Disney '08

Once again, we have proven to be the well-oiled Disney machine. Crowds schmowds. During our annual trek to Disney, we bobbed and weaved our way through four parks in three days, a finely tuned Disney experience on the roll. And, as usual, I brought back some new Disney knowledge to share with you:
– Parker is finally tall enough to ride some of the bigger rides. We went on the Test Track, which has you go through a car testing facility. At the end, you go on an outdoor track at about 65 mph in an open-air car. Allie loved the ride and even went back for seconds. Parker decided that being tall enough to ride certain things was not necessarily a good thing.
– Disney is very accommodating to those in wheelchairs and motorized scooters, which is admirable to say the least. For example, buses allow those riders to get on first, along with their party. That said, if you are with someone in a scooter and your party of 15 gets to go on ahead of all of the people waiting to get on, I would recommend you quietly board and stare forward. Doing a death-metal horn sign and saying, “YEEEEEAAAAAHHHH!!!” only makes the crowd angry. And you can imagine how this particular crowd member felt 12 hours after the initial incident, when we were leaving a park later in the day when the EXACT SAME FAMILY boarded our bus ahead of us. And out came the horns. Grrr.
– Even at Disney, the circle of life comes complete. We saw this when we were at Animal Kingdom, and we stopped at the meerkat exhibit. And it seemed the meerkat exhibit had also become the vulture exhibit. And the vultures were having a snack. Godspeed, little Timon.
– Speaking of natural interaction, I think it takes a brave bunny to sneak up and chomp on a sleeping gorilla’s lunch.
– I finally have let go one of my biggest issues: swinging the chains. In most every queue line you go in, there are chains separating the line. And children have an uncontrollable need to swing them. While in previous years I have considered duct taping my children’s arms to their sides, this year I opted for the “swing away” approach. Now you may be saying that children should stand there and behave and not touch things. And you clearly have not been in line for a flying Dumbo ride with 150 children. Let ‘em swing the chain.
– If and when you do go to Disney, please don’t be one of those people who walks around talking about how much Disney charges for this or for that. It’s no secret. Disney doesn’t hide the prices. Sure, the food is expensive. But they also don’t care if you bring in your own food and drinks. And if you choose to spend $25 on a giant Goofy hat that you will never wear again, that’s pretty much of your own doing.
– While watching the Country Bear Jamboree, I looked around the crowd and wondered, “What in the world must the 11-year-old from Brazil who speaks no English be thinking right now?” Probably that Americans are very strange.
– Speaking of Brazil, by my estimate, all of Brazil was at Disney during our visit. Yes, the entire country. And a large contingent wore bright yellow matching sweat suits.
– Nokia should change their slogan to “Nokia: Our cell phones can survive a three-story fall from the Primeval Whirl roller coaster.”
– I found the equivalent of the first time my daughter met Cinderella few years ago: When my 4-year-old son met Mr. Incredible. I think his jaw may still be open.
– The diners at the Rainforest Cafe confuse me. When we found out that it was a two hour wait, we opted not to dine there. We were then told there was immediate seating available on the covered back deck, overlooking a lake. Only about half of the deck was full. So the choice was to sit immediately on a 65-degree Florida evening overlooking a lake or wait two hours to eat at a cramped, loud, chaotic indoor table. Yeah, makes tremendous sense that the deck wasn’t full.
– The front of the monorail is the only way to travel. And apparently telling the kids not to lean on the turns or the monorail will fall is “mean.”
All in all, another great trip for our family, and we plan to make it back again next year. It’s our annual pilgrimage, one that we hope to keep taking as long as the kids still feel the magic. And want to swing the chains.

Crape murder

So there seem to be two schools of thought on crape myrtles:

1. Hack their limbs back each winter, letting them spring forth anew in the spring

2. Let them grow and be crape myrtles and avoid what has been dubbed "crape murder."

I opted for both schools with two crape myrtles in my yard. In the front yard, I had one that was a gnarled, mangled mess of an eyesore. A few years ago, I hacked it back to about 4 feet high. The tree came back the next spring, and it also did not complain once when I was cutting it, so I assume it was fine.

The tree in my backyard was given a license to grow on its own. And, this weekend, I revoked the license and went beyond crape murder and into systematic crape execution.

I really had no choice in the matter. There were two factors that led me to have to remove the tree: (1) It had grown so large that, when it rained, the limbs drooped down onto the house and in the pool and (2) I got a chain saw for Christmas.

The tree had gotten out of control, and even the possibility of trimming the branches wouldn't have mattered.

Apparently, it had been trimmed over the years so that the trunk was now about a foot thick, and the branching didn't start until about 8 feet in the air.

Had I trimmed down the offending branches, I would have had a big ugly stump the size of Yao Ming in the middle of my backyard. It was all or nothing, and nothing was no longer an option.

So I got the process in motion. Step 1: Wait until my wife would be gone for a couple of hours. She had expressed some concern over removing the tree. That said, she never came down solidly on the side of leaving it up, so it's not like she'd make me put the tree back up.

So Parker and I headed out and got to chopping. (What lumberjack DOESN'T utilize a 4-year-old sidekick?)

Parker had two main jobs: (1) help me haul the branches off after they were cut and (2) not get crushed. Parker picked a spot on the other side of the yard where he would sit and give me the thumbs up when it was time to trim.

The chain saw I have has an 8-foot extension pole, so I was able to lop off some of the tallest branches first. I would gauge which way the branches would fall, line up my angle and proceed to cut.

I can honestly say that I hit the mark 100 percent of the time, assuming the "mark" I was shooting for was completely guessing wrong on where the branches would fall.

Fortunately, they all fell in places that didn't cause damage. No broken windows, crushed fences or pinned dogs. (The dogs were inside, as I didn't want them anywhere near falling trees. When I was a kid, I saw our family beagle get crushed by a tree that was cut down. Great childhood memory there.)

After about an hour, I had removed a substantial amount of the limbs.

In fact, there was only one long, lone branch left. What had started the day as an out-of-control hydra of a tree had turned into the Charlie Brown Christmas crape myrtle.

While there was only one branch remaining, it was a rather large branch. And it was leaning toward the house, specifically in the direction of the big picture window in our kitchen. While I was not sure of what my wife's reaction would be on removing the tree, I can guarantee what the reaction would be if I sent a branch crashing through the window into the kitchen. Despite where I thought the branch might fall, reflecting on my previous guesses, I decided to enlist some help.

In no time, Parker was nestled in the crook of the tree, holding the branch tightly to guide it toward the ground when I cut it.

Now, I will await for your apology for thinking for one second that I would have done that. For shame.

No, I did not turn my son into a lumberjacking koala. I asked a neighbor for help. He came over with a rope and the kind of can-do attitude that makes America great: "I'll pull the rope while you cut. And even if it falls on me, it won't hurt that bad."

When the saw was almost through the branch, it started to crack, and my neighbor guided it harmlessly to the ground. Mission accomplished. Tree done.

I hated having to take down a tree, but the thing was just out of control.

I love a nice shady yard, but I don't like it at the expense of being able to walk outside my kitchen door because you get smacked with sagging branches.

Crape myrtles have this strange Phoenix-like quality of rebirth, so I am sure it will try and sprout up again this spring.

And if you're curious as to my wife's opinion on the removed tree, let's just put it this way. If and when the tree DOES come back, I'll probably let her weigh in on the decision first.

