The Doomsday Clock and Chef Boyardee

Parenthood has been a real joy thus far. I mean it. Little Joe is an amazing boy. The biggest challenge is being able to fit in all my old activities, like blogging, with all the new activities associated with raising a child, like reading with him, game nights, and teaching him the Greek alphabet.

Some highlights from the past few weeks: Our ensemble was a big hit at Golden Fest. Even though we went on two hours later than last year, we had what everyone agreed was an even bigger crowd dancing. Little Joe took lots of photos and videos of us. He said afterwards that he didn’t really like the rest of the music too much, but he seems to like ours. He’s still getting used to the unusual sounds. I think he was also a bit overwhelmed by the variety of bands and the large crowds. I was a bit overwhelmed myself, even though I’ve been many times before.

Our Boston friends L and M were down in New York for the weekend, so we had brunch with them on Sunday. We also got to spend some time with Dr. Mike. Little Joe has become very attached to our friends in a short span of time, and they all adore him. After brunch we walked around the city, but it was overcast and foggy, so we didn’t do as much as we’d planned. On Monday we visited the Statue of Liberty, and I was disappointed to learn that one can no longer climb up into the crown. I suppose I should have known that was to be the case in the aftermath of 9/11 and the ever-present War on Terror. Feh.

Somewhere in Connecticut on the way home on Monday (Martin Luther King Day), Joe was listening to the radio, channel surfing, and because we had been talking about MLK’s legacy, when he came to an NPR station broadcasting an excerpt from on of MLK’s speeches condemning the Vietnam War, he stopped on his own and turned up the volume. I didn’t ask him to stop and listen. He did it on his own. I’m not sure how much he understood, but we chatted about it afterwards. I’m glad we listened. Although I knew about MLK’s condemnation of the Vietnam War, I don’t think I’d ever heard one of his speeches on the subject. It was very powerful and very timely.

Since that time, Joe and I have had many conversations about the war in Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan, the War on Terror, and the Bush administration. We usually talk about these things in the morning when I’m driving him to school. I have the radio tuned to NPR and he often asks questions about something in the day’s news from the Middle East. We’ve also had many conversations about the Doomsday Clock and how it was pushed five minutes to midnight a couple of weeks ago.

He became a bit obsessed with it, not in an alarming way—it wasn’t keeping him awake at night—but he seemed fascinated with the idea of a symbolic clock whose minute hand reflects the variety and severity of threats to human existence. He seemed to understand that the purpose of the Doomsday Clock isn’t simply to frighten us, but to raise awareness of the need to change our behavior. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about parenthood in general and Little Joe in particular is that we can joke about farts and boogers one minute, but then have a serious conversation about current events.

We have had many humorous moments as well. One such occurred the other night at dinner when Joe was recounting how at the supermarket last week, to his horror Little Joe went and got a couple of cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli for the cart. Joe would make all his pasta by hand if he had the time, and while he isn’t able to do that every day, he’s certainly not going to turn to Chef Boyardee for his pasta needs.

Rather than simply explaining to Little Joe that Chef Boyardee is ghetto—and potentially hurting his feelings as well as coming off as food snobs—I told him that during World War II Chef Boyardee was a Nazi sympathizer and that if you google him, you’ll find pictures of him standing side-by-side with Mussolini on the Palazzo Venezia in Rome.

Little Joe also likes KFC, and although we’ve indulged him a few times, he’s not going to be having it very often. So in addition to telling him that Chef Boyardee was a Nazi, I also informed him that Colonel Sanders was a grand wizard of the KKK. I think it went over his head.