A father's journey into relevance. 21st Century Dad...

Our school auditorium looked like a presidential press conference or an appearance by Lindsay Lohan.

Last week our elementary school had its spring choir performance. The choir features all grades, with some songs performed by just the older or younger kids. So it shouldn't be surprising that there were a lot of parents with cameras. Maybe it shouldn't even be surprising that there were a lot of parents with camcorders. But I was very surprised to see the number of parents who had their cameras mounted on tripods. Some had the courtesy to stay in the back (maybe to take advantage of power outlets), rubbing elbows with those parents who chose to stand and video the whole performance while relying on the "steady-cam" feature. But there were quite a few parents who just sat down in the 2nd or 3rd row, with the tripod propped up right between their knees.

Now I'm not complaining. No one was blocking my view from 8 rows back (except for the 3-year-old that kept standing on his chair). It's a free country. If someone wants to videotape 60 minutes of a school choir performance featuring their child, then more power to them. It's good for the camcorder industry, and will help drive down prices by the time I'm ready to purchase an HD direct-to-hardrive camcorder. It could also eventually help Sun Microsystems when the video is made available for streaming. Tivo could get a lift from use of their new Home Movie Sharing service. And that means more broadband use that will drive down DSL and Cable prices. Right?

Oh, there is just one thing that has to happen before we can all rejoice as our Google/YouTube stock soars. The video footage has to make it off the camera's tape/mini-DVD/harddisk and onto the computer. That means that all those dads (yes, it was mostly dads) have to find the time to upload an hour's worth of footage to their computer, edit it, add menus and titles, burn DVDs, upload to sharing sites and alert all their relatives and friends so that they can enjoying the 1-hour performance featuring (if you listen very carefully) one 9-year-old kid among 50 K-6th graders. Maybe one day someone will be clever and just charge a small fee to record all school performances and put them on a download site. One camera tripod instead of 30. For those who want their own child highlighted, it's easy enough to splice in close-up footage of a particular kid a few seconds at a time.

Meanwhile, I was content to just sit back in my chair, holding the camera up above my head and using the flip-out viewing screen to zoom in on my girls and their friends for maybe 30 seconds per song. No tripod, no blocked views. True, my camcorder battery was starting to get in the red zone, but I had no intention of video-taping a 60-minute elementary school choir performance. My family certainly wouldn't watch all 60 minutes. And who else would?

My guess: all those tapes will join 30 others sitting in some dad's shoebox waiting for the time when dad has nothing else more pressing to do. No more homework to help with, no more household maintenance backlog, no more episodes of Lost or Heroes to watch on Tivo. I can speak from experience. Only for me it's 15 tapes, not 30. And it's a big cigar box, not a shoebox. And I've given up trying to follow Lost on a weekly basis. I'll wait until I retire, and get the whole 20-season series on Blu-ray. Save the video. Save the world.

I have finally found it after all these years! Ever since I was a kid watching various "invisible man" shows and movies, I now have the secret to becoming totally invisible!

My daughter is in a San Jose Children's Musical Theater Production of "Oklahoma". These productions never involve just the children. The parents put in time to supervise rehearsals, create sets, help with costumes, etc. Last Saturday I drew the short straw, and got to go with my daughter to supervise a 2-hour rehearsal. What were my duties? Something I am very well qualified for: shushing kids. I have a wide range of shushes, from the come on, you know you're supposed to be quiet shush to the make one more sound and you are out of here! shush.

I planned on using mostly the come on, you know you're supposed to be quiet shush because one of the Big Rules at CMT is that kids have to be quiet so that everyone can focus on the director. I figured one little shush would be all that would be required. There was one small group of boys and girls talking right near me, so I tried it. Ssshh.

No response. They kept talking. So I tried a little louder and longer hey, you're breaking the rules shush. Ssssssshhhhhhhh.

Still no response. So then I finally tried the I'm not your father but I'm not afraid to ground you for a month shush. SSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

And that's when I realized it. They couldn't see me! They must have thought that there was just a problem with the heating system making noise. I waved my hands, pointed, even puffed my chest to look more menacing (in a nice parent-supervisor-like manner). No response. I was truly invisible. But just like in the sci-fi shows, it turns out my invisibility had one weakness. Young innocent children could still see me. The youngest child in the group made eye contact with me, and got the others attention. They stopped talking!

Like any other true scientific breakthrough, I needed to repeat my experiment in invisibility. Sure enough, 15 minutes later there was another group of kids. I repeated my range of shushes, and got the same result. No response. This time there were no little kids to help me out. But there was a supervisor mom nearby. She heard the kids and came over and shushed them using the same tone and inflection as my shushes. And they got quiet.

So it could be a power only dads have, and only around kids over the age of 8. I guess I need more data before I can publish my findings...

One and a half years, 6 blog entries and 4 drafts that never got completed.

So it's time for a fresh start. I gave up the dream of actually getting my kids interested in my blogs. I now realize that people blog for themselves. If anyone out there wants to listen, or (even better) wants to respond, then that's just a bonus. And if some day my kids stumble on my entries while maybe doing a vanity search, then all I can say is "Hi kids". And I hope I haven't embarrassed you too much.

Which is why I have relaunched my site with the subtitle "A father's journey into relevance". Relevance means being an active part of their lives and experiences, besides being the guy that works so that they can eat and have cool things. And yes, this is a bit tongue-in-cheek. I know that I'm very relevant to them. They just don't show it much. But that's just how many teens and pre-teens are.

By the way, think of this "relevance" thing as being maybe 10% of the contents of this blog. Sort of like how fruit drinks nowadays contain "10% real fruit juice". The rest is mostly water and sweeteners.