Thursday, February 03, 2011

I'm a Rotten Parent!

Why? Because it is parental malpractice to allow a child who has had a cold for a week and who is taking antibiotics for one of his very rare ear infections to play outside when it is only eight degrees and windy (That is eight of our capitalist Fahrenheit degrees, Martijn, not those Bolshi Celsius degrees that you and every one else uses!) Of course, it is also parental malpractice to lock your kid up for three days in a second-storey apartment while he stares out the window longingly at half a foot (about 12 centimeters, for you socialistas) of perfect, crystalline snow. So I can't win, can I? Well, if I'm going to fail as a parent, I'm going to fail by letting my boy play outside when he probably shouldn't. It's a tough job, this parenting!

8 comments:

Carl Duewall said...

Be careful there my friend, you are approaching normal behavior.

Dave Renfro said...

Normal? The horror!

Hey, Carl!

Martijn said...

Rotten parents make great kids is my (anarchistic-commy-aristotilian) opinion. And perfect parents make rotten kids.

So, it's 8 Fahrenheid? And how am I supposed to know how many degrees that is? I can just about work my way to the answer by comparing with what I know from Hollywood movies... In Trains, Plains & Automobiles, Neal Page and Del Griffith sit in the back of an open car when it's REALLY cold and Del asks "how cold do you think it is?" and Neal says "one". So 8 would be really cold too. Hang in! Hi, Dave.

Martijn

Dave Renfro said...

8F = -13C

Martijn, you have no idea how frustrating it is still using standard measurements. I make carbide end mill blanks at work. Some of them have standard and metric dimensions on the same print. In fact, some of them have metric dimensions with standard tolerances. Of course, the tolerances are superscripted and the abreviations are not there on the prints, but we see absurd dimensions like this:

D 0.5000" +0.0002/-0.0000
L 101.6 mm +0.0600/-0.0000

It drives us batshit!

Oh, and I couldn't agree more that perfect parents make rotten kids. At least I don't have to worry about that!

Martijn said...

Oh, but I know how difficult it is! As a scuba diver I was used to seeing how much air was left in the tank by seeing it in Bar (kilo pascal). Then one day I leaned some gear from Amercan friends and I had to see the same things in pounds per square inch!!! Not that I cared too much... the rule is simply to go up when the air is all gone.

-13C is COLD for sure!

Martijn said...

"leaned" is loaned.

Anonymous said...

Aw, you're a great parent. UF Mike

Dave Renfro said...

Thanks, Mike! Sometimes I doubt myself, but then my boy, five years old, will use a word like "madagas-truck" as he did today. He doesn't care to say his name all the time or state his age, which to the State of Arkansas indicates a severe speech delay, but damn can that boy throw down some fun wordplay! Maybe I am doing something right!