Many father-son relationships can be defined by a single group of words.
“Luke, I am your father.” (Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, 1980)
“Daddy’s gonna kill Ralphie.” (Ralphie Parker and The Old Man, 1983)
“You can’t see the line, can you, Russ?” (Clark Griswold and Rusty Griswold, 1989)
“Hold the light.” (KC and myself, 1987*-present)
When something breaks around the house, KC generally tries to fix it. Oftentimes, the fixing must take place in a dark, hard to reach location where his mole-like nearsightedness and sausage-like fingers prove to be extreme handicaps. Fortunately for KC, two things happened. One, his wife bore him a son. And two, Conrad Hubert invented the flashlight in 1898. So when the going gets dark, I get going. Meaning that I shine a flashlight on whatever it is that KC is trying to fix.
Over 20 plus years, Holding the Light has evolved into a ritual. KC tries to do the work without my aid, but realizes that he “can’t see shit.” He finds me somewhere in the house and asks me to Hold the Light. I dutifully Hold the Light. After about three minutes, my mind wanders and the flashlight beam does the same. KC, usually lying on his back with sweat pouring down his face and the blood rushing to his head, calmly reminds me to Hold the Light on The Work. The beam continues to wander. Then he breaks down and shouts, “Seth, HOLD THE LIGHT. ON THE WORK” and I re-engage for another three minutes.
Really, these situations are more than a ritual. They are an allegory for our entire father-son relationship. KC proactively struggling against Mother Nature, his heels on the edge of the abyss. Me adding to his insanity by not exactly doing as I am told and second-guessing many of his decisions.
“Are you sure you want to use that wrench?” “It would probably be easier if you sprayed WD-40 on it first.” “Are you sure you want to take that off?” “Why didn’t you do this first?”
I have no business back-seat driving these situations. Despite years of Holding the Light, I know very little about home repair; certainly less than KC. But the man has a track record which suggests he could use some help from time to time.
Like when he was working on the underside of his Ford Bronco but forgot to engage the emergency brake. Our basketball pole was the only thing that stopped the car from plowing through a fence and coming to rest at the bottom of our neighbor’s swimming pool. Or the time he tried to remove an axle head from the same Bronco. The greasiness caused his hands to slip, and he punched himself in the face with a closed fist. Or the night he tried to turn off the water valve in our upstairs bathroom. The toilet overflowed. Everyone was in bed, and the front of the house was a swamp before my mom heard the water running down the inside of the walls . Or the time. . .
*Date is an estimate. I was born in 1985, and I figure that by age two, KC would have judged my hand strength sufficient to hold a flashlight.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Balls
When I first started going to the gym, I was under the age minimum so I did my best to keep a low profile. I kept my eyes to the floor, and I did not talk to any of the patrons. One old man, however, went out of his way to talk to me. He was a regular at the gym, known among the patrons for wearing shorts so short that he exposed his balls while stretching.
The first time he spoke to me, I was sitting on a bench in the locker room, bending over to tie my shoes. A pair of feet suddenly entered the top of my vision, and a voice began to ask me a question. As I raised my head to mumble a reply, I almost swallowed my tongue. The old man was standing in front of me, completely naked. And since I was sitting down his wad of balls and dick were at eye level, about two feet from my face. I do not recall the contents of our conversation; I only remember keeping my head permanently inclined in order to avoid contact with his meat eye.
Since I was relatively new to the world of locker rooms, I tried to take the incident in stride. Maybe that’s just how it is, I thought. However, eleven years of subsequent locker room experience indicate that normal men do not approach 14 year old boys in the locker room while naked and offer their junk as an olive branch.
Of course, that is just my own interpretation of locker room etiquette. Others might disagree. Such as one of my undergraduate professors. He and I arrived at the gym at approximately the same time and happened to select side-by-side lockers. We struck up a conversation during which he began to change his clothes. This would be completely unremarkable but for the fact that he never completed the task. He just stood there naked for the entirety of our conversation, which seemed to last an infinite number of minutes.
Other examples abound. Like the fat guy at my gym in Urbana who would practice his golf swing in the nude while staring at himself in the mirror. Or the people that lie on the locker room tiles and stretch while naked. Or the two or three guys that I have seen engaging in meticulous, open-forum crotch-scaping. A man’s face is the only thing that he should shave in public.
