At the Pediatrician

(our usual pediatrician was sick so we waited two hours to see this guy)

Doctor: Well your baby is looking healthy, he's 50th percentile for height and weight...
NinjaDad: He's 100th percentile for Ninjosity.
Doctor: Umm...yes I see. And you said he started rolling over at what age?
NinjaDad: 3 days old.
Doctor: Oh you mean 3 months old?
NinjaDad: Are there more than 72 hours in 3 months?
Doctor: Well yes of course..
NinjaDad: Then no.
Doctor: Ok, whatever, three days it is.
NinjaDad: Thank You, that's what I said 5 sentences ago...now six.
Doctor: I see...so let's take a look under your son's hat.
NinjaDad: What hat?
Doctor: The hat you're baby is wearing. I just want to see how he looks without the hat on.
NinjaDad: I would rather see how you look without your hands on.
Doctor: Hey now let's not get too testy here.
NinjaDad: See how you raise your hands when you say "Hey now let's not get too testy here"?
Doctor: Yes
NinjaDad: It wouldn't make much sense with no hands on the end of your arms...
Doctor: I don't think this is appropriate.
NinjaDad: ...people would be wondering if you were wanting them to kick a field goal at you.
Doctor: I'm just trying to do my job here.
NinjaDad: You must be a time traveler because you are trying to do your job two hours in the future.
Doctor: Umm, that doesn't make sense. You mean two hours in the past.
NinjaDad: Think it through.
Doctor: You people have a funny sense of humor.
NinjaDad: 10...9...8...
Doctor: What are you doing?
NinjaDad: You'll see.
Doctor: Well looks like little Jason is in great health and you'll be seeing your regular pediatrician in 3 months.
NinjaDad: Who's Jason? 7...6...5...
Doctor: Umm your son? It says here Jason?
NinjaDad: No it doesn't. 4...3...2...
Doctor: OK Mr. Ninja...then what exactly does it say?
NinjaDad: It says NinjaSon...1...zero.
Doctor: Hey did you just cut my hands off?

...ooops let's see you try being a new Dad.

Dear NinjaSon,

Ok so by the time you are reading this I am dead and so you can not get mad at me for the sins of my past. And you especially should not get mad at me about the story behind that funny scar you have on your stommy. This is actually a good lesson to learn about flexibility and following the curves in the road of life.

So as you know we are a family of Ninja. We come from a long line of Ninja tracing back to feudal Manhattan. The men of the family have been stone cold assassins of deadly death and up until the 1960's the women of the family have been thieves or spies or homemakers. Well since the 60's there have been great strides made in Women Ninja and your NinjaMom, bless her heart, was a very capable and deadly Ninja. When you were born we had to decide who was going to Ninja and who was going to stay at home with you. I was a bit stubborn and insisted I needed to earn the family natto. Your mother was kind enough to let me have my stubborn way, plus while she was pregnant her kill rate went way down. If it wasn't for all the people she took out in the delivery room she would have had a miserable season. She was a natural born mother and I could not have wished a better home for you.

Well one day she got a little sick and could not care for you and so I decided that watching a NinjaBaby couldn't be that hard and plus it was take-your-son-to-work-week and so I took you on a few assignments. Like a good NinjaBaby, you were as silent as man five weeks dead and the only time you made a peep was when we jumped down more than three stories, and then you would laugh your little ninja head off. So the day was going well and we were on our last assignment on the south of the island and of course I had to stop and take a picture of you riding the giant bronze water buffalo on Wall Street.

Anyway we were supposed to take out an entire boardroom full of executives and so we were in the ventilation system of the building feeling each footstep below us to locate each board member. Once I had a good count I dropped down and started tossing a few shuriken left-handed because I needed to work on my fakie technique. And somewhere into my 27th or 28th shuriken all of a sudden seventeen more Ninja drop in. Now whoever hired me made the biggest beginner mistake of thinking that if one Ninja was good, seventeen could only be better. Big stupid fucking mistake.

Let me say this only once: Ninja are like saffron, a little goes a long way.

