Author: Mike Gibbons

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Uncategorized

It’s a gas gas gas

Folks, here is one truth I know: There is only one correct response if your significant other says, “You go on. I’ll call the fire department.”

That’s right – hit the road! You’ve been given the green light, and your best guy/gal is shouldering the worries of whatever the fire department may be coming out to tend to so go take on the world!

Oh, wait. I mean, exactly the opposite of that.

The other day my wife and I were planning on heading out for the day, and my wife told me she smelled something. “Don’t you smell that?” she said. My wife walked around the house like a bloodhound, nose in the air, sniff-sniffing wherever she went. “There. There. Not there. There.” Eventually, I decided to uproot myself from my chair and walk the house with her. After a few sniff-sniffs, I caught a whiff, too. And it was strong.

We found the smell concentrated in an upstairs bathroom and our downstairs laundry closet. As we wondered aloud if it was a gas leak, it was at that moment that my wife and I both had the frank discussion where we admitted to ourselves that we did not know if, in fact, we had gas coming into our house. I am sure some of you mock us for that. Just a hunch an even higher percentage of you are saying, “Wait, do we have gas?”

After a thorough search, we found no culprits. I told my wife that we should cut the air up a little higher, head out of the day, and come back when it had all sorted itself out. This is the same approach I take to car repair and personal health.

My wife said she was not going to leave the house like this. At that point, she decided we should call the fire department and that I could just go on, if that was my prerogative.

I am sure you are not surprised to learn that I did not, in fact, head on out. Even I am not that dumb. I called dispatch and explained to the operator what was going on. She instructed me to get everyone out of the house and that the fire department would be there soon. My wife, son and dogs were already out back. I called up for my daughter and told her that we had to evacuate the house. She said, “I need to find my hairbrush!!!!” I told her to Get. Out. Now. “I’M LOOKING FOR MY HAIRBRUSH!!!” I ruin everything, with silly little evacuations and such.

The fire department showed up in a few minutes, and they searched the house and found nothing. Their meters weren’t showing anything harmful. They checked every room, every appliance, every nook and cranny. They told us we could come back in, and my wife, poking around in the laundry room, found the culprit – a gasoline-soaked blouse that was wrapped in a towel and tucked up snug against the washing machine.

We sorted it out in short order. A cousin who is staying with us had headed out early in the morning. She stopped to get gas, and the gas splashed back on her. She came back to our house, showered upstairs, and rinsed off the blouse. There were items in the wash, so she put the blouse in a towel by the wash and sent us a text letting us know what the deal was, as she didn’t want to wake us at 5 in the morning.

Turns out, said text never left the starting blocks. She was very apologetic about it, and we told her not to worry about it because, hey, if nothing else, column material.

I told the firemen that I really appreciated them coming out, and I was sorry if I had sent them on a wild goose chase. They assured me that they would much rather residents give them a call when in doubt, rather than, say, crank up the air and just hope it all blows over.

Hopefully we won’t be calling them anytime again soon, but I am relieved to know that they are quick on the draw when responding. Should we have a similar event in the future, I won’t hesitate to call them. But I will make sure I keep an emergency hairbrush outside of the house, just in case.

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

 

Categories
Home improvement

Mow, mow, mow your yard

I used to have a very simple three-part checklist to go over when purchasing a new lawnmower:

  • Does it meet my wife’s pre-approved budgetary ceiling?
  • Does it start after one or two pulls?
  • Can it roll over any and everything its path — including but not limited to sticks, rocks, toys, lawn furniture and laundry that has fallen off a clothesline — and still keep grinding away?

If the answer was yes to these, consider new mower purchased. And based on number three, that might explain why I purchase lawn mowers slightly more often than most people purchase shoes.

Yes, I am not exactly gentle on my mowers. But after my previous mower’s death, I found it was time to reevaluate things in my life.

