Tag: ‘murica

Let’s talk about the 2026 World Baseball Classic

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One thing that sometimes sucks about trying to be a dutiful brogger, is when there’s a topic or something I want to write about that has a little bit of time sensitivity.  Most often times, it happens when the topic is sports, and the case of it right now is the fact that I wanted to talk about the World Baseball Classic, and an upcoming game, but since baseball has the shortest time in between games, sometimes that can get a bit dicey, and when sleep, parenting and work obligations mount, I can’t always be as on top of things as I’d like to be sometimes.

But anyway, I still haven’t really been watching any full games, but I’ve been following the World Baseball Classic, because I’ve been a fan of the global tournament since it started in 2006, and even when MLB gets insufferable sometimes, the WBC still remains somewhat pure and digestible, mostly on account of the fact that there are large swaths of players in the tournament who actually give a shit about the game and isn’t necessarily just concerning themselves about dollar signs.

So let’s get one thing out of the way here, I’m stoked that Korea has managed to get out of the group stage for the first time since 2009, after numerous embarrassing early exits in 2013, 2017 and 2023.  In true Team Korea fashion, they kind of backed into their advancement, mostly powered by the fact that they hung 16 runs on the lowly Czech national team, but they took consecutive losses against Japan and Taiwan, before getting the job done and clearing the run differential in a win against Australia.

I’ve followed enough KBO and Korean baseball players over the years to know where Korea’s strengths and weaknesses lie, and I can comfortably say that as happy as I am that they’ve advanced into the second round and will get to play ball on American soil, I’m not liking their chances, seeing as how they will have to play either the Dominican Republic or Venezuela next; should they upset them, they might get an easier draw, but DR and Venezuela are basically two MLB All-Star squads.  Korea can hit, but their pitching remains suspect, so it remains a lofty mountain to climb.

All I really hope is that they don’t get blown out, and put up good fights against whomever they go up against, and bring honor to the Motherland.

But to get to the topic that really inspired this post, is Team USA, after their humiliating defeat at the squad of Team Italy.  Of course, there’s a part of me that wants to see the United States win the World Baseball Classic, I mean we invented the fucking sport, and yet have managed to only once win a tournament that Americans invented and massaged most rules to give Americans the most advantage.

However, given the state of ‘Murica, my general agitation with the state of MLB and professional sports in general and just plain jaded outlook on all things ‘Murica, there’s a part of me that wouldn’t necessarily find that much dissatisfaction at Team USA taking another L in the WBC, and be forced to watch either Japan, DR or Venezuela hoist the trophy at the end of the tournament.

For starters, I was pretty excited about Team USA’s chances when the roster started taking shape, and anchored by two Cy Young winners in Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes.  I mean, even the mighty Japan and DR and Venezuela would have to kind of give the OJ Simpson face at the thought of having to go through either of those guys.  But then the Skubal drama began, where he said he was only going to pitch one game, against Great Britain, before leaving the team, and I’m just like why the fuck are you even here then bro?

I did take satisfaction at the first batter he faced taking him yard, because fuck him.

But aside from Skenes and 55 pitches from Skubal, the US pitching staff was pretty lean and full of mostly 3rd and 4th starters from mid-market teams, and it’s obvious that a lot of requests for top-tier talent fell on deaf ears as pitchers across the league were in obvious body (and wallet) protect mode, and didn’t want to risk injury pitching in the WBC, when the money is made in MLB.

Regardless, the perception is often that the rest of the world is still way behind the US in baseball talent, and a pitching staff of an Ace and a bunch of mid-tier guys should still be adequate at taking on the rest of the world, but that’s the kind of mentality that exemplifies why the United States has only won 1/5 World Baseball Classics.

