A few years back on the Central Coast

Last weekend I took the Heathens to the movies. Just they and me, us just three. We saw “We Bought A Zoo”, a heart-wrenching tale of a father and his two kids who undertake ownership of a zoo as part of buying a house, all brought on by their attempt to move past the death of the mom in the family. Heathen #2 took the opportunity to nap, #1 took it all in and wrestled with the concept of death and roaring lions, while I took the chance to weep like a damn baby every five minutes. Yeah, I don’t recommend you go into that movie with the hopes of a comedic romp, but if you feel like staining your sleeves with tears and snot like a child might, then by all means, go.

The movie highlighted the struggles of family dynamic, of a father trying to connect with his son and daughter, trying to find purpose when his has seemed to vanish into the ether. I haven’t lost a spouse to death, nor have I up and quit my day job, but nonetheless, I’m struggling. We all are. In this time of Facebook and Twitter, where everyone is trying to sell either the very best versions of what they WANT you to see, or in the case of the  latter, bitter snark, it’s easy to feel as though you’ve fallen off the Normal Train.

Lord knows I’ve made horrendous errors. My propensity to only learn things the hard way has cost me pride, dignity and self-respect on more than one occasion. I’ve had friends, good friends, take a look at me and just say “nahhh, I’m not dealing with you.” The ability to take everything too personally has slowed down my personal growth to the point where the middle finger is often my primary reaction to people who may, or may not be, just trying to help. And the sad truth is that is it’s probably going to be that way in many aspect of my life, always. I never wanted to grow up thinking “well I better not experience THAT part of life, because I’ve been told it’s not good, or it’ll hurt.” I’ve NEEDED to grab the stove, so that I could KNOW what getting burned felt like, to hurt like that, to live.

So how to reconcile this rocky path I keep choosing with raising my boys with a semblance of stability? I looked over at them during the movie, as the father in the movie was in the middle of arguing with his son, and I felt distinct chest pains; already my boys like to push the edge of the envelope, and although it’s a normal part of establishing your individual identity, it still hurts sometimes. People in this life will let you down, as I have to many, and I’ve had done to me; but these, my boys, my most rewarding endeavor in this life….they’ve changed the game completely. At the age of six and eight, they’ve taught me more about being an adult than any other adult I’ve known. It is they who continue to teach me how to be a parent. Those two giggling spasms of drive-me-loco energy are who prop me up from my darkest moments. From some unknown paternal well of inner resolve, I’m able to put aside my selfish drive and focus on strength for them in return. From the moment they arrived into this world, naked and screaming, nothing has driven me quite like the sense of protective love I feel for those lunatics. Nothing else could.

Our paths together will continue to wind around unknown corners, little hurts and big heartbreaks testing our will and resolve. But I didn’t get to town on the Normal Train myself, so to bend to convention seems an unlikely option as a parent for me. I’ll love those boys ferociously, for all their lives and then some, and maybe they’ll grow up to question just what kind of unhinged dad they’ve inherited. That’s okay, I’ve never claimed to be normal, or stable for that matter. They’ll grow up with many questions about this fantastic, mean, beautiful world, but one thing I hope they never question is my boundless love for them.

As heart-wrenching as it was, it really wasn’t the movie causing my eyes to leak so prolifically. The sheer enormity of this journey of fatherhood can, at once, cause you to buckle at the knees and give you the kind of strength you never dreamed existed. What a crazy blessing. Thanks for having my back, boys. I’ll always have yours. Always.

My Grandparents On Their Honeymoon, 1941. Old School.

“Thanks, Grandpa, for letting me drive you to the service; it means a lot to me to be able to spend this time with you”, I said, probably a little too loudly.

“I didn’t have a damn say in the decision”, he replied.

“Odd”, I thought, “that’s the second time in ten minutes he’s cursed”. While I may swear like a sailor on shore leave, my grandfather isn’t prone to profanity except in times of great distress. So, in essence, it wasn’t weird at all: my grandmother, his wife of 70 years, had passed away in her childhood home after 92 years of toil on this earth. While not totally unexpected following a difficult surgical procedure, the loss is profound for all of us, not the least of which for this once-strapping man, reduced at age 94 to minimal talk and the frail carriage of a body he struggles to control. Here’s the man who showed me how to ride a bicycle backwards in his late 60’s now requiring two people and a considerable effort to get him from his wheelchair to the car, where I’ll spend what will probably be our last time together privately, save for Uncle Phil riding in the back seat.

