The Lockdown Comic Strip

When Jake and I were both young enough to attend the same elementary school (he in 1st grade, me in 5th), a prisoner escaped from a regional detention facility over 30 miles away.

The result? A full scale lockdown of our school.

The rationale for this was to limit any possibility that this felon might be able to enter the school and comprise the safety of students or staff, or that he might apprehend a student or staff member while in transit from the school to the safety of their home.

Furthermore, this lockdown ensured that if this escapee desperately needed art supplies or a Voltron backpack, his nefarious scheme would be thwarted.

Although it was kind of exciting to be in a lockdown situation versus an escaped prisoner, I recognized that there was basically zero chance of anything happening on our school grounds. Although recess was cancelled, we spent an uneventful day playing Heads-Up-7-Up and hangman with our vocab words.

Down the hall, however, the collective psyche of the 1st grade classes was volatile.

Having had the situation explained to them, each child was certain they were about to die. Except for Jake.

Noticing the wide-eyed panic gripping his classmates, Jake's instincts took over. While everyone around him fell helplessly into a spiraling miasma of fear and paranoia, Jake overcame these powerful emotions, and took control. Summoning every talent at his disposal, he dedicated himself to exacerbating the problem.

He quickly sketched a three-panel comic strip which he thought would best explain the dire gravity of this predicament to his classmates.



Having completed the first rendering of the scene unfolding directly outside their doors, Jake quickly drew additional copies and circulated them throughout the room.

Doing this--especially with the specific intention of traumatizing his classmates--is despicable, evil, cruel and fantastic.

When I finally heard about this later in the day, I couldn't have been more proud.

Even Hal and The Beast cracked a smile. Then chastised him. Then scrapbooked the comic.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words...and Dozens of Years

When I reflect on a childhood spent under Hal and The Beast's roof, I recognize that I can never articulately describe, or fully convey, precisely what it was like. Even now, despite being a techincal writer by trade, I cannot accurately capture the nuances and extravagances of it all.

There was, and is, an odd dynamic between my parents, Jake and I that repells being described by mere language.

I might have gone my whole life without properly encapsulating it, were it not for this photograph.

I have entitled it, My Childhood.



I still have the talon marks on my scalp.

Keen, Terrible Ears

Something that I learned about Hal and The Beast growing up is that they have excellent hearing.
Something else that I learned about Hal and The Beast growing up is that they have horrible hearing.

Now for all of you "logical" people out there, this appears to be a contradictory statement. The two statements are mutually exclusive, you say? Such a thing as the realm of logical possibility, however, has never been able to contain the my parents' powers of absurdity.

Their cochlear ability was a function of the subject matter. If what The Beast was listening to involved a new idea, learning how to do something, or anything I wanted her to hear, her eardrum went slack and the microscopic hairs of her inner ear curled up and refused to be bothered until Labor Day. At this point, everything I said became clicks and pops. My mother's face would contort into an expression that screamed, "What the heck is wrong with you? For the last time: I DON'T SPEAK SWAHILI!!"

Similarly, Hal's hearing would give out during the main body of any joke or story, and until it returned halfway through the punchline, he would become distracted and floss his teeth with the nearest available envelope or sheet of paper, while quite believably pretending he could still hear. The amazing thing about Hal's lapses in hearing was their corresponding lapses in memory. Upon regaining his hearing during the punchline, he would forget that any time had passed since the introduction of the story or joke in question, and would then proceed to ask questions easily answered by listening to the previous 40 or so sentences. When answering these questions and reminding him that the information had been stated seconds earlier, one would receive the impression that the hearing problem was returning to some degree, indicated by a distinct deer-in-the-headlights expression.

The paradox is in their moments of hyper-sensitive, almost prescient hearing. If in frustration at their failing ears or after an argument Ben or I would mutter something under our breath, at the other end of the house, in the basement, beneath the level of our own hearing, with our head wrapped in a towel, while we stood inside an anechoic chamber, we would immediately have a shrieking, frothing parent standing at our side, breathing heavily and inquiring as to exactly what it was we had just called them.


Don't believe me? Just last week, I was tyring to explain to The Beast (via phone, from Utah) how to send an email. After giving up after several minutes of her saying nothing but, "Huh?" I hung up and grumbled something about my frustration. 0.736 seconds later, I received an email from my mother in all caps, reading, "I AM NOT!!!!!!!!!!"

Vacancy at Casa de Hawken

Shortly after Jake moved away to college, and I was living on the east coast, The Beast and Hal had to come to terms with being empty nesters.

Throughout our childhood, they they had spoken at great length about how much they were looking forward to having an empty home without the trials and travails of raising both of us.

