why my hair dont grow no more

Me: “What’s the meaning of life anyway”
Hamza, overhearing me: “42″

I’ve raised him well.

So I am sitting on the toilet throne when Ayaan starts knocking on the bathroom door.  Naturally, I keep my mouth shut.  Who wants to insane all that poisonous gas through his mouth.

5 seconds go by, he doesn’t stop.

10 seconds go by, he doesn’t stop.

“What Ayaan?”
“What are you doing”
“I am on the toilet”
“What are you doing on it”

Seriously dude, you’re almost 5.  Figure it out!

“Can I finish please?”

He continues to knock.

“Go away”

At this point he starts banging on the door.  A few more seconds go by. Now he’s screamin’ my name and hitting the door.  About a full minute later I finish my business, wash my hands and start to floss my teeth.  He continues hitting the door.

Two more minutes go by.

I change into my PJs, brush, use the mouthwash, wash my face, curse those zits, play the “find-some-hairs-on-Zeeshan’s-head game”.  All while Ayaan continues to scream off the top of his lungs while kicking the door.  I know I could’ve opened the door, but I do need some alone time.

I clean the countertop, clean the bathtub, organize the shower area, fold dirty laundry … all just to avoid having to deal with him.  But he continues to scream.

I take a deep breath, collect all my patience and open the door.

“Why, Ayaan, why are you screaming?”
“Why won’t you tell me what you were doing on the toilet?”

Uh, like a failed soul I lower my shoulders and reply.  He smiles and walks away.

That’s it?  Nearly ten minutes of screaming, yelling, kicking and crying just to hear THAT?  I take him to the library, I sent him to preschool, he’s been at the junior kindergarten for a while, I took him to taekwando, I take him skating, I take him to soccer, I take him swimming.  After all that his mental maturity is basically crying for ten minutes just to hear what I was doing on the toilet, and then instantly smiling and walking away?

Real question isn’t why I am bald, real wonder is how I’ve managed to still hold on to my eyebrows.

Ayaan was craying his brain out.

Me: “What happened?”
Ayaan (nearly 5): “When I was 3 you asked me to do something and I was doing it and you got angry at me”
Me: “But why are you crying now???”
Ayaan: “I was going to do it but you got angry anyway”

Seriously, dude?  That’s how we’re going to roll now?

If feeding and clothing my kids weren’t an issue, I’d have a 2012 Audi A6 in my driveway :-

As it turns out, they put you in jail for not feeding your kids and obviously we don’t want that.  So I stick with my minivan. I do have an ingenious system to deal with the situation (or so I thought).  I drive my minivan pretending I am driving an A6. 

As it turns out, my system worked a little too well.

The other day I was driving on Derry (on my minivan of course) when a 2012 A6 pulled next to me.  Since the car just hit the market, it was the first time I actually saw one on the road.  My first thought was: “hey look, we’re driving same cars”.  The driver noticed me looking at his direction so he glanced towards me.  As our eyes met, I gave him a “hey look, we have same cool cars” look. 

It literally took me 5 seconds to notice my A6 was much higher than his and another 3 to remember I actually have a 5 year old minivan.

Phhbb, whatever.  My A6 is just as nice as his.  And mine carries 8 people.  He got a rotten deal and he was jealous. 

Ayaan decided to floss. I didn’t realize we had this much meat  :-

Ayaan barges in to  my office, yelling “she said the F WORD!!!”

“What?”, I snapped.  Safiya, what did you say?
Safiya: ”I said this book was stupid”
Ayaan: “oh my God, she said that ‘f word’ again!” 

That was close, even closer than the time I thought they were talking about the s word (reason #112)!  I was wondering how my 4 year old who hasn’t even started school yet knew the ‘f word’.  I was at least 5 before I started using it. 

When I first moved to Waterloo I had four apartment mates.  When I first met them, we wanted to go out for a walk (we all had just met).  One of us, lets call him Bob ( because that was his name) left early while rest of us unpacked. 

