Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell Podcast (private feed for andy@afbray.co.uk)

Storming Scout Camp

I used to hate camping. Now, I love it. That’s because my kids are doing it instead of me. Every summer, I pay to leave them in the woods for a week. We’ll see if they remember to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way back.Next Sunday, my thirteen-year-old, Mae, and eleven-year-old, Lucy, will both go to BSA summer camp. It will be Lucy’s first time. She’s gone on weekend campouts before but has never stayed in a tent for more than two nights. She’s nervous about camping for a full week. I can’t blame her. Houses exist for a reason. It would be cheaper to keep her at home than to pay for the privilege of letting her rough it. It seems backwards to pay extra to live with fewer amenities than usual. If I saw an Airbnb with no electricity or plumbing, you couldn’t pay me to book it. But if you attach a few merit badges, it transforms into a premium childhood experience. Scouting offers strategic deprivation in the name of developing character. It’s the ultimate business model. I wish I could get people to pay me to make their lives worse.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!The biggest downside of scouting is it actually works. My kids are developing all kinds of skills I don’t necessarily want them to have. Mae and Lucy have spent the last month doing prerequisites for their big outing. Wednesday night, Lucy told me she needed a hatchet. It’s never good when children start requesting weapons. Lucy insisted she needed to work on her Totin’ Chip certification, which would allow her to use sharp objects at camp. She needed to get that qualification beforehand on my property where I’d be liable. An older scout was supposed to train her on the proper safety procedures. Fortunately for her, and unfortunately for me, Mae fit that description. They went into the basement and pulled out every dangerous tool they could find. They disappeared into the backyard. A while later, they returned with all their fingers and toes attached. Apparently that ten-minute training session gave Lucy all the skills she’ll need to chop firewood. It’s the only chore she’s ever looked forward to. All it takes to make mundane tasks fun is the risk of severe bodily injury. If I can make it more extreme, maybe I can finally get my kids to fold their laundry.Recreational hatchet time won’t be the only danger at summer camp. The biggest threat will come from the sky. Mae has a track record with the weather. Her two previous years featured the worst storms in camp history. The first year, the same system that walloped the woods also hit our suburb far to the north. It knocked down a huge tree a few blocks away, which crushed a house where Mae sometimes played. Who would have guessed that, at that particular moment, she’d be safer in the middle of nowhere without a roof? The storm last summer was even worse. It featured 80 mph straight-line winds that did severe damage across the campground. Mae spent that storm hiding out in a covered picnic area under a house built into the side of a hill. Things got so bad that, afterwards, her troop leaders got everyone a patch to say that they survived the storm. I’m not sure what Mae did to anger Mother Nature, but clearly that spirit doesn’t forget or forgive. Lucy might have been better off insisting on going a separate week from Mae. That hatchet won’t provide much protection against a thunderhead.The upcoming round of summer camp is scheduled for the worst possible time. That time is the summer. We can only go places and do things when the kids are off school. It’s so lame how education gets in the way of our frivolous entertainment. We have June and July booked solid with minor outings we can’t pull off during the school year. This coming week, Lola and I are driving our family to Wisconsin to hang out with our college friends, Rocco and Phoebe. They have a boat, which is the foundation of any lasting friendship. The plan is to travel there Wednesday and home Saturday. Sunday morning, Mae and Lucy will leave for camp. That means they’ll have to do most of their packing for summer camp Monday and Tuesday, nearly a full week in advance. They are biologically incapable of doing anything before the last possible second. They inherited the procrastination gene from me. Worse, they’ll need many of their camp items in Wisconsin, meaning their stuff will need to be washed and repacked with virtually no time to spare. The odds of them not having something they need for camp when Sunday morning rolls around are approximately one hundred percent. I expect to have to make multiple emergency Walmart runs in the final hours before they depart. To save time, we should camp out in the Walmart parking lot the night before. I can’t prevent the panic caused by our poor planning, but I can make it more convenient.Mae and Lucy might not pack early, but they did get a head start on their merit badges. If they don’t do the prerequisites beforehand, they’ll come home from camp empty handed. For one badge, Mae has to observe mammals in the wild over multiple days. Humans don’t count. I’m not sure if non-human hominids do. If she observes Bigfoot, she deserves extra credit. At the very least, she’d win the respect and admiration of my dad, who remains a true believer. He’s still waiting for the day someone catches a sasquatch in a bear trap. I look forward to the world’s most well-deserved “I told you so.” So far, Mae’s nature stalking hasn’t turned up anything that dramatic. She went to the park in the middle of town and watched some squirrels. They didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. They save their crimes for when no one can see them. No one suspects the squirrel drug lord. I imagine the other kids going to camp will have similarly unremarkable reports about similarly unremarkable vermin. Not many children can look out their windows and see bears and bison. The largest wild mammal in these parts is the whitetail deer. The most likely place to see them is on the side of the interstate. What an awkward place to take a nap.I must admit I’m a little jealous of Mae and Lucy’s upcoming adventure. For as much as I complain about my own scouting experience, I enjoyed summer camp. I mainly liked the lack of adult supervision. We made our own merit badge schedules and were responsible for getting ourselves to and from class. It was college, minus the alcohol but with just as many mid-day naps. Unlike Mae, I never angered the weather gods. I don’t remember any severe storms. The worst I experienced was a steady drizzle. The saying went that it never rained at summer camp. Even during a downpour, my troop leader