My daughter finished up her first season of middle school tennis last week. She’s played sports before, but never on a team like this. And even though she will probably let all the air out of my tires for saying it … I’m so squeakin’ proud of her! It was awesome as a parent to go watch and cheer her on. But, I’m also learning there are a whole lot of ins and outs to being the parent of a kid playing a sport. So this week I’ve written the Code of Athlete Parenting: • Thou shalt not blurt out “Doh!” loud enough for your child to hear if he or she misses a shot, or sends a ball into lower Earth orbit. The next shot might be aimed at your head. • Thou shalt not blurt out loud enough for everyone to hear, “Yeah! That’s right! Eat it, punk!” when your child brilliantly tucks a ball in an un-returnable corner. And if you do happen to do this and people turn around to glare at you, just blame “medication” and start drooling. That will buy you at least a pass or two.
A child’s epic, audacious Disney World plan
There is just no way to describe the pride and joy that I felt as I watched the Powerpoint presentation. Of course, I have always loved my daughter. But now here was a moment I felt we had transcended space and time, melding minds on some ethereal plane. My wife and I had been summoned to a presentation in the study. It was led off by a promotional video for Disney World, and then the Powerpoint came up. I once tried to chew my leg off to get out of a Powerpoint, but now I was riveted to the screen. It ran through our planned itinerary — no, a master strategy! — for not just arriving at the Magic Kingdom when the park opened, but actually making it there half an hour early to ensure we beat the usual 90-minute wait for the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. How audacious! Tears flowed down my face as the slides detailed specific times to wake up, how to eat breakfast while running at full sprint and where to drive cross country through a swamp in order to shave 3 minutes off the Google maps route.
The socially-conscious summer airline ticket
On my desk at home are the strewn makings of a summer vacation — scraps of paper and Post-It Notes. Legal pads and torn slips marked with lots of stars indicating I’ve hit gold. Pay dirt. A bullseye. The traveler’s Holy Grail. Maybe it’s the perfect flight with the perfect departure time, or a not-so-long duration, or a price that won’t make me question whether I really need my second kidney. I love these starred scraps of paper. They sing to me when it’s vacation planning time. They sit on the top of the stack and as I walk by, I marvel at them and say things like, “Did it again, Boss. You rock!” Until … BOOM! Scandal rocks my perfect slip of paper: A dog has perished on an airplane flight. My family is enraged. They have blacklisted the airline. The very same airline on my precious scrap of paper. My plans go down with the dog. “NO!!!” I’m told. “No, no, no, no, NO. We are not flying that airline. They kill dogs!”
Now, for a few words of affirmation on a big anniversary
“We’ve had 20 years to plan our 20th wedding anniversary! TWENTY years!!! It’s a week away! We have NOTHING!!!” It was one of those moments when you try to sneak out of the room. My wife seemed just as upset with herself as with me, and since she clearly had this under control … I … would … just … quietly … tip-toe … out … of … the … “Where are you going?!?” So close. “You’re complicit in this, too, buddy. We’re complete anniversary failures.” “Yeah, I know. I’M SO MAD AT MYSELF! What were we thinking? Oh, well … I guess we’ll just make it up on our 30th. Want to take one of those airplanes that lands on water?” She looked like she might kill me.
Discovering (already-known) family history in my DNA
The results are in and big surprise … I’M HUMAN! Just as I suspected. Some suggested I was part water bug, or had traces of wild dingo. But the DNA doesn’t lie. Turns out I’m still just a boring, slightly-graying man whose family history is exactly what we thought it was: unspectacular. WOOHOO! Thank you saliva-scraping family origin DNA kit. You have determined the obvious. But my mother was beside herself at the results. Always prone to audacious, grandiose statements, she declared over the phone: “This is incredible. Our family is the history of the world!” Well, that was a bit of a stretch. If anything, all it had told us was we were true American mutts, which we already knew. It wasn’t like we were a lost people searching for our family roots. My grandmother on my mother’s side was born in Cuba, and her family had moved there from Spain. Documented fact. My grandfather was born in Tampa, but his family had immigrated from Sicily. Documented fact. My father had been born in a steamer trunk, in Louisville, Ky. He had researched his family, and they were of European and British descent. Documented and fact.
