by Randall Allen Dunn

Last week, someone shouted a racial slur at my wife and daughter as they walked home from the grocery store. Nicki was so shocked she didn’t even see what vehicle the man was driving. I’m shocked that this happened in one of the most ethnically diverse cities of our state.

When she texted me about this, I was really angry. I’ve been dreading this day ever since we became a multi-racial family. The day when our children would have to start listening to the mindless contempt of people who judge them by their skin color and nothing else. Whether it’s a white person who hates blacks, a black person who hate whites, or others who just can’t stomach seeing both races share the same house.

I’m still angry as I type this.

Angry at how cruel people can be, to shout something from a car at a young mother walking down a public street with her two small children, one a five-year old girl and the other one in a stroller. I’m angry that someone can be so ignorant and hateful that they would try to make Nicki and Abby and Noah (not his real name) feel less than human. Angry that someone would dismiss my daughter at a glance, never bothering to discover how special she is.

But as angry as I am, I can’t let myself hate them. I can still be angry, frustrated, impatient, and confounded by them, but I can’t hate them. They’re acting out of blind ignorance. What they need is education, to break through their prejudiced mindset. Not for someone like me to stand up and start a war with them. Hating the haters won’t solve anything.

Still, it’s hard to swallow my pride and my sense of justice, while I wait for those people to grow up and stop throwing stones at my kids.

I’m reminded of the film, “Ruby Bridges”, which chronicles the trying experiences of the first African-American child to attend an all-white grade school in the South. On the first day of school in November of 1960, Ruby (Chaz Monet) is greeted by an angry mob of protesting adults. They wave picket signs and shout threats, upset that the President has ordered them to integrate their school. US Marshals are on hand to ensure Ruby’s safe passage into the first grade.

Unfortunately, all of the other kids’ white parents have yanked them out of school, unwilling to let their children share the same building with a black child. At the same time, all of the white teachers have refused to teach Ruby. They don’t realize – and likely wouldn’t believe – that Ruby is a brilliant child, who tested highly enough to be selected to attend the all-white William Frantz Public School. So Ruby’s mother, Lucille (Lela Rochon), refuses to give in to local pressure, insisting that her daughter earned the right to receive the same quality education given to other children. She knows that they have to take a risk in order to change their lives for the better, or people will simply continue to limit their opportunities because of their color.

Having just moved to town from Boston, Barbara Henry (Penelope Ann Miller), settles in to teach Ruby as her only student. She’s frustrated at the abuse hurled at this innocent little girl by the locals, who won’t even try to accept her.

A child psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Coles (Kevin Pollak), shares Barbara’s feelings. Having seen the protesters shouting threats at Ruby, he offers to provide Ruby some free counseling during her first year.

But he becomes so focused on helping Ruby as a patient – or even a project – that he fails to recognize his own inner prejudices. While his wife, Jane (Jean Louisa Kelly), enjoys getting to know Ruby’s parents, Robert graciously declines every offer of hospitality made by the Bridges. When Robert later asks Jane to make him some dinner, she pretends to be surprised to hear that he’s hungry. She tells him she’s full, having enjoyed a home-cooked meal at the Bridges’ home, and walks away.

Robert later recognizes that while he’s been fighting for the Bridges’ rights, he hasn’t treated them as equals, let alone as friends or neighbors. Which is something the Bridges need far more than they need a professional counselor.

At the same time, Ruby is dealing with more stress than any first grader should ever have to. Every day when Ruby walks up the steps of the school, one female protester threatens to poison her. So Ruby can’t bring herself to eat anything unless it’s packaged, like potato chips and pop. She also hides her lunch so the teacher won’t see she’s not eating it.

Other adults call Ruby nasty names, complaining that they won’t allow their children to attend the same school as a black child. When some white children finally do return to school and join Ruby’s class, a boy tells her his mother told her not to play with her because she’s black. (Of course, they used much crueler words to describe Ruby’s race.)

Most horrifying of all, an elderly woman fashions a doll in Ruby’s image, lying in a makeshift coffin, and waves it at Ruby from the line of protesters.

