Deeper Shade of Soul

As I looked into the mirror, lyrics from “A Deeper Shade of Soul”, a song by the 90s fusion band Urban Dance Squad, immediately popped into my head.  “Surprise, surprise; so you rub your eyes…” Thing is, I kept rubbing, but it was still there.  Sparsely scattered throughout my freshly-grown goatee.  My soul patch, my grunge mange, my Shaggy.  It no longer reflected that deeper shade of soul.  What I saw was the lighter shade of old.

The infamous goatee is one of those things that has come and gone since my mid-20s.  It was my youthful change-up from the same-ole-same-ole blandness of everyday me.  Since my head is now clean shaven in the shiny image of a cue ball, it’s basically the extent of what I’m able to mix up in the appearance department.   It’s my lame self-expression of suburban mutiny.  My pointless rebellion of corporate professionalism.  After a few months, it runs its course and vanishes yet again in another tantrum of self-expression and pointless anti-rebellion rebellion.

Squint, blink, blink, squint harder.  I tried several different angles in three separate light sources, but to no avail.  As much as I would try to deny it, they simply weren’t blonde hairs.  My waning optimism humbled.  Execution-style.

Deep down, I have always been a firm believer in the premise that you are only as old as you feel.  Even as I accelerate towards 40 at break-neck speed, I literally still view myself as that carefree, 26 year old lout.  More often than not, this viewpoint also directly conflicts with the physical limitations imposed by Father-time upon my 40 year old carcass.  Limitations that aren’t fully realized until the agonizing aftermaths and their associated maimings have thoroughly run their course.  In retrospect, maimings that may have been avoided if I simply switched my multi-vitamin to their “silver” product line.

I have to admit.  This was new territory for me and it really played with my psyche.  The shaving of the head thing never really bothered me.  It was somewhat trendy and it didn’t actually advertise my genuine ripeness.  This gray business though.  It was truly the first time that I looked into the mirror and viewed myself as a 40 year old man.  I didn’t necessarily like the mental images.

Here I’ve gone from Redbeard, the ruthless and enigmatic pirate of the Mediterranean…to Greybeard.  You guys remember Greybeard.  The pirate on the beach with the blackened bifocal visor and metal detector, who throws his back out trying to pull his treasure from the dunes.  The pirate who takes long afternoon naps before raiding English merchant ships.  The pirate who dons tan polyester shorts coupled with black dress socks and sock suspenders over his wooden leg.  OK, so I made up Greybeard.  However, you have now assembled the visuals running rampant through my head. 

“Yo ho ho and a bottle of Mucilex.  Now get off my lawn!”

Honestly, I should have seen this coming.  Shortly before Apple’s release of the iPad, I heard two guys anxiously discussing the latest tech sensation at a coffee shop.  I merely assumed they were just medical students discussing post-surgical eye care.  Droid, Kindle, and 4G were new Transformers characters until I was educated otherwise by a CNN business report.  Techo-geriatrics or just outright senility?  Quite possibly, a combination of both. 

Of course, I also get those not-so-gentle reminders in my assorted daily dialogues as well.  Last summer, I had a college sophomore as a summer intern at work.  While looking up places to eat lunch on the internet one morning, he happened upon a local establishment called “Mel’s Cafe”.  I spun towards him and immediately delivered, in a deadpan falsetto drawl, “kiss my grits”. 

You could classify the look that I received as your classic combination of shock and utter disgust.  “What did you just say?”

“Mel’s Diner?  Flo?  Kiss my grits?  Come on…really?  Nothing?”  Oh right, he’s twenty.

My desperate attempts at disguising the self-carbon-dating of myself are equally as pathetic.  For example, I am a self-proclaimed music nut.  Music has always been my universal topic of discussion in bridging generations and genres of influence.  I pride myself on staying current with the modern rock and R&B scenes.  That is, until I start unconsciously slipping in references of a reminiscent yesteryear.  Words such as “album”, “B-side”, “45”, and “record store” inadvertently incorporate themselves into my geezer gab and inevitably rat out my four decades of existence.

