Magic

When Elijah came home from camp last summer, he regaled us with stories of defeating rival Camp Mohawk in the annual camp Olympics and getting lost in the woods and learning to love and watching his friends get picked off by Jason Voorhees’ mom.

Naw, he doesn’t tell us squat. 

He did, however, tell us about a game he played constantly: Magic The Gathering. Diana and I simultaneously gave him a wedgie and swirly.

Despite being a fashionable nerd, I missed Magic The Gathering (MTG). It always felt more like a theater dork game than a band nerd game. But in a desperate attempt to cling to my son in any way shape or form before he leaves for college, I asked him to teach me.

The game is based around collecting little cards with dragons or elves or spells on them. You use them to fight someone else’s dragons or elves. There are tens of thousands of cards in existence, so it is physically impossible for someone to try to buy them all. 

But I was determined to try.

Egged on by Eli, I started buying up cards. Cards that ended up on the floor, in huge piles around the dining room table, under the couch, in my pockets. Diana hates this game with every fiber of her being.

Pretty quickly, we learned the best place to waste our money was at Evanston Games. THE place for Evanston nerds. Eli and I immediately found our home. Eli loves it because EGames is a wonderful, welcoming place that attracts kids who don’t really fit in anywhere else. Lots of gender fluidity, awkwardness, and dorky hairdos. 

EGames loves Eli because he is a naturally charming kid who wants to help anyone and everyone. Plus he is bankrolled by a dad with more money than sense (remind me to tell you about the Simpsons toy collection I just purchased). 

They love me because I like to burst through the door and shout, “I would like to purchase your most expensive card, good people!”

We’ve become so invested in the game that we attend Friday night “drafts.” Which is basically me, plus 12 kids half my age tearing open card wrappers and playing a little round robin tournament.

I am not joking when I say the kids are half my age. The other week I was playing against a ten year old person who identified as “they/them” and they stopped playing to stare at me for a moment.

“Are you a DAD?” they asked.

“Uh, yeah. I’m a dad.”

“Whose dad are you?”

I pointed out Eli. “I’m his dad.”

They stared at me for another beat. Then asked, “Can I have a dollar?”

Yes. Evanston Games kid. You can always have a dollar. 

Janet

I spend 23.5 hours a day in the same spot in my office. Staring at a computer screen, surrounded by my special ukulele, my toys, my legos and a slowly vanishing collection of wine stuff from when Diana actually stepped foot in here. 

Oh and there is always a filthy little dog at my feet who would love nothing better than to sit on me.

My command center and hibernation chamber is great and serves its purpose, but does mean I’m trapped from the outside world. An outside world that occasionally need to interact with my world. 

Inevitably, when I am just about to present an amazing advertising idea to a person who could fire me with a snap of their fingers, someone knocks at the door. One of the 3,000 Amazon deliveries we get a day. Or a Luca friend. Or a nice young and not totally scary man who wants to sell me some magazines.

We tried to give Luca his own key, but it’s nearly impossible for him to remember something so important. Plus, our front lock sticks, so he is usually forces to pound on the door or repeatedly ring the doorbell until I excuse myself from a high powered meeting to let him in.

I’ve taken to leaving the door unlocked so I no longer have to move from my chair. Or move at all. I look forward to the day when I am so obese I get to wash myself with a rag on a stick.

Yeah, it’s not the safest thing in the world, but we live in Whitey Whiteville. We don’t get much crime in these parts. 

Moving on. A few weeks ago, I was sitting in my bedsores and Luca was watching his phone on our blue couch when we heard the door open and a woman’s voice said, “Helloooooo?”

We both figured it was Eli, and thus ignored the greeting.

“Helloooo? Hellooooo? Janet?”

Janet? That’s a new one. Must be a Tiktok trend. 

Luca then shouted, “Daaaaaaaaaaaaad!”

I strolled into our living room where a young woman had just broken into our house. Luca stood at a safe distance.

As I looked at the woman, I thought, “Am I within in my rights to kill this person?” Now, this woman was zero threat. She was a good hundred pounds lighter than me and had the look of a cat enthusiast. 

But still. What am I supposed to do here? Yell? Brandish a steak knife? Get a nerf gun?

Luca and I just started laughing. No, Janet doesn’t life here. Just two idiots who couldn’t stop laughing. Janet’s friend began apologizing profusely and wanted nothing more than to go back to her cats.  

