Game Theory

Game Theory



As a kid, I couldn’t tell you how many times I came home from school to a living room scattered with empty beer bottles. You could always tell when the Air Force sent Dad his monthly stipend because there would be bottles of Budweiser all over the place instead of Keystone.  My little brother Josh and I would walk into the kitchen and find a pair of ten dollar bills beneath the ash tray that desperately needed emptying. Next to the crumpled ten-spots would be a note with the word “groceries” scribbled across it. On days like those Josh would whine to me that he was hungry and the only thing in the fridge was a half empty jug of milk, a few sticks of butter and a box of baking soda in the far corner. Days like that I would tell myself that if I ever had kids of my own I would always do right by them. I would never pick them up from baseball practice in my pickup truck with a Black and Mild in one hand and a plastic cup filled with Orange Juice and Vodka in the other. They would never have to spend the night at some group home getting groped by bunch of teenaged foster kids all because I got in a fight with an off duty police officer. And most of all, I would make sure that they never had to go an entire week without seeing my face.

I have that opportunity now but it isn’t going as smoothly as I had hoped. By the time my son was born I realized that I had practically spent my whole life acting as somebody’s parent and sometimes I wonder if “acting” is all I’ll ever be doing. My son is four years old as of two weeks ago and my wife is six months pregnant with our second child. My mother in law is convinced that it’s going to be a girl because of some strange superstition of hers, something about Alicia’s belly being shaped like a watermelon instead of a basketball.  My son is pretty much like any other kid his age. He likes to draw just like I did, loves basketball and any and all things relating to Spiderman. You’d be amazed at how many different styles of Red and Blue pajamas he has. I’ve tried to get him interested in some other superheroes mainly because Peter Parker has always seemed a little too sensitive for my tastes, but it was no use. I can’t get him to watch Ironman and to my knowledge there aren’t any decent Thor movies out right now.  His hair is braided into dreadlocks that hang to his shoulders. Not my idea, but it was better than the alternative. I wanted him to just have a regular fade, but my wife, for reasons I will never understand, wanted him to have one of those God awful rattails on the back of his head. I never really held the style of one’s hair in high regard but allowing your children to go outside like that should be considered some form of child abuse.

Anyway, I took my son to the playground this afternoon. I had to make it up to him for not buying him some “dippin dots” when we were at the mall.  You know; those little flash frozen orbs that they peddle to little kids at the mall. He is already a very active boy, even without a mountain of sugar coursing through his still developing bloodstream. When I told him that he couldn’t have his ice cream he did his usual routine; clenched fists, stomping his feet and a pouty look on his face that said that I was a terrible person for not buying him a cup of “peanut butter chip” or whatever the hell it was. Despite my being worst monster since Hitler, he still held my hand as we walked to the parking lot. There must be some sort of natural code written into the DNA of every four year old that instinctively tells them how to punish disobedient parents. He didn’t struggle when I tried to put him into his car seat, but he did that limp-limbs trick when I tried to pick him up. His arms went straight up so that when I tried to lift him by his armpits he slipped out from my grasp, falling butt first into the asphalt.

After painstakingly wrestling the toddler into the luxury sedan we embarked on our journey home. He eventually stopped crying and reverted to staring holes through back of my headrest. Looking at my son’s dramatic frown through the rearview mirror I asked, “Hey Jonah, how’s about a movie before bedtime tonight?”

No answer, he simply folded his arms in a manner that is all too grown up and stared angrily out the window. I sighed as I returned my attention to the road. Some inconsiderate driver in a yellow Mustang cut in front of me right after I entered the freeway. Apparently eight miles over the speed limit isn’t fast enough for some people. 

The insidious silence of my son was starting to get to me. It may sound horrible but the fact is that I hate being left alone with him. He is just a little boy but it’s disturbing how mature he behaves sometimes. It’s not that noticeable when he throws his minor fits, but it is always a cycle with him. The usual routine is just phase one, reminiscent of the tantrums my brother Josh used to throw when we were kids whenever I tried to get him to take a bath or go to bed at a decent hour. No with Jonah it was different. When he was finished whining, he would give you the silent treatment.  And if you tried to coax a response out of him he would simply glare at you with this hateful emptiness, a look that said “I just don’t care anymore.” The first time he gave me a look like that I could have sworn that I saw my father’s face in his and for a moment I was that same little kid staring into a naked refrigerator with his brother standing next to him, crying until his eyes turned red.