I’m still leery about the broadcasting and outright marketing of the fact that “my beard is weird”, but I have decided to keep it around for a little longer.  I recently caught Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead on the radio reassuring that “oh well, a touch of grey kind of suits you anyway.”  At this point, I can’t say that I agree with that sentiment.  After all, deep down…I’m still only 26.  This billboard of gray just doesn’t project me at all. 

However, reality is oftentimes as subtle as a cinderblock to the toes.  Apparently, it’s time for me to accept the fact that my deeper shade of soul has officially walked the plank.  No longer do I channel that serious alt-rock mystique with the goatee.  Probably more the creepy old guy from that “very special episode” of a sitcom.    

Garcia does provide me with some solace at the end of that song though.  “I will get by.  I will survive.”  I still don’t accept it, but point taken.  The fact that I’m quoting the Dead, though, most likely means that I’m already well-beyond hope anyway.  If that’s the highway that I’m headed down though, I’m going out kicking and screaming…doing 30 mph in the fast lane.

And Good Will Toward Men...

I try to make it a habit of maintaining my composure around my children.  Language, demeanor, and common courtesies are areas that have been a constant work-in-progress since our first was born.  Our parents raised us a certain way and we are trying to do the same.  It’s not that I’m some sort of hothead or foul-mouthed hooligan or anything.  No comments from the peanut gallery, please.  It’s just that on those off-chances that I do lose my composure, it’s often quite colorful.

One of my mother-in-law’s favorite accounts revolves around the time that my father-in-law and I hung crown molding in our dining room.  I had cut the last piece of molding a full inch too short.  Already frustrated with the general expertise required in geometry, I snapped.  Calmly and without a word, I picked up the molding, walked out onto our back deck, and launched it like an Olympic javelin.   I estimated a good thirty yards through the air.  With my obvious shortfalls in tape measure usage, it may have well been closer to sixty.  I’m talking Nike sponsorship material here.  After cooling off, however, I walked into the backyard, wiped off the grass stains, and worked around the problem to complete the job.  Slightly insane?  A wee over-the-top?  You could make that argument.  However, spectacularly colorful. 

Most of the time, I incoherently mumble through my locker room repertoire and continue with the task at hand.  However, there’s always the “people factor”, coupled with my lack of patience for them, to consider as well.  Being that eternal cynic, I always expect people to behave like…well, people.  Society as a whole expects others to act as if they have some trace of common sense.  However, I happen to agree with the anonymous skeptic who once penned that “the problem with common sense is that most people are morons.”  More gently put, if you don’t expect too much, you’ll never be disappointed.

Normally, I find people-watching an amusing spectator sport.  There is that handful that really seems to draw my ire though.  Generally, they’re the ones that pose some sort of threat to what’s near-and-dear to me. 

Driving home late on Christmas Day, it snowed the entire way home.  The roads were clear until we reached our county line.  Literally, right at the county marker, the roads went completely untouched by snow removal equipment.  From that point forward, I couldn’t tell where the road ended and the ditches began.  With my wife, three kids, and a few dozen Christmas presents jammed into my car, I tried to take it slow and steady.  Anything over second gear seemed to result in a loss of traction.

“That handful” of people were also on the road that night.  The ones who, on snow-covered roads, decided to tailgate six inches from my bumper.  If there is one major pet peeve that I have, it’s tailgating.  Blame my years of navigating DC traffic as first-hand witness to thousands of mangled bumpers.  What’s the saying?  “You can take the boy out of the city, but not the city out of the boy.” 

Here I have my entire family in this car.  If I had to hit my brakes for any reason, this guy is basically in my backseat eating cheese sticks with my kids.  I flashed my hazards a few times.  Even resorted to physically waving him off.  Clueless.  I felt my face began to heat up as I rapidly approached that “slightly insane” stage.  For the purposes of safety, I pulled over in an effort to let him pass.

As he drove by me, I opened my window and stuck my head out in an effort to enhance our personal line of pleasantries.  Somehow, I managed to only shake a fist at him while keeping all five digits in the downward position.  However, I then followed it up with a booming “you’re an IDIOT” at the top of my lungs.  Yes.  That “boy-city” thing again.

After putting the window back up and carefully getting back on the road, a small voice appeared from the backseat.  It was my five year old daughter. 

“Daddy, it’s not nice to call somebody an idiot.”

Oops.  I have passengers.