So the three of us went out when we saw Bob walking back towards the apartment.  Colin (one of our roommates) went right up to Bob and jokingly yelled “What the hell’s your problem, man”.  We thought Bob would recognize us, laugh, joke, something.  Instead Bob’s face went pale.  He turned around and literally ran.

Later that night when we got back, Bob came out of his room.

“Guys, you wont believe what happened”
”What  happened?”
”These three punks tried to attack me just cuz I am Asian”

Bob, I apologize for laughing really hard for the next ten minutes.  We really should’ve told him what happened before we laughed, he must have been so confused. 

I’ve often wondered what would’ve happened if Bob was walking with a large group of his body builder friends and decided to fight back instead of running away. 

I am so hot!  We’re having one of the hottest months on record and I am sitting here wearing a sweater.  And I am sweating.  Why?  Read on!

Ayaan came to my office a few minutes ago wearing a sweater and sweating from heat.

“Why are you wearing a sweater, it’s so hot?”
”Because I like it and I haven’t worn it for so long!”

Wait, I have sweaters I like and miss and I haven’t worn them for so long. 

I did what any reasonable person would do, I put on my favourite sweater.  Now Ayaan and I are both happy.  And hot.  But happy. 

I was doing laundry and was surprised to see Hamza didn’t have any dirty clothes in his hamper.

Me: “Hamza, did you wear clean underwear today?”
Hamza: “Of course”
Me: “Where did you put your dirty one from yesterday?”
Hamza: “In the drawer”
Me: “Umm, and the dirty one from the day before?”
Hamza: “In the drawer”
Me: “I see.  And where did you get the clean one this morning?”
Hamza: “From the drawer”

Err. 

Now here’s a tip for you readers: if it ever happens to you, wash everything. Don’t do what I did next. I had this genius idea to smell underwear from his drawer to see if it smelled like fabric softener (which would indicate it didn’t need washing).  The first one did smell and no, it wasn’t fabric softener smell. 

What the heck was I thinking smelling underwear that a 7 year old was potentially wearing for 4 days! 

This is what happened to my phone :-

How, you ask?

I was watching X-Men with my brothers when halfway through the movie I realized I was holding the phone.  So I put it in my jacket’s inside pocket.

The thing is, my jacket doesn’t have an inside pocket .

Doh! Now I know. 

Ayaan brought home a biscotti from school for Father’s Day.  He then lectured me on sharing and took  half of my biscotti away.  My biscotti! 

He has a promising career ahead of him as the taxman. 

Door bell.

"Are you looking for Ayaan" (he’s 4.5).
"No, I dont play with babies. Is Safiya home".  (she’s 9)
"How old are you?"
"5".

Baby?

I was going to write something on Fathers Day when I came across this gem from Louis CK.  He said it better than I could :-

Safiya and Hamza had their tae kwan do competition. 

Hamza: “I am nervous”
Safiya: “Pretend you’re not fighting for your country.  Pretend it’s just for fun”

Wait, I thought it was for fun.  You mean 7 year olds on their local competition are fighting for their country?  Err, God help us!  On the flip side, I wonder if my kids can call themselves vets. 

Me: “rock”
Ayaan: “rock”

…

Ayaan: “I won”
Me: “How, you said rock too”
Ayaan: “Yes, but my rock is bigger than yours”

Fitting to say, the boy was born in the USA. 

Me: “Ayaan, they put lines on the road for biking”
Ayaan: “They put lions?”
Me: “yes, so you can bike between lines”
Ayaan: “I dont want to bike between lions”
Me: “You’re young, you can bike on the sidewalk.  Come, let me show you those lines”
Ayaan: “I dont want to see lions”
Me: “it’s right here”
Ayaan: “I dont see lions”
Me: “These white lines on the road”
Ayaan: “White lions? I dont see them”
Me: “Right here” (I point at the lines)
Ayaan: “These are called lions too?”
Me: “Ya, they’re lines”

I didn’t realize what happened until much later he was telling his siblings there were two types of lions, the animal kind and the biking on the road kind.  Doh! 

My boys are broken. 

