Lawnmower and parenting

Josh is assembling one of his puzzles. He is past the tricky first part where you have absolutely no idea about which piece to begin with. As you help him by asking questions about shapes and alignments of parts, the question arises in your mind. "Are you being a good father? Are you teaching Josh all he should know for a five year old?" You wonder how many parents feel the same. You decide to look up some statistics published somewhere on that topic. At least it would be good for your psyche if you learn that seventy-eight percentage - any number above fifty, of parents feel that they are being bad parents.

Just look at this room. The train set that Josh played with yesterday, is still sitting there in the middle of the room. Of course the engine and a wagon are missing. You make a mental note to return them here if you step on them in the kitchen or bathroom. The miniature cars and the plastic animals are scattered everywhere. This room reminds you of your room when you were in college. You remember the article that said that all children grow into their parents. What if Josh turns out like you? And how better is your office than Josh's room. You quickly dismiss the picture of your office cubicle. The center of your intense activity with papers and magazines covering all the surfaces of the desk, the yellow-post-it notes on the overhead bookshelf, the little napkin with the customer's phone number taped to the computer monitor and at least three manuals with bookmarks - napkins again.

How much of your father have you become. The fact that you haven't become a person who runs his life like a well-oiled machine gives a lot of comfort. Josh will not be like you!

Josh is almost done and you look at the dinosaur emerging. You make little corrections to fit the parts tightly. Just then you remember the calendar Paul has in his cubicle. Paul's wife has made a calendar at the Kinko's with their photos. Paul's daughter Karen is just a month younger than Josh. There were pictures of Paul and Karen fishing - Her first fish, playing checkers, family vacationing in the Blue Ridge, in the beach and Karen learning ballet.

You take some consolation on your child's achievements. And the fact that he knows more animals than you do. Even the name of that rat with aluminum sidings in Texas. And that he can tell apart a T-Rex, Allosaurus, Brachio and Stego. At least till 'Land before Times', after which they all became Sharp Tooth, Little Feet and Sarah's. And how about his computer skills? Josh can shutdown the computer properly. A five-year-old can turn on a computer but how many can shut it down properly. He can load his CDs, handle the mouse and fly through his games with no assistance. You make a note for the zillionth time to cut down his time on the PC. You definitely don't want him to develop your 'monitor-tan'. You think that Josh is going to send an email to your cell phone any day now. If only you can teach him his alphabets soon!

Josh has finished the puzzle and wants some action. You both go out to the yard. Suddenly you get the great idea of teaching your kid the fine art of lawn mowing. "Ah, that should fix Paul and Karen". You set up the equipment and lecture Josh about mowing, lawn, grass height, the switches and so on. You wonder how much a five year old register of this lecture. Just when the mower is humming nicely, your wife calls out to remind about lunch. And about the dinner party tonight at Fred's place. And when you turn back to resume your tutorial, you are in for a surprise.

The lawn mower has gone right through your flowerbed. Your weeks of hard work, the envy of your neighbors and the jewel of your yard, all gone in one push. You lose your control and start screaming at Josh. That produces his mother instantly. She picks up Josh who is transitioning from a state of achievement to crying. She stops you with, "Hey Hold on. You are raising a child. Not a flower-bed."

You shout back asking would not a five-year-old know not to mow through a flowerbed. The defense attorney's response started with, "If a thirty-seven year old knows how to set a mower in front of a flower-bed...."

As you go back inside the house, you wonder if Karen can shutdown the PC properly.

Recipe

“What are you doing?” asked a very happy looking Raj.

It was eight in the evening. We were tired.

“Just looking into a simple problem”, I said. Sam and I had decided a long time back never to get into specifics with Raj. In this case, the simple problem was a bug that threatened to stop our major software release. We had been trying to fix the problem for two days without any luck.

Raj offered to take us to dinner. Raj is the chief technical officer of our company. How he got to that position was a corporate mystery. Usually Raj delves into our problems and was ready to give us unsolicited advices. But today he stayed away from our problem. So far.

“How about some beer first?” Raj asked. After a marathon debugging effort, we were ready for anything. Even a beer with Raj. A break from the monotony also would give us some rest and hopefully a solution when we attack it again the next day.

As were driving down the streets of downtown Washington, Raj got into his trivia mode. “Do you know that Washington, D.C. was designed after Roman cities? Look at the numbered and lettered streets. We said that we were not aware of that.

“If you notice you will not find the letter ‘I’ , in the lettered streets. That is because there is no letter ‘I’ in Latin. Did you see that movie Indiana Jones? Harrison Ford steps on the letters to get to the Holy Grail. Stepping on a letter could mean death. Just imagine – a letter in a foreign alphabet decides your life and death.

