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

My Friend of a Friend, the Pope

Not to brag (okay, definitely to brag) but my friend, Winston, knows the new Pope. Like, really well. They’ve had beers together. The Pope was roommates with Winston’s dad in college. He stood in Winston’s dad’s wedding. He’s been a close family friend for Winston’s entire life. For all but a few days of Winston’s existence, that wasn’t anything to gloat about. Anybody can be close family friends with a bishop. All that changed with a wisp of white smoke. Now, Winston has an all-time name to drop, even if it’s a new name the family friend had never gone by before. Although I guess it’s not that new. Thirteen Leos beat him to it.Winston’s dad met the future Pope in college. Winston met me in college. I’m a future no one. I’m also a current no one. I like to be consistent. Winston introduced me to my future wife. Lola and I would have met eventually—it was a small college, and we had a bunch of classes together—but Winston gets official credit for connecting us. Lola curses his name to this day.Winston married Lola’s college roommate, Virginia. Lola and I both stood in their wedding. Virginia stood in our wedding. Winston did a reading. They’re the godparents for our oldest kid. We’re the godparents for their only kid. More importantly, I’ve helped Winston and Virginia move, separately and together, multiple times. They owe me a life debt. We’ve linked our families as closely as we can without marrying each other in some sort of weird quadrangle that would definitely not be okay with the Catholic Church. That means Winston’s family friend is essentially my family friend. I’m almost buddies with the Pope.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication with second-hand pope connections. You should probably sign up.What are the advantages of this second-hand connection? They are legion. For starters, if the Pope declares a crusade, I could leverage Winston to get an exemption. My knees aren’t good enough for a holy war. I have a doctor’s note.My oldest daughter should benefit as well. Betsy’s godfather has a direct link to the leader of the Catholic Church. The Pope doesn’t have the power to pardon crimes in the US, but if he made a few calls on Betsy’s behalf, that would carry some weight. He could get a felony bargained down to a misdemeanor in no time flat. Betsy’s get-out-of-jail-free card is just one call away, assuming that the Pope still carries a cell phone and that Winston has his number. Hopefully the Pope wouldn’t send him straight to voicemail. That would be figuratively and literally telling Winston to go to hell.The upside of all this is the greatest for Winston himself. He’s a religion teacher at a Catholic school. He now has the ultimate trump card. He can use the Pope like parents use Santa. Behave yourselves or I’ll tell the Pope. You don’t agree with how I graded your essay on Church history? Let’s ask the Pope. You think memorizing lists of virtues is pointless? Guess who disagrees? My close personal friend, THE GOSH DARN POPE. You’re not allowed to swear when you invoke the Pope, but it’s okay to take his name in vain. Winston is now unfireable. Any Catholic school principal who crosses him will get the boot like a common Protestant. It’ll be a struggle for Winston to get through a semester without threatening to have at least one student excommunicated. With great connections comes great responsibility. I hope he greatly and responsibly milks the situation for all it’s worth.The person this has to be the weirdest for is Winston’s dad. There’s no way he’ll ever be able to take the Pope seriously after rooming with him in college. What are the odds that, out of eight billion people on earth, the one chosen to lead the Church is the guy you used to do beer bongs with on Thirsty Thursdays? Not that the total selection pool was really eight billion. It excluded women, but that might have been the only exception. I’m not sure if the pope has to be a cardinal, or even Catholic. I assume Air Bud rules apply. If something isn’t explicitly forbidden, it’s implicitly allowed. We’re lucky we didn’t get a golden retriever as Supreme Pontiff. Regardless, it has to be surprising that some guy you used to know as Keg Killer or Captain Barfy is now in charge of 1.1 billion Catholics. For legal purposes, I don’t have any evidence that Winston’s dad ever called the Pope either of those nicknames. I also don’t have any evidence that he didn’t. Once again, Air Bud rules apply. All things are possible with God and dogs who play sports.It’s unlikely that the future Pope partied too hard when Winston’s dad roomed with him. That college was a seminary. Winston’s dad was in a religious order for a few years before he left to get married and raise a family. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side. When he had two screaming toddlers, I’m sure he missed his prior life of quiet religious austerity. After leaving the order, he stayed super Catholic, as evidenced by his religion teacher son. That’s why he and the future Pope/former Captain Barfy stayed friends. That and the beer. They might have met during religious training, but it was Catholic religious training. All initiates have to chug a six pack to prove they aren’t secret Baptists.When Winston says he had beers with the future Pope, I take that story at face value. On top of being Catholic, Winston’s family is Polish. They’re American Polish, so really they’re just American, but they kept the fun parts of their heritage, namely the religion, the impossible-to-spell last name, and the drinking. Their surname is three sentences long and doesn’t include a vowel. I’ve been friends with him for twenty-two years and I still can’t spell it without looking it up. When Winston was growing up, everyone who visited the Kzzxczklbbkz family home had beers, regardless of the time, the day of the week, or the person’s age. For legal purposes, I won’t tell you their family tradition for the first day of kindergarten. Actually, I could tell that story now that I’m writing with what I assume is the full protection of the papacy. It can’t be that hard to get diplomatic immunity from the Vatican. When his dad’s bishop former roommate stopped by, they definitely cracked open some cold ones. Now that guy is on top of the religious world. I hope Winston and his dad gave the Pope a regular working man beverage and not something pretentious. It’s a sin to give the future Pope a small batch IPA.Winston isn’t the only person who