Coping with embarrassing dad syndrome
“Whatever you do, DON’T GET OUT OF THE CAR!” she said … through clinched teeth. Lives seemed to depend on it. I felt the weight of the words, and thought carefully about what I should say next. I’m a mature, thoughtful, relatively intelligent parent who thinks deeply about things. “Say WHAT?!?” I exclaimed. “This is America! You can’t tell me what to do. I have rights, you know? I’ll get out of the car and roll around on the hood like a bad 1980s music video if I want! Don’t think I won’t, either.” Yep, pretty much nailed it. Mature, thoughtful dad – 1. Kid – O This was all over tennis practice pickup. I was being dispatched to collect my middle school daughter from the courts. Seemed simple enough. I had to be there by a certain time … SHARP! I felt kind of like an Uber driver and a stock car racer rolled into one. I thought about buying driving gloves. I felt cool! Then I got my real orders: DON’T GET OUT OF THE CAR! Stay out of sight at all times. If you are seen by anyone — even a Chinese spy satellite flying over — that’s IT for you. You’ll never be allowed out of the house again. You won’t be able to walk me down the aisle one day. I will sell all your financial passwords on the Dark Web. It’ll get real, dad! You got that?
Family origins as a birthday present?
“Brian! You need to come over right now and get your birthday present! It says ‘time sensitive’ on it!” Oh no! Not like, “Oh no!” I’m not going to do it. More like, “Oh no! What could it be?” “Oh no! Why in the world is it ‘time sensitive’ that I have to get it right now?” or “Oh no! Is this going to kill me?” “Mom, my birthday isn’t for like 20 days. What is it?” I said into the phone. “I can’t tell you,” she answered. “You just have to come get it right now. What are you doing, anyway? Watching the ‘Puppy Bowl?’” It was Super Bowl Sunday. I think I WAS watching the Puppy Bowl. I didn’t have time for this. I told my daughter to get in the car. That I needed moral support … and a witness. Plus, someone to drive the car if I got injured. “I’m only 12,” she said. “I can’t drive!” “That’s of little consequence. Now, bring your bike helmet and the first aid kit we got for the hurricane.”
New Year’s resolutions worth resolving
I don’t know what to make of our new year’s resolutions. My wife had resolved to be less judgmental. Then she declared that if I were any kind of a good person, I would pledge to be less critical. “Less critical!” I erupted. “That is by far one of the silliest things I’ve ever heard you say.” And whammo! Just like that we had blown up two perfectly good resolutions … in the span of the first couple minutes of 2018. #quickestresolutionfails We’ll probably keep trying, though. We’re not the kind of people who take failure well. We don’t give up. That’s for stupid weak people who have … DANGIT! There I go again. OK, seriously, I’m really trying. There are other ones I want to work on in the new year, too. Like learning whether there is any correlation between the amount of cake I’ve been eating and the fact that I’ve slipped a notch on my belt. Or how when it comes to running consistently, I’ve not only fallen off the wagon, but the wagon turned around, ran me over twice and then gave me a slice of cake. At this rate, I’ll be down another belt notch by June!
Cold, Florida weather and the soothsaying acorns
Cold. So cold. Teeth chattering. Bones aching. Lips chapping. Dog not going outside unless I stand with the door open while screaming, “Be gone with you, wretched cur!!!” (My neighbors always pass by at the same, exact moment and report me to Animal Control.) It’s not my fault: It’s winter, and my dog would prefer I put out a stack of newspapers and let her do her business inside. It’s cold out there, and she has no interest in braving it. I don’t either. What is this chilly stuff? Is this not Florida, a state so immune to freezing weather that the snow shovel is listed as an endangered species? The other day I had to go do the unthinkable: root around in my closet in search of — GASP! — a sweater. I didn’t even know I had one. It was moth-eaten and covered in dust — a relic from 1996 when I bought it as a joke, or to use as a rag while changing my car’s oil. But after the cold snap this week, we Floridians could use a few sweaters. And some mittens and scarves and ear muffs … and about 17 batts of insulation to wrap around us with duct tape. It is cold, and we don’t know how to hack it! I watched bleary-eyed at the weather map as a mass of light snow moved across north Florida toward Jacksonville. Ouch! Not a sight you see every day.
The Christmas Gift Search for Meaning
It’s been almost a week, so it’s time to dig through those bags of Christmas presents stacked up in the bedroom and try to make some sense of the head-scratchers. You know, the unusual and perplexing ones you received. Call it “The Christmas Gift Search for Meaning.” That’s when you try to find the answer to why someone thought you needed such a thing. Try it. It’s rather enlightening. Two portable car battery chargers – These both came from my aunt. She’s the queen of strange and mystifying Christmas gifts. Usually there’s a theme, and this year it was: “A hurricane is gonna’ kick you in your privates, so be prepared!!!” As such — and because here in St. Augustine, Fla., we’ve been through two hurricanes in a single calendar year — we got solar-powered radios, military-grade tactical flashlights AND multiple car battery chargers … just in case while fleeing a hurricane my car breaks down MULTIPLE TIMES. My aunt doesn’t understand that in this disposable age, when car batteries go dead, people just walk away and call an Uber. Even in hurricanes.