No mention of Yellowstone's scenic sulfur pits. |
My younger son turned 18 Tuesday, and I've been celebrating here all week.
Yet a more somber note is in order.
Sometimes there are indications that my younger son inherited my genetic curse, a facility for writing. I noticed the writer's eye early, when he was 7. We were walking home from baseball practice, and a police car cruised by.
Yet a more somber note is in order.
Sometimes there are indications that my younger son inherited my genetic curse, a facility for writing. I noticed the writer's eye early, when he was 7. We were walking home from baseball practice, and a police car cruised by.
"Dad, what do the police in Northbrook DO?" he asked, itself a trenchant question.
There were a number of ways I could have reacted, but I decided to play it straight.
"Well," I began, "they protect us..."
"Protect us from what," he said, cutting me off, "spiders?"
I can't tell you how much I admired that. Of course, being a writer means picking your subject, dealing with it honestly, and accepting the consequences, and Kent was doing that when he was 12. I think I'm going to wind up Kent Week early—it feels as if it has run its course—with this column, capping our epic trip to California in 2009:
Only this year, I reminded myself giddily, I didn't blow it, I nailed it -- that fabulous five-week, 7,000-mile journey with the boys through 13 states and nine national parks. An unbroken chain of golden moments, an unmitigated triumph that no one can take away . .
Umm, not quite. There is some late dissent I feel obligated to share. I hold in my hand my 12-year-old son's language arts assignment. A personal essay.
To his credit, he did ask beforehand if it was OK to write about. Confident, I gave my consent with a kingly wave of the hand.
I was smug, until the moment I read the resulting paper's title, "Bad memories of a great vacation."
Bad memories? How can that be?
"As all great vacations have to start somewhere," the 10-page paper begins, "ours started with Spam."
To him, Minnesota's Spam Museum was not the font of wonder that I described here.
"The start of our vacation couldn't be duller," my
son wrote.
Boring is preferred to "horrible," which came when we tried to camp overnight in Yellowstone.
Boring is preferred to "horrible," which came when we tried to camp overnight in Yellowstone.
"We had to pitch our backpacks over a tree," he wrote. "But before
we did I noticed the tree was rotting at the bottom and I knew it
wouldn't hold our backpacks. So I told my dad, but he didn't
believe me. He tied the backpacks to the tree and it was fine for
one split second. Then the tree snapped under the pressure and we
had to hold it up."
It gets worse. The low point of the vacation, if not my entire life -- I was too ashamed to mention it at the time -- took place in Nevada.
Our motel happened to be next door to one of those giant fireworks stores. I was reluctant, but the boys pleaded. I knew better than to let them get big rockets or mortars. Just a few small devices, including a "Barrel of Fun," a firework the size of a Ping-Pong ball that throws out sparks. Harmless.
The next day, I pulled off the interstate at a lonely road, and drove until it turned into gravel. The middle of nowhere, a desolate patch of desert, barren but for a bit of scrub. We set the firework in the middle of the road.
"Then the trouble began," my son wrote.
The Barrel of Fun, designed to shoot in the air, did just that. But it toppled over, sending sparks skittling to the side of the road.
"A fire began," my kid wrote.
In the time it took me to run over and try to stamp the burning scrub, the fire was 5 feet high, so hot I couldn't get close. It spread while we piled panicking into the car and retreated to a safe distance.
The fire burned long enough for me to imagine it engulfing the state, to contemplate the brave young smoke jumpers who would die battling the result of my stupidity, the enormous bill and, later, prison.
The fire went out on its own.
"After this experience we knew fireworks were bad," my son wrote.
Reading his essay, like anyone whose ox has been gored, I first felt outrage. "Fine!" I fumed. "If he feels that way, we'll just park him at Camp Piney Lake next summer while his brother and I set off on fresh adventures!"
