Downtown with Dad

One of the fun memories I have from when I was very young is actually a series of memories—trips downtown with my dad. We lived in a suburban area away from the city, and every now and again, Dad needed to travel into town to take care of business. This was before the days of internet banking and other conveniences. "Taking care of business" often meant—gasp!—actually talking with people face to face. Dad was a school teacher and had summers off, so that's when he'd take me into the Big City.

By "Big City," I mean Salt Lake City, which was very small compared to real big cities. But to me, a trip to the tall buildings and crowded streets was a magical experience.

We normally started the day by making a quick stop at the K-Mart deli. We'd pick up a couple hoagie sandwiches to eat later, then get back in the old Ford Falcon and head into town. We'd usually end up parking in one location, then walking to the various businesses. It always seemed like Dad walked way faster than I could, but I did my best to keep up so I wouldn't slow him down. We often stopped by construction sites and watched the men working their heavy equipment. I always thought they put those little observation windows by the sites just for me and Dad to see what they were doing.

Once in a while we'd stop at the big ZCMI Department Store where Dad would buy a bag of honey roasted nuts. Those were my favorite. At some point during the day, we'd find a place to rest and eat the hoagies. By most standards K-Mart hoagies aren't anything to write home about. In fact, they may be the reason K-Mart is going out of business. But I really enjoyed them, even with the flimsy processed cheese they came with.

I would usually be pretty tired by the end of the day. The trip back out to the 'burbs in the non-air conditioned Falcon seemed to take a long time.

I really treasure my memories of those trips. I don't know if Dad realized how important it made me feel to spend the day doing grown-up business with him. One thing I learned is children love doing things with their parents, and I've tried to incorporate that into my own parenting. My kids may think I'm just trying to get them to help me with the yard work so I don't have so much to do myself. That may be partially true. But really, I just want to keep spending time with my family while they're all still close by—and still willing to spend time with me.

Postscript: I wrote this post a little while ago, and in the meantime, the terrible tragedy in Connecticut occurred where twenty innocent young children were killed. Watching something like that unfold just makes all of my memories with my family growing up, and with my family now, even more meaningful.

My Job Ain't So Bad

A number of years ago, my job required me to wake up early each morning and head to work—pretty much like everyone else in the whole world. But on one particular day, I really didn't want to work. It was the day after Christmas, a Friday, and most everyone else was taking the day off. My kids were home for winter vacation and the last thing I wanted to do was drag my lazy carcass to the office.

I managed to get out of bed in a reasonable time, eat breakfast, and wandered out into the dark yard to scrape the ice off my car windows. It was a cold, gloomy day, the sun wasn't yet clear of the mountains, and it seemed I was the only miserable soul that had to go to work. Well, almost. I heard the sound of the garbage truck arriving, so I knew at least one other person in the world was working. While the car warmed up, I pulled the big, black trash can out to the street and returned to the garage to get another empty box that was too big to fit into the can.

The garbage truck pulled up and the driver waved down at me. He had a big smile on his face and acted as friendly as Mr. Rogers. Or maybe Mr. Bean. I briefly wondered what the heck his problem was—if anything, he should be hating his job even more than I was that morning.

The big robotic arm reached out and lifted the can up over the truck. It dumped all our leftover Christmas packaging into the bin, with Mr. Rogers smiling the whole time. I couldn't really talk over the noise of the truck, so I pointed at the extra box I had. The driver motioned for me to toss it up into the bin. I did so, but a small wind caught the box and it landed behind the bin on top of the truck. Now what could I do?

The driver was totally unfazed. He saw the box through his mirror, took the truck out of gear, unbuckled his seat belt, climbed out of the door and onto the ladder next to the cab. And he was still smiling and waving and nodding his head like he was the happiest man in the world.

He couldn't reach the box from the ladder, so he climbed onto the top of the truck and found he still couldn’t reach it. He waved at me like nothing at all was wrong and actually climbed down into the garbage bin to reach the box. Then tragedy struck. He slipped on the slime and disappeared down into the dark depths of the trash hole.

I'd killed the garbage man.

I ran over to climb up the ladder, but his head popped back up. He was safe, and still smiling and waving. Then he slipped and fell again. This time when he resurfaced, he didn't wave. He instead chose to use both hands to hold onto the side of the truck. He inched his way through the rubbish and reached my errant box. After pulling it in, he slowly returned to the front of the bin, climbed out of the trash and back into the cab. He was covered with slime and torn-up gift wrapping, but he never stopped smiling.

I stood there and watched him drive to the next house. And I came to an important realization—my job didn't suck that bad after all.

Affected by Tragedy

I've written a few posts about some of the crazy stuff we did when I was younger. This post is a little different.

There are occasionally things that happen in your life that make you stop and think about what you're doing. For some, it may be an embarrassing event. For others, it may be a family tragedy like a divorce or death. Even moving to a new town can be a major event for kids. Health issues, injuries, bad grades—all kinds of things can suddenly affect you in ways you couldn't have predicted.

