I slice up their hot dogs, steaming from the boil water, and plastic-plate them with a squirt of ketchup, trying like hell to avoid as much as touching the juice, which I’m certain contains Zika. Just like grown-ups at a ball game or the county fair, my kids enjoy hot dogs most when their brains are completely shut off. And they don’t even know the horrible truth about hot dogs, you know, the Zika.
“Hey, daddy?”
“Yes?”
“I really like Curious George so I might read it again, alright?”
Archie chews his hot dog while he talks, head down, mumbling, mouth full, almost incomprehensible. He thinks he’s winning, setting me up so that he can keep reading his book while he eats, but he doesn’t know that I’ve already won because he’s eating a hot dog and doesn’t even know it.
In the thrill of my victory over Archie, I let my guard down and Augie Jedi-mind-tricks me into letting him out of his high chair after only a few bites. He goes in his room and comes out with three shirts around his neck, looking like a baby Necklush model (http://shop.necklush.com/ free shout-outs! message me). He “dresses” himself now.
“Hey, daddy.”
“Yes?”
“I think I getting a lil bit scay-ed because thinking about No-noggin so I think I need you to come keep an eye on me while I read this book in the bed, alright?”
“Alright”
But I’m reading about Muhammad Ali and not paying attention so he starts to get out of his chair before I see he still has a pile of cut-up hot dog pieces. I negotiate with him from my usual position of weakness (Trump will fix this for me) and get him to choke down one more piece before being all done. Then I take his pieces and Augie’s pieces and put them in a little baggie in the fridge. I’ll nuke and serve the same pieces later, but when they don’t eat them again, I’ll throw them away, which I hate doing, but how many lives does a piece of cut-up hot dog have?
What I won’t do ever is eat them, even though I kind of want to.
After days of boiling, slicing, serving, saving, nuking, and throwing away, I reach breaking point where I’m going to have to eat one. But not one of theirs, nasty Zika-filled things. I’m talking one off the grill. Fortunately it’s Memorial Day–a solemn day of remembrance when all factory-farming, Monsanto-spewing, waist-busting, artery-clogging, 35%-of-American-men-are-obese-ing bets are off. (Relax. I know my timeline is jacked with the Ali reference. This is all fiction.)
I fire one up until it starts to split, turning it carefully, lovingly, no black on the skin, just pure slightly crispy brown with juice bubbling off the seams. Burger King can’t touch this. I pull it off smoking hot and put a fork right to it. They don’t make buns good enough for this masterpiece. Hot juice shoots out five feet in the air.
“Yeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!”
I yell not because the scalding-hot juice hits my face, but rather from sheer joy.
“Everything okay out there? I think the kids are hungry.”
No they’re not.
“All good. Let’s eat!”
XulaDad 