As soon as he uttered his seemingly derisive curse, I noticed the faintest hint of a smile curl up at the corner of his mouth. He was yanking my chain in the face of all this sadness, while I witnessed, for the first time in 33 years of knowing him, a tear escape his blurred eyes. His rock, his soul mate, the love of his life had soldiered on into the beyond, and while he was surrounded by family, I was struck by the enormity of his new, lonely reality. And yet, there he was, tears dripping on to his natty pin-striped suit, busting my chops, just a little.    

“Did I ever tell you about the time I told mother to meet me in Omaha?” he mumbled to me as we bounced through the rough outlying town of Oildale, a nasty stretch known for brawling roughnecks and hardscrabble living.

I thought I’d heard all of his stories over the years; most I knew by heart. I’ve always tried to patiently hear each one each time, knowing that these chapters are the significant tales of his life, and someday, when he’s gone, those will be my memories of him. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard this story and told him as much. His stooped posture took on a re-invigorated thrust of energy, and his gnarled hand rested on my arm, one conspirator to another as Uncle Phil leaned forward from the back seat, hungrily devouring his father’s words, no matter the content.

“I had just graduated from Officer’s Candidate School in Maryland” he feebly uttered, “and I wanted to get posted as far west as I could, wanted to get back home. So I tried for, and found out I was going to be stationed at Ft. Crook, Nebraska. That’s near Omaha, you know. And so I got ahold of your grandma in Bakersfield and told her ‘Meet me in Omaha’. It was 1941, or 1942, and the war was on. I got on a train, and mother got on a train in Bakersfield, and wouldn’t you know it, three days later, we both got there. (I later found out they got there within a half an hour of one another, something of a miracle, given the time period, the war, all of the variables).  So there we are, and I meet her on the platform at 11 at night, and I hadn’t seen her in 3 months….” his voice trailed off at this point, and he muttered a little more about getting a hotel and ending up in Nebraska for 3 years, but for the briefest moment, as he described being on the train platform, he was again a young man in uniform, serving his country and waiting for his pregnant bride, a remarkably stoic and thoughtful woman. The reunion was being played out in his mind, and he was  joyful at the thought; more tears flowed. Time froze for he and I both, loving silence enveloping us in its sad beauty.

“I told you to slow down; it’s 45mph here, and you’re going to get a damn ticket if you’re not careful”

“Yes, sir. I’m doing 44, Grandpa.”

“I know. You know that time we took that trip to Mexico?”

“Of course Grandpa. It was a very important time in my childhood.”

“I remember we were all there at Puerto Vallarta, at dinner, and Robert announced that he would be marrying your mother. And I remember, you must have been, what, 7? And I remember you looked up at me and you said ‘Now I can call you Grandpa’”, another sad smile emerging from the corners of his mouth as he recounted the evening in perfect detail. “I told you to slow down through here.”

Now we’re BOTH leaking water from our eyes, the tough old farmer and me. He and grandma were the only grandparents I’d ever really know, accepting me into the family as one of their own from the moment I came crashing into their lives a chaotic 4yr. old, top of my lungs and full throttle. In their strong, quiet way, they’d be the foundation of so much in my life, from the now priceless hand-knit pot holders she would give me at Christmas to the work ethic he demanded of his family, trying to instill a sense of self-sufficiency and pride in craftsmanship that is the hallmark of each of their seven children.

He was at once strong and vulnerable as the oil derricks and freight trains quietly passed by the windows of his Buick, and our time slipping too fast before my eyes. He won’t read this, and I don’t know if he can today recall the conversation we had three days ago, but as we journeyed together to bid a sad farewell to a remarkable woman, he gave me what will probably be his last and most important gift: the recognition of our bond as family with all that that entails: loving, squabbling, growing, but through it all, doing it together.

After the service and the lunch and he was situated in his chair, grandmother’s recliner conspicuously unoccupied by little more than memory, I clutched his gnarled hand and told him that, yes, I’d be safe going home, and more importantly, I love you, Grandpa.