I was out gallivanting with my friends one night and we headed home around midnight. Because of what later happened, many details from that night are a little fuzzy. I don't recall what we were doing, but I'm sure it involved driving around looking for classmates, goofing off, laughing, cheeseburgers, the usual. None of us were into drugs or alcohol—we seemed to entertain ourselves quite well without needing chemical assistance.

I don't even remember if I was driving that night or if we were in someone else's car. I only remember that we had several people in the car that all lived within a couple blocks of each other. As we neared the neighborhood, we saw police and emergency vehicles all over and the main road was blocked. We saw a mangled car in the middle of the street and activity all around. A crowd of spectators had gathered and most looked pretty somber. An officer directed us through a side road and as we passed, I heard something about a fatality.

It kind of humbled us as we drove the last little way to our houses. We didn't know what was going on, but it didn't look good. I don't remember the exact events after I arrived home, but I do remember my parents were very glad to see me.

It didn't take long to find out what had happened. A few friends of ours from school had also been out that night. Unfortunately, their group had decided they did need some chemicals. They'd been drinking pretty heavily and were driving home—drunk and at very high speeds. It was estimated they were going at least seventy miles an hour on a road with a thirty-five posted limit. Their car crossed a little bridge and went airborne. It flew straight into a parked flatbed semi trailer. The trailer severed the top of the car right off.

Everyone in the car was seriously injured. One boy whom I'd known for many years was decapitated and died instantly.

It was a pretty grim incident and made me glad my friends and I weren't drinking. But it also made me think about some of the crazy stuff I did. I wasn't a very careful driver before that. After that, I tried to be a little more careful and even started wearing my seat belt. Nobody wore seat belts in those days and my friends often bugged me about it.

The main thing I thought about after that experience, though, was how would my mom have felt if that had been me?

Maximum Padding

I spent a lot of time in my high school years playing jokes on people, and sometimes people got me back. One of those paybacks happened late on a Saturday night, long after I was in bed. My mom woke me up Sunday morning and said I needed to go out and do something about my car. It was an old, green 1973 Chevy Impala that broke down a lot. I wasn't sure what mom was talking about and figured something must have fallen off of it again.

I rubbed my eyes and looked out the window. It had snowed a thick layer during the night, but only on my car. What was it? Mom gave me her "I don't know what kind of friends you hang out with" look. I threw on a shirt and went outside to investigate.

The Impala was parked out in the street. I approached it and quickly found out what had happened—it was covered with a fluffy carpeting of feminine hygiene products.

I'd been padded.

I stood there assessing the damage. Then I heard some honking. Our street happened to be the connecting road between two parts of the neighborhood, and everyone was on their way to the local church—while I was standing there, barefoot and wearing pajamas, staring at a pad-covered car. You know what the conversation at church was about that week.

Somebody's Datsun that we were in the midst of padding

It took a while to get them off the car. Some of the adhesive never came off. But it didn't take long to find out who'd done it. It seems these were a new brand of pads that the manufacturer had sent out to mailboxes all over the county as free samples. (Can you imagine some old widower living alone and opening his mailbox—"What the crap is this?") The post office ended up with many cases left over and didn't know what to do with them. They decided to give them to the nearby Girls Village, which was a group home for girls with family issues.

A whole building filled with girls our age was a strong temptation for me and my friends, so we hung out there a lot. And we played practical jokes there a lot. And they finally got me back.

Later, we stole some of the pads from their shed—yes, they had a whole shed full—and padded other cars. It kept us entertained for a while.

Is Man Really a Dog's Best Friend?

Pets are an interesting concept. The idea of owning another living being for your own enjoyment is a little strange, especially when you keep that being in a cage. But pets can be entertaining and provide some friendship. And I suppose that friendship often goes both ways.

Pets aren't always treated well, though. If there's a pet afterlife where we'll meet our former animals after we die, then I'm probably going to be facing a herd of emaciated hamsters ("Couldn't you have given me just one more carrot?") and confused fish ("Why did you flush me?").

When I was young, I had a dog named Snoopy. I wasn't too creative in coming up with names. He was a small shorthaired mutt, the kind my friend calls a Neighborhood Special. We kept him outside, but probably shouldn’t have because he was really too small and furless for our harsh winters.

He managed to survive each cold season and was always happy to see me every morning when I'd scrape the ice out of his water bowl and dump a shapeless blob into his food bowl.

One winter afternoon, I wanted to play in the snow but couldn't find anyone to join me. It was a cold, gray, dreary day, and nobody else wanted to go outside. So I suited up and went out by myself and found Snoopy waiting there. He'd been alone all day and jumped all over me. He wagged and snorted—I think that's how dogs laugh. He followed me around while I tried to roll out a snowman. It hadn't snowed in several days and the crusty snow wasn't sticking, so I soon gave up that pursuit.

I tried making little roads in the snow for pretend cars to drive in. The grass under the snow had piles of smelly, decomposing leaves leftover from autumn, so that wasn't fun either. Snoopy enjoyed the smells though. The driveway had been cleared, so there was no ice to slide on. I tried playing tetherball, but the rock-hard ball hurt my hands. I soon realized why nobody else had wanted to go out.