Back to basics

So by my estimate, I spent less time in high school than I did shopping for a new cell phone.
And I had that new cell phone for a grand total of two months before I lost it. Good job, Mike.
It started a while back when my wife realized that we had had our cell phones for a couple of years. Apparently, if you keep the same phone for that long, the company will give you a new one, free of charge. There was nothing wrong with my phone, mind you. But they did offer gobs of free ones. And two years in technology terms is like... well, it’s two years. But a lot can happen.
My phone was a basic one. I made calls. I received calls. I felt very high-tech because I had learned to text message, although I am still having a hard time using text message shorthand, as I feel a little dirty typing “U up 4 lnch?” I try to opt for curt instead of improper, and simply go with “Lunch?”
But I decided I would go ahead and get a new phone, because the new ones had all kinds of features. I could e-mail. I could take pictures. I could surf the web. I could make cole slaw. I could levitate. I could paint a house in under four minutes. Oh, the places your cell phone will take you!
My wife and I spent far too much time looking at the different features, researching them on the Internet, asking people about their phones. At one point, someone at work remarked, “Why don’t you just get a phone already?” That is absurd. This is not something you just grab on a whim, such as a car or a house or a kidney. This is a cell phone, for crying out loud! I will be stuck with this thing for TWO years! (Yes, I COULD buy one before then, but why in the world would I do that?)
Eventually, we settled on one kind of phone for both of us. It was a snazzy, sleek little number that roughly 22 billion people on the planet have. And, no, this was not a sweet, romantic matching pair type deal. Rather, it was that both of us independently chose the same phone, and neither of us had plans to back down. A compromise of different colors was reached.
So once the phones arrived, I shelved my old phone and headed into the exciting world of my new phone. There were indeed bells. And whistles. And countless other things that I had no idea what they were for. And I couldn’t figure out how to use any of the features that it did have. I even decided to buy a ring tone — something 11-year-olds do a dozen times a day – and couldn’t figure out how to do it. I went to the store and had them walk me through it. I felt bad for them. It was like they had just thawed me from my glacier and were introducing me to this modern world.
After a while, I just resigned myself to using the basic phone parts, and occasionally fumbling around and trying to take a grainy picture, although more often than not I took a picture of my hand. Also, I somehow turned the ringer off on a regular basis, and I am not sure how I did that, but I think it involved one of the 40 buttons on the side of it.
I will admit there was a certain longing for my old phone. Sure, it was as low-tech as you get with cell phones, but it did everything I needed. I could operate it without looking at where the buttons or keys were. I was in tune with the ring tone. It was synergy.
But I tried to get used to my new phone, thinking eventually it would turn into my new cell companion. But it just wasn’t clicking. It didn’t feel right, like my old one. Then the other day, I was at the grocery store with my daughter. I called home. “How about quesadillas tonight?” I said. “Pardon?” said the woman next to me. “I’m on my phone. I thought that was evident, what with the hand held up to my ear,” I responded.
And that is the last call I made. I got home later that night and could not find my phone, which is odd, because I am rather consistent with placing keys, wallet, etc. in the same place. I checked the three most likely places that any right thinking person would:
1. My car
2. The couch where I woke my son up from a nap by starting a wrestling match
3. A pile of leaves out back (I even used a metal detector for that search)
Despite those routine searches, it never turned up. The next day, I took my old phone out of dry-dock and had them activate it at the store. The moment I used the phone, I felt a comfort that had been missing since I switched over. Simple was back, and simple was good.
I am sure that my new phone will turn up somewhere, either in a leaf pile or a couch cushion or in a pile of onions at the store. And when it does, I will have a big dilemma. Do I turn it back on? Or do I stick with my old phone? And most importantly, do I make the quesadillas?

Flour child

I knew when I heard the way my wife called his name – “PARKER WHITFIELD!!!!” – that we were at a crossroads.
And down one of those roads was a bad day – the potential start of one of those avalanche days of bad things, piling up and on, with stubbed toes and being cut off in traffic and losing your keys and all the other things that seem to follow when your day starts like that.
Fortunately, we did not go down that road. Instead, I looked at my wife. She looked at me. “He’s covered in flour,” I said. “And so is the kitchen.”
At that point, we headed down the better road, the one that didn’t end in a tequila bender in Mexico.
You see, my wife was making cookies and decided to have Parker help. There were three big flaws in her plan:
1. She was making cookies at eight in the morning. No one is ready to make cookies at 8 a.m. except professional bakers. All of us other non-baker humans should not even try baking cookies until well after a pot or seven of coffee. It’s just not wise.
2. She enlisted the help of a 4-year-old. She would have been better served to enlist the support of a seizuring macaw.
3. She lost the “Who Can Pretend to Be Asleep the Longest?” game, and therefore did have me to run interference for her. See, the kids are now old enough that they can somewhat fend for themselves in the morning, so we don’t have to spring out of bed the minute they are up. It’s nice to know you can lie in bed and know that, in the other room, your children are quietly painting each other and pulling all the stuffing out of a couch cushion. So my wife and I play this exciting game. First one to admit to being up loses. Winner gets to sleep in. My wife is normally very good at this game. She claims to be good because she is actually sleeping. I find that hard to believe.
So where was I? Right, Parker helping with cookies. So my wife had all of the ingredients out on the counter, and Parker was handing her things as she needed them. Apparently, he decided she needed the flour, and he went for the big plastic canister that holds roughly 65,000 cups of flour. I have no idea why we have that much flour. Apparently we are expecting the entire state of Kentucky to come over for made-from-scratch biscuits or something.
But anyway, Parker’s attempt, well, failed, and he ended up dumping the canister on his head, covering him in white powder, sending flour to all corners of the kitchen, and creating a nice little mushroom cloud of flour dust that I hope will settle in the next few weeks.
By the time I got to the kitchen (the “WHITFIELD” echo was just starting to fade), Parker was really not sure what to think. I am fairly certain that one thing that was prominent in his mind was, “This was probably not the wisest course of action.”
He looked at me and then his mother. And when he saw that we were, well, on the floor laughing, he too felt a little more at ease, although he was somewhat tempered in his celebration, as every time he would move a big puff of flour would cloud up in his face, so he would start spitting and sneezing and coughing.
Eventually, I got most of the flour off his body, mainly by taking off his pajamas, so he looked like a little naked kabuki actor halfway through makeup. Truth be told, I do not recall how I got the rest of the flour got off of his head. It probably involved the dog.
But the important point was that my wife and I could have let this be a very bad start to the day. And to both of our credit, we didn’t. We laughed at the funny things in life, and reserved the serious, stern side for important infractions, such as standing in front of the TV during a football game or eating the last peanut butter bar, which Daddy SPECIFICALLY got for his lunch and hid them on the top shelf INSIDE the crock pot, under a dish towel for the exact purpose of hiding them so that he could have them for himself. You know, meaningful stuff.
It’s not to say that we, like everyone on the planet, don’t sometimes have the wrong reaction now and again. But it’s good to have a successful flour-dumped-on-your-kid’s-head dry run to remind you to keep things in perspective. More often than not, it’s just not that big of a deal. That said, I sure hope Kentucky doesn’t show up.

Showing my resolve

So long, 2007. Let’s get it started, 2008. Much like my federally required Thanksgiving column, I offer up my heaping helping of New Year’s resolutions:
I resolve to get the most use out of my brand spanking new deep freezer. I have that sucker loaded with meat and pizzas and such, and I feel pretty confident that I could weather a nuclear winter with my food supply. The only catch: I have to actually remember to use it, rather than remembering about all of the meat in there in about two years after a prolonged power outage.
I resolve not to make my wife make that face. She makes that face often, and it usually comes after I have nitpicked about something, such as, say, the kids leaving a television on in a room they are no longer in. She often says, “It’s not that big of a deal.” I then reply with, “You’re right. It’s not that big of a deal to turn off the television.” That’s usually when the face occurs. I will suffer in silence this year, and just turn the TV off myself and get over it.
I resolve to be more patient with my kids. I sometimes expect too much of them, such as expecting them not to act as though they were raised by wolves. On occasion, their lupine-backgrounds will shine through. They’re only humanish.
I resolve to go through 2008 injury free. This is perhaps my biggest challenge, as I received a chain saw and an ax for Christmas.
I resolve to win at Cardboard Sword Fight, even though the last one was really not fair, since I had a cheap cardboard tube from a dollar roll of wrapping paper, and Parker had one of those super thick tubes from that fancy foil paper.
I resolve to no longer put Nicky, my daughter’s new American Doll, in perilous situations. Apparently, my daughter does not find it funny when I suggest Nicky would like to be an Arctic Explorer and go visit the freezer.
I resolve to figure out eBay. I know it’s not that hard, but I am going to sit down and open an account and finally unload stuff that has been taking up closet space for years. I think my chances of listening to a CD by Icelandic alternative rockers The Sugarcubes (Bjork, before the weird swan outfit!) are pretty slim by now.
I resolve to teach Murphy the Excitable Dachshund that Maggie the Attack Basset does not find him attractive, and he should probably chill out on the romantic gestures.
I resolve to not let my wife look inside my car after I clean out hers and make snide comments, as she often seems to note that I tend to leave large volumes of stuff in my car, and I don’t usually have the added distraction of trying to corral two children who are somersaulting out of the vehicle.
I resolve to figure out all of the cool stuff my TiVo can do. Currently, it can record “Boston Legal” and “Go Diego Go.” I am pretty sure it does more than that.
I resolve to not eat fast food for lunch a single time.
I resolve to not set goals I cannot possibly achieve, so I resolve to not eat fast food as much.
I resolve to keep things in perspective.
I resolve to remind my wife that my perspective is that football is the single most important issue facing our nation.
I resolve to shape my political opinions on the current field of presidential candidates based solely on the method of taping a picture of each candidate’s face on a squirrel and having the squirrels race. Winner gets my vote. Seems to make as much sense as the current method.
Happy New Year, everybody!