“I love you too, Uli.”

Maybe she’s in heaven and maybe she’s in Omaha, but I bet no matter where it is, she’s waiting to meet you there, Grandpa. And she’ll be damn happy to see you again. Thanks for the ride, it was worth every last mile to me.

No running for me, thank you very much

This time of year, Missouri lives in a cold-storage state of mind. We’re stockpiling holiday cheer and consumptive orgies for round 2, having just overindulged at Thanksgiving and lazily eyeballing the birth of Christ as personified by televisions going on sale at low, low prices. One particular day, the weather turns cold, very cold and we brace for it with ever-louder holiday music and a fondness for melted cheese dip. Belts get loosened a notch and we analyze football games on the weekend while inflatable Santas keep watch over the neglected leaves in our yards.

No wonder people hate themselves over the holidays.

We cook like the end of times is nigh, we apply subtle social pressure to one another (“hey, are you already done shopping for the kids? Bob knocked his all out  last week. What an asshole”), we pretend not to notice the wagging finger of the devout as they clamor for us to remember the Christ in Christmas, and we force smiles to one another as we anticipate yet another two weeks of our children NOT being school and tearing our homes apart all while we seethe inwardly and debate the merits of child labor laws in our minds. It is enough to make you pray to the baby Jesus in the manger to smite down the inventor of Black Friday in a righteous fury. THAT would have set the tone for history, in my opinion.

But since Jesus has not seen fit to smite down those who would program holiday music to begin the day after Halloween, I need to find other ways to avoid fits of freezing temper tantrums. Workout burnout comes quickly to the short attention spanned, and there’s something cleansing about running that even motivated me to write about it the other day (here). In this weather, though, running is pure misery, in some respects. Grown men end up wearing tights (guilty), snot meanders onto your upper lip more frequently, and it’s hard to catch your breath in cold jabs. Misery, it turns out, loves company. I know someone who I can force to run with me, even on those days when my runner-wife decides she can’t bear to watch my painful loping: the dog.

He’s been signed up to run the Frosty Paws 5k with me on December 10, and he didn’t even sign a consent form. To be fair to the poor bastard, I thought he might be in need of a training run or two, since he’s been living like a damn spoiled Saudi prince at the house. That picture above? His normal workday, personified.

So we ran this morning. He was less than impressed, and after taking a prolific dump somewhere near mile one, I could tell his heart just wasn’t into it. Clearly, he was missing his daytime episodes of Animal Cops Houston and pining for another rendition of “White Christmas” to be cranked over the airwaves. With a droolish curious look on his mug, he trotted alongside me full of the attitude you’d expect from a teenager, only to be excited by the taunts of random squirrels and the chance to pee on new trees. That’s ok….if I’m going to have festive cheer foisted upon me, he’s going to have cold runs forced upon him in anticipation of a race in a few weeks. It’s the holidays, dammit. Show some spirit.

The Dad We Wish We Had On Turkey Day

You know, we have so much to be thankful for, you and I.

If you’re reading this, you have access to the internet, which means you’re not spending you time hunting down raccoons for a meal. Likely you have a roof over your head, the ability to live outside of the yoke of an oppressive regime in the heat of the Middle East and enough money to buy that latte you’re drinking at Starbucks with your Power Mac laptop which is how you stumbled across this page.

As a cynical raconteur and avowed skeptic, I find it easy to take the “not only is the glass half empty, it’s cracked and leaking but I’m too lazy to do anything about it except complain to no one in particular” approach. On a related note, this is precisely why I’d make a crappy religious zealot; I wouldn’t believe myself most of the time. I could stand to be a little less jaded, I suppose, a little peppier when I get into a fender bender, a few more “woo-hoo’s” at CrossFit when I see someone skipping rope really, really fast. And truly, in this life, there is so much for which to be grateful.

