Speechless in Virginia

I have often said that my wife is the social butterfly of the family.  Always the energetic and charismatic force in the room, she’s overwhelmingly friendly and always gives those that she meets the benefit of the doubt.  After being in the room for five minutes with her, everyone knows exactly who she is and what she is about.

Myself, on the other hand…I’m the smart-mouthed introvert standing intently nearby.  The guy quietly observing the mannerisms and dialogue of those around him, so that he can figure out their agenda or self-serving angle.   Quick with the sarcasm, no one gets a free pass from me until they are a proven commodity in my world. 

The irresistible socialite and the irreverent skeptic.  We make a great team.

Unfortunately, sometimes those opposing talents in the social graces can present some unforeseen problems.  For me, talking more than I should used to result in some guy attempting a roundhouse at my face.  For my wife, however, it appears to be more a physical reaction than third party response.  It has resulted in a voice that has gotten steadily more hoarse and weaker by the day. 

After going several weeks with this deteriorating condition, she finally decided to see a doctor.  Diagnosis?  Vocal fold hemorrhage.  That’s basically “badly bruised” vocal cords for those of us that got laughed at by our guidance counselors for articulating medical school aspirations.  The treatment?  No talking for ten days.  No murmuring, no whispering, no nothing.  In short, complete silence. 

“No talking unless you’re getting paid to do it.”

Yikes.  Time to hide the wallet…

The doctor went on further by threatening that if her voice didn’t improve within that ten day timeframe, she was going to send her to a voice pathologist to learn how to talk differently. 

Time to consult our medical deductible as well…

Looking at the plus side of this warning, however, we explained the doctor’s threat in detail to our darling brood.  This, in an effort to help minimize the multiple direction-giving sessions that we are seemingly required to provide to them on an hourly basis.  Following that conversation though, a noticeable confusion appeared across my son’s face. 

“You mean she’s going to talk in a different accent?”

Never one to let such an easy opportunity go to waste, I immediately leapt into character with a terribly over-the-top English accent.  “Blimey…she’ll have to like this from here on out, matey!”

Thinking back, I’m not even entirely sure he realized that I was joking.  Better to tuck that little gem away for future use…

Along those same disconnected lines, I called my parents that evening to alert them of her diagnosis.  My mom asked if she was hoarse from yelling at the meet.  She was obviously referring to us cheering loudly for our children at their swim meets every Wednesday night.  Overhearing this one-way conversation in the background, however, my father instantly drew a fairly warped, far left-field mental picture instead.  Given my wife’s propensity for watching the Food Network and cooking deliciously exotic meals, he later confessed that he had literally pictured her screaming at food.  Yes…yelling at the meat. 

“Stupid bacon…cook faster!  And you’re next, idiot rump roast!”

Shall we just top this macabre vision off with a bloody butcher’s apron and an industrial-sized tenderizing hammer?  Seems fitting.

Yes, while some may be able to trace their family’s ancestry back hundreds of years, I can actually trace my family’s lunacy gene down from one generation to the next.  It’s a lot like the ABC celebrity reality show “Who Do You Think You Are”…just sprinkled with a healthy dose of the SyFy Network’s “Insane or Inspired” for good measure.

Unfortunately though, even with all of the awful Monty Python imitations and grisly PETA night-terrors tucked gently away, it was time to put the doctor’s orders into action.  Ten days without talking.  Ten days for this extremely dedicated, outgoing wife and mother of three?

“You’ve gotta ask yourself one question.  ‘Do I feel lucky?’  Well, do you ya punk?”

Making every attempt to meet doctor’s orders, and with all of the best intentions, what has ensued since could best be described as “charades for the clinically insane”.  Hand signals and body language very much open to interpretation, of which I immediately pounce on and exploit to the sickest extent of my twisted capacities.

One evening, my better half told me to go down to the basement with a shovel and search for Jimmy Hoffa.  “Whoa there…take it easy, Mrs. Corleone.”  Using a variety of exceedingly more colorful hand gestures thereafter though, I was made to understand that she was kindly asking me to get the ice cream out of the freezer downstairs and scoop some out for the kids.

Yet another day, she asked me to make some sandwiches for the kids.  In retrospect, she was actually very creative in miming exactly how to make a sandwich.  Right down to splitting up the bread and spreading the mayo.  For a brief moment there, I actually waited for an encore performance where she would be trapped inside an invisible box.  However, my interpretation ultimately led me to openly quote the 1990s Bell Biv DeVoe song “Poison”.  “Smack it up, flip it, rub it down?  Oh no?“

While I will admit that some of my analyses may wander astray on occasion, I was of the firm belief that we were making some real, measureable progress!

Over the course of time though, our little game of charades had digressed into a puzzling flurry of rudimentary gang signs.  Recently, she asked me several times to get the pretzels out of the pantry by using some new hand gestures that were unfamiliar to me.  Confused, the only reply that came to mind was to reciprocate using my own contorted assembly of hand signals while shouting “Vatos Locos forever!  Blood in, blood out, ese!”