Adults refusing to associate with a little girl, and refusing to let their kids play with her, and threatening to kill her. All because they don’t like the skin she’s wearing.

It’s hard to wait for such people to grow up.

It’s even harder to stomach the way some of those people combine their prejudice with faith, praying over their meals while shaking their heads at the little black girl who is “ruining their school”. It sickens me that people who believe in a loving God would somehow decide that God’s love doesn’t really extend to everyone.

Years ago, I encountered such a person as I visited an adult Sunday school class. A man talked about being grateful to God and said, “After all, I could have been born Black.”

I was shocked speechless as the teacher deftly moved the conversation along by asking a new question, to avoid calling the man out for making such an ignorant and hateful statement. I couldn’t believe this person had just linked his bigotry to God, as if God had “cursed” some people with “the wrong color”.

In light of such nonsense, who can blame Ruby’s father, Abon (Michael Beach), for taking down the picture of Jesus from their hallway? Why shouldn’t he be angry that his daughter sees such a painting every day, in which Christ is depicted as resembling the protesters more than he resembles Ruby, even though no one knows what Christ looks like.

And why shouldn’t Abon be dubious about making integration work, having served alongside white soldiers in Korea, risking his life for them, but still being valued less because of his skin color?

My mom told me how some black soldiers who returned home from World War II were lynched for wearing a military uniform. I’m sure those people would never believe that the black men had fought for their freedom, and that the uniform they wore was the only outfit they had to wear upon their return.

Their attackers presumed the uniforms had been stolen.

In the face of such stupid hatred, I honestly don’t have much patience. But I also recognize the futility of arguing with truly ignorant people, who can’t grasp how closely their bigotry mirrors the mentality of the Nazi regime, who were all too eager to burn thousands of Jewish people in ovens. All I can really do, when I hear such mindless remarks or hear about such unforgivable murders, is hold my stomach and try to keep from vomiting at the senselessness of people’s hatred.

Because it’s not just about prejudice of white people against black people, or vice versa. It’s all the racial slurs and racist jokes made about Asians, Hispanics, Indians, Arabs, Native Americans, Jews, Poles, French, Germans, Russians and every other race that people put on their hate list. Every race that people readily dismiss as worthless or untrustworthy or less anything than the rest of us. I have always been disgusted by people’s expressions of personal bigotry, in conversations, jokes, or in violent news headlines.

Yet Ruby handles it in a way that challenges me, and should challenge all of us who must deal with the haters who surround us. As she is about enter the school one morning, Ruby turns back to face the crowd of protesters, though the US Marshalls had warned her never to look at any of them. She mouths something, then walks back into the school building under escort.

Later, Robert asks Ruby what she said. “Did you finally get angry with them?” he asks. “Did you tell them to just leave you alone?’

“No,” Ruby says casually. “I didn’t tell them anything. I didn’t talk to them.”

“But, Ruby, I was there,” Robert tells her. “I saw your lips moving.”

“But I wasn’t talking to them,” Ruby says. “I was praying for them.”

Robert is aghast. “Praying for them?”

“Yes, I pray for them every day in the car. But I forgot that day.”

“Oh. What prayer did you say?”

“‘Please, God, forgive these people, because even if they say those mean things, they don’t know what they’re doing. So you can forgive them, just like you did those folks a long time ago, when they said terrible things about you.’”

I’d like to be able to pray for the haters, the bigots, and the murderers, the way that Ruby did. Of course, it feels hard to do that. But the truth is that it’s a choice I make. Whether to let anger curdle into bitterness, or to pray for those attackers to change, while wishing them well. To keep my heart clean and ready for other people’s hearts to change, even if some hearts refuse to ever open.

My wife and daughter were insulted by an individual, not by a race. Nor was the attack made by a specific political party, age group, United States region, or even a gender, but by a single person who made a bad choice. A person who had listened to lies about others and lies about himself, which led him to lash out at an innocent family. I can’t really hate him. He’s as much a victim of those lies as we are.

