Brewskis and belly laughs

I‘M ALWAYS

looking to reinvent myself -- it’s my nature -- so one day I just take out the razor and weed-whack my goatee, a pathetic piece of landscaping, really.

“Why?” asks my wife.

“I’m always reinventing myself,” I explain.

“Oh, please,” she says.

That’s a little dismissive, don’t you think? Sure, I’ve had the exact same haircut for 40 years. I park in the same parking space every day. Eat, essentially, the same lunch.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not constantly growing and changing in more substantial ways. I’m always pushing the envelope in terms of personal style and fitness.

For instance, I’ve begun training for touch football season, which begins Oct. 1. I warn my wife that if she notices a little something different about my behavior -- a certain seriousness of purpose, an iron-willed self-discipline -- not to be alarmed. I’m not becoming emotionally stunted, or running for office. I’m just getting my game face on.

“Oh, please,” she says again.

By the way, when I shaved the goatee, not one of the kids notices, but they whine like chain saws when I let the front lawn go an extra two weeks. Our oldest -- The Daughter Wears Prada -- made some crack about the wheat fields of Nebraska

Patiently, I explain that I’ve decided to let the lawn grow a little, so it will insulate itself from the late August sun. It will also, in time, begin to re-seed and regenerate itself. Much like me.

“Is Dad, like, all goofy?” one of the kids asks, as if their mother is a good judge of such things. Believe me, if she could detect goofiness in any reliable way, we wouldn’t have slept together more than twice.

“No more than normal,” their mother says.

Thanks, honey. Is it so goofy to savor these last few crumbs of summer? I sit watching those amazing Dodgers on TV with the toddler draped across my lap like a quilt. Between pitches, I am teaching him how to count on his fingers.

“5-6-7 ... ,” says the toddler.

“8-9-10 ... ,” I add.

“11, 12, brewski ... ,” says the toddler.

Honestly, I don’t know where he came up with this brewski thing. I admire him for it, sure. The Babylonians used base 60. He uses base beer. But I swear I wasn’t behind it. I swear on Mickey Mantle’s grave.

We were just sitting there the first time it happened. The toddler counted to 10, which startled me because I thought he could only count to five. I started thinking we might finally have our first prodigy. Bright as I am, I’m long overdue for producing some sort of baby Einstein.

I don’t care if it’s the viola or the NFL, I just long to be one of those dads who stands quietly off to the side as other parents whisper and point. “Yep, that’s him, that’s Mozart’s dad. Didn’t he used to have a goatee?”

And I was well on my way with this fantasy, when the toddler started into double digits -- 11, 12, brewski ....

“I think we might be blessed,” I tell my wife.

“Us?” she asks, not looking up from her summer book.

“I think we might have a little Belushi,” I say.

Which is good, because summer is fading and time for a last few belly laughs is running out. My sun-dipped, khaki-skinned children and I eat some homemade pie and search desperately for things to laugh about. The two are not unrelated, humor and dessert. You can’t have a really good belly laugh without a belly. Plus, a little gut looks good on a man.

“It’s a sign of prosperity,” I remind them.

“We are not prosperous, Dad,” the little girl says.

We’re not? Heck, I thought we were loaded. We have several TVs, all going at once. We have two refrigerators, one filled with leftovers from Cheesecake Factory, which is anything but cheap.

We have two dogs, a cat, a goldfish and a couple of squirrels canoodling in the attic. I fear one of the children will one day sneak home a giraffe.

If we’re not prosperous, who is?

“You should count your blessings,” I tell the little girl.

“Or your pairs of shoes,” her mother adds.

Meanwhile, the grass grows longer and the days grow shorter. I try to Q-tip the toddler’s left ear, and he darts off, guffawing over the intimacy of it all. On TV, the second baseman throws a baseball into the seats like a Meadowlark Lemon stunt.

See, laughter is everywhere, at least for a few more weeks. While we can, we’ll savor summer sunsets and count our punch lines ... 11, 12, brewski ...

I think I’ll grow a beard.

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes .com, or at myspace.com /chriserskine.