Upon witnessing this bizarre exchange, our two daughters had now officially joined our son in the family’s resident state of confusion.

Let’s be realistic.  Try as she may, it’s virtually impossible to raise three kids and one man-child without using your voice.   Making matters worse is the fact that our kids have been essentially trained from birth to ask mom for anything first-and-foremost.  This due to the fact that mom is practically with them 24 hours a day and the fact that dad typically defers to what mom would “probably” say anyhow.  In essence, I’m really just the used car salesman of the family.  Why would they bother with the middle man when they can just go straight to the source?

I will admit that, being the observational introvert, the role reversal has not been an easy transition for our household.  Recent efforts to quell disputes have led me to resort to widely exaggerated threats of Armageddon, in stances where I would normally remain quiet and let my wife’s matriarchal voice of sanity prevail.  Be it for my own personal amusement or just due to outright confusion, a lot also gets lost in translation.  Follow-up discussions of specific connotation and basic civility with our children have become the norm these days.

To give myself some credit though, I have begun to post some real gains in my long-term memory retention regarding certain hand gestures.  “I’m going to choke the life out of you” is fairly well engrained.  The “knock it off” throat-slash is yet another dandy.  For all intents-and-purposes though, the “you’re not funny” gesture is one that is already pretty widely known.

The Sound of Old

They are moments that are few and far between.  Those rare occasions where I can actually listen to my music in the car with my family.  To be honest, my taste in music isn’t exactly categorized as, shall we say, family-friendly in nature.  However, my son has started to develop a taste for some of the cleaner versions of his dad’s rock music, much to his father’s delight.  He says that he loves the sound of the crunching guitars and pounding drums.  The apprenticed apple apparently doesn’t fall very far from the tree…

Coming home from my son’s karate practice one evening, I started flipping through some stations on my satellite radio.  I came across a song that flooded me with an abundance of great memories.  An essential CD from my days back in college.  My son immediately took note of my reaction to it and sat forward.

“Dad, what song is this?”

“A great song.  It’s called ‘Plush’ by the group Stone Temple Pilots.  My band back in college used to play this song.  I loved playing it.”

“It sounds like old people music.  Can you put some good rock music on?”

I nearly lost control of the car…

“Old people music”?  When did such an influential song from my early twenties gimp along to that geriatric point?  When did a very relevant band from the 1990s suddenly become elevator music to an eight year old?  I must have missed the obituary and their iconic performance on the “Lawrence Welk Show”. 

Now granted, the song was released roughly twenty years ago, but I can still vividly remember rehearsing that song in our dorm room…much to the dismay of our Resident Advisor.  I can also still mentally picture the music video on MTV in my head.

My shoulders slumped as clarity began to rapidly fill the car.  CDs?  Actual music videos on MTV?  In the name of Stevie Ray Vaughn, it is old people music!

Thinking back to high school, I remember listening to certain songs on the radio that were classified as classic rock, merely because they were played on the local classic rock station.  Groups like Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Aerosmith, Queen.  Music that was considered classic rock by the mid-1980s, even though they weren’t more than 10 or 15 years from their original release date.  There was no debating that the sound was a little more antiquated, but I always attributed this more to the technological advances in instrument amplification and digital recording, rather than the songs just being flat-out “old”. 

So where does this leave me with the expiration date of relevance as related to the cherished music of my youth?  The question bothered me throughout the evening, even as I continued to privately sneer spitefully in my son’s direction.  Just when exactly does a rock song get reclassified as classic rock? 

In order to attain any semblance of sleep that night, I did what any respectable academic scholar would have done in a similar moment of encyclopedic crisis.  I searched for the answer online.

Most results pointed to around the 20 year benchmark from original release for any relevant song or album to attain that “classic” status.  If you were to use the definition of a classic car as an example, most insurance companies reference anything 15 years or older.  Most classic car clubs use the 20 year benchmark as well.  The more I read, the more it became painfully evident.  Much like the classic rock being played on the radio to a teenaged version of myself some 20+ years earlier, the era of my college music was now officially shelved under “J”…for Jurassic.

Perhaps, if I had paid more attention to my surroundings, I would have seen this milestone coming a lot earlier.  Probably the most obvious indicator would have been from a TV commercial that has been getting a lot of airplay recently.  A commercial for a family-sized vehicle in which the 40ish parents and a carload of school-age kids are driving downing the road and singing Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train”.  The epic anthem of heavy metal’s original madman, a man once censored by Tipper Gore’s Parental Music Resource Center (PMRC), now the subject of a family car commercial.  How did I not trip over that enormous headstone while wandering through my playlists on iTunes?

Unfortunately, the “old people music” insanity doesn’t just stop at the newly-labeled classic rock that is near-and-dear to the ole PaceMaker.  It seems to be popping up in different areas fairly regularly in my everyday life now as well.