But I know who I am, who my wife is, and who Abby is. If someone tries to label us as nothing more than a color, gender, nationality, or any other one-sided aspect, that’s their choice, and their loss. Each person is unique and full in their individual personality. Even the guy who shouted insults at my family. He might have his own wife and kids. He might be struggling at his job. He might have a flooded basement. He might have been abused as a child. He might be scared of black people, without even knowing the reason. He might be any one of those things, or none of them. I don’t know, because I don’t know him, any more than he knows us.

So why would I hate him?

I don’t even know him.

Instead, I’ll stick to what I know. That I’m married to an amazing woman, who’s doing a phenomenal job of raising our kids. That Abby is the most incredible child I’ve ever known, and she continues to make us laugh every day. That Noah is learning to trust us more and more, and loves our family. And that whatever crisis we face, with bizarre tantrums, broken relationships, flat tires, skyrocketing fuel costs, or even a man shouting insults from a fleeing vehicle, we’ll get through it all, and tomorrow is another day.

Another day of knowing who we are.

(Please note: I will not be posting a new Weekly Blog next week. I’d like this one to stay up a while longer.

-RAD)

Find more reviews of “Ruby Bridges” at amazon.com!

by Randall Allen Dunn

Some people don’t think men do much for their families. A lot of TV shows and films portray fathers as ignorant or uninvolved. Unfortunately, their caricatures are based on the way a lot of real fathers have acted.

But most fathers that I know actually make sacrifices of time, money and convenience for their families, just like moms do. They make themselves do things they don’t want to do, to care for their wife and children. Those dads go an extra mile beyond their comfort zone, doing whatever it takes to please their families and keep them safe. Without fear of contradiction or bragging, I feel like I have been one of those dads for the last two months.

Things have gotten really busy in our house since we got our foster child, Noah (not his real name). Nicki was already watching two other children during the day, and suddenly she was running around from one chore to the next, trying to keep the older ones from bickering while keeping the curious babies off of each other’s faces and eyes. Laundry, meals and dishes suddenly compounded into larger, less manageable piles.

So whenever I was home, I helped with a lot of cleaning, organizing, brainstorming, and riot control. This was on top of my writing and teaching, and some writing tasks had to be set aside for a while. After the first couple of weeks, we made some headway, but we still had a long way to go to restore order in our once-peaceful home.

When I wake up

Noah cried a lot. For the first month, it was his greatest skill, and he demonstrated it frequently. After praying eagerly for a baby brother for over a year, Abby asked by the second week if we could send him back. We reminded her gently, over Noah’s wailing, that this is what she prayed for.

Noah cried every time we put him down for a nap or down for the night. He couldn’t calm himself enough to sleep. Since our floor is so squeaky, we move with catlike stealth whenever he finally quiets down, because we know he’ll start flipping out again the moment we squeak past his bedroom. One night, we were trapped in the upstairs bathroom for twenty minutes, waiting for him to go out.

Bathtime became a major challenge. Noah is very stocky and heavy for a one-year old, looking more like he’s eighteen months. Worse, he’s proficient at squirming when he wants to escape. You can imagine the difficulty of lifting such a child into a bath, scrubbing him, washing his thick, curly hair, then maneuvering him back onto dry land without letting him slip out of your arms to thud onto the floor. On my first attempt, I felt like I was wrestling a greased pig. Nicki keeps threatening to let me give both children a bath by myself one night.

When I’m working
Yes, I know I’m gonna be

Then the floodwaters rose. Heavy rains flooded our basement, so we had to mop up with a dry-vac and a lot of towels, which we later had to wash. We moved around a lot of items from our floor, including some cardboard boxes that had gotten soaked on the bottom. It was really tiring, but I felt a certain sense of accomplishment from just surviving and cleaning up the mess. Just to get through one crisis after another and to see our family and our house still standing.

The song, “500 Miles”, accurately expressed how I felt lately after working so hard to get through these everyday challenges. As I listened to this song (actually a cover of it by Steven Curtis Chapman), I realized that all this tiring work was worth it, just to know that I was getting it done. And that I was doing it for my wife and my kids.

