Rules of Engagement for the Purple Room

1. The purple room is not the green room. Nor after last year's renovations is it the blue room anymore. We all need to recognize this and move forward.

2. The purple room has its own code. Here we raise our hands -- and only our own. To raise somebody else's hand is disrespectful.

3. We don't take someone else's toys. And we especially don't take them if we're planning to sell them on eBay.

4. It is not assumed that everyone can read or tell time. We should all, however, be able to figure out which way north is without relying on a GPS.

5. We celebrate our diversity – but each of us on different days. This is not confusing but a source of strength.

6. Any dangerous toys that find their way into the purple room will be confiscated and sold on eBay. The proceeds will go to the scholarship fund.

7. Construction paper and crayons are examples of acceptable media for arts and crafts projects. Clay is also available on Mondays and Thursdays. Toilet paper glued to the door of the snack refrigerator is NOT art.

8. The bathroom is not for casual use. Only go when it is an emergency.

9. If during the day you become confused about what to do next, look for someone who is facing north. Then help the next person to orient him- or her-self.

10. In the event of damage to something, the last one to have touched it will be held responsible.

11. Don’t even think about touching the glass wind chimes.

12. FYI, the ceiling is not about to collapse. We just haven’t finished all of our renovations yet. So if you see something up there that worries you, don’t go around reporting it. Ssh. Keep it to yourself.

Dad's Blogging

"My dad can't come to the phone right now," I heard one of my kids tell a caller. "He's blogging."

Wow, I thought as I finished another post, we as a society have come a long way. Time was when Dad had to have a much better excuse for not doing things than expressing himself online. Dad had to be out chopping wood or killing whatever animal was going to be on the menu for dinner.

Now I know several dads who blog, and the consensus seems to be that it is a highly reputable and valuable activity for men, like playing golf or fishing. In an effort to test this theory, I tried it on my wife.

"Are you finally going to get around to moving that table to the garage?" she asked me the other day.

"I'm sorry but right now I'm blogging."

"Come on! I've been asking you for weeks."

"I'm also pretty far behind on my blog," I said in a grave voice.

As our eyes met over the screen of my laptop, i wondered if things were about to change between us. I also couldn't help but wish that the internet had been around during the early years of our marriage.

Then, however, her own tone of voice turned grave, even ominous.

"Ok, but just wait until you see my blog. I've devoted several posts to you."

I was up off the couch in no time.

Love Letter from Shakespeare

“You’re a writer. Why don’t you do a Valentine’s Day piece about how to write a love letter?” my wife suggested to me the other day.

“Oh, is Valentine’s Day coming up?”

I could see why she had thought of me for the job. Actually, I am not much for composing letters of any kind. What may have been the last one I wrote went like this:

"Dear Aunt Sylvia, thank you for the baseball mitt you gave me for my birthday. Fifth grade is fun. Love David"

Now technically this could be called a “love letter” since the word “love” does appear in it. But it didn’t seem quite the right model for an expression of feelings on Valentine’s Day. Some spark of romance was still missing.

“If music be the food of love,” I murmured to myself as I turned on the radio to help me concentrate. The collected works of a certain famous playwright happened to be on my desk, and in the midst of deep thoughts about how to begin a love letter, it occurred to me that “if music be the food of love” wasn’t half-bad. But if music be the food of love, then what? Then “you will always be in my top 40”?

No, that didn’t sound quite right either. Still, maybe if I tweaked it a bit, I might have something.

"If music be the food of love, then it shouldn’t matter that I forgot to pick up the pizza for dinner."

Now we were getting somewhere.

All of a sudden I knew what advice to give about writing a love letter. Borrow from Shakespeare, but add enough words of your own so as not to arouse suspicion. Sure, I dimly recollected that Shakespeare had said something about being neither a borrower nor a lender. But then again hadn’t he also borrowed most of his plots from other writers?

Figuring he’d understand, I sat down to work. I was going to write a love letter from Shakespeare that was also from me.

"Hark! What thing through yonder window breaks? Is it a bird, is it a plane, is it – what ho! Arise my love and kill the moon."

