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daddy's little helper

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2009.11.27

This morning my mobile phone chirped to tell me that I'd received an email. Naturally, I'd just sat down on the toilet.

Then the door opened, and The Boy was there with my mobile phone. Thanks, boy!

But at the day care he immediately forgot all about me. As usual.

When I went to put his jacket and spare clothing in the small shelf space he's got, I found a set of covers waiting for me. I was meant to enter the kids' class room and change the covers on his futon.

What followed was five minutes of me entertaining every one of the small children in the room. Everyone had something to show me, or wanted to tell me something, or wanted to help me. All while I wrestled with the curiously small cover for the oversized futon*. The Boy stayed on the other side of the room throughout, playing with the toy shinkansen set.

*A word to any non-Japanese readers who happen upon this journal. What we think of as a futon doesn't exist in Japan. A futon (typically pronounced f'ton) is a simple mattress, a thin thing that is folded during the day and put away in a wide closet. There's none of the North American slat-board furniture nonsense or those special foam core things or any of that. At the day care, the futons measure about 75cm by 125cm.

rand()m quote

One day you will take a fork in the road, and you're going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. If you go one way, you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and get good assignments. Or you can go the other way and you can do something [...] for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and get good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you have to make a decision. To be or to do.

—John Boyd, US Air Force