My last mower was purchased off of Craig’s List, so while it did not come with a warranty, it did come with the guarantee of hours of anxiety leading up to the sale as I went through the many scenarios in which this transaction would go bad and I would end up in the news as just another one of the Craig’s List Lawn Mower Killer’s victims. “HOW COULD YOU NOT HAVE SEEN THIS COMING, MIKE!?!?!?” I said to myself about 30 seconds before getting out and handing a guy some cash in the driveway of his very nice home. (Spoiler alert: He did not kill me.)

This mower was pretty solid for the first few uses. Started quickly. Mowed over whatever was in its path. Seemed to be a pretty solid character.

And then it revealed itself. I had filled up the gas tank prior to cutting the yard. My yard is not that big, so it does not take a whole tank of gas to cut the entire thing. In fact, it maybe takes a quarter of a tank. So when I finished, there was plenty of gas still in the mower.

Fast forward about an hour, and there was not plenty of gas in the mower. There was plenty of gas on the mower. There was plenty of gas around the mower. Even I can determine that is not ideal functionality from a gas tank.

At this point, something in me snapped. I was tired of messing with mowers. (Even if I was often the reason they were breaking.) I was tired of dealing with gasoline. I was tired of having chunks of children’s toys shoot out of the mower at lethal speeds when I run over them in the yard.

So I decided punt my requirements for a mower. I went rogue. When I told my wife my decision, she said, “Really?” Indeed, I had decided I would buy an electric mower. The cheapest one I could find. One that was just probably slightly more powerful than a ceiling fan.

I found one online for under $100. “Remember,” my wife said, “you get what you pay for.” I reminded her that my last purchase cost more and resulted in about three mows and a gas leak. “Fair enough,” she said.

In a few days, my mower arrived. The assembly took roughly four seconds, as it involved snapping the handle onto the base.

There is no cord to pull to start. Rather, you plug it in and push a button, and off it roars. OK, purrs.

It is not going to run over any large objects any time soon. In fact, the first time I used it, it ran up against some rather thick St. Augustine and had to make a few passes to get through it.

And yes, trailing an extension cord did occasionally present a hiccup during the mowing as it decided to get tangled around a wheel or a foot or a nearby tree. Upside – just stop and untangle, and then push the button again and you’re back and running.

And yes, I have to manage my personal expectations of yard manliness (or lack thereof) I am exuding. Sure you can have a conversation at normal tone while the mower is running. That doesn’t make me any less of man.

I have now mowed the yard a few times with it. It takes me a little bit longer than previously, but not by more than a few minutes. And so far, I don’t have to deal with any mechanical issues, and certainly no gas issues.

So I will continue with my adorable little electric mower for the time being. I will clear the path before I mow, and I will deal with the cord as I need to. And I will try and keep this one in good condition and hopefully won’t have to buy another one for a long time. After all, I’ve dodged the Craig’s List Lawn Mower Killer once. No sense in tempting fate a second time.

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

 

Categories
Childhood Family

COWS! and other parenting tricks

We were having dinner the other night, and we decided a good topic of conversation would be “The times we tricked you foolish, foolish children.”

OK, so that wasn’t expressly what was stated at the beginning, but the conversation did head that way. My kids are teens now, and we find it fun to look back on when they were little and my wife and I navigated the parenting waters and we maybe used a smidge of literary license to help us get through the day. I am sure other parents can relate. For those of you with young kids or planning on having kids in the future, tuck some of these away for future use.