Christmas cheer

A few weeks ago, I told you I would have my Christmas decorations up early. So, any guesses on how I did?
Wow, thanks for your vote of confidence. I will have you know that even before Thanksgiving, I had most of my lights up, and the day after I flipped the switch. I added a few items the following weekend and essentially completed my holiday decorating, as promised. So, how did I do it? A few simple tricks:
1. Organization — A few years ago, my wife bought a bunch of plastic storage crates for all of our holiday decorations.
She bought green and red ones for Christmas and orange and black ones for Halloween. I told her that festively color coding our attic was a little much even for her. “But you know what holiday each box belongs to, don’t you?”
Point taken. Plus it also keeps everything neatly stored together and allows me to avoid what had become my annual ritual of coming down the attic staircase only to have the bottom of a Wild Turkey box fly open, spilling ornaments and Nativity pieces everywhere.
2. Planning — Most years, I grab a strand of lights and hang them up. And then I grab another strand and hang them up.
Repeat until there are no more lights to hang. I then go to the street and look at my house, only to realize I have covered one tree, two azaleas, and a third of my garage.
This year, I spread out all of the lights and took an inventory of what we had and where it should go. My wife also got involved, since I did not opt to do it as I had in years past, at 11:30 at night when I couldn’t sleep.
At one point, she actually had a tape measure out and was figuring out if certain light strands would fill up certain parts of the house.
I told her that was an amazing idea. She looked at me with equal parts disdain and sadness.
3. Involving the children — I would prefer that my kids have pleasant Christmas memories, not one of their father being red faced and screaming, “UNLESS YOU WANT ME TO CANCEL CHRISTMAS DON’T TOUCH THE LIGHTS AGAIN!!!”
So I took a deep breath and pulled out the decorations knowing that my helpers would have (a) the gentle touch of a blender and (b) the attention span of a spastic cat.
Yes, we had a few tangles and a bulb or two got broken, but the kids had a good time, in particular when, without them realizing, I strung lights on them. (For what it’s worth, that may or may not have been a reason for the tangles/breakage.)
4. Patience on the tree hunt — We still get a real tree, and we will continue to do so, as that is one of the basic things I have to have in my house.
I know most people have gone to artificial — I think I’m the last one in my family who still goes real — and that’s fine.
But there is something about a real tree that I absolutely can’t go without. My guess is it dates back to 2001, when my cat tried to climb our real tree and it went crashing down on top of her. Relax, she was fine.
But once the shock of the destroyed ornaments, the ripped couch, and the water everywhere subsided, I had to concede that it was one of the funniest thing ever to occur. (You would be amazed at the sound a cat can produce.)
Of course, it’s not easy to find the right tree. We went to five different places. Around stop #3, I was pretty much good to go with whatever tree was there.
ME: (grabbing a tree) Come on — let’s get it and go.
MY WIFE: Uh, that’s a magnolia tree. And it’s planted.
However, I suppressed that urge, and continued to investigate every tree we saw, and even actually paid attention when my wife asked me questions about fullness and gaps and the like. When we got home, she said, “Thanks for not being you today.” I will just assume that was a compliment.
5. Enjoying the experience — Because of the previous items, I was able to focus on this one, which is really critical. Now, you may say, “Mike, you should always enjoy this, because it’s Christmas and it’s a special time.”
And then you may drone on and on and on about the little things and keeping perspective and blah blah blah.
And THAT will make me not enjoy it. Rather, let me have my quirks, and work incredibly hard to make sure that Christmas is merry and the season is bright.
Except for where the bulbs are broken.
So my decorations are up and I am fully in the holiday season, well before the last-minute rush I am accustomed to.
If you are a chronically late Christmas decorator, I encourage you to get it in gear and make things simple for yourself. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself in the same boat again — struggling to untangle the lights and get the ornaments on the magnolia tree.

She shoots, she scores

I love sports. Anyone who knows me knows that. And as I am sure my wife will tell you, I sometimes get carried away. I invest a tremendous — if not occasionally ridiculous — amount of emotional capital into sports. For example:
1. I threw my back out in 1995 celebrating the Braves winning the World Series. (I was at Game 6, so I was doubly pumped.)
2. Two of my friends were watching a Bama game with me recently when they made a wager on whether I would accidentally put my hand into the ceiling fan above me if we scored.
3. I see nothing wrong with being lifted in the air by another man, assuming your cornerback just picked off a critical interception.
4. A friend and I once had a very serious conversation on how many years off our life we would forego if the Minnesota Vikings’ Gary Anderson would miss a field goal in 1999. (It will cost us both four years.)
That said, all of my excitement and zeal for sports was totally trumped last weekend when I experienced the single greatest moment in my sports fan career: watching my 7-year-old make a basket.
Allie is playing on a basketball team for the first time, and the first time she touched the ball, she dribbled a few times, stopped, popped and dropped. (That’s sports fan talk for made a basket. Aren’t I hip?)
She has loved basketball for a while. We go out in the driveway and shoot hoops all the time, and she has gotten pretty good at making baskets, even on a regulation 10-foot goal. (Per edict from the commissioner, I am no longer allowed to swat her shot out of the air and scream, “YOU GOTTA BRING MORE THAN THAT IN HERE!!!”) Our usual game is HORSE, although she will often try and amend the game to HORSES mid-play, the little weasel.
When she decided she wanted to play on a team, I was excited, as she is at the age where she can really enjoy getting into team sports. She played soccer when she was 5, but her main strengths were cartwheels and hugging people she knew on the other team. I was pretty sure she was ready to advance to the next level.
At the game, I try not to be THAT dad. You know, the one whose mood for the next week will depend on whether or not his kid’s team wins. I am just excited to see Allie playing and having a good time. I did tell her that winning = dinner, but that’s just a little incentive. Ha! Little sports dad humor. They don’t even keep score, so how would she know if she won or not? (She’ll know based on whether she gets dinner.) Ha! Little more sports-dad craziness there.
At the game, I try to cheer and encourage but not to coach her too much from the bleachers. After all, that’s why she has a coach, and he does a great job of teaching the kids about the game and teamwork. Granted, at her first scrimmage, I did slide over to the bench and remind her that just because she was not on the court, it did not mean that she should hold animated meetings about Hannah Montana or Chick-fil-A or whatever it was with her teammates. Watch the game, for crying out loud.
She eventually got her head in the game during the scrimmage (only one cartwheel on the court), so I was excited about the first real game. The coach has numbers assigned to each player and calls out the play to the players each time down court. When I heard “1-4,” I was excited, because we originally were going to name Allie “4.” No, wait, it was because Allie was playing the 4-position, so that meant that she would get the ball, dribble a couple of times and throw one up. When the ball hit her hands, I was just happy to see that it didn’t go through her hands and smack her in the nose, because I know quite well that tends to put a damper on a basketball game with her.
One of the more humorous times in the game was when she was on defense. Allie is one of the smaller kids in the league, as the age range starts at 7 and goes to, from what I can tell, 32.
At one point, Allie was guarding a player on the other team who is slightly larger than I am. All you could see behind him were two little hands poking out from behind his shoulders. Fortunately, they did not throw him the ball when she was guarding him.
Oh, and a tip of the cap to the referees in the game, who understood that the kids are all learning the game and did things such as reminding them to dribble the ball. No fouls were called in our game. Word is that a foul was called earlier in the morning, and it made a little girl cry, so they stopped calling fouls. Based on the speed of the game, I think that was probably the right call.
She had fun the rest of the game, and even grabbed a rebound. But the most important thing is that she is learning to be part of a team. And isn’t that the most important thing? I mean, after you know you’ll get dinner.

Forming memories

When I was little, we used to go to Tuscaloosa, Ala., to visit my family. I have a picture of me, probably about 2 years old, holding my great-grandfather’s hand, walking in the backyard picking pecans.
When I was in college, I was talking with my grandmother about the picture. She stared at me for a second. “Michael,” she said, “you do remember when you used to come here to visit, right?”
I thought about it for a second. “Christmas.”
“And you know pecans are not on the ground at Christmas, right?”
I had never done the math. Turns out, my great-grandfather would collect the pecans and put them in a freezer, and then spread them out just before we got there so that we could go and pick them up.
Yes, you can cue the “awwwws.” A sweet and kind Christmas memory indeed.
Reflecting on this, I realized that we all twist and tweak the truth in order to better serve kids. My parents did it. As a parent, I do it. Some of them – like the pecan story – are done to generate fond childhood memories. Others are done for parental convenience.
For example, when I was little, there were three shows that no child should ever, ever, ever watch: “Barney Miller,” “Hill Street Blues” and “Dallas.” When those shows came on, my parents forbade us from being anywhere near. “You will NOT watch this show, mister!”
I always assumed they were really looking out for mine and my sisters’ delicate moral shapings, and that these shows were REALLY hard core. And while some of the content may have pushed the age-appropriate boundaries on occasion, it’s pretty tame compared to today’s standards.
As my parents confessed to me recently, that was not the driving force behind our banishment. They wanted an hour to themselves, without four kids swarming about screaming, “SHE BROKE MY RUBIK’S CUBE!!!”
I find myself doing similar things, and there are certain shows where my children are simply not allowed in the room.
I tell them they need to scoot on to their own rooms, as it is an adult show. Truth of the matter, it’s not that they’re bawdy or anything. I just want an hour on the couch to watch “Chuck.” Hey, I don’t pretend to be a complex guy.
Of course, I also try and do the fond memory side, too. For example, I have a routine I do every night with my daughter for bedtime. We have a back-and-forth exchange:
HER: Light on?
ME: Check.
HER: Door shut?
ME: Check.
HER: See you when I wake up.
ME: Check.
Yes, she leaves the light on. But it’s her routine. But every morning, when she wakes up, the light is off. “Guess you turned it off, hon” is my reply. She shrugs this off, accepting that she must have done that. Not only does she not realize we turned her light off, she doesn’t realize that leaving it on actually makes our life easier.
Why? Because she sleeps like a load of concrete and we can come in her room and put up laundry, clean out closets, practice trumpets, etc. Nothing wakes her. But she will have the memory (I hope) of a peaceful bedtime routine.
I imagine my children will have a host of memories of these things, things they will realize as adults that I had set up, staged or otherwise packaged in a deceptive manner. Of course, this time of year is one of the ultimate examples of that, and I will keep it in vague, general terms, since a certain 7-year-old has been known to read Daddy’s column.
This will most likely be the last year of that phase. In fact, some in her school have already been planting seeds of doubt. (I hope those little Johnny Buzzkillseeds get coal in their stockings.)
When the seeds sprout, I will explain to her that belief in the spirit of things is what is important. And tell her that her mother and I still believe. And we also believe that ruining it for her little brother will amount to television restriction.
When you think about it, it’s all in the perspective. It doesn’t matter what the reality is. When I see the picture of me holding my great-grandfather’s hand, it doesn’t matter that the pecans didn’t fall out of the tree the day before.
In some ways, it’s kinda cool to learn that. Similarly, it was nice to see that when I was kid, my parents were ACTUAL married people who occasionally wanted a few minutes without the kids around.
Of course, my kids are more than welcome to take their time learning the realities of things. Especially this time of year. Take your time.

