I don’t mean to sound over-dramatic, but I really feel lucky. I don’t mean to make light of the situation. It’s just that people have told me this in jest. Not because I made it through Hurricane Matthew, but because I made it through two nights in a stuffy hotel room with my mother. With her dog. Without electricity. With only a couple of cold chicken fingers and the few sandwiches I grabbed from work. And maybe most of all, because my wife didn’t kill me for staying with my mother, and not with her and my daughter. It certainly wasn’t the way I planned it. Looking back on it, I’m still not sure how it worked out that way. But I do remember a phone call one early morning, right before Matthew started huffing and puffing our way. It was my mother: “Brian! The hotel just called to say they’re canceling my reservation! They’re evacuating the city!” (My mother talks with a Southern accent, but she is Cuban. And Cubans talk in exclamation points!)
Memories of waterparks
I have four distinct memories of going to waterparks as a child: 1) Nearly being drowned by a crush of friends in the deep end of the wave pool; 2) burning to such a crisp that I looked like a strip of bacon (and smelled like it, too;) 3) drinking no water, aside from what I swallowed while being drowned in the wave pool; and 4) putting my towel down on a beach chair and never — ever! — finding it again. I grew up in Tampa, and many weekends were spent at Adventure Island. My mother would drop my brother, me and a couple friends off with a towel, a glob of sunscreen to share and some wadded up money we were supposed to use for lunch. (We inevitably blew it at the arcade.) In summer, we lived at waterparks. In Florida you are required to attend waterparks. It’s the official state bird. But my daughter, now 10, had never been to one. (When you live close to the Atlantic Ocean, who needs fake waves?) So when we traveled to Orlando this past weekend so my wife could attend a conference, the two of us visited Aquatica, a waterworld filled with slides, wave pools, lazy rivers and tourists wearing odd bathing suits that leave nothing to the imagination.
The no-good, lousy birthday gift-giver
The world’s worst gift-giver … is getting worse. Sad. Pathetic. A real louse. What’s wrong with me? “Did a package arrive today?” I asked my wife, nervously. Biting my nails. It was zero hour. Getting close. Her birthday? Near on the horizon. Just days away. “No,” my wife replied. “Are you expecting something?” “Me? … Um … no. Why do you ask?” Smooth lousy gift-giver. Any dolt could see through that, and my wife is no dolt. Not to mention I had specifically asked her to pick out her gift — to make sure I got the right one. Then I ordered it online. I waited two days for it to be delivered. Where is it?!? The gift? A Fitbit exercise watch. Counts steps, heart beats, rungs on your belt, even guilts you out of eating burritos drowned in sour cream. It was a gift, but also a replacement. I was responsible for … ahem … accidentally throwing away her old one. In an airport parking lot. Still not sure how I managed that one. Now I had turned an IOU into a birthday present. SURPRISE!
Don’t snicker at the toddler
I was trying to fight it. Desperately attempting to suppress it. Making my best effort not to show it. But it came through. I couldn’t help it as we wandered like a pack of baboons through the Kennedy Space Center. My dad. My wife and our 10-year-old. My brother and his wife. And their nearly 3-year-old son, Striker. I just couldn’t help giving the “toddler stare of disbelief.” We all do it. Some people are mean about it. Others curious. Then there are people like me who can’t seem to remember having kids at that age. We give off a look that seems to say, “Is that normal?” It’s toddler denial complex — the belief that your child was never, ever that small, that energetic and that … well … kooky. That he or she came straight into the world refined, sipping tea, asking how the stock market was doing, able to stand perfectly still for more than 5 seconds and always saying, “Dear Papa, how may I make your life more enjoyable?”
Maybe it’s time we ban dads from back-to-school shopping
Dads shouldn’t be allowed to shop for back-to-school supplies. It’s a common fact. An unwritten rule. A law that some enterprising politician ought to propose. Everyone knows it. Dads know it. Moms know it. Poor little kids know it. Yet, every year, millions of dads still do it, and catastrophe unfolds. I speak from personal experience. I don’t say this in some macho, chauvinistic way. Like it’s below us or that real men should be out chopping wood instead of grabbing loose leaf paper. No, it’s more that we’re an impatient, easily-frustrated walking embarrassment to our family. And we don’t know a No. 2 pencil from a … well … a No. 3? I went with my wife and daughter shopping for school supplies the weekend before she started fifth grade. It wasn’t my cup of tea. The way I see school shopping: You grab a bunch of stuff and throw it in a basket. You have maybe a 50-50 shot some of it is what you need, but more importantly, you’re on the way home!