She let herself out and quickly walked down our sidewalk, where she encountered Elijah, who was just arriving home from school.

The woman tried to explain why she was in Eli’s house and he burst out laughing as well. I hope she found Janet eventually.

80's Summer

A few weeks ago, one of Luca’s buddies was laying on my couch, eating my chips, watching my TV, and breathing my air. In my most dad voice, I asked, “Don’t you have anywhere to…be?”

He barely looked up from his phone (drinking my Wifi) and said, “I’m having an 80’s Summer.” Do tell.  In reaction to being cooped up for a year and a half, his folks just shove him out the door in the morning and let him make his own plans. 

Wait, what? Aren’t we responsible for scheduling our kids 24/7? I thought our social agreement was to shove as many camps, clubs, playdates, sleep overs and sleep unders as humanly possible into their lives so they won’t have a single second to suffer that greatest enemy ever: boredom. WHAT IF MY CHILD IS BORED?

I suddenly loved this chip eating couch farter. We decided to lay off the scheduling and just let Luca hang with his pals. His 80’s summer has slid into an 80’s fall. Luca and his 4 neighborhood pals jump on their bikes and terrorize the local convenience store owners, play endless games of baseball and football, and map out their sleepovers in that classic kid way to maximize time away from your own bed.

This is 2021, so Luca’s 80’s life has more electronic tracking than the NSA. I don’t abuse his privacy too much, but I do occasionally check to make sure Luca and his pals don’t hang out at Ye Olde Drug Dealer’s Emporium or follow the commuter train tracks to see a dead body in Winnetka. 

I’d be lying if I said it didn’t break my heart a bit. More than once, I’ve offered to play catch or let him spend my money and he sheepishly admits he already has plans to track mud into a friend’s house. 

Luca is such an empathetic kid, I try not to make him feel guilty about spending so much time away. But he senses my pathetic-ness. It may be because I stare out our front window so much. I love when he doles out a little of his time like alms. “Father, would you like three farthings of my attention?” Heavens yes.

If I’m really good, Luca will let me watch him play video games. 

Later today, Luca set aside 3 hours to watch the Bears game with me. Now, I’m not a Bears fan. I haven’t given a crap about them in 20 years. But you better believe I am going to dig out my old Rex Grossman jersey and savor some real Luca time.

I may even try to hold his hand. 

Tutu!

 

A few weeks ago, Diana took a much needed break at the cabin while the boys and I slowly but surely destroyed the house. 

I was doing my best to pay attention to a Teams meeting while Spotify, Twitter, Reddit, Youtube and Simpsons trivia tried their best to lure me away. I got a little text alert from Diana that included a link to the Evanston animal shelter. Hmm. Must have been a mistake a slip of the finger. Moving on…

Ding. “We should totally foster her!”

Uh-oh.

I clicked on the link. “We have this INCREDIBLY sweet senior girl that really needs out of our kennel. She came to us from a less than ideal situation and deserves to live in a warm and loving home. Her name is Tutu and she’s probably about 13 years old. She’s mostly blind and deaf but has so much pep in her step. When she’s not sleeping like an angel, she wants to snuggle and get loved on. Can anyone take her in? She could probably go with calm dogs and kids that will give her space and time to settle in.”

What? Blind? Deaf? Situation? Loved on? I went into panic mode. We can’t afford another dog. Jerry is a jerk to other dogs. We just got used to our schedule with one idiot dog. Didn’t I swear we’d never have two dogs at the same time?

But her picture was just so cute. She looked like a Muppet. Or an Ewok. Or a Mewok. Plus, when the deaf, almost blind lady wants to take in a deaf, totally blind dog you kinda have to say yes. 

I went to the shelter to meet Tutu. I was a little worried about the whole “less than ideal situation” talk. What did that mean? Was she a pickpocket on the streets of London? Was she being used in a tiny circus? Was her previous owner The Situation from MTV’s “Jersey Shore?” 

The nice lady put Tutu into my arms and just started throwing her stuff into my trunk, convinced we’d fall madly in love. She was right. This fragile little old dame just snuggled into my arms and looked in my general direction with her adorable vacant eyes. If you shouted, “Tutu!” like a cuckoo clock, she would also cock her head as if to say, “Is there a cuckoo clock in this room?”

She’s settled in nicely. Jerry explained in great detail that his stuff was his stuff and she should not, under any circumstances touch his stuff or else he will bark very loudly. Whenever he barks at her she cocks her head as if to say, “Is there a cuckoo clock in this room?”

