I wasn't sure how I felt about my fellow man so I had to head out to the mall

Turns out I still dislike the huddled masses.

A few observations from the mall, not specific to any detestable average American trait.

- there is a style amongst tween/teen girls ...I don't know if they are considered "cool" but there are definitely a bunch of them...
I would describe it as Pippy Longstockings-Punk.
It's mismatched and punkish and calculatedly irreverent.
It's argyle socks, plaid slip-on Vans, a tartan skirt and striped shirt.
It's an " I don't give a shit about style" style.

Ok, whatever.

- many of the male mannequins in the sports oriented stores have pretty severe cases of gynomastia. ( for those of you not up on the nomenclature, that's man boobs)
no comment necessary it's funny all on it's own.

- they have a store called "all things Catholic"
at first I was highly offended because I went into the store and found several things catholic missing . one example?Not a single pedophile priest. Also? when I inquired at the counter about how I might go about buying my way into heaven I was asked to leave...
it wasn't until later that I realized that the point of the store was not to provide all things catholic but that all things provided would definitely be catholic.

my bad

Oh and Americans are fat and dress poorly.

that is all.

I had an idea...at least I thought I did...

I was going to mark the occasion of my 100th post by reposting my favorite posts so far...or maybe have you guys tell me which were the best so far and I'd repost your choices...

When I brought this up I was chastised for cussing so much.

I recently spent a couple of completely wasted hours clicking the "next blog" button to see if I could come across anything interesting...I found a very depressed 14 year old girl from Singapore who was (possibly) recently dumped and writes in pitch-perfect LOLCATS grammar.

I also came across a woman celebrating her 100th post by writing an excrutiating account of her encounter with endometrious and all the life choices it makes you reflect upon.

I'll celebrate my 100th by telling you about my trip to the supermarket.
(see what you made me do, chastisers?)

Have you ever been in a public place and you look around at the other patrons and you think, "I am catching something right now. I am contracting an illness being in the prescense of these people. I need to get the hell out of here."

I heard an old guy walking behind me say to the witch he had dressed up as his wife " I'm sick of chasing that guy. He's never here. Next time I see him I'm chasing him off the cliff with my car."
I turned around to get a look at the charming old fella.
He was pushing a walker. It was a pretty kick-ass walker I have to say. If they haven't perfected the Segue by the time I am his age and we are still using walkers, I want one like his.
It had hand-brakes!
How fast does he expect to get that thing going?
Was it a racing walker?

Oh and speaking of the Segue? I saw a guy riding one down 8th street today...WTF?
I have only seen somebody riding one of those things one other time. It was in Scottsdale near where I was thinking about buying a condo with a girlfriend of mine.
( We decided that instead of buying the condo we would break up)

At this point in history there is no way to ride one of those things without looking totally nuts.
I expect that by the time I am in need of a walker the Segue will be even further developed and a standard mode of transport for people of diminishing walking skills....of course I also thought we were supposed to have flying cars by now....

And where the hell is my robot slave? I am sick and tired of going to the refrigerator for my own damn soda!

Hey, he started it!

Your kids start from day one trying to make you lose your mind.
It's psychological warfare.
It begins with the sleep deprivation and continues through the OCD behavior. I suspect that they don't really want to see Toy Story for the 1,000 time but they know you might not be able to live through one more viewing...( I have a beef with Toy Story, don't get me started on that one.)
At some point you have to fight back to keep your sanity.
When turbo was little that Fat Boy Slim song....."right about now the funk soul brother, check it out now the funk soul brother"
If you would insert his name instead of ' brother ' he would be apoplectic.
It was awesome.

He and I had this game that we played. Wind And Storm. We were super heroes.
He was Storm:

,

I was Wind...he named the characters.
In fact the whole thing was of his devising. He wrote the script I just played my part. It was played almost entirely in the car, driving to school, from the babysitter etc.

Here's the thing, as Wind I had the power of wind. So mostly I was limited to knocking things over.
As storm he had all the power of a storm...you see where this is headed?
I was the damn sidekick!
He had wind, lightning, hail...the list goes on.
I was the frickin' driver for the most part. He'd say "Wind that white car is following us, lose him!"

And then I'd floor it.