A family river-rapid down memory lane
Panic set in as I walked up the aisle — straight to the front of the line. Where would I put my wallet? How would I protect my bag from the water? What would my hair look like after the deluge? Did I really want to walk around a theme park soaking wet, my pants drenched, people wondering why I would go out in public like that? “Look, honey! That man wet himself … all over!” It was the Congo River Rapids at Tampa’s Busch Gardens. I hadn’t been back to the park in over a decade. Now three generations of Thompson — my dad, my daughter, my wife and me — were boarding this wobbly raft. All the riders who just came off were drenched. DRENCHED! One woman was complaining she almost drowned. She wanted CPR from a snappy-looking employee. What am I an idiot, I thought? This isn’t what grown people do.
Those summer beach things that we Floridians know
Every Memorial Day Weekend two things happen: I remember those who served and sacrificed for our country. It’s the meaning of the holiday. But then I inevitably traipse off to the beach with family in tow and am reminded of what it means to be a Floridian as summer sets in. It’s the weekend when we Floridians emerge from our cocoons and rediscover a world filled with sun, sand, waves and incredible tans that make us look like coconut-scented gods. And it’s all thanks to the time-honored tricks of the trade we’ve learned from living in a tropical paradise. As I sat on the beach this past weekend, I pondered the rules we know as residents of this sun-drenched state. • Rule #1 – Ice cream always dies a tragic death at the beach. On average, it only takes 3 seconds to wilt a Rocket Pop. Which is why the only time to eat it is at 9:30 in the morning. That’s what the smart Floridians do. It’s the only way to protect your expensive investment. “Dad, can I have an ice cream?” my daughter asked. “It’s 10 a.m.!” I replied. “Why’d you wait so long? You shouldn’t have wasted time brushing your teeth this morning.”
The (kind of) complete mountain essentials guide
To buy a first aid kit, or not to buy a first aid kit? That is the question. The eternal question. I mean, what would it say about me? No longer will I be the kind of dad who when faced with a child sporting a bleeding wound tears off a sheet of paper and says, “Here! Hold this on it until the bleeding stops.” That’s fatherhood at its best right there. (Forget whether it’s hygienic.) But if I buy this travel first aid kit, I will suddenly be prepared and ready for all calamity in a smart, reasonable and remarkably mature way. Is that who I am? My family is heading to Colorado soon. The mountains! We plan to do a lot of hiking and outdoorsy stuff, which has me thinking about all the essentials to bring. The things I could potentially need. And the things I just want an excuse to buy: Like the knife that Indiana Jones had. Imagine explaining that one to airport security!
Back to ‘normalcy’ as a parent finishes chemo
It was the 6-month checkup. It felt normal, and routine. Like going to the dentist. I drove my mother to the doctor’s appointment in Jacksonville. It was raining, and she worried about the “squaw line” coming across the state as if it was a band of radioactive storms sent to wipe out mankind. “Do you know how to drive in a squaw line?” she said. It was funny, worrying about something else for a change. Could it have been 6 months already? Six months since this very same doctor told her that even though it looked like all the cancer cells had been removed during surgery, chemotherapy was needed to mop up possible stragglers. I can’t remember the last time I had the wind knocked out of me. But this did the trick. Six months on the wildest, bumpiest ride I’ve ever experienced. Country-road-with-bad-shocks bumpy. She started chemo in September. She fell in the driveway the next day and broke her hip. She fell again a week or so later and fractured a knee. Six months of metal rods and rehab. Social workers and anti-nausea medicines. ER visits, wheelchairs, bone marrow shots, white blood cell counts, handicap rails … It’s easy to lose perspective while you’re in the midst of it. You need a moment of reflection, when you’re free from it all, to put it in context. When you can look back and say, “Whooeeee!” only to realize “Whooeeee!” doesn’t do it justice. You need a word that a […]
The Christmas panic shopping guide
The little sign reached out and smacked me upside the head: “14 days to Christmas,” it proclaimed. Unwritten and invisible to all but me were these words: “This jerkface hasn’t started Christmas shopping yet. He’s doomed!” Wow, Christmas countdowns have gotten mean this year. But it was right. Two weeks out and I was desperate. In trouble. Possibly ruined. How had this happened? How could this be? Christmas is supposed to be the season of giving. I had turned it into the season of goofing off. And at that moment, the Christmas Shopping Panic set in.