While reading a Berenstain Bears book to my daughter recently, the story referenced the characters listening to a jukebox.  A puzzled look immediately flashed across her face.  Knowing exactly what the next question would be, I tried to put it into a 21^st century perspective for her.

“It plays songs.  It’s like a giant iPod.”

I’m not sure which hurt worse.  The fact that I had compared an archaic, 800-pound piece of acoustic furniture from my youth to an electronic device the size of a binder clip…or the fact that I distinctly remember going to Pizza Hut as a kid and dropping four or five dollars worth of quarters into one so that I could hear my favorite songs played on vinyl 45s.

Vinyl 45s.  Yes, I believe that this is where the old phrase “beating a dead horse” comes into play.  You may now drag my petrified carcass to the glue factory.

Since the vast majority of my beloved music base has obviously ridden the path of the setting sun, I guess it also entitles me to make musical references that only my older colleagues would get.  For me personally, I love the puzzled looks that I receive from my son as I plug in my guitar and explain to him that I’m going to crank my amplifier up to “eleven” in an English accent.  Simply because it’s “one louder than ten”.

It’s the punch-line that keeps giving.  Thank you, Nigel…

I do find myself sometimes holding on to that occasional waning ray of melodic hope though.  Those times where I get to witness my daughter bouncing from room-to-room while humming the tune to the seemingly timeless and multi-generationally acceptable song “Low Rider” by War.  With pride, I get to happily bounce right along beside her and sing “take a little trip, take a little trip, take a little trip with me”.

Unfortunately, it appears as though that “little trip” will now include driving a twenty-foot Cadillac to dinner at 3 o’clock in the afternoon to grab the “Early Bird Special”...all while playing early 90s grunge rock on the cassette deck.

California Dreamin'

Being a born and raised an EastCoaster, there are some things that just become geographically instinctual over the course of time.  Things that you just stop thinking about because you’re always used to seeing them a certain way.  It’s only after you find yourself on the west coast that these instincts get tossed curbside and you wind up having to completely reset your bearings.  Literally…

My family is from New York.  Generations-upon-generations of native New Yorkers.  Even though a good portion of the family has since moved from the Empire state, they all stayed on the east coast.  Like most New York transplants, inevitably winding up in south Florida.  As for myself, I was raised in Virginia.  When my family travelled in my youth, it was always to see family.  Mainly New York, Florida years later.  This travel was always exclusive to the east coast though.  It’s all I’ve ever known.

I have been to the west coast a couple of times in my life, but only recently on business.  No matter how many times that I head out there though, it’s still the slightest differences that continue push me a little off-kilter as soon as I step off of the plane.

For example, as an EastCoaster, if the ocean is on your right side, it essentially means that you’re travelling north.  Travelling from Virginia to Long Island fairly regularly as a kid, that’s what I have been mentally programmed to decipher as common geographical fact.  On the west coast, however, the ocean on your right means that you are travelling south.  It only took this MENSA candidate about 15 minutes and 5 miles in the wrong direction to figure out that notable detail. 

With the complete inability to effectively deprogram myself of this “fact” with any measureable success, my inner compass was completely hosed up for the better part of the week.  To alleviate any possibility of confusion for myself, I literally spent the majority of my wanderings with my map flipped upside-down.  Ocean on the right. 

There.  Now I can navigate.

It really was a pathetic overcompensation of my mental GPS.  For some reason though, a “recalculating, recalculating…you moron” banter kept replaying over and over again in the back of my head.  Better yet, nothing quite says “tourist” better than some idiot sitting at a stoplight in downtown Los Angeles reading his map upside-down.  I probably would have attracted less attention to myself if I had just held my keys and wallet out of the window in my open recruitment of potential carjackers.

With my inverted map and reverse-pole navigation in check, I headed down to the beach one evening to take in some local California culture and to stick my feet in the Pacific for the first time.  Yes, that “tourist” thing again...  As I walked down the main beach road, there was a well-dressed guy standing in the street holding out a sign towards oncoming traffic.  It simply stated “You’re Beautiful”.  Being that quintessential EastCoaster, I studied him for several minutes trying to figure out his angle.  Money?  Publicity stunt?  Political agenda?  Con?

Much to my skeptical surprise, it became clear to me that this guy really had no agenda.  He was simply trying to communicate “positive vibes” during the evening rush.  A foreign concept to an EastCoaster like me, who was notorious for unconsciously bulldozing people over in my attempts at catching the Metro train pulling into the station.

Even more foreign to me was the fact that people were smiling, high-fiving him as they drove past, and yelling back “no man, you’re beautiful”.   I was traumatized.  Why was no one throwing bricks at this guy for impeding traffic?  Why was no one trying to mow him down in their expensive, European sedans for standing in the middle of the road?  Why was no one screaming at him to get out of the way, while calling both he and his mother unspeakable names?

I‘m a stranger in a strange land.

For me, however, the pinnacle of these trips is always the cheap entertainment that I get out of people-watching at LAX prior to my departure.  A vast plethora of gratuitous sights and sounds to help get me through the early morning doldrums of business travel. 

