Release the Hounds!

Well, as it is Tuesday in the week preceding my return to classes at the Uof I, I am understandably anxious. I feel good about the prospect of actually attending classes, about not having to work some shitty job that I'm using partially to keep bills paid and partially as an excuse to not grow up and graduate. Of course, I want to graduate. Given how deep the god damned snow has gotten here in Moscow over the last 3 weeks, I want in the worst way to nuke this town and watch the cloud rise in the rear view. Jesus, my kids can't even play in this snow since there's so much of the shit just piled up around here!

Imagine, if you will, watching an ecstatic 3 year old jump off the last 3 steps of your front stoop, suddenly being swallowed to the neck by the icy clutches of Moscow's wintered climes. He had taken off so fast that he left an after cloud in his wake. As his shrills of excitement turn to shrieks of horror, his reactionary older sister dives in feet first and waist deep in her rescue effort without so much as a word. It is at this moment, and every father has them, that he is reminded that he belongs to an elite yet common brotherhood. It is at this moment as his children look up with terrified and glassy eyes, immobilized by by a combination of severe winter weather and their physically small statures, you stand at the top of the steps shaking your head and gripping a snow shovel ironically thinking about how a few brief years before, someone looked on you in many similarly pathetic situations shaking their heads in the exact same way. A small rewind in the memory to bundling up the children with great care in preparation for the outdoors, the jackets, hats, snow pants, boots, gloves, jackets, scarves, whatever. You had this feeling that this exact scenario would unfold, even with your careful warnings to the children that it would. As you sigh, and remember where you are looking down at your sniveling little ones deciding whether or not to give them the "I told you so", or just to let them see the "I told you so" look on your face as you pull them out of the snow. Dads the world over have mastered this look, and you know that when you give it to them that you are passing it on from someone who masterfully taught it to you in the same way they were taught themselves. The "I told you so" look is a genuine human heirloom, interwoven into the very fabric of societies and cultures the world over since the dawn of stupidity. It is the signal of manhood as you realize it's significance, and the gong that introduces that sobering question as you grasp little bodies and drag them shivering up the steps, "Fuck. Was I really this dumb?"