  • We were at Disney years ago, and they had a station where you could make and then buy your own Star Wars light saber. My son was about three, and he was very excited about building his own. At the conclusion, I told him, “OK, now put the parts back in their right places so other kids can build them.” I never mentioned that you could actually buy your creations. Dutifully, he put all the parts back, and we didn’t buy one. Lest you think I am awful, remember that this was rather smart savings, as there was roughly a 100 percent chance that the light saber would not have made it out of the store intact.
  • The ice cream truck went through our neighborhood a good bit. And we USUALLY went out and got a treat. But some days, ice cream is just the last thing we wanted to contend with. “Yeah, I used to turn the TV up so you wouldn’t hear it sometimes,” my wife confessed. Sometimes, the ice cream truck just isn’t in the day’s plans.
  • We used to live in a very popular Halloween neighborhood. The kids would come home with pounds of candy. They could have eaten nothing but candy until the next Halloween and had plenty left over. After they went to sleep on Halloween, we would get a decent selection for them to have over the next week or so, and the rest would magically disappear, often at our places of employment. One year, we decided to store all of the candy in a bin and just hang onto it until the next Halloween, at which point we could repurpose it for trick or treaters. Fun fact: If you store candy in a bin where squirrels can get to it, you will, a year later, find yourself a bin with nothing but shredded candy wrappers and squirrel droppings.
  • Never upset cows. We were riding home from a trip, and the kids were starting to squabble in the back seat. As we rode through some rural country land, surrounded on both sides by cow pastures, my wife loudly announced, “KIDS! QUIET! THERE ARE COWS!!!!” Both kids went silent immediately. I glanced at my wife. “Cows?” I mouthed. She shrugged. But they were quiet for the next half hour or so.
  • We used to have a pool, and we would always sit with the kids when they were swimming. One of our strongest rules: Thunder = no more pool. In the house. Now. There MAY have been a time or two when, as both kids emerged from underwater, I said, “I heard thunder. Everyone inside.” Sometimes,  you’ve gotta get homework done.
  • Turns out, dentists do not require you to come for a wiggly tooth. When my daughter was young, my wife informed her that a tooth that was dangling by a single nasty little thread had to be dealt with, or, per our dentist, we would have to come in for an appointment, that we may have told her was already set. Thank goodness she did not call the bluff and she let my wife deal with the tooth, so we didn’t have to fast track a non-necessary dentist appointment.

Now, I know some of you are perfect people and never stretch the truth to fit your parenting agenda. And congratulations. You’re better than we are. I think our kids have grown up just fine, and I kinda enjoy sharing with them the stories of how we had to creatively parent at times. Hopefully, this will help them when they are parents, and their children are upsetting the cows and the thunder is getting closer.

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

Categories
Childhood Family

Because everyone loves Cleaning Day

I think we can all agree that the single most fun day a family can celebrate together is Cleaning Day.

Just listen to the shouts of joy from the kids! (Teenagers shouts of joy sound strangely similar to whines and moans.)

Yes, we (and by “we” I mean my wife and I) decided we (and by “we” I mean “my wife and I and the kids even if they came kicking and screaming”) were all going to knock out some housekeeping. My wife and I dutifully informed the kids that they both had a few chores they were going to have to take care of. We informed them of this when we were in a moving car so they had no escape and would have to listen to what their tasks would be.

The chores were fairly simple. Granted, based on their reaction, I think it’s a pretty good thing my kids weren’t born into Little House on the Prairie.

My daughter is 16, and we let her have as much privacy as possible in her room. And as long as the door can shut, we don’t really care too much what her room looks like. But every so often, we are greeted with two options: Good ol’ cleaning overhaul or we cut that section out of the house, move it safely away, and burn it.

She set off on her room cleaning initiative with minimal grumbling. I clean at a rather frenzied pace, so I decided I would let my daughter clean without being near her as she cleans at the speed of a very tired sloth, and it probably wouldn’t be very productive if I kept saying, “CLEAN FASTER!!!”

I did offer to assist by taking down any cups she had in her room. Fun fact: A teenage girl’s room can house well over 1,000 half-full Tervis tumblers.

Our son’s assigned chore was very specifically geared toward him: Clean up the giant tackle box that our front porch had become.

He is an avid fisherman, and he spends as much time when he’s at home at the ponds near our house. He keeps a lot of his fishing gear right at the front door so he can grab his stuff on the go.