I would not let it disturb me this time. I turned on the stereo and put in a CD from the carrier on the passenger side visor. The car was soon filled with the sound of bass guitar, drum kits and keyboards. I turned up the volume when Black Thought, my favorite rapper since high school, began to interject the jazzy sound with melodic rhymes. Alicia hates it when I listen to my music with Jonah in the car. One time a few years ago, all three of us were on our way to Alicia’s parent’s house and I think I was listening to The Roots when either Black Thought or Malik B. snuck in the word “shit” or something like that. Alicia practically threw a fit saying that, “he’s gonna grow up thinking language like that is okay” and what not. The fact that I had started laughing and said that they show worse stuff on Cartoon Network, didn’t help much either.  Besides, he had only just begun to start talking at the time so it was a fair assumption that he had no idea what they were talking about. And I like to think that the old school sound is cleaner than half the stuff they play on the radio these days. I’d rather have him listening to The Roots and A Tribe Called Quest than anything on BET right now.

As we rolled onward I saw the green signs signaling the approach of exit seven on the metal pylons spanning the freeway. It’s two exits before the one that will take us home, but if I got off there it would take us by Jonah’s favorite park, the one with the gigantic wooden playground equipment handcrafted so that it looks like a big wooden castle complete with towers, turrets and buttresses.

I said, “Hey kid, you wanna’ head to the park for a lil’ while?”

He looked at me without smiling but he appeared slightly less pissed off than he was a few minutes ago. His expression had changed so that it was no longer that exaggerated glare that all little kids do when they really want you to know how mad they are. Though he was not kind enough to bless my ears with a response I took his absence of protest as an answer in the affirmative. I imagined him saying, “you better take me to the damn park,” as I exited the freeway and drove the sedan past the towering stone church on the corner. We rolled onward down the little street which ran underneath the cover of oaks and evergreens. When we finally passed the break in the mass of trees we could see the little manmade lake which sat on the south end of the park. There was a walking path that encompassed the lake, originating in the dirt hiking trail through the woods and leading up to the little wooden dock on the lake’s eastern shore, the one where I would sometimes take Jonah to feed the ducks and watch people drive their little remote control boats through the water.

We pulled into the parking lot and just as luck would have it, there was a damn ice cream truck parked right next to the stone pavilion on the East side. I turned up the music so Jonah wouldn’t hear that awful chiming melody and came to a stop front of the basketball courts on the opposite side. The first thing I heard as I opened the driver side door was the playful sound of children screaming and laughing in the wooden playground fortress. I went to the trunk and took the black backpack full of parental provisions which included a novel I had begun to read that same afternoon, a first aid kit which contained just enough bandages and disinfectant to save your life from a deadly paper cut and more Tupperware containers of dry cereal than the average adult could eat by himself. I know I probably looked stupid wearing a backpack over dark purple shirt with an even darker purple tie, but there’s a limit to how cool a person can be when they’re dragging a toddler around everywhere. The boy was lethargic when I lifted him out of his car seat. He did not speak as I led him by the hand toward the entrance of the playground. Halfway down the sidewalk I noticed that one of the laces on his blue and red Spiderman sneakers was undone. He stood there like a statue while I tied his shoe, arms hanging limply at his sides as I kneeled like an unworthy peasant in front of a noble prince. When his lace was secure I looked up at him, into that same cold empty face that makes you feel dead inside, the face that says “you’re failing as a parent.”

We continued to the playground. Jonah gradually picked up the pace as the wooden towers grew closer until he finally released my hand and ran as fast as his legs could carry him beneath the tall wooden arch of the playground entrance. I followed him inside. To my left were the wooden bleachers built into the North wall of the massive playground, the ones where the parents all sat and watched their kids make use of the equipment. They were playing the same game I was, taking their kids to the park in hopes that they would use up their energy there so that they would be all “tuckered out” by the time they got them home. I hate that phrase, “tuckered out,” its role in the English language is that of the estranged relative who shows up on your doorstep out of the blue and asks for a place to stay as if he had seen you just yesterday. Speaking of which, my brother Josh is coming home from school to spend the summer at our house again. It’s not that I don’t like seeing him every once in a while, but as much times as I’ve spent helping him find his own apartment on campus it would be nice if he would spend at least some of his time there or at least sublease it to somebody while he’s away so that he’s not just paying for expensive storage space.

But anyway, if my plan to get Jonah “tuckered out” at the park did work, it would mean that I could get him to sleep in his own room tonight so that me and Alicia could have the bed to ourselves. It’s not that I thought she would be in the mood tonight; in fact, I was almost certain she wouldn’t be since her “morning” sickness tends to occur in the evening for some reason. Even if there was no sex for me tonight, it would be nice for once to wake up in the morning without Jonah’s foot in my face. I took my seat on the edge of the bleachers and reached into my backpack for the book which I had begun reading during my lunch hour at work. “Bleachers” by John Grisham, Josh mailed me his old copy a few weeks ago but I never had a chance to stop and read it until today.

I tried to force myself to read but my mind kept wandering. I could not get rid of the image of my son’s face as he looked down at me when I tied his shoes. Sometimes I find it difficult to see any part of myself in him. Sure he looks like me, but he feels like such a stranger when I am near him. As I watched Jonah climb up the ladder into one of the wooden towers I found myself wondering if he would even care if I was no longer here to take care of him. Does my presence mean so little that it would make no difference whether I lived or died? He is so young; he might not even remember me.