I even had a remarkable breakthrough in becoming a “Mr. Fix-It”! I’m not a handyman type – at all. I have almost no interest in learning how cars or appliances or cell phones actually work, let alone how to fix them when they break. So Nicki and I knew we were in trouble when our air conditioner started leaking. It was too big a job for her to figure out (she’s definitely the “Mrs. Fix-It” of the house!) and it was too expensive a repair for us to afford. So we had to resolve to do without the AC for the summer and use lots of fans for survival in the hottest days. Or just lay down towels and dry-vac up the water puddles that would accumulate.

So last month, while vacuuming up the latest spill, I realized that I needed to clear some junk out of the center of the room, instead of continuing to vacuum around it. I moved one large box, and noticed that it had been sitting on the air conditioning hose. Repairmen from a previous job had moved the box on top of the hose, which was now pinched. When I opened it up, water started moving through it. With this adjustment and some more treatment from our dry-vac and dehumidifier, we soon had a completely leak-free floor again! Problem solved!

Nicki was quite relieved and called me brilliant. (We both blissfully ignore my failure to notice a large box on our air conditioning hose before this point, because we only focus on our victories!) But she appreciates far more than my final solution to the problem. She appreciates my partnering with her to clean up the mess, day after day.

A week after all this, I proceeded to swipe my foot sideways against a wall, all but breaking my pinky toe, just before we headed to the zoo for a belated birthday and Mother’s Day outing. (I think I was attempting to slide a toy aside. The throbbing pain erased my memory of the reason I was sliding my foot sideways.) The next week, I was mowing our lawn when the bottom fell out. Literally, a piece of my lawnmower fell onto the grass! Not realizing this object was a hot metal part that once belonged to my lawnmower, I picked it up to move it aside, scorching my thumb and forefinger.

But I still live, and I’m still a dad, working at whatever’s needed to take care of my family, one dangerous task at a time.

When I come home
I know I’m gonna be

I’m gonna be the man who comes back home to you
And when I grow old

Well, I know I’m gonna be

It’s not always comfortable, convenient or safe to be a dad. But no matter how exhausted or confused I might get, it’s always worth it to know that I’ve been there for my family. People might not notice what I’m doing, or the effort it takes to do it, but I know it, and I’m glad I got it done.

It feels good to be a dad.

Happy Father’s Day!

Find more reviews of “The Best of the Proclaimers” at amazon.com!

by Randall Allen Dunn

I started to panic the other week. Nicki had texted me during her first visitation meeting with the birth mother of our foster child, Noah (not his real name). The text read:

So far so good. I think he’ll end up going back.

This surprised and startled me. It also angered me. As foster parents, we know the ultimate goal is to see a child reunited with his birth parents. The secondary goal is to ensure that the child is being raised in a safe environment. If a birth parent can address the safety concerns that caused their child to be placed in foster care, DCFS can happily return the child to their home.

So I knew that we might not end up adopting Noah. But everything I had heard about Noah’s family situation up to that point, I couldn’t imagine him being safe back at home. There were no signs of direct abuse, just serious neglect. Those issues could be corrected, but every indication told us that they would not be.

Of course, the bottom line was that I had come to love Noah. I didn’t want to have to let him go.

Any more than his birth mother did.

In the film, “A Simple Twist of Fate”, Michael McCann (Steve Martin) is eagerly preparing for the birth of his first child, even building a wooden cradle. Only to discover that his wife’s child actually belongs to the man she had an affair with. Michael leaves his wife, retreating into bitter solitude. His only comfort comes from his growing collection of valuable gold coins and a liquor bottle.

One night, he loses all of his wealth as well, when a thief steals all of his coins while Michael is drunk.

The thief is Tanny (Stephen Baldwin), the no-account brother of local politician John Newland (Gabriel Byrne). Focused on his budding career, John distances himself from Tanny’s activities, providing him enough money to get by, to party himself sick if he chooses … and to keep his mouth shut while keeping out of the public eye.

He also encourages Tanny to keep quiet about another dirty little secret – one that’s more personal. John has an illegitimate daughter, through a heroin-addicted woman (Anne Heche) whom he also supplies with money to care for their daughter … so long as she also keeps quiet.

Sadly, that money often goes to support the woman’s drug habit instead of stocking her refrigerator. Her daughter watches from her crib as the young mother shoots up in front of her.