Privately, I patted myself on the back.  The fact that only a closed fist and an “idiot” were outwardly expressed was really a testimonial to my overall progress.  Before children, I was liable to offend a busload of Marines and sprain a finger…or two.  Exemplifying the true decathlete of vulgarity.  However, she was right.  The next five minutes resulted in an extended conversation on how it wasn’t nice to treat other people that way.  How we have to control our tempers and be courteous to others (even if they are idiots).  It turned into an extremely beneficial moment for us, as parents, in teaching both tolerance and respect. 

Through these discussions, my blood pressure stabilized and body temperature normalized.  My family was safe and that’s all that really mattered.  At that moment, a truck blew by us in a no-passing lane, weaving and darting to get in front of me.  Unfortunately, my mouth is occasionally a good second or two faster than my brain.  This was one of those such instances.  “Now go ahead and wreck” immediately fell out of my sarcastic mumbler.

I physically cringed as that little voice returned from the backseat.  “Daddy, why do you hope he wrecks?”

Luckily my wife, with fifteen years experience in defusing the repercussions associated with my oftentimes irrepressible outer-voice, was fast enough to orchestrate an impromptu word scramble to smooth the situation.  The natives seemed satisfied.

As for me, I simply nodded intently.  Better to slouch down and keep my mouth shut at this point.  Not tempt kiddy decorum any further.  Somehow, I managed to keep my language in check.  Demeanor and common courtesy, on the other hand, were systemically launched by a colorful, albeit slightly insane, Olympic gold medalist.  Twice.

This time, I’m demanding the IOC and Guinness folks provide the official measurement.

The Inquisition

“It just seemed like a good idea at the time.”  “I just wanted to see what would happen.”

Just a couple snippets of the inner thoughts of a child.  Well, mine anyway.  I’m a living case study concerning all matters “parent-child psychology”, but I can vividly remember mumbling through a few of them myself as a child.  I still have the scars, dents, and fracture-related arthritis to remind me of the associated aftermaths.  However, it’s my charismatic children that now stand to serve a refresher crash course, specifically for my wife and I.

Recently, I went into the garage to grab some nails from my tool bench.  What I found, however, were a couple of nuts.  Sitting on the floor of the garage was my daughter.  Bicycle helmet on, looking down towards the ground, bracing herself.  My son, standing directly in front of her.  Foam-covered wiffleball bat raised completely over his head, ready to swing down.  I must have caught him at “T-minus-two” because I received a surprised, half-hearted smile and customary shoulder shrug after breaking his concentration.

I simply looked at him with my hands motioning to my daughter.  “Really?”

“What?  She has a helmet on.”

The “facepalm” was nearly involuntary.  Involuntary, due to the number of times in a week that I find myself performing it.

Frankly, he had a point.  They had at least taken a helmet into consideration.  If it were my brother and I as kids, we probably wouldn’t have thought that far ahead.  The plan would have been considerably more rudimentary and, let’s be honest, a wiffleball bat simply would not have achieved what he and I would have envisioned as a respectable rate of downward velocity.  I am fairly certain, though, that my son’s experimentation with physics, freak accidents involving bicycles and wiffleball bats, and the biological fundamentals of cranial flexibility would have quickly escalated until true blunt-force-trauma was achieved.  Better to have broken up this party in the research and development stages.

 “Is that really such a great idea?” 

It was your typical, rhetorical question that every parent feels compelled to ask in response to performances such as these.  Personally, I have to.  The cheap amusement that I get out of seeing his wheels spin, in a desperate attempt to formulate an acceptable explanation, is just too good to pass up. 

So starts the Parental Inquisition. A full fatherhood tribunal involving his specific actions and their potential consequences.  I presented my own lengthy dissertation as to why “bat” and “little sister” do not belong in the same sentence together.  However, the more I talked, the more I could see his eyes wandering further out of focus.  The wheels were spinning, but not necessarily on anything that I was spouting.  Most likely, he was mentally flowcharting his next initiative.  I heard accountability and responsibility coming out.  He heard Charlie Brown’s teacher coming in.  “Wa-wonk, wa-wonk, wonk”.