He would try to get clever once in a while, "Wind, I didn't like the school lunch today, pull into this McDonalds!"
When I got sick of being the sidekick I would start talking in this exaggerated super hero type voice...he'd say "Wind, I think I see an enemy up ahead!"
I'd say "I SEE HIM STORM!" in this really deep, old timey radio-play kind of voice.
"wind use your normal voice"
"I AM!"
"No that's not how wind talks!"
"BUT THIS IS MY VOICE!"
"no use your normal voice!"
"INDEED!"
"dad!"
(normal voice now)
"yes?"
"see, that's how wind talks"
"LIKE THIS?!"
"NO!"
You see how that works?

He would get sooo pissed but Screw it.

I'm the one with the drivers license, how come I gotta' be the damn sidekick?

Perjury! Je'cuse!

Let's talk about perjury, shall we?
President Clinton got impeached for perjury. How brilliant is it that he got impeached...and then he just showed up for work the next day? Love that attitude.
He got impeached for lying about...well, for lying about what every married man in America, hell every man who has ever been in a relationship would have lied about. He got impeached for lying about a BJ. Really? Honestly?
Come on!
I put a bit of the blame back on Clinton...he should have just said, "Fuck off. It's between me and Hillary."
DONE. End of story !. NEXT!
While I don't condone what he did, I do condemn the fact that he gave it legs by trying to deal with it on their level.
Presidents have had mistresses forever. Again; I don't condone it. But the fact that Clinton got strung up for it and Bush the first got away with his affair annoys me.
The fact that Clinton took enormous piles of shit for smoking pot but Bush the Second got a very small ration of crap for doing coke...and drunk driving, that bugs me. One was Harmless the other? dangerous.

Anyway.... perjury.
They are going after Barry Bonds for perjury now.
GREAT!....

Well, maybe not.
Here is my issue. Barry plays a game. Sure he plays the game for big bucks. Yes I don't like the fact that he has brought a taint to something I happen to love. But he is under the threat of prison time because he cheated at a game?
A game?
I Think his name should not be attached to any kind of record. Any rational person knows he took steroids. Steroids are illegal in baseball right now. He tested positive for steroids. Done. He cheated. No hall of fame. No name in the record books.

But going to jail for perjury?
Come on.
OJ is not in jail.
Penis Cheney shot his buddy in the face. No jail.
GW invaded a country on the basis of a lie. There were no WMD's. There was no yellow cake uranium. Warrant-less wiretaps, men detained without trial on the ass end of Cuba, legal counsel denied. I am so weary talking about this, and I know I run the risk of sounding like a crank...but if you read a few books, do a little research, you will have to come to the conclusion that he cheated in the first election. He did. I assure you.
And as far as his various wars?
Look, I went to school with some A-Holes...
And the way GW went to war with Iraq? It's like me looking around my elementary school and deciding one guy in particular was a dick. He didn't do anything to me per-se but he is definitely a dick. So i get a bunch of kids together and we jump him. We beat the crap out of this kid on the basis of the idea that he's a dick so at some point he was probably going to mess with me so...I was just defending myself, right?
PERSPECTIVE PEOPLE! If Putin did what Bush did? We'd be screaming at the top of our lungs on the floor of the UN...

We have an absolute rogue for a president, yet we are going to jail Barry Bonds for cheating at a game?
I am not a fan of Bonds at all, but come on.

Remember the time we tied Jake's leash to Ryan's stroller?

I don't know what it was about children being inside the house that so annoyed our Dad.
When we were at my Dad's house for the weekend, if you were caught loitering about the premises for more than 5 minutes my Dad was right there like he was breaking up a high school party...
"all right people lets go, take it outside..."
Can't a kid just hang out?!
Or, as my sister says,
"I just wanted to watch Gilligan's Island"
Whatever. We were exiled.
"Get out of my house! You, your sister, Waz...and while you're at it take the Goddamn dogs!"
So there we are, a ragged band, like the Jews wandering the desert, like the homesteaders trekking across the Great Plains in Conestoga wagons...

Too dramatic? Sorry.

It's me, Waz in a stroller, Jake and Angie on leashes and my sister.
I don't know where the decision making process broke down. I don't know why I didn't just take the dogs, and she took the stroller.
I just know that at some point it seemed like a keen idea to tie a leash connected to a 150 pound rottweiler to the stroller that my brother was strapped into.

(Hey! I was 12! I was not ready to command this kind of expedition, ok?)

So...Jake sees another dog whose ass he would love to give a neighborly sniff and he heads off in that direction.

Abruptly.
With vigor.