would say it was just a heavy dew. I don’t know if Boy Scouts made me a better person, but it taught me a thing or two about fake news.Nature really must have it out for Mae. Timing can’t explain the difference between my mild-weather camping and Mae’s apocalyptic storms. We both went in the last week of June. I only remember my dates because I always had my birthday while I was at camp. It was my most closely guarded secret. If the counselors discovered it was your special day, they made you run around the mess hall at lunch while everyone sang. That epic ballad went as follows: “Around the mess hall you must go. You must go. You must go. Around the mess hall you must go. It’s your birthday.” I appreciate lyrics that are on the nose. It makes it easy for me to remember them a million years later when I’m about to turn forty. My greatest fear was that I’d have to make that sprint while everyone serenaded me. I wouldn’t have minded the running part, but I was terrified of being the center of attention. Now, I email thousands of people a week begging them to pay attention to me. It’s shocking how far I’ve fallen. Despite its best efforts, scouting couldn’t save me from myself.Mae and Lucy aren’t my only kids with scout camps this summer. Waffle had hers last week. Because she’s still in Cub Scouts, hers was just a day camp. That was more than enough time for her to do damage. She practiced her skills with BB guns and archery. I don’t know what’s up with people training my children to be more dangerous, but I wish they’d stop. Waffle came home from camp every day completely exhausted. One night, she didn’t come down for dinner. She had fallen fast asleep in the few minutes it took me to air fry chicken nuggets. Terrorizing humanity really takes it out of you. She eagerly anticipates the day when she gets to go to BSA summer camp with her sisters. She’d like nothing more than to use hatchets and build fires. Perhaps the storms had it out for Mae because it knew what our family line had in store. If Waffle ever makes it to that camp, the damage from those straight-line winds will seem minor by comparison.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.Hopefully my girls won’t come home this year with another patch for surviving record-setting storms. I’d rather they just come back with good stories. What they’ll actually return with is good stories plus an entire garbage bag full of dirty laundry. We’ll need to quickly wash the contents so we’re ready for our next summer adventure. Scheduling all of these outings back-to-back seemed like a great idea in the planning stage but is a bit much now that we actually have to do them. I hate the guy who filled up my calendar with all this stuff. If I ever meet him, I intend to take him out. My plan is to slowly poison him with beer.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

Bunked

Brace yourselves. This week, I had to get out my tools. It was my job to stack my children. The result was far scarier than anything I experienced at the amusement park. There’s nothing riskier than putting your life at the mercy of my precarious craftsmanship.Bunk beds are unique among furniture. There’s nothing else that’s meant to hold people in a two-story configuration. Even Ikea has yet to propose a double decker couch. When it comes to sleeping, though, the more children you can warehouse in a single area, the better. Raising kids is most efficient when you can pile them on top of each other. When we first moved our kids out of their cribs, they were all in deconstructed bunk beds. We got one set from Lola’s parents and one set from mine. Early in our marriage, we were not above accepting hand-me-downs from relatives. We’re still not. If something’s not good enough for you anymore, it’s just right for me. I like my possessions like I like my people: free and slightly damaged. We had an advantage when it came to inheriting stuff. Lola and I had all four of our kids before our siblings had any of theirs. We won the race to collect our parents’ surplus child rearing junk. To date, it’s the only thing I’ve won in my life. You’re looking at the reigning champion of the Garage Sale Derby. Well, you’re reading the words by me. If you’re looking at me, I need to do a better job of keeping my curtains closed.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!My oldest two daughters were the first to leave the ground. Lola and I miscalculated when pumping out children as quickly as possible. We had too many kids for the size of our house. Even after we renovated the attic to add a bedroom, we were still left with four sleeping spaces for six people. Lola and I claimed one room for ourselves, although I’m sure she would have been more than happy to split us into two. That left us with three rooms for four kids. Rather than giving two kids their own room and forcing the other two to share, we elected to make all of the children equally miserable. We put two kids in two of the bedrooms and turned the third bedroom into a glorified storage closet, also known as a playroom. The idea was that by putting all of their stuff in one room, they would have enough space to sleep in the other two. That approach was naive to say the least. Like goldfish, children grow to fill the size of their container. They didn’t physically expand, but they added stuff until all three rooms were equally packed. No matter how fast Lola and I got rid of things, items came in faster than it went out. Eventually, we were left with no choice but to send Betsy and Mae into the sky. It was either that or make them sleep in the backyard. I would have gone with that option, but that’s where the pigs poop.Although Betsy and Mae slept in twin beds that were meant to be stacked, I never considered bunking them. Their beds were extremely old and unstable. Lola’s parents got them used many decades ago. I’m not sure if anyone in either of our family lines has ever bought new furniture. If you plan on having kids, you’re best off to get all your furniture pre-destroyed. The other reason we didn’t stack them was that the kids were getting older and homework was doing a better job at ruining their lives. They needed a flat surface where they could keep up with it. Rather than bunking the beds and then adding two desks in the space where one of the beds used to be, we opted for a far more complex solution. Lola found a used loft bed for cheap. It had a desk and a dresser built in. It seemed like a quick and easy solution to both of our problems. Predictably, it was the opposite of both of those things.Anything built with a hex wrench isn’t really meant to be disassembled. Getting the loft bed from the other person’s house to ours proved to be a monumental task. The massive, partially