Unfortunately, much like my facepalm ritual, the Inquisition has quickly become an encore performance these days.  A recent example accompanied my son’s gravitational theories concerning the centripetal force required to successfully spin a hammock-full of four year olds, 360 degrees around in a circle.  Unfortunately, only enough force to achieve 180 degrees was reached that evening.  My daughter and friend found themselves with a faceful of mulch.  Back to the drawing board for Sir Isaac Newton... 

Yet another Inquisition was conducted several weeks later, following my son’s aspirations of a winner-take-all game of “chicken” down our driveway.  Son and daughter pedaling their big wheels full-speed towards each other, then veering left or right at the last moment to avoid sure carnage.  My daughter lost that bout too, by the way.  Amidst the mayhem that morning, I firmly believe that James Dean would have been proud of her unwavering moxie.  In hindsight, I think that I can also officially rule out any career for them in statistics, as they both failed miserably in determining their individual success rates in carnage avoidance.  Insurance adjusters perhaps?

Ultimately, it all seems to come back to the old “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” theory.  Improvised bike ramps that would have failed every building code known to man, backfiring potato cannons full of butane, and homemade rocket launchers involving aerial fireworks and my father’s pipe clamps were just a few personal debacles of note.  Most led to friends-turned-M*A*S*H* personnel in frantic episodes of dragging battered comrades back to their respective houses for bandaging and antiseptic.   Shouting wildly at each other along the way in a desperate attempt to get our stories straight for the mom. 

No one ever got seriously injured…not that anyone would admit to anyway.  It was pretty tough to mask the dozen stitches and accompanying skull staples for yours truly though.  From that point forward, heaving coffee cans full of carriage bolts at each other was unspokenly frowned upon amongst friends.

Deep down, you can’t say that it really gets any better with age either.  I’m willing to bet that over 50% of the weekend emergency room visits for 18-50 year old males start out with the phrase “wanna see what I can do” or “hey man, check this out”.  I have personally witnessed at least a dozen of these events.  Probably been a direct party to twice that.  That’s all that I’m willing to admit to on-the-record though, without an attorney present and a gratuitous sound-bite of Jack Palance’s “Believe it…or not”.

Even though it’s inescapable that my son will continue to navigate youth with his father’s genetic idiocy coursing wildly through his veins, I have at least highlighted the need for him to start leaving his sister out of his master plan.  Glass-half-full, I have been the beneficiary of sprint-related cardio workouts after overhearing “go ahead, try it” from the next room.  However, as his ideas grow more elaborate, I also see my odds of success significantly fall in the area of preemptive catastrophe interference.   

I take it back.  The bike helmet was a magnificent idea.

Fail. Rewind. Repeat.

In the days that pre-dated social networks, instant messaging, and texting, many of us only had email as the main source of communication between friends while at work.  Hard to believe for some of those kinder in years, but email was considerably easier than lugging around that ten pound military com unit commonly referred to as a “cell phone” back in those days. 

A regular “activity” for on-the-job, twenty-somethings like me back then, was the constant forwarding of email jokes.  It was our escape from the daily doldrums of office cubical incarceration.  One email, that I actually still keep near-and-dear, was entitled “Modern Philosophies of the Cynic”.  It was my battle-cry, my manifesto.  Bottled sarcasm.  As someone who has always done everything the hard way, it spoke to my inner realist.

“The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required to be pressed against it” and “The hardness of the butter is always proportional to the softness of the bread” were just a couple memorable quips from this masterpiece.  I keep this original list handily nearby, posted to one of my cabinets at work.  Torn and weathered from the dozens of job changes dating back to the mid-1990s, it’s magnificently printed via vintage dot matrix and still proudly echoes one of my favorites. 

“Success Always Occurs in Private.  Failure in Full View.”

I constantly find new ways to reinvent that credo.  And I often do so spectacularly.

Anybody who knows me knows that I’m not a master orator.  Tense public speaking situations for me are often met with wildly-exaggerated sarcasm and self-depreciative mockery.  Humor is my defense.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love talking and joking with a roomful of friends.  But a roomful of judgmental strangers?  Me…as the straight-laced professional with a serious demeanor?  Fuhget-about-it.  In truth, I do what I have to do to make a buck, but I unquestionably loathe every second of it. 