So what happens when you hire seventeen Ninja to kill one tiny little boardroom full of people. A pissing contest, that's what happens. Ninja trying to out-ninja everybody. One Ninja killing with just his ears. Another Ninja killing while walking on his hands only. One Ninja B-Boy killing while pop-locking with Pony sneakers on and everything. It was retarded nut-to-butt packed with Ninjas and dead people. We were so outta there. As I stood on the window sill about to make my exit I had a funny feeling as I stepped into the city air. A rogue Ninja was there actually to take me out and launched a few shuriken as I left the building. I immediately rotated in mid-flight and instinctively shielded my vital bits. When I hit the ground I realized the horror of my actions. I shielded my vital bits with you. Yes I know, I am a monster, I am a stupid stupid Ninja, I am a bad NinjaDad and you are probably in therapy right now talking about how bad of a father I was, but it was my first day as a primary caretaker and new Dads sometimes have to learn things the hard way. Well anyway your NinjaMom had stuffed your Bjorn with lots of black lacquer protective rods because we have a TON of black lacquer everything thanks to the 1980's, and fortunately when I held you up as a human shield (only by instinct remember, not on purpose) as I flew through that window, the shuriken where slowed by all that black lacquer. I like to think that the shuriken being Manhattan shuriken were so appalled that they were about to be embedded in remnants of 80's furniture they actually tried to reverse course and fly back to the Ninja that sent them. Well to make a long story short you were non-fatally hit by only one shuriken that went through some black lacquer before reaching your stommy and so it made just a small scratch. I told your NinjaMom that you were playing with my tanto while going down the slide at the park so that she wouldn't get mad at me for using you as a shield (once again, just to recap, very very sorry about that).

So the moral of the story is the fact that sometimes in life we are faced with new challenges. And being a new Dad is not always as easy as burning down thirteen villages in one night (*cough*ricedaddies*cough*) the only thing we can ask ourselves is to do our very NinjaBest. And my true role my Son, is to help you learn from my mistakes so that our errors are not passed down from generation to generation. When you become a NinjaDad, remember to not use your children as shields when you are attacked by rogue Ninja pretending to be one of the guys. This is bad. And also, never throw away old furniture just because it is passe. Everything comes back into fashion eventually. Well everything except those stupid snow Ninja outfits. I can't believe I used to wear that.

RiceDaddies are not Nice Daddies

I was recently interviewed on Ricedaddies and to my dismay they made me look like an idiot. I would expect more cultural sensitivity from a group of Asian-American fathers but they had to go low-brow with typical Ninja stereotypes. It is masked (no pun intended), but their anti-Ninja sentiment still comes through when they edit out my musings on Asian-against-Asian prejudice and comments on real issues facing Ninja-Americans. And they totally blew out of proportion the whole me cutting the interviewer's arm off thing. I knew there would be medical personnel standing by and so it was completely safe to take a little poke at the arm. Neurosurgery these days is like getting drive-through. I am sure they will reattach that interviewer's arm without much ado. Feel free to support me through your comments to RiceDaddies.

NinjaDad Knock-Knock (you thought I was kidding?)

NinjaDad: Knock Knock
Anybody: Who's th....ARRGRGGRGGHHHHHH! [thud]
NinjaDad: Ninja.

...oh yeah, about that spinal tattoo.

Ahhh yes. One of the first questions you will probably have my son when you get to this site is about that tattoo. Upon your eighteenth birthday the mole on your back will have grown large enough for you to realize it is actually a tattoo which, with ever passing year, has grown with you. Once you had reached the age of 18 the micro-tattoo had grown large enough to become visible to the naked ninja eye. It's like a little ninja practical joke. ROTTL-SBIAN!! (roll on the tatami laughing silently because I am Ninja). Oh, how did I learn the secret art of micro-tattoo you ask? Ahhhh let me share a NinjaDad story.

I was on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley one day on my way to assassinate the first of 24 hippy assignments I had scheduled before lunch, when I began feeling a little hungry. I was surprised considering the fact that I clearly remember having eaten at least three days before. So what do you know, I see a few steps before me my favorite meal, a single grain of rice. It is guarded by a fat man wearing large spectacles and a Phish Phever T-shirt who I quickly kick in the esophagus. As I reach towards the grain of rice I suddenly see the unbelievable. On this grain of rice in gigantic letters was the word Jon. I quickly allowed the fat man to begin breathing again and asked him...