I said something in appreciation of his knowledge of history. In return he lectured us on the need to keep our ears and eyes open. “Who knows? You will end up in that show “Who wants to be a millionaire”. And this alphabet nonsense could stand between you and a million dollars”.

Raj was not technically sharp. He followed his own processes and methodical and slow approaches to problem solving. We on the other hand considered ourselves free spirits. We just attacked a problem in a “prodigal manner” almost till a solution presented itself! And we had been lucky often. Raj was successful in his career probably because he just kept his eyes and ears open. Whatever that meant.

We were at the Capital Brewery. Raj wanted to know if they serve Manchurian. He then went into how he used to enjoy beer and a snack called “Gobi Manchurian” that-goes-well-with-beer in the Bangalore pubs. He said that was a Chinese food and wondered whether the Chinese really had a food item called Manchurian. I suggested that they would probably have it in Manchuria.

When we were gulping down the beer, Raj went into how he had to work with slow and outdated computers, almost no software tools and no documentation too. He explained over an hour about how they pulled out quality software from thin air.

Then came the question. “What exactly is your problem today?” Sam said that the program was crashing after taking the stock symbols without giving the stock quotes as the program was supposed to do. I suspected that it was the beer that made Sam break our long standing resolution. Raj asked if we used any other software in our program. We knew where his questions were leading. There are two types of programmers. One who readily blamed other’s work for the problems and our type who always suspected their own work and worked continuously to improve it. “May be you should check the data when it is processed by the WebStream’s library. Who knows what they are doing”. WebStream is a partner company whose programs we used in our product.

Surprisingly Raj touched something we didn’t suspect for the source of the current problem. Sam silently nodded to me conveying that we ought to explore that path. Though our motto is that our product is guilty unless proven otherwise, we wanted to examine that angle as we had tried everything by then.

Then we went to dinner. When we were devouring the Ethiopian bread, Raj launched into recipes and tastes of about ten similar delicacies from his homeland. And somewhere between preparing the dough and deep frying the eggplants, I decided not to take up Raj’s suggestion. It may be that I wanted another dinner with Raj to punish ourselves for our oversight. Or it may be that I wanted to master that eggplant cuisine!

Reducing Agent

When I first saw the advertisement, I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Lose all your friends or your money back”. I had never seen anything like that. I had an overdose of friends and always wanted to cut down the number of friends. But this method of losing all the friends intrigued me. Lose all the friends and start over again. May be this time I can choose the right ones. So I went to see this person.

Parry invited me into his house with a warm smile. I wondered how such a nice person would help me lose all my friends. Parry started explaining his method. First he wanted me to know the history behind his technique. Once Parry ran into somebody in his neighborhood grocery store. That man invited Parry to his house to discuss a revolutionary business plan. Parry was told that if he did that business for a couple of years, he would earn enough money that he could retire. As that person bored him with all the outcomes of doing that business with phrases like residual income, network of people, achieving your dreams, inner potential, pyramid of workers under you, the power of franchise, Parry was looking for the escape route.

He couldn’t escape without taking two videotapes that would explain the concept further. Parry said that there wasn’t any information but more spiel on people living rich and happily after doing that business. Parry said that he dreaded the calls from this businessman and hid whenever he saw him in the grocery store. It changed his lifestyle a lot in the following weeks – not answering the phone, shopping in a distant grocery store and so on. One day the phone rang as he was having dinner. As he let the phone ring, he reviewed the whole experience with a detached view and suddenly had an insight. He thought through the process and decided to try it out. Next day, he invited a few of his friends. As he explained the business plan, he made sure it was more boring than his own ordeal.

He tried to follow-up with his friends but could never talk to anyone. He realized that his insight was working when he received a thank-you note from the local Phone Company. They were thanking him for the sudden demand he created for their caller-id service.

Parry said that he had mastered that art to perfection and he could make people disappear. Literally. I said that would not be possible. Parry smiled and took me to his backyard. We saw his neighbor working in his yard. Parry called out his name. And in the next instant, that man disappeared. I mean, he just disappeared. He was faster than the Cheshire cat of Alice in Wonderland. That cat at least left a grin back for a while. I didn’t even see his facial expression changing. There was no “Poof” or no “jingle” with which people disappear in fairy tales. He just plain disappeared.

I asked him for some more demonstration to believe my own eyes. Parry took me to the riverside. He said he could show more in the grocery store but they don’t allow him inside anymore. We drove to the riverside and Parry was scanning the joggers and people who were fishing and playing in the water. He finally spotted a friend in a kayak and waved. And in the next second, the kayak was empty. It was as if it was drifting along empty.

As we were driving back, I asked Parry how long it took for the people to reappear. Parry chuckled and said, “that I will never know.”