Category Archives: Outings and (Mis)Adventures

Let’s all go for a ride in the clown car

I bought my car 14 years ago — five years before I began dating my wife and 10 years before we had our first child. I was a single guy who lived in a one-bedroom apartment and watched TV on a 19” box.

My little car has two doors, crank windows, and no A/C. Also, it has a manual transmission, which occupies my kid-swatting hand much of the time I am driving. I chose my car because it promised reliable, low-cost transportation for myself, and possibly a date. Those were the only souls I could imagine transporting.

In recent years, it would have been reasonable to trade in my car for something more family friendly.  As sensible as this act would have been, there are a few reasons why I have not done it.

  • Cars cost more now than they did in 1998. I now have a wife and children. By definition, this means that I have less money than I had in 1998. The gap between myself and a new vehicle only seems to be widening.
  • I love my car. It still gets great gas mileage and has been cheap to keep in good running order. Besides, she’s never whispered a peep about where I went, and with whom, during those five years before my wife came along.
  • My wife’s car, though not perfect, has been adequate as a vehicle for transporting the children. It transports them far more often than my car does.

Sleek, inexpensive, and good at keeping secrets. What more could a man want?

Still, there are times when I need to transport the kids in my car. The first time I tried this, it was quite an eye-opener. We were in a hurry, and since my older son’s car seat was already in the middle of the back seat, I put the baby’s car seat in the most easily accessible spot: behind the driver’s seat.

I couldn’t put the driver’s seat back upright without sliding it all the way forward. I’m not short enough to drive comfortably with the seat all the way forward. It made it kind of difficult to let the clutch all the way out without rolling my ankle to the point of a sprain. My elbows extended perpendicularly from my body whenever I put my hands on the wheel. I had to roll down my window to make enough room to get my left hand on the wheel.

It was a short trip, so I decided to bite the bullet and drive all folded up this one time. I didn’t reckon with a difficult parking situation at my destination. Searching out a parking spot in a crowded area is a very active, albeit slow, piece of driving. As I was resting my chin on my knee, contemplating where best to park, this became painfully clear to me.

In 1922, bachelor Rocco thought only of cutting a dashing figure in his zippy sports car.

An indeterminate number of children later, Rocco reluctantly traded in his sports car for this early minivan. This transaction began the period commonly known as the Great Depression. (Image: Russell Lee – U.S. Farm Security Administration)

Fortunately, the throbbing of my clutch ankle was superseded by a cramp, closer to the spine, in the calf of that same leg. The three-year-old asked from the back seat why the ride was so jerky today. I told him to save his questions until he had identified a viable parking spot.

As I was losing feeling in my lower body, I broke down and decided to pay to park in a ramp. It was a bitter decision, taken for the sake of the children. It meant that I would have to carry the baby a bit farther to our destination, but as I limped away from the vehicle, I decided it was a small price to pay to allow the imprint of the steering wheel to start to fade from my chest.

Killing me softly with yogurt

As a rule, I avoid the ladies (and occasional gentlemen) who hand out samples in the grocery store. My wife likes to see what they have to offer, but I don’t even like to make eye contact with them.

One summer during college, I worked in a grocery store, often behind the bottle return counter. This was before anyone invented machines to take back all those gross, sticky bottles. Instead, they got handed to me. I had to touch every one of them in order to sort them into the proper bins. With that kind of baggage, is it any wonder that I find the idea of eating anything in the grocery store abhorrent?

The days of my youthful exuberance, before working the bottle return counter made me cold and cynical . . . and bald. (My neck is no longer bent under the weight of that hair.)

So, no, I don’t want to try a sample. It’s probably some unholy combination anyway; hence the need to force it upon unwitting passersby. Even if it could defy the odds and appear somewhat appetizing, I have my grocery store demons to keep my teeth clenched together.

I was appalled, therefore, shopping with my son, to find a sample lady beaming at us expectantly from the end of our aisle. This meant I would have to sacrifice another little piece of my soul in declining the generous offer of a kindly stranger.

Worse was the betrayal I felt at realizing that my boy was pulling me toward the trap, eager to see what treats this woman was offering out of her gingerbread house. I hate it when he acts like his mother’s boy and his mother is nowhere near to deal with the consequences.

Overcome with a rare spell of patience, I concluded that it was not right to make the boy carry the burden of my supermarket baggage. I allowed him to lead me to the sample cart, where his instincts were proven to be uncanny. The lady was doling out cups filled with flavored yogurt made especially for kids.

Through what witchcraft this lady wordlessly reeled him to her, I cannot say. I let him taste a sample, but I stayed very near his side. As sweet and gentle as she appeared, she was still a grocery store sample lady.