• The unconditional love your children have for you (at least before their age gets into the double digits)
• The way in which your dog acts upon your return home, even if you were only gone for 5 minutes; the maniacal tail (or nub) wagging, the eyes, casting about wildly, the incessant pawing. You’ll always be the biggest celebrity in your dog’s world.
• Waking up in a country where you can be as free as you’d like. Free to be informed, free to be ignorant, but most importantly, free to be.
• Thermostats in the winter, and the ability to use them.
• Enough leisure time on our hands that we pay the Kardashians of this world exorbitant sums to basically live in front of cameras and date/marry professional athletes at their casual will.
• We can choose to run for health or sport as opposed to running for our lives from a pride of hungry lions with low blood-sugar issues.
• When Wall Street’s greediest chowderheads choose to abscond with others money, and our faith in man falters, we still forgive our neighbor for running over our garbage cans or that jerk who swiped your parking space….we forgive him too. Or we oughta.
• A well stocked liquor store on virtually every corner. Turns out, that’s quite handy.
• Family. Even the one’s you’re not talking to right now.
• Friends. Even the one’s who won’t talk to you right now.
• A house to clean. Laundry that needs to be done, because that means you’re still needed for more than just operating the dishwasher.
• Want bacon? Go buy bacon. Want a big-screen tv? Go buy one. Wanna meet a disease-infested tranny hooker in a park after hours? Go to Craigslist. My point? We don’t lack for much, except for an appreciation for what’s in front of us.

And I may well be the worst when it comes to a basic appreciation…..but not today. So thank you, one and all, for mostly just being you; friend or foe, you’re shaping the landscape of this life for me, and I’m grateful for the challenges and gifts of this life. I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled pessimism soon enough, but today, I’m just thankful.

s'not funny.

Once in great while, I get to time travel. I don’t need physics or machinery or even a white lab coat. It’s much simpler than that; I just go and work as a Watchdog Dad at one of the Heathens schools. This program is designed to have positive male influences present at schools throughout the day so as to deter kids from becoming filthy drug dealers and tax cheats. We help out in classes and eat barely cooked meals with the kids so as to re-live the torture of grade school. But the real trip back in time? That takes place on that playing field where hierarchies are established, hearts are broken and gravel is shoved up into the nostrils of the weak: The Playground.

Today I tottered out there, dizzy from trying to keep up with kids adding “9′s” and “6′s” and subtracting “3′s”, eager to shake these mathematical puzzles from my brain. As the children of 2nd and 3rd grade came tearing out the halls, ready to unleash yet even more crazy from their bottomless wells of boundless energy, I quickly found another adult; it would be necessary for there to be witnesses if any of these psycho-monkeys decided to band together and beat the monitors to death with red rubber balls and rocks.

Quickly they segregated: the boys kicking footballs and shoving their enemies into trees, while the girls quickly banded into packs of 3 or 4, apparently bound by various shades of pink or sparkle. And suddenly I was 8 again. I was the last kid getting picked for the pickup football game, left behind with a kid who insisted on being called “Punker Joe“, his only defining quality that I can remember being twin trails of snot running from his nostrils to his mouth. I can’t seem to recall my own children’s birthdays, but as vividly as getting hit by a bus, I can repeat the names of Shea Morenz, Bodine French, Austin Prince and Adam McLean, the Lords of Vieja Valley grade school in the early 80′s.

Their chatter left me devastated: “let’s leave Emily alone, we’re not with HER!“, “you SUCK!” and “Parker put a booger on my butt!!” I could handle that last one, but I was dazed by the collective effort to ostracize the loners and kiss the asses of the popular. Nothing’s changed since 1983. Attitudes are getting better or worse, depending on who you talk to, parents are acting like friends to their kids, Western society is on the brink of collapse, all that, but the pecking order on The Playground is the same.

Brittany, Brit’ney and Kylie are gonna prance like princesses declaring who’s in and who’s uncool; Riley, Jesse and Corbin are looking for chances to kick someone (literally) off the monkey bars and that weird group of kids will be off in the corner trading Bakugon ninja-jedi cards, twin trails of snot streaming down their upper lips, their eyes looking at me knowingly, silently inviting me to join their band of lovable losers.