In response to making that buck and take on a greater role in my job, I was recently invited to take an eight-hour executive presentations course through work.  Yes indeed, ladies and gentlemen, now boarding the “A” train to Hell.  Destination: Dante’s Inner Circle with stops at Anxiety, Apprehension, and Public Humiliation.

This particular training covered a wide range of public-speaking scenarios in a corporate environment.  Speak on the spot, presenting with powerpoint, hostile Q&A sessions, and impromptu boardroom fist-pounding speeches.  These weren’t one-and-done sessions either.  Each scenario was done three times in succession.  The first round was a start-and-stop session with critique from the instructor.  The second was a complete delivery with a humiliating, overall performance hack-job from your fellow classmates.  The third and final was the excruciating review of the entire train wreck on videotape.

Yes…videotape.  The ultimate weapon of mental mass destruction.  The vehicle that makes it capable to pacify the most animated of grandstanders, as well as psychologically cement the innumerous possibilities of potential internet blackmail.  Just ask the “Star Wars Kid” how well it worked out for him when his supposed private video went viral worldwide.  Talk about your semester-long case study in psychiatry…and well, drapery products.

There it was.  Stammering voice, delivery, nervous ticks, and gawky appearance on full, 42-inch hi-def display.  If you ever possessed even the slightest trace of personal insecurity, this magnified it fifty times over.  Being the gangly, bald, babbling oaf who makes really bad jokes at really inopportune times, I now understand this.  Honestly, it was not unlike watching the Hindenburg disaster.  In fact, once or twice, I believe I inadvertently channeled Herbert Morrison’s horrified eyewitness account out loud. 

“Oh the Humanity!” 

At the end of the class, the instructor handed back our videotapes and asked us to revisit them on occasion to remind us on where we needed to improve.  Improve?  On utter calamity?  Besides, those images of are now permanently burned into my memory like a psychosomatic branding iron.  So much for that theory of your brain subconsciously hiding extreme trauma in order to protect itself.

Passing through Washington DC on my way home that evening, I contemplated shipping this videotape, via airmail, into the Potomac River below.  Two things kept me from doing so.  One, it was 20 degrees outside and the thought of rolling down my windows on the 14^th Street Bridge at 40 miles per hour was completely unfathomable.  Second, the “Star Wars Kid”.  Having some random jokester find and post this natural disaster to YouTube.  Twenty million witnesses to my personal fail-a-thon.

With this scenario firmly entrenched in my psyche, the remnants of that videotape now sit in a secure, undisclosed location.  Stamped thoroughly and repeatedly with my personal Seal of Approval, courtesy of a 22-ounce framing hammer.  Further durability exercises on said evidence will include stoning-by-cinderblock, pyre-burning, and a private exorcism performed with speaker magnets dipped in battery acid.

Honestly, I don’t know why these embarrassing debacles still affect me.  I was a Public Relations major in college and have taken dozens of these public speaking classes over the course of my academic and professional life.  You’d think by this point, I would be psychologically immune to the end product and looming mortification.  Being that eternal cynic though, I always seem to find that dark ray of comedic sunshine to help me get through it.  This time, appropriately, it was the very first quip on my faithful philosophies list.

“If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that proves you tried.”

Monkey See, Monkey Do

I remember the look on my parent’s faces like it was yesterday.  That look of shock, dismay, and “wow…he really is an idiot” all wrapped up in a single mushroom-cloud blossoming above their heads.  The first inquiry that usually passed through pursed lips was the obvious question of wanting to know why I did what I did.  The response they received was one that had been passed down by children from generation-to-generation since the origins of man. 

“I don’t know.”

As infuriating as that answer is to every parent around the globe, it’s generally true.   Honestly, you could have hooked me up to an EEG machine and seen absolutely zero brain activity during the alleged timeframe in question.  More often than not, it was just something that seemed interesting for me to do at the time.  Consequences?  Well, I hadn’t really thought that far ahead yet.

Before I had children, my parents and I would occasionally sit around and laugh about some of the ridiculous things that my siblings and I did in our childhood.  Most of them were your typical, harmless acts of juvenile boneheadedness.  However, there was always that occasional feat of overconfident recklessness coupled with just enough dumb luck to leave us unscathed in the end.  Stitches were sometimes involved, but we were kids and that’s what kids do.  Oh how we laughed! 