Unfortunately, I am not without guilt in the keep-yourself-to-yourself department. One day about two years ago, I was at the gym, bent over at the waist in front of a treadmill with my legs about shoulder width apart, trying to stretch before I went running. I was standing in front of a mirror, so I wound up staring absently at my own ass. I slowly began to realize that something was not right. There was a weird pink splotch on the back of my pants. At first I thought that I had spilled bleach on my clothes. Then a horrifying realization washed over me. I could not remember the last time I had cleaned my apartment, much less used bleach on anything. This was not a stain. This was my balls. My shorts and my underwear each had gaping holes which apparently lined up perfectly when I bent over. My insistence on wearing my clothes until they disintegrated had finally caught up with me.
The first time he spoke to me, I was sitting on a bench in the locker room, bending over to tie my shoes. A pair of feet suddenly entered the top of my vision, and a voice began to ask me a question. As I raised my head to mumble a reply, I almost swallowed my tongue. The old man was standing in front of me, completely naked. And since I was sitting down his wad of balls and dick were at eye level, about two feet from my face. I do not recall the contents of our conversation; I only remember keeping my head permanently inclined in order to avoid contact with his meat eye.
Since I was relatively new to the world of locker rooms, I tried to take the incident in stride. Maybe that’s just how it is, I thought. However, eleven years of subsequent locker room experience indicate that normal men do not approach 14 year old boys in the locker room while naked and offer their junk as an olive branch.
Of course, that is just my own interpretation of locker room etiquette. Others might disagree. Such as one of my undergraduate professors. He and I arrived at the gym at approximately the same time and happened to select side-by-side lockers. We struck up a conversation during which he began to change his clothes. This would be completely unremarkable but for the fact that he never completed the task. He just stood there naked for the entirety of our conversation, which seemed to last an infinite number of minutes.
Other examples abound. Like the fat guy at my gym in Urbana who would practice his golf swing in the nude while staring at himself in the mirror. Or the people that lie on the locker room tiles and stretch while naked. Or the two or three guys that I have seen engaging in meticulous, open-forum crotch-scaping. A man’s face is the only thing that he should shave in public.
Unfortunately, I am not without guilt in the keep-yourself-to-yourself department. One day about two years ago, I was at the gym, bent over at the waist in front of a treadmill with my legs about shoulder width apart, trying to stretch before I went running. I was standing in front of a mirror, so I wound up staring absently at my own ass. I slowly began to realize that something was not right. There was a weird pink splotch on the back of my pants. At first I thought that I had spilled bleach on my clothes. Then a horrifying realization washed over me. I could not remember the last time I had cleaned my apartment, much less used bleach on anything. This was not a stain. This was my balls. My shorts and my underwear each had gaping holes which apparently lined up perfectly when I bent over. My insistence on wearing my clothes until they disintegrated had finally caught up with me.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
No Ticket
My sister attended the University of Missouri. When it was time to move her to campus, the family did just about everything right. Stockpiled Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons. Bought her a coat that would hold up against the Missouri winter. Built a loft for her bed. Bought a miniature refrigerator and a fashionable red plastic microwave. We did not, however, remember to reserve a truck to transport these items from Memphis to Columbia.
Prince Ali arrived in Jasmine’s city with 75 golden camels. Hannibal marched on Rome with the aid of hundreds of elephants. Genghis Kahn and his Golden Horde swept across Eurasia on the backs of thousands of horses. All of these beasts could have fit comfortably inside of the 25 foot straight truck that my father rented from Ryder at the last minute.
If you get in a wreck on a motorcycle, there’s a decent chance that you will die but it’s somewhat unlikely that another driver will get hurt. But if you get in a wreck behind the wheel of a 25 foot straight truck, you’ll probably survive but the road will be littered with innocent corpses. Yet somehow you must have a special license to operate a motorcycle, and Uncle Sam only required that KC breathe on a mirror in order to rent that 25 foot behemoth. In hindsight, the Ryder employee manning the rental desk probably did not even go that far. He likely took one look at KC’s moving day outfit, which consisted of a red t-shirt and mid-thigh jorts (cut-off jean shorts), and knew that KC was eminently qualified to operate heavy machinery.
Despite rolling up to a campus where she knew no one in a truck that screams, “I BROUGHT MY PONY WITH ME TO SCHOOL!,” my sister managed to make friends. I met some of them a few months later when my dad, my mom and I returned to Columbia to watch Mizzou play Nebraska in football.