Only They Know What They're Thinking

There’s an old school song lyric that I recently saw made into a tattoo, and it’s one that’s been rattling around the confines of my addled mind for more than a few minutes:

“Gaudemus Igitur

Juvenes Dum Sumus”

Translated from Latin, it means:

“Let us rejoice therefore

while we are young”

This summer I got to witness my son go from inflatable water wings and clinging to the sides of the shallow end of the pool to diving for rubber snakes in the 6′ deep section. He figured out how to throw a baseball without looking like he was having severe muscle cramps. He rode the bike without training wheels. His drawing skills keep getting better and he can draw a better SpongeBob than I. My other son is a young comic with disarming charm – he held the door open for a lady at the movies tonight, and he’s only six. His memory and recall are what I rely on almost daily to find my car keys or that one shoe I keep losing.

They’re growing up, those boys.

As we slide into Fall, and seasons and lives continue to evolve and change and grow, so too do my young Heathens. Their futures are unwritten, as are all of ours, but their slates are clean. You and I, we are living with the battle scars and badges of life’s choices, for better or worse. When they run across the lawn at full speed, with reckless abandon, I want them to cherish that very moment; I am. They won’t, they’re just busy living life with the throttle pinned wide open, much more concerned with which Transformer can defeat which Jedi than with drinking in the heavy, proud emotions I feel as I watch them. Before long they won’t want to spend their free time playing catch or Lego’s with me so much, and that’s as it should be. Here’s what they will know: no matter what, I’m right there for them with every step from learning how to drive to learning how to deal those uncharted waters of first loves and unwanted teen acne. For now, today, they’re still right here, and yet I miss them already. Perhaps it’s time for me to kick off the shoes and jump on the trampoline with them for a while, or at least till I get motion sick.

Time to rejoice a little. Love a lot.

Even if I’m not so young.

The nose knows

I’ve recently become injured by way of stupidity. Long story longer, I was lifting some heavy weights, got excessively macho one day, went back the next day for another round of lifting. I drove home in minor pain, thinking that some good stretching would help solve this dilemma. I was wrong. I hobbled to the bedroom and collapsed on the carpet, my back devolving into what was later described as a “bulging disc” and a “pinched nerve” condition. These declarations were made after one chiropractic visit, some drugs, one ER visit, an MRI and some more, better drugs.

In all my life, through broken bones, some burning of the earlobes and skin, nasal laser surgery and a chance encounter with a cyst in my chest cavity, I’ve never experienced pain like that which I felt curled up on the floor, unable to move at all. In between high pitched screams and thoughts of “this is what dying feels like”, I was left on the section of carpet that, at one time, the dog decided to urinate upon. I thought we’d done a thorough and true cleanup of the carpet, which we were planning on replacing this month anyways. Again, I was wrong. Nose down in the ghost of piss, I was going beyond humiliated pain. My children were witnessing tears rolling down my cheeks, muffled choking noises as I rolled like an upside down tortoise, begging for mercy. Scared and scarred, they chose to leave the room as I howled.  Finally, I crept up onto all fours, thinking I was alone in my state. Wrong.

MoJay, our illustrious Boxer who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jonathan Winters, had been observing this whole scenario. Head cocked, he looked at me as if to say “man, that is the worst impression of Charlie Sheen going through a drug withdrawal I’ve ever seen, and I watch alot of daytime television.” The look also indicated he wasn’t really sure who I was, even though we’ve lived together for well over a year. There was only one way to find out. So, as I wheezed out choking breaths, on all fours, he decided to drive his nose into the back of my pants to verify, sending me down on my elbows with another round of screeching.

“It’s me, dammit, MoJay! You worthless, no good, blind as a bat, piece of…… DAMMIT! (sobs)”.

He didn’t seem convinced. Trotting off, the arrogant bastard went to find someone else in the house to lavish affection upon him, and I began the slow crawl on my forearms toward the bathroom. And then I hear the clicking on the wood floor. He was back.

And he wanted to check, again.

There is nothing quite as degrading as having a dog make sport out of sniffing your ass, while you’re helpless to defend yourself, cursing and crying all at once. The deep underlying fear was that, if this little game ceased to amuse him, perhaps he’d jump it up a notch and try to assert dominance. Who does that to a broken, partially disabled bastard like me?

My dog does.

Fearing non-consensual aggravated canine sexual assault made me temporarily forget the crippling pain for half a second. I careened onto my back and bellowed even louder as the pain set in.

He wagged his nub of a tail, a twinkle in his eye, relishing my fear.

For sale: 5 acres, 2 shovels, 1 broom. Children not included

Vapor lock.

