Savoring sugary staleness

 

 

One characteristic that separates myself from my son can be seen with any snack put in front of either of us. G will eat a cookie or two, a handful of pretzels or whatever then stop. I on the other hand will eat whatever is in front of me until it is gone. Then I get sick, gassy and generally remind myself that I'm an idiot.

The last three years we have stumbled into the tradition of building gingerbread houses at Christmas. Standing in the candy aisle at the grocery store with a cart full of every shape of confection with a 5 year old and asking him, Is there anything else we might need? is guaranteed to get some odd looks of judgment from passers by. That might be my favorite part.

The tradition is good. We sat as a family and buttered up graham crackers with cake filling as mortar and used candy canes as trusses while discussing what a summer tree house project might need to include. Stories and plans for coming adventures continued each night after Christmas when G was allowed to dismantle a particular section of his candied structure to eat. This went on like clockwork after dinner not just through the week till New Years' eve, but another week as well. He tediously ate away at sections of wall, roof and window framing as if he were taking the pieces of dried, stiff, stale licorice, pruned gummy bears and slightly melted Skittles to a candy land rebuilding center to recycle for a gingerbread house remodel next year. He savored every stale bite.

Near the end of the deconstruction I decided to tell G of a gingerbread house I made when I was in kindergarten. It was a basic cabin type structure built similarly with graham crackers and based on a piece of cardboard. It was a class project early in the week before the holiday break. It had candy corn shingles and black licorice for siding. It was a work of art and I was excited to take it home to show off. The trouble was that I walked home from school and I had to hold it with both hands in front of me roughly 1500 ft past the park, through the alley and across another two blocks to my house. (I'm fairly certain of the distance as I just checked on Google maps.)

I'll be honest,  I made it across the schoolyard, past the park and through the alley to Lassen Park Circle, a mere 2/3rds of the trip, before it occurred to me that I was carrying an empty piece of cardboard with some frosting stains. In the distance of roughly 3 soccer fields I had eaten my entire gingerbread house. That last block toward home was an emotional journey as my pride of handiwork became a fear of consequence due to my jaw work.

As an adult looking back at this memory from nearly 40 years ago, I still recall the feeling of shock of realizing I ate the whole thing. It started with just a nibble, just this side of the roof...just the whole roof but not the walls...just the back wall...then the wall that fell down...then....well...I better just get it over with!

Likewise etched in my mind is of how angry my mom was. She was pissed. The next morning she pinned a note to the back of my jacket, firmly instructing me to not remove it but sternly to walk up to my teacher and have her unpin it from my coat. The note explained my indulgence the day before and requested that I stay after school to make another. I was to wait in the school office after finishing for my mother who would pick me up and drive me home so I would be supervised and not engage in the eating of my gingerbread house again.

G was a little disgusted with me as I told him the story. We sat at the kitchen table nibbling away at a wall. As the story progressed he pulled the plate a little further from me, closer to himself. His eyes stayed fixed on me, occasionally scanning to my hands as I broke a bit of frosting off the wall.  You can have one more bite before I have to go to bed, but don't eat anymore without my permission.

Do Pengiuns even blow bubbles?

I hate swimming. Let me rephrase that. I hate swimming in a pool. Swimming in a lake is fun like an old Mountain Dew commercial.  Beyond the community swimming pool nastiness, I find racing anaerobic toward a cement wall repeatedly almost as ridiculous as running across a freeway.

Swimming takes rhythm, buoyancy, mechanical awareness of one's body and the skill of not inhaling water while splashing around in a manner that propels one in a forward motion toward said concrete wall. To top if off, a middle aged fellow has to do all the above while being observed by either a really cute girl in short shorts,  red life guard t-shirt and whistle hanging from the edge of her lips or a pimply faced beef-cake man-child who'd rather you weren't in the pool at all so he could instead stare across the room at the cute girl with the shorts and whistle. Both potentially capable of saving your life.

Option B is to sit around the shallow pool in a humid line up with an assortment of other parents of kindergartners splashing around attempting to blow bubbles in the water. Moms and Dads stare at smart phones while the lap pool remains still like glass and that teen-age boy with the eyes for the other lifeguard cups his biceps with opposite hands and flexes his arms alternately. Teen-age boys have more muscles than brains. I'm not saying I was smart as a teen-ager, but what I would give to have had that physique in my youth. The swimmers wedged torso and voluptuous shoulders that I voluntarily forsook for strength and speed on a bicycle were like an express-lane to get girls attention.

"I shave my legs too!" I would retort in PE when the swimmers would point and laugh at my scrawny shoulders and tattooed tan-lines but the parallel stopped there.

As a father I want the best for my son. I want to give him the opportunities I didn't have. I think every father wants this. As both of you dear readers know, I have fostered learning to ride a bicycle with zeal. But I also want a well rounded son who can pay his own way through law or medical school. A strong, smart, well mannered, athletic son. I want his teen-aged angst to revolve around which scholarships to choose as well as how to decide on whom to take to prom without breaking too many teen-aged girl hearts. What father doesn't?

Enter swim lessons. The boy needs to learn to swim for obvious reasons such as not drowning and as exercise so he'll go to bed on time, without fuss and because we live 2 blocks from an indoor swimming pool in a place where it rains 9-months a year. But also for success in life. To develop his well-rounded sporting abilities, to challenge his fears and mostly to start the process of looking good with his shirt off.