Giving thanks

So we’re a day before Thanksgiving and as a columnist, I will share with you what I am thankful for, as is required by the U.S. Constitution. (Columnists who do not write such a column are ordered to write TWO Christmas wish columns.)
That said:
1. I am thankful for my daughter, Allie, who is now at the age where she gets embarrassed by her father, meaning I get to see the priceless look of horror on her face when we run into a classmate in public and I say, “So, are you her boyfriend?”
2. I am thankful for my son Parker, who is still at the age where he has little cares, and may wander into a room wearing nothing and say, “Daddy, I got tired of wearing pants.”
3. I am thankful for my wife, who tells me I talk in my sleep but says I only babble. She has a prime opportunity to have some fun at my expense, yet never does.
4. I am thankful for each and every one of you who returns your shopping cart to the corral (double thanks for actually taking it back to the store). For those of you who leave them in parking spaces, I hope you step in something.
5. I am thankful that my mother-in-law forced me to watch a show on the Food Network a while back, as I was introduced to the world of Hot Brown sandwiches, something I will make with my leftover turkey.
6. I am thankful for college football coaching rumors not involving Alabama. Sure, Nick Saban’s name gets dropped out on some fringe elements, but to see the fans in College Station, Baton Rouge, Ann Arbor, Auburn and Columbia teetering on the verge of insanity is... well, having endured it too much recently, it’s quite enjoyable.
7. I am thankful that Tom Glavine is back in a Braves uniform, as his five-year prison sentence has concluded.
8. I am thankful that Britney Spears makes $700,000 a month. It reminds me that if great things can happen to pointless people, then certainly moderately good things can happen to me.
9. I am thankful for Sirius satellite radio, as it is one of the greatest inventions of all time, and anyone against the merger between XM and Sirius not only hates America, they hate puppies. It’s a fact.
10. I am thankful for the opportunity to share songs that are stuck in my head. For example, all morning I have been singing the Slinky commercial song. Now you are. “It’s Slinky! It’s Slinky!”
11. I am thankful for YouTube, as it allows such little-known shows as “Exit 57” to live on. Most of you are not familiar with the show, but it’s a sketch comedy group from about a decade ago. Stephen Colbert was on it, and let me tell you – his work as a Dancing Muchacho is second to none.
12. I am thankful for my dogs, who remind me that sleeping away your day can be a very rewarding experience.
13. I am thankful for my memories of the time I drove down to the coast to cover Hurricane Fran in 1996, because I believe that is the last stinking time it rained in South Carolina, and I would hate to forget what rain is.
14. I am thankful for Coke in a glass bottle. I am not sure what the difference is, but it definitely tastes better.
15. I am thankful that Downtown continues to grow. Having grown up in Aiken, it’s nice to see a far different Downtown than years ago, in particular in terms of restaurants. Oh, and as for the parking problems? My neighbor said it best: If you can hit a golf ball from your car to the front door of the business, you didn’t have to park far away. That said, I do not recommend actually testing this.
16. I am thankful for you, dear reader, who is kind enough to offer the occasional nice word on a column. Or call me a parasite. Which I haven’t forgotten. Thanks, sir.
17. I am thankful for stuffing. It is the single greatest food ever created, and it is a tragedy that it gets one, maybe two appearances a year on America’s dinner tables.
18. I am thankful for TiVo, because I can watch “Boston Legal” when I want to, and I have yet to see a commercial during it. Also, I have a never-ending supply of “Go, Diego, Go” at my fingertips.
19. I am thankful for wireless internet, as my home office is wherever I want it to be.
20. I am thankful that we have reached No. 20, as I have to go. I feel the need to go buy a Slinky.

Card shark

It’s a simple matter of order.
Things have a place where they should go. And if they are NOT in said place, they will not be found. Am I right? Finally, some people agree with me.
It all started the other day when I went to the store. When I opened my wallet to pull out my credit card, I was a little miffed to find nothing but a lonely leather pocket. (I assume my wallet is leather. I have no idea, since I bought it some time around the Clinton administration, and let’s be honest – I’m not the most discerning consumer when it comes to buying items, much less something that will spend the bulk of its time in a back pocket or a car console.)
Most people’s first reaction in not finding their credit card would be to assume someone stole it.
My first reaction was to hurriedly move stuff off the counter and apologize to the people behind me, lest I be That Guy, the one who (a) picks his lottery numbers while holding up the line or (b) waits until reaching the counter until even looking at the fast food menu that has barely changed in 20 years or (c) writes a check on the counter right next to the “NO PERSONAL CHECKS” sign. You know, That Guy.
Anyhow, I ended up going to a nearby cash machine to get out money to pay for my purchase, as I knew full well where my credit card was: in my wife’s clutches.
I remembered earlier in the day when we had been at the store with the kids. The kids decided it was a perfect time for freeze tag, so I decided it was time to leave public shopping areas with them. I pitched my wife my wallet to pay for our purchase and took the kids outside to run free as nature intended.
My wife returned my wallet when we got in the van, and I failed to check for my credit card as I should have, but I was distracted (and frozen). So it never occurred to me that the card would not be there. Of course, I planned to address the issue immediately when I got home. Unfortunately, I have the attention span of a hyperactive terrier, so forgot by the time I was home, which was all of about two blocks away.
Just to prove a point side note: I keep index cards in my car visor so that I can jot down things I need to do. On the occasion people have seen them, they think I am, well, off my rocker. They will say something like, “Crazy Brad Pitt; gluttony; popcorn” and I will have to explain that I was listening to the radio and I heard someone talking about Brad Pitt, which made me try and remember the name of the movie where he played the crazy guy, and I’ll need to look it up later. (It was “12 Monkeys.”) And that will then make me think of the movie “Se7en,” which had me trying to name the seven deadly sins and blanking on “wrath” so I had to remind myself to look THAT up. And then all of the movie talk has me thinking popcorn, so I remember that we’re out at home so I start an impromptu shopping list. It’s not a world you want to visit, folks.
OK, anyhow, I did not write down to get my card back, so it floated out of my brain. It occurred to me about two days later when I needed it.
I swung by my wife’s school to get it from her. She insisted that she did not have it, and that she had put it back in my wallet. I told her she was clearly delusional, and I would go find it in her purse. Nothing.
I told her that she must have quite irresponsibly left it sitting in her car. She assured me that she had put it back in my wallet. I told her a search of her car would prove her wrong. Nothing.
Just to humor her, I flipped open my wallet. Nothing.
And then I looked in the middle pocket, the one behind where I normally keep my card, and there I saw what certainly did resemble a Master Card logo. Indeed, my card had been there the whole time. But, as I maintained, it was not where it was supposed to be. Therefore, there was no reason I should have been able to find it.
“If I go to get my mail and open up the box, and you have instead delivered my mail to a neighbor’s tree, I will NOT find my mail!!!” I stated with great confidence that everyone would be on my side.
Unfortunately, they turned on me: “That is true,” offered one of my non-supporters, “but in this case, it’s like your mail is usually on the right side of the mailbox, and one day I put it on the left side. It’s still in the mailbox.”
I refuse to accept their flawed reasoning. I am a change fearin’ habit creature. If it’s supposed to be in the front right pocket, that’s where I’m looking. No more. And you see where that’s getting me.
I know you’re thinking I should have looked a little closer. And perhaps you’re right. Maybe I need to break some of my routine on occasion. It could be good for the soul to get out of my repetitive ways. I’ll write myself a note.