The stroller is Yanked out of my hands and Waz goes off on Mr. Toads Wild Ride.
He is flying down the sidewalk. I was a very fast runner, but they were away from me before I could squeak about it.

He gets about 3 house lengths ahead of me, he is almost to his new friend...and just as I have the thought "cool he's going to stop..."
(can i just ask, why is it always the case that just as you think "it's ok, disaster has been averted"...the shit hits the fan?)

Just as I think it's cool?

The stroller hit a crack in the sidewalk.
The stroller launched 4 feet into the air.
The stroller inverted itself mid-air.
The stroller landed kid-side down.
The stroller slid across the length of the lawn.
The stroller stopped.
Jake got a nose-full of ass.

I catch up and flip the stroller over and I can tell by the look on Waz's face he will never be the same.
Stunned?
sure.
Bloody?
Only a little.
But you know what?
The man flies helicopters now!
And he just might have the stomach for it because of that ride. Maybe after that he realized nothing would ever be scarier?
Who knows. ( I also convinced him to sit in the front car of various roller coasters and water-flumes with me, much to his terror/benefit)

So. I bend the stroller back into an approximation of what it once was and we head back to the house
(even though I know we aren't welcome. It's like trying to get into studio 54 circa 1979.)

The rest is hazy. I know there was a lot of punishment. I don't remember if my sister ratted me out, if Waz started crying the second we got back or if the frame damage on the stroller outed me.

I just know there was punishment aplenty.
and if I say "remember when we tied Jake to Ryan's stroller" I can make my sister laugh.

Annoying Commercials

I have a couple in mind right now, mostly because they just ran back to back.
I'll try to do write- ups on others as it comes to me.
One of my curses is that I see between the lines to the true meaning that others don't.
For example.
There is a commercial running right now,
It is for a deodorant that is "prescription strength"
WTF?
How bad does your armpit funk have to be that you have to go to your doctor?
How does it come to that? Does someone say, "hey dude, use deodorant , OK?"
and you say "I. AM!"
So you head to the doctor, "hey, smell my armpit, does that seem normal? Will my HMO cover that kind of stench?"

The second commercial.

It's the Froot Of The Loom guys.
They are in some kind of conference room (wait, they have meetings?) one of the guys comes in holding a pie.
He says something like "well, we got another apple pie, guess who it's for.."
cut to Apple-guy looking all sheepish....
What are they saying?
Are they telling us the apple is a cannibal?
Are they all kind of pissed about it, like, "damn, why you gotta be a cannibal?"
I say again,

WTF?

The Yin Of Parenthood

A cool thing that I have with my son, that nobody told me might happen, is that we have inside jokes.
I know every family has funny stuff that only people in the family get. I can say to my sister, "remember the time we tied Jake's leash to Ryan's stroller?" and she knows exactly what I'm talking about and we can both laugh.

But I'm not talking about that. I can say "play ball wetbacks!" and she gets the joke...but it's not emblematic.

I'm talking about the idea of a single word or a simple phrase, and it may not even have any real meaning, it's funny because it's just something you and your friend know and nobody else does.

You can look at a friend and say "have you seen my baseball?" and your friend high fives you.

Makes no sense to anybody but you 2.

I don't think I had stuff like that with my parents.
(I do with my sister)

I do with Turbo.....it's one of those little joys that I didn't really expect. I'm not a "buddy parent" but I do have these cool things with my boy that I never had with my dad.

At a very early age he grasped the concept that if I am holding forth on an opinion that someone else does not agree with he will back me up unilaterally, even if he has no clue what we're talking about.

When he was about 7 years old I was having a jokey kind of argument with a girlfriend of mine. I was espousing some absurd, indefensible position for the sake of being a butt head. She said, "Turbo, what do you think?"

He said " I agree with my dad" even though he knew for a fact I was talking crap.

She expressed outrage.

He shrugged.

I said "Bro's before Ho's" and put my fist out for a pound, which he eagerly gave me.

That miffed her even further.
Well played son

Later he came up to me, "Dad, what does that mean, 'Bro's before Ho's'?"

"I'll tell you when you're older buddy"

This past summer my sister...
Hang on...Hey Sister? Everybody I write about gets a pseudonym, in case someday somebody outside our little circle actually reads this....so what would you like for a pseudonym?

Ok. So, my sister became a little obsessed with LOLCATS. I got into it too and Turbo really took to it. It appeals to his absurdist sense of humor.