If anything at all, this is the WBC where it’s become very apparent that the talent gaps between everyone and the United States have shrunk exponentially from the last go-around.  A combination of relaxed participation rules, allowing players to represent countries up to their grandparents’ birth countries, as well as just the fact that other countries are picking up baseball and are getting decent at it, and most importantly, the fact that a lot of other countries aren’t just not afraid of the Big Bad USA, they have disdain and a desire to defeat them.

Seeing the highlights of all these games where teams not the United States are playing with their balls hanging out and playing for their flags and not their wallets has been a thing of beauty, and considering the fact that the US isn’t completely dominating makes me feel as if the 2026 WBC is a lot like the 2004 Summer Olympic Men’s Basketball, where not only were no other countries afraid of the United States anymore, they were out for their blood, and were successfully drawing it.

Italy humiliating the United States shouldn’t just be a wake-up call to USA Baseball, but was a glowing example of American arrogance and a fatal lack of accountability.  It didn’t take long for the media to pick up on US manager Mark DeRosa’s remarks before the Italy game, about how he had believed that Team USA had already secured their spot in the second round, because in reality they had not, and although he is deserving of the heat he took for making such a reckless statement, my knee-jerk thought was that yes, he is the manager of the squad, but he’s still just one guy on a team with like nine managers and a 30-man roster; why didn’t any single person among all those guys try and correct him or get him to walk back his stupid comments?

Either way, after the loss to Italy, it opened the door to a very interesting scenario where the United States could realistically be eliminated from the group stage of the tournament, for the first time ever.  Their fate rested in the hands, bats and gloves of the Italy vs. Mexico game, where there were three possible outcomes, with one of them being the United States going home.

And this is where the time sensitivity comes into play, and I’m sad to say that I already know the outcome of this scenario, because I didn’t get a chance to write about all this until way later than I had hoped, but work and life got in the way.

But I thought it would’ve been really, really, really interesting if Team Italy and Team Mexico colluded to rig their game to where they landed on the outcome where the United States were sent packing; me writing this out like this indicates that such did not happen, and the Italy/Mexico game doesn’t even have to finish for the fate to already be sealed.

Basically, had Mexico beaten Italy with four runs or less, the United States would have been eliminated with both Mexico and Italy advancing.  An Italy win or a Mexico win with five runs+ would have the United States advancing, but like I said, it would’ve been really something to see if Italy and Mexico colluded, and we saw some real shenanigans on national television, like Mexico nursing a 4-1 lead, and suddenly all players just sitting there striking out on three straight pitches over and over again until the game ended.

In a way, it would be just desserts for Team USA to go out in such a fashion, where their arrogance, ignorance, and just the fact that they’re representing a flag that isn’t particularly favored by many outside of the country and frankly many within it.

But last I checked the score, Italy was up on Mexico 9-1, so they’re going to win the group, and the United States is going to squeak on through to the second round.  Ironically, I think this does Team USA a favor, because if I’m reading correctly, Italy will have to play Puerto Rico next, and the US gets Canada; there are lots of talented Canadians, but I think Puerto Rico is the more dangerous squad.  Nationalistic pride, might backfire for the Italians, but they are playing pretty great, and frankly, this WBC doesn’t seem like it has as overwhelming of a favorite as past ones have, and honestly, that’s a good thing.

This has been a great World Baseball Classic, and I’m glad to see that more of the world is catching up to me in recognizing the beauty that exists when players are playing for their flags and not just money.

This is where I’m at with my trust in my country

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I got a thing in the mail from the US Census Bureau today, that wasn’t the next official US Census, but something called the American Community Survey.  My address was “randomly selected,” and it’s claiming to be collecting information to decide where important services are needed:

• Improving roads and reducing traffic
• Building schools
• Planning for the health care needs of the elderly

As a dutiful American, I took the time to fill out the survey in regards to my household, but I couldn’t help but notice just how tremendously thorough the survey seemed to be at gathering the specific racial breakdown of my household.  Mythical wife and I often joke about how we would conveniently tweak our children’s ethnic checkboxes to give them the most advantage in various situations, and considering the state of our nation as it is today, I had half a mind to just put my kids in as just “white” because there seems to be little benefit to being anything other than such, and it’s not like I’m completely lying, seeing as how my little girls are 50% white.