That passed, with the help of some soothing from my wife. It was, she observed, a finely written piece. He was, she pointed out, exactly like me. (And whose fault is that? I blustered. Her fault! She should have warned me that being myself and manifesting my own personality all these years would lead to children who are similar to me, visiting my own sour negativity back upon myself, a contrapasso punishment straight out of Dante's hell.)
"Why couldn't you focus on all the good stuff?" I whined to him. "The Snake River? Santa Barbara?"
"Right Dad," he said, with bored languor. "Which would you rather read: 'We stayed in a room. We played tennis. They gave us fruit.'
"Or would you rather read about the time we nearly burned down Nevada?"
It gets worse. The low point of the vacation, if not my entire life -- I was too ashamed to mention it at the time -- took place in Nevada.
Our motel happened to be next door to one of those giant fireworks stores. I was reluctant, but the boys pleaded. I knew better than to let them get big rockets or mortars. Just a few small devices, including a "Barrel of Fun," a firework the size of a Ping-Pong ball that throws out sparks. Harmless.
The next day, I pulled off the interstate at a lonely road, and drove until it turned into gravel. The middle of nowhere, a desolate patch of desert, barren but for a bit of scrub. We set the firework in the middle of the road.
"Then the trouble began," my son wrote.
The Barrel of Fun, designed to shoot in the air, did just that. But it toppled over, sending sparks skittling to the side of the road.
"A fire began," my kid wrote.
In the time it took me to run over and try to stamp the burning scrub, the fire was 5 feet high, so hot I couldn't get close. It spread while we piled panicking into the car and retreated to a safe distance.
The fire burned long enough for me to imagine it engulfing the state, to contemplate the brave young smoke jumpers who would die battling the result of my stupidity, the enormous bill and, later, prison.
The fire went out on its own.
"After this experience we knew fireworks were bad," my son wrote.
Reading his essay, like anyone whose ox has been gored, I first felt outrage. "Fine!" I fumed. "If he feels that way, we'll just park him at Camp Piney Lake next summer while his brother and I set off on fresh adventures!"
That passed, with the help of some soothing from my wife. It was, she observed, a finely written piece. He was, she pointed out, exactly like me. (And whose fault is that? I blustered. Her fault! She should have warned me that being myself and manifesting my own personality all these years would lead to children who are similar to me, visiting my own sour negativity back upon myself, a contrapasso punishment straight out of Dante's hell.)
"Why couldn't you focus on all the good stuff?" I whined to him. "The Snake River? Santa Barbara?"
"Right Dad," he said, with bored languor. "Which would you rather read: 'We stayed in a room. We played tennis. They gave us fruit.'
"Or would you rather read about the time we nearly burned down Nevada?"
TOUCHE, YOU LITTLE . . .
Well, there you have it. For those who, over the years, have felt my lash, have written outraged letters to the editor, demanding that action be taken, you'll be pleased to learn that a fate worse than being fired has engulfed me. I have been delivered over to the scant mercies of a live-in 12-year-old Torquemada.
Well, there you have it. For those who, over the years, have felt my lash, have written outraged letters to the editor, demanding that action be taken, you'll be pleased to learn that a fate worse than being fired has engulfed me. I have been delivered over to the scant mercies of a live-in 12-year-old Torquemada.
And it is all of my own doing! I knowingly sired my judge, raised,
nurtured and fed strained peaches to my jury, clucked over my
critic while he gained strength and powers of observation, biding
his time until he could, in the most skillful manner possible,
explain to the world exactly what kind of doofus I am.
Why is this a surprise? How could it possibly be a surprise? What kind of idiot am I?
No need to answer that. It will be further explained, I assume, in the next language arts assignment.
—Originally published in the Sun-Times Oct. 21, 2009
Why is this a surprise? How could it possibly be a surprise? What kind of idiot am I?
No need to answer that. It will be further explained, I assume, in the next language arts assignment.
—Originally published in the Sun-Times Oct. 21, 2009