deconstructed pieces barely fit inside my minivan. It took me multiple trips between suburbs to get it home. Once it was inside my house, I had to move it up our twisty grand staircase by myself. Those ninety degree turns were designed so that wives could collect on their husbands’ life insurance policies. When I finally had it in the room where it was supposed to be, I couldn’t get it back together. I had to call in my father-in-law, Bob. He had to drill new holes and add extra support after I shattered a key piece of load-bearing particle board. Despite its reputation, Ikea-style furniture is not the adult version of Legos. It’s meant to go together once and never be taken apart again. If you make the mistake of trying to assemble it a second time, you better have a manlier relative who’s good with tools.The loft bed didn’t end up saving us any money. After we reassembled the used one for Betsy, Mae wanted one, too. We couldn’t find a second used set. We ended up having to buy a matching one at full price. It was cheaper than a new car, but not by much. Mae has yet to realize that her options were to get that loft bed or to go to college. Things only got more expensive from there. As soon as Lucy and Waffle saw how awesome those loft beds were, they wanted them, too. I told them they could have them when they were older, which is my default way of saying no. I hoped the newness of the loft beds would wear off and Lucy and Waffle would give up on wanting them. They never did. Fads come and go, but envy is forever.Finally, after years of asking, they wore me down. I decided to stack my youngest two children, but only if I could do it as cheaply as possible. I learned my lesson from the loft beds, which had more drawbacks than I anticipated. While Betsy and Mae love them, I hate how much clutter builds up on the desks under their beds. Anytime I try to clean out that area or simply to retrieve an item from the surface of one of them, I hit my head one hundred percent of the time. I can’t afford any more brain damage. Having a set of bunk beds on one side of the room and two freestanding desks on the other would lead to significantly fewer concussions for me. I’m finally wise enough to pick the furniture solutions that don’t require me to wear a helmet.Rebunking the beds was easier said than done. For starters, we didn’t have all the parts. We were missing the railing for the top bunk and the ladder. I asked Lola’s parents for it. They searched and searched but came up empty. Then I realized this was the set we got from my parents. I have a hard time recalling where anything originated. Remember those concussions I mentioned before? I don’t. We finally got the railing and ladder from my parents. They didn’t come with the necessary bolts. Surely that wouldn’t be a problem. I brought the ladder and railing into my house and left them in the front room. They stayed there for several weeks. The most important part of any project is putting it off for as long as humanly possible. Eventually, I ran out of excuses and had to put the thing together. All of our lives we’re about to become much more dangerous.The hardest part of the job was everything. Both twin beds were completely covered in stuffed animals. When I cleared them off, there was no space to walk on the floor. I tossed the stuffed animals out of the room. Somehow, the contents of that one chamber took up the entire second floor. It looked like a Squishmallow factory exploded. Then I had to figure out which bed was supposed to go on top. The answer was neither. We had mixed and matched the top and bottom headboards when we assembled the twin beds years ago. When both beds were on the ground, it didn’t matter. Now that I was stacking them, I had to take them apart and start over. That required virtually every tool I owned. None of the bolts matched. I needed hex wrenches, regular wrenches, every type of screw driver, and a crowbar. It’s important to note that Lola stayed in our third floor bedroom for this entire process. It’s the only reason we’re still married.After equal measures of critical thinking and brute force, I finally got the right headboards on the right beds. All the necessary holes were lined up. Unfortunately, there was nothing to fill them. Of all the parts we were missing, the most critical were the four pegs necessary to hold the top bed above the bottom one. At the start of my procrastination phase, I had purchased a wooden dowel to cut into pieces. Saturday, I measured twice and cut once. I put all four pegs in place. Then I summoned my children to help me lift the top bunk. The bed was lighter than it looked, which doesn’t bode well for its long-term stability. Positioning it was extremely awkward. It took ten hands to guide the bedposts onto the pegs. Once we did, I realized I should have measured twice and cut twice. All of the pegs were too long. We took the top bunk off the bottom bunk. I returned to the basement to saw again. I may or may not have sent one of those pegs rocketing around the room like a wooden bullet. It didn’t kill anyone, so it’s like it never happened. I brought the slightly shorter pegs back upstairs for a second attempt. The top bed fit perfectly over the pegs. We were almost in business.All that was left was to attach the railing and the ladder. I went into my basement to search through the bin of random screws that every man owns. To my shock and delight, I found two that fit the railing perfectly. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. That took care of one end of the railing. Unfortunately, I needed two more bolts. Three hours into the project, I had to make my first trip to the hardware store. That’s by far the longest I’ve ever made it without having to make a supply run. Either I’m becoming more efficient or I’m working slower. We all know it’s option two. I bought the bolts and came back, thinking I was almost done. The first bolt went in without a problem. The second bolt wouldn’t go in at all. That’s when I realized that the bottom board on the railing didn’t have a corresponding hole that went all the way through the bedpost. It only went part way through. In hindsight, it was probably supposed to have a short wooden peg, which I was missing. Attempting to get one would have required me to disassemble part of the bed and make a second trip to the hardware store. Instead, I drilled the hole the rest of the way through so one of my new bolts would fit. If you’re my wife reading this, I made that up and didn’t have to drill any new holes. Please don’t inspect the bunk beds more closely.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.After that, all that was left to do was to add the mattresses and the million Squishmallows. I left the second part to my kids. It took them the rest of the day to put all their stuffed animals back. Last night, Lucy and Waffle slept in the beds. Lucy was on top and Waffle was on the bottom. The bunk beds didn’t collapse and kill anyone, so the night was a success. This morning, Lucy noted that every time one of them moved, the other one heard it. Welcome to apartment living. Even with their complaints, the kids were delighted. Now they’re asking about when we can get them desks. I’ll see how long I can put off that request. In the meantime, we have a long card table that would fill the role perfectly. The best part is that it wouldn’t require any assembly. Maybe all our furniture should be card tables from now on.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