However, it’s apparent that “white” isn’t sufficient enough on the ACS, because there’s not only just a checkbox for white, but a text field asking for specificity on what kind of white; English, Irish, German, etc, and naturally the survey makes it a mandatory field where you cannot continue without some sort of clarity.  For once in my life, white people have it harder than I do, whereas all I had to do was check Korean, and that’s it.

It’s like they’re trying to filter out the people who can pass for as white, and make sure that the light-skinned Spaniards, Middle Eastern, Western Asia, and South Americans, who might be Latinos or Muslims or any other un-‘Murican category can’t be existing the country in plain sight.

I played it straight, and entered both of my kids as Korean as well as white + whatever specificity mythical wife could surmise was her background, because I have this paranoia that the US Government already knows the answers to the questions they’re asking, and this whole thing is a gigantic government-sanctioned phishing quest to find out what Americans are liars, and then target them for some sort of federal retribution.

However, by the time I got to the point of the survey where I was down to the final screen where my final buttons were “review” and “submit,” I couldn’t help but notice that about 85% of the survey was entering in racial information to an uncomfortably granular degree, and there were a few sections dedicated to asking about cars in the household, and level of education of the residents of the home.

Considering there are basically concentration camps being not-so-silently built throughout the country to capture and detain and worse, minorities, ICE raids and acts of murder, the timing of the ACS is extremely unnerving and gives me an overwhelming feeling of distrust that this isn’t being done for the altruistic purposes it claims to be gathering information for.

But it’s got to be legit, it’s from the US Government!

Yes I am aware, and frankly that’s precisely why I don’t trust it, because that’s where I’m at with my trust in the country, to where I’m scared to be compliant and submit my information, for fear that my response gets filtered into a bucket of people and households that aren’t the preferred pool of just white people, and puts me on the radar for a future ICE raid or federal scrutiny, because I’m not white.  There’s little to reason to believe that my spouse being white, and my kids being half-white would give them any more protection, and I don’t want them to be categorized as future targets, especially at this stage of their lives.

Needless to say, I did not hit submit on my survey, and short of being strong-armed in the future through some strongly-worded follow-up snail mail or actual communicative contact, I’m in no rush to do so.  Because I do not trust the United States government at all these days, more than ever, and the ACS just reeks of racial information gathering, and I have zero faith that this information won’t be used for anything that isn’t nefarious or malicious towards minorities.

It is sad and pathetic that I feel this way, and it sucks knowing that no matter how good of an American I try to be, I’m always going to be looked at as a second-rate human being by the people who run the country, because I’m not white.  Yes it’s not lost on me that Asians are among the more tolerated minorities in the country, but when white people can’t seem to figure out how to eliminate more black people, and they feel that Hispanics are too lofty a goal to try to eliminate, they’re going to target Asians, if they already aren’t, just to feel like they’re getting some traction somewhere.

It’s like playing a really hard video game, getting frustrated by it, and dropping the difficulty down just to feel good about yourself.  ‘Murican government probably doesn’t operate much differently, and as a result, I have no faith in them at all, nor am I in any rush to be complicit with submitting my ACS survey information.

There are probably way better analogies for Tarik Skubal’s WBC participation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

But the first one that comes to mind is when Amazon announced the first-ever Prime Day, they were boasting that it was going to basically be the Brack Friday of the summer, that there were going to be all sorts of incredible deals, massive savings, and that it was going to be the greatest shopping event of the year outside of the holidays.  But when Prime Day began, it became quickly apparent that it really was Amazon’s cleverly-named attempt to clean out their warehouses, because for every one marquee item they had that sold out in two seconds, there were at least a million listings for dumb bullshit like USB cables, electrical outlet covers, dish towels, and all sorts of small, inane crap that nobody really needed.