I pass Safya laundry to put away. “Safya, please make sure you put your underwear in the ….”.  Suddenly I was interrupted by my boys (ages 4 and 7) laughing out loud (“hahaha, he said underwear”).

The other day Ayaan, who is learning how to spell, asked me how to spell stopped.  “S, T, O, P, P…”.  I hear: “hahahaa, he said peepee, hehehe”. 

Argh!  I can’t have a conversation anymore.  And don’t even ask me what happens if the word “butt” ever slips out. 

Took kids to Booster Juice.  Ayaan didn’t want anything they had, so he ordered a custom drink (no yogurt, mango juice and orange juice mixed together with ice).  The lady at the counter says ok. 

Just to be sure, Ayaan calls back, looks her straight in the eye and says in a disturbingly stern voice: “I am not joking about mixing mango juice and orange juice.  That’s how I want it. Orange Juice.  Mango Juice.  Ice.  No  Yogurt.  And fast.” 

The boy is four!

Poor lady gave me the death stare that said: “what the heck have you been teaching your kid”.  I swear, it’s not me. I was just as terrified as she was. 

I did leave a tip. 

I’ve often gone out of my way to introduce my children to as many cultures and ethnicities as possible.  I, perhaps naively, thought they’d grow up to be colour blind.  But turned out they’re more observant than I gave them credit for. 

I know my daughter, when she was somewhat  younger, already decided it was okay to refer to people with different shades of brown.  When my older son was 5, he used to wonder why some people say “white” and “black” when everyone was really brown.  In many ways, I did succeed with them because they didn’t really see differences in skin colour to be anything other than a different shade of the same colour.

But those were my other two.  Not My-Goal-In-Life-Is-To-Grow-Up-To-Be-A-Man-With-A-Moustache.  I already knew this kid was going to either be a politician or a criminal mastermind. I didn’t know he was going to be racist too. 

Too harsh on a barely four-year old?  Judge for yourself :-

Ayaan: “Baba, why are you brown?”
Me: “What do you mean?”
Ayaan: “Why aren’t you white like the me and everyone else”

You?  Dude, I have news for you!  Your iron deficiency (true) gives you a pale skin, but and I are same ethnicity.   I know it was an innocent question from a four year old, but it still caught me a bit off-guard.  Why does he even know this? I hope he was referring to their t-shirts when he said “black girl and white guy”. 

Okay, I’ll let it slide, for now.  Four year olds ask questions. 

So we had a  nice talk about how different people have different skin colours based on the amount of sunshine their ancestors got.  A four year old who yelled he liked killing as a two-year old and could plot killing a cat to make room for a  new one, before even turning three, should be able to get that. 

Why am I brown!  Sheesh!  I am brown because being brown is freaking awesome!  Why aren’t you brown? 

Okay, I need to chill out.  I am going to BBQ steak until they’re brown on the outside and red on the inside, just like moi.

Here’s a hint: If you send me a friend request on facebook then please do one of the following (preferably all) :-

1. Make sure you put something in your profile.  An empty profile doesn’t tell me who you are. 
2. If you can’t do that then at least put a real picture.  Unless you really are a dog, using a dog pic as your profile doesn’t help anyone.
3. If you can’t do that either then at least introduce yourself.

What am I supposed to do if I get a friend request an Info shows me this :-

I am not allowed to send a message asking who the person is and his profile picture is a monkey (why would you pick a monkey to represent you anyway)!  These things tell me absolutely nothing about yourself.  NOTHING!  If you’re going to take time out to send out a friend request then have a mercy on my hair and at least add a one-liner with an introduction!  AAAH, using facebook shouldn’t be this stressful! 

This brings me to my second pet peeve.  I can forgive this: (it means you haven’t set a profile picture yet).  But I swear, none of these is your profile :-

I understand if you don’t want to be found. But if you’re sending friend requests out then either put your own picture up OR at least add an intro in the Info page or at least do not disable people’s ability to send messages to you!!!!!!

I feel like a jerk rejecting your friend request but sorry, I have no way of asking you who you are.  Oh this goes for all 8 request I’ve procrastinated on and am rejecting today.