Waffle's First Job

Saturday marked multiple firsts for my nine-year-old, Waffle. She had her first job, her first customer service experience, and her first irate customer. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen—or, in this case, the bounce house.Technically, it was a volunteer position and not a job. Even in Indiana, fourth graders aren’t allowed to hold W2 gigs. At least not yet. It wouldn’t surprise me if, tomorrow, I saw a headline that Hoosier children can now work sixty-hour weeks as long as their bosses give them one fifteen minute break each day for homework. Well, you might see that headline. I won't see it because I can’t handle reading or watching the news anymore. Now I only engage in low stress activities like watching sports. Don’t ask me what my blood pressure was during the Pacers game Saturday. My kids’ BSA troop and Cub Scout pack volunteered to help with our suburbs’ summer festival. The children would provide labor in exchange for a donation from the non-profit group running the festival to help pay for summer camp and other scout activities. It’s the ultimate workaround for existing child labor laws. Kids can’t work for pay, but it’s okay to make them volunteer and then pay someone else on their behalf. If I had known that earlier, my parenting experience might not have been such a money losing endeavor. My greatest regret is failing to exploit my children to their fullest economic potential.Not many scouts were eager to sign up for shifts. The three girls I supplied were a large portion of the total labor force. Mae and Lucy went for BSA, and Waffle went for her Cub Scout pack. Only Mae had worked the festival before. She told her two younger sisters that, last year, she had been tasked with emptying trash cans for three hours. That failed to dampen Lucy and Waffle’s enthusiasm. They were mostly excited about running around the festival unsupervised. Garbage disposal duty was a small price to pay for freedom. The festival was within walking distance of our house. When it was time for their shift, they didn’t even wait for Lola and me to take them over. We went a short while later to verify that they made it safely on their own. The festival was a ghost town at that point. The event would feature live music later in the evening, but at 3:30 p.m., everybody was still setting up. In a few hours, there would be an avalanche of people and garbage. The scouts would be all that stood in the way of humanity being buried alive in its own filth. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it. That “somebody” was a small group of small girls.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!My kids were especially excited about their waste management duties because of the main job perk: a food voucher that came with their shift. They could take a coupon to any vendor at the festival to receive a meal free of charge. If they wanted an elephant ear to be their dinner, there was no power on earth that could stop them. They could try unique food pairings like giant tenderloins with snow cones or deep fried Snicker bars with cheeseburgers. That sort of culinary latitude was worth dealing with any amount of trash.Meanwhile, Lola and I were at home eating steak. We could thank the only non-scout in the family for that. In addition to the Triple Birthday Party, each kid gets to pick a meal as part of the extended celebration for their special day. The girls almost always choose to go out to eat somewhere, or for me to go out and pick something up. The latter is my preferred scenario. It lets me chug six liters of soda in the privacy of my own home rather than asking a waitress to repeatedly bring me free refills. I can’t afford the tip warranted by that level of labor. This year, Betsy made me extremely proud with her choice for a birthday meal. She wanted my board game friend, Peter, to make steaks. His grilled New York strips are far superior to any cut of meat that I’ve ever had in a restaurant. I was able to buy six pounds of high-end beef from the grocery store for what I would have paid for a single entree at a top tier steakhouse. It was perfect timing that we did it on a night when the younger three girls were eating something else. Fine cuts of meat would have been wasted on them. Had they been home, I would have made them grilled cheese sandwiches or reheated leftovers. Instead, they were sampling the finest cuisine food trucks had to offer. It tricked them into thinking that trading unpaid labor for food was actually a good idea. The customer service meltdown that would define the evening was yet to come.After an immensely satisfying steak dinner that was all the better because I got to finish everybody’s leftovers plus the extra steak, we walked over to the festival to check on the kids. Mae and Lucy were deep in the garbage mines. We caught Mae in action emptying a can. She had a technique for pulling out the bag while jumping backwards to avoid what she called “trash juice.” She had been on the job long enough to develop technical jargon. She asked us if she could do a second shift, which would keep her there until 10 p.m.. Apparently dodging trash juice was fun. We told her that she could. I didn’t want to risk the karmic fallout of stopping her the one time she actually wanted to clean. Lucy, meanwhile, was ready to go home. She had seen enough trash juice for one lifetime. She had already secured her prize: a walking taco in exchange for her meal voucher. That didn’t satisfy her lust for junk food. She asked me if I could get her cotton candy on the way out. I paid five dollars for twenty-five cents worth of melted, strung-out sugar. I was okay with that trade since I got the dad tax. Remnants of that cotton candy will be stuck in my beard for the rest of my life. It was a small price to pay for the optimal food pairing. Cotton candy really is the perfect chaser for the world’s best steak.After a little more walking, we found Waffle at the