The only catch, besides her need to poop in our workout room, is an intense need to be held 24/7. To Tutu, the floor is lava. When she is not in our arms, she wanders the house, crying for someone to hold her. But, she’s blind so I get it. 

It gets a little embarrassing when I am presenting to big wigs, but I just pretend I am Dr. Evil and Tutu is my Mr. Bigglesworth, “You WILL buy this commercial…for ONE MILLION DOLLARS!” We even bought a little dog carrying bag like a 60 year old rich woman. Which makes me feel like a pretty 60 year old rich woman. 

The Evanston shelter hasn’t really checked in on Tutu, so I assume she’s already moved from the “Foster” category to the “Forever ours” category.

Batting a Thousand

I forced Luca to watch the 1989 baseball classic “Major League.” A film that could never be made in 2021. You know, because of the racism and misogyny and the Charlie Sheen. We quietly ignored the particularly awful bits and concentrated on the dramatic baseball moments. 

As a result, Luca’s love of the game skyrocketed. He asks me for a catch every night after dinner. I can say without hyperbole that throwing pop ups to my son as the sun sets and I get eaten my mosquitos is the greatest feeling in the history of the world.

It’s a bummer that Luca hasn’t been able to play on a real, live baseball team in two years. Until now (cue dramatic music).

One of Luca’s buddies, the one who wore a sport coat to our last Superbowl party, asked Luca to join his team for the playoffs. The brief moment of COVID dip sent most of his team’s families on vacation, so they were short.

He had one day to prepare, which was just enough time for me to completely freak him out. “Don’t panic. Don’t think about the fact you haven’t played in two years or don’t know anyone on the team or that you are prone to nervousness or how important this game is or how many people will be staring at you or that this could very well be the most important moment of your young life.”

I don’t think Luca blinked for 24 hours.

Thankfully for both of us, he got a ride to the game with his pal and I was left to my own anxiety. I arrived at the game the requisite Hamann half hour early and Luca had already slipped into the casual camaraderie of athletic tweens. Every other word out of their mouths was “bruh” and Luca speaks fluent Bruh. 

He raced up to me and excitedly told me about pre-game batting practice and bruh this and bruh that and I could see in his eyes that he was in heaven. He had two requests: Could I film his at bats and please don’t embarrass him. I guaranteed at least one of the two.

Diana arrived with Jerry, who wanted nothing more than to lovingly attack every single kid in a uniform, and we settled down to watch the kickoff. Or tipoff. I prayed my pre-game prayer, “Lord, please let absolutely no balls be hit towards my son. Amen.”

The team got absolutely clobbered, but Luca played well, which is kind of perfect. He even caught a fly ball to briefly stop the other team from reaching the slaughter rule score. 

Then it was time for Luca to bat. I raced to shove my camera in between the chain link fence. Keep in mind the other pitcher was in the middle of a brilliant no hitter. He was throwing like that pitcher whose name you recognize. 

And then that little jerk got a hit. Right up the middle, over the pitcher and into the outfield. Diana and I screamed our faces off and Jerry thought it was the apocalypse. 

In case you are wondering, this is still a Hamanneggs post so I totally screwed up filming him. I have some great footage of my feet celebrating Luca’s hit. 

Did we overdo it congratulating Luca? Did we put wayyyyy too much importance on sports? Did we set him up for disappointment down the road? We sure did. Ice cream, kisses, his choice of whatever dinner he wanted, his face tattooed on our faces.

Charlie Sheen, eat your heart out. 

Festival of Lights

Every time we drive to Michigan, we pass though the “Firework Zone.” Two massive structures bookending the highway that scream at us about their mental stability and low prices. I’m always vaguely disappointed they aren’t on fire when we pass if only to keep the kids from begging for fireworks. 

We always vaguely argue, “It’s not even 4th of July,” which works exactly 51 weeks out of the year. And this year it bit us in the butt. The boys cashed in their chips and we found ourselves in front of the big white crazy explosive building and not the big red crazy explosive building.

Diana went in with the boys because I could not be trusted. It was determined by all parties that I would get conned into buying the “Thumb Remover 2000” and not even the boys wanted that responsibility. I was on Jerry duty. While the rest of the family shopped, we had an adventure exploring the fried chicken trailer in the parking lot. 

