For Father's Day: Last blast from the past

After a year, time for review

To: Stephen Christopher

From: Mom and Dad

Re: Performance to date

We’ve decided to sit down with you now, a little earlier than normal, and review your performance.

We know your official anniversary date isn’t until tomorrow, but your mother and I aren’t sticklers for full formality.

We’ve been for the most part pleased with your performance, so you’ll be happy

to know we’ve decided to keep you on with the organization.

And we believe the positives outweigh the negatives, so we believe there is room for advancement in the organization.

But we also believe in setting goals. We’ve allowed you in this first year to kind find your way with the organization.

We were really pleased you were able to join us a year ago. It was an intense,

nine-month negotiation before the deal was clinched, and that last session —

what a whopper.

Started at 10:45 p.m. on a Thursday night and didn’t finish until 6:32 p.m. the next day.

As noted, we’ve been extremely pleased since.

You’ve shown a real flair for making people smile, particularly your grandmothers.

But I think you made your Grandpa Guilfoyle almost cry a couple of times as well — one of those “happy cry” type things — but you need to watch that in the future.

Your strengths? For one, you are doing very well at keeping a schedule. Like your father, you have a real talent for sleeping. Also like your father, you can almost walk a straight line. You like to prop yourself up on the biplane your Grandma and Grandpa Larson bought you, but you are beginning to move away from needing that.

You have shown a talent for sucking up in specific ways to your Daddy.

You kissed him three times on Father’s Day, but really haven’t that much since. You also said “Dada” first, and meant it. but you gave it up after a couple of days.

You perk up with a smile whenever you are around your mother, and she can make you laugh like no one else can.

That’s a more generic way of sucking up. Both your mother and I don’t mind the sucking up.

We aren’t criticizing. We just want to make a note of it now, so you’ll know, later on, that we were on to you from the get-go.

Yes, this memo is going in your permanent file with the organization.

You already can throw very good. A small ball gets tossed across the room with either arm. You roll your big ball with your mother, playing a roll-y kind of catch which she thinks is brilliant.

Your Father wants you to be a major league pitcher sohe can sponge off you in his

dotage. Unfortunately, his dotage is probably going to start next week, so you might have to grow up kind of fast.

You crawl with speed. You are active and fast.

There is some room for improvement in several key areas, however. You haven’t said “Mama” yet, and we’d really like to see some movement in that area.

You have steadfastly refused to settle on a hair color, but what little colorless hair you have is getting almost long enough to need a trip to the barber shop.

You do seem to catch a lot of colds. But when you go to the doctor’s office, you are

almost uniformly a good boy.

You do seem to fuss a lot when you have a cold and your mother and I have to

suction your nose.

Let’s set a timetable for you to learn how to blow your own nose, and thus we won’t have to keep doing this unpleasant task. We won’t feel guilty making you cry, and you will get your nose cleared out that much sooner.

It will be a win-win for all involved.

We’d like to see some more movement in the teeth area as well. A little girl born just one week before you has more than twice as many teeth as you.

Your mother believes in this area that whatever pace you are on is fine.

Your father is too competitive for his own good. You not only need to catch up, you need to get ahead and stay ahead.

We’re not just talking incisors. We’d like to see some cuspids and molars within the next year.

You haven’t noticed, but we have —you have actually stood on your own a couple of times without holding on. but you snake your arm back to daddy’s leg or the ottoman or the couch or whatever you are leaning on.

When you don’t think about it, you can stand.

When you think about what you are doing, you fall on your butt. Boom.

We don’t want you to not think, but you need to not think about this area a lot

more.

I’ve started working with you on standing a little bit.

But this is another thing where you are going to have to do most of the work.

Once you stand on your own, you’ll quickly be walking on your own.

Your mother wants to see this as much as possible.

Your father is afraid he definitely won’t be able to keep up once you’re really moving along.

This review, of course, comes after the positive reviews you got at your three-month and six-month probationary periods.

As per organization policy, at this stage, with the good reviews, we have indeed decided to make you a permanent part of the organization.

From now on out, there will just be annual reviews.

In other words, we guess we’re going to keep you.