Ask Mr. Smartypants

My sister had a fantasy when she was young, a not uncommon dream that she wasn't actually related to the rest of us drones.

Often, she would punctuate an argument with my mother by screaming, "I have a real family somewhere that loves me!" A lot of counseling could have been avoided had my mother responded, "Oh, honey, you have a family right here that loves you."

Instead, Mom went with, "You should find this 'real family' that loves you so much and go live with them," a line that, to Traci's 7-year-old ears, might have come off as harsh.

In the arguments of the Fillers, no one tosses softballs.

Those memories came back with a vengeance recently when the story broke of Kay Rene Qualls and DeeAnn Schafer, 56-year-old women born in the same tiny hospital in Heppner, Ore., and switched at birth. I can't help but wonder whether they had similar screaming matches with their parents.

The two found out they had been switched (a fact confirmed by DNA testing), after an elderly neighbor brought old suspicions to light last year.

I would have loved to entertain such fantasies as a kid, but there was no way. My mom and dad both stood about 6 feet tall, wore glasses, had dark hair and deep voices and shared the skin coloration and features that indicate 5,000 years of pure Jew. I look like a younger identical twin of both my folks, which is unusual, and not in a good way.

For Traci, the fantasy seemed plausible because she is a foot shorter than the parents and I, several shades lighter in complexion, and is, according to her, also smarter, more refined, better-looking, more disciplined and more evolved than us, whom she perceives as toilet-trained house apes with glasses.

It's interesting that the "switched-at-birth" fantasy that children and adolescents indulge in is similar to people's reincarnation fantasies. Just as people believe that in past lives they were Joan of Arc, Cleopatra or Richard the Lion-hearted, they think their real family is rich, refined, European nobility.

Nobody ever says, "I think in a previous life, I was a toothless, psoriasis-infected serf who smelled like curried mulch and bathed only on Easter and only in beer."

And no one ever imagines they were switched at birth and actually hail from a family nearly identical to the one that raised them: residents of the same small town, hard workers, loving, solid, unspectacular people. That's pretty much what these two ladies discovered.

So Traci, I'll grant you your "real" family, somewhere, that loves you, but with one caveat:

They're exactly like us.

What I've never understood about the kind of oddly homoerotic hazing that accompanies athletic team initiations and fraternity rites is this: How do people find the courage to first suggest these sorts of aberrant behaviors to their buddies?

I always imagine three guys, best friends and athletic studs, sitting around a table at Waffle House, talking.

Don: "Man, Kelly sure is hot."

Sam: "Way hot."

Frank: "Yeah, she's sexy. You know, we oughta pull the freshmen's pants down and spank their naked buttocks."

I wouldn't have the courage to say that to my boys, even if the thought had occurred. The fellows I rolled with in high school would have turned on me in, if not horror, then humorous spite and, at the very minimum, called me "Spanky McFondlestein" for, approximately, eternity. Certainly, it would have been the focal point of every toast delivered at my wedding and funeral.

When I was a sports columnist in Pennsylvania, the craziest hazing story I have ever heard broke. Older athletes at one local high school had been violating the younger jocks with, seriously, broom handles and pinecones.

Again, how does one suggest this form of abuse?

Vito: "What do you guys want to do tonight?"

Charlie: "Your sister."

Vito: "You're hilarious."

Mick: "What we oughta do is violate the freshmen with pinecones and broomsticks ... or go to the movies. 'Crying Game' is playing, so either way. I mean, I have no real preference."

The issue is hot this week after reports broke of hazing among the Woodruff baseball teams that featured upperclassmen spanking the bare bottoms of younger players at the back of a bus. At a news conference, School District 4 Superintendent Rallie Liston said he thought no one meant any harm and these initiation behaviors, it appeared, had been going on for decades.

How much the coaches knew is still unclear, and the investigation is continuing.

And now the parents, the school district, the community at large and at least one opinion columnist have to find a way to convey the fact that while this is, of course, wrong and abusive, it is also not unusual, or a huge honkin' deal, assuming no one got hurt.

The purpose of hazing is to create the feeling among a group of people that they have been through similar, tough stuff and now, having shared those experiences, are bonded together and can count on one another.

The version going on at Woodruff is, strictly speaking, assault, and cannot be tolerated.

But the biggest message I would pass on is this: If, before people undertook any action, they thought, "OK, if this ended up in the newspaper, how bad/silly/deviant would I look?" they might save themselves a lot of trouble.

I'd say it's worth a few moments of thought to prevent a lifetime of being called Spanky McFondlestein.

You never could have convinced me, before I had a child, how very different the roles of mother and father are. I knew in my childless, all-knowing heart that men and women could perform the tasks of parenting interchangeably, if they were enlightened and willing.