Now I have children of my own.  I’m not laughing so much anymore…

Since it was just before Halloween, we’ll go ahead and channel a little Hitchcock for the moment in order to set the proper ambiance.  Visualize the shower scene from the movie “Psycho”.  This time, however, it wasn’t Norman Bates with the blade outside of the curtain.  It was my son, with my wife’s razor on the inside.  There were no shrieks from Marion Crane….only my wife.  As I rushed into the bathroom, my wife stood looking into the shower.  Arms extended, mouth open.  Our son?  Standing in the shower, razor in hand, and three chunks of hair missing from the side of his head.

They say that imitation is the best form of flattery.  “They” probably never had children attempt to shave their heads. 

Before I could wrap my mind around what had just transpired, my parent’s furrowed brows unwillingly became mine.  The blood rushed to my head, then…ka-blooey.  Radioactive fallout in my bathroom.  Like a trained monkey, the words just fell out of my mouth.  Verbatim, as was poetically performed by my parent’s thirty years earlier. 

“What were you thinking?” 

I wanted to cover my mouth in humiliation, but couldn’t risk letting down my psycho-dad intimidation leverage at that point.  Of course I know what he was thinking.  Zero.  Zilch.  Nada.  Same as his pop thirty years earlier.  Yet I asked anyway?  I’m beginning to wonder if there is some sort of pre-programmed, primordial genetic code that kicks in upon birth of your offspring.  Hmm.  I smell grant money…

After the customary barrage of rants and lectures about making choices and thinking things through, it was time to sit down and survey the damage.  It was down to the scalp, but salvageable.  

After stern lectures like these, the quiet moments following are normally reserved as a time of reflection between a man and his son.  Men address it and move on.  Done.  However, while I attempted to cover the boy’s handiwork with my clippers, I found myself considering the various formations that I could achieve from connecting those three spots shaved into the side of his head.  My mind immediately wandered to a courtside scene from the movie “White Men Can’t Jump”. 

“You got a ‘Z’ in your 'fro!” 

That quiet moment digressed into giggling.  My son, seeing his snickering father with a pair of clippers in hand, panicked.  Thinking that I was about to follow through on one of my earlier rants about shaving him clean in my image, he started to sob. 

After some reassuring words, creative use of hair gel, and a semi-reparative fade cut, life returned to normal for the boy.  His hair grows pretty fast, so he would just have to endure a couple school days and Halloween parties.  Thankfully, Indiana Jones was the costume of choice this year.  Doctor Jones’ hat is his patented trademark, so the costume would actually work in his favor.  Although I did stand by with a pair of Chuck Taylors, just in case we decided to finish that “Z”.

When I relayed the episode to my parents, I’m pretty sure that I could make out the slightest satisfaction coming from the other end of the phone.  Karma’s celestial realignment had come full-circle.  Instead of it being me regurgitating the “I don’t know” alibi to my parents after blowing up the neighbor’s toys with roman candles and firecrackers, it was my son.  Same oblivious look, same steadfast delivery.  Just without all of the explosions, pyrotechnics, and smoldering G.I. Joe figures in the background, that is.

I had spent a lifetime attempting to defend the “I don’t know” party-line.  Now, without warning, I found myself on the other side.  Genetically coerced into recycling time-honored dad questions to obvious childhood disaster scenarios.  I wondered what other conventional zingers might be headed our way.  Would preparedness help preempt the inevitable?  My parents would have been a great asset in providing this background intelligence, of course, but why would they cheat themselves out of free skit comedy? 

Molecular genetics theories aside, I’m resigned to the fact that I’m unconsciously wired to continue delivering these pointless inquiries to my children, just as my father and his father’s fathers had, since the beginning of mankind.  Retrospectively, and apparently inescapably, if they all jumped off a bridge, I guess I would too.

The Grapes of Wrath

It really doesn’t seem all that long ago.  Maybe a little more than ten years “BC” (before children) or so.  My wife and I were still just dating at the time.  The summer was creeping to a close.  Warm winds were being replaced by cooler ones from the northwest and all of the leaves were prepping themselves for nature’s fireworks.  It was my favorite season of the year. 

It was fall.  It was October.  It was wine festival season.