Clearly, he had as much to gain from our collaboration as I did."

“Why are you reading Romeo and Juliet?” my wife asked when she came home to find me still at it.

“It’s the one with all the romantic lines in it. At least in comparison to the other plays. I mean ‘my kingdom for a horse’? ‘First let’s kill all the lawyers’? You can’t send those to someone – not unless you’re trying to break up with them.”

It dawned on my wife what I was doing.

“Isn’t there something in Shakespeare about looking into your heart and writing?” she hinted.

“’To thine own self be true.’ Great sentiment. But as a Valentine’s Day message, it almost sounds suspicious. Like you’re saying, ‘At least I hope you’re being true to yourself because you’re incapable of being true to anyone else.’”

We both pondered my project for a moment. Papers were strewn everywhere on the top of the desk. Stuck to its rim were several post-its with lines of iambic pentameter on them. Peeking out from behind a coffee mug was a plastic figurine of the Bard that we had brought back as a souvenir from England.

“Next time just thank me for the kids,” she finally said.

How to Act Old

With all the advice out there about acting young, staying hip, etc, you’d think the other thing was easy – acting old, that is. But few of us are born knowing how to do this. It’s a learned skill, like whittling your own furniture or tying an Alpine butterfly knot, and like these it will soon be a vanishing art.

Yes, that’s right. We may soon live in a world where everyone is young. This will be because no one knows how to be the other thing anymore. The dignified pause as one struggles to remember what one was just saying; the peace and freedom that come from accepting that one can no longer keep up with the internet; these are becoming obsolete. So too are references to popular songs that one’s children and grandchildren have never heard of. How is today’s aging population supposed to make such dated references when a fabulous foursome whose heyday was fifty years ago are once again back in vogue?

But a world in which everyone goes around humming “When I’m 64” is a world where no one does. The very essence of hipness is to distinguish one generation from another, but, if “social climate change” continues, the pundits report with alarm, it may no longer be possible to do so. By 2050 not only will the polar ice caps have melted, but, right before being washed away, the trendiest clubs will be full of seniors dancing the Macarena along with their grandchildren.

In an effort to avert some parts of this apocalyptic scenario in the little while that remains, I have decided to revive the lost art of acting old. Here are a few secrets I have picked up over the years:

1. People acting old go to sleep early and wake up early, in fact, just in time to greet their teenage children as they try to sneak in after breaking curfew. At this point, the early riser does not wink knowingly at the late-nighter, as if to say, “Oh yeah. I get you. Out studying with some friends, huh? I did plenty of that too when I was your age. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” Ok, that last part was acceptable old-speak, but better is “If you were studying, where are your books, young lady/man?” This will give the youth in question the opportunity to groan at your ignorance. “Books? This isn’t the 1990s. We study on our phones, Dad…”

2. People acting old regularly embarrass their kids. They could almost seem to take a malicious delight in doing it. Or so any well brought-up child will think. If intergenerational phenomena like the Beatles and the TV show “Glee” make an air of being awkwardly out-of-step harder to achieve, the determined oldster does not give up. No, these oldsters go back as far as it takes – to the show tunes of the 1890s if necessary – for their cultural references. “Knocked’em in the Old Kent Road” is a guaranteed eyebrow-raiser, one that, for all his own favoring of hits of the past, Mr. Schuster will probably not be introducing to New Directions anytime soon.

3. People acting old are nostalgic. “Remember the restaurant that used to be
on that corner? I had a great BLT there in 1989.” That sounds old, not “I’m glad they tore it down and put up the bistro instead.” This applies to people as well. “I liked her first husband” is preferable to “third time’s the charm” just as “he used to have such a wonderfully explosive temper “ beats “the therapy has done him a world of good.” Just remember not to overdo it with the slang of yesteryear. Like songs, words and expressions have a way of coming back into circulation so that by the time you get around to saying, “Attaboy, ducky, don’t take any wooden nickels!”, you might well run the risk of sounding like a hipster.

4. A certain number of years should bring with it the worry that life is not a cycle, just a bumpy road with a sudden drop at the end. This is of course not good news. The old, however, take their consolation from the fact that, if they are lucky, they will not be around to experience the worst of global warming.