( his sense of humor is very much in the genre of Tom Greene and Monty Python(which I recently turned him on to) ... among others)

This one in particular became sort of our catchphrase of the summer:



All summer long, if I wanted to make him laugh or vice versa? We'd just say,
SO...MUCH...PURPLE...in the acting style of Shatner.

Now that's an inside joke.

The yang of parenthood.

There are a ton of things that nobody can properly prepare you for when you become a parent.
The sleepless nights, the OCD behavior.....have you any idea what it's like to listen to a toddler pointing at a stereo and saying "James Brown? James Brown? James Brown?"

Look, I like James Brown, but I don't want to listen to it 24-7, ok?
I know what you're thinking, " hey it could have been worse, it could have been Barney"
Well ...no, actually. On a cellular level Turbo is one cool SOB. So while I didn't have to listen to The Wiggles, I did have to watch my son point at the stereo and plaintively wail "the bluuues"
And then cry because I didn't want to stop listening to what I wanted to listen to so that he could listen to his favorite Taj Mahal cd for the Millionth time..

So while they can warn you about these things you can't really prepare for it.
The thing I am dealing with now that you can't prepare for?
Your love for your child changes. I don't love Turbo any less now. But it's...different.

He is not that adorable little guy anymore. When he was little he was the cutest thing you have ever seen. This is not fatherly blinders. I was stopped in the supermarket on a regular basis and implored by women to put the boy into baby modeling. When we lived in Portland, when he was a preschooler, anytime we took the train or walked downtown, somebody would stop and say hi to him, he was known in Portland. Random people would shout out "Hey Hopper!" It was weird. But he was that cute, that charming.

Then he got older, he got smarter and funnier and weirder.


And my love didn't change.

I don't know when it changed. I know it happened slowly .....

What got me thinking about this was a picture I have of him from a little more than a year ago....he was still %100 kid then.


He's not now. He's in that middle passage between man and boy. His voice is deeper, he's...growing hair in places ....and he smells funny sometimes....but he's still a kid in many ways...

and I feel differently about him.
I still love him but I feel this sadness sometimes because he's not my cute, cuddly, insanely adorable little guy.....

I don't have any answers at this point...I just noticed it recently and I'm a bit lost because I don't ever remember anybody warning me about this...It seems obvious that your love for your child evolves but...to not feel the insane adoration for the little guy like I used to...I'm sure it's a natural way to prepare for the kid becoming independant and eventually moving out and making his own life...but still, it's unsettling.

It seems You never stop being who you were

My sister has a blog. I love it. Read it here
She recently wrote about how she always thought that our parents loved me more. That was not the whole point of the blog but..it came up.
But I always felt I was judged the most, loved the least.
I always felt that she was: The Girl and Waz was: The Baby and I was: The Disappointment.
But I have to be honest, it was along the lines of the backhanded compliment... because I always felt like they felt like I was the best of the bunch and I just screwed it all up...that's a heavy load, right?

Anyway, she talked in her blog about how she always felt like I was the most loved because I got the most attention ...but it took the form of yelling and punishing..
No matter what I did it seemed like I was always getting yelled at for some crap even if it was accidental or not my fault at all. I drove my Moms car ONCE in a parking lot because she was trying to teach me how to drive...2 years later the clutch went out and she tried to blame me. (I'm not making this up) Another time the ice maker broke, I was blamed for it. The evidence against me? I was always drinking big cups of ice water.

The other day my sister and I were talking and a story came up that completely epitomizes this dynamic. I think what makes it so perfect an example is that it happened only 5 years ago.
SO:

It was mothers day. I was going to make a big dinner for the Moms. That consisted of my mom and a mom who was a close friend of the family. I went to Sam's and bought Filet's ($80.00 worth or something stupid like that) Plus a couple bottles of Jim Beam marinade.( also expensive)
I was standing in front of the fridge that my mom has a million pictures of all the various extended and actual grand kids on.
I picked up the bottle and shook it back and forth instead of up and down....a jet of marinade shot all down the front of me with the first quick twist of my wrist, with the second the refrigerator got a liberal coating. Marinade was in my eyes, up my nose and a thick line of it ran from my hairline to my waist.
A tiny piece of minced garlic started trying to burn a hole through my nasal passage.
Mom looked at me for a beat and then said:

" What did you do that for!?"

I said the only thing one could in that situation.

" Like I ......meant to do that!"
( the pregnant pause contained a silent "F***ing!")