My son ate the entire sample. He said he liked it. I was skeptical. This boy eating yogurt? It didn’t seem right. I asked him if he were sure he liked it. He nodded. He really liked it. We should buy some for home.

A scientific breakthrough of enormous potential: flavored yogurt developed especially to appeal to kids.

I asked the proud lady where this magical, child-friendly yogurt was to be found. She pointed toward the opposite corner of the store. Excellent. This would give me a chance to remove the boy from her sphere of influence and question him privately about the yogurt. When the truth came out, we could exit the store yogurt-free, and without Yogurt-Mesmer knowing our deception.

She read my duplicitous soul through my eyes. A knowing smile lit her face. “I happen to have one more four-pack right here,” she said, materializing the item from the amorphous folds of her robe. (Robe, apron, what’s the difference?) My son’s eyes grew bright. Mine darkened. Defeated, I took the package and put it into our cart.

Later that day, when my son asked for a snack, I opened one of his cups of yogurt for him. He took the first spoonful willingly enough, but made an unhappy face at tasting it. The second spoonful took more effort. It was the last. “This stuff is disgusting!” the boy declared. He’s never taken another bite of the concoction. He runs away whenever I mention opening another cup of it for him.

Wasted potential: flavored yogurt developed especially to appeal to kids, meet garbage disposal, developed especially to erase evidence of Daddy’s gullibility.

That’s how modern witchcraft works, my friends. No longer does it lure children into candy houses where they are fattened up as dinner entrees. Now it lures them to the sample cart, where Daddy’s money is sucked down the rabbit hole of the retail machine. It’s good to see that even fairy tales are keeping up with the times.

Zoo of shattered illusions

Our local zoo is free during the winter. Since we had a 70+ degree winter day on Saturday, we decided to take the boy out to see how the animals are getting along. All I was looking to get out of it were a couple of hours of family fun. What I got was the crumbling of the pillars of my understanding of the animal kingdom. Apparently, everything I thought I knew about animals and zoos is based upon myth. Here is a small sampling of how my world got turned upside down.

Bald Eagle

This eagle is anything but bald. If his head were black, he would be the Fonzi of the bird world. I don’t know, maybe back before Rogaine he had a receding hair-line. But after a few visits to the Bosley Treatment Center, his wavy locks are back. Now the lady eagles can’t resist him, and with the way he’s got it goin’ on, the species is in far less danger of becoming extinct.

The famous "bald" eagle.

For your reference, this is a more accurate representation of bald and eagle. Bald – foreground. Eagle – background (lower right).

Everybody sing: "I want to know what bald is. I want you to show me."

Tortoise and Hare

We all know the respective reputations of the tortoise and the hare. Guess what? It’s all wrong. The tortoise did not win the race because the hare got cocky and lazy. The tortoise won because his speed was vastly under-rated and the hare was lazy long before he got cocky. In fact, I could find no evidence that hares are ever faster than tortoises.

I can’t show you the video we took of the tortoise and hares because I don’t own the blog upgrades necessary to post it, so you’ll have to rely upon my vivid prose to paint the picture. The tortoise was running around his area like a madman, chasing trespassing peacocks out of his yard, weaving like a sports car, turning on a dime. A little girl was heard to proclaim, “That turtle is on the move!”

The hares were resting from a hard day of resting. One of them tried to rise, but his frail legs seemed unequal to the task and he lay back down. Another took a lethargic swipe at the back of his ear with his rear paw. He missed. Either his ear didn’t itch badly enough to make him care to take another swing at it, or he was just too sleepy. In the next fable I come across, I’m betting on the tortoise, even if the hare seems like he’s taking the race seriously.

Kids are fascinated with zoo animals

This is not 100% myth; my son did seem quite enamored of the tiger cubs. It’s not that he didn’t enjoy seeing the other animals, just that they didn’t inspire that special childish wonder within him. He was not at all above saying, “Okay, let’s see what’s next,” after staring down a lemur for a few seconds.

That tiger cub is tearing up a plastic sled. If you are a zoo animal and you want to be a hit with little boys, kill or destory something right in front of them.

To my son, the most fascinating aspect of our zoo is that it abuts a railroad track. Every so often, a freight train would roll by. No matter where we were, or what animal we were facing, my son would tug me toward the tracks. “I wanna see the train,” he said, as if there just happened to be this mildly amusing collection of animals right next to the most interesting railway line. If you want to know what it is that fascinates little boys, it’s trains. If a train happens to be transporting construction vehicles, the little boy is in nirvana.

I now consider myself to be righteously disabused of my innocent fancies.

A boy riding a baby giraffe: one of the few things you can still believe in.