But if we as a country are willing to wake up fast to looming catastrophe, we may at least be able to reverse social climate change before it is too late. We can return to a world where elders are met with looks of utter incomprehension whenever they address their juniors, where to those over 50 the singers on “Glee” seem to be heading in some very “new” directions indeed. It will not happen overnight. Democrats and Republicans will have to put aside their differences and work together on this one. But I think we can all agree that a large and sustainable generation gap is a bipartisan issue.

So go to it, one-hundred-and-twelfth congress. Attaboy!

Survival of the Fittest: Renewal Letter from Men's Health Magazine

Dude, it has recently come to our attention that your subscription to “Men’s Health” has lapsed and a suspicious glossy with a certain charismatic, middle-aged African-American woman on the cover has been showing up in your mailbox instead. Now if this is what you really want, we will be the first to wish you a hearty “bon voyage” and leave you to your quality time with Dr. Phil.

But first, bonehead, there are some points you might want to consider:

1. We were on the verge of revealing our best sex tip ever. (Hint: it involves peanut butter, several boxes of Kleenex, and a large tuning fork.)

2. We were about to send you an advance copy of our Christmas CD, “Hark! (And Stop Procrastinating)”, where our very own “Abs of Titanium” chorus joins forces with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to sing yuletide favorites.

3. You will no longer be eligible to compete in the 30-mile, rough-terrain “fun run” we have scheduled for next Saturday. It is for guys as chiseled and cut as the faces on Mount Rushmore, guys who can calculate their BMI index in their sleep but wouldn’t be caught dead reading about their own mother’s “Aha! Moment.” Does this sound like you anymore? We didn’t think so.

Now here’s what we would like to think. We would like to think that this magazine is not really coming to you at all but to the live-in, supermodel girlfriend we helped you land with our series of articles on “better personal grooming.” No, don’t thank us. We were just doing our job.

But don’t think it is over yet – no , not by a long shot. From what we have seen, you still have a lot to learn about the opposite sex, and we have a lot more to teach you. Dude, the answer to the question, "Does this dress make me look fat?", isn't “I can't tell." You would know this if you had more carefully read our spring feature on “Things to say and not to say if you don’t Want to Blow it with Her.” Not to toot our own horn, but we were proud of this article and are only sorry some of our readers seem to have been paying more attention to the ad for potency vitamins on the opposite page.

If the magazine in question is not hers, we are going to assume that you dropped a free weight on your head and that ordering this magazine instead of “Men’s Health” isn’t the only sign of some major screws being knocked loose up there. Have you noticed yourself slipping up at work lately, making the sort of rookie mistakes that even the lowliest intern wouldn’t make? We thought so. If you don’t watch out, the Fortune 500 company we helped you build with our article, ”Jump Start your Career Today!”, will be gone and so, along with it, will your supermodel girlfriend. Then who are you going to turn to for advice? Dr. Phil?

Ok, we would be the first to admit that some of Dr. Phil’s relationship advice makes sense. He may not have the credentials of our “sex professor” – if he is a professor, at what university does he teach? – but we can connect with all that stuff about how each one of us should “love smart” and open up to intimacy. Haven’t we been pretty much telling you the same thing all these months? We would just like to see more emphasis on surefire ways to make guys like you totally irresistible to women they meet in bars. Even the smartest love has to start somewhere, and that somewhere can’t always be a MENSA convention.

Speaking of which, did you know we're even now working on an article about how stomach crunches can improve your IQ?

In the end, though, this one's a no-brainer. On the one side is the chance not only to achieve your best triathlon time ever but also to gain all the self-confidence you will ever need in life. That’s right. You heard us: if you had any more self-confidence than we’re prepared to give you, you’d be unbearable. On the other side are knitting patterns and a lot of “ho-hum moments.”

Of course, we're not really worried, just a bit concerned. In fact to show you just how concerned-but-not-worried we are, we have enclosed a convenient renewal form for you to fill out and return to us in the attached envelope. Or if you lack the stamps but think you might have the cojones, try doing it online. Either way we'll see you on the other side.