Two words when that come to mind when I wrap my warped mind around the concept of moving back into town: “vapor lock”.

We bought this house 5 years and 10 months ago, an excited and younger family, eager to get out of the suburbs and onto our 5 acres of the American Dream. It was a larger, kinda run down house with lots of, um, potential, but the real selling point for me was The Shop. 24′ x 80′, it was the ultimate man cave, built by the previous owner for his cabinet business. I owned a small excavating concern at the time, and although none of my equipment would fit INSIDE the shop, all the tools, beer fridge and other necessary manliness trappings would. 5 ACRES. I envisioned my boys on dirt bikes, I saw digging out a large pond that would freeze over in winter for some outdoor hockey, I pictured throwing big fall parties with a corn maze that I would create. I failed to look for the money tree that would fund all of these endeavors, but hey, when you’re dreaming, you can’t let a little thing like financial realities come crash the party.

As time and income would allow, we fixed up the things that needed it. The Dirtbag came out from the Northwest and we remodeled the former garage/family room into a fully functioning hair salon so that The Wife could work from home and the boys could come off the school bus to a home with at least one parent in it. I built things from salvaged barn wood in the shop, installed a stove and created a social haven for other off-duty firemen looking to escape their own homes. We half-built a garden that’s half the size of our former house. We have a guest room so that our out-of-town visitors aren’t fighting disgusting small boys for bed space or worse, toilet time.

Like the American Dream itself, though, it’s about the pursuit, not necessarily the arrival. The day arrived when the acquisition of more, bigger, greater wasn’t fulfilling anymore. It leaves a void, a void in which I was missing some vital aspects to being a father. Maybe smaller COULD better. Maybe I didn’t need as much.

I sold the business because I was never home, and it wasn’t worth the chump change I was able to claim as profit when my boys were growing up in my absence. I wanted to give writing a shot, even if only as a hobby. Then, the economy decided to jump the fiscal shark, and new realities really hit. We probably weren’t going to put in that swimming pool, much less a garage or a pond or a life-size re-creation of Mt. Rushmore in the back yard. And, like many people these days, we were asking “do we really need all this stuff, all this space, all those weeds?” We don’t. Mowing through the summer in Missouri equates to trying to drain a swamp with a shop-vac, humidity included.

“Let’s move back into town!” I boldly declared. My family looked at me like I just informed them that I was having recreational sex with feral cats. It took a while, but I sold the idea. Mostly, I sold it by telling them that we’re doing it. But she saw that we were spending all of our time in town anyways, that it doesn’t take a 1,920 square foot shop to house a laptop for writing, that she missed the social interaction of business in a salon. It was decided. We contacted a reputable Realtor, who guided us through the steps it’s gonna take to maybe, barely, hopefully break somewhat even on our house after all this time and money spent on improvements. We know what neighborhood we want to live in, what sort of tile & carpentry work I have to do get our house ready to put on the market, how to purge all of my hoarded treasures that are living in my shop.

I want to do this. She wants to do this. The boys could care less.

So why am I vapor locked when it comes to getting the house on the market?

I think it may be a mix of lamenting emotion, trepidation at the unknown and abject laziness. My boys have begun to grow up in this house, the only one they remember. It’s nice to have my own bathroom, whereas the historic old bungalows we’re looking at in town mandate that we’ll probably all be lucky to crawl into an old water heater for family bath times. I like that, on the rare occasions when the weather isn’t similar to either Vietnam in summer or Hoth in winter, my boys can go tearing around chasing each other with lightsabers, screaming at the top of their lungs to no one in particular. I like interacting with her clients in the salon, where I can get salacious and worthless details about people I don’t even know.

But it’s time.

Time to move on. Time to get out from behind the financial 8-Ball. Time to accept that without an excavating company to house, 5 acres just translates into a lot of mowing. I have no desire to become a hobby farmer. I would prefer to be a hobby coffee-and-bullshit consumer. Rural living has it’s benefits, not including some of the redneck mindset that my neighbors have (although I will miss trying to understand how one of them truly believes that a Kansas-born African American man as President is a sign of the impending terrorist apocalypse).