end of a side street. She was running a bounce house. Yes, running it. It was her first day on the job and she had already worked her way into a position of authority. I’ve repeatedly called the structure a bounce house, but it was really more of an inflatable obstacle course. Waffle was inside of it directing children. She was like the lifeguard at the top of a water slide. It was her duty to prevent a multi-kid pileup. Putting Waffle in charge of safety is like putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department. Somehow, no one had died yet. Despite the high stakes, her job was literally a cushy one. She was bouncing up and down on an inflatable floor while Mae and Lucy handled liquid refuse. The only downside was that Waffle dealt with people. She was about to learn why her sisters preferred the garbage.Waffle also wanted to stay for another shift. I let her. I generally say yes to anything that keeps the kids out of the house. We left Mae and Waffle at the festival and walked home. The critical confrontation happened after we were gone. I pieced it together from eyewitness testimony. As with all my stories, nearly all the facts will be wrong, but the vibes will be on-point. Waffle was still in the inflatable obstacle course, diligently doing her job of directing traffic. A line was forming in front of the attraction. Waffle pointed to let in kid after kid. A pair of siblings approached. Waffle let in one sibling but told the other one to wait. Their dad got mad. He confronted Waffle. Other kids were cutting his second kid, he said. Waffle wasn’t being fair. She had to let his child in. His volume went up.Waffle was still inside the obstacle course. She’s nine. She’s very small. She wasn’t rattled. Perhaps she’s used to a lot of yelling from home. For her and her sisters, inside voices are full-throated screams. Then again, maybe she felt safe because she was protected by inflatable walls. It’s not like the guy could run in there and get her. She was a rabbit in her own warren. Your move, Mr. Fox.Thankfully, the girl troop’s BSA scoutmaster was standing within earshot. She stepped in immediately. I assume she used her mom voice. It’s exactly as powerful as “the voice” used by the Bene Gesserit in Dune. Those movies were basically documentaries. She told the man to stop yelling. He rebutted that he wasn’t yelling, which is how you instantly lose any argument. If you ever have to say, “I’m not yelling,” you’re yelling, full stop. Confronted by superior authority, the man backed down. Waffle let the guy’s second kid go through the course, and the man slinked away.Waffle is too young to grasp how wildly inappropriate and potentially dangerous that situation was. There should never be a time where a grown man raises his voice to argue with a nine-year-old volunteering at a free event, or with a nine-year-old at all. I say this as someone who argues with a nine-year-old literally every day. The difference is that she’s my nine-year-old. I would never argue with somebody else’s nine-year-old, regardless of their position of authority. I would simply take the L and move on. The incident gave Waffle an extremely accurate preview of what it’s like to deal with the public. The inflatable obstacle course was free. It’s not like the guy and his kids were being deprived of a service for which they had paid and were entitled. It was something fun and silly for the youth at a public festival, yet the dude was still mad enough about it to yell at a child. Now would be a very good time for that guy to re-examine everything about his life. Unfortunately, behavior like that is more the rule than the exception. If Waffle’s future job requires her to deal with human beings in any setting, she will see many versions of that person. May she always have an inflatable obstacle course to escape into if things get dicey.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.I walked back to the festival to pick up Mae and Waffle at the end of the second shift. They were in high spirits. They had worked hard, raised money for their troop and pack, and eaten free food of questionable nutritional value. Those were all the ingredients of a perfect Saturday night. One angry dad couldn’t ruin that for them. As we walked home, they discussed their experiences. Both agreed that running the inflatable obstacle course was the hardest job at the festival. Dealing with trash was far easier than dealing with people. Perhaps I have some future sanitation engineers on my hands. As someone who’s had to deal with more than a few humans in my time, I fully support that career path. Hears to the future garbage men and women of America. I hope no one ever yells at any of them again.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

A Streetcar Named Despair

Having completed my hosting and parenting obligations with the Triple Birthday Party, my next move was obvious: to flee the state. I planned a trip with Lola and four friends to a Reds game in Cincinnati. I bought tickets for the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. I’m old enough that I need a full day before and after any outing to recover. It was a good day to escape. The Indianapolis 500 was that same afternoon. More than 500,000 people were expected at the track. On our way out of town that morning, cars were already backed up on all the off-ramps leading towards the track. The path to Ohio was wide open. I will literally change states to avoid traffic congestion.The kids weren’t sad to see us go. The girls are big enough that Lola and I felt comfortable going two hours away for the day while they watched themselves. Having just finished school, they wanted nothing more than to be left at home to do nothing. As their parents, we couldn’t let them enjoy that level of happiness. Before we walked out the door, Lola assigned a list of chores. Each was a simple task that required little to no interaction between children. Naturally, those assignments would lead to hours of fighting. That wasn’t our problem. My hope was simply that any screaming wouldn’t be loud enough to be audible one state over. To the kids’ credit, I didn’t hear them once, but I had the radio up fairly loud. I’ll have to wait to see if I get noise complaints in the mail from my neighbors.