Tanny takes the woman out for a drive while they’re both high, with her daughter in the back seat. After they crash in the woods, Tanny sneaks into Michael’s house and finds the golden coins. He carries them off and is never heard from again.

Which cuts off the supply of money from John Newland, since he would never risk delivering the funds to his mistress himself. When she drives toward Newland’s mansion home to demand justice, she ends up too sick to continue. She rests on the side of the road in a snowstorm, not noticing as her little girl toddles away … into Michael’s open front door. A simple twist of fate has caused Michael to exchange his fabulous wealth for the opportunity to care for a little blond girl.

Being a single father – and a longtime loner – Michael has no idea what to do. He enlists the help of a local shopkeeper, April (Catherine O’Hara), to figure out how to take care of the girl, whom he names Mathilda. For years, he endures the trials, errors, and fears of parenting a child, never knowing who her real parents are. Meanwhile, John Newland keeps a watchful eye on Michael and Mathilda from a distance, to ensure that she is provided for, while protecting his own secret.

Until his wife, Nancy (Laura Linney), learns she is infertile. When John privately reveals to her that Michael’s ten-year old daughter, Mathilda (Alana Austin), is his biological child, they start a custody trial.

Hearing the horrific news, Michael marches to the Newlands’ front lawn. “You are not getting her,” he announces, a clear threat in his tone.

The Newlands insist that Mathilda will surely choose to live with her own father, especially considering all that they can provide for her.

Michael is not convinced. “If you love her so much, then why did you turn your back on her ten years ago? You might want her now, but it’s me she’s been calling ‘Daddy’ ever since she could say the word!”

Michael doesn’t realize that Mathilda has followed him on her bike, and now stands on the Newlands’ lawn, hearing their conversation. She is even more stunned to learn that Mister Newland, a man she has trusted as a kind adult friend, is really her birth father. Shaken and confused, she rides away from them all, heading home.

Before leaving, Michael tells the Newlands, “When you turn a gift away from your door, it goes to the one that takes it in.”

The trial exposes all of Michael’s flaws, both for his common parenting mistakes with Mathilda when she was younger, and for his abandonment of his own marriage when he learned of his wife’s affair. The prosecuting attorney lists off Michael’s problems that followed, when he developed a reputation as an angry, unfriendly miser. By the end of the trial, the judge is ready to award custody to the Newlands, based solely on their ability to provide for Mathilda’s future.

At that point, Michael and Mathilda are saved by the discovery of Tanny Newland’s body, along with all of Michael’s stolen gold coins. Michael has his fortune back. But now its only value is in helping him keep his daughter.

By the end of Nicki’s visitation with the birth mother, things seemed less certain. Other questions arose, to the point that Noah’s living situation could go either way. By then, I had resolved that I would be all right with Noah returning home, so long as his mother could truly care for him. I just wanted him to be safe. If that meant caring for him as a foster parent until his birth mother could care for him herself, I was still happy to do that. Though it would break our hearts to see him go.

Of course, this is my perspective, as a foster parent caring for little Noah for less than a month. What must his mother be feeling, knowing she risks the loss of her own child?

Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has hang-ups and problems to address. When a child comes into your life, the need to correct those bad habits or influences becomes all the more glaring. But some people continue to hold onto bad habits that they should be letting go.

Don’t let your poor choices rob you of one of the greatest joys you can experience in life. The Bible says, “Where your heart is, there your treasure will be.”

Treasure your children, and do whatever it takes to hold onto them.

Find more reviews of “A Simple Twist of Fate” at amazon.com!

by Randall Allen Dunn

Being a mother means making sacrifices. Giving up your own personal time, personal space, and sometimes a sense of your own personal identity. I know all this because my wife was ill this week, and I filled in – partly – on some of her many daily duties.

I am so tired.

After waking at 5:45 AM to the sounds of foster child Noah (not his real name) crying in his crib, Nicki and I rolled out of bed. She got a bottle ready while I cuddled Noah to calm him down. Then I changed his diaper, got him dressed and fed him his bottle. After a rough night, Nicki realized she was too sick to watch the kids she normally babysits during the day, and I quickly determined she would need me to stay home to help watch our own children.