Home is a state of mind, and this one has been good to us. Hopefully, this vapor lock will pass, I’ll get off my rump and do what needs to be done, and we can begin our slow shuffle into town. And the memories? We’ll take those with us into town and start making new history.

Dad?

We become our parents.

It’s a fact of life and one that makes me want to chew on rocks when I think about it too much. This point was driven home the other day when I was pointing a finger at one of my boys and telling him to “sit up straight, I’m not raising boneless chickens here”. Karma, revenge, God’s Master Plan To Mock Us, whatever you may call it, it’s seemingly inevitable and heartbreaking all at once. Here are the signs that I’m sliding down that slope; you may well be joining me. Let’s get together and complain of our health woes in the near future, shall we?

5 Signs I’ve Become My Parents

1. Hey! Your hat’s on backwards. When I was a kid, I was told the only two reasons my stepfather would accept for someone wearing their hat backwards were if they were playing catcher in baseball or they were welding. The lame excuse I concocted of not wanting the wind to blow it off as I rode my BMX bike at a blistering 4mph was met with the cold stare of intolerant incredulity. Now? I think anyone wearing a baseball hat on backwards is telling the world “I’m still being financially supported by my parents.” I actually told my son in my big outdoor voice the other day that “no, as long as you’re riding in MY car, you’re not wearing that hat backwards and sideways. I’m not chauffeuring Justin Beiber here, dammit.” While my stepdad might be proud, I can’t believe I’m actually saying this. Pass the throat lozenges and hot coffee, please.
2. Don’t call me after 9pm. This was a hard and fast rule in our house growing up. It was also The Great Paradox Of The Teenager – if you wanted to stay out past your 10pm curfew, how could you call and make that request if it was 9:08pm? Inevitably, I’d make the bad choice of just skipping the call and the usual response of “do you have any idea what time it is? SOME of us have to work tomorrow, you know” and just enjoy some risky freedom, only to be met at the door at 11pm by crossed arms, a glare and a grounding. And now? I’ll actually fake sounding all sleepy if someone calls after 9. I have no idea why – we’re always up later than that, but that somehow crept up on me, made it’s way into my Standards of Acceptable Behavior. Go ahead and call, I’m not really asleep, I’m just being grouchy.
3. Shut up, the weather’s about to come on. Concerning oneself about the weather really is just a pastime in frustrated gambling, and yet if it’s 5pm and I’m watching the news like a responsible senior citizen, I’m addicted to the weather report. I really think that Missouri has one month of good weather – two weeks in the Spring and two weeks in the Fall. The rest of the time is spent either melting in humidity or chattering your teeth out in the icy gray of winter. So why the hell do I care about the weather? It’s gonna rain, or it won’t and yet I stay glued to the weather portion of the news like I’m responsible for delivering life-saving serum across the Midwest, and my journey hinges on mold-spore counts and potential rainfall totals.
4. Volume. No matter what channel, no matter what song, if my kids are playing it, it’s too damn loud. My music? Can’t get loud enough. Sorry boys, you’re not living in a democracy here, and there’s no way I can tolerate iCarly at volume level “4″ when we could be cranking Credence Clearwater Revival at “11″. My own father and I went through this in 1982, when he was determined to blast Pink Floyd on the Hi-Fi while dancing in his striped bikini underwear and all I wanted to listen to was Dexy’s Midnight Runner’s awesome sonic effort “Come On, Eileen”. He won, every time.
5. Comfortably weird. Reference the above statement; it’s no exaggeration – my father would wear speedo-style underwear and little else the moment he was freed from the shackles of the working world. It was horrifying for a kid trying to have friends or anything resembling a social life. And now? If our boys have a friend over to spend the night, I’ll try and convince them at the dinner table that I know how to use The Force. I’ll drink scalding coffee on hot days and late into the night. Three showers a day seems to be a reasonable number. I’ll drag the garbage can to the end of the driveway in a robe…in the snow. And when I found out a co-worker picked up a set of bagpipes for $25? I fumed with jealousy for a week. Yeah. I’m there.

Now you’ll have to excuse me…I need to go organize my sock drawer before bed time.

How We Do

I pulled up to the stoplight the other day. It was an ordinary stoplight, an ordinary day, in an ordinary town, as ordinary as life has been made to seem these days.