Christmas cheer

I suppose there is nothing groundbreaking about letting you know that I, like most of you, feel that Christmas should be celebrated during Christmas.
Trust me, I do not claim to be the first to bring this forward. Little known fact: There are cave drawings of cavemen lamenting the fact that the holiday season had leached over into the mammoth hunting festival.
Christmas coming earlier and earlier and earlier is one of those accepted things now, where everyone enjoys making the observation, myself included.
I did my first observation of the year in the middle of a home improvement store a week before Halloween.
There, surrounded by Christmas decorations stacked to the ceiling and Christmas music ringing through the aisles, I made this lovely announcement to my children: “STOP SINGING CHRISTMAS SONGS!!!”
Plenty of customers turned and eyed me and my grumpy edict to my kids. They also were a little suspect when they then saw me shopping for axes.
A quick side note for those of you who cast those odd looks at me: We came to the store looking for an ax, as mine broke.
When it gets to be fire time, I would like to be able to split the wood in the woodpile, so I would appreciate it if you would not stare at me as though I am homicidal.
But back to the Christmas songs. That is the one thing I can continue to control.
You can throw up enormous inflatable snow globes at every store in the middle of June for all I care.
I can still not allow Christmas songs to be sung until the day after Thanksgiving.
And I can shout it in the middle of a home improvement store, drawing curious stares from other people, in particular ones who don’t see my kids but just see me, several aisles away, shouting, “NO JINGLE BELLS!!!”
I guess am sort of giving into the early Christmas season this year, as I am planning on getting my Christmas decorations put up early this year. Not saying I will turn them on. But I want them up by the time my neighbor’s lights come on.
His house is two doors down, and each Christmas he puts up the most beautiful and classy Christmas display you will see, brilliant and organized, the entire house awash in Christmas cheer.
And it’s always fired up before anyone else’s.
Invariably what happens is I come home one night, turn the corner and see the display. And then I look at the dark void that is my house, and realize that not only am I not showing Christmas cheer, I am actually creating a cheer vortex, where joy and happiness get sucked away into the abyss.
Then I end up trying to decorate frantically at 10:30 at night just to try and light the darkness.
So this year, I plan to bring all of the lights and decorations down from the attic early and start sorting.
First off, I will pull out all of the net lights, the single greatest Christmas decoration invention since that big tube thingee that Christmas tree places use to wrap up your tree in net.
I currently have enough nets to cover the bushes along the front of my house.
However, I have a fairly large azalea bed that, by my estimate, I could cover with about 50 more net lights.
I am fairly certain I will not get the OK to proceed with that acquisition because (a) it will be a little pricey and (b) it will look like my front yard is on fire.
But I will look for some strategic places to put new lights and head out and buy them (pending management approval).
One thing I will NOT do is anything involving the roof line. As I have told you in years past, my roof is no longer a place for lights.
I applaud anyone and everyone who wants to do it at their home. Knock yourself out. Heck, if it means that much to you, you’re more than welcome to come do mine.
And it has nothing to do with heights. Heights don’t bother me, even after I saw my neighbor, while trying to hang Christmas lights, plummet from his roof and break his ankle a few years ago.
Rather, it is the extreme annoyance that I get from having to wiggle the ladder between bushes, and then fight tree branches near the house, and then lean all the way back to reach back to the roofline, only to have the long string of lights pull free of the clasps and go crashing to the ground, leaving me to spread some very un-Christmas cheer through the neighborhood.
Hopefully my early preparation will pay off, and I will be able to sit back and enjoy the true Christmas season.
But if I do it right, once I plug the lights in and see the house light up, it will mean it is officially Christmas season.
And I guess that means I can let the kids sing again.

Life lessons

Before my first child was born, my wife and I went to parenting classes. They taught us all kinds of valuable things such as the names of various body parts that I did not even know existed.
Sure, they touched on some of the basics of child care (you should feed them, etc.). Don’t get me wrong – it was all important information. It’s just that nothing can ever truly prepare you for being a parent.
It’s just something you have to experience, like the Grand Canyon or shingles. And now that I reflect on my years as a parent, I think it may be time to perhaps add some more sections to the classes.
Or, perhaps, another class, one that kicks in after your child can walk and talk (and therefore run from you and argue with you). Among those added sections:

1. Hairstyles for Little Girls: For those of you who are not females or fathers of daughters, you may not know that little girls’ hair contraptions are among the most complicated devices on the planet. Used incorrectly, they will inflict exceptional pain on a little girl, leaving you to try and convince her to wear a baseball cap to school.
2. Interpreting Children’s Clothes Sizes: I am still lost here, based on conversations such as this:
MY WIFE: Look at the tag. It says 6. So it’s for a 6-year-old.
ME: So I can get rid of the 5s and shelve the 7s?
MY WIFE: No, some of the 5s and 7s fit, too, and some of the 6s don’t.
ME:
I am guessing there is a better way to figure it out other than dressing your child and having your wife or mother or a random gas station attendant ask why you dressed your son in Capri pants.
3. Reasoning With Children: This would be a short section. “Don’t bother.”
4. Answering Impossible Questions: You don’t need to come up with an answer.
You just need to figure out a way out of it.
For example., the other day, my son said, “Daddy, if yellow and blue make green, what makes yellow?” “Excellent question!” I said. And then I followed up with, “Hey, let’s go buy a puppy!!!!”
5. Naming Pets: This would help you take proactive approaches to making sure you don’t have a goldfish named “Goldie,” a dog named “Doggie” or a Chewbacca action figure named “Yoda.”
6. Sports, and Why It’s OK Not to Start Them Out When They are Two Weeks Old: By my estimate, Allie was in roughly 8,000 organized sporting activities by the time she was 5. And when she finally said, “Uh, is it OK if I don’t play soccer/basketball/bobsledding this year?” we realized we were maybe stretching her a little thin.
Parker has done a few activities, but would much rather spend his time kicking around in the backyard climbing trees and looking for bugs.
Don’t get me wrong – if it works for your kid, great. But there’s nothing requiring you to put your child in sports from day one. It’ll wait. I promise.
7. Parenting Books, And What To Do When They Are Wrong: Parenting books are fine guides. But there will come a time when the book does not agree with your child. And you cannot reason with your child (see No. 3) and say, “Uh, yeah, you need to go back to sleep, because page 234 says that you should be sleeping through the night.” As a supplement to all of your parenting books, I recommend you pick up my best selling parenting advice which I will reprint in its entirety here: “Figure out what works for your kid. Do that. The End.”
8. What Baby Food Tastes Like: They should go ahead and just do a tasting so you get that little inquisition out of the way ASAP, rather than stretching it out for the duration of the food introduction. Oh, and in case you’re wondering – it tastes gross.
9. Screams of Pain, And How To Determine What Is Real: To the untrained ear, screams of children all sound equally horrible. But with a little work and practice, you will have no trouble determining the scream of “I am pretty sure my knee doesn’t bend this way” between the scream of “Hey, that’s my Barbie!”
10. Helping Siblings Get Along: If my wife had her say, this would be the part where you learn to sit down and talk with your children and iron out the issues. I would refer you to No. 3 and say, “Let ’em fight it out. Last man standing wins.”

I am sure there are many other things that could help parents as they journey down the path.
Of course, part of the joy of parenting is finding out what you know and you don’t know, and teaching and molding your children. I guess it’s something I learned from my parents. I just wish they’d taught me where yellow comes from.

Back on the field

A few years ago, I announced my retirement from competitive sports. My wife was pleased with this, as she was tired of having a husband who would wake up in the morning and asked to be carried down the stairs.
So it had been a few years since I played sports on a regular basis, unless you count front-yard wiffle ball with children.
I had been telling my wife for a while that I wanted to get back into some sort of regular physical activity, so when the opportunity to play flag football arose, I thought it was a perfect fit.
I was quite excited when I told my wife.
“Are you nuts?” was her response.
She then began to remind me of the very long list of ailments and injuries directly attributable to my career in flag football: Pulled muscles, broken ribs, shredded knees, crushed toes, black eyes.
I assured her that I was older and wiser. She agreed with half of the statement.
I promised her that I would (a) stretch a ton before each game, ensuring that I would not injure myself while playing and (b) I would not take it so seriously that a loss would put a dark cloud over the next few days.
When I went out for the first game, I was somewhat concerned what several years’ hiatus had done to me. Had I lost a step? Could I still catch the ball? Have they come up with the next generation forward pass?
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I could still run and catch. I was also pleased to find out that I was less out of shape than I thought.
I came to realize that, although I thought I had been inactive for the past seven years, I had actually been engaging in a fairly intensive workout. It involved:
1. Wind sprints: “Parker, get back in the cart and put down the cantaloupe — WE ARE IN A GROCERY STORE!!!”
2. Overhead presses: “Fine, touch the ceiling once more and then it’s bedtime.”
3. Leg lifts: “OK, one more airplane ride. And then Daddy has to collapse for a few minutes.”
4. Intense cardio: Also known as the “Just stepped on a Thomas the Tank hop”
Basically, unbeknownst to me, I was in some of the best shape of my life. OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. But I was far off from where I thought I would be, which was a good sign. The next day I was sore, but it was a good sore.
And you can guess how long that joy ride lasted. The next time we practiced, I made the egregious error of attempting to punt the ball, something that my leg decided was not going to happen.
I felt a sharp pull on the inside of my thigh. I tried to run a few times, and my leg informed me that if I continued to try that, it would make me fall on the ground.
A pulled muscle, I figured. Those happen. I’ll rest it and wrap it really tight for the next game. Sure enough, a few days later I was game ready again.
I stretched like crazy, wrapped up my leg tight as a drum, and was having a banner, pain-free day. Joy ride 2, prepare for your screeching halt.
There was a play across the middle, and a guy near me caught the ball.
I was a few yards away and tried to make up some ground and grab his flag. I’m not really sure how I did this, but I ended up planting my knee firmly in the ground and twisting my entire body to the left. I hobbled to the side, my knee throbbing in pain. After a few plays, I was able to come back in, thinking I was no worse for wear.
Let’s fast forward to the next morning, when I made the ridiculous mistake of trying to get out of bed.
The scream and subsequent roll off of the bed onto the floor let my wife know that something might be a tad wrong. I apparently pulled a muscle in my chest or rib cage. And if you are not familiar with those kinds of pulls, I recommend that every time you go to take breath, you stab yourself in the side with a steak knife.
Here we are a week later, and I appear to be on the mend. (I can actually brush my teeth without crying!) I haven’t set foot back on the field yet, but I am hoping to be there soon.
After all, I was in far better shape than I realized. And surely these were just freak accidents that could have happened to anyone.
I am sure the next game will be fine. I just hope my wife will carry me downstairs the next morning.