Unfortunately, over time the gear gets rather spread out, often occupying the table and chairs on our front porch. My son doesn’t quite get the need for organizing something such as fishing gear on your front porch. He also doesn’t get the need for shoes, showers, shirts or eating off a plate. (We do hope one day to fully domesticate him.)

His first attempt to get out of the chore was to tell me that his tackle box was broken. I pointed at the very much not broken tackle box sitting amidst the lures and hooks and such. He informed me that was his saltwater tackle box. Oh, silly me. How foolish not to know.

Then, in what can only be described as a brilliant Jedi mind trick, we soon found ourselves at the store, picking out a new tackle box for his freshwater stuff. And a new rod. And some bobbers.

Oh, wait it can be described as something else: I’m a sucker.

In short order, he had his new tackle box organized, and the front porch looked far more orderly. He was off fishing in no time. (For what it’s worth, I am sure the order will be maintained for, oh, let’s give it two hours.)

So their onerous workday complete, both kids were able to resume their life of leisure and get back to doing the thing they love most: Not having to clean. Ma and Pa Ingalls would be so proud of their efforts.

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

 

Categories
Animals

Squirrels will be squirrels

Alright, squirrels. Enough is enough.

I have been accepting of squirrels for a long time. I get that plenty of folks don’t like them. But I find them somewhat entertaining, and I am willing to let them take part in my feeders. In fact, I adopted my father’s approach on this: Call them squirrel feeders, and then you are pleasantly surprised when birds show up.

But this has gotten out of hand.

By my estimate, I am on my 4,000th consecutive day of having to repair a feeder because squirrels make it so we can’t have nice things.

I have one small feeder I keep right on my porch. My back porch is my default home office, and I spend as much time out there as I can, as I enjoy being able to sit in peace and quiet for a good six seconds until the door slides open and someone says, “Dad, (insert sibling here) did (insert annoying thing one sibling did to the other that could easily be ignored but has to be a national emergency instead).”

But during my few moments of solitude, I enjoy seeing numerous different types of birds come to the feeder. We have a good understanding: I’ll keep the feeder stocked, and they will flit up and give me a nice moment of nature to enjoy.

The squirrels do not approach when I am on the deck. I will occasionally see them walking the fence or scurrying about in the trees. But they keep a wide berth when I am outside. And I think I know why. I think they know that if they approach, they will get a good talking to as to why, when I came outside, my feeder was on the ground again, and sunflower seeds were strewn about the yard.

Science fact: Squirrels loathe a good talking-to.

The feeder I have is not a fancy one at all. It’s a small wooden one that is easily dislodged by a couple of playfully destructive squirrels swinging it back and forth. I know there are numerous anti-squirrel feeders out there. Some of them quite hilariously sling the squirrels off. If you haven’t seen it, off to YouTube with you.

But there are two problems with the squirrel-proof feeders: (1) I kinda like the squirrels (2) my feeder is already in place and getting another one would require both time and money, neither of which I am readily eager to dispense with.

As I came out to my deck to write this column, I found the feeder on the ground again. And I had made the rookie mistake of leaving the bag of sunflower seeds in a chair on the deck, so the squirrels had also happily torn into that and left shells all over my deck. Really, squirrels? This is how you thank me?

I considered bringing them to the table for a summit to iron out our differences and find some common ground. But squirrels are notoriously stubborn negotiators, so I knew this would be a non-starter. Thus, I have decided on the only option left for me. I am going nuclear: I am now classifying my feeder as a bird feeder. You hear that squirrels? Yeah. I did it. This is for the birds. In a good way.

I hate to have to bring the hammer down in such a strict manner. But if there is one thing that raising children has taught me it’s that sometimes, you have to make the hard decisions for the long-term greater good.

My hope is that the squirrels will understand this harsh change and learn and grow. To any of my neighborhood squirrels reading this who have not been destructive to my feeder, I’m sorry that you are being punished for the bad actions of a few. But that is life.

