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During last July’s 5.8 earthquake, 3-year-old Bronwyn told her 1-year-old sister, “We’re going for a wiggle.” READ MORE
Fatherhood
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There are four of us in my house: my wife, my son, me, and Steve. Steve is not a relative, or even, in the strict sense, a friend. He does not pay rent. One can't really call Steve a babysitter: He doesn't so much look after our 2-year old as our 2-year-old looks after him. Steve is a young man, slim as a matador, with dark, expressive eyes and a winning, ironic personality. People like Steve. Steve is hard not to like. Steve does little vaudeville dances for us. He dances when the mail comes. He teaches us all the steps. Steve's dances are never too precious, in that Barneyish way, because when Steve dances, he dances with a self-deprecating Seinfeld wink: What's the deal with this dance I'm doing? We all enjoy Steve. Steve makes the uncool cool, and, as anyone who's ever bought dorky '70s clothes second-hand can tell you, there's nothing cooler than that. You might think I'd be jealous of Steve, who lives in my house and makes my family smile, especially since Steve, along with being a nice and oddly compelling young guy, is also a well-known television star. Fortunately, Steve wears the same shirt every day, a rugby deal with a white collar and alternating horizontal stripes of green and greener. No one with such a shirt can possibly steal the love of my family. Unless what he's really saying with The Shirt is, What's the deal with this shirt? In which case the shirt is cool, and I'm in trouble. Steve is the former host of a much-loved Nickelodeon television program called "Blue's Clues." There has been much talk of late of Steve having left his home, a place with talking drawers and a kindly mailbox with attitude. Steve, we are told, has gone off to college and enlisted his brother Joe to take over the considerable responsibility of holding conversations with these inanimate objects. People who know Steve are concerned about him. Steve left no forwarding address. What college, exactly, did Steve go to? How is Steve getting along with the other freshmen? Do they make fun of Steve when he talks to his dresser drawer? I'm happy to say that I have the answers. Steve, it turns out, did not go to college. Steve moved into my house, and brought with him his drawer and his mailbox. He also brought his little blue dog. Did I mention that Steve has a little blue dog? My son always napped during the half-hour when Steve's show was shown on television, so we didn't know Steve all that well when one day last fall I found him in an aisle at Kmart and brought him home and put him in our entertainment center. Our entertainment center is reasonably big, big enough, anyway, for Steve and his drawer and his mailbox and his little blue dog. They live there comfortably enough, I think, though my son makes demands on them, constant demands. Steve dances in our home four to six times a day. But Steve never gets tired. That is one of the great things about Steve. I, too, dance for my son, but I get tired. Steve does not. At first, I didn't tell anyone that Steve was living at my house, in my entertainment center. Steve must have had his reasons for leaving home and ditching college and crashing on the bottom shelf of the Kmart video aisle, not far from the Martha Stewart stuff. We all need to get away sometimes. But soon I understood that the concern out there was sincere. What happens to Steve when he's no longer busy being Steve? I had to let people know, so I'm letting people know. Steve is still being Steve. He's being Steve right here, for my son, and my wife, and me. One Saturday afternoon not long ago, my son grabbed a book off a Barnes and Noble shelf and brought it to me and opened it up to show me Steve's little blue dog. He asked me to read. I read. By page 2, my son was looking at me with that sidelong something's-fishy-here look of his. I understood at once what he wanted: He wanted me to read like Steve. Now I read like Steve all the time. I read like Steve even when I'm reading books that have nothing to do with Steve. Again, I am not threatened that my son wants me to read like Steve more than he wants me to read like me. I am good at reading like Steve. When I read like Steve, my son loves me all the more. Or is it Steve that he loves? Greg Blake Miller of Las Vegas has just completed his first novel. He is a regular contributor to this column. |
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