Fly guy

So there I was, staring down my enemy, prepared for combat. We were locked in a fight of epic proportions. Two entered the cage. Only one would emerge. Then, I heard the door open.
ALLIE: Daddy! I need to go! Get out of the bathroom!
ME: (slamming the door shut) YOU’LL LET THE FLY OUT!
ALLIE: Daaaa-ddy!
ME: There are two other bathrooms. I’M AT WAR HERE!!!!
And so goes my insane fascination with hunting down flies when they enter my house. I refer to myself as a warrior. My wife has several other terms, none quite so noble.
For some reason, when a fly enters the house, I absolutely lose it. I have a set strategy for killing them, which starts with ordering everyone out of the room. I shut off all of the lights, save for the one in the bathroom near the kitchen. Often, I taunt the flies. In short order, they buzz on into the bathroom. Then it is Go time. For the record, I am undefeated. No fly escapes on my watch. With my trusty fly swatter, The Big Green Death Machine, I have vanquished many a fly foe. I even have different strategies. Sometimes, I lie in wait. Other times, I am the aggressor. And other times, I opt for style points, only attempting to take the fly out of midair.
You may think that I am somewhat odd for this ritualistic fly killing I take part in. You would be wrong. For one thing, I have found that several other people – including a certain president of a certain United States of America – are also avid fly hunters. Doubt me? Would U.S. News or Newsweek or Globe or wherever it was I read it lie to you?
But I also have found that it is possibly genetic. I was over at my parents’ house this summer, and we noted an inordinate number of flies zooming around out back. (This may or may not have had anything to do with the beached whale carcass.) Over several visits, we had been fending off flies the old-fashioned way – fans turned on high, newspapers rolled up, and repeatedly pawing at the air while trying to stifle your comments lest the 4-year-old hear them and repeat them.
Eventually, we took the logical step. What’s that you say – did we go inside? Oh, no. That is not the logical step. That is the coward’s step! We went on the offensive. We went shopping. And we armed ourselves with the Big Blue, Yellow and Pink Death Machines. Bring it on, flies.
At first, we simply kept the swatters handy for standard swatting. Fly lands, fly dies. You don’t want to rush into a big fly hunt production until you’re sure everyone is on board. But after a while, it became evident that this was not just for utility purposes. And how did this become evident? Probably when my dad said, “You’re sister’s got more than you.” When you start keeping tabs, it is officially on.
From then on, we became consumed with the flies. Once we had wiped out the flies (or they had gotten the message, as I prefer to think), we actually found ourselves wishing more flies would arrive, which I have to say is a weird place to arrive at.
After a few sessions, simply stalking the flies was not enough. We began to develop rules. Among them:
– Flies on someone’s head are fair game.
– Rule 1 does not apply if Mom is the someone.
– Double points if you hit a fly on your own person.
– Fly on a drink? Just shoo it away (that lesson learned the hard way).
We even began to try trick shots and developed fly-killing jargon. At one point, I was sitting there and one landed on my swatter. I simply said to my dad, “High five.” And he immediately knew what I was talking about. In a flash of blue plastic – WHAP! Fly sandwich. To completely go off the deep end, I have even designed my ultimate fly swatter. (Viking inspired, made from skulls, and shooting fire. It will so rock.)
And in case you were wondering – yes, my wife does sigh. A lot.
Oh, during this very grown-up process, we learned one interesting thing about my son: he can catch flies. We were complaining that there were no flies to sway, and Parker said he’d go get us one. He ran away and came back about 15 seconds later, fist clenched. He opened his hand, and sure enough – out it flew. He did it several more times. Not sure how he did it. I am guessing he picked them off the whale.

A-maze-ing

We were lost. I was willing to admit it, especially when I saw my daughter, Allie, drawing the words “HELP US” in huge letters in the dirt. Dire times.
But my wife was not going to take defeat. “This way,” she said. “And Parker, don’t pick the corn.”
Yes, we were well into a corn maze, which is far bigger than you think it will be. A reader sent me information on this particular maze, located in Gilbert, just off I-20 exit 51. (I am not positive, but I got the sense the reader felt confident that I would lose at least one if not two kids if I went.)
My wife and I had pitched around the idea of going for a while, and when a Saturday morning came free with nothing on the agenda, we decided it was time to take the challenge. We loaded up the kids and were there in no time. This particular corn maze is part of Maize Quest, a rather sprawling network of corn mazes around the country. From what I can gather from the website, if you have the land, they will come and build you a big ol’ corn maze just for you. Of course, you don’t have to stick with corn. As they tell you, “Fence mazes, rope mazes, stone mazes, cornfield mazes, labyrinths, mist mazes, bamboo mazes, hedge mazes, hybrid mazes.” In fact, at the farm in Gilbert, they also have a tire maze and a “marshmallow” maze, which I believe was comprised of bails of hay wrapped in white plastic. Or giant marshmallows, which if true is probably quite a sight after a heavy rain.
Anywho, the corn maze sprawls over eight acres. To give you an idea how big eight acres is, it is twice the size of a four-acre plot of land. The maze boasts three miles of pathways, which means you will, without a doubt, be carrying at least one child by the end of it.
This particular maze had a pirate theme, and from an aerial shot you could see that detailed pirate scene that had been carved out of the giant field of corn. In the middle of the corn were two observation decks, and a third, taller deck was at the perimeter. Each deck was staffed with people whose job it was to get you out of the maze should you become hopelessly lost. They arm you with a big flag that you wave when you are ready to quit. Or about to wet your pants. They offer different colors of flags, but I think they should just stick with white surrender flags.
You are given a map to start with, but you can only see the map when you hold it under red transparency. (It’s kinda like those fast food game pieces, only in this instance, you don’t win a Big Mac, but rather your freedom from a corn maze.) There are five stations throughout the maze that have map readers. So, if you can make it to the station, you can put your map under the reader and chart out the path to the next station, which leads to this conversation:
MY WIFE: OK, left, second right, third right, left, left, third right, double back, over the bridge, left, right, second right.
ME: Uh...
MY WIFE: Put down the flag.
Somehow, my wife managed to get us from station to station. She is a far better map reader than I am, so I took the role of chief distracter during map reads. My wife would be plotting our course, and I would be saying one of two things:
1. “Allie, it’s a grasshopper. It’s not going to ‘get you.’”
2. “Parker, it’s a grasshopper. Leave it alone.”
If you have a fear of grasshoppers, I would recommend against a corn maze. Grasshoppers love corn. Or mazes. But there are plenty of them.
When we got to the fifth and final station, my wife told me we were almost at the end. (And made me erase Allie’s “Help Us” sign.) Sure enough, following her lead, we soon saw the exit. After a little more than an hour, the kids sprinted out of the exit victorious. One of the workers the main observation deck announces via loudspeaker when you complete the maze, which the kids found very cool.
I highly recommend a day at the corn maze with your family. If I can go and not only complete the maze but also return with the same two children I entered the maze with, surely you can do this as well. They also let you do it at night, using flashlights. Yeah, no chance I don’t lose a kid that way. If you go, just remember to follow the map, work as a team and, most importantly, remember — the grasshoppers are not going to get you.
For more information, visit www.cornmaze.com.

