New Daddy Trick. Uh, better left untried

My Father learned an interesting trick when he was a soldier in World War II.  

I think I can finally say I`ve outdone him

After my Father got drafted into the army during World War II, he was quick to volunteer for a program to learn Japanese.  As of yet, I don't have any Japanese readers on my blog, so I wont offend them, otherwise, it may be impolite for me to say that Japanese is a very difficult language for Americans, even smart Americans, to learn.  Up there with Hungarian.  And I don't know how well the army teachers were at the time, but my Father did learn two things from these classes.  One, his Japanese.  He demonstrated what he knew of the Japanese language in later years to us kids.  He could count to 4.  I only remember half of the count now in my later years and it sounded like "Itchy Knee".  I am not sure if that is the 3, 4 or the 1, 2.  At any rate it beats out my 4 years of Latin I took in High school, as I don't remember any words besides the ones still in the English language and the 6 cases of declining nouns including the Vocative case. (Tangeant note:  for my business I have been thinking of making a T shirt which reads "Punk IS Dead.  Latin is Seriously Dead")

The other thing my Father learned at this time was how to sleep with his eyes open.  This is a very useful talent which can be used on many occasions in all environments.  It can be used at religious services, concerts when you don't want to look rude or uncultured, sporting events when you really don't care who wins not to mention even about the sport, but everyone else around you does care and you have to or you would lose your job or your life, not to say the least of course during education classes of dubious interest.  

I always envied my Father`s talent in this area and practiced it whenever I could. Sadly it never came to me.  I never mastered it.  Until last Sunday morning, in fact I out did my Father.

Don't get me wrong, I love my kids and I love to be a Father.  If I could be Daddy 100 per cent and keep my business intact and safe (easy to do actually as it spirals into bankruptcy) I would do that.  To tell you the truth I am a bit at odds with my new found talent and am not sure that I want to, or that I should cultivate it.  I do not find it in tune with being a good father and do not recommend that others try to accomplish it.  In fact if you shame me with a blistering comment at the end, I will hang my head and say, "Yes yes, I know I am terrible, I deserve your ridicule and even hatred".   But it happened and it leaves me curious about whether it could be re created and it was, well, gratifying.

My yearly sickness which I usually get at the end of November came to me in the second week of September and I hadn't been getting any good sleep as my brain seems intent on driving me to madness with its sick humor dreams it sends me every night.  So by the third week of September I was starting to decompose (in more ways than one) with less than six hours of sleep every night.   Plus my recent inkling that I have some degree of DSPS which puts my sleep/wake rhythm out of sync with the rest of society and my children's` sleep rhythms.

Sunday morning comes and my kids bound into our room at 7.20am.  I had gone to bed at 1am and was heading toward a record 7 hours of sleep.  Not to be.  Unless...

My wife had let me sleep in on Saturday morning and so on Sunday it was my turn, seeing as she was worse off than I as she had been coughing all night.  So it`s 7.20 am and my younger daughter is pushed aside by my wife and so she brings me a book and asks, or rather tells me, "Daddy read a book".  Fair is fair so I got out the Curious George book of their choice and began to read to them.

 

It was the box collection of 6 Curious George books of the new adventures which are shorter (done in the Margret and H. A. Rey style, but not written or drawn by them and not as long as the original Curious George adventures).  I got to the word "quarry" in the adventure "Curious George`s Dinosaur Discovery" and had to repeat the word three times as if I was just learning to read and I couldn`t see the word properly.  Then I realized it was because I had had a micro dream from the word about the Beatles in their early days as the Quarry Men.  I had had the dream in the time it had taken me to read the word three times.  I then further realized that I had in fact been SLEEPING through nearly four and half books of Curious George adventures.  It was only when I came to my R.E.M. sleep and started dreaming about the word "quarry" that I woke up.  

Yes it had been me reading.  And yes not only had I been sleeping with my eyes open, but READING OUT LOUD while I slept too.  Incredible.  While not a breakthrough of Newtonian gravity, I lay there in awe at what I had just done, mind you without the aid of meditation or  hallucinogenic drugs or any drugs for that matter.  My mind had continued to function at a very high level using several senses and yet I had slept.  Wow.    

And so gentle, good reader, you can imagine the conundrum I am in now.  Do I continue to cultivate my new found talent? Realize if exploited properly it could end as a benefit to science and a boon to society, but is rather bad parenting.  Or should I resist any more attempts of this and discard it as a fluke and, well, bad parenting?  I kind of feel like I imagine Peter Parker felt after he realized he had the powers of a spider amplified into human dimensions.  "With great power comes great responsibility."  I am not sure I am ready for this.  And maybe I love my kids too much and would rather be a good Daddy.  Then again.... I could use the sleep.