The most recent involved a well-dressed, well-groomed mother and her two young children.  A boy and girl whose outfits likely cost more than the entire contents of my suitcase…as well as the two guys next to me.  They were like a walking advertisement for Louis Vuitton.  Moments later, an older boy walks up next to them wearing black skinny jeans and T-shirt, black flat-bill hat cocked sideways, massive ear gauges, and enough metal in his lips to make me openly question the competency of the TSA screeners that morning.  I recall thinking to myself that this woman looked entirely too young to have a son in his early twenties.  

After a brief kiss between the two, it suddenly dawned on me.  “Wait.  That’s DAD?” 

To quote the late Chris Farley…  ”Awesome”. 

It was like Rodeo Drive meets Blink-182.  I couldn’t just leave it simply at gawking though.  I found myself honestly wondering which of their two kids would finally snap, break out of mom’s Abercrombie & Fitch mold, and take over as lead singer of the next great southern California punk band.  With a smirk on my face and the iconic punk anthem “California Uber Alles” screaming in my head, my view was suddenly obstructed by an extremely elderly bleached blonde in a halter top shrieking into her Bluetooth.

That was my sign.  Time to go…immediately.

Time to get back to the familiar surroundings and those things near-and-dear to my EastCoaster heart.  Being able to read my maps with some directional sanity and enjoying that ever-warming symphony of threats and insults directed to those that impede traffic in any way whatsoever.  Really, nothing says “home” quite like a fellow EastCoaster threatening horrific carnage upon your entire family for taking too long in the crosswalk.  I salute you, fine citizen!

At least I wasn’t totally unprepared for my latest adventure out west.  Dictated by recent events, this wandering stranger now knows exactly what to do in the event of an earthquake.

Immediately call everyone you know to see if they felt it.

Disney Revisited

We pulled it off. 

Ten fast-paced days and nine significantly slower nights at “the happiest place on Earth”.  All without my personal need of illicit, black market sedatives or emergency crowd-phobia counseling interventions.  That may sound a lot like a teaser to an old Jerry Springer Show episode to you, but it spelled unmitigated success in my book.

We managed to fly down there and back, visit all of the parks, ride all of the rides, and weather the infinite, roving wall of human beings without a hitch.  This, while still retaining our sanity.  At least…what little sanity we had prior to leaving.  All kidding aside, we really had an amazing time.  Nothing but ear-to-ear grins from everyone. 

Even with all of this rampant glee and beaming, I found myself taking several mental notes related to the colossal, well-oiled machine that is the House of Mouse.  Some of which included items that I firmly believe are absolute essentials for any future anticipated Disney visits down the road:

1)      Pack a “gullet-horn”.  As one would imagine, a gullet-horn looks exactly like a shoehorn.  You’ll need one of these to help choke you down the amount of food that you will receive at your meals.  This is because you will feel financially compelled to eat every last morsel dropped in front of you…as well as in front of your spouse and each of your children. 

2)      Pack a “Yellow Cab” hat.   This is for your futile attempts at leaving the park during a parade and/or fireworks display.  You’ll be tasked to channel your inner, New York City taxi driver in an effort to successfully navigate a double stroller through the maddening sea of moving human traffic cones.  Coincidentally, much like cabs downtown, I don’t stop after running you down either.

3)      Pack an English-to-French translation reference tool.  Apparently, the entire province of Quebec shuts down during the month of March and relocates to Orlando.  Don’t get me wrong, they were an overwhelmingly nice group of people and I happen to be a huge fan of their beers.  It was just the whole language barrier thing.  I’m of the opinion that if one stands and picks up a folded, double stroller over his head on a crowded bus, it should clearly communicate the international sign for “me and the protruding veins popping out of my neck are attempting to exit this tin can right now and haul this 75-pound, concussion-inducing railcar with me.”  Then again, it could also be the Austrian international sign for “I am Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Please stop and stare.”  Next time, maybe I’ll just point out the window and yell “get to the choppa”.

In addition to these travel essentials, I was also befuddled by a few surprising revelations.  Revelations discovered only after living and breathing the full Disney experience.

Now, I’m not one usually surprised by much.  Surprises don’t usually happen to people who literally expect the most idiotic things to occur at any random instant.  However, these observations led me to some real moments of enlightenment.  Amusing in retrospect, completely astonishing in real time.  These were in the areas of “towing” and “herding”.

Let’s start with “towing”.  Now, I have been guilty of several traffic-related offenses in my lifetime.  Particularly in the realm of illegal parking.  Having grown up in and around the Washington DC area, it basically a rite of passage.  I have been the recipient of parking tickets, even been towed on occasion.  There was also that instance where I was the direct beneficiary of the dreaded iron “Collar of Shame” tire lock from Old Town Alexandria’s finest.  You just have to be aware that if you take advantage of certain liberties, you should also expect to entertain the associated consequences.  When it comes down to it though, sometimes that $60 parking ticket is a whole lot easier to digest than having to walk 10 blocks in the pouring rain.  It’s just the nature of the beast.