"How is this possible? Letters so large on a single grain of rice? You must know a Ninja."
"Hrckle, fegmatta", the fat man replied. So I realized he still cannot breathe correctly so I punch him in the diaphragm.
"I do this," the fat man replied.
"Shaddup, get the Ninja out of here" I said in disbelief.
"No I can write your name on a grain of rice"
"But can you write that which is not my name?"
"Umm sure like what?"

And so I had the fat man write many amazing things for me.

2cool2beNinja
NinjaFever
Hiya
live/die (one on each side of the rice)
If you can read this then you are already dead in 5...4...3...2...1 (Ok Ok he used longgrain rice for that one)
inja-Na
NinjaBaby(this one is for you...check your belly button....I still love you and even though I am dead I can still give you presents)
camel (if you are laughing at this you are one step closer to my true identity...therefore one step closer to death)
ninja4life
westsiiide
ninja=die

And so I befriended fat man and had him teach me his writing skills. I also learned about Che Guevara and indoor growing techniques, but that is neither here nor there. The important thing is that I had learned to write very very small. And this is how I came to tattoo the message upon your back: I love you my only NinjaSon, you will find my collected writings of wisdom, life lessons, funny stories, hopes and wishes, fashion picks, gadget reviews, ninja-recipes, family trees, friends of NinjaDad, anecdotal musings of the poetry of day to day life, throat-kicking techniques, tips on how to keep your Ninja hood clean, essays on entitlement in the modern age and how we can regain old-time values, and knock-knock jokes at http://www.ninja-dad.blogspot.com or possibly a simpler destination known as...www.NinjaDad.com

Oh and of course I had to kill the fat man. It is the circle of NinjaLife.

I am Ninjadad

Life is hard when you're a single ninjadad.
Always on the road going from city to city, killing this guy or that guy. Raising a baby ninja son. When we're not on the road, we call home a large metropolitan city (don't ever ask) and I guess we do OK. But lately I've wondered how many more days will I share with the love of my life?

Take the other day for example. I had scaled a fourteen story west-end complex and used falling-salamander-on-hotspring-stone technique to make a 12 inch diameter hole in the Lexan window and made my way into ticket #24435's home. I was suspended upside down using toes beta and Bert to grip the beautiful crown moulding. I was appreciating how the corners were so tightly fit when ticket #24435 entered the building fourteen stories below me. I shit you not I almost fell down right there. Normally I would have heard him approaching seventeen steps before the building's entry. And that day I missed his approach entirely. I was so ashamed that I assassinated him with thunderous-eyelashes technique just to overcompensate for my slip-up. Afterwards sitting on his couch watching cable, I was still in shock at how incompetent I had become. That's when something life-changing happened. Superman came on. The original movie with Christopher Reeves, you remember right? And so I was watching and saying to myself "...can do that. Yup. And that. And that. Yeah I can do that but in a faster way. And that...." when all of a sudden I saw the fortress of solitude. I was thinking about how it would take me at least 4 days to construct that when all of a sudden he appeared.

Jor-EL.

And he spoke to his son. Even though he was dead. And I thought damn, this is what I need to do. Obviously I will soon die at the rate I am losing all of my skill and ability. Maybe it is the love for my son that is making me slower, less competent. I will create a fortress of solitude for my son to refer to in the likely chance that I die too soon. In it, it shall contain the wisdom I have collected over my years as Ninja and human being. And I will call it...

www.NinjaDad.com

And with that I tightened the bjorn and kissed my sleeping son's hooded head with my deadly hooded lips of deadly death. And we leapt through the Lexan hole and made our way home to our ninja-abode. Oh and I killed three guys on the subway because I think they thought I looked fat with my bjorn on.

My beautiful son. You are my heart of all hearts. I am so sorry that I had to pass so soon. But now that you can see the tattoo on your spine you will know where to find me forever. I am forever your...

Ninjadad.