suddenly has a good pope story. The discourse is now full of people with first, second, and third-hand connections to a man who used to be just some guy and is now THE guy. The difference between me and them is that I have more imaginary friends on the internet, making my lame story seem that much better. I’m confident that my unexpected and undeserved rise on social media was solely for the purpose of me bragging to a bunch of strangers that a friend of a friend is now pope. My mom sent me a picture from Facebook of a bunch of old people having pizza with the future Pope. There are likely thousands of people with similar screenshots. This is a new pope in the social media age. I imagine the first thing he did after being elected was to rush online and untag himself in pictures. Then again, it’s hard to be canceled when you effectively have the power of a medieval monarch. If he really wanted to, Leo XIV could have me launched from a catapult.Before I get Winston in trouble, I should clarify that he didn’t tell me any of this directly. He told another friend who promptly sent all the screenshots to me. I can’t imagine why Winston wouldn’t want the guy with the newsletter to have the hot gossip. I think in the past he had mentioned a bishop friend to me, but he could have had more than one. That comes with the territory when your dad did a stint as a professional church guy. If he did have other bishop family friends, he can forget their names now. The likelihood of knowing two future popes in one lifetime is pretty low. Unless you were a pope back when they led armies and assassinated each other every other weekend. I’m glad that modern popes focus on telling us to be nicer to each other. I’m less glad that that message is what makes people the most angry.I should watch myself. This is the closest I’ve ever been to getting excommunicated. All it would take is Winston’s dad clicking “forward” for this email to end up in the Pope’s inbox. Then again, that inbox probably got pretty full in the last few days. I’m sure everybody wants the Pope to be a guest on their podcast. Get in line, Joe Rogan. Also, I’m sure the Pope has a guy who reads his emails now. I assume it’s the assistant priest he hates the most. His entire vocation is now to be a human spam filter. I’d have to write something pretty egregious for spam filter priest to print it out, run it past the Swiss guards, and hand it to the Pope. You know, like claiming that his college/seminary nickname may or may not have been Captain Barfy.I’m actually unclear on if college and the seminary were the same time period or two separate stints and if Winston’s dad was his roommate for both or just one or the other. I could easily ask. Lola and I are close with Winston’s parents. They were next in line for godparent duties if we had more kids. I have his mom’s number in my phone. I refuse to reach out. I learned just enough about this for it to be funny and then immediately stopped digging. I’m afraid to ask too many follow-up questions lest I ruin a good story with accurate information. I prefer to fill in any blanks with wild conjecture.Spread the conjecture. Share this article.You’ve been reading my occasional stories about Winston for years without ever once realizing he’d one day have a pope in his pocket. As convoluted as my papal connection sounds, I guarantee that at least one of you will tell your own friend that you read a newsletter by a guy who’s friends with a guy who knows the Pope. Now you’re in the chain of connections, too. Promise me you’ll use this proximity to power solely for mischief. I’m sure it’s good enough to get out of a parking ticket. You won’t know until you try.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

Panic Cleaning Season

Triple Birthday Party season is upon us. It feels like I just wrote this newsletter. The years start coming and they don’t stop coming. Smash Mouth truly is the leading philosophical body of our time. Thanks to the impossible scheduling conflicts created by trying to get all of my brothers and sisters into one place, my parents delayed our Easter celebration in favor of combining it with Triple Birthday Party weekend. In two Saturdays, all of my siblings will come to my house. The following day, we’ll go to my parents house for a rare May Easter egg hunt plus the high school graduation of my youngest brother. If you’re wondering what the age gap is between us, it’s approximately a thousand years, give or take a few centuries. This will be the first time in many years—if not ever—that my entire family will be here for the Triple Birthday Party. It depends on your definition of “entire.” All of my siblings have been here before, but one of my brothers has three kids who have never set foot in my house. The pressure is on for us to throw the shindig of a lifetime. Naturally, we aren’t up to the challenge, but that won’t stop us from trying. It’s time to panic clean like we’ve never panic cleaned before.The house certainly looks like we’ve never cleaned before. In theory, this year shouldn’t involve any panic because we’re starting the process earlier than ever. We’ve been at it for a month. We began prematurely enough that it couldn’t really be considered party cleaning. It was just our regular roster of unending chores, but with added intensity. Existence is a burden. The idea was that, once we hit the panic-cleaning stage, we’d be starting from a messy house rather than one that was in complete shambles. I’ve been a parent for a long time, but I still don’t understand how our house reaches a state of decay so quickly. There’s hardly anyone in it for most of the day. We all have to deal with minor inconveniences like work and school, which take up all of our daylight hours. Betsy and Mae also have extracurricular activities that keep them out of the house on nights and weekends. When we’re at home, we mostly devote ourselves to sedentary activities. The kids are always on their screens or doing a solo craft project like knitting or diamond dotting. Lola and I often host our friends. We do exciting activities together like playing board games, watching TV, or playing board games while watching TV. We’re living our best lives. None of that should generate much debris, yet there’s always so much to clean up. Thirty seconds after I force my youngest two kids to pick up their laundry, I blink, and their dressers have exploded, tossing every article of clothing they own around the room. And thus the cycle begins again. What we really need to do is clean for a week straight and then send the kids to live somewhere else. That’s not an option, so we have to stay on top of our regular cleaning plus the special bonus cleaning for party time, all while the children actively work against us. It’s the same challenge as every year, only harder because the kids are bigger and make larger messes. They have bigger attitudes, too.