Topical and Tropical

Rants, Raves, and Other Mindless Babble

Being Stealthlike

Posted on February 13, 2009 in Daily Life | comment bubble

I like to consider myself a ninja in training, constantly honing my stealthlike abilities, both at home and at the office. It starts in the mornings when I have to successfully get out of bed without waking my wife and our 3 month old son who is sleeping in the bassinet next to our bed. I quietly creep past him, go down the hall, and close my 2 year old’s door, all the while hoping that the hinges holding it on don’t let out an ear-piercing squeal. As I enter the bathroom directly across the hall and go about my daily bladder-emptying sequence, I cross my fingers as I gently push the toilet flush handle down. After the whooshing and swirling sounds have stopped reverberating off the walls, I listen intently to see if the natives have grown restless. Success. Everyone is still asleep. From there I jump in the shower and turn on the water, praying that my son thinks it’s just that daily downpour. After a quick drying session, I proceed to slip into my outfit for the day, all the while trying to not rattle my clothes hangers into an uncontrollable plastic chorus. Then I glide past my sleeping son and wife again, grab my glasses, and clench my phone with a death grip as I attempt to muffle the unhooking beep. With a surgeons precision, my fingers lift up my keys and they quietly clank together as they dangle and await the nerve-racking drop into my pants pocket. After a quick gazelle-like gallop down the hall, I slowly lift the plastic shopping bag that contains my lunch and mechanically slip my work bag over my shoulder. Finally I open my 2 year old’s door slightly, quietly whisper goodbye to everyone, and efficiently negotiate the creaky boards of our upstairs as if they are museum security lasers. Success. I’m downstairs and in the clear.

After packing up my lunch and nervously listening to the gears of our garage door grind, I gracefully pull out of the driveway and go off to work where I engage in a different kind of stealthiness. Donning my design ninja outfit, I quietly enter our basement offices, and fire up my computer. Unknowing clients and co-workers walk past my curvicle and say hi, never knowing completely what I’m doing as I sit hunched over my keyboard. I am quietly concepting video gallery interfaces, sketching out wireframe documents, designing site bugs, and changing the face of the web at Notre Dame. Without notice I emerge from the shadows of my glowing MacBook Pro and launch an attack on the social networking world, thrusting my conversational throwing star into the Twitter and AIM interfaces. While the rest of the campus leaves the comfort of their offices and goes out to enjoy lunch, I stay back, and with my stomach rumbling from sheer hunger I continue to plow my way through client projects and initiatives. I have complete radio silence throughout the day, with the exception of the occasional blasting of Rage Against the Machine or Metallica and the tension-relieving phone call from home, where I listen to the calming words of my wife or the incoherent sentences of my 2 year old. At the end of the day, with a cat-like reflex I close all software applications and dialog boxes, swiftly pull all cords from their respective outlets, and stride out of the office only revealing my presence with the parting words, “Have a goodnight gang.”

Fortunately, the pressure of being ninja-like subsides once I get home, until bedtime of course, and I can enjoy the freedom and chaos that comes from being a husband and father of two young boys. My son Jacob and I can wrestle and play cars on the floor, I can hold my son Lucas and watch him smile at me as I make sounds only frogs would make, and I can crash on the couch with my wife, with TiVO remote in hand, and peruse through numerous shows with robotic-type grace. Along the way, diapers are changed with the highest degree of calming smoothness, table scraps and crumbs are collected, temper tantrums are resolved, and the garbage is taken out under the cover of the late-evening Midwestern darkness.

The night has come once again and the warrior must once again appear. After engaging in online video game conflicts and tweaking freelance design projects while the rest of the world sleeps, I creep upstairs, and amongst the glow of a hallway nightlight and a harmony of snoring, I get ready for bed, only to wake up the next morning and do it all over again.