The Sleep Habits of Highly Effective People

Highly effective people are also good sleepers. Or so the latest research would indicate, sweeping away centuries of myths about the fine line between genius and insomnia. Count Leo Tolstoy liked to take a long afternoon nap and follow it with his morning bath – to the confusion of the servant in charge of the soap. The ancient Greek mathematician and inventor of the first working odometer, Archimedes, could often be found dozing face-up in the sand, with each of his legs forming the base of an imaginary right triangle. His tragic death came about when the head of an invading Roman army woke him and asked for directions to Athens.

“Idiot. Can’t you see I’m working?” were the last words of the great thinker, who had he lived longer, would probably have gone on to create MapQuest.

Nevertheless, with all the evidence in favor of sleep, the conundrum still remains of why exactly it is necessary. Health professionals like to go on about tired brain cells and impaired judgment, but the real answer to the mystery of why we need to drift off from time to time may be social. When we sleep, according to Dr. Emil Sonnenright, the noted psychologist and author of the bestseller “Wake Me When It’s Over!”, we are communicating powerful messages to others. These messages can range from “I’m not interested in what you’re saying at the moment,” as when we drop off in the middle of someone else’s sentence, to “ I sure have a lot to accomplish and should start before the day gets away from me.” Paradoxically, collapsing in an overwhelmed posture on an available couch may be a way of letting the world know how busy we are.

In a recent phone interview, Dr. Sonnenright explained his philosophy of sleep: “We all dream of a world where those who normally interfere in our lives would know better and that is Planet Sleep. When we make an abrupt, unscheduled visit there, it is then no irresponsible or solipsistic act but could for instance be a way of telling an employer that what we do on our own time is none of their business. On the other hand, a parent who nods off while reading their child a bedtime story may be hinting as to whose bedtime it really is. It follows then that crankiness is a symptom of sleep deprivation not for the reasons that are usually thought. We are cranky because the emotions that we normally express through sleep back up on us not because we are tired…we are tired…we are…”

At this point Dr. Sonnenright could not be reached for further comment.
We do some of our best sleeping with others. Now here I do not mean that kind of “sleeping.” That is not the only way to become close to someone in bed. Many couples also report experiencing a “weird sense of togetherness” as if they’d “stayed up having a heated, involved discussion” after nights spent tossing in sync while tugging the blankets back and forth. Each tug, each crafty effort to “hash it out,” or roll in such a way as to monopolize the available source of warmth for oneself, represents part of an ongoing dialogue about the yard, what’s on the DVR queue, taxes, etc. Things they might never say aloud to each other, like “You know that awful blue shirt you can’t find? I threw it out,” find expression during these nocturnal encounters.

According to marriage counselors, couples who do not communicate when they are asleep in bed are usually not communicating during waking hours either. If you or someone you know falls into this category, there are simple techniques that can put the spark back into your sleep life. Before turning in, try lighting incense candles and then putting on romantic, mood-setting music. Wear something unexpected to bed, like a see-through Grateful Dead t-shirt. (Hint: here actual holes help.) After that, close your eyes and let nature take its course.

Like any other kind, slumberous communication can be taken too far as in cases of actual kicking or aggressive snoring. Still, even then it is best not “to opt out of the discussion” by grabbing a pillow and moving to the downstairs couch. (For one thing, this may be exactly what the other person wants.) Instead, try responding with your own body so as to say, “I hear you but perhaps a little too loudly. Could you take it down a notch or two?” A fetal position, with hands over the ears, conveys this nicely.

We cannot all be geniuses like Archimedes and Tolstoy. But with enough sleep most of us can lead highly effective and fulfilling lives. The senior administrator; the happily married taxidermist; these are people who know how to hang a “Gone Fishing” sign from the yardarm. When deadlines loom and others give in to the frenzy of the moment, they are not to be found at their battle stations. They are to be found sacked out under them.

You can try beating them or joining them, but if it is the latter, I have a personal request: please don’t snore.