The game was on a Saturday morning in mid-season. It takes about six hours to get to Columbia from Memphis, and we had to depart late on Friday night so that I could fulfill my princely duties slanging water for the Houston High School football team. Our plan was to open a vein, fill it with 6 hours of Wallflowers, Hootie, and Phil Collins; get to Columbia about 4 AM; sleep fast; and hurry to the game. We hit the road, and the plan seemed to be going well. Then, about two hours into the trip, just south of Cape Girardeau, KC shattered the southeastern Missouri silence with a sudden, thunderous “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”
At first I thought Hootie’s uninflected droning of “Ionlywannabewithyouuuu” had finally, after seven years of family trips, broken my father’s will to live. Unfortunately I was wrong. KC had left the tickets to the game in the kitchen.
We turned around. We got the tickets. Ten or eleven hours after we first hit the road, we arrived in Columbia. We slept for a couple hours at the hotel and went to the game. I know that I was very tired at the game because I actually laughed when KC told me for the 76th time that the N on Nebraska’s helmets stands for knowledge. We dozed in the stands, but we were awake long enough to see Nebraska quarterback Eric Crouch embarrass the Mizzou defense with a 105 yard touchdown run. The play was the cornerstone of Crouch’s Heisman-winning season and remains the most impressive athletic feat I have seen in person.
It turns out that ticket misplacement, along with size 8 cranial circumferences and inability to color inside the lines, is a genetic trait that can be passed from father to son. To read about my own ticket problems, click here.
Prince Ali arrived in Jasmine’s city with 75 golden camels. Hannibal marched on Rome with the aid of hundreds of elephants. Genghis Kahn and his Golden Horde swept across Eurasia on the backs of thousands of horses. All of these beasts could have fit comfortably inside of the 25 foot straight truck that my father rented from Ryder at the last minute.
If you get in a wreck on a motorcycle, there’s a decent chance that you will die but it’s somewhat unlikely that another driver will get hurt. But if you get in a wreck behind the wheel of a 25 foot straight truck, you’ll probably survive but the road will be littered with innocent corpses. Yet somehow you must have a special license to operate a motorcycle, and Uncle Sam only required that KC breathe on a mirror in order to rent that 25 foot behemoth. In hindsight, the Ryder employee manning the rental desk probably did not even go that far. He likely took one look at KC’s moving day outfit, which consisted of a red t-shirt and mid-thigh jorts (cut-off jean shorts), and knew that KC was eminently qualified to operate heavy machinery.
Despite rolling up to a campus where she knew no one in a truck that screams, “I BROUGHT MY PONY WITH ME TO SCHOOL!,” my sister managed to make friends. I met some of them a few months later when my dad, my mom and I returned to Columbia to watch Mizzou play Nebraska in football.
The game was on a Saturday morning in mid-season. It takes about six hours to get to Columbia from Memphis, and we had to depart late on Friday night so that I could fulfill my princely duties slanging water for the Houston High School football team. Our plan was to open a vein, fill it with 6 hours of Wallflowers, Hootie, and Phil Collins; get to Columbia about 4 AM; sleep fast; and hurry to the game. We hit the road, and the plan seemed to be going well. Then, about two hours into the trip, just south of Cape Girardeau, KC shattered the southeastern Missouri silence with a sudden, thunderous “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”
At first I thought Hootie’s uninflected droning of “Ionlywannabewithyouuuu” had finally, after seven years of family trips, broken my father’s will to live. Unfortunately I was wrong. KC had left the tickets to the game in the kitchen.
We turned around. We got the tickets. Ten or eleven hours after we first hit the road, we arrived in Columbia. We slept for a couple hours at the hotel and went to the game. I know that I was very tired at the game because I actually laughed when KC told me for the 76th time that the N on Nebraska’s helmets stands for knowledge. We dozed in the stands, but we were awake long enough to see Nebraska quarterback Eric Crouch embarrass the Mizzou defense with a 105 yard touchdown run. The play was the cornerstone of Crouch’s Heisman-winning season and remains the most impressive athletic feat I have seen in person.
It turns out that ticket misplacement, along with size 8 cranial circumferences and inability to color inside the lines, is a genetic trait that can be passed from father to son. To read about my own ticket problems, click here.
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