive tactics. Though I promised myself I wouldn't do it, I begin entertaining the thought of calling for help.

He senses my indecision and increases his audible attack on me. Victory is only seconds away.

I fumble for my phone and as I am close to dialing the numerical code for surrender, I hear a glorious sound.

The long and laborious sound of the garage door emanates through the house. Back-up has arrived. His screaming subsides into a smattering of whimpers before he retreats completely into silence and as the sound of my wife's footsteps echo in our kitchen...

He sleeps.



Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Comments

Excuses...

11:58 PM Posted by Knox McCoy

I feel that it is appropriate to apologize for the lack of content I've been providing lately. I'm sure there are a great deal of people in suspense over when the next painstakingly written post will appear (observe HEAVY sarcasm).

I've had a couple of things brewing over the last few weeks and here's where you can see the fruits of my labors:

www.thesportingmuse.com (occasionally)

www.bleacherreport.com/users/37319-R-K-McCoy
(somewhat frequently)

www.thefullmontekiffin.com (periodically)

www.volnation.com/blogs
(tri-weekly is the tentative arrangement)

Thanks for reading (all 2 of you) and I hope to have something up later this week with Rowe making an angry face. Hope all is well with everyone.

Comments

The Perils of Reality TV

11:56 PM Posted by Knox McCoy



Becoming a father ushers in so many hopes and dreams for your child.
There’s a natural inclination to pass down the wisdom of experience even with the caveat that your child is to become his own person with or without your advice.

But that doesn’t stop my heart from overflowing with love and hope for Rowe. While there are some futures I secretly root for, I can honestly say that I don’t worry about the passions and hobbies he will develop. There are some areas where I am more proficient than others and that I selfishly hope we can share in. But I am equally open to his pursuit of happiness in ways that are less than relatable to my experiences.

But there is one thing I will not allow. I will not negotiate it, won’t support it, and cannot permit it regardless of what he feels.

I will never support Rowe entering into the reality TV realm.

When I pray, there are many things I pray for: Health, wisdom, discernment, etc. But I also pray that I will never suffer from the indignity of watching Rowe make an idiot of himself on television.

I pray that his presence is never seen on The Real World, COPS, or The Bachelor. Is that too much to ask for? (As an addendum to this list, I would also prefer that Rowe never be interviewed by local news….after a tornado…with a trailer park as the backdrop.)

Let me ask you this: In the 20+ years of The Real World, has there ever been a single male cast member that you would have your son emulate? The short answer: No. (And if you are wondering, I did include this season's ex-dude and transsexual, Katelynn Cusanelli in my vetting for a reputable Real-Worlder. Not surprisingly, her sex-change really hurt his/her chances at being example-worthy.)

Do you know how many nights I wake up in the throes of a nightmare where Rowe is apprehended by his mullet-haired head on COPS, while wearing a grease-stained wife-beater? I must have missed the chapter on night terrors concerning your child’s future in What to Expect When You Are Expecting.

And as for The Bachelor, let’s be clear: I watch. I’m not joining the fan club or anything, but I watch. But it’s more a bewilderment with the belief that the process of truly loving someone can be distilled into a camera-influenced 2-month(ish) period. But I do watch and will continue to watch with a skepticism that is framed with fascination.

But the fear is that if Rowe ends up on The Bachelor, he A) has an incredibly skewed idea about what love is, B) is an insatiably attention-hound or C) will be unable to use any adjective other than “amazing” to describe a woman.

Clearly, I want the world for Rowe and will be happy only if he is truly happy. I want him to discover and pursue what he loves. Just not on Temptation Island or Bromance.

Just Saying: 10 Random Things

11:05 PM Posted by Knox McCoy

So I'm supposed to do something in conjunction with this list like tell you to do your own list and send it to 12 people or kittens in Abilene will die...or something like that. Actually, I may be a little hazy on the details.

At any rate, let’s do this, 10 Random things.

1. I discover good music 5 years after everyone else. And no I don’t mean Shakira.

2. I am a super-dramatic vomiter. I find that embracing the bodily function of regurgitation helps get it over with quickly and if that means emitting a high pitched shriek like that of a grade school girl, then color me feminine.

3. I love Zombie movies. Even though they ALL follow the same plot and structure, I am fascinated with the zombie ideal.

4. I hate cornhole. I hate the name, I hate the boards, and I hate the trash talk that invariably comes with it. Essentially, it’s a homeless man’s version of horseshoes but with a name way, WAY crappier.

