Dangers of an Idle Mind

Moochy is clearly growing up to be a smart kid - I'd never tell him but he's smarter than i was at that age (his brother is no slouch either). I still have my moments too, those these days they're more often 'senior' moments. So with me and the Moochy's combined brain power you can be forgiven for thinking we never get caught looking really really stupid. Unless you had been in a certain computer games retailer last year. Me and Mooch were looking for a new game. We wanted a multiplayer game and preferably one that didn't just require fast fingers. We were looking at board and card games when we got to discussing poker. "You know it's funny," I said to the 14 year old, "you never see multi player poker games for the Playstation." Moochy looked puzzled too. "You're right, I wonder why?" he mused. We decided to ask The guy behind the counter seemed a little bemused at the question; his head tilted to one side, b...

We haven’t had a ‘silly Connecticut’ story in a while, and I can honestly say I have no idea why I didn’t write this up at the time. Our local sports team is the Bridgeport Bluefish , a non-affiliated, minor league baseball team. Their only real claim to fame is that their coach is a very renown former lefty pitcher whose deserved reputation was eclipsed by his eponymous surgery - one Tommy John . Anyway last summer, pre-teenage Spud and his oh-so-teenage brother were staying with us and so we decided an evening at the ballpark would be nice. Next to the ballpark is the Arena, a multi-purpose venue, and this particular evening the WWE was doing its sweaty man dance thing at the Arena while the Bluefish played the Lancaster Barnstormers. The car-park was more crowded than usual and as we pulled up to the orange vested lady at the gate she said: “Baseball or Arena?” “Baseball.” We said. “Three dollars” said the young lady. I don’t know if it was me, the boys or Christine who actually sa...

We haven’t had an embarrassing kid’s story for a while so here is the tale of Moochy and the monster under his bed. Moochy, my eldest son hated going to bed and never more so than when he felt there was something happening that he was missing out on. In those times he would invent all sorts of reasons for why he could not go to sleep or had to keep getting up. This story takes place on one of those occasions when he was about four. One beautiful spring evening we were staying at his Grandparent’s house in southwest London, near where me and his mother both lived before moving about 60 miles away. Anyway, we had arranged for some of our old friends to come around and hang out for a while. They were due around 8 and so just before that we put Moochy and his younger brother, Spud, into their pajamas, tucked them into bed and turning out the light, bade them goodnight. No sooner had the first visitors arrived than a little blond four year old appeared and told us. “I can’t sleep; there’s a...

Last ‘my kids’ story for a while – I promise. Back in 2002 I took Spud to his first major sporting event. It was a Cubs against the Cardinals baseball game at Wrigley Field. Spud had been playing Backyard Baseball, the PC game, for a year or so and knew enough about baseball to follow what was happening on the field. It was a bright and warm August afternoon as the Spudster and I settled into our seats, which were behind home plate about half way up the second tier. Spud was 6 and had never been to any type of big sporting event before (closest was a single A game the year before). It was a great experience, we did all the things kids love about baseball games. We had cotton candy, soda, peanuts and I even got him the ubiquitous foam claw. The early innings passed with Spud getting acquainted with the mechanics of a ball game. The peanut throwing, Wrigley’s skanky toilets etc. but we soon settled to watch the actual game. Almost immediately the Cardinals star batter stepped up to the p...

Every parent has a s tory of h ow their children have embarrassed them and here is mine. Back at the end of the summer in 1996 I lived in a small village in Essex, England. That summer had seen the Olympics in Atlanta, an explosion over the Atlantic of a Paris-bound TWA plane and England were beaten by arch rivals Germany in the Euro 96 semi-finals. Oasis and Blur dominated the UK airwaves. By September 1996 my family consisted of my wife, a two year old boy referred to as Moochy and a six month old who become to be known as Spud. Oh, and a nameless Goldfish too. Moochy was as cute as any two year old ever was. He had a shock of white hair and big blue eyes. Overall he was a pretty happy kid. The only concern we had was that he was having some problems with talking, most of the things he was saying were pretty unintelligible but at least he was trying. The story takes place one Sunday afternoon. Spud and his mother were both taking an afternoon nap and I decided Moochy and I should do ...