They emerged with their loot and Luca shouted, “A hundred dollars!” in an attempt to make me angry. Elijah was mortified because Diana dared ask an employee for help. She also asked for the “safest” fireworks they sold, and Eli was sure the teen would follow us all the way to the cabin and give us each a wedgie while shouting, “Haw haw!”

The majority of the ‘works were of the “snake” variety. You know that little disk you light and then it poops out carbon in the shape of a snake? We got a bunch of those, a bunch of sparklers, and some smoke bombs. 

But the real spectacular was the “Festival of Lights.” The giant box didn’t seem to celebrate the Tirthankara (savior) Mahavira's attainment of nirvana, but we all agreed it would make a nice finale to our Michigan trip. 

Leading up to the “Festival,” I had consumed enough beer to lose a bit of my Hamann-ness and enjoyed both the fire and the works. I also had the Uber Hamann, Luca, with us who poured thousands of gallons of water over each and every spent item. Soon our driveway was a mess of soggy cardboard and soot. Luca would also scream, “RUN!” every time a wick was lit, so our thumbs were pretty safe.

Then it was “Festival” time. We were giddy with excitement and Michigan IPAs. Just as we flicked our BIC, the neighbors started their fireworks display. The forest lit up as hundreds of pounds of TNT erupted. It was spectacular and dangerous and loud. Jerry decided that under the cabin was a perfectly reasonable place to live out the rest of his days.

We didn’t have to search for the “Festival” wick because it was as bright as midday. It ignited and was noticeably anemic compared to the warzone next door. It sizzled little fountains of sparks and pops and smoke. But it was all ours. 

And it was glorious. 

El Diablo

At the end of the school year, the boys were becoming gross, pale Basement People. Only emerging from their video game hovel to eat hot cheese snacks and recoil from the sun. My plan of unfulfilled threats wasn’t working, so we signed them up for organized sports. 

Elijah attended flag football camp (more on that in a future post) and Luca was a double threat of track and soccer. I have no idea what happened in track, as events occurred during the week. So make up your own HamannEggs post. I’ll get you started: “Luca’s desire to be in track sure did lead to something funny…”

Although Diana and I were vaccinated, Luca and his team were not, so the league took extra precautions. The kids were required to wear masks at all times (although most wore theirs in a jaunty, under the nose style) and they had to play the same opponent every game of the season. 

I was worried at first because playing the same team every week seemed mighty boring and my entertainment is really all that matters. But the teams were evenly matched and every week was a barn burner. Except the first couple games, where the kid, all still suffering from Basement People Syndrome, were gassed by the first quarter. 

It was a ready-made rivalry and we got to know the members of the opposite team as well as Luca’s. We knew the kids whose parents forced them to be there, the kids who were kind of jerks, and quickly learned who the studs were. Namely, El Diablo.

El Diablo was amazing. This kid could score a goal from the parking lot. He could literally Bend it Like Beckham. He was the fastest, toughest, most accurate kid on the field at all times. He had a humble attitude of an athlete who was playing a completely different game than anyone else. 

Every time the Luca’s team would go up by a score or two, the opponents’ coach would give El Diablo a look that said, “Whenever you’re ready” and the kid would blast a goal through the back of the net and into Wisconsin. Thankfully for everyone (and my attention span) the coach would only deploy El Diablo sparingly.

As Story Writing 101 would have it, the last game of the season had both teams tied. Luca was positively electric. Not only because Diana said, “If you don’t score a goal, don’t bother coming home.”

The game was delightfully tight and they entered the final period tied. That’s when the opponent’s coach did the unthinkable: he put El Diablo in goal. El Diablo was amazing at any position, but it was bizarre to put your howitzer so far behind enemy lines. I truly respected the coach’s sportsmanship and wanted him to pay dearly for it.

With seconds left in the game, Luca had a breakaway with the ball and was one on one against El Diablo. I began bellowing like an injured water buffalo. “Errrrooooooo! Luuuuuuucaaa! Bloooorgh! HamannEggs Storyyyyyyyy!” 

Luca fired a shot with all his might. A beautiful laser that streaked across the field. And careened off the goal post. The “clunk” was deafening, but the crowd cheered his almost amazing play. We parents gave each other smiles and knowing nods, content with the fact that this wonderful rivalry would end in a tie.

But then Luca’s teammate scooped up the rebound and scored on El Diablo. Haha! Take that, kid who is great at his sport!

Luca was thrilled and celebrated by going to the basement to play videogames.