Although psychologically immune to the parking repercussions associated with major metropolitan areas, I was not expecting to usher in this mentality at the wonderful world of Disney.  That is, coming to grips with the common practice now affectionately known to my family as “stroller towing”.

Yes, you read that correctly…

Unbeknownst to me, amid the outskirts of the densely clogged pedestrian arteries of the Magic Kingdom, there are actually marked and designated stroller parking areas.  I did notice a few hundred strollers tightly circled together like a convoy of well-defended Conestogas, but I never gave it much thought.  It was only after ditching our stroller next to several others near an alleyway that it became painfully obvious.  We returned from a seemingly timeless attraction to find that our stroller had vanished. 

“It really is a small world ‘cause we just got jacked!”

Our stroller, which was filled with nothing but smile-sustaining, kid-survival rations such as Flavor-Blasted Goldfish and cotton candy, must have been swiped by some kind of highly organized criminal syndicate.

“What kind of sacrilegious, blood-sucking dregs would swipe a kid’s stroller at Disney,” I openly questioned aloud, with little regard to the stares from my immediate audience of roughly five hundred.

In truth, our stroller was moved to one of the designated stroller parking areas by a Disney employee.  Moved to ensure that those same clogged arteries were moving in their customary, controlled-chaos manner.  An employee with a job description much like a grizzled cast member of the show “Operation Repo”…only wearing pastels, mouse ears, and a smile.  Humbled, it was an embarrassing education in Disney etiquette.

The “herding” rationalization was one of those true “light bulb” moments for me.  It suddenly dawned on me while I was standing in line for a particular ride.  A teenaged Line Czar, wearing a cowboy hat and boots, was barking out orders at me like a Special Forces drill instructor. 

“There is no line.  Just push all the way in.  You’ll get on that ride.  Go to your left sir, your left, YOUR LEFT SIR!”

Suddenly, there was a light.  The herding, the yelling, the cowboy attire.  Were we getting on the “Toy Story” ride or being corralled to pasture?  In my mind, the only things missing were the theme song from “Bonanza” and the USDA stamp across my posterior. 

My son suddenly piped up and asked why the workers kept yelling at us to move.  My reply received his trademark smirk and furrowed brow of confusion.  The typical, and only suitable response to one of his pop’s highly veiled, and wildly psychotic, volleys of sarcasm.

“Because we’re cattle, son...  Moo.”

Packing essentials and revelations aside, the trip was an overwhelming success.  We had more fun than we could keep track of.  The atmosphere was stimulating, the food was outstanding, and everyone got to do exactly what they wanted to do.  Ten solid days of galloping wildly through the parks, riding rides until nauseous, and devouring every ounce of food within reach.  And that’s just what was on my agenda. 

The smiles and childhood memories made from this trip will last us a lifetime.  We hope to build further memories with a return visit in another four years or so.  To be honest though, this trip was all about establishing and passing these memories and experiences along to our children, just as our parents had roughly thirty years earlier.  In that regard, mission accomplished.

I do have one additional parting comment.  To the guy that I nearly knocked unconscious as I turned to get on the bus with my backpack filled with granola snacks and fifty pounds of water, I tip my hat and apologize again.  I’m not entirely sure how to say “get along little dogie” in French, but I believe that “moo” needs no official translation.

Reality Never Sleeps In

The sound of the Pack-N-Play rustles to life at 6 am.  A nappy head with sleepy eyes pops up, followed by the cheerful sound from our two-year old moments later.

“Hi Mommy.  Hi Daddy!”

Such a sweet sound to us first thing in the morning.  Her genuine excitement and joyfulness fills the room.  It might have sounded a bit more joyful to us, had we gone to bed earlier than 2 am the night before.

The writing was on the wall.  It was going to be one of those high-octane coffee kinds of mornings.  The kind that you drink with a fork and a knife.  More accurately, it was time to pay up.

We had headed back to my old stomping grounds the night before for an evening out.  Just the wife and I.  There was a benefit planned back in my hometown for a high school friend of mine.  It was something that I had been looking forward to for several weeks.  Not only were we were going to see some of our old friends, but my wife was actually going to meet several people that I had literally grown up with.  Some of which, going all the way back to kindergarten. 

We had tried several times to do things like this in the past.  A night out for the two of us.  These attempts were often stymied by cataclysmic parent-related roadblocks.  Sequences that usually started with us lining up one set of grandparents to watch our beloved offspring for the evening, followed by us packing the car for the eventual overnight road trip to their house.  It may seem like a lot of time and effort for just a couple hours…but if the end result was a much-needed night out for my better half and I, the prep work involved doesn’t matter a whole lot. 

Unfortunately, what typically transpires after this process is nothing short of epidemic plague and pestilence.  Calamities of biblical proportions.  I smite thee!  Ka-blooey.