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!My nine-year-old, Waffle, got herself grounded for a week last Sunday due to repeated defiance over a completely basic task that would have taken, at most, five minutes to complete. I grudgingly respect her commitment to not being productive. Deep down, I’d also like to watch the world burn rather than getting a single thing done. In Waffle’s defense, she has less motivation than the other girls. She’s the only one who doesn’t have a birthday being celebrated at the party. Don’t feel too bad for her. Some people bring her gifts anyway, and she gets a party all to herself in the fall. That’s future gratification, though. For now, she’d rather focus on the instant kind, which mostly involves doing the opposite of whatever I say. This spring, I estimate that I’ve had to threaten to ground her forever approximately once every two days if she doesn’t pick up her clothes. The rate at which they end up on her floor is impressive. She only wears one outfit, making it a mystery how the other seventy-five pairs of shirts and pants end up all over the carpet. Perhaps she wants to up her fashion game before she starts at a new school this fall. I still maintain that she could do that without blowing up her dresser. I shudder to think of what those clothes must look like after I make her put them away. I choose to believe that everything is neatly folded and not crushed into crumpled balls. I’ve written a lot of books, but that fantasy is my single greatest work of fiction.The pigs have been equally unhelpful in getting ready for the party. It’s warm enough outside for grass to grow, which means my annual war on mud has begun. The pigs have done their part to make the yard less of a mess by bringing all of the mud into the house. In general, they really are clean animals. They don’t roll around in the muck. They just walk through it while going about their normal business and track it into the house on their hooves. My tiny backyard is divided into two sections separated by gates. I seeded and watered one side and kept it safe from the pigs until the grass was obnoxiously high. Last week, I let them graze on it so I didn’t have to mow. Then Luna, the smallest and best behaved of the pigs, started digging, destroying the fresh section of lawn. She always roots up the same spot where the elm tree used to be. There must be something down there that smells good. Either that or she’s just bored and strikes where the ground is soft. My beautiful, carefully manicured green space now has a massive hole in it that will soon reach all the way to China. I think I found a workaround for the tariffs. Meanwhile, I’ve reseeded the other side of the yard. In a few weeks, it will be lush and green, at which point I’ll let in the pigs to destroy that half, too. Much like with the inside of the house, keeping the outside in good shape is a losing battle. I need to catch it in that elusive condition where one side or the other looks good for the day of the Triple Birthday Party. The art of hosting is trying to have people over when your house is in that rare transitional state before everything gets destroyed again. That’s why it’s best if all parties are as short as possible.This Saturday was an especially busy day of chores in preparation for the party. While the pigs were outside wrecking the fresh grass, I made the critical mistake of trying to clean up their room. I didn’t realize how dirty the space was until I scrubbed down parts of it. I forgot that those brown baseboards were supposed to be white. I had only planned to wash their blankets and vacuum the room, but once I got started, I fell down the black hole of “and one more thing.” By the end of it, I was on a stepladder dusting transoms and vacuuming cobwebs from the corners of the ceiling. The pig room hasn’t been this clean since before we had pigs. It’ll stay that way for the next six to twelve hours. If I had been smart, I would have waited to clean that room until ten minutes before the party. By the time people actually get here for the celebration, that room will look just as dirty as it usually does. I took pictures of it in unnaturally pristine condition to prove it happened. I’ll show people those images on my phone and ban them from entering the actual room. If they need a beer from the fridge in the pig room, I’ll send a kid to fetch it. It’s not like they’ll have anything better to do at their own party.Once we get everything clean, the birthday party will generate a new mess. I don’t mean the normal trash from a large gathering. Most of our guests clean up after themselves—and even after others. My mom has been known to sneak off to do my dishes. The bigger issue will be all the new gifts. No one in the history of the world has ever needed more stuff less than my daughters. Their rooms are bursting at the seams with the bounty from previous birthday parties. We’ve gone through their spaces multiple times to get rid of items they’ve either aged out of or no longer use, but it’s a losing battle. Material goods are flowing into this house far faster than they’re going out. I thought the problem might ease as the kids got older and became more interested in digital gifts. That hasn’t proven to be the case. They’ll never stop asking for more water bottles and Lego sets. We’ll only have room for new ones if I start sleeping outside.It seems like we’re ahead of the curve on party preparation this year, but that’s probably because there’s a million things I’m forgetting. The real terror won’t set in until the final day or two when I remember them all at once and try to do them simultaneously. Lola and I both put in leave for the Friday before the party. There’s nothing quite like burning vacation time to do chores. Those efforts won’t impress anyone. No one will believe we’re good hosts, but they might leave thinking we live like actual human beings instead of swamp creatures with a hoarding problem. It’s an impossible standard to maintain. If we don’t disappoint them this time, we’ll have to put on the same facade next year—or whenever the least frequent visitors eventually come back. We should draw a line and only panic clean when my Missouri siblings come to visit. The ones in Illinois have been here often enough to have already caught us on a day when we didn’t have time to perpetuate our lies. I need six to eight weeks of notice to create the illusion of being a functional adult. If you show up sooner than that, it’s your own fault if you’re traumatized by what you see.