Also, like the cookie jar book, it does that cop-out stretch writing thing. It’s the literary equivalent of like stepping on cocaine with baby powder. In Where the Wild Things Are there are three pages for the following phrases “And he got in his boat and he sailed… And sailed… And he sailed some more.” Is your typewriter broken in a way that only allows you to write that sentence? I’m writing this book. I have a word count from my publishers. I can’t just write the same sentence over… and over… and over… and over again.

When I looked up Maurice Sendak’s credits I was thoroughly unsurprised to find that he never did a single book for adults. It’s not like “Oh, and he also wrote All the President’s Men.”

Here’s the real problem. Whether it’s Mapplethorpe and Piss Christ or a shitty Adam Sandler movie I’m not bringing my family to see it. But I’m forced to read these books. I have to read to my kids, and thus put this toxic waste into my brain, filling valuable real estate that could be taken up with vintage racing cars and porn.

This has been going on for centuries. Slightly after the invention of the printing press, parents were being tortured with this tripe. Not that it always has to be published. Nursery rhymes suck, too.

You’ve got an old woman who lives in a shoe with too many kids and is probably on welfare, babies in cradles falling out of trees, you’ve got three blind mice having their tails cut off with a butcher’s knife and the ring around the rosie song is about the plague.

Then there’s Lizzie Borden. We used to take horrible shit and turn it into nursery rhymes. This chick murdered her family. Adorable. That was apparently novel enough to turn it into a nursery rhyme. Unfortunately, something like this happens every day in Dade County. Do we have a Charles Manson nursery rhyme? Are kids on the playground singing nursery rhymes about that chick who drowned her kids in the tub?

It occurred to me one night when I was playing with Sonny’s feet how lame the “This Little Piggy” nursery rhyme is. In fact, we shouldn’t even call it a nursery rhyme since it doesn’t fucking rhyme. This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none. And this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home. Not even an attempt at a rhyme.

This little ditty first appeared in 1728, well before the Internet. So this piece of shit spread by word of mouth. How did it catch on? There’s a weird foot fetish angle to it. I’m convinced that this was “written” by a foot fetish pedophile who wanted to get his neighbors to take their kids’ shoes off in front of him. “Hey, I’ve got this great thing you can say to your kids. But first they need to take their shoes off. Yeah, that’s the stuff… slower… slower.”

Also, it is lazy. So the first piggy went to market. Okay, good start. But then the second stayed home? He couldn’t go to the carnival or the castle or something? He literally does nothing? The third one had roast beef, which has to be an awkward conversation with the cows he sees at the farm. “How was lunch?” “Good, I ate your brother-in-law.” Then the fourth piggy has none. He doesn’t eat anything. Creatively, the author just gave up. I want to find this guy and go wee wee wee on his grave.

The funniest part is that I got annoyed by this and decided to hash it out with Lynette, and the conversation got heated. Was the first pig the same as the third pig? We couldn’t agree if the first pig went to market and got the roast beef. Are there only two piggies? The fifth one went all the way home, is that a different home? Is he coming home to the piggy that stayed home or to another house? Eventually, it got to the point where Lynette was shouting, “He doesn’t go back to the other house. He has his own home, you idiot.”

I’ve made it a point to interact with my kids physically. This was something I never got from my parents. When they were just one year old, I was launching them like horseshoes onto a pyramid of pillows on my bed. I knew boys like to wrestle around and roughhouse, but I had figured out by that point that Natalia had the daredevil gene, too. It was in their blood. All my nephews had the gene, too. They had broken arms every other week. All my stupid roof jumping and reckless driving escapades have been detailed in my previous books. So it was inevitable that my kids would have that thrill seeker thing in them, too.

I’ve already told you about the abuse I take from Natalia during our wrestling matches. Here’s the thing — as much as I try to enjoy these moments of physicality with my kids, I always come up short. No matter who wins the match, I’m always the loser.

One night, when they were about four and a half, Olga was in Guatemala taking care of her sick mother. And heaven forbid the wife and I raise the kids by ourselves. So the maid who usually only comes in on Friday had been asked to come in a little extra to help us out. She has a son herself, so she asked if she could bring him. The little boy’s name is Nathan. He was six years old.

Well, Nathan had heard about our wrestling time and wanted in. There are three things you should know about this situation before I tell you the story. First, the maid and her man had gotten divorced. I don’t know why, I don’t speak Spanish and I didn’t want to get involved with that telenovela. But I know as a product of divorce how much little boys want to be roughhoused by their old man. So I decided to let Nathan in on the fun.

The second fact is that not only was Nathan older than the twins, he was big for his age. Way bigger than the twins. He had a bucket head and a barrel chest. He was built like a pony keg.

The third thing is that at the time I had a fucked-up knee. I’m a guy who doesn’t complain about injuries. Everything else, yes. But when I’m in pain, you won’t know it unless it’s bad. This was bad. I ended up needing surgery.

Natalia’s favorite move at this time was to hop on the bed, take a running start and launch herself at me headfirst. I’d catch her and swing around 360 to throw her back on the bed. Nathan saw this and wanted to try it, too. Again, feeling bad for this kid and his absentee dad, I couldn’t tell him to hold back while I wrestled with my privileged white kids. I told him to go for it. It was like getting hit by a train. And since I managed not to get knocked over and toss him back on the bed, he wanted to do it again. I probably wrestled with this king-sized kid for an hour and jacked up my knee even worse than it already was.

Frankly, I’m surprised Lynette even lets me do this. My rough-and-tumble time with the kids has led to a couple of injuries. In fact I started unintentionally injuring them early and often. Over the holidays in 2007, when the kids were about eighteen months old, I was working out with a trainer. We had one of those big yoga balls. He knew I had a great sense of balance and wanted to see if I could kneel on the thing and not keel over. I did it, no problem. Then he wanted to see if I could stand on it. I could. Then he stepped it up and started tossing me a medicine ball to see if I could catch it and still maintain my balance. I could. I was pretty impressed with myself. So the next night, I decided to try and impress Lynette. I was kneeling on the yoga ball maintaining balance when Natalia walked up and quietly said, “Up.” I figured if I could catch a medicine ball hurled by a personal trainer and not fall, I could pick her up. I leaned down and was able to scoop her up and still stay on my knees on the ball. Then Sonny came waddling in after her. At the time, he was built like a butt plug. He didn’t have “up” in his vocabulary yet, so he just stood there staring with an “up” look. So I picked him up, too. Again, no part of me was touching terra firma. I just leaned over and grabbed him and then hoisted him with my other arm. I balanced for a good while with one in each arm while Lynette watched, impressed and getting hot for me. That is, until the phone rang and I unconsciously turned and my knees went out from under me and we all went ass over teakettle. Of course, my instincts kicked in at that time and I protected my greatest treasure… my face. That’s my money maker. I dropped the kids like two sacks of flour. They both hit the floor with a thud, landing on their backs and heads. Meanwhile, I landed on my chest and looked up from the carpet to see a look on Lynette’s face like I had just broken into the house and was wielding a rusty machete. A three-count later, both kids exploded in tears and Lynette scooped them up. They were okay. But then again, it’s hard to tell when a kid might be concussed. It’s not like they have big presentations to make the following morning. Their next day was crapping themselves and being fed oatmeal, which is what usually happens when you have a traumatic brain injury, anyway.