One instance had us driving to my in-laws for the day.  The goal was to drop off the kids that afternoon and go out to dinner with some of our friends.  About 45 minutes into the trip north, projectile vomiting ensued from the back seat.  After coming to a screeching halt in front of a local police station and an animated, private conversation with my maker, a field-improvised sanitization plan was devised. 

It’s really too bad that we didn’t happen upon a fire station instead.  I probably would have been better off using one of their hoses for that particular decontamination activity.  That, and maybe some of that sawdust stuff that they used for comparable biological disasters on school buses back-in-the-day.  I have to be honest.  Much like the effects that Ginger Ale has on my psychological feelings of queasiness, the smell of that sawdust will forever be engrained in the darkest recesses of my nausea psyche.

The U-turn trip home that afternoon was brutal.  Although I adamantly denied it at the time, I really did intentionally aim for that skunk running across the road.  Anything to provide a scented variety to my nose.

On yet another occasion, we drove north for a friend’s annual summer cookout.  Old friends, good times, and extremely loud guitars.  Same scenario.  This time, we actually made it to my in-laws.  Five minutes after walking in the door, our daughter throws up all over their dining room floor.  After executing yet another Federal Superfund initiative, I immediately repacked the car and we headed home.  Evening thwarted once again.  Although the drive home that time was odor-free, I couldn’t say the same for the quarantined vicinities of my in-law’s house.

You get the idea.  These outings with my wife are few and far between.  They are also apparently subject to clearances and/or waivers by the EPA and the CDC.  On those off-chances where the Gods of Bedlam do overlook the inevitable smiting of our plans and we actually make it out for an evening alone, we are prone to take full advantage of it.  Unfortunately, taking advantage of these instances also tends to give us that “first week college freshman” mindset. 

“Freedom!”  Kilt and blue war paint optional.

It’s a scenario ripe for exploitation and abuse.  Circumstances that often lead to humanly-toxic doses of Pepto-Bismol and caffeine the next morning.

The benefit that Saturday night turned out to be a great success.  All kinds of people turned out from my days in high school.  It was great seeing some of those people that I had literally grown up with too.  Amazing that after all of these years, that handful of us really hadn’t changed that much.  Good, bad, or still pending sentencing.

After the benefit had wrapped up for the evening, the wife and I decided to take advantage of the remainder of our evening by having a nice dinner and a couple of drinks.  Upon sitting down for our meal, it was discovered that several of our friends were also visiting the same establishment.  Our table was consequently abandoned and a respectable corner of the bar was taken hostage for the evening.

I monitored the time pretty frequently over the next couple of hours.  10:00, 11:00, midnight.  We were so busy catching up on good times, that the time didn’t seem relevant.  It had never had previously…at least, before kids.  I kept telling myself that it wasn’t getting “late” because “late” used to equate to “sunrise” a decade or so ago.  I was convinced and determined that my 40 year old carcass could still hang.  At least for another ten or fifteen minutes.  Maybe.

Deep down though, I knew we’d be required to pay up come sunrise.  And that this reality was going to hurt.

Now close to 1 am, my wife suddenly realizes what time it is.  Pumpkin status…officially outed.  The fact remained that we still had to drive 45 minutes back to my in-laws house and get up with the kids at o’dark:30 tomorrow morning.

Correction.  THIS morning.  Duly noted.  It was time to go. 

Although I had the temporary, misguided delusion of being a college freshman for a couple of hours, the reality is that we successfully made it out for the evening and had fun.  We got to spend time together, see old friends, and have grown-up conversations.  Conversations that didn’t end with the catch-all quip “because I said so”.  Of course, while temporarily entrenched in these adolescent delusions, one often doesn’t take into consideration the reality of following day’s responsibilities.

Because reality doesn’t sleep in.

Buckle Up

There is no such thing as a “quick trip” to the store anymore.  Those days of yore when your mom would literally throw you in the backseat of the car and be at the local grocery store in three minutes are long gone.

Today’s time-intensive replacement routine has become nothing short of pre-calculated child appendage weaving and high-impact parental calisthenics.  The aerobic saga of strapping your darling brood into their car seats, that is.  It’s an endless myriad of military-grade carbon-fiber buckles, snaps, straps, latches, pads, mounting brackets, bubble-wrap, and eight-point racing harnesses.  It’s the equivalent of prepping a NASCAR driver for a couple hundred laps…just without the assistance of a pit crew or a toddler-sized shoe-horn. 

Couple that routine with the actual effort that it takes to actually strap one of those things into your car.  And if you’re lucky enough to have one of those older cars without that “latch system” installed?  Best of luck to you.  You’re basically left to fend for yourself, using thousand year-old origami techniques on those shoulder harnesses. 

