Two nights ago, it was time to get the boys ready for bed.  For some reason, NHL was complaining so B went to take care of him while I got JSL ready.  Don’t ask me why, but I decided to pull JSL’s shirt off of him while he was standing on a stairwell.  As the shirt went up, JSL lost his balance and fell.  He went clunking down the stairs and slid to a halt face down and not moving.  I screamed for B to call 911 and then… I woke up.

Yes, all of this was a nightmare.  A horrible nightmare.  Although, I was relieved that it wasn’t real, I lay awake in bed afraid.  I was terrified that, should I go back to sleep, I would re-enter the dream from where I left off – with JSL lying lifeless on the floor.  The image of JSL laying there, face down with his arms splayed, was (and remains) burned into my brain.  Though I was exhausted, I forced myself to stay awake for a few minutes.  Thankfully, the rest of my dreams were free of injured children.

Have you ever experienced a very realistic dream about your children being hurt?

Disclaimer: The image above, Turtle-Hits the Floor, was obtained from OpenClipArt.org.

I’ve written about my fear of flying before.  When the airplane I’m riding in takes off or lands, I get very nervous.  Just writing and thinking about it is causing my hands to shake a bit.

I try to fill my mind with statistics which prove that air travel is safe.  I tell myself that the number of accidents involving fatalities in the past 5 years is only a handful compared to the tons of flights that take off and land uneventfully day after day after day.  Still, the Hollywood image runs through my mind of a plane coming in for a landing when something goes horribly wrong.  (Perhaps Hollywood Airlines should get some better planes because a plane in a film or TV show almost invariable encounters problems along the trip.)  The fear remains with me no matter how unreasonable I tell myself it is.

Still, I’m going to have to endure this if I want to go to Disney World.  I could do this with no problem, but this year there’s an additional fear: Airport Security.  I’m all for security on airplanes, but I’ll admit I’m afraid of the enhanced security procedures that I’ve heard are in place.  From Rapiscan scanners (seriously, could they have come up with a worse name for it?!!) that effectively display a nude image of you while exposing you to radiation to TSA personnel who must pat you down in areas that only my doctor and wife ever touch.

And it isn’t mainly me I’m afraid about.  Were it just me, I’d steel myself for it and get through it.  It’s my kids I’m worried about.  Will they ask JSL to step into the scanner by himself?  Will they want to pat down NHL such that our Stranger Danger lessons get triggered?  The boys are excited about the Disney World trip and I’d hate for an airport security nightmare to mar the experience.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you travelled with kids recently via airplane?  How was your airport security experience?  If not, do you have any fears about your kids handling airport security?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #78

On Tuesday night, I tucked the boys in as I always do, got my computer and sat down beside JSL’s bed.  As I always do.  As they always do, my boys decided it wasn’t *quite* time to go to sleep.  Instead, they were going to trot out delay tactics.  NHL said his stomach hurt and I told him it was probably gas and to go to sleep.  Then he said something that made me realize that he wasn’t delaying.

“Daddy?  I’m scared.  I’m scared of dying.”

Uh oh.

To be honest, I think this fear has been in the back of his mind for some time now.  Ever since B’s grandfather passed away nearly four years ago.  NHL was very close with B’s grandfather.  They loved spending time together eating ice cream or Dunkin’ Donuts munchkins.

What NHL didn’t understand was that his great-grandfather wasn’t well.  He had Parkinson’s disease and was slowly but surely succumbing to the illness.  When I first met B, her grandfather walked with the aid of a walker with only occasional trouble.  Eventually, he couldn’t reliably stand on his own for too long.  He would fall over and I would need to rush to B’s grandparents’ apartment to help lift him.  (Lifting a 200 pound man who can’t help you lift himself isn’t easy!)

Eventually, B’s grandfather was moved to a nursing home.  Of course, Parkinson’s is an unforgiving disease and it kept progressing.  Eventually, his mind went as well.  He would be perfectly lucid one moment and talking to me as if it were decades in the past another.

When we last saw B’s grandfather, NHL refused to go near him.  We think he could sense something was wrong.  We were there to say our goodbyes.

In the years since his great-grandfather’s passing, NHL has occasionally displayed an interest in death.  He would talk about death in ways that made adults uncomfortable.  Completely innocently on his part, of course, but still uncomfortable.

Fast forwarding back to Tuesday night, I hugged NHL and told him that he didn’t have to worry.  He mentioned that everyone dies and I agreed but added that he wouldn’t die for a long, long time.  He mentioned being scared about being buried and eaten by ants.  I told him that his soul, the part of him that makes him him, would go to heaven.  This soothed him enough for him to go to sleep.  Still, I could sense the impending bad dreams and repeated awakenings the night would bring.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you spoken with your child about death?  If so, what did you say to them?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #71

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I went up on a ferris wheel, facing my fear of falling primarily to take photos. That wasn’t entirely true. The original plan was that I was going to go up with JSL. He didn’t want any part of the ferris wheel, however, so I wound up sitting next to NHL.