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!The game wasn’t until 1:40 p.m.. We timed our departure so that we’d have enough time to eat before the game. None of us had picnic supplies on hand, and nobody was in the mood for a grocery run. Nothing kills fun faster than shopping. We figured we’d eat at one of the million restaurants in downtown Cincinnati. To offset those costs, I planned to park two miles from everything at my free spot at the base of a mountain. I found the space on our prior trip to the city for an FC Cincinnati game. That time, I parked on top of the mountain and walked down before discovering the free spot at the base. This time, I planned to go straight to the bottom, which is the overall direction my life is heading these days. To get from my distant spot to the game, I intended to utilize Cincinnati’s free streetcar service. I was harnessing the power of an entire publicly-funded transportation grid to avoid paying fifteen dollars for a closer spot. That was the textbook definition of tax money well-spent, especially since those tax dollars were Cincinnati’s and not mine.The drive from Indianapolis to Cincinnati was uneventful. Besides marveling at the masses of cars clogging up the interstate exits on the way to watch other cars go in circles, we mostly caught up on each other’s lives. There were so many health problems and petty misfortunes that we hadn’t shared with each other yet. Before my grandmother passed away, we visited her a few times a year. She’d give us an update on all the people who had died or had some grievous medical calamity since the last time we were over. There is no good news about your friends when you’re in your nineties. I’ve gotten to that point with my friends, and I’m not even quite forty. We do everything faster these days, including falling apart. I had hoped we could play a game or two in the van, but there was far too much bad news to swap. Any lulls in the conversation were filled with complaints about my music selection and my driving, both of which offered ample room for improvement. Driving a minivan full of adults isn’t necessarily any better than driving a minivan full of kids. Grown-ups might drop fewer snacks, but their complaints are more articulate and better grounded in fact. I wish my van had one of those windows in limousines that cuts off sound from the passenger compartment. If anyone wants to complain, they can call me.When we arrived in Cincinnati, I was relieved to see that my free parking spot at the base of the mountain was still unclaimed. There’s not much demand for spaces on random side streets miles away from anything important. Atmospheric conditions were less welcoming. I dressed for a dreary day, but I arrived in beach weather. I was wearing jeans and a jacket. It was too late for me to change my decision on pants, and I didn’t have sharp enough scissors to turn them into jorts. I left my coat in the car and resigned myself to the fact that my legs would simply burst into flames. It would be one more medical misfortune to talk about on the ride home.We didn’t have long to reconsider our wardrobe decisions at the side of the van. I hurried everyone along so we could catch the next streetcar at the first station on our route. I am very fun in high stress urban settings. We got to the station right as the streetcar pulled up. Everything was going according to plan, or at least it would have been if I remembered that we were a group of humans and not robots. Sometimes people have to go to the bathroom. I didn’t think to ask about that before I rushed us onto the streetcar. It was now becoming a crisis for one member of the group. Of all the things I had researched when organizing this trip, bathroom locations weren’t one of them. That was an amateur mistake. Whenever you leave the house, always know your emergency contact information and the approximate coordinates of the nearest toilet.The streetcar was taking us to a giant food festival a few blocks from the ballpark. I knew the festival had bathrooms. I didn’t know if we could make it that far. The tram stopped in front of the library one station before our destination, but we decided to roll the dice and hold out for the festival. Unfortunately, the festival wasn’t at the next stop. To the surprise of no one, my ability to find giant outdoor events is just as bad as my music selection and my driving. We rushed into a nearby CVS. The cashier said the bathroom wasn’t for public use. The key to urban planning is to make toilets as hard as possible for visitors to find so they have to pee behind Dumpsters in alleys. It really boosts tourism. The cashier said the closest public bathroom was at the library one stop earlier. Our options were to backtrack on foot or push forward and find the food festival, if it existed at all. Maybe I got my weekends mixed up and there was no food festival. Perhaps the real food festival was the friends we made along the way.I deferred the final decision to the person who had to go to the bathroom the worst. They elected to bravely push forward. Three painful blocks later, we finally located the festival. I have never in my life been so relieved to see a row of porta potties. Happiness is a plastic phone booth with unspeakable contents at the bottom.After the porta potties saved the day, we had time to eat. The festival wasn’t exactly a place to find good deals. Almost everything cost ten dollars, whether it was a drink, a sandwich, or a tiny bowl of macaroni and cheese. Clearly Ohio doesn’t have laws against price fixing. Every brewery in town had a booth, but the costs of all their food and drinks were inflated to cartel prices. We briefly debated taking the tram a few miles north to eat inside a brewery at normal menu costs, but we decided we didn’t have time. Besides, ten dollar sandwiches were still cheaper than what we would find in the ballpark. I can justify almost any bad purchase by reminding myself that I would get screwed over even worse at the next place. We stayed at the festival and completely vaporized the tiny amount of money I saved on parking. The saying “penny wise, pound foolish” comes to mind, mainly because it felt like my finances were being murdered by Pennywise the clown. Down here, the only thing that floats is my loan to pay for the day.Full of the world’s most expensive street food, we walked a few blocks to the game. Our tickets were only twenty-five dollars, which is two and a half sandwiches in Cincinnati terms. Despite the cheap price, our view was relatively good. We were on the third baseline low enough that Lola didn’t get vertigo. Apparently some people have heard of the Chicago Cubs, whoever they are. They had more fans in the stands than the Reds. The crowd cheered when the hometown team lost. If you’re a sports franchise, you absolutely do not want my support. I curse everything I love. Just ask my wife and kids.After the game, we made our way back to one of the streetcar stations. There was a lot of festival traffic blocking the trams. We figured it would be quicker to walk to another part of the route and catch a different streetcar. When we got to that station, we reasoned it’d be faster to walk to one more. We