5. I have declared a jihad against Nicolas Cage. He is a brutally awful actor. He is obsessed with Elvis. He named his son Kal-El. He was in The Wicker Man. He’s a more cliché and less accomplished Keanu Reeves. His hair is inexplicably bad. He looks like a younger Gollum. And finally he actually made a movie called Bangkok Dangerous. These are the facts.

6. I love teen soap dramas. It started with Dawson, progressed with to the O.C. and now I’m ashamedly involved with Gossip Girl.

7. I read the newspaper to feel smarter, but the news is typically outdated and the articles are agenda-driven and editorialized. I think it is just more of a token thing now like a pocket-watch or VCR.

8. I’m not completely ready to close the book on aliens.

9. In that same vein, I’m a major conspiracy theorist. Oswald did not act alone, did we really land on the moon, Michael Jordan gambled on the NBA, and the LAPD was involved in Biggie Smalls' death.

10. I’m a garlic bloodhound. If you have had garlic within the past 72 hours, I know about it. You may not realize I know, but trust me, I know. My nose is unparalleled when it comes to picking up garlic breath.

P.S. Garlic breath is somewhere between burnt hair and heat-festered diapers on the Fantastically Awful Smells Scale.

I Am: Homer Simpson's Paternal Embodiment

12:20 AM Posted by Knox McCoy


I’m 26 and fully ensconced in the transitional portion of my life. School is far enough away that has officially become a memory but I don’t feel fully engulfed in adult-ness. Rowe helps me feel as though I am becoming a grizzled veteran of life, but I can’t help but still feel like a kid sometimes.

Maybe this is because I am the younger sibling so invariably feelings of youth will trickle down to me. But regardless, I feel marooned between two eras of life.

But this isn’t anything new. I think my generation has been searching for some kind of larger identity that will define us but there is yet to be a calling card for us. 9/11 was certainly the landmark event of our generation but it didn’t really change any fundamental dynamics of our life. We briefly became patriotic and then quickly found ourselves receding into the familiarity of cynicism and snarkiness.

I mean there hasn’t even been a unanimous choice for my generation’s label. Is it Generation Y? The Millennials? The Trophy Kids? No one knows for sure and I think this identity crisis has most impacted males.

That isn’t to suggest an exaggerated importance or a more put-upon existence than women; rather it concerns the average man’s struggle to identify his purpose. We have had no World Wars, Vietnams, or Cold Wars to define us. It seems as though the conflict my generation fights is cliché and marginalization.

Instead of fighting the advancement of Hitler, Mussolini, and Khrushchev's ideologies, my generation is fighting against the advancement of stereotypes perpetuated by Peter Griffin, Homer Simpson and Doug Heffernan. Are we all really chubby, incompetent, and perpetually covered in barbecue stains?

It seems that we are caught between converging ideologies. Is it better to be the domineering husband of the 50’s or the submissive husband conditioned by feminism? Is it ok to show emotion in front of my son or should I always project stoicism?
Where exactly do we stand?

And the church doesn’t do much to help negative perceptions either. Granted, there are some alarming trends among Christian males, but we aren’t all porn-addled bums incapable of turning away from a pretty female who isn’t our wife. To a certain degree I think it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Men are becoming what they are being told that they are.

I haven’t read Wild at Heart, but I think the essential message is that at our core, men need to be able to be who God made us to be: physical, aggressive, adventurous, etc. But in this digital age, men are being cornered more and more into becoming creatures of the cubicle and unable to be true to ourselves.

When I see Ashley with Rowe, I envy her because it is apparent that her transition to motherhood has been without much problem. She instinctively knows what Rowe needs and how to provide it for him and she completed this transition with very little complication.

I, conversely, am less natural with Rowe. My methods are trial, error, and panic.

By no means am I asserting that young W.A.S.P.s like myself live a painful existence. It’s more that we seem to be becoming more and more lost without the relief of compass or maps.

There’s a dearth of resources out there for young Christian husbands/fathers to consult and I’d like to see more dialogue and discussion about what it means to be a good, honorable, and faithful man. Because I love this point in my life and I want to be what my family needs, but I need all the help I can get.

After all, we can only glean so much from pro wrestling and football, ya know?

Comments