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.As my readers point out every year, the solution to all of this is to host the Triple Birthday Party at a neutral site. It would eliminate any need to clean. However, the biggest drawback of hosting at my house is also the biggest upside. It’s good that, once a year, we’re forced to get our house back into livable condition. Without the pressure of the judgment of others, we would be crushed by the weight of our own squalor. Instead, we dig ourselves out every May. The house might not stay clean for very long, but it gives us a new starting point from which things can fall apart. If we shoot for the stars and miss, it will at least take us a little longer to descend to rock bottom again. As much as I hate all of this party preparation, I desperately need it. Plus, it’s nice to see everyone. That’s important, too, even if it’s at the bottom of the list.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

Two States Away

Like most parents, I only trust my kids as far as I can throw them. Unlike most parents, I interpret that saying to mean “as far as I can throw them with mechanical assistance” since I’m not very strong. I trust my kids as far as I can launch them with a catapult. I can still have faith in them even if we’re separated by tall ramparts and a deep moat.If I’m being honest, it’s more laziness than trust. I constantly tell my daughters that I don’t want to be their prison guard. I didn’t become a dad to wander around my house enforcing the rules. If the kids violate some statute, I’d rather not know. As long as no one is bleeding and nothing is on fire, no harm, no foul. Of course, my offspring refuse to comply with this extremely lax request. They prefer to scream at each other while misbehaving, letting the entire neighborhood know that they’re up to no good. When they loudly announce their crimes, they call my bluff. If I don’t enforce the rules when I’m notified of a transgression at maximum volume, then there aren’t any rules at all. That’s how the girls end up grounded, much to their disappointment and mine. If only I could convince them to be smoother criminals.Their behavior gets better when I’m out and about and they’re still at home, mainly because I’m too far away to hear them yelling at each other. This assumes that I’m outside the three-block radius of their screams. I’m more than willing to let them watch each other with no adults at home. It’s not so much babysitting as mutually assured destruction. My fourteen-year-old, Betsy, is nominally in charge, but in practice, each child is an independent city-state, subject only to their own laws and counsel. In the case of a dispute that they can’t resolve with loud words and physical violence, they each have a phone they can use to make a direct appeal to the highest authority in the land: me. Obviously, the actual power rests with Lola, but the girls almost never call her during fights. If the kids contact me, there’s a chance I’ll do something arbitrary and unfair, wronging only the sister they’re mad at. But if they call their mom, everyone will end up doing chores. Even at their angriest, the girls are reluctant to use the nuclear option.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!The cell phone era has allowed me to place even more unearned trust in my kids. The range of that catapult keeps getting longer. It’s a far cry from where we started—literally. Our earliest parenting method was to stay within crying distance when a baby was napping. We never used baby monitors. My strategy with infants then was no different than my strategy with teenagers now. If I can’t hear them, they’re probably fine. Beyond that, I’d rather not know. If you’re a young parent, you’re likely horrified by that approach. It’s extremely common for parents with infants today to watch their sleeping children on video monitors. My sister-in-law, Alice, and brother-in-law, Jerry, always know if their rage baby (now a rage toddler) is actually sleeping or merely writhing around like a Tasmanian devil in her crib. I say it doesn’t matter either way. If she’s entertaining herself with barrel rolls, let her be. You’ll know there’s a real problem when she shakes the walls with her screaming.The earliest stages of a child’s life are the easiest. The more mobile they are, the more of a danger they pose to themselves and others. We had to watch our kids more closely when they were toddlers than when they were inert babies wiggling in place. I miss the days when I would put them on the floor and they would stay in that spot until acted upon by an outside force. It was a big deal when we could finally be in a different room from our two-year-olds without them dying. It took us a lot of trial and error before the house was toddler-proofed to the point where there were no more easily accessible knives and explosives. I never should have joined the Bomb of the Month Club.Our trust zone continued to expand as the kids got bigger. Lola and I could go for walks without them and trust that the house wouldn’t burn down. As they got deeper into elementary school, we gave them keys. They could get off the bus and into the house without a parent being home. Not long after that, we let them lock up the house and put themselves on the bus if Lola and I had already left for work. My biggest motivation in giving the kids more independence was to stop paying for daycare. When the world shut down for covid, Lola and I were both at home. For our first time as parents, we weren’t spending any money on child care. As that era ended and we began leaving the house more often, I refused to go back to the way things were. Instead of paying people to keep my children alive, I installed cameras around the house and bought the girls cell phones so they could be alone before and after school and on breaks. That approach was hardly free, but it was less expensive than the alternative. Being a parent is mostly finding ways to mitigate financial damage. My ultimate goal is to go broke more slowly.In recent months, our trust range has taken huge leaps. From a practical standpoint, it doesn’t matter if Lola and I are fifteen minutes