You must also ensure that you use the proper leverage during the installation phase.  Otherwise, be dazzled upon initial speed bump impact, as you witness junior’s car seat begin to spin counter-clockwise like the knife-throwing “Wheel of Death” act from the circus sideshow tent.  Not that I’ve personally witnessed anything like that before…

My installation technique usually involves jamming my less-than-narrow 210 pound frame into my child’s car seat in order to achieve that maximum, required leverage.  Once I’m thoroughly wedged in and the car seat is properly weighted down, I tighten the straps to attain the appropriate placement tension.

Although masterfully resourceful and highly effective, it also leaves the neighbors curious as to why a grown man would sit in a toddler seat and violently rock back and forth…all while cursing like a North Atlantic sailor.  While debatable, I have found that a frequent smile and wave provides them with the needed assurance that all is right at the asylum and communicates that the local constables aren’t required at this juncture.  Not that they’ve personally witnessed anything like that before…

I really do understand the safety benefits behind all of it.  The way my family staggers, teeters, and pavement-bounces their way through life, safety-first is essentially requisite for simple survival.  After a humorous New Year’s Eve discussion on the matter though, it begs the question.  Where were these safety measures when we were kids and how did we survive without them? 

Think back.  Yesteryear’s car seats were basically mom or dad reaching into the backseat to hold you in place while swerving and braking.  Occasionally this technique would go awry and you would wind up on the floor under the passenger seat.  However, you’d always manage to score that handful of loose change that had fallen under there for future candy machine use.  Concussion winning! 

Much like car seats, bike helmet safety has evolved as well.  Modern helmets are now fully-equipped with the latest blast-proof foam, adequate ventilation, and engineered to withstand a head-on collision with a 747.

Head protection in my era was basically your eleventh-hour attempts at strategic flailing.  Aerial efforts skillfully executed to target your delicate melon towards the hydrangea in the neighbor’s front yard.  The end result of a failed bunny-hop of the curb at 15 mph, followed by the subsequent, twisting catapult over the handlebars.  A hydrangea, by the way, that never quite grew back…much to my neighbor’s chagrin. 

Even if you were smart enough to wear a helmet in those days, it was probably one of those flimsy toy helmets that you entrusted with your cranial well-being.  It probably had more to do with looking like “Speed Racer” than actual safety in most cases, but the general idea was there. 

Unfortunately, my mouse pad has greater impact-resistance than any of those helmets ever did.  Thinking back, I never recalled seeing that ASTM certification sticker next to the “Made in China” stamp either.  In hindsight, the lead byproducts in those things probably did even less for my cerebral development than my epic hydrangea dismount ever did.  That explains a lot, actually.

Outside of car seats and bike helmets, US Government child safety directives of my youth could probably be best summed up by the cars of the late 1970s.  Those spectacular, twenty-ton battleships labeled by “The Big Three” as the “family station wagon”.   Part 350-horsepower battering ram; part cross-country touring hearse.    

Especially endearing to these automobiles was the built-in babysitter.  The rear-facing “way-back” seat.  Not only could you completely ignore what your kids were getting into, but it was seemingly designed to eliminate all instances of kid-related static through a combination of distance and rear-facing projection acoustics.  Well-played, Detroit!  A prime example of demographic marketing at its best. 

Ironically, this was apparently where my wife “quietly” spent most of her childhood.  Maybe that’s the reason why she gets that look of complacency when the kids are screaming “huh, what” from the back seat.

I have to be honest.  After all of those exploding Ford Pinto allegations of the time, you really have to wonder how the idea of a “way-back seat” over the gas tank ever really gained traction and came to fruition.

So where does this all leave me in my quest to shave seven minutes from my trips with a carload of children?  Cutting corners by off-roading through people’s front yards at high speeds?  Jumping over neighborhood retaining ponds like those “Dukes of Hazzard” did?  Although an enticing personal challenge, I’m not 100% on the amount of “air” that I could get out of that minivan.  Not yet, anyway.

Maybe the reappearance of the automatic seatbelt would help trim some time.  Belts that automatically strap your youngsters in for you.  Remember those wonderful safety devices of late 1980s fame?  Your head out of the window, talking to a member of the opposite sex after school.  Looking cool.  Then, upon turning your car off, the seatbelt suddenly rolls forward across your neck and pushes your face into the steering wheel.  Coolness personified.  Not that I’ve been personally scarred by anything like that before… 

On second thought, I’ll take my chances jumping the retaining pond.

Monster Dive

"I've been training it, but we're not sure if we're going to use it.  We'll keep training it for another week and maybe make a decision.  It's a 3.8 in difficulty." - Former USA diver Laura Wilkinson on the “monster dive” she was practicing as part of her program in the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

The difficulty referenced, short for “Degree of Difficulty”, is often referred to as the "DD" in competitive diving.  The DD takes into consideration the number of twists and somersaults planned in a dive, among other criteria.  It’s one of the elements used to calculate a diving score.  It is multiplied with the judges' scores to create a total score for an individual dive.  The scores are added together for a final total score, with the highest score being the winner.

Simple enough.