After feeding the kids breakfast, combing through Noah’s thick hair, spending some playtime with Abby, putting Noah down for a nap, feeding the kids lunch, running errands, letting the kids play for thirty minutes at the mall, taking them to the bathroom, buying groceries, putting Noah down for another all-too-brief nap, doing a few chores, feeding the kids dinner, changing Noah back into pajamas and a new diaper, and feeding him another nighttime bottle, and then drying the dishes Nicki had washed … I’m exhausted. And this didn’t even include washing or folding any laundry, or giving the children a bath. And, yes, I changed more than two diapers that day.

There were a couple of moments when I wished for the time to write, or even read a book, or a paragraph of a book. But there’s not much time for that in a mother’s day. Instead, it’s filled with meeting the needs of small children, to the point that moms can start to feel that they exist only for their kids.

Some people, having had no such parenting experience, don’t consider this “real work”.

In “Mr. Mom” – the movie that created the slang term for a stay-at-home dad – Jack Butler (Michael Keaton) is laid off from his job as an auto engineer. His wife, Caroline (Teri Garr), searches for work and ends up finding a new job at an ad agency – before Jack manages to find a new job. So Caroline heads off to her new office job, leaving Jack to care for their three small children.

Jack insists that he’ll have no problems, but he soon discovers that being a full-time “mom” isn’t so easy as he assumed it would be. After dealing with diapers and formula, breaking up fights, figuring out recipes, cleaning messy clothes, and wrestling with the unwieldy vacuum cleaner that Caroline nicknamed “Jaws”, Jack starts to feel trapped in domestic life. He becomes defensive when Caroline asks about how he’s managing everything, taking every suggestion as a personal attack.

After Caroline tells him that she went through the same struggles, and advises him to figure out a routine that works for him, Jack gets back on his feet. Soon he’s got the whole stay-at-home parenting thing down, managing the house and kids with amazing efficiency.

But once Jack gets comfortable with his routine at home, Caroline begins to feels resentful that he’s gotten distracted playing poker with the neighborhood moms instead of having dinner ready when she gets home. They’re starting to realize the ways they’ve taken each other for granted, before their roles were reversed. It’s easy for husbands and wives to misunderstand how difficult their jobs can be. More often than not, people imagine that stay-at-home moms – or dads – have plenty of free time on their hands. They can’t grasp how the bills or laundry or dishes could ever be left untouched by the end of the day.

I assure you, that stay-at-home day is long and tiring, and there are never enough hours in it to complete all the tasks at hand.

Being a mom is a full-time job with little recognition.

However, it certainly has its rewards. Our own reward comes in seeing how kind and helpful Abby is becoming, on top of how clever and funny she is. It’s in watching Noah make huge strides in just one month, learning to trust and enjoy us more, and to wait for his needs to be met instead of screaming for attention. It’s in seeing them and the children Nicki babysits, as they all learn to play and work well together.

Stay-at-home moms don’t get a paycheck for their never-ending job. Sometimes they don’t even get a thank-you. Sometimes they get criticism and insensitive remarks from people who don’t understand what’s involved in a mother’s daily routine.

But seeing the way children mature in responsibility and concern for others makes a mother proud of what she is instilling in her kids.

Sometimes that’s all a mom gets to see. But it’s a nice hint of the return she will get on her investment, which will continue to pay out down the road.

For several generations to come.

To all mothers, I and my fatigue salute you.

Happy Mother’s Day!

P.S. My wife feels better, and is managing all four kids again today as I type this. After breaking up a fight, she joked to me, “I feel like a zookeeper.” A few minutes later, she told me about the latest antics of the ‘animals’ out in the living room.

Find more reviews of “Mr. Mom” at amazon.com!

by Randall Allen Dunn

Nicki and I took in a new foster child last Friday night, a one-year old boy. For reasons of privacy, we’ll call him “Noah”, until we know for certain that we can adopt him.