away hanging out with our board game friends for the day or on a quick trip to a nearby state. The kids have to cook two meals for themselves either way. They’re not limited to the microwave. They can use the stove, oven, and air fryer. Even our nine-year-old, Waffle, can make scrambled eggs. If our house ever burns down, that will be the sentence that haunts me. The farthest we’ve ever gone without the kids was our day trip to Cincinnati. In the event of an emergency, it would have taken us two hours to get home, but the kids all have cell phones, and the police station is two minutes from our house. We also still had all those cameras I set up to avoid paying for daycare. It’s weird that my version of being a laid back dad involves monitoring my children more closely than the average police state. That still makes me chill by the parenting standards of today. There are many parents who have the police-state-level surveillance system and also never leave home without their kids. Those are the children who, upon getting their first whiff of freedom, become frat house legends.About the only thing my daughters can’t do for themselves is buy groceries. Scratch that. There’s a corner store within a few blocks of our house. Betsy loves baking. She’ll start a batch of cookies before realizing we’re out of a key ingredient. We’re always missing something. The first rule of baking is that every recipe requires at least one additional grocery run, even if you were already at the store that morning. In those instances, I tell Betsy to walk to the corner store and buy the item herself—with my credit card, of course. She’s not buying our weekly grocery haul, but she understands how the concept works. If she had her own income, she’d be fully independent. I’m not sure if I’m rooting for that day to come faster or to never arrive at all.All of this leads me to my current predicament. I, the most relaxed and coolest dad on the face of the earth, have one final barrier that I have yet to cross. I still haven’t let the kids stay home alone overnight. Lola and I have left the girls to their own devices during many daytime adventures, but we always end up in our own bed under the same roof as them. I’m not sure why this is my last hang up. Nothing magical happens when I sleep at home. It’s not like I have to tuck in the kids or check under their beds for monsters. Sometimes, like on the trip to Ohio, they’re already asleep before we get back. They wouldn’t have known if we returned that night or not. Trusting the kids to stay in the house overnight while we’re away is somehow an added level of responsibility that, in practical terms, changes nothing, but, in emotional ones, is a game changer. If I tell people I left my almost-fifteen-year-old in charge for a day, they shrug, but if I told them I let her watch the kids overnight, they’d have to stifle a gasp. If only Betsy would get older a little quicker to make this a non-issue. Time continues to simultaneously move too fast and too slow.The matter will come to a head at the start of August. We typically see my college cross country teammates, Rocco and Phoebe, twice over the summer at their place in Wisconsin. They have a boat, which is the basis of all long distance friendships. On our first visit each year, usually in June, we go up with the kids and ride around on the lake for two days. The second visit is an adults-only outing, which involves substantially fewer water sports and significantly more hydration. I’ve missed the adults-only weekend three years in a row. The first time, my appendix exploded a few days before we were supposed to visit. The following year, I was recovering from an abscess on my butt that left a gaping wound my wife had to pack with gauze once a day. She’s a lucky woman. Soaking that cavity in dirty lake water seemed less than ideal. Last year, the adults-only weekend was moved from Wisconsin to Costa Rica for Phoebe’s fortieth birthday. We missed that one because it was the same day our kids started school. The last time we actually went to the adults-only weekend, Betsy would have been twelve, which meant leaving her home with the other girls was out of the question. This time she’ll be fifteen, which is borderline. Unfortunately, she remains on the wrong side of that border. It looks like we’ll have to guilt a family member into watching the kids for a weekend for the first time in years. If you’re my parents or in-laws, this is your warning to start making up reasons you’re busy on those days.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.The fact that I even considered leaving Betsy in charge of her sisters overnight shows that we’re getting close. Maybe we’ll finally get to that point when she’s sixteen and can drive the other girls around if they need anything. Then again, perhaps we won’t reach that level of trust until she’s eighteen and legally an adult. Whatever the line is, there are two things that are certain: It’s approaching fast, and it’s not here yet. By the time of this year’s adults-only trip, the kids will be fifteen, thirteen, eleven, and nine. We’ll be in the awkward position of sending two teenagers to a babysitter. Our daughters will surely resent us for it, but at least they’ll be easy to watch. Wherever they end up for that weekend, they’ll likely spend the entire time on their phones. My parents or in-laws won’t even know they’re there—except when they hear the stove turn on because one of the kids got hungry. That’s not entirely true. They’ll also know the kids are there when they scream at each other for no reason at all. The best solution would be to send the girls to stay with four separate family members in four separate houses. Only then would there be peace.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

Starring From the Bench

