Rayanna, Jayanna, Layanna, and Haile Selassie

On Tuesday, I picked up the seven-year-old from gymnastics. I hate gymnastics. Well, I hate all the other parents there. I was walking across the parking lot to enter the building when a white Escalade cut me off about twenty feet from the entrance. As in, pulled in front of me, stopped, and forced me to walk around the vehicle. The waiting area is on the perimeter of the gym and all the parents hover there. They all talk about who the best kids are. It's a competition, even for first graders.

She gets in the car and I ask her what the most interesting thing was that happened to her all day. She tells me that she started a club at school -- The Cheetah Club.

"Who's in it?" I ask.

"Moriah," she says (I know Moriah), "Rayanna, Jayanna, and Layanna."

"Are those sisters?" I ask.

"No. Why?" she says.

We walk through the front door of the house, and it's controlled chaos -- which is the normal state of things. The Monkey is running around in his diaper and a shirt. He's apparently been eating blue and green markers and is also super grumpy. The eleven-year-old is working on a homemade Doctor Who video. The Ape is crying.

After Dinner the Goddess gives baths to the younger kids. I talk to the eleven-year-old about his homework. It's stupid. Social Studies. It's this decoding worksheet with terms related to world events in the 1930s, before war breaks out. Basically, he just unscrambles a code and writes out the words and names. It's from some website called StudentHandouts.com or something.

"Have you talked about any of these words in class?" I ask.

"No," he says.

One of the names he unscrambles is "Haile Selassie." I talk to him about Rastafarianism, Bob Marley, and sacramental marijuana. I'm just doing my part to educate the kid.

I really want to play some music. I'm trying to record this electronic album at home over the next couple of months and I'm anxious to get to work. I sit down with the Goddess to talk to her about a project we're working on together -- this combination burlesque/revue/game show thing that we thought up. While we're talking, her phone rings. It's the director of a show she auditioned for. She crosses her fingers and answers.

Now, the Goddess doesn't get overly enthusiastic about a lot of things, but she was really excited about this show. She hasn't auditioned with this group before, but the part she wanted was perfect for her. She nailed the dance audition the night before and she felt really confident about getting it.

I watched her as she talked on the phone. Her face dropped. She hadn't gotten the part she wanted.

She was upset and it's the worst kind of upset to me, because I'm utterly powerless to do anything about it. We both know how this shit works. It's community theatre and she was the new person. You have to pay your dues with this sort of thing, prove that you aren't a flake, and put in your time playing the "townsperson" or in the chorus.

I just listened while she cried. I'm a terrible listener. It's taking all of my power to not go into problem-solving mode, which is where I normally say something stupid. "Don't talk, Jack. Just listen." I manage to listen for an hour without trying to fix anything or saying something insensitive or horrible. I secretly congratulate myself on acting the way any decent human being naturally would.

Then I play music till about 3:00 A.M.

Wednesday morning came early, but it wasn't hard to find the motivation to get up. We had a lot on our plate.

First off, it was Back to the Future day: October 21, 2015. (Go watch the second movie of the trilogy if you don't know what that is. Also, how have you not seen that movie?)

Also, President Obama was coming to our small city, speaking about two blocks from where I used to live before we moved to Crackerbox Palace.

And I was going to be on the radio that night.

The Obama thing was cool, but received with the typical bigotry I've come to expect living here. I could talk at length about why he was here and what it means, but I'll save that for another time.

My friend Rebecca had asked me to be on her radio show after work and I was really excited about that. It's a new, independent radio station, all volunteer deejays. She wanted to talk about my band and Halloween.

I headed there after work and had a really good time. Rebecca played music from both the band and my new electronic project. We also talked about Halloween candy, horror movies, and Chick tracts.

When I get home, I walk through the front door and I'm overjoyed by what I see: the Goddess has the Monkey (age 2) and the Ape (age 8 months) dressed as Doc Brown and Marty McFly. She's taking photos.

It's hard to explain how much this makes me love the Goddess. She's just perfect. She's a photographer, a dancer, an actress, and an amazing mother who makes life so much fun. Like a lot of creative people, she's very sensitive and is hurt easily. I don't know why she's with me. I'm essentially a bull in a china shop when it comes to emotions. It's not that I don't feel deeply, it's just that I have the empathy of a profoundly autistic child. It's a long-term project for me.

When the older kids get home from the movies, I talk to the eleven-year-old about grades for about the 573rd time in the past week. He's got something like a 58% in Science. One of the grades is "homework," that just consisted of signing on to the grade book online and making note of any missing assignments. We've checked his grades about forty times this week -- but he has somehow managed to not sign in on his own account once. And he has these low scores on tests and assignments about the scientific method, which is weird because when we talk about it, he volunteers all the steps and how he might conduct an experiment on a question he had around the house.

But he's distracted when we talk. He's thinking about Back to the Future and Doctor Who again.

"If you could go back in time, where do you think you would want to go?"

This is followed in quick succession by a series of questions about travel through time and, especially, space.

"Why haven't we sent anyone to Mars?"

"Why haven't we sent any robots to planets besides Mars?"

"How far away is Mars?"

"How fast do you travel through space?"

"How long would it take people to get to Mars?"

"How long would it take to get to Pluto?"

"Do you think they could discover other planets in our solar system?"

"Which is bigger, Pluto or the moon?"

"How many planets the size of Pluto could fit in the sun?"

"Are stars the hottest things there are?"

"Could scientists design a suit that allowed you to touch the sun?"

"Since the sun is gas, if you could stand the heat, could you go through it?"

He asked questions like this for about forty minutes.

This child is failing science right now.

Or maybe I should say, school is failing him.

My family is remarkable -- they are brilliant, funny, beautiful, talented, warm, sensitive, compassionate people, of whom this world is not worthy.