That was just one tiny crumb in the enormous, crusty loaf of the child-rearing knowledge I possessed before my daughter came along. I often shared this wisdom with people who were already parents, giving them helpful tips on their rearing skills and repeating my advice, loudly, when they did not seem to fully comprehend or act on it.

"Force them to eat whatever you eat, make them sleep in their own beds from day one and never give in to manipulative tears," I told them.

My reward for that is a daughter who eats only pizza, macaroni and cheese, cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets, has spent less than five nights total in the six beds we have bought for her and weeps more effectively than the Indian in the old littering commercials.

As soon as her eyes well up, I get an urge to call Papa John's, clear the roadside of debris and sleep on the couch.

And I would rather plug my various body parts into light sockets than be a mom.

I've tried momming. Since Quinn was born, there have been many times when Angela had to be gone all day, and I was able to stay home. Particularly when Quinn was too small to tell me why she was crying, I found such days almost unbearable. It's easier for me to attend and write about an actual shootout in 140-degree heat or wait tables at Outback on Valentine's Day than to care for an infant for eight hours. I once voluntarily fled a warm, dry home where Quinn was feeling colicky to gladly run around in the rain covering a flood for three straight days.

I can care for an infant for eight hours. I can also hold my hand over a lit Zippo. I just find these things very difficult.

I now believe that's because I'm a daddy, not a mommy.

And I'm shocked to find that in many ways I'm a very old-fashioned daddy. I don't relate to the strong emotions experienced by my daughter. She'll tell me she's sad or lonely and I'll respond, "Yeah, you should stop feeling those feelings. Yuck. Try keeping them secret until they go away."

Working nights (and days), I am Special Guest Daddy. I swoop in for hugs, kisses, a quick meal and a little daughter worship and leave the heavy parental lifting, the details, the showers, the homework and the nagging that will turn Quinn into a top-notch adult, to the wife.

When Angela, who had stayed home with Quinn for six months after she was born, told me she wanted to keep doing so, I knew we were fundamentally different.

So on Mother's Day, I can only thank my wife for being the mommy and honestly acknowledge that I could never do it one tenth as well.

It is a battleground where the combat is fought not with weapons but with loud, breathy sighs and half-intelligible mumbles. It is a chess board where wits are matched every day, every moment, and each of us strives to gain the slightest advantage over the other.

It is the dishes, the ones in the sink and in the washer, the dirty ones and the clean ones, the dry ones and the wet ones and the caked-on ones, around which we maneuver like married Machiavellians. Always we plot and plan, scheme to conquer, never acknowledging the battle aloud.

Until someone goes too far.

Angela: "Why, why, seriously, why do you have to put this in the sink instead of the dishwasher? Is it resting up for the big wash?”

Me: “It needed to soak.”

Angela: “It's a water glass. What were you trying to soak off of it? The water?”

Me: “Well, what about last Thursday night when you said you would do the kitchen and you left the roasted potato pan in the sink? Hmm? Hmm?”

Angela: “Say ‘Hmm' to me in that tone one more time and I will tear your lips right off your face. The potato pan actually did need to soak because potatoes were roasted in it at 500 degrees for two hours.”

Me: “Perhaps, but that pan will not rest flat in our sink, and thus never soaked at all. Isn't it true that it actually sat in the sink at a tilted diagonal, bone dry, for two days, until I was forced to clean it with a belt sander? Isn't it? Isn't it?”

Angela: “Who are you, Columbo? As I remember, I didn't get a chance to do that pan because I had to fold six loads of laundry, check Quinn's homework, get her a shower and read her to sleep, then answer work e-mails for 90 minutes while you watched a recap of the Web gems from a baseball game between your 24th and 27th most favorite teams. Ring a bell?”

Me: “I watch baseball for the government. You know I can't talk about it; it's very hush-hush.”

And beyond the maneuvering to load the dishes is the strategizing that goes into turning the thing on.

“Okay,” I'll think. “It is now 10 p.m. If I turn on the dishwasher, it will finish running at midnight and be too hot to unload when I go to sleep. Angela will wake up first tomorrow, and I will simply lie in bed till I hear the clanging of dishes being put away, wait 5 minutes, then wander downstairs and get some coffee as she finishes.”

But so often I am outwitted. I wait in bed for the dish clanging until I can wait no longer, then stumble downstairs to find a washer full of clean dishes, a sink full of breakfast detritus and a note.

“Hey, I'm taking Quinn to school, then I've got to go to Greenville to work, then I'm having lunch at Quinn's school, grocery shopping, picking Quinn up, getting the dry cleaning, taking her to swimming, then home to cook dinner. See you tonight.”

It seems unbelievable she would go to such lengths just to avoid emptying the dishwasher, but it's like my mom used to tell me … often:

There's just no cure for lazy.

One day last week, I took Quinn to school. That's rare, because I am normally asleep at that time, with visions of ... certain things, dancing in my head.

It gave me a chance to hear about what Mommy doesn't do.