I’m glad we are at a point where we can move past this, and I look forward to the time when I can welcome you back to the feeder, and you have matured to the point where you can show it the respect it deserves.

Also I’m guessing that some time around, oh, say, tomorrow, I will be buying a squirrel proof feeder.

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

 

Categories
Childhood Family

Fidgeting, flipping, and slime, oh my.

We were bored on a recent Saturday night, and my kids were wanting to do something fun. We weighed our options.

Board game? Nah. Movie? Nah. Chase you sister around the house with a Nerf gun and shoot her all night? One yes, one no, one abstention.

My daughter said, “We should make slime!”

Now, keep in mind my kids are teenagers, and well past the age when they were first introduced with making slime in school. That said, it kinda sounded like something fun to do, so why not.

I sent the kids to the store to get the required ingredients, which are incredibly complicated (glue and Borax). For all the parents who dread their kids driving, trust me, there are perks. Wanna make slime on a Saturday night? Fine. Go get the stuff yourself while I sit in a quiet house for a few minutes.

They were back in no time with the ingredients and in short order we had slime. I posted a picture on Facebook with the kids making their concoctions, with the post “Never too old to make slime.”

A teacher friend of mine commented, “I’m sorry, but that stuff is the bane of every teacher’s existence.”

And teacher friend, I feel your pain. My mother was a teacher, and I know how hard it is to be a teacher, and not just because my mom had the unfortunate teaching experience of having me as a student.

There are quite a few annoying fads that teachers have to deal with, and more pop every year. I remember when I was a kid, and one fifth grade teacher had to put a moratorium on bee catchers, these little paper contraptions we concocted that made a fantastically annoying clacking noise when you smacked them back and forth. We found them delightful. The adult tasked with trying to teach us math? Not so much.

There are several other fads that are quite popular right now that I am sure teachers cannot wait to see them go the way of the bee catcher.

Among those:

  • Bottle flipping. For those of you not familiar with this, bottle flipping involves a partially full bottle of water that is flipped, with the goal of landing it right side up. Or, you can really show your pro level and “cap it,” meaning you land it on the, surprise, cap. If you have never been around a bottle flipper before, do this: Have someone every so often come and just slap the table you are sitting at. Or the coffee table next to you. Or just any surface near you, in particular when you are sitting at your computer trying to compose an email.
  • Your mom. Not, not yours. But apparently, responding, “Your mom” is the trendy way to respond to any and every question. Seeing as how this was a popular thing back when we were making bee catchers, I’m not sure this one will die any time soon.
  • Fidget spinners. If you’re not familiar with these, they are these little spinner devices that kids love to constantly spin. And fidget. And there is a reason most every teacher on planet earth currently wants all fidget spinners to disappear forever.

I am sure there other annoyances teachers would love to see go away, and I’d love for you to share them with me. I’ll be happy to write a follow-up column. Until then, remember, summer is close. And you will soon be out of the bottle-flipping, fidget-spinning, your-mom nightmare. I just hope I haven’t inadvertently starting a resurgence in bee catchers.

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

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Honk if you love new driving lessons

When a teen gets a driver’s license, they have to (in most states) take a driving course prior to taking the driving test.

This is a good idea, even if it can certainly be debated that letting teens drive is not.

That said, there are a few things that aren’t standard in driver training course, and I think it’s time they added some.

Some of the no-brainer additions: changing a flat tire, jump starting a battery, and how to properly wave thank you when someone lets you in traffic. But a recent event brought one more to me recently: proper honk protocol.

I was at a stop light the other day, and I will admit I was daydreaming a smidge. The light turned green, and I didn’t notice. The car in front of me had maybe gotten two car lengths ahead, so it’s not like I’d been sitting there for hours.

Now, the courteous thing to do – as the gentleman behind me would have learned in driving school had this been taught – would be to give two or three quick little beeps. Just a, “Hey, buddy, green light.”