Everytime we'd have a bleach fight, invent games like "Steak Knife Tag," knock a door off its hinges, misuse Roman Candles, or incur the petty wrath of school administrators, The Beast and Hal would embark on the same well-rehearsed rant about how much they were looking forward to having some peace.

Once we were both gone, they lost their minds.

Apparently, over time, they had used the intense, unpleasant feelings associated with raising us as benchmarks to measure the passage of time.

No sooner were we gone than they began offering a spare room in the basement to a series of shady, miserable young adults who were trying to get back on their feet.

I couldn't have been more shocked.

If Jake or I had ever left a freezer door open over the weekend or re-spilled Nair on the hood of the Tahoe we were suddenly written out of the will, but a revolving door of 20-somethings with bad credit and GEDs were suddenly invited carte blanche into a well-furnished room.

In an attempt to keep a bad situation from becoming disastrous, I tried to help The Beast be a little more selective about who she let into the basement, but helping either parent salvage their dignity was like trying to desalinate the ocean or legitimize boxing.

I thought the best place to start would be the long list of e-mails from would-be housemates.

Despite passionate protests from Hal and The Beast, we quickly eliminated three people from the running.

The first e-mail read, "I am very clean, I can cook, and I promise to never get drunk and puke in the oven."

The second was similar: "I do not own a pet, I am applying for jobs, I can hear what vegetables are thinking."

Number three: "I currently have $45,631 in credit card debt, so I need a place to lay low for a while. Are either of you immune to scabies?"

No sooner had my visit ended than there were new visitors in the basement.

Hal and The Beast claim they're happy to help, but I know for a fact they weren't to excited about having to replace their oven.

All Roads Point to Aisle 7

One of the nice things about living within the NYC city limits is the notable lack of Wal-Marts.

This means a drastic decline in the volume of white trash breathing my air and having barbecues in the parking lot. The latter reason stems from the fact that NYC outlawed parking lots in the 16th century.

Despite what you may have heard, the only downside to a Wal-Mart-less life is the limited access to jumbo packs of crazy straws for 99 cents, or 42 oz. of shampoo for $1.57.

Back home, however, The Beast and Hal can barely drive 10 minutes without seeing two of Sam Walton's infamous inventions.

While I was visiting them back in mid-August it reminded me of a particularly humorous activity from my pre-NYC years: Anytime I happened to enter a Wal-Mart after coming home from work or attending a meeting (and this was not a terribly regular occurrence), I would always be swarmed with questions.

It is no stretch of the imagination to say that if you walk into a Wal-Mart dressed like a professional (i.e. shirt and tie) you and the manager will be the only two people who do so all day.

Rarely was I in the store more than three minutes before someone came up and asked where some item was located.

"Where are the light bulbs?" they would ask. My answer: Aisle seven.

As I turned the next corner in search of my own items, I was approached again about eggs. "Aisle seven."

On one such occasion, and entirely by accident, I was at one of these stores during its grand opening.

For the entire 45 minutes I was there I answered a non-stop stream of questions.

Where are the batteries? Aisle seven.

Where is the toilet paper? Aisle seven, next to the batteries.

Where are the Power Rangers? Ummm, aisle fiv…seven.

There's a "bargain" store opening near my building later this week, and I am barely restraining the urge to throw on a fresh-pressed pair of slacks, my favorite tie and walk amidst the rows of neatly arranged goods.

If any of you out on the Intraweb want to come with me and enjoy some free samples that’d be great.

Meet me on aisle seven.

My Childhood in a Nut Shell...in a Cucumber... Both?

In ways I do not entirely understand, this video is a perfectly encapsulating demonstration of my childhood, and perhaps the Hawken home as an entity: Cute, wholesome, tenacious, and exasperating in the most charming way imaginable.


[Sidenote, Hal and The Beast are pretty well defined by this clip. Once again, I can't exactly explain why, but for those of you that know them, you're nodding your head.]

Re: Family Names

Upon hearing one of these creole names, it seemed like you'd received some kind of medeival salutation or a tribal recitation of genealogy.
Sometimes, The Beast would eventually get to my name, think it was wrong, say another name or two, then (about half the time) come back to my name. The resultant effect was something like this:
"Haro-, Ben-Jake [pause] Anna-Ben-Jake!"
In fact, as our mother ages, these salutations have taken on an inquisitory tone, ending often with, "...Tyler?"

Family Names

It's common for mothers to give their children names that reflect special family members or other branches of the clan. My middle name, for example, is The Beast's maiden name.

What is uncommon, however, is for mothers to entirely forget their children's names--constantly.