Aging out

It’s official: I’m old.
Granted, I don’t FEEL old, but the folks in product marketing and advertising have decided I am no longer young, as they have kicked me out of their coveted 18-34 demographic, simply because I made the decision to turn 35.
When I was a kid, 35 was WAY old. Like as old as my parents. I now realize that my parents were actually younger than this when I was born.
Being able to wrap your arms around the fact that your parents were once – gasp – younger is a disturbing concept.
So since we are so focused on number when it comes to age, I will focus on some important numbers during my 35 years logged here on Earth:
5: Number of places I have lived. The bulk of my years are here in Aiken (including my first ones). My second longest tenure was in college at Alabama. Throw in a year in Michigan, a year in D.C. and a year in Orlando and I have just enough experience in life to know that I would rather live deep in a well than in a big city.
2: The number of children I have.
4: The number of children my parents had.
Countless: The number of times I have questioned how, as the fourth child, I made it here. Don’t get me wrong: Love my two children. I just couldn’t imagine leaving man-to-man coverage and playing a zone defense.
11: The number of ways my children think babies come to the planet.
0: Number of children that will be produced in those ways, which include shaving baby monkeys, alien landings, and finding “baby nests” in trees.
8: The number of pet dogs I have had.
3: The number of pet opossums I have had.
1: The number of pet raccoons I have had.
0: The number of pet manatees I have had, due to unfair laws and unreasonable spouses.
4: The number of cars I have owned my life.
1: The number of new cars I have owned in my life.
13: The number of years I drove that new car before selling it last year.
20: The average number of new cars most of my friends seem to have owned since college.
59: Cost, in cents, of a gallon of gas when I got my driver’s license.
11: Age I looked when I got my license.
3: Times I got pulled over because a police officer thought I was some sixth grader out on a joy ride in mom’s car.
240: Length, in feet, of my mother’s Mercury Grand Marquis, which made me look even more diminutive.
5: Years my wife and I dated before getting married.
9: Years we have been married.
52: Years my wife feels like we have been together.
11: Milliseconds it took me to accept my first job offer out of college.
3: Number of times the person offering the job told me to stop accepting the position before I knew the salary, location, etc.
15,900: My annual salary out of college.
7: An hourly wage I thought was AWESOME when in college.
10: Cents the Tooth Fairy paid out when I was a kid.
3: Dollars the Tooth Fairy now pays out, which seems to be outpacing inflation.
0: The number of times I have been called for jury duty.
1: The number of times I have been a Nielsen viewer.
2: Seconds it takes you to realize there is a flaw when people are getting asked to record their viewing habits more often than to determine their fellow citizens’ guilt or innocence.
6: Minutes that we shot for in running a mile when I played high school soccer.
6: Minutes that, I guarantee you, will not be even attempted when running a mile unless a bear is chasing me.
4: Number of football National Championships Alabama has won in football in my lifetime.
20: Number of football National Championships that Alabama fans, including myself, expect Nick Saban to win over the next 20 years (after this year, of course, which is a warm-up).
575: Number of “Mike’s Life” columns I estimate that I have written.
500ish: Number of times someone has asked, “Does your wife get mad about your columns?”
0: Number of times she has gotten mad about a column.
1: Number of times I have been called a “parasite” as a result of a column.
So there you have it. A very random sampling of key numbers OTHER than 35.
Frankly, getting older doesn’t bother me that much, even if I have been kicked out of the cool kids’ demographic.
But I am sure my new club – the 35-55 demographic – can be a happening club, too.
After all, we are the ones who can really make a difference in this world. First order – I’m getting a manatee.

Fire. Fire on the legs.

So there we were, having a delightful time by the pool. Allie was swimming and singing, Parker was splashing around and laughing, and I was sitting on the side. Probably whistling. A bluebird may have even perched on my shoulder. Suburban utopia.
Parker decided to hop out and come over to where I was. He stopped about 10 feet from me and got a curious look on his face. It was a mix between confusion and fear. And then came the dance. It was a dance I know well. It was the dance of someone being mauled by fire ants.
In a blur, I went over to grab Parker, all the while he was speeding up the dance and swatting at his legs, screaming, “ANTS! DADDY! ANTS!!!”
I grabbed Parker by the arms and dipped him in the pool. Allie did a backstroke, making sure she was as far removed from any ants as possible. I was holding Parker by the wrists and had him in the water, and he was kicking furiously in the water, screaming in pain. I am fairly certain the bluebird flew away.
My wife wrapped him in a towel and took him inside. I told Allie it was time to get out of the pool, and she looked at me as if I told her it was time to cut off her own ear. “Uh, Daddy – there are ANTS over there.”
I assured her she would be fine, and that I would lift her over the ants in question. After some minor negotiation (“Fine. A pony. And you can get your driver’s license. Yes, and a tattoo.”) I got Allie inside. Parker was sitting on the couch with my wife, and it was clear the ants had not held back. All over his legs were huge welts, and the area around each welt was turning a bright red. And they hurt. Bad. For those of you who have never been bitten by a fire ant, I offer this comparable experience: Heat up a metal shish kabob to 1,000 degrees. Now jab it into your flesh. Repeat.
We tried to put ice on the wounds, but Parker wanted none of that. As bad as the bites felt, he said the ice felt worse. He had close to 20 bites, and his little legs looked just brutal. Eventually, we got him somewhat calmed down.
We gave him some Benadryl, which makes some children sleepy. Parker is not some children. If we could figure out a way to hook Parker up to an energy grid, we could easily power a city the size of Seattle. He was in fast forward mode. He would run to the den, hop on the couch, jump to the table, sprint upstairs, say something like, DaddycanIhaveajuiceboxIlovedinosaursweneedanotherpuppy!” Eventually, we were able to settle him down (I was amazed at my wife’s accuracy with a dart gun), at which point it was time to finish the battle the ants had started.
Sure, I’ve had run-ins with fire ants. The last major one I had with was courtesy of a nest that had taken up in an extension ladder. When I raised the ladder, the ants came raining down on me, bringing about their exceptionally unnecessary viciousness. But I’m a grown-up. I can take it. We settled it like men. Or, at least, one man armed with poison.
But NOBODY bites my kids repeatedly. Except my kids. But I think we have gotten through the biting phases. This was going to be more than straight up poison. This was going to be a message to the other ants.
I went out on the pool deck and found where they were coming from. That was easy because they were coming from, well, everywhere. In between the concrete slabs of the pool deck are these little white plastic spacers. They are apparently hollow, because streaming out of both ends were ants. There are eight of the spacers around the pool, and each of them had a steady stream of ants going from the pool area to the yard. I can only assume that they have a nice little colony underneath my pool area, which I also hope does not suddenly collapse in on itself as a result of their efforts.
So I armed myself with some ant killer and a thirst for vengeance. At each opening, I put a little bit of the powder in, filling the gap.
Normally, that would be enough to take care of it. But they attacked my son. They would pay.
As the ants returned to find their pathway blocked by a deadly white powder, they would begin to cluster around in little groups, clearly not knowing what to do.
So, I took the powder and made little circles around the clusters, trapping in groups of 20 or so ants in a little poison death corral. I then would scream, “NOT SO TOUGH NOW, HUH?” or “ They may bite our children, but they’ll never take ... OUR FREEDOM!!!”
I continued to taunt and isolate the ants, all the while lecturing them on coming in to my yard and disrupting our Rockwellian pool time.
After about an hour, my wife told me to come inside, as she needed my help. And the neighbors were unsettled with my warpaint.
Parker was pretty much healed up after a couple of days, and I think I have cured the ant problem. And hopefully any other ants in the vicinity got the message, leaving me to focus on other issues. Such as how to get Allie a driver’s license.

Life's a beach

It took us a while to figure out — it had been about five years since my wife and I had taken a weekend for just the two of us.
Time flies when you’re knee-deep in diapers.
True, most years we make a pilgrimage back to Alabama for a football game sans kids, but I think most people would agree that a weekend at a fraternity house does not constitute a romantic getaway.
The maid of honor at our wedding was getting married in Hilton Head, and we saw this as a perfect time to enjoy a weekend at the beach.
The wedding was going to be a small affair, with dinner Friday night and the wedding Saturday night, so we would have much of the daytime to spend doing things that did not involve finding a restaurant with a playground.
The wedding itself was to be at a very nice resort right on the beach.
I had made reservations several months prior, at a hotel I was told was “next door.” Apparently, I should have asked for them to be more specific, because “next door” was about a mile away.
Two days before we left, this came to our attention. Actually, it came to my attention via this message from my wife: “Do you know how far away we’re staying from the wedding?”
By her tone, I was fairly certain that she was not actually looking for a measurement.
Instead, I opted for the counter argument of telling her that the rooms at the resort were way more expensive. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. After all, why splurge a little since we get to go out of town every five whole years.”
Clearly, I had some work to do.
So I called the resort and spoke to a very nice woman in Texas named Lisa.
I know she was in Texas because I asked her. I always enjoy hearing someone cheerily answer the phone, tell me her name is something like “Janeane,” and then having her confess that she, in fact, was in New Dehli. I don’t have a problem with call centers being stationed overseas. I just always find it humorous.
So Lisa asked what she could do for me. I laid it out for her in plain terms: “I’m in the doghouse. We’re going to a wedding in Hilton Head, and I tried to book a room on the cheap. My wife is not very happy with me.”
Lisa told me that they did have rooms, but the wedding rate deadline had passed. I asked how much the rate would be. Way more than twice our current reservation rate at the Walk-a-Ways Inn.
I sighed. I was ready to bite the bullet when I figured it was worth asking: “Are there any rate discounts you might be able to give me? I am both cheap and in the doghouse, which presents a rather difficult dilemma.”
I heard her pecking away on her keyboard. “Let’s see.” Peck, peck, peck. When she came back with a new rate, I asked her to repeat it. Indeed, it was only a few bucks more than our current reservation.
She asked me if we wanted a king size or two queens. I told her that I felt confident a king would suffice.
Showing she had a good sense of humor, she told me that, as a precaution, she would have extra blankets sent to the room in case I needed to use the floor.
When we got into Hilton Head, we checked into our room and found that Lisa had done us right — we had a nice big balcony, overlooking the pool area and the ocean.
The dinner that night was nice, a cookout on a deck overlooking the ocean during which my wife got to catch up with lots of friends from high school.
That night, we both went to sleep looking forward to sleeping in as late as we possibly could. No alarms, no atomic elbow drops from a flying 4-year-old.
And cue 7 a.m. Apparently, we can’t sleep in like we used to.
After a nice breakfast (again, by the beach), we headed out to go shopping in Hilton Head. We went to Harbour Town and found that the Hilton Head approach to stores is to (a) make them as small as possible (b) fill them with as much merchandise as possible and (c) encourage people who like to stand still for 10-12 minutes at a time to block the entranceways.
I’m all for quaint, but I have no desire to be blocked in a tiny, round store just so that I get my son a shirt with an alligator on it.
The wedding itself was on the beach and was a beautiful and scenic affair. Another wedding had ended a while earlier and was holding their reception at a nearby pavilion.
It was a touching scene to see the bride and groom exchange rings as “Macarena” blared from next door.
After the reception, my wife and I concluded the evening in the most perfect way possible — we sat on our balcony overlooking the ocean for a while, and then retired inside and fell asleep to the soothing sounds of South Florida beating Auburn in overtime.
It was a well deserved and relaxing vacation, although we both were ready to get back to the kids by Sunday.
I think it’s important that couples on occasion take time for themselves. I can’t wait to do it again in 2012.