Having an “instant child” in the house again brings back a lot of old memories. It also revealed how much I had forgotten about babies, like how to mix a bottle of formula and how often to check Noah’s diaper. We also had to re-arrange our household items again, that were safe for a four-year old girl, but not for a curious one-year old boy.

Abby and is thrilled to finally have a baby brother after waiting for at least a year, and she’s been a tremendous help. Still, we’ve had to explain to her repeatedly that Noah doesn’t realize it’s wrong to bite, scratch, or grab her toys and slobber on them. I told her she needs to defend herself if Noah does something that might hurt her, since he doesn’t know any better. Then I had to explain that she doesn’t need to actually fight him, or assume a battle-ready “Wonder Woman” stance with her fists crossed over her chest.

Years ago, after Nicki and I decided we wanted to foster and adopt children, we watched a hilarious movie called, “Rent-a-Kid”, about a well-to-do married couple that decides to “try out” parenting. While having dinner at a restaurant, Valerie Syracuse (Sherry Miller) reveals how desperate she is to have children. Her husband, Russ (Matt McCoy), is willing to oblige, but doesn’t know if they can handle having kids along with all of their other busy activities.

In steps Harry Haber (Leslie Nielsen), who has been eavesdropping. “Excuse me for intruding,” he says, “but from my table, I could only hear part of your conversation.”

He explains that he is in the rental business, offering various items such as popcorn machines and weed whackers, and is currently offering couples like them the opportunity to take in children for brief periods.

Russ is aghast. “You rent live children?”

Harry provides them with a card, telling them he has three children currently available. Of course, he doesn’t reveal that there is no such business as “Rent-a-Kid”, which is merely an idea he’s concocted while watching the orphanage for his vacationing son, Cliff (Tony Rosato). Having spent his life renting items to others, he sees no reason that the process won’t help his son “move some merchandise”.

Upon reflection, Russ decides to try it out. He’s not certain he has what it takes to be a parent, but he’s willing to find out, for Valerie’s sake. So they arrange to take in three children for a ten-day rental period:  Brandon Ward (Amos Crawley) and his younger siblings, Kyle (Cody Jones) and Molly (Tabitha Lupien).

Unfortunately, they quickly discover that parenting is tricky. Russ plans to take medical-school-minded Kyle to meet a doctor friend at the hospital. At the same time, Valerie plans to take Molly out for lunch, leaving no one to watch Brandon. But the building’s trusted doorman, Larry Kayvey (Christopher Lloyd), is happy to invite Brandon to his apartment for the afternoon.

At the hospital, Russ becomes sick while viewing a surgery and heads for the nearest bathroom. When he returns, Kyle is no longer with his friend. “This is great!” he shouts in a panic. “My first day and I’ve lost him!” Terrified that the zealous child will attempt to operate on someone, he bursts into the ER to interrupt a three-foot tall surgeon. “Stop! He’s only a kid!” Russ shouts.

The surgeon removes his mask to reveal a full beard, and Russ apologizes. “I’m extremely sorry. I thought you were the eight-year old boy I rented for ten days.” He soon finds Kyle, safe and sound, averting the first of many possible catastrophes.

A few nights later, Russ and Valerie enjoy an evening out with friends, and suddenly realize they’ve left all the kids at home without a sitter. They rush back to find that – once again – doorman Larry has rescued them by sitting up with the kids. Russ and Valerie try to apologize, but realize they have no excuse. They decide they’re just not cut out to be parents, and it’s best that they found out before starting a family of their own.

At Thanksgiving, they neglect the kids, leaving them with Larry again while they focus on their prominent dinner guests. Then they discover a letter written by Molly, in which she was attempting to enter a contest that would win Russ and Valerie enough money to adopt them.

Ashamed, Russ and Valerie abandon their own party to join Larry and the kids. When the ten-day rental period ends, they realize they don’t want to let the kids go, and eagerly ask to adopt them all, in spite of their parental shortcomings.

No one is really prepared to be a parent, and every parent makes plenty of mistakes. It’s by learning from those mistakes – and those of more experienced parents – that we learn how to raise our kids.

Don’t be afraid to care for a child. No one starts out as a perfect parent. Like all things worth doing, it takes a lot of practice.

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