Crazy Days, Lazy Nights

The old adage states that you’re only as old as you feel. That’s a great mantra and definitely words to live by. However, I still haven’t read anything that includes the post-30s addendum clause “...or as otherwise dictated by your immediate surroundings”. Case in point, a recent vacation with the wife and kids to Myrtle Beach where I received that cold splash of geriatric reality. Twice.

We arrived at night in the middle of “Bike Week”. At a stoplight, we’re surrounded on all sides by deafening, high-performance motorcycles. Completely encompassed amidst the modern epitome of masculinity. Then there’s me, in a minivan with the family…and a wagon strapped to the roof. To say that we were the sore thumb is an understatement. However, in a vaguely reminiscent pre-30s demeanor that I once possessed, I glanced around and gave a couple of guys the customary male “chin nod”. Much to my surprise, there was no snickering. More dumbfounded shock than anything else. I turned toward my wife and stated proudly in my best sniffling, Don Knotts impression, “yep, they’re jealous.”

The reality is that twenty years ago, I was one of those guys. Out all night, cruising the Strand in search of bedlam, without a care in the world. A youth lost on borrowed time. These days, you’re more likely to find me body-surfing with my kids instead of planning the evening out. However, sitting at that stoplight, I also found myself looking at my two daughters and contemplating what would happen if they ever decided to bring home one of those guys. Someone like…well, me. Sigh. “Alas poor Yorick, I knew him…” All-too-well.

Later in the week, we drove past the house that my friends and I had rented for our high school senior graduation week. The week where fifteen of those guys drove down to Myrtle Beach with grand aspirations of utter lawlessness and rampant hooliganism. My Mustang SVO loaded down with friends, guitars, just enough food to sustain an existence, and just enough beverage to humiliate a German Oktoberfest. A week of blowing off steam before moving on to college or jobs. We had even adopted a song that week to commemorate the lifestyle. “Lazy Days, Crazy Nights” by the ‘80s band Tesla. “I love those lazy days and crazy nights; It’s my way, it’s my life; I’m doing fine right here on borrowed time.”

Let’s fast forward twenty years. Replace my beloved SVO with a minivan, the cases of libation with bags of children’s beach toys, and my guitars with that eye-sore strapped to the roof. Furthermore, let’s replace those friends that yelled from the backseat every time that we passed a female with my children doing the same every time that we pass a miniature golf course. Thought I saw all of that coming? Back then, I might have been arrested for choking a fortune-teller.

Honestly though, I can’t think of a more satisfying outcome. Having a family and being a dad to bouncing, giggling kids will do that. Mentally, I’m still just as young at heart and still feed that sense of adolescent invincibility with occasional stupidity. However, those lazy days and crazy nights have transformed themselves into the wonderfully crazy days of my wife and I chasing our kids around and the lazy nights of collapsing on the couch afterwards. There’s a real sense of accomplishment there for me.

Heading home, I pulled that song up on the iPod for amusement’s sake. After hearing those apt lyrics and cracking a reminiscent smile, I promptly turned the Backyardigans CD on to pacify the restless kids in the backseat. I even found myself humming along. So, to my immediate surroundings, you can keep your bikes and your borrowed time. I’m taking my wagon...and going home. It’s my way, it’s my life.

 - Originally published in Fluvanna Review July 15 2010

The Art of Payback

“It’s all fun and games until someone leaves with a staple in their head.” Sage advice from a friend and fellow witness that now has special meaning for my four year old daughter. Thankfully, my daughter is just fine and now belly laughs when I refer to her as “my little staplehead”. However, somewhere not far from Fluvanna, I can hear my parents quietly giggling. Payback.

It all started innocently enough, as it always does. Our friends’ had decided to take us in for the evening after we had lost electricity during one of Virginia’s latest Arctic impressions. Not only did my family invade their otherwise quiet Sunday night, but we had also brought along our Springer Spaniel as well. It was our dog that started the evening’s festivities by first repeatedly drinking out of their toilet and then proceeding to leave a fresh present on their screened porch. However, it was our illustrious exit that provided for the post-New Years fireworks.

As I loaded the car to return to a reheated home, the children ran around in last ditch efforts to employ a variety of parental annoyance tactics and assorted kiddy mayhem. Then, it happened. Daughter and friend bump into each other and daughter launches headfirst into the nearest wall. Standard physics and sheet rock density aside, she wasn’t even fazed. That is, until she saw the blood. A quick check by the remaining, non-hysterical adults in the house confirmed it stitch-worthy.

OK. Check the watch. 9:15 on a Sunday night. Perfect. That gives us exactly 45 minutes to get her in the car, get the well “relieved” dog home, and get to the Martha Jefferson Pantops ER before it closes at 10 pm…all on snow-covered roads. Also to impose further on our friends to now watch both our son and infant daughter. Little did they know when they invited us over that this was standard operating procedure for the family. You’ve heard the old saying “Friends help you move, but real friends watch two of your three children at 10 pm on a Sunday night as your daughter’s head is bleeding”. Something like that anyway.

One fun-filled Sunday evening ride to Charlottesville and one staple to the noggin later, the patient is doing just fine. We can laugh about it now, but this brings me to yet another life lesson. A seemingly ever-growing list as I continue down the road of parenthood. “No matter what you do, your children will inevitably take after you…usually at inopportune times and always in grand fashion.”

After a childhood of repeatedly denting and abusing my cranium, our 4 year old has begun to follow dad’s lead. My parents had to endure much of the same from my childhood. If it wasn’t 105 degree fevers while sitting in Christmas traffic on the Jersey Turnpike, it was getting my own skull stapled together after one of those “see-what-I-can-do” moments that I am still too embarrassed to discuss publicly. I think back to some of the other less-than-intelligent feats that I had performed as a child that led to similar devastating results. Is this only the beginning? My parents can now sit in amusement as my wife and I shake our heads in disbelief. Been there, done that.

I shudder to think that I’ll have to look back on my own childhood to get an idea of what’s in store for my wife and I. I’m fairly certain that my parents were on a first name basis with our ER for a good portion of my childhood. It’s amusing that my daughter is the one that has begun to piece it all together though. As I look at her and refer to her as “my little staplehead”, she can honestly look back up at me and stated proudly, “it takes one to know one, daddy.” Touché.

Or should that be “en garde”?

- Originally published in Fluvanna Review February 25 2010