April 2016 – Mike's Life

Having just returned from a four-day trip to the west coast, I can tell you this for a fact: I have no idea what time it is.

My wife and I went west for a wedding, and took the opportunity to make it a getaway for just the two of us. The kids were safely locked in their rooms, and their water bowls were filled. Or they were with grandparents. Can’t recall.

We were going to the wedding of a college friend of ours, which meant a bunch of folks in their 40s got together to revert to being college kids. If you are an investor in Motrin and Gatorade, your portfolio is probably looking up this week.

We had a wonderful time catching up with old friends, meeting new ones, and, most importantly, being there to see the beginning of a new marriage. So, without further ado, a few highlights from the trip:

Our flight out was fairly uneventful, which is exactly how a flight should be. As we boarded the plane in Atlanta for San Francisco, I overheard the man behind me say he had just been hired as a pilot for a different airline. I told him I was glad to have a backup on the plane. He told me he had never flown this type of plane. I assured him he would be a far better option than me. “I guess so. Pointy side goes first…” Pilot humor, I guess.
It is amazing that this country was ever settled beyond the Mississippi River. Kansas, Colorado, Nevada, Utah and the eastern part of California look like wastelands from the air. Pretty sure my Conestoga wagon would have given up much sooner.
While in San Francisco, we went super-tourist. Fisherman’s Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge, chowder in a sourdough bread bowl, riding the streetcars, etc. I absolutely loved the City, but the top three takeaways: (1) Streetcars have the right-of-way, and if I ever drive in San Francisco, I will make sure not to get in front of one, as I saw a brakeman get out and yell at a driver to get off the tracks. Bad for the driver, entertaining for us. (2) In-N-Out Burger is everything everyone promised me it would be. Well done, west coast. Well done. (3) Seals and sea lions are loud, smelly, and generally awesome, especially when they start trying to knock each other off the docks. I could have sat and watched that mass of marine mammals at Pier 39 all day, but I had to go and find my wife, who I kinda lost. (I found her.)
I saw a neon green Lamborghini out there. Hanging from the mirror was a Berkeley student parking decal. When I was in college, I drove a 1984 Toyota Corolla. So pretty much the same thing.
The Pacific Ocean is cold. And the sun is backwards out there. The sun is supposed to rise from the ocean, not set into. What kind of weird sorcery is that?
California was not nearly the bizarro world I was expecting, although I did hear overhear someone say, “I made a vegan, dairy-free birthday cake, and it was fantastic.” So I guess that was kinda California.
On the flight home, I was reminded that people really just care about themselves. Our plane was delayed leaving San Francisco, which meant we would be landing with about 10 minutes to make our connecting flight in Atlanta. As we landed, the flight attendant took to the intercom asking folks to please let those with immediate connecting flights leave first. We were in the back of the plane and were hoping to sprint off the plane and do our best to catch our connection. On a huge, full plane, a grand total of three people had stayed in their seats. Yeah, all of you had immediate connections. Sure. One of the three still sitting was on her phone, and said, “We’ve got nowhere to be for a while, so we’re just going to sit here.” She was wearing an Alabama Crimson Tide shirt. Roll Tide, ma’am.

So we’re back home now, tired and a smidge delirious. But we’re a complete family again, and I’m glad to be home and ready to get back into the routine. It was a great trip with some great friends. Hopefully, we can do it again soon. But first, I need to figure out what time it is so I can see if it’s time to chase another Motrin with a Gatorade.

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Charleston. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike.

Little brothers and big sisters

I am not sure how he kept it a secret this long.

Little brothers are notorious for ratting out their big sisters, so imagine my surprise when my son spilled the beans from something his big sister did four years ago.

We were driving in the car talking about the kids staying home by themselves. We’re only going to be gone for a week, and I let them watch “Home Alone” to be prepared so they should be fine.

Ha! A little bad parenting humor there.

We don’t have plans to leave them at home by themselves any time soon. But I was commending him on getting to the point where his mother and I can go out for a dinner without receiving 8 billion text messages in the first 20 minutes.

Parker said that the reason he didn’t like staying home was because of that time “Allie totally freaked me out a couple of years ago.”

Huh? You mean to tell me that an indiscretion, perceived or otherwise, happened and you waited YEARS to tell me? If her music is slightly loud my wife and I are informed in milliseconds.

But somehow, this kept. Possibly because he was afraid of the person who is not Allie.

Confused yet?

Apparently, several years ago, we left them alone and did something crazy like go to the grocery store together. Once we were gone, he said his sister struck a very awkward, stiff pose and began walking toward him slowly, with a weird grin on her face and her head tilted slightly sideways. According to him, they had this conversation:

PARKER: Stop, it, Allie.

ALLIE: Allie’s not here, Parker.

PARKER: STOP IT, ALLIE!!!

ALLIE: Allie’s not here, Parker.

And she continued slowly pacing toward him smiling and saying this until, I am guessing, he threw the nearest object at her.

For whatever reason, he had neglected to tell us about this incident until now. My reaction was to laugh, which I fortunately stifled. “Dude, that is just wrong,” I said.

Fortunately, he is over the freak-out now, and we can all kinda laugh about it.

Now first off, I am not condoning what she did. That said, the part of my brain that is still stuck in college-mode absolutely loved it. That’s how you mess with your little brother.

Also, I am the youngest of four kids, with three older sisters. If they are reading this, I can only guess they are lamenting that they had never thought of this tactic to mess with me as a kid. That said, they found plenty of pretty solid ones on their own without pretending to be possessed. Those include hooking me by my belt loop to a rope swing, spinning me and telling me to close my eyes and count to 10, and when I opened them I would be able to fly. (Hey, guess what happened after 10? I could not fly, and everyone had scattered.) This also includes telling me that when I clipped my nails, I had to bury all of the clippings in different holes in the yard or a witch could find them and cast a spell on me. Our childhood home’s backyard is a graveyard of hundreds of graves of nail clippings from a paranoid little me. Good times!

We were having dinner recently, and I brought up the story. “Hey, Allie. Parker ratted you out on something you did to him a while back…” I told the story and she gave a great big eye roll, which I have found is the most common facial expression for a teenage girl.

“Omigosh, Parker, I was like seven when I did that.” Eye roll. She wasn’t seven, by the way, because that would have put him at four, and we weren’t leaving them home then.

I assured my daughter that the statute of limitations had her protected from any punishment, and we could all enjoy a good laugh about it. Eye roll. And a bit of a laugh.

When siblings look back on their time as kids, you want them to be fond memories. Not the fighting, the squabbling, the generally-being-siblings parts. But it’s OK to have some good memories of the times one of them got the other one, so long as it was fairly innocuous.

This was a pretty harmless prank, as were the ones my sisters did to me. It’s all part of being a little brother. And, when I look at my kids and also think back on my childhood, it’s probably a very legitimate payback for all the things we did as little brothers.