Anyway, that’s kind of what it feels like to find out that reigning AL Cy Young winner and vocal proponent of USA Baseball, Tarik Skubal revealed that he was only planning on making one start in the World Baseball Classic, and then returning to Spring Training.

Skubal was one of the first players announced for Team USA, and an easy guy to hitch the wagon to, as someone whose incredible arm could easily carry the squad deep into the tournament, and most importantly, potentially neutralize the potent lineups of Japan, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.

Considering the United States has only won the tournament they basically invented in order to pad their global athletic standing once out of five times, it’s got to be like a sour grape for USA Baseball, and something they always want to wash the taste out of their mouths, by winning again, and closing that lead held by Japan, who has won 3 of 5, and a guy like Skubal committing is a giant boon, especially since he was shortly followed by NL Cy Young winner, Paul Skenes, creating an incredibly unfair-sounding 1-2 pitching duo in a short tournament format.

But now Skubal reveals that he’s only planning to make a single start, against Great Britain of all teams in the tournament; unsurprising, once such intel was absorbed by baseball fans, it quickly turned into snarky vitriol towards the talented lefty, with people accusing him of unpatriotically going into body protect mode, since it’s clear that he’s going to be seeking out a gabillion dollar contract after the 2026 season, as he’s set to become an unrestricted free agent for the first time.

Like, in one hand, I get the importance of protecting one’s self, especially considering the last WBC saw closer Edwin Diaz blow out his knee in 2022 and miss an entire season, and injury is always on the backs of the minds of nearly every participating major leaguer.

But in the other hand, if Skubal knew that he wasn’t going to commit more than a single fucking start for Team USA, I feel like it probably would’ve been best had he just not committed to the team in the first place.  Free up the spot to someone who really wanted to put their balls on the line for the country, and is willing to make three starts if needed, which should encapsulate a group, knockout and potential final in a best-case scenario.

In a way, joining the squad but then only committing to a single appearance, against possibly the worst team in the entire tournament is tantamount to being a part of a group project in school, doing the very first assignment, but then not doing anything at all for the remainder of the project.

Look, I know my analogy game is terribly off right now, but the point is, Skubal’s shenanigans is like a shitty rug pull that gave US baseball hope, but then took it all back.  If anything, if Skubal was only going to commit to a single game, it would be best served if it were saved to be against Japan or any of the other expected powerhouses of the tournament, and save appearances against scrubs like Great Britain, Brazil or Italy for guys like the retired Clayton Kershaw or Logan Webb.

Obviously, I’d love to see Team USA win another WBC, because I don’t think Korea is going to make the runs they did like they did in 2006 and 2009 ever again, but it’s times like this where the greed and body-protect logic of professional athletes gets really fucking old.  There’s a reason why Japan has won three of the five WBCs, and there’s very little reason to believe that they’re not going to be knocking on the door of a fourth one in coming weeks.

White people can’t admit that kimchi is just good

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Inquirer: US government includes kimchi to America’s list of gut health-friendly foods

Seeing as how I’m the only person in my household that actually likes and eats kimchi, sometimes it’s a struggle to eat all the kimchi in the amounts that they’re sold in.  For most of my life, kimchi was a dish served solely with Korean foods, rices, stews, bbq or anything that would constitute as a ‘Korean meal.’

But one day, I had this idea of just adding some of this aging kimchi to a sandwich.  I didn’t have any mustard, I was out of pepperjack cheese, and my house is generally pretty sparse when it comes to condiments, and turkey, I saw this great meme about how it’s the meat that is the equivalent of a human being who doesn’t drink enough water even though they know they should, and I had this idea of adding kimchi to my sandwich to help elevate a mundane turkey sandwich.

I felt like I had just invented fire, based on the sheer life that it had injected into my entrée.  And then I had one of those moments where I had to stop what I was doing and process the door I had just unlocked and opened up, realizing that I could add kimchi to a whole new world of foods out there to try and enhance them.