So ordinary, in fact, that I was driving my wife’s minivan. It’s white. It’s got coffee stains on the cloth interior. It has almost 100,000 miles and one of the doors opens with the touch of a button. It’s not paid for, not just yet. It’s screams mild-mannered and is just so damn sensible. It would be the perfect robbery getaway car here in the Midwest, since it looks EXACTLY like every third vehicle here, minus the ubiquitous “Bush 2008″ sticker we don’t have. It’s fuel efficient. It pulls slightly to the right when braking, since she tends to drive like a meth-fueled Nascar racer, going through brake rotors at an alarming rate. It’s air conditioned. It smells of leftover breakfast things and hockey gear and quietly desperate suburban living.

It kills me.

Back to the other day. I roll up, windows rolled down to let the smell of unkempt homeless guy/ farting children out. My lovely, delightful boys were engaged in some sort of Star Wars games on their personal electronic devices, so as to keep us from actually interacting. They weren’t fighting each other, so I was feeling like Father Of The Year. I was happy to crank some tunes on the factory-issued 6″ speakers that came with our beloved minivan, plugged into my own electronic device to which I am a slave, thereby marking me as a hopelessly middle aged wannabe technophile. The music? Well, it was a gangsta-rap kinda day, and I was in the mood for some Snoop Dogg, because I can, in no way, relate to anything about the lifestyle he’s living, so of course, I love it. I love it, but I’m a semi-responsible parent, too, so I had it on the radio-edit version. I really don’t feel like explaining to my children that we don’t refer to women that way, we don’t use the n-word like that, we don’t pull our gats out and perform drive-by shootings in the name of respect. At least, not in the minivan.

So there we are, thumpin’ to the beat (or, I am) waiting, wondering if I should be a rebel today and order an iced coffee WITHOUT my requisite 2 packets of Splenda when we drive through Starbucks; I’m basically living the dream. In the distance, I hear a high pitched whine approaching that can mean only one thing: a horde of crotch-rocket sport bikes was rapidly descending upon our same stoplight. Three or four of them throttle down, pull alongside us, kick it into neutral and rev their engines several times to assert dominance over one another, and more specifically, to annoy everyone around them. And there she was.

Perched on the back of one of these Road Rockets Of Most Assured Death At High Speed, she sported low-rise jeans with the inevitable “tramp-stamp” style tattoo just above the crack of her backside, a long flowing ponytail billowing out of the back of her helmet and, get this, stiletto high heels. The helmet was a full face model, thereby leaving my imagination to fill in the blanks as to just how beautiful she most certainly was, hands clutched around the driver, who would no doubt be sporting too much Axe Body Spray and a backwards hat, if not for his helmet. As he gunned the throttle up and down, she turned her head to the side and our eyes locked. I recognized the look in those eyes. Not lust. Not love. Not like.

Pity.

Here she was, poised to take off to 115mph. in a matter of moments on a city street, looking at me, getting 18 miles to the gallon at 5mph. under the speed limit. I represented, in that moment, everything she and her sleeveless-shirted boyfriend weren’t: they were careless, carefree, willing to die in a hail of asphalt and bumpers and look damn good doing it. She was wearing STILETTO HEELS for godssakes. She probably thought I was wearing mid-calf-high socks with Teva sandals, which for the record, I wasn’t. “Wow,” she was probably thinking, “look at that poor, nasty old sap, listening to that old hip-hop with his kids in the Toyota Grocery Getter. Gawd. Who wants to live to be THAT old? Wind that throttle out again, Ricky, you stud.”

Just like that, the light went green, and they roared off to the next frat party or sports bar or cocaine-flavored techno club. “But wait, “ I feebly protested, with my fist in the air, “I have a mortgage. Health insurance. I recently lowered my cholesterol, and I make a mean piece of sourdough toast.”

Too late. She was gone, our love never realized. It never would be. She will continue to seek thrills at high speeds in high heels, and I will be in bed by 9:36pm after a nice hot cup of tea. She has no idea what she’s missing; very little can match the exhilarating feeling of knowing you can seat 8 semi-comfortably.

Just for the hell of it, I purchased that coffee without Splenda. Because, beneath this khaki exterior, beats the heart of a bad boy. A bad boy with good cholesterol and a white minivan.