The first night of lessons I sat with the other parents watching our little ones dance around in the water holding onto a hula-hoop and blowing bubbles into the heavily chlorinated water that killed the germs in the snot they all were flushing into the pool with each cute little not-so-synchronized curtsy below the surface. Don't get me wrong, I was proud of G and the effort he displayed after listening to and attempting each task put forth by his 16-year old teacher. But then I noticed the empty lap pool across the room. Class is 30-minutes. I barely manage to get 30-minutes twice a week riding the rollers in the garage well after G has gone to bed at night. The opportunity to get some exercise and blow off some steam while at the same time purging the energy of a 5-year old was too much to resist.

Other than high-school PE, swimming in the same high school pool Mark Spitz swam in, I have only swam for rehab after breaking an assortment of bones. To be clear, I have never swam for exercise while not medicated with narcotics, or as a puffy out of shape middle-aged man, or both. So I started. I started slowly like a water-buffalo wades into a muddy desert oasis. I moved forward, splashing with the vigor of a dozen 5-year olds holding onto a hula-hoop scared to submerge their noses. The weeks passed quickly, G looked forward to each swim night. I only missed one session. Finally, the last class, -graduation day arrived. All the kids got a certificate. I managed to swim a  clean, half lap without messing up my stroke/breath rhythm or inhaling water. Victory for the two-dozen or so half laps I stormed like a hurricane through.

Swim teachers are smart. They provide a certificate so each kid feels good about their water based accomplishments. But the teacher knows full well that 5 year olds can't read scribbled notes on the back of the certificate. "G can move onto the next class but only if he learns to submerge his head and blow bubbles under water."

So basically G failed swim class. He got the nod to move on if he does some extra practice, but really, he should be held back. Kind of like the high school math teacher that on the last day of school said to me, "Pop Quiz, do you know how to round up? Can 68.7% round up to 70%?"

Still riding high for my personal half lap of glory after 5weeks of not drowning in spite of myself, I let G walk tall back to the locker room as I came to terms that being not so strong of a swimmer might just be part of the genetic makeup. As a reward, I had promised him a stop at the vending machine we had walked passed every week for a well earned treat. His choice was clear. He wanted a Pop-Tart because, "That's what we have on long bike rides."

The Bro Code

The saying, "What happens in Vegas; Stays in Vegas" is over-done so I won't use it. Sometimes the details are best glossed over. What makes the kinship of friends through our journey of life so strong is often a knowing nod, a silent reference of understanding rather than a Odyssey-esque public explanation of say, a night of drunkenness that ended in a visit to a tattoo parlour, or a bike ride where some directionally challenged mates got too deep into the forest and ended up smoking pot with naked hippies in the Siskiyou's. These of course are just hypothetical examples to back up my point that on occasion, a scenario plays out whether planned or not, that is best stored deep in the cerebral warehouse where grey matter goes black. Like a vintage wine or a milk crate of old magazines, a particularly good story should be brought out for public consumption only after many years have passed. I guarantee you that a story about borrowing moms' car for a supposed trip down the coast to Santa Barbara that was really an all-nighter to Denver, goes over better 20 years later not the week after it happened. For example.

But how do you explain that to a 5-year old? To nonchalantly make the point, DON'T TELL MOM! My previous examples are of the Bro' Code. An unspoken commitment between friends that what goes down or is discussed on a ride along the river, for example, stays between the points of departure and arrival. Did Jeff Spicoli tell Jefferson to call his brother about wrecking his car? No, he remembered that his dad was a TV repairman and had an ultimate set of tools and that he could totally fix it. The difference between Bro's and Parent/Child teeters on teaching one's kid to lie. Enter my dilemma.

I can't say that all of my injuries as a youth are from bike crashes. Actually, bike crashes are in the minority of ways I've maimed myself. Race crash injuries even rarer still. One way or another, over the years I've sprained, broken, torn, cracked or separated pretty much one of every bone, joint or limb in my body. I've even been told that counting all of my concussions takes a full set of fingers. Some of which have been broken.  But for some reason, now in old(er) age, I've crashed more and suffered injuries that involve a little more that simply walking it off. So when I crashed out of a recent cyclocross race and couldn't move my shoulder but knew well enough that nothing was broken, I needed to explain to Gavin why I was out of the race early and convey the message that Mom DID-NOT-NEED-TO-KNOW without coming straight out and telling him to keep his little mouth shut.

His concern and questions only made his knowledge more of a liability. When Markie, who drove to the race with us, pushed that I not drive home, pointing out my inability to make the reach to shift to 3rd or 5th gears, G was captivated by the plot unfolding in front of him. It didn't help when G asked, Markie do you even know how to drive a stick-car? That my good friend answered back, I've done it once, I think I might be able to do it again.

By the time we dropped Markie off, the ibuprofen had kicked in enough that I was confident I could manage the cross-town trip home driving the stick-car myself. Markie unpacked his gear, G peed on a tree, we all said our good-bye's then Gavin said, Hey Markie, good job driving Red Car, especially since it was only your second time with the stick thing!

Finally home, I had G take a trip to the bathroom while I unpacked the car. Grimacing and finding creative ways to carry our race-day crap back into the house, I walked through the kitchen on my way to the laundry and over-heard from down the hall, G replaying the day to A while he sat on the toilet, NOT pooping. It went pretty much like this:

I made it all the way across the monkey bars, but Dad crashed bad and had to quit the race. It was a bummer because he was doing good. He wasn't in last place. He can't move his arm. I hurt my arm on a log. See that scratch? I might need an operation. It's probably broken like Dad's. Then Markie drove home because Dad couldn't. Markie has only driven a stick car one time before. He did really good though. I wasn't even scared.

The rest of the story is more of an altercation followed by a confession and later a conviction. It's not much of a story really. Maybe I'll tell you someday at dinner. In twenty years.