Sick day redux. Or, an Active Dad concedes the day.

It seems like just days ago that one of the boys was home sick, which had triggered a minor episode of Proustian remembrance on my part. Except that for me, sick days past were mostly about getting to eat as many bologna sandwiches and goldfish crackers as I wanted. Yeah, I know.

Anyway, the reason it seemed just like mere days ago that I was tied to the house with my very own little Typhoid Mary is because it really was, as it turns out, just days ago. And now the other boy is home sick. But that’s ok, because part of being an Active, Awesome Dad bla bla bla… is that I’m ready for any contingency. When the boy finally dragged himself out of bed we stuffed a pancake or two in his face and then the fun, such as it was, began.

We started off slowly with some streaming Netflix and an episode of American Pickers. And anyone who’s seen Mike and Frank poking through a box of oil cans will tell you that any given episode is stultifying enough to make the folks down at Auction Kings seem positively bacchanalian by comparison. (What? Is that a Charles Lindberg scrapbook? Stop it!) Anyway, once we had our fill of rural barns overflowing with moldering crap we moved on to the Xbox.

Here we rely heavily on Gamefly. Although not nearly as cheap as the low-end Netflix membership, belonging to Gamefly is still a far less expensive way for your kids to amuse themselves than getting tangled up with a seemingly never-ending stream of positively smelly game titles at full price. For $20 a month (which the boy pays for himself by doing extra chores around the house) the nice people at Gamefly send us two video game titles to keep around as long as we’d like before sending them back in their little pre-paid envelopes. Then, as if by magic, new titles arrive, and before you can say Master Chief we’re shooting aliens. Or jacking cars. Whichever.

So, are these responsible ways to spend a sick day? Would the day be better spent doing extra credit for homework? Or maybe getting a head start on that copy of Great Expectations that’s looming this Spring? Well sure, but sometimes being an Active, Awesome Dad means conceding that it can be good for the soul to do absolutely nothing productive. Which is also better than eating faceload of bologna sandwiches.

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