Back then, there were usually ten to fifteen of us crammed into a commuter van stocked with an allotment of food and beverage for the day.  Maybe a Lunchable or two in tow for the eternal bachelors aboard.  There were no plans, time constraints, or schedules.  Just a day of music, laughs, and fermented grape juice with friends.  That’s the romanticized version of how I remember it anyway.

Recently, my wife and I had received a flyer in the mail for an upcoming wine festival.  It had been ages since we had been to one.  Right about the time when the kids became a little too mobile to make them enjoyable.  The flyer stated that, on top of the ten wineries, there would also be activities for the kids.  It was pretty close to our old stomping grounds back then, so we decided to give it a try with some old friends.  This just sounded too good to pass up.  Fun for us and for the kids.  This was a sure-fire win-win.

That morning, however, it became pretty evident that the romanticized version I remember so vividly was going to be completely thrown out of the window.  The car was completely packed with booster seats, running stroller, diaper bag as well as toys, snacks, and changes of clothes for the kids.  In the end, there was just enough room for a couple homemade Lunchables for the kids, but apparently no room for the jovial adult foods of years past.  My wife and I would now be pairing merlots with animal crackers and string cheese. 

Upon arriving at the wine festival, we realized that it was lunch time and the kids were beginning to show signs of low blood sugar.  They were spiraling rapidly towards DEFCON3, so food had to be consumed…and soon.  We unpacked the stroller, bags, food, and toys from the car and migrated into the wine festival like vagabonds fleeing the Dust Bowl.  The only thing missing was the family of livestock tied to the back of my Sonata.

After setting up a blanket, I stood to take in the atmosphere.  Music as well as smells of wine and food filled the air.  It was a lot like I remembered.  Except for the part with my kids incessantly tugging at my shorts, wondering where the kid activities were.  After several trips around the grounds, we realized that there was only one ride for the kids.  One.  Stinkin’.  Ride.  A lawn-tractor pulling wheeled-barrels around in a circle.  Oh, and that face-painting tent.  There’s your plural for the kid activities.  Kudos to the flyer’s creator for their mastery of the English language.

The barrel ride was a hit for the first half hour.  But, as the afternoon wore on, the kids grew increasingly bored.  They wanted us to walk down to the river, play games, or read to them.  I can’t complain really.  Ten years from now, they’ll probably deny that we’re even related to them.  However, we were finding our opportunities to taste wine narrowing and opportunities to converse with old friends dwindling.  The nostalgic, carefree wine festival was becoming a parental juggling act.

The times that I was able to taste, I noted my surroundings.  At one point, I was standing next to two twenty-somethings reeking of expensive cologne and narcissism.  Their egos were vaguely familiar, but I’m well-aware that I misplaced such bravado eons ago.  Gelled hair, Polo sunglasses, and Armani dress shirt on one.  “Faux hawk”, Versace sunglasses, and matching designer shirt on the other.  A third walked up with similar garb.  Then there’s me.  Bald head, $15 Dockers “Danger Magnet” sunglasses from Kohl’s, $10 button-up dress shirt from Old Navy…and that stroller.  Eeny, meeny, miney, schmoe.

After five long minutes of their insufferable banter, I had an uncomfortable revelation.  Were my friends and I really this obnoxious at wine festivals, all those moons ago?  You’d have to replace their $200 Italian leather shoes with Timberlands and Vans, of course, but you see where I’m going.  We had a lot of fun back then and we were just as full of ourselves.  Not only did the parallel startle me, but I also suddenly wanted to hurt myself.  OK, I’ll admit it.  I really just wanted to hurt them.  The thought was surprisingly therapeutic to my self-loathing at that moment. 

Essentially, I chalked up the differences to a welcome change in my priorities.  I took solace knowing that over those ten years, I changed from thinking of myself first to thinking of the family first and myself last…without even thinking about it.  It just happened.  That was a lot of thinking.  At that point, I decided that I needed more wine to subdue any further maturity or enlightenment on my part. 

As I walked away, I humored myself by mumbling a famous Steinbeck quote.  “They's a time of change.”

Finally, it was time to go home.  Our kids were ecstatic.  I’ve never seen them leave anywhere as cooperatively as they did that afternoon.  As they cartwheeled towards the exit, I stopped, put my glass in the stroller’s drink holder, took in a deep breath, and looked around one last time. 