Instead, he just laid on his horn. Even when I began to go, he continued with the horn. He also added some aggressive hand gestures, because clearly I had not gone immediately as a direct attempt to inconvenience him.

I considered slowing down as I approached the green light and hoping to wait for a yellow, but then I realized that was the dark, little vindictive corner of my brain that I have to hush on occasion.

I got through the light, as did the driver behind me.

But he was still mad. Either that or there was a bee in his car and he was trying to shoo it. And he was tailgating me. Or he was really interested in reading my license plate. Pretty sure it’s the prior on both accounts.

My son was in the car with me and glanced in the side mirror. “Dad, he’s mad.”

“I know, son. And when we get to a stopping place we are going to get out and fight him. Both of us.”

My son stared at me. “Ok, you’re joking.”

I find it somewhat disturbing that my 14-year-old thought, if only for a moment, that the best way to combat road rage was for a father-son battle royale.

“Yes, I am,” I assured him.

My son asked me what I would do if he followed us to our destination and said something to me.

I paused for a moment. Good question. I certainly wouldn’t engage angrily, as, although it has never happened to me, I don’t thinking getting beaten up (or worse) in a parking lot would be much fun.

I told my son I would simply say, “Hey, man. Thanks for the heads up on the green light. My bad.” And if he continued? I would add, “Hey, you’re gonna be OK. Have a great day.”

Fortunately, this scenario never had to be explored, as he turned off after a few miles. But a few quick lessons of horn protocol could have helped avoid any of this.

Need a gentle reminder to go? Beep beep beep.

About to merge into the side of my car? BEEEEEP!!!

About to merge into the side of my car while texting? BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!! BEEP!!! BEEP!!!!

(Can we stop for just a second to appreciate about much of a fun word “beep” is? Good. Carry on.)

Granted, even if you taught it, some folks are never going to follow the rules. Maybe this guy is one of those. If you’re reading this and the actions of the guy behind me sound a smidge familiar, just remember that not every bad thing in the world is someone out to get you. Sometimes, other people inconvenience you on accident and without malice. It’s nothing to get your blood pressure up over. You, good friend, are going to be OK.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s break into groups and have a discussion on the extreme severity of folks who don’t return shopping carts.

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

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Cleveland rocks

Dear Ford,

Brilliant idea. And you’re 16 years late. You could have save me about 200 trips to Cleveland.

Sincerely,

Mike

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking a cat just walked over my keyboard and randomly typed a paragraph. Well, I don’t have a cat, so there.

Actually, when given context, it makes perfect sense (I think).

See, Ford has developed a prototype for a crib called the Max Motor Dreams that simulates a car ride. It looks like a regular bassinet. However, this bad boy plays car engine sounds and rocks in a manner akin to a moving car. Lights flash on and off to simulate streetlights being passed.

I think I speak for every parent who ever had to use a car as a sleep agent when I say, Ford, you must mass produce this and you must begin yesterday. Or, preferably 16 years ago.

When my daughter was a baby (guessing you can piece together that she’s now 16), her preferred method of going to sleep was never to go sleep.

For the first couple of years, my wife and I took turns trying to get her to sleep. This usually involved us walking the house at all hours of the night singing to her. If we so much as considered placing her in her crib, she would immediately become stiff as board and begin wailing a sound I am fairly certain is normally reserved for hyenas.

So we would walk. And dance. And sing. And walk. And sing. All. Night. Long.

But during the day, when it came time for naps, we had little success with the Mommy and Daddy Dance Party Remix. So we went to the old standby, a few laps around the neighborhood in the car. After a few blocks, she would fall fast asleep. Plenty of times, I remember pulling back in the driveway and thinking, “Hmm. She could wake up if I move her to her bed. Looks like it’s time to catch up on some NPR while I sit in my driveway for the next hour.”