The playoffs are upon us. For what sport? The answer is all of them. It’s actually just the NBA and NHL, but those include two of the four teams I get with my local streaming package, which counts as the entire world to me. The end of winter sports lines up with the end of the school year. Professional athletes are winding down as my kids are winding up, which is bad news. That’s the one direction I never want to wind them. High school track, middle school tennis, and the elementary school’s running club are in full swing. Some of those seasons only last six weeks, but it feels like six years when I’m dropping them off and picking them up. The movie Everything Everywhere All At Once was named after the current youth sports schedule. If only they gave out an Academy Award for superior driving.On top of sports, Betsy has livestock judging for FFA. It might not be the NBA playoffs, but the organizers take it just as seriously. Judges won’t let the kids talk for the whole event lest the competitors share their answers for which sheep they think is the ugliest. Like most teenagers, Betsy lives in a state of constant communication. Silence is torture. She was disappointed a few weekends ago when she and her four-student crew judged livestock so well that they made it to state, extending their season. It’s now an open question as to which will end first, competitive sheep shaming or Pacers basketball. I’m hoping it’s the animal thing. Then Betsy can finally stay home and watch hoops with me.I thought sports would be a good bonding experience for me and the girls. That only worked when I was snagging cheap tickets to take them to games. They liked the one-on-one outings, which let them take turns making each other jealous. When I watch the games at home, where we could all cheer on the team at the same time, my living room is a ghost town. Even my wife won’t watch with me unless I set up an additional screen with something she wants to see. Her ideal setup is a sitcom on the laptop close to her and basketball on the TV across the room. Naturally, Lola’s show has the sound on while basketball is on mute. She never once looks up. If I turned off the game, it would take her hours to notice. She only becomes aware of it when I randomly jump with excitement at something happening on the court. I might as well be reacting to imaginary voices in my head. It’s not easy being the only one in the house who’s crazy.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!The kids prefer participating in sports over watching them. I’m a spectator either way. Track is the roughest one to watch. This year, Betsy is running the 4x800 relay and the 800 meter dash. That’s less than five minutes total of her moving her feet. For that experience, I can expect to be at the track for two hours for the smallest possible meet and all day for a big one. That’s a far cry from cross country, where Betsy runs six times as far but is completely done in under half an hour. I go to the home meets and leave Betsy to her own devices for the away ones. My job is to get her to the high school before the bus leaves and to pick her up when it gets back. That’s easier said than done. She often leaves within the boundaries of the work day and gets home in the middle of the night. It seems like the middle of the night, anyway. At my age, anything after 9 p.m. might as well be the next day. More than once, Betsy has gotten back after 11 p.m. on a school night. Pacers games never run that late. Her absurd arrival times have ruined many opportunities for us to watch basketball together. They also highlight that high school girls track is far more serious than professional basketball. Those millionaire athletes are contractually guaranteed to get to bed at a decent time. High school athletes need their own collective bargaining agreement.My girls aren’t just uninterested in watching professional sports. They’re also indifferent to watching each other. Nobody is begging to join me when I go to Betsy’s home track meets. It’s just as well. If they blinked, they would miss her races. Mostly what they would see is Betsy walking around the infield talking with her friends. That’s her favorite part. No wonder she hates silent livestock judging so much. Any judging she does at track meets is definitely out loud. Parents aren’t allowed to go in the infield at track meets. If I want to communicate with Betsy in between events, I have to text her. I could have stayed home for that. The only direct communication comes during races, when I yell as loudly as I can. She still can’t hear me. It doesn’t matter what I say. The important thing is that she sees me seeing her. That doesn’t make her run any faster, but it does remind her that she has a ride home after the meet. It’s the kind of reassurance every athlete needs to do their best. I’m basically just a set of car keys with legs.If the other kids did want to watch Betsy, I would subtly discourage them. The entry fee at the gate costs nearly as much as the nosebleed Pacers tickets I was getting in the middle of the season. Now that the playoffs are here, those prices are a distant memory. I’ll be enjoying the end of the season tournament exclusively from my couch. I continue to try to trick my children into joining me. I tell them exciting details about the biggest stars, but they’re unimpressed. There’s only one player’s name they remember. When I saw him at a game, I thought perhaps a high school kid had wandered in by mistake or that maybe it was a Make-A-Wish situation. Instead, he’s an actual player. Meet Johnny Furphy. He’s a twenty-year-old Australian in his rookie year. His last name is pronounced exactly like it looks, which is the biggest part of his appeal. More players should sound like viral children’s toys from the late nineties. He only gets in the game when the Pacers are way ahead or hopelessly behind, or when the game doesn’t matter to the standings. When he suddenly gets tossed in the game, he looks like a confused freshman trying to find his class on the first day of school. Then he’ll suddenly dunk and remind everyone that he’s actually a professional athlete making $1.8 million a year. That magical moment is the only thing in sports that my kids care about. I’m more than happy to get excited about it, too, if it means the girls and I can enjoy a brief moment of basketball together.As a bottom-of-the-bench player, I can relate to Furphy’s experience. There are two situations where the crowd will blow the roof off a gym. The first is when a key starter makes a game-winning shot. The other is when the guy at the bottom of the bench makes his only basket in garbage time. It’s a feel-good story and also the ultimate flex. If our worst guy can score on you, you might as well go home. As the season has gone on, Furphy has gotten more confident and made bigger and bigger plays. The first time he got a dunk, I texted my entire family. The children, wherever they were, stopped what they were doing to text back. Track meets can wait when Furphy gets to work. After a game, my ten-year-old, Lucy, will never ask who won or lost, but she’ll ask if Furphy scored. It happened more and more towards the end of the season. After the Pacers locked in their playoff spot and rested their starters, Furphy