Kimchi in sandwiches.  Kimchi in curries.  Kimchi in very specific tacos.  Kimchi on burgers, hot dogs.  Kimchi as a side to steak or chops or fried chicken.  Kimchi no longer needed to be restricted to accompanying solely Korean food, it was a revelation that I had way too late in my life.

The point is, kimchi is a wonderful food, and it’s cringeworthingly bittersweet that the United States government is recognizing it on a federal level.  And it’s clear that it’s a very white people tactic of trying to push kimchi to the American people, by instead of just letting people come to their own conclusions about the food, they wrap it in a cornucopia of science in declaring it a gut health food, so that people might eat it out of health conscientious instead of branching out their tastebuds into food other than chicken tenders or bougie doughnuts.

All the scientific jargon seems legit to me, but aside from it all, kimchi is just a food that tastes great.  And the thing is, like most of the Korean language, the term kimchi is so broad and subjective, and encapsulates a lot varieties other than the napa cabbage version that whitey is probably thinking is the only form of kimchi that exists.

Whatever though, as critical as I may be by the tactic, I always do like when Korean things get recognized on a more global scale.  Except if through its exposure, it causes all of the greedy merchants of the world to see justification to raise their prices and make it less economical for me to get my motherland’s staple.

I don’t believe he didn’t know how poorly this would be received

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ANF: US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy basically says the majority of airline passengers are a bunch of slobs, encourages people to start dressing better when they travel at airports

Honestly, when I read the headline to this story, I couldn’t imagine that it was headed in any other direction than mass defiance, triggering and straight up rage-baiting from the federal fucking government.  To which it’s kind of sad, yet entertaining, but really more sad, that the federal government would go to the trouble to immaturely rage-bait as if they were a low-tier Instagrammer trying to get shock views with a poor take.

There’s no way Sean Duffy wouldn’t have known that posting a video, calling out primarily everyone who goes to airports in sweats, pajamas or otherwise comfortable clothes, and essentially blaming them for the uptick in disorderly conduct incidents at airports and on airplanes, wasn’t straight trolling.  As if he himself actually ever goes to airports for any other reason than to do his job, but he’s most definitely not flying commercial, with the rest of the pleebs, when he probably flies private, when for his own personal needs.

I mean it goes without saying that Americans today, more than ever, hate being told what to do, but telling them how they need to be dressing, that’s a tier above as far as triggering the defiance of modern America.  The response from the masses have been predictable and not at all surprising.

I’m sure all the fights and incidents have nothing to do with the fact that over the last two decades, the airline industry has been stoking the flames of passenger dissatisfaction, with all sorts of bullshit shenanigans such as cramming more seats into planes, reducing leg room, personal space, charging for bags, charging for snacks, and of course, the escalations of fares in general with absolutely no justification for doing so other than to line the profits of companies that are already billion dollar companies, among other things.

It’s totally because people are rolling into airports wearing sweatpants or pajamas.  Yep, makes total sense.  Hey, perhaps if we’re being encouraged to go back into the golden age of airlines, why not allow smoking on flights again?  Why not fire all the male flight attendants, and make sure all planes are staffed by attractive stewardesses instead?

The more I think about this whole thing, the more I can’t believe that this was absolutely anything other than a classic rage-baiting troll job, except that it’s coming from within our own government.  Like some defiant shit influencer who wants to throw shade, except in this case it’s coming from a 54-year old man(-child).

Honestly, this is all probably part of a larger, more nefarious plot, in order to force more martial law into things that ordinarily never needed it.  Duffy rage-baits the traveling nation, many predictably start dressing up like even bigger slobs at airports in defiance.  Airlines have little choice but to enforce their own dress rules, leading to more irate customers, passengers, and causing more incidents.  The National Guard suddenly has to start showing up at airports, and funding somewhere more essential is depleted in order to support.  Hashtag ‘Murica.