In that one exclamation a pure distillation of my black sheep status. The implication that, despite all logical evidence to the contrary, I somehow was up to some shit, yet again.

Can you take a picture of my tomato?

I was standing around talking with some people when Doug walked up carrying a tomato.

Let me describe Doug first. He is in his 50's. He has been smoking for about 45 of those years and he looks like it.
You know how Pig Pen walks around with a cloud of dust trailing behind him? Well good ole' Doug has a smoke cloud. Walking behind Doug is like driving behind a poorly maintained diesel.

So Doug walks up and in his raspy voice says "does one of you have a camera phone to take a picture of my tomato for me?"
WTF?
" What I am supposed to do, email you a picture of your tomato?"
" No can't you just go down to Wal Mart and have a print made?"
"Hang on, you want me to take a picture of your damn tomato, drive down to Wal Mart and have them make a print for me and then bring it back to you? Why the hell would I do that?"
he holds out the tomato
" Because it has a funny shape and I want a picture of it before I go eat it."
" By funny shape do you mean the fact that it looks like an ass?"
" well...yeah."
" Get your ass and your ass-shaped tomato away from me Doug"

These are the kind of weirdos I work with.

Let's Set Off the Geek Fight

I was in a video game store looking at the XBox 360 and the PS3 for Turbo.
I was thinking about getting him one for Christmas and wanted to see how much they cost.
Turns out? A lot.
I don't know squat about these things so I asked the counter guy which one is better.
What ensued was so funny....

Geek 1: I think the way to go is the PS3 it's the best system for the money. It has the most games, it's faster, it is more user friendly..
Geek 2 sidles over with a look on his face like he just smelled something bad
G2: hey, Robert ( he said "hey, Robert" in such a way that it sounded to me like he was saying, "hey Dumbass" ) did you just say the PS3 is better? 'Cause that doesn't make any sense.
G1: um..yeah. It's way better.
G2: Oh, so I guess the drug policy here has been revoked because you must be high if you think that the fact that the 360 is way easier to program games for and the development time for games is so much quicker means nothing?
G1: Who cares about development times when the sheer volume of the games available for the PS3 far outweighs the 360, David! (the way he said David actually made it sound to me like "baby raper")
G2: who cares about game volume when the games suck?!
G1: Two words for you dude: BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY!
G2: Backward compatibility! Backward compatibility?! (His voice rising higher than a 15 year old Anthony Michael Hall on helium)
What about pixels per square inch?! What about Multi- player online capability!?

I said "thanks guys" and backed out before geek blood was shed in a furious slap fight.

I Admire Your Rededication

I saw on the news today that they "Re" dedicated the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. AKA The Wall.
Did I miss something? When did The Wall become un-dedicated?
Did it stop being a wall and lapse into being a fence or something?

Or could this be some BS publicity stunt on the behalf of the current administration on this upcoming veterans day to divert our attention away from the fact that they are rapidly churning out a new crop of veterans as we speak?

Naw...sometimes a memorial just needs to get it's priorities straight and re-dedicate itself to it's original purpose...

A Jacket update

I forgot about the Jr. High factor at my work.
I forgot when I got back into the car business that car dealerships are this funky combination of a bunch of weird characters who love to make fun of people doing anything differently.

For example: we have a guy whose name is listed as "Captain" Ed on his cards...
because he lived on a boat in Seattle for 8 years... Not because he was the host of a local morning kids show...
Which is a very good thing considering he is a highly inappropriate individual.
Ed and I had a conversation regarding the fact that he once had a girlfriend who had a g- string made out of the same material as the shoes I was wearing.

Suede shoes. (black not blue)

What ensued was a very disturbing conversation about the non-breathable nature of suede and the extreme need for breathability in that particular part of a woman's anatomy.
Damned if I could not get the thought of Captain Ed's ex girlfriends stinky cooter out of my head all day...

That has a nice ring to it...sort of like a series of kids books along the lines of Captain Underpants...but for adults....
"The Amazing Adventures Of Captain Ed's Ex Girlfriend's Stinky Cooter"

Ok, maybe not.

But I digress. Yet this is the same guy who is only too willing to make fun of the fact that I drive a Miata.
Really, Captain Ed?
In fact I get a lot of crap for that. It turns out driving a Miata makes me gay.
I would have thought having butt-sex with other men would have been more of an indication of whether I am gay or not, but there you have it, a car made me gay.
Oh and did you know that skateboard shoes can make you gay as well? It's true because I get told that several times a day.

