“Dad!” pounced the kid as I walked in the door for lunch. “Ready to do some science experiments?”
Ambushed is more like it. Was it even at the door? Maybe it was out by the front gate. She jumped me from the bushes like some kind of jungle cat.
“Come on. Let’s get to work!”
I didn’t even have time to put my keys down before I was dragged off.
Pop was in town. That’s my dad. He went shopping. “I hope it’s OK,” he said.
I came in to find a mad scientist’s den. That’s what the science kit was called. “Extreme Secret Experiments Inside!” the booklet said on the cover.
There were little beakers and test tubes with colored liquid in them. White powder in packages. Eye droppers. Funnels. My daughter had a pair of goggles. There was a giant monster with a flat head hooked up to wires on a gurney. OK, maybe not that.
My dad smiled. It was the kind of smile that said, “Sorry … but this is really funny as hell!”
Funny for YOU! You get to leave. I get to clean the exploding volcano off the ceiling and figure out why the dog is coughing up blue bubbles.
“Dad! Dad!” barked my daughter. She sounded like a seal. “Want to make slime? Glowing alien slime! oooOOOooohhh! What color slime do you want to make?”
Here’s what lunch is to me: A chance to come home. Unwind. Read The Wall Street Journal. Learn about the wider world while totally ignoring the closer world. Lunch is that time when I go into what I refer to as a “conscious coma.”
I don’t make slime. Or “Lemony Invisible Ink.” Or “Bread in a Tube.” Or “Plastic Rotten Milk,” whetever the heck that is. Do you even need a science kit to make that!
But I realized something as I considered shaking the kid off: Ain’t got much of this left. This youthful exuberance. This ants-in-the-pants excitement to see me walk in the door. This lightning-charged need to be with me. The child is already 8. Ain’t got much of this left.
These are the moments you don’t squander. Opportunities you don’t pass up. I learned that from my dad. When he used to come home with science kits and other assorted thingamajiggers that took hours of patience and attention. That you find the time and the mental strength no matter how badly that couch is calling you.
You do it and you enjoy it. That’s your fatherly duty.
“GREEN slime,” I said. “Alien slime should always be green.”
“Good point,” she said. “I’ll get the food coloring.”
On the stove something exploded. The dog coughed up blue bubbles. I swore I heard a hissing beaker whisper, “HELP ME!”
“Eh! Who cares?” I said, putting my Wall Street Journal down and heading into the mad scientist’s den. It was time to get to work.