Throughout the course of my life, I have never heard my mother call me by the correct name on the first try.

If I ever heard "Jaco...Ben" (commonly rendered Jake-Ben) shouted down the hallway, chances were I was needed for something. Typically, however, it sounded more like this:

"Jacob! [silence] Hey Jake! [more silence] Ben?!"

As you might imagine, Jake's standard name was "Ben-Jake."

Things really became disasterous when we got our dog, Anna.

Adding a third name to mix was basically the same as providing Jake and I with middle names.

Now, in addition to "Ben" being rendered a surname, my full title was "Jake-Anna-Ben."

It's common usage was:

"Jake! [silence] Anna! [the dog walks into the room, confused] Go away! Jake! [more silence] Ben?!"

It would have been degrading were it not so ridiculous.

The Official "Admittedly Hawken" Welcome Message

While it's true we were raised as Hawkens, we consider it distinctly unfair to assume anything else about us. For that reason, we present this weblog to you, the reader, courtesy of the world wide Intraweb.

This blog is a database of the most intellectually stimulating (i.e. utterly ridiculous) elements of the proud Hawken family.

We are not so ambitious as to chronicle every distant relative, so we have focused our wit, scorn and mildly antagonistic style of affection on our two parents, Megan and Harold.

The great American sage, Mark Twain, remarked, "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." This blog could easily set its mind to pursuing fanciful, fictional notings of singularly gelastic events--but nothing we might imagine could properly compare to what we have witnessed.

Instead, this is a bold, enthusiastic retelling of a childhood spent in the incomparable Hawken home, and our continuing intersections with our unique, fiery and unintentionally jocular parents.

No, we're not making it up.

At least not very often.

Auto Mechaniacs

For all of his humorous foibles, Hal was remarkably adept at household and auto repairs.

As you might imagine, this saved countless hours and dollars.

Hal, however, was not the type of person who was comfortable with copious amounts of either commodity, so, on the rare occasions a mechanic was needed, he made sure to expend as much time and money as possible.

The mechanic he chose to perform any and all car repairs was, in technical language, an outlandish thief.

Our attempts to repeatedly point this out fell on deaf ears, however; Hal was intensely loyal to the shadiest auto shop in South King County.

Everytime the car began making a noise we didn't recognize (or when it stopped making noises entirely and simply ground to a halt along the shoulder of a major interstate) Hal would immediately call this man.

The solution from the mechanic was typically the same--he would promise that the repairs would be done by Monday (they would finish on Saturday), he would quote a basic price (it would be double), and he would declare it an easy fix (a monkey with an astigmatism had a better chance of finding the problem).

The real mystery to everyone but Hal was that none of the repairs were ever actually made. From what I could tell the broken head gasket was not so much "replaced" as it had "grease rubbed on it" and the "valves were reevaluated." In any other setting I think Hal would have known he was being robbed, but whenever it came to this mechanic, he wouldn't blink.

From what I can tell, each time a repair was necessary, their conversations went something like this:

Hal: My Volvo broke down again.
Mechanic: Really? Again?
Hal: Yeah, it burst into flames this time.
Mechanic: Just like I expected. This is only the second time, right?
Hal: No, this makes a baker's dozen.
Mechanic: As you know, your zero-coverage warranty won't cover this.
Hal: I don't care about that, just tell me how you can mess this up even worse as soon as possible.
Mechanic: You drive a hard bargain, Hal. How about double charging you, and I do some unrelated repairs?
Hal: I'd be willing to pay triple if you promise to break one of the last things that still work...
Mechanic: You got yourself a deal. To be clear, however, the next time your wife's minivan goes over a speed bump and the transmission falls out, I'm gonna have to ask for all your mutual funds.
Hal: That's fair.
Mechanic: When's the most inconvenient time to have your car ready?
Hal: Friday would be terrible.
Mechanic: Sounds good, see you Friday.

For reasons such as these Jake, The Beast and I restricted him from responsibilities such as picking restaurants, movies, or HMOs.

You can just imagine the convo we'd have to have with a doctor he picked...

Hal: So you're saying I have what?
Doctor: Inoperable cancer of the pancreas.
Hal: I see. So what's the next step? Would you like an enormous, unnecessary payment?
Doctor: Yes, thank you. Also, I'd like to perform another unnecessary procedure--I think a colonoscopy would be appropriate.
Hal: I didn't know you actually did those here.
Doctor: We don't, but your mechanic said you wouldn't be too picky about details like that.
Hal: True.
Doctor: Also, we'd like to do an autopsy once this tumor eats its way through your thorax.
Hal: Be sure to overcharge my next of kin.