My point is, here you have all these weird characters ( last night a guy asked me to take a picture of his tomato and then print him a picture of it...more about that later) and yet if you deviate slightly from what everyone else is doing they can't help but give you crap about it...just like Jr. High...
Look at him he's doing something different than the rest of us! What a weirdo!

In my new jacket I got asked if I was going racing, I got called Motorcycle Mike ( I responded "It's Motorcycle Michael" ) and , my favorite, Speed Racer.
I had to inform the person that I was actually Racer X because it's a black jacket, not white.
Plus, like Racer X, I am much more likely to do something mean to you for no reason, unlike Speed Racer.
Speed Racer was a pussy.

But not a funky one like Captain Ed's Ex Girlfriends Stinky Cooter.

I Bought A Pleather Jacket

I bought a jacket, and I am pretty damned excited about this jacket.
In terms of style it is very much like a jacket I had back when I was riding motorcycles.
It was a vintage leather jacket I found at some insanely hip place in San Francisco or maybe Silverlake (which if you don't know, is and always will be, an uber cool neighborhood in L.A.)
It was a motorcycle jacket, but not the Harley style.
More like the European cafe-racer style. Narrowly cut through the torso, short collar. (not the kind that fold over...almost like a stubby mock turtleneck?) That jacket got stolen.

This new jacket? It's fake leather, so my latent greenie-enviro side feels ok. The fakeness of the leather? The most convincing I have ever seen. Not a single person said "is that real leather?"
One person went so far as to rub the pleather between their fingers and say "nice jacket"
Several people made comments about the jacket that were all complimentary...well except for that brat of a receptionist who said, "you gonna' race after work?"
And it's not all heavy like a real leather jacket. Have you ever worn a leather jacket for any length of time? Tiresome.
Did I mention my pleather jacket is machine washable?
oh yeah.

So what did this incredibly cool jacket cost me?
This jacket that in the first hour of me owning it got me 6 compliments and made me feel almost, kinda, sorta, hip again?

25 bucks.
Do you love it? I love it. I got it at Ross.

I love this kind of randomness

So a customer of mine leaves to go pick up her mom and daughter.
She gets back and the daughter and mom get out of the car. I am talking to my customer while the mom sort of wanders off to look at the cars and the daughter is just standing there with a faraway look clutching a hard plastic toy about the size of a lunchbox that is in the shape of an animal or something.
In the middle of greeting my customer " hey, so you want me to bring that Jetta down for you?"
the little girl (3 years old or so) sort of pirouettes and just breaks into a full speed run....
let me interrupt myself for a second....

She doesn't make a sound, there is no expression on her face, she is just suddenly running.

She crosses 2 empty parking spaces and then slams into a New Beetle. Her torso and the weird little plastic animal impact the car loudly and she sort of bounces off the car and starts to amble back towards us, no evidence on her face or in her demeanor that she just Kamikazied a New Beetle.
The grandma calls her by her full name "Autumn Marie Salazar!" and she bursts into tears.
The mom sort of puts her hand over her mouth and looks around like "oh, shit! did anybody see that?"
and lets be honest, I have made that face at least 1,000 times, for I am Turbo's father!

sorry to go all 'Highlander' on you but...There Can Be Only One Turbo's Father!

Ok, so the kid caroms off the car, gets yelled at and cries.

But really? I feel like the victim here because I have just seen one of the funniest things ever and I can't laugh.
And there's nothing cool I can say, "yeah my son used to run into cars at full speed, they're so cute at that age."

Turbo Is One of Us

My sister and I are snobs.
Get over it.
She has Coach purses, I write with a Mont Blanc pen...I'm not sure how we got this way really...
But we are a bit fussy and it turns out it may be genetic, being a bit of a snob.

I was picking Turbo up at school...this was when he was in 2nd grade...he said he had to go to the bathroom before we left.
By the way, I had him in this awesome magnate school. They had to wear uniforms, the teachers busted that ass..it was great. The principal was always around making sure kids picked up their coat and shit...
anyway, we were heading out and he had to use the bathroom and he started heading away from a bathroom that was right there.
I said "hey, over here?" and pointed to the restroom.
He says, "no dad, that one is used by kindergartners"
he said it like a Klansman says "jewboys"
Clear distaste.
I said "kindergartners?"
he said " yeah, they don't even flush. Disgusting kids."

He was 2 years away from "being one of them" yet his distaste for "those people" was palpable.