Only illegal because they got caught

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: North Georgia VFW post busted for hosting “illegal” gambling, including slot machines and table games

Over the last weekend, I took #2 to a birthday party that was at some Dave & Busters-clone type of joint, where they had bowling, laser tag, arcade machines.  Additionally, they also had a section of the place loosely cordoned off with some velvet ropes that had pool tables as well as, slot machines.

I don’t really care enough to find out the entire legality of the ability to have slot machines in the state of Georgia, but the point remains that at a place clearly geared up to be friendly to all ages, which is to say a place where you can bring young children to and not get judged too much by asshole bystanders, this place still had a row of slot machines, in plain sight for kids to see and potentially watch, along with the gamblers who could be playing them.

So it’s a little puzzling to read this story about how some VFW post up in the sticks of Georgia was busted and raided because they had gambling there, because there are a number of Kroger grocery stores throughout the state who also have slot machines, legally, in addition to the number of joints that have them in plain sight.

If I had to guess, the real issue is probably that it’s not so much the fact that the VFW post didn’t report their gambling activities, it’s probably the fact that they probably paid no tax on their intake, as well as any of their gamblers probably weren’t paying taxes on any of their winnings, even though I highly doubt that a VFW hall is going to be a place where guys are routinely clearing $10,000+, the general cutoff where one should expect a notification from the IRS for exceeding.

It’s just funny to me, because gambling is an ever-increasing problem in my opinion, throughout the United States, and as gambling has permeated through the internet, and states are relaxing their buttholes and pulling the anti-gambling stick out of them, and the act is hardly restricted to just Las Vegas, Atlantic City or indigenous lands anymore, it’s becoming really problematic, I think.

Underground gambling undoubtedly has been going on since the dawn of civilization, but if I had to guess, it has probably gotten absolutely worse throughout the last decade or so with the relaxation of gambling laws, and the increasing availability of gaming in general.  Like, people who weren’t gamblers to begin with have a greater chance of being exposed and introduced and apt to become them, and with enough drive and addiction, it’s only a matter of time before they’re pissing away their social security checks at the local VFW because they heard that they could play some hold ‘em for cash.

When Shohei Ohtani got busted for gambling and he and MLB threw his interpreter under the bus, there was a great meme about how the golden boy could have gotten into this gambling scandal.  And all Japanese guys being degenerate gambling addict jokes aside, there was this one meme that I always remembered and still refer to this day:

Welcome back to SportsCenter presented by ESPN Bet, for more on the Ohtani situation, we go to our FanDuel MLB Insider Jeff Passan at our DraftKings Studio in Los Angeles, brought to you by Caesar’s Sportsbook.  Jeff, how could something like this happen??

That’s how I feel about the VFW gambling hall that’s supposedly illegal.  Sure, they probably weren’t paying any taxes on the cash money circulating around the joint, but at the same time, I can’t imagine anything remotely close to a casino’s liquid was sloshing around the joint.

Plus, probably all of them are veterans who have served the country in some way shape or form, leave them the fuck alone.  I’m not saying they should get full-on Armageddon don’t ever have to pay taxes ever again, but for fuck’s sake, turn the other cheek on some casual entertainment gambling, they’re not hurting anyone.

Instead, Uncle Sam gets to fuck over these guys a second time around, by shutting down their social gathering spot, and being colossal assholes in going after a small pissant operation, in the grand spectrum of illegal gambling operations throughout the country.

Way to go, Georgia.  Way to go, ‘murica.  Sure is great here

Dad Brog (#158): I’m not ready for anything prefaced by “adult”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m in the middle of one of those weekends where I’ve sparsely had any time for myself; even more so than usual.  The kids are still in this weird adjustment period of daylight savings as well as simply adapting to their general schedules, and this particular morning, they were up at 7 am, not long after I had gotten up to begin my day, and I was completely unprepared as far as having breakfast ready, but it didn’t matter that my kids were ready to begin their day.