Nope.  I still wanted to hurt them.

Danger Magnet

Superdad, Representative of the League of Responsible Husbands, the Man’s Man, and all-around Encompasser of Smoothness.  A lot of fathers strive for the full package.  However, there would be no such luck for this guy.  Not that weekend anyway.  It’s those moments you look back on as a man and cringe.  OK, two moments.  For now though, I’m blaming the sunglasses and will have them tested accordingly.

It was a beautiful Saturday.  My wife had taken part in a four mile run that morning.  I had lone dictatorship of our children and offered to meet her for a picnic after her race.  Three kids, dressed, lunches packed…Mr. Together.  I had even gotten us to the park fifteen minutes early. 

As I got out of the car, I noticed a group of women talking nearby.  They waved politely as they witnessed Superdad get kids “A” and “B” out of the car and swiftly set up the running stroller.  All this mind you, while baby was still happily giggling in her car seat.

It was at that point that I noticed the flat tires on the stroller.  With fists on hips, I raised my face towards the noon sun and laughed heartily out loud.  Superman may have needed a phone booth, but not this guy.  After all, Superdad had remembered to bring the electric air pump.  Your flat tires were no match for my superior powers of preparedness!

What I hadn’t accounted for though, was the thundering racket that the pump made when turned on.  So obnoxious, in fact, that it terrified baby.  Laughter instantly turned to ear-piercing scream.  A scream that clearly echoed through the same crowded parking lot in which restless kids “A” and “B” were now running wildly amok. 

Then, my cell phone rang.

As I stood to grab the phone and scold my scampering brood, I proceeded to smash the nosepiece of my sunglasses into the handbrake on the stroller.  Pain, as well as many of the decorative words that I had learned in various locker rooms, swam uncontrollably downstream from throbbing nose to unfiltered mouth.  Squinting in agony, I immediately barked at my darling offspring like the crotchety old man telling the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn.  Missing were my shillelagh and weathered fedora.

As my eyesight returned, I immediately looked around for potential witnesses.  That same group of women had stopped talking and just stared.  Sunglasses skewed ninety degrees in the wrong direction, feral children galloping about, baby screaming…all with blood and tears trickling from my swollen beak.  Add to that the intolerable sound of that pump still churning away in the background, setting the appropriate “Symphony of Pandemonium” ambiance. 

Smoothness personified in just under ten seconds.

Cringe event number two took place twenty-four hours later.  We took the kids hiking for the day in the mountains.  About halfway up the ascent, I took note of the shear drop off from the sides of the trail.  Having my nine month old daughter strapped in a carrier, I decided that use of a walking stick was probably in our best interest.  At this point, I wasn’t particularly interested in being the world’s first father-infant daughter BASE jumping tandem.

At the top, we stopped for a break.  I propped my stick against a wall and bent down to unbuckle the baby carrier.  Really, a skilled marksman couldn’t have sighted it any better.  The stick slid off of the wall and right into the nosepiece of my sunglasses.  I’m pretty sure that I heard a twenty-strong chorus of groans to accompany the event.   Ego and nose still painfully bruised from the day before, I mumbled through the remainder of my offensive vocabulary before ripping the sunglasses from my bottom lip.  The only thing that kept me from heaving them deep into the wilderness below was the lecture that I would have received from my four year old standing nearby.  “You littered.  You’re going to jail!”

The sunglasses have now been sent to the Institute for the Modishly-Impaired.  I anticipate the test results will confirm my theory that the nosepiece is made from the exact same magnetic material as is found in my toes.  I’ve been known to smash toes in the same weekend, even the same day.  However, this was a first for the nose.  It had to be the sunglasses. 

So, where does this leave me and my shades?  Hipness enabler or danger magnet?  GQ advertisement or Plastic Surgery Weekly? 

For now, I’ve opted to keep the sunglasses.  They may be a reprehensible maiming hazard, but they’re still functional.  This, even after the skin and dried blood were washed from them.  Public humiliation may have dimmed those brief flickers of “smoothness”, but I’ll continue to strive for that full package status.  For now, no phone booths required. 

Although a part of me is beginning to wonder if these types of scenarios are what led Superman to totally disregard the trendy eyewear fad.