“No!” I thought, “Why do you have such dark thoughts? He’s your son! Not some stranger off the street but your own flesh and blood.”

Jonah lost his grip on one of the rungs of the ladder, tumbling down onto one of the wooden beams. I watched as he gaped at his knee, a scratch had appeared and blood was slowly beginning to trickle down. He had this look on his face all of a sudden like the greatest tragedy to happen to the world since the conception of corporate owned hip hop had just taken place on his knee. This was the part when his eyes would begin to fill with tears; he would wait until a few drops rolled down his cheeks before he would start howling.

He was so fragile. I wondered if I was ever that frail and vulnerable.

Jonah’s chest was heaving the way it always does right before he broke down into an all out bawling session. Watching him prepare to burst into tears, I realized that I felt the same emptiness that I did the last time I went to church as a kid. You see, I’m somewhat of an agnostic. It’s kind of like being an atheist but I don’t pray to Richard Dawkins each night before I go to sleep. Alicia is pretty much the same as me except for the fact that she still goes to church every once in a while to appease her mother.

There was this short pudgy woman sitting next to me with gray hair and black rimmed glasses. She looked over at my son who was still ready to blow at any minute and then back at me. Though she didn’t say anything I imagined her standing up and slapping me in the face saying, “What’s wrong with you? Your son is hurt and you’re sitting here judging him? Get off your ass and help him!”

I shut my book, returning it to its place inside the backpack. Then I removed some tissues and the little box of bandages from the front pocket. I walked over to the scene of the disaster.  He did not whine or cry out loud as I had expected, but simply whimpered as I kneeled down next to him in the wooden shavings of the playground floor.

Putting on one of those cheap smiles that make you want to shoot yourself for wearing, I said, “Hey kid, you hurt your knee?”

Jonah nodded his head as he stared up at me with pleadingly tearful eyes.

As I wiped the blood from his knee I said, “Its okay, we’ll fix it up better than it was before.”

My mind returned to those dark places as I peeled the wax paper from the bandage. The little cartoon figures on the adhesive strip seemed to be laughing at me at me as I thought to myself that my son only wants me when he is in need of something.

“All better?”

Jonah responded by sticking his elbow in my face. He must have hit it on the ladder on his way down even though there was no visible wound there. As I kissed the little elbow, I thought to myself that he was still my son and that the least I could do was pretend that I love him. At the very least, I owed him the illusion of a caring father.

Tears still fell as he lowered his elbow, but at least he was being quiet. The placebo kiss that Alicia had first come up with as a relic of her own childhood was our best defense against all minor bumps and bruises. I tried to stand up but Jonah jumped up and wrapped his arms around my neck before I could get off of my knees. I felt his tears soaking through the collar of my shirt. I never really thought about it before, but at that point I realize that he had never hugged me like that until just that very moment. His hugs always came right after I bought him something he really wanted like the Spiderman action figure he saw on TV that he played with once before letting it disappear into the recesses of his cavernous toy chest. As I kneeled there, the wood chips digging into my black khakis, I thought for a moment about walking up to the gray haired lady on the bleachers and saying, “how’s that for good parenting,” and then maybe throwing the word “hoe” in there just for dramatic effect. I can be kind of childish myself sometimes.

I whispered “its okay, kid,” as I placed my hand on his mass of dreadlocks.

In an instance of unfathomable appreciation Jonah spoke into my ear between tearful sobs, “I love you, Dad.”

That statement did more than throw me off guard. His voice sounded so sincere that it almost frightened me. For a moment I thought back to the house that me and Josh used to live at on the base outside of Kansas City. It was before my Dad sustained the back injury which required him to be discharged from service. I remember me and Josh tossing the basketball at the goal above the garage door. Dad drove up to the curb wearing his camouflage BDU and when he saw us he would pick us up and hold us close to the goal so that we could dunk the ball. Me and Josh would laugh and pretend we were both Charles Barkley. So vivid was that mental image that I could even hear his voice the way I remembered it when I was a kid. In that moment I hugged him more closely, they way I had wanted my own father to hug me when I was his age.

Standing up off the ground as I held him close I whispered back to him, “I love you too.”

In a moment it was all over. Jonah went back to conquering the wooden tower like it was some unnamed mountain in the Far East. As I got up and returned to my seat on the bleachers, I didn’t even feel like gloating in the gray haired lady’s face anymore. When I picked up the backpack I heard Jonah shouting from above me, “Hey Dad, look at me!” as he jumped up and down on this little wooden bridge that connects two of the towers. He was too short to see over the protective railing without hopping in place, but I made sure that I waved at him long enough for him to see. Jonah ran off to the other end of the playground and I opened up my backpack once more to return the bandages to their place. As I opened up the front pocket I wanted to smack the smirks off of the faces of each and every person sitting at those bleachers. Somebody had stolen my book.