"Mommy doesn't go this way."

"Mommy doesn't go this fast."

"Mommy doesn't honk the horn and call the people in front of her @#$%sticks."

"No one tells Mommy she has the right to remain silent."

Her Daughterness has been doing Earth Day projects lately.

That means Quinn, snugly situated in her (OK, our) bed at 7:45 p.m. (OK, 8:45 p.m.) looks up through sleepy lids and says "We're supposed to make a topographically correct model of the Earth. To scale. For tomorrow. Do we have any construction paper. And a soldering iron?"

So she made posters and cardboard-box thingies and milk-jug thingies and told us confused stories about the environment.

Quinn: "Teacher says the end zone is disappearing."

Me: "It just seems that way because we're Gamecock fans."

We were sitting in the drop-off line at Pine Street Elementary in a car festooned with Earth Day projects, in a line of idling cars festooned with Earth Day projects, and I suddenly realized that if I cared about the environment, my kid would ride the bus, with 60 other kids, like I did.

Now, I'm sure Pine Street Elementary has kids who ride the school bus. It stands to reason that it would. I've never met one of those kids, heard tell of them or seen a school bus in our neighborhood, but it is a near-certainty that some Pine Street students ride school buses.

I, and pretty much everyone I knew, in a neighborhood much like the one I live in now, rode the bus in elementary school.

My kid doesn't, because it would inconvenience us and because we have visions of her being snatched from the stop by strangers. She has a better chance of being hit by lightning as she's walking to the store to cash her winning Powerball ticket than she does of being snatched by a stranger, but still.

I'm willing to save the Earth, as long as I don't have to give up anything I CARE ABOUT or be inconvenienced. I'll forgo plastic bags and embrace recycling and funky light bulbs, but give up stuff I care about? Please.

Prius drivers aren't people who love Lincoln Navigators and deny themselves. They are people who like the Prius, which is fine, but not noble.

And 99 percent of my environmental impact is not optional on a day-to-day basis. It's defined by the size of the house I bought, the stores I use, the factories built to meet my needs and the whole infrastructure of society.

That doesn't justify wastefulness or pollution, it just puts the "I'm green and you're mean" argument in perspective.

So on this Earth Day, along with raising awareness, I'm saying we should give up something we love: environmental self-righteousness.

And for Pine Street parents, I say let he whose kid rides the school bus cast the first stone.

I always thought we needed to hide our grotesque self-obsession beneath a thin veneer of faked interest in other people. That's how I had lived, because I was taught showing people real feelings (and this could be specific to MY real feelings) is impolite.

When conversing, though focused on the fascinating subject of me, I learned to act as if I were thinking about the dreary, boring things that are other people.

“How are you?” I would say, or “Are they sure it's terminal?” my eyes gleaming with interest, but inside, I would be thinking, “When are we going to talk about me? I have a great anecdote about something I said to the cashier at Publix, but chatosauraus here won't shut up about her chemo and her wigs and her nosebleeds. Some people.”

Then, I joined Facebook and realized we no longer even have to pretend to care about anything other than ourselves.

The lists and quizzes have gotten out of hand.

“My five favorite albums.” “Here are 21 neat things about me.” “The 99 foods that make me gassy.” “The 1,159 people I would like to smack with a smoked turkey leg.”

After the lists came the personality tests: “What type of dog would you be?” (Hot dog) “What state should you live in?” (Denial) “What is your love language?” (Braille) “What would your stripper name be?” (Scooter Cedaridge) “What color is your aura?” (mauve) “Which of Jesus' apostles would you be?” (Umm … pass.)

If these tests were accompanied by parallel tests asking the same questions about your spouse, it would at least raise Facebook to the level of “The Newlywed Game.”

Him: “Vermont? How am I the state of Vermont?”

Her: “Well, I don't particularly remind myself of Judas Iscariot, and if I was a movie, I would not be ‘Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.’ ”

It would be one thing if we took these tests in the privacy of our own homes and minds. I could argue that the unexamined life is not worth living (totally untrue, but I could argue it) and that to know myself is to receive a jewel of great value (although no one who knows me thinks so).

But these quizzes and personality evaluations (“Hey, honey, my personality evaluation came back, and it's negative”) are not being done privately, in dark rooms, between gulps of Haagen Daas.

Well, they are being done privately, in darkened rooms, between gulps of Haagen Daas, but then they're being distributed via the Internet.

Then, friends are expected to chime in with comments.

“You know, you really do remind me of Simon the Zealot. Good call.”

The problem for me is amateurs homing in on my territory: thinking way too much about myself and my life, then publishing the results.

I can't handle the competition (I imagine that's obvious by now) and I'm afraid you folks don't understand the risks of baring your souls to an unprepared public.

So I'm asking you to cut it out, and leave the self-obsessed writing and soul-baring to me, good old Scooter Cedaridge.