ended up hiking the entire mile and a half, after I had explicitly promised the group that we wouldn’t have to do much walking thanks to Cincinnati’s robust public transportation system. My promises aren’t just empty; they’re maliciously wrong and lead to tragic amounts of exercise.Before leaving the city, we stopped at a brewery. The venue allowed carry-in food. There was a pizza place two doors down. I heroically offered to pick up a few pies. On the way, I received an urgent call from Lola. She told me to turn around immediately. According to the restaurant’s website, each pizza costs three sandwiches, which was outrageous, even by the standards of the food cartel. Instead, we returned to my van and left the city without eating dinner. Half an hour from home, Lola texted the kids and asked them to cook a few frozen pizzas. The food was waiting for us, hot and ready, when we walked in the front door. Abandoning your children at home for the day while you flee the state has unexpected upsides. The kids didn’t murder each other while we were gone, and they allegedly finished their chores. I took them at their word because I didn’t feel like being angry. Ignorance is bliss and also makes me a better parent.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.I went to bed immediately after eating pizza at the extremely late hour of 9:30 p.m., which was for the best. Every team I support that had a night game also lost. The Pacers and FC Cincinnati should pay me not to root for them. It was an exhausting day that had too much overpriced street food and entirely too much exercise, with “entirely too much” being “any.” Still, it was a lot of fun. I look forward to our next outing to a Reds game, probably sometime next summer. I need to give my friends at least another year to rack up more medical conditions that we can talk about on the drive there and back.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe

The Ultimate Reward

By the time you read this, the Triple Birthday Party will be over. I, however, am still stuck in the final hours of panic cleaning, which have somehow stretched into days that feel like centuries. If I survive this, I’ll tell that harrowing story on Thursday. The upcoming weekend is slated to be a two-day birthday-Easter extravaganza that won’t leave much of a window for writing. I can’t be messing around with adverbs and participles when I should be strapping on body armor for the adult Easter egg hunt. Fighting over dollar bills hidden in plastic eggs is literally the only good part of being an adult. All the better if collecting that money requires multiple full-body tackles. Anything worth doing is worth doing in a way that hurts your siblings and also yourself. My family has elevated self-destruction to an art form.Since it’s too early to write about why I’ll be limping or in a wheelchair, I’ll confine my story to the first part of the week. I didn’t just panic clean my house to impress relatives who will later fight me for petty cash. This week, I also watched my kids collect numerous awards. Betsy cleaned up for FFA, literally and figuratively. They have a banquet at the end of the year where they celebrate all the things the students accomplished. Betsy’s achievements were honored with commemorative certificates and pasta. Carbs are the second greatest form of reward. The first is cash, ideally delivered by means of plastic eggs distributed across a lawn and acquired by right of combat. My hope is that Betsy can parlay her stacks of priceless—but also worthless—certificates into real money in the form of scholarships. Finding ways to pad your college application is the most important part of high school. Nobody else knows how good you are unless you tell them. Critics claim high school doesn’t teach things that are useful in the real world, but shameless self-promotion is the most important skill of all. It’s not just good for getting fake jobs like being an influencer, although it’s certainly necessary for that, too. If you want to break into any field, you need to fake it until you make it. Then, once you get the job of your dreams, you need to fake it even more. You can finally be honest with yourself and others when you die—but only after you get past St. Peter. When he’s still evaluating you, you’ll need to do the most faking of all.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!Betsy had many accomplishments worthy of certificates. FFA is a broad club that oversees a million completely unrelated sub-activities. Betsy and her team were recognized for placing at the state level in competitive parliamentary procedure. Arguing over the rules of how a meeting is run might sound nerdy, but it’s not too different from most sports. There’s just as much rule lawyering in the NBA. Fun fact: No player has ever committed a foul. Just listen to them complain after any whistle. Arguing about who’s turn it is to second a motion in a professional meeting club seems straightforward by comparison. At first glance, it would appear to be another practical life skill, but most jobs don’t use parliamentary procedure. They operate by the rules of email warfare. It’s both a delicate dance and a deadly bloodsport. The right use of “per my last email” can burn down someone’s entire world. FFA has a proud history of changing with the times. I’m sure they’ll add passive aggressive email competitions by next year. If Betsy can master that one, she’ll be a CEO in no time.Betsy and her teammates were also recognized for their livestock judging skills. They achieved a state rank for body shaming cows, sheep, and pigs. That’s one skill that won’t translate into the real world—I hope. Maybe office environments are meaner than I remember. This was Betsy’s first and last year in that particular activity. She didn’t mind hurting the livestock’s feelings. She had three sisters. She is well versed in all forms of emotional combat. Her main complaint was that she wasn’t allowed to talk to her teammates for hours at a time. The judges didn’t want them swapping ideas about which sheep they thought was the ugliest. She came out of that very quiet day with yet another fancy certificate. Maybe it will take her one step closer to a scholarship with FFA or an unrelated organization that also frowns on fat bovines. Animal beauty standards are getting out of hand. That’s what we get for letting them test our beauty products. You can put lipstick on a pig, and it makes their Instagram follower counts skyrocket.Waffle collected an award of her own. Her running club had its one and only fun run for the year. The kids ran three thousand meters, which is just shy of two miles. Your first race is always miserable. So is your last race and all the races in between. The