I finally gave up and just sat on the snow under the plum tree. Snoopy jumped onto my lap. I tried calming him down, but his tail just wouldn't stop wiggling. He eventually curled up and I petted him while my butt froze. As he lay there, he kept raising his head to look at me, as though trying to tell me something, or perhaps thank me for spending time with him. Soon my dad came home from work, and I went inside for dinner. I left Snoopy by himself in the cold, dark yard.

After a freezing night spent in his little wooden house, Snoopy was there again in the morning, wagging and snorting like always.

A year or so later, on a warm, spring Saturday morning, I left Snoopy in the yard while I went to get a friend. Snoopy really wanted to follow me, but I closed the gate and made him stay. When my friend and I returned we discovered Snoopy under the fence. He'd tried following me by pushing his way through. His collar had caught on the fence and in his efforts, he'd choked himself.

He died trying to be with me.

I recently saw a bumper sticker that read, "I want to be the person my dog thinks I am." I don't know who wrote that, but if we all had the same goal, I think the world would be a lot better place.

Criminal Egging

While my high school friends and I often participated in silly shenanigans, we usually didn't purposely try to be mean to people. One time, however, my friend Stitch and I decided we needed to egg someone's house. To this day, I can't understand why we felt that need, or why we picked this particular person. I can't recall our target's name, but I do remember he was a nice kid who never did anything to us. But in our minds, he needed an egging.

And once a teenager gets something in his mind, it's hard to replace it with something else.

We planned our caper at Stitch's house. I distracted his mom in the kitchen while he stole two eggs from the fridge. It wasn't easy, because his mom had a sense of knowing when we were about to try something. We managed to get the eggs and then drove my old 1971 Ford Country Squire station wagon over to the target house.

Let me preface this next part by saying I'm not sure I truly believe in karma. But I do believe that all of us, sooner or later, always get what we deserve.

This was to be a drive-by egging, so I inched the Country Squire past the target house. It was late afternoon, there were people all over, and we worried who might see us. But we egged each other on—ha!—and were determined to go through with it. I think we had eggs on our brains. Stitch sat up on the open window sill and tossed his egg over the car. It soared in a beautiful arc across the yard and … it landed on the lawn and bounced. Then rolled to a stop by the doorstep. Stitch's mom must have known what we were up to and hard-boiled the egg.

I knew I could do way better than that. I brought my left hand back across my chest. I threw with all my might out the driver's window. But the egg never made it. Instead, my hand slammed against the front pillar of the car. I nearly broke my fingers. Egg splattered everywhere, especially down the defrost vents.

Karma had struck quickly that day.

It took at least a full hour for the two of us to restore our proper breathing. We laughed so hard we needed oxygen. And the Country Squire never smelled the same after that.

Toss-a-Loogie

When parents ask a teenager "What were you thinking?" and the teen responds "I don't know," the parents need to realize that the teen truly doesn't know. Like the time my older son jumped out his friend's moving Suburban. Did he really think he could accelerate his legs from a complete stop to twenty-five miles an hour before he hit the asphalt?

When my friend Brent and I were fifteen and moving on to high school, we received invitations to Meet Your School night a few weeks before classes began. Moving from junior high to high school was a big step, and we didn't want to be complete dorks by not attending Meet Your School. Besides, my older sister was a school officer and promised me it would be cool, so I took her word for it. We even got there ten minutes early. And we quickly discovered that only dorks got there early. In fact, I think only dorks attended at all.

We worried we wouldn't find a seat and hurried into the auditorium. Only one other person was there—an older guy, probably some other dork's dad. We sat about five rows behind him and waited for the excitement to begin.

Brent had a touch of hay fever that day, and while we sat there, he coughed and produced a giant loogie. Teenagers are fascinated with body fluids—pus is always a favorite—and not wanting to swallow it back down, Brent expelled it onto his hand. And it was a magnificent specimen.

The next question was, what could he do with it? A fifteen-year-old boy in that situation doesn't have a whole lot of options. Walking to the restroom to wash his hand was certainly not one of them. He chose the only other option—tossing the loogie out into the air. I mean, what else could he do?

The loogie whirled through the dark auditorium like a spiral galaxy spinning through outer space. It arced downward and straight toward the one place we wished it hadn't gone—right down the neck of The Dad sitting in front of us. It was a perfect shot. A hole in one. But there was no time for congratulations. Brent and I froze into perfect granite statues.

The Dad winced. He reached back into his collar. He pulled his hand out slowly. Slime dripped from his fingers. He turned around. He stared back at us.

If you took the entire energy output of the Three Gorges Dam Hydroelectric Generators, it wouldn't even come close to the amount of energy Brent and I expended for those eight seconds trying to maintain composure while The Dad's eyes bored into us. Maybe he'd think it was someone else. Of course we'd forgotten we were the only other dorks in the whole room.

We fully expected a beating, but The Dad just slowly stood up, continued glaring at us, and walked out of the room. He came back after a few minutes and sat somewhere else. I'm not sure what prompted him to be so forgiving. Maybe he'd tossed a loogie when he was fifteen.