This worked OK for the first few years. But then our daughter did what babies do and developed the ability to communicate with us. And, in particular, she developed the ability to ask questions. Lots and lots of questions.

Plenty of the questions were the standard ones: Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? Why can’t we put grass in the sky and make it green?

But one of her main line of questioning involved where we were going. Unfortunately, it’s not an acceptable answer to a curious three-year-old to reply, “Why do you care? You know like five places on the whole planet.”

So often times we would give her the answers. “Grandma’s” or “the store” or “the casino, of course.” But we knew quite well that our anti-sleep daughter was not going to be down with the answer of “We’re driving around so you’ll fall asleep and Mommy and Daddy can have one hour of peace and quiet and you won’t act like an angry cobra later this evening.”

So we went to Cleveland. Every time. “Daddy, where are we going?” “We’re going to Cleveland,” I’d say.

For some reason, she found Cleveland a perfectly fine destination, and eagerly got buckled in for yet another trip to the amazing place that is Cleveland.

Now, you may be wondering, why Cleveland? The answer is I threw a mental dart at the mental map in my head and that’s where it landed. We just had to go somewhere.

My days of tricking a kid into going to sleep are long behind me, but I still really wish I had such a thing as the Max Motor Dreams back in the day. It would have saved me countless of miles of roads traveled, and who knows how many hours of time. I could have put her in the crib and let the magic happen. Of course, the one downside is that she never would have gotten to go to Cleveland so many times.

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

 

Categories
Childhood Family

Unfortunate life experience checklist item? Check.

I’m no fan of cliches. I try to avoid them in my writing and in my everyday speech. In fact, I avoid them like the plague.

Ha! See what I did there?

Anywho, I recently rattled off a couple of cliches that, in retrospect, were two of the most true things I’ve ever said: “I’m just glad no one was hurt” and “We can replace a car. We can’t replace you.”

Yes, my daughter has had that unfortunate life experience to check off the list: a car wreck.

We got the call the other evening. My wife came darting to the porch where I was sitting. “Come on. Allie’s been in a wreck.”

She filled me in as we sprinted to my car. Allie had rear-ended someone a couple of blocks from our house. She was OK, my wife told me, but obviously a wreck emotionally as well.

When we pulled up, we saw the two cars in the middle of the road. Allie’s car was all kinds of smashed up, with the hood buckled and airbags deployed. The car she hit had much less damage, with just a bit of a mangled rear bumper.img_1004

This was one of those parenting moments where you realize that the cliche really is the only thing that’s accurate at that point. It’s like when your wife is pregnant and someone asks if you want a boy or a girl. Yeah, most of us just really are hoping for a healthy baby. Or when you are  a dad out with your kids and someone says, “Babysitting today?” and you respond, “No, I’m parenting.” While that last one might not be a cliche, I felt it needed to be said.

The officer came and gave us an accident report (yes, it was her fault), and car was soon on the back of a truck headed to a tow yard.

I started the insurance fun the next morning. The day after that, we got the news we kind of expected: the car was totaled.

Quick backstory on the car: The car was a Christmas gift to her a couple of years ago from my inlaws. It has been her great uncle’s car, who passed away at the age of 94. Her grandparents decided that it would be a good first car, and surprised her with it. We even had an elaborate reveal that involved a scavenger hunt and concluded with her grandfather, rocking a Santa shirt, pulling it out of the garage to surprise her. The look on her face was priceless, and she loved this car with all her heart. It was her baby.

So, needless to say, the news that it was totaled was devastating.

And while that news stunk, I prefer to look at it this way: The car took the brunt of the wreck so that my daughter didn’t. It was the K-2SO of cars that day. (If that makes no sense, ask a Star Wars fan to explain.) Thank you, Chevrolet, and the safety engineers who made this so. Thank you, Nana and Pop, for passing down a car that she would not only love, but that, far more importantly, would keep her safe.

Allie got back behind the wheