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Please click here to check the book price and shipping information ... Whose Kids Are These Anyway? : True Confessions of a Family Man , by Ken Swarner |
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Book Review 
Eons ago, when I was a kid, MAD Magazine had a feature called "You Really Know You're a Parent When ..." (The panels continued, "You find yourself drinking your coffee out of a Yogi Bear mug ... The road maps in your glove compartment are permanently fused together with Tootsie Rolls ...") In the intervening years I have searched the world for a writer who could encapsulate the qualitative essence of parenting in that literary mode. Until recently, I didn't now about Ken Swarner, who has nothing to do with MAD Magazine , but he has the writing skill that I've been seeking! Although many newspapers in the U.S. and Canada carry Ken's syndicated column Family Man (established 1997), our local Poughkeepsie Journal isn't one of them. So all of time stood still and the cosmos stopped for me until -- well, that's a lie -- let me start over .... I was simply unable to find such an author until just a few weeks ago, when I received an email from Ken. He introduced himself and said that, if I didn't already have a review copy of his new book, he would ask Penguin-Putnam to sling one my way. If the traditional lyrics to the Twelve Days of Christmas leave you envious because you receive such handmade gifts as handprints and noodle collages [see "The Twelve Days of Crafts", pages 216-218] ... or if you harbor a concern that your co-workers might vote you "most likely to smell like baby wipes" [97] -- you're probably a parent, and therefore know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm a dad. Ken's a dad. I can relate to the universal idea that a kid would be discovered standing there, still holding the scissors, and yet deny being the one who gave the dog a haircut. [198] But I can't claim to have thought of Ken's approach to classifying kids' lies into several distinct types. [198-200] It's one of those areas where someone else has to point it out, so then the rest of us can recognize it as well. I think scientists refer to that as the Oh Yeah phenomenon. Hey, as parents, did you ever find that the two of you keep missing each other, so you leave a sequence of notes on the kitchen counter, or under the refrigerator magnet, or at some other central location? A nebulous range of topics from " the kid needs money" to "call the plumber" might ring that bell. "Notes left by two working parents" [225] makes a fine start for Chapter 13. But this is the technology age, so see also the collection of voice mail messages in Chapter 6. I asked our talented author if it would be all right to quote some lines from his book. He told me to "quote away" -- and that's a quote. So, dads, moms too, I'm copying a few of the passages that may impart some giggly Been There responses. I must say, Allison Swarner must be a saint if she didn't clobber her husband with a frying pan for telling the whole world about certain embarrassing moments. But, apparently, that hurdle was already hopped over, so go ahead and read the book. And the next time your child embarrasses you in a restaurant by pretending to barf, or does the wrong thing out in the front yard while 76-year-old Mrs. McCurdy across the street is watching, pause to consider how lucky you are, and enjoy those Little Things in your life. Book review by Mike Lepore for crimsonbird.com |
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Please click here to check the book price and shipping information ... Whose Kids Are These Anyway? : True Confessions of a Family Man , by Ken Swarner |