The Magic of Latin

Like a lot of other decent, hardworking Americans, I worry that Latin is no longer heard in the home. Time was when parents were able to console their children out of Seneca and celebrate their accomplishments with a verse of Vergil – all of this in the original, mind you. Now the sad fact is that most of us are using translations, some of which are badly out of date. It’s not going to do much for the credibility of Latin or the classics in general to advise your daughter not to “lament much o’er trivial wrongs” (“Hercules Furens”) after she has just lost a middle-school presidential race as viciously contested as the consular elections of 63 B.C. Nor will she be coming to you for help with her next campaign slogan.

How then are we to train the young generation so that they can fully share Cicero’s indignation at Catiline or regard the expulsion of the Tarquins with the untranslatable emotions of a Brutus or a Porsenna? Hint: it will not be through endless verb conjugations or practice sentences about what the agricola was doing to his field while the soldiers were marching back up the same hill they marched down three pages earlier. In a world where kids can text one another several blinks of an eye faster than Caesar could order his troops to blaze through another enemy encampment, we are going to have to throw away all the old maps of Gaul and start anew.

Fortunately, there is a school with an approach to teaching Latin so innovative and paradigm-shifting that it is being heralded as a pilot program for all the rest. This is Hogwarts, where language drills take the form of powerful spells and charms rather than dull sentences. These spells and charms range from the merely mischievous “prior incantato” (replays the same song on a CD so that the CD player seems stuck) to the immobilizing “petrificus totalus,” which comes in handy during games of wizard freeze-tag. Topping these, however, is the all-powerful “expelliarmus,” which, though originally developed by administrators for use against students caught casting an “incendio” spell on any piece of school property, has gone on to have much broader, defense-against-the-dark-arts applications.

All of these, if not exactly real Latin, are real enough. To attempt to press issues of linguistic and historical accuracy too closely would only lead to the inevitable “reductio ad nauseam.”

Think of it. Right now you can’t so much as sharpen a number 2 pencil with French or Spanish, but at Hogwarts you can use Latin to blast through to your locker even with an army of trolls standing in the way. And that’s just in the first year. Once the Hogwarts model becomes more widely adopted in grades 7 through 12, enrollments are going to soar for even the homework-heavy AP classes. If he were around, Caesar himself might sign up.

But, some might ask, where’s the discipline, the rigor, the thorough introduction to life’s tedium? The answer is of course “two doors down the hall in algebra or pre-calculus.” For too long Latin has suffered from the stigma of being a “dead” subject in the sense of “the least able to hold a candle to communicating with your friends.” One would almost think some evil Voldemort had cast a “soporificus” spell over the entire discipline, creating the impression that it was invented as a cure for excitement. This would explain why students in a typical Latin class look as if they have been suspended in a solution of ether.

It’s time to put the “hex” back into dactylic hexameter. Under the new system teachers would no longer enter their classrooms through conventional apertures like doors and windows but would suddenly materialize in front of their students and begin each day with a hearty “Yo! Awakenus!” Launched out of their seats as if by catapult, students would then find themselves crisscrossing the room at alarming velocities until a flick of the teacher’s wand restored them to their seats. There they could go about the business of levitating words off the page and into their memories. After that it is only a matter of time before, perched on their broomsticks, the same students who once stumbled over “amo, amas, amat” are pursuing long, knotted- tailed beasts known as “runaway sentences” down hallways and into the cafeteria.

Now some American educators claim that a pedagogy developed in Britain would not translate easily to our own schools. Also, those in charge of strained budgets are concerned at signs that Latin is only the beginning. “We simply don’t have the resources to take on everything they do over there. Not to mention the liability issues!” complained one Long Island school superintendent in response to parent demands that their children be able to sign up for Quidditch as well as football and track.

But there is no question that the Hogwarts experiment is being watched by language instructors in this country – and not just the Latin ones. French teachers, faced with weeks and months spent drilling students on how to say that they will first be traveling to the beach with Jean Paul and then going hiking with Ann Marie “pendant les vacances,” are having second thoughts as well. Couldn’t conversational French, these teachers are starting to wonder, include a few spells of its own? Mais, oui.

“Bonjour, tout le monde. Prenez les batons de pouvoir…”