While up there, I did what I usually do on rides such as this: I surpressed my fears so as not to panic my son. In fact, I’ve done that a lot over the years. You see, NHL has turned out to be quite the ride daredevil. He likes going on rides that are fast, twisting and make me afraid that one of us will fall out. Yet, in nearly every case, I supress my fears in order to make him happy. (This isn’t to say that I let him do purposefully dangerous things. Just that I know the difference between real danger and my phobia.)

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Do you have any fears that you have had to overcome when you became a parent?

BTW, if you like of The Wiggles or know someone that does, be sure to enter my giveaway for their new DVD. In addition, stop by TheAngelForever.com blog for a second chance to win.

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #52

While at BlogHer 2010, there was a small list of people that I wanted to meet. It wasn’t really formal, written out, or set in stone, but more of a general mental list. Three names were prominent on it, though: Dadarocks (aka Adam Cohen), KissMyKitty (aka Jenn) and AnissaMayhew (aka… well, I guess she’s self-explanatory).

I’ve worked with Adam in the creation and running of DadRevolution, but had never met him in person. I was able to remedy this at the Ralph Lauren party and again at Sparklecorn.

I’ve worked with Jenn during my Eden Fantasys review. I got to meet her just before the "Bringing Sex Out Of The Closet" session. Prior to this, we almost met a few times but always just missed each other. It was quite the meeting as we discussed "presents" I should buy my wife. I later saw her at the Eden Fantasys "decorating" party and at Sparklecorn.

I’ve followed Anissa’s husband, and later her, from her stroke through to the present day. I even got to see her three times during BlogHer. Each time, I saw her though, my mind went blank. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what I was going to say. To keep from completely embarassing myself, I just walked by. Note: This wasn’t due to anything Anissa did or said. A lot of other people went up and talked to her and I never saw her being anything but gracious. I just had a mental freezeup and didn’t know what to say.

Luckily, I met a lot of the people on my mental list and a lot of people who I hadn’t planned to meet pre-BlogHer. I’m now following a lot more people on Twitter, made some great connections, and have a stack of business cards to go through. (I will go through those! I promise!)

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Have you ever been at a loss for words when you saw someone you really wanted to meet and talk to in person? How did you handle this?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #51

I have many fears going into BlogHer.  Some are pretty mundane: Fear that I’ll be too tired at the end of the day to party.  Fear that I won’t have anything sparkly (yet manly) to wear to Sparklecorn.  Fear that I’ll stick out like a sore thumb in some way.  Mainly, though, my fears involve meeting people face to face instead of online.

I’ve never been good with face to face meetings.  My first problem involves coming up with conversation topics.  I’m pretty good at that, but I tend to either become too quiet (especially if the conversation is between more than two people) or I hog the conversation too much (the dreaded "he’s been talking for 10 minutes straight without so much as stopping to take a breath").  Online, conversation is easy.  Someone sends me a message, I send one back, they send one back to me.  Sometimes multiple messages get sent before one gets sent back, but it’s pretty much an even rhythm.

My second problem involves the filter between my mouth and brain.  Mine can get broken and I might find myself saying things that I really shouldn’t be saying.  For example, when I was looking at new cars and I started telling the salesman how I thought my old one had a busted transmission.  Hello?  TechyDad’s Brain?  Make a note for future exchanges of this nature.  Don’t tell the salesman who’ll be figuring out your trade-in value that you think your transmission is broken!!!  That is all.

Needless to say, online is easier here too.  I can type something out and then edit it fifteen times without the person realizing that the witty thing I just said is the much improved version of the bland, boring comment I was about to leave.  The same goes for debating too.  Online, I can look up sources and take my time to make a solid argument.  In person, my brain can have the most compelling argument with all the facts and words lined up.  It then sends it to my mouth where the filter slices and dices it until it seems as though I don’t know what I’m saying.

My last problem involves seeing people I’ve already met.  You see, I’m not good with faces and names.  There are people who work for my company whom I’ve seen dozens of times over the past nine years who I couldn’t name if I saw them walking down the hall.  I’ll know that I know them from somewhere but I just won’t be able to place it.  If I’m that bad with people I’ve seen over the course of nine years, imagine how I’ll be with the hundred or so people I’ll meet this week.  "Hi.  I’m TechyDad and you are… Oh yes, we did meet before… your name was… Right…. and your website…. Yes, I remember you.  What, do you think I forgot your name since we last met yesterday? …. Oh, we met an hour ago?"

All the nervousness brings back unpleasant memories of high school.  My only consolation is that other bloggers out there are going through the pre-BlogHer jitters too.  Here’s hoping that all my fears are unfounded and I have a wonderful time.  If not, I’ll be that guy curled up in the corner with a stack of business cards trying desperately to commit the faces, names and URLs to memory.