entire sport is little more than self-inflicted torture. The first race is especially bad because the pain is unexpected. Jogging around with your friends at practice is fun. Dying in a race because you’re full of adrenaline and started out too fast is not. Before each of their first races, I told all four of my girls that my goals for them were no walking and no crying. Going into this week, we had yet to achieve either one. Even Betsy, who runs varsity in track and qualified for cross country regionals as a freshman, couldn’t hold back the tears in middle school. It’s my fault. I spent my kids’ entire lives telling them to avoid pain. Then I abruptly changed messages and told them to hurt themselves as much as possible over a long distance. When you touch a hot stove, your first instinct is to pull back your hand, not to leave it there until someone else says you crossed an arbitrary finish line. Only Betsy stuck with running. Mae did it for two years before abandoning it forever. Lucy learned her lesson after one. Before Waffle’s first race, my expectations were low. If she came out less than completely traumatized, I would have been happy. I suspected even that was asking too much.On the morning of the race, it poured. The organizers made it clear they would never cancel. There were too many schools involved and not enough days left in the academic year. The most they would do would be to delay by an hour if there were lightning. That was better than the alternative of sending out the tallest kid with a long metal pole as a diversion. The schools didn't have to decide between the two plans because the rain stopped. Hundreds of little kids had the green light to run through the swamp that used to be a park. That was Lola’s problem. She packed old towels and extra shoes for the ride back to our house, where Waffle could be hosed off. Meanwhile, I was at Betsy’s FFA banquet, which was the opposite of a mud pit. Fancy dress was required. Many of the dads still wore cargo shorts, but I could tell they were their nice cargo shorts and not the ones they wore when mowing. That’s as close as you can get to a black-tie event in the middle of Indiana. Some of the guys might have even been wearing the cargo shorts from their weddings.The gun went off. Waffle took off too fast, as most kids do their first time. Show me the child with self control and I’ll show you the cop posing as a minor. Waffle walked some but didn’t cry. She came close. Running is truly terrible. She pushed herself because her best friend was right behind her. Growing up with sisters taught her that there’s nothing more important than beating the people closest to you. She crossed the finish line without a tear on her face, a remarkable first for our family. More importantly, she got real hardware she could gloat about. She earned a medal for being the third place third grader out of all four schools. Unlike her Pinewood Derby trophies, which she won because there was no one else in her age group, there was actual competition this time. It was enough of an incentive to ensure she runs next year. That’s how you ruin your life starting at an early age. Some day, her knees will sound like mine.Mae wasn’t spared from award season. Her tennis team was supposed to have an end-of-the-year ceremony after school Friday, but it was rescheduled for during the school day next week. That’s my ideal scenario. I fully support anything that saves me an extra trip. The downside is it will make the final school days even more crowded. During those same hours, the elementary, middle, and high school will each host an academic award ceremony. Parents are only invited if their kid gets a special one-off award. Even then, the schools encourage you to attend virtually. Admitting a bunch of people in the middle of the day is a security risk and a logistical nightmare. Large sections of the middle and high school parking lots are closed off due to construction. It’s a shame the schools only discouraged parents from attending some activities instead of all of them.The entire seventh grade and their parents are supposed to go back to the school for a world’s fair, where they’ll show off their projects on different countries. It’s a tradition dating back decades. Lola’s plan is to park half a mile away and walk. Mae might not win an award for the replica of a statue that she made, but Lola should get one for the farthest distance traveled on foot. The real prize will be that that particular project will be over and we won’t have to worry about it anymore. I hope they don’t punish us by making us take it home. The only thing worse than hiking half a mile to your parking spot is hiking half a mile to your parking spot while carrying a large replica Chinese sculpture.By the end of the school year, my kids will have backpacks full of certificates. I’ve already established a system to get those awards into the garbage as quickly as possible. I scan them into folders that I’ll never look at again. Then I give the kids the option to keep any of the certificates that are especially important to them. Sometimes they’ll pull out one or two, but generally they abandon the entire pile. In the grand scheme of things, your fifth grade second semester honor roll certificate doesn’t carry much emotional significance. I discard the rest, decluttering the house and saving us from drowning in mementos of excellence. The flaw in this plan is it depends on me to do the scanning. I get around to it—eventually. It usually only takes me a few months or years. In the meantime, the pile gets bigger and bigger. Someday, I’ll throw away awards without scanning first and see if anyone notices. As long as no one checks the trash cans, I can continue pretending to be a good dad. I paid attention during those fake-it-till-you-make-it classes in high school.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.It took me over a decade to finally clean out my backpack after the final day of college. I waited just as long to deal with my own horde of meaningless childhood awards. I used to be incredibly good at participating. If you wanted somebody to show up no matter what, I was your guy. If you wanted somebody to show up AND perform well, you definitely should have called somebody else. I had two boxes of trophies, medals, and certificates. I only had specific memories associated with a few of them. The rest were just stuff. There’s only one place that extraneous junk belongs. I hope those participation trophies mean more to the raccoons at the dump than they did to me. They’re just as deserving as I was.Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.James This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jamesbreakwell.substack.com/subscribe