So how does scoring work for plain-old recreational diving?  Those events where the only judges are your peers?  And with any luck, an orthopedic surgeon or two in attendance as well.  Coupled with the scoring criteria rationalized in competitive diving, I’m of the firm belief that your health insurance deductible should also be taken into consideration as well.  My thinking is that a high insurance deductible should add a solid two-tenths of a point onto one’s difficulty.  An unwritten directive in the sport of non-competitive crib-diving.  This would have given our toddler a solid 4.0 DD for her monster dive and a sure Sunday night Olympic Gold.

Sunday night…  Why is it always a Sunday night?

There was a loud “thud” from the second floor.  It’s a sound similar to those that we have become accustomed to hearing with our older children and their ritualistic, galloping burst of pre-bedtime lunacy.  Problem was, they were already quietly reading in their beds.  To break our monotonous routine, the noise was followed up with a piercing, painful cry erupting from our toddler’s bedroom.  This was certainly an added twist.

After laying her down for the evening, she managed to scale up and out of her crib…only to triple-pike and one-and-a-half twist herself into the carpet below.  Based on the height of the crib and the numerous technical/aerial possibilities, I’m guessing that her DD was epic on this particular dive.

As procedurally requisite by household edict, panic promptly ensued thereafter.

Once we were finally able to determine that she hadn’t permanently maimed herself, we started assessing her overall condition.  She favored her left arm and could barely lift it.  Having dislocated my shoulder in an icy snow-skiing debacle back in college, it looked awfully familiar.  To ensure that nothing was separated or broken, we deemed it necessary to perform a series of basic medical tests to gauge her overall diagnosis of damage.  The fact that neither my wife nor I are trained medical professionals just took the episode’s ridiculousness to an all new level of idiocy.

I promptly administered a mixed bag of assessments that included such battlefield-proven and AMA-certified tests such as “give daddy hugs”, “raise the roof”, and “grab the toy that I’m holding over your head”.  Luckily, it was determined that a trip to the ER was required before I was able to make her do “The Dougie”.

In the end, it turned out that it wasn’t her shoulder at all.  It was a buckle fracture of the wrist.  It was this obvious ineptitude in the medical diagnoses department which explained my high school guidance counselor’s propensity for giggle fits at the mere mention of my medical school aspirations.  To my defense, I did narrow the injury down to the correct appendage.  However, the overall success rates in defending the “round-about” diagnosis technique probably wouldn’t play out particularly well in a malpractice suit.

To ensure that her fracture healed correctly, the orthopedic surgeon stated that she was required to wear a hard cast over her wrist and forearm.  A little pink cast that would be required to stay on her arm for three weeks.

“Three weeks?  That’s it?  Three weeks is nothing!” 

It lasted roughly 24 hours.  After the swelling had gone down, she wasted no time in yanking it off with relative ease.  She casually strolled into the kitchen and handed us her cast.  Unfazed and completely unassuming, she followed it up with a firmly verbal “off” before leaving the kitchen.  I interpreted this in adult-speak as “silly minions, your petty restraints are no match for my iron-will and unrelenting determination”. 

Game on. 

I’ll see your “will and determination” and raise you “two unremitting parents”.  A trip back to the orthopedic doctor the following day warranted her a smaller, yet tighter cast.

Her second cast lasted considerably longer in comparison.  About five days to be precise.  You can’t fault her for a lack of trying though.  Tugging, pulling, even throwing herself into a tub of water in an ill-conceived attempt to bob for apples at a friend’s Halloween party.  Personally, I think that successfully snagging said apple while achieving little-to-no splash upon entry should provide for at least another two-tenths cushion in the DD department.  We’ve got to be up to a stellar 4.2 at this point.

In the end though, she managed to yank this one off too.  Yet another trip to the orthopedic office.

In a move that could be characterized as nothing short of desperation, the third cast was applied over her forearm and bent elbow.  Matching wills, we were just as determined to keep this one on as she was to get it off.

Good luck with that one, Houdini.

The third cast represented our “Alamo”.  A final stand that would limit her ability to do the everyday things, but also ensure that she had no way of getting it off.  A week later, however, we found it sitting next to her in her crib.

“Off.” 

Duly noted.

With only a couple days left on her three week immobilization period, we waved the white flag and conceded defeat to a determined two year old.  We were beaten.  Outwitted.  It had become apparent to us that her head was obviously harder than any of these casts were.  Besides, I think we were officially “black-balled” by that particular orthopedic practice after the second cast anyway.

Three casts in two and a half weeks.  Houdini, Copperfield, and Angel?  Those jokers were mere illusionists...  This kid was a magician. 

Even as I struggle to figure out the contorted physics behind her multiple escape acts, there is something to be said for her unconditional resolve.  As with everything else that she does, she doesn’t rely on others.  If there is something that she wants or doesn’t like, she simply grabs the bull by the horns…and cannonballs it.  There simply isn’t a DD measurement for that kind of monster dive.

Her teens ought to be a riot.