scored in double digits two games in a row. Once, he even made a key basket to send the game to overtime. He might be on his way to becoming a legitimately good player, which would be a shame. Then we’ll have to stop rooting for him and pick someone else with a funny name.My kids don’t know what it’s like to be a bench player. They only do sports they’re good at. I should have tried that strategy myself. Betsy runs varsity for track and cross country. Mae is good at tennis, despite playing it for the first time last year. She was terrified of the tryouts in sixth grade. She had never held a tennis racket before. She hurriedly practiced on her own, alternately aiming at her sisters and at a brick wall behind the house. Only one of those opponents was able to return the ball consistently. She made the team without much trouble, mainly because they had more slots than kids. That wasn’t the case this spring. Word had spread about the tennis team, and even more girls came out. Mae practiced harder than ever, sometimes walking across town to the tennis courts, despite the fact that she insists I otherwise need to drive her everywhere. Her legs only work if she’s on her way to something fun. Mae made the team again this year, this time over actual competition. She might not even be at the bottom of the rotation. I don’t know how an actual athlete ended up in this family. The season is insanely short. The tennis matches are condensed to compensate. It feels like she has one every other day until the end of the year. I’ll be at all of the home ones sitting close enough that she can see me seeing her. Maybe that will make her hit the ball that much harder. I’m sure I’ve already given her plenty of anger to work out.Waffle is also dabbling at competing instead of spectating. This is the first year she’s old enough for the elementary school’s running club. She’ll have a grand total of six morning practices before she does the big run, which is slightly under two miles. We’ll see how that goes. So far, all of my kids have cried the first time they ran it. A few of them may or may not have cried the second. Lucy was wise enough to only do it once. Some children learn their lesson the first time they touch a hot stove. Other kids keep hurting themselves. Only the dumbest of us run all the way through college.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.May is the busiest month of the year by design. It’s intended to make parents and kids appreciate summer vacation that much more. By the end of next month, I’ll be so relieved that I don’t have any more sports to drive to that I’ll forget the added work of having the kids home all day every day of the week. It’s a shame that by the time all the girls are free in the evening to watch sports with me, the Pacers’ season will likely be over. The WNBA will be ramping up, so maybe we can get into that. The only other athlete they can name besides Furphy is Caitlin Clark. She makes up for her lack of a funny name with actual greatness. That seems like a lot of work. Personally, I’d rather go the weird name route to being famous.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 Permanent Bracelet

I should have asked more questions. Or just any questions. Even one question would have been an improvement.The text came in from a number I didn’t have saved in my phone. It asked if my nine-year-old, Waffle, could come over for a birthday party. Of course, the message didn’t call her “Waffle.” If I used her pseudonym in real life, someone would have contacted Child Protective Services by now. It’s not unusual for me to have random conversations about my children with unsaved numbers. In this instance, as in nearly all such cases, the text history showed that I contacted them, or that they contacted me, a year earlier to RSVP for a birthday party. I never save the number to my phone because I don’t expect to ever use it again. Yet the following year, there’s another birthday. And another birthday party. And another text exchange with the same unsaved number. It catches me by surprise every time.This message was a little different. The mom (Or dad. Or Aunt. Or unrelated child guardian.) on the other end asked if I’d be okay with Waffle getting a permanent bracelet at the party. I didn’t know what that was. I also didn’t look into it. Like any rational adult, I used what little pre-existing information I had to make an uneducated guess. I assumed that a permanent bracelet was one of those semi-permanent temporary tattoos that lasts for a few weeks before fading away. Never mind that “semi-permanent” and “permanent” have opposite meanings. I simply couldn’t conceive that anything done at a child’s birthday party would really last forever. That was naive to say the least. Waffle regularly picks up scars that will stick around for the rest of her life. It’s not uncommon for her and her sisters to casually kick each other in the face because reasons. That actually made me less wary of the invitation. Any other house has to be safer than here.Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell is a reader-supported publication. It’s like PBS, but completely unhelpful and slightly evil. Join today!I must admit I was a little jealous of Waffle’s invitation. I would rather die than hang out with a bunch of nine-year-olds, but I liked the idea of the semi-permanent tattoos. I’ve looked into getting some for myself. I’m far too flighty to ever commit to a real tattoo. I second guess everything I’ve ever said and done. I’d basically be paying a tattoo artist to physically install regret on my skin. But I could be happy with something for a few weeks, especially if it faded away on its own and could easily be hidden under a long sleeve shirt if the bad thoughts set in early. I went as far as comparing prices online. I thought it would be funny to completely cover my upper torso in fake tattoos for a beach day. The biggest drawback would be in applying them. I’m slightly hairier than a standard yeti. My wife correctly pointed out that I’d have to shave my arms and chest. That was a deal-breaker. Any task that requires even the most basic amount of grooming gets a hard no from me.I dropped off Waffle at the party Saturday afternoon. The house was only a handful of blocks away from my own. I had evidently stopped there exactly one year before, but I had no memory of the place. It’s for the best that my brain has erased far more of my life than it’s retained. Otherwise I would have long ago died from self-inflicted cringe. I walked