Instead of a 60-90 minute quiet time reprieve in the middle of the day, this was a day in which there were two concurrent birthday parties happening at the same time, so mythical wife and I decided to divide and conquer and take each kid to a different party, in different parts of town.  I watched #2 plow through three slices of pizza, a ridiculously gargantuan slice of cake, and a bowl of dipping dots, all while playing a bunch of really shitty games at Chuck-E-Cheese where kids are lucky to get maybe 15 seconds of game time before the credits expire and I can’t imagine paying actual money for gaming time with such absurdly unfavorable math, and I felt fortunate to be on a timed party free-play.

Needless to say, with the kids down, instead of relaxing, I found myself playing catch-up on things that I didn’t get to do on a typical Saturday, which meant hopping on the treadmill to get some exercise, while simultaneously doing my daily Duolingo that I typically prefer to do early in the morning before everyone else is really up.  And then I decided to go run some errands while some stores were still open, all for the sake of not having to them during Sunday, when I would inevitably have to have a kid in tow while trying to do them, and by the time I’m sitting here it’s past ten, and I don’t feel like I have adequate time to really watch something from my endless list of crap that I want to watch, so I bring myself to sit here to write in my brog that nobody knows exists.

But hey, at least I got to go be on top of the drop of Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus, and watched the first two episodes on Friday night, and the show was as good as I would have hoped it would be, so that’s something remotely positive amidst feeling buried by life and looking out the metaphorical window of the world to see the United States completely at peace with itself forcibly starving its own citizens but this post wasn’t meant to be political as much as I just wanted to take that dig in lieu of making a dedicated post about how fucked America is.

However, getting to the point of this post, the biggest occurrence to happen over this weekend was undoubtedly the fact that #1 lost her first tooth, and I’m just not ready for this at all.  Because when it comes to teeth, most everyone knows that the vernacular for them are baby teeth, and when they fall out, they’re supplanted by your adult teeth, and I am so not fucking ready to hear the word “adult” at all, associated with my five-year old child.

It’s crazy, it was just like a few weeks ago in which #1 pointed out to mythical wife and I that she had a wiggly tooth, and we were both having the same reaction about how, wtf has all this time flown by to where our kid is now having her baby teeth starting to fall out.  A cursory internet search confirms that five is a fairly common age for the first teeth to begin falling out, and I have memories of my own childhood of when I had my first loose tooth, where my dad tied a piece of floss around it before yanking it out, and the vague memory of feeling like I’d been punched in the mouth, with a similar result of there being a lot of blood.

But as unfortunate as it was that I couldn’t be there when it happened, there wasn’t really much blood when #1’s first tooth came out.  I had literally just taken her to the dentist just says prior, and I saw the X-rays showing the adult teeth rapidly growing underneath and how to anticipate the first tooth to come out soon, and it was still a harrowing moment seeing those photographs of all these adult teeth starting to grow beneath the baby ones, and again I’m struggling to hear the word adult at all when it comes to my kid, because she’s still just five freaking years old.

Inevitably, like the Korean blood in her body demands, questions about the Tooth Fairy and the whole concept of getting money for teeth came up pretty immediately, and now I’ve got to start ponying up cash to put under her pillow and hope to not wake her along the way.  Plus there’s the whole question of just how much money to give for a tooth; when I was a kid, it was $2 a tooth, but my parents quashed the whole mythos of the Tooth Fairy real quick and just gave me cashmoney on the spot after an extraction.

It’s going to be a tricky next few years, given the fact that I have two kids of close age who will be inevitably be periodically dropping teef throughout the next 8-9 years, and me having to keep up with needing adequate cash to fund all these damn teef and keep up with inflation.

But heaven help me that there are anything at all in my little girls’ bodies that are considered adult, even if they’re pretty much right on schedule when it comes to the first teeth falling out.  They’re always going to be babies to me.