A swimming success

Victory is mine. Parker can swim.
At the beginning of the summer, I told my wife that I would have him swimming by the end of the summer. And we both stuck to it and accomplished our goal, meaning he can start having dinner again.
Ha! Little parenting humor there! Moving on...
Having a pool in our backyard is a tremendous amount of fun. It is also tremendously terrifying. When we bought the house, the pool was just sitting there, a 20,000-gallon rectangular pond in my backyard. When Allie was about two, we were walking around the side of the pool, and, despite the fact that I was holding her hand, she was doing one of those staggering, leaning walks that two-year olds do, and stepped right off the edge into the pool. We were at the shallow end, and I immediately pulled her out, but the split second shot of her looking up at me from under the water terrifies me to this day. The next day, my wife and I were shopping for fences to put around the pool deck.
Despite the comfort of the fence around the pool, we still had very strict rules on pool use. They can only go out there with adults, no running, keep the jet ski under 40 mph, etc.
Allie is a very good swimmer which is a comforting fact. However, at the beginning of the summer, Parker was, well, not. He wore a little life vest when he swam, which we referred to as his “bubble” for some reason. One thing that always disturbed me about “bubbles” and the like is that it gives the kids the false confidence they can swim. The bubble is a lot of fun, though, because he can just paddle around the pool, floating here and there. However, it’s not swimming, and it was key that we get him in fish mode.
In order to wean him off the bubble, I started with a rule: He could not go in the deep end unless he had his bubble on. He could touch at the shallow end, so he would sometimes opt to go without the bubble and just hang in the shallow end. But the allure of the deep blue deep end was great, and he would yearn to travel out there where his sister was swimming around. In order to encourage him to swim, I would stand down at the deep end and say, “WHAT’S THE MATTER, LITTLE BABY – CAN’T SWIM!?!?! BOO-HOO, BABY!!!” And then Allie and I would point and laugh.
Ha! A little more parenting humor there! (I cannot vouch for whether or not Big Sister may have mocked just a smidge.)
So when Parker said he wanted to swim to the deep end, I told him he had to start swimming on his own before he could go. We started in the shallow end, where I would stand about five feet away, and he would stand on the steps. He would launch himself toward me, flailing his arms and legs, slowly sinking underwater. He would stand up, spewing water, hacking and snorting as he emerged. Not exactly a stellar beginning. We kept trying and he eventually got to where he would go for about 8-10 feet, although he always concluded with sinking to the bottom at the end. Fine at the shallow end. Not so fine for someone wanting to go to the deep end.
When Allie learned to swim, there was a point when it just sort of clicked. All at once, everything fell into place for her, and she started gliding across the water. I kept waiting for that moment with the Parker. Then, one day, he was standing on the steps and he said, “Daddy, watch this!” I was about 10 feet from him, expecting him to have that click-on moment. Instead, what he did is, well, odd. He dove underwater, belly almost touching the bottom, and swam, kicking his feet together like a dolphin all the way to me, and popped out of the water still holding his breath. Sure that it was an accident, I put him back on the steps and told him to do it again. Again, down underwater, and he just dolphined on over to me, not coming up for air until he reached me. Perhaps this is normal, but it sure seems odd to me that he could swim UNDER the water, but not ON TOP of the water.
We kept working on the above water swimming, but every time he would start to sink, he would just go into Flipper mode and go torpedoing underwater. Again, all well and good when you can stand up when you get done.
So the other day, he asked if I could carry him on my back into the deep end. We swam to the other side, and he grabbed onto the wall. Just to see what happened, I pushed back way from the wall and told Parker to swim to me. CLICK. He pushed off and starting furiously paddling toward me, his head high above water. I kept swimming backwards, and he kept swimming toward me, until before he knew it we were in the shallow end. The next step was to master jumping into the deep end and swimming. I told him to jump and swim to me, as I treaded water in the deep end. “Will I sink?” he asked me.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” I told him.
He jumped and, with a few quick strokes, was on top of the water, swimming furiously toward me. He could swim.
While I will never feel comfortable letting children swim without an adult present, it’s nice to know that both of them are at the level where they can hold their own. Next summer, Parker will continue to improve, and the pool will be more and more fun. For one thing, he’ll now be able to take the jet ski to the deep end.

Swing town

Allie's eyes lit up when she opened the birthday present and saw the multi-colored wooden swing, which we told her we would hang at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

I am fortunate in that my kids love the basic toys. Fire trucks, swings, blocks, etc. I am sure they would love video games given the option, but since I told them video games do not exist and that anyone saying they had one was telling lies seems to have stemmed that tide.

When we got over to my parents' house, my dad and I pulled the swing out of the box in preparation of finding the perfect tree to hang it from. Unfortunately, the swing only came with an 8 foot rope, and anyone who knows anything about swings knows that 8 feet is nowhere near enough rope to be able to get you to a dangerous - and therefore fun - height.

So my dad went into the garage and found some more rope, and then we set off to find the perfect tree. We stood there in the backyard, and we were both thinking the same thing - man, I wish that tree was still there.

My parents' backyard has a nice, gentle slope. There are woods in the back, and when I was a kid, there was a path right thorough the middle of the woods. About halfway down the path was a great big tree that towered up into the canopy and gently arched over the pathway. I remember vividly as a kid when my dad shimmied to the part of the arching tree just over the path - easily 40 feet up - and tied a rope to the tree. At the other end we attached a tire and had the quintessential makeshift American swing.

The beauty of the swing is that you could get a nice running start and swoop down the hill, so that at the apex of the swing, you were quite high up. (I would give an estimate, but someone far better at geometry than I would probably correct me based on my guess of the tree height.) Regardless, you were quite high up, high enough to break my sister's arm when she plummeted from the tire swing as a kid. Good times.

But alas, Mother Nature had taken that tree down, and the path has grown up somewhat, so that even if you DID manage to swing through there, you would be playing a rather painful game of woodland pinball.

My dad and I agreed that we would consider clearing a new path in the near future, but for now we would find a slightly less awesome tree branch to attach the swing to. We found one close to the house, probably about 15-20 feet high. We attached the swing, and Allie was swinging away in no time, having an absolute blast. Of course, then my wife and mom had to come out and ruin the fun by asking, "Why is she jumping from a ladder onto the swing?"

Clearly, they aren't even trying to enjoy the swing experience. "To get more air," I responded casually. You see, you back the ladder up, climb up a few steps, and launch - a good enough swing and you can even come back and hit the ladder on your return flight.

I tried to calm my wife by explaining to her that our swing when we were kids was even higher and more dangerous. Apparently, she doesn't accept the argument that the one we had as children actually broke children's bones, so this was safe.

Of course, plenty of the playground stuff we had as kids was awesomely dangerous and, in fact, tire-related. I remember in elementary school when two of the most coveted playground toys were giant tractor tires. We would curl up in them and push each other around the playground. Occasionally, we would line up and roll into each other. Last tire standing won! Ah, nothing like the fun of spinning inside a tractor tire that, if it fell on you, would probably crush you.

Oh, and if memory serves, one of the first things you learn in giant tire spinning was to check for water. Most everyone at some point hopped in, tucked in their arms and legs, got a push from a friend and - SPLASH!!! - about 10 gallons of nasty, fetid mosquito-infested water dumped on your back.

My dad and I are still scouting out some new locations for the swing. We may end up leaving it where it is now, but we may try to track down an old tire and maybe have two swings. Who knows, maybe we can get a good deal on a couple of tractor tires while we're at it. The key thing is to make sure the kids get good, wholesome tire experience, just like we had as kids. Except for my sister. We'll try to avoid that.