Waffle to the door and met the other kid’s mom for what was evidently the second or third time. I double-checked that I was supposed to pick up Waffle at 7 p.m.. My most important job as a parent is to eventually get my kid back. Anything more than that is overachieving. I left Waffle to enjoy the semi-permanent tattooing process and made the short drive home. The chaos that perpetually swirls around her was someone else’s problem for a while.Halfway through the party, Waffle texted me to say the gathering had been extended by an hour. She asked if she could stay. I suspected the temporary tattoo process wasn’t going well. At least it had failed in a way that was taking longer rather than in a way that got Waffle sent home early. It’s the emergency evacuations that you have to worry about. I told Waffle she could stay. I probably didn’t give the matter the attention it deserved. I was distracted by my own concerns. I was hosting my usual group of friends and relatives-by-marriage for another three-TV day. We were watching Ted Lasso on the center screen and real soccer matches to both sides. My middle two children were gone to a BSA campout, which left only my fourteen-year-old, Betsy, at home. She was hanging out with the adults due to a lack of better options. Life is boring without sisters to antagonize. Turning the situation to our advantage, we badgered her to bake cookies and brownies for the group. As a teenager, Betsy is immensely vulnerable to peer pressure, but adult pressure has no effect. She is still, however, highly susceptible to bribery. She agreed to bake for us if I would do all the dishes afterward and let her buy a snack at the corner store where she had to go to buy more eggs. She drives a hard bargain.Amid the negotiating, I forgot all about Waffle and her temporary ink. I didn’t remember she existed until my phone reminded me to pick her up. I quickly made the short drive. At the party house, I was greeted by a mob of little girls. They promised to fetch Waffle. As I waited, the birthday girl’s mom materialized. She seemed nervous and apologetic. She assured me that Waffle’s bracelet could be removed with a quick snip from a pair of scissors. I had no idea what she was talking about. Then Waffle appeared. She had a thin metal, gold-colored bracelet on her wrist. It didn’t have a clasp. The mom said it had a few extra links in it so Waffle could grow. I didn’t realize quite how “permanent” permanent really was until that moment. Unless scissors were involved. Then the bracelet wouldn’t make it through the night.I asked Waffle for more details on the way home. She said a woman showed up at the start of the party to give all the girls their non-removable jewelry. She used some sort of heat gun or soldering iron to melt the links together. All the best parties involve a little bit of welding. I had drastically misinterpreted what was going to happen at the event. That was on me. It was my own fault for translating the original text message into different words with completely different meanings. Good luck shaking my pre-existing beliefs. My brain won’t be accepting new inputs now or ever again.I could see how some moms and dads might be upset if their kids were given non-removable jewelry, even if it could be easily removed by breaking it. It’s a big fashion statement. Fortunately for that other mom—and for Waffle—I don’t care how my kid dresses. I’m happy she gets stressed at all. One of the best days of my life was when she could finally run her morning routine on her own. I don’t even have to be home any more. If I’m away, she still gets herself up, gets ready, and puts herself on the bus. I’ll know if she ever fails at that process when I get a call from the truant officer. That happened recently with Betsy. I got a voicemail from the high school that said she never showed up. I was more than a little alarmed. It turned out there was a miscommunication at the school. No one told the attendance officer that Betsy was on a field trip wrestling cattle or whatever it is she does for FFA. I have yet to receive a call like that for Waffle. If she wants a bracelet she can’t take off without ruining it, more power to her. She has her own sense of style, which is for the best. I pity any child who gets their fashion sense from me.I would never choose to wear permanent jewelry. I don’t even wear my real wedding ring. It stays in a drawer in my bedroom. I got it slightly too big in anticipation of gaining weight over the course of my lifetime. I did, but not in my fingers. They stayed as weak and skinny as ever. My ring would fly off if I gesticulated wildly, which I always do. I don’t know how to talk without using my hands. If you tied them behind my back, I’d be mute. I bought a smaller metal wedding ring for eight dollars on eBay. I don’t like wearing that one, either. It got in the way at the gym, and I was afraid I’d lose it when I took it off. Instead, I replaced it with even cheaper silicone rings that I can wear all the time. Walmart sells them by the dozen, which reflects my ideal price point. The best part is I can take them off and shoot them like rubber bands. Predictably, I lose them frequently, which isn’t a problem when they have the same replacement cost as a stick of gum. Lola isn’t concerned when I’m temporarily ringless. She knows no other woman will swoop in to claim me. She doesn’t want to claim me herself.Thanks for reading Exploding Unicorn by James Breakwell! This post is public so feel free to share it.The biggest downside of Waffle’s permanent bracelet is that everyone will know exactly who was invited to the party—and who wasn’t. Things are going to be very awkward for anyone who doesn’t show up to school Monday with new bling. That’s the kind of third grade drama that lifetime grudges are made of. Hopefully all the girls in her class were invited. I didn’t do a headcount, but there were an unreasonable number of little kids in that house. All of this assumes that any of the bracelets actually make it to Monday. If they can be removed by a pair of scissors, they lack the tensile strength to survive Waffle’s daily life. It’s only a matter of time until she snags that bracelet on something and snaps it in half. That something will most likely be a sibling’s face. Until then, Waffle will have the fanciest wrist in the family. My biggest fear isn’t that she’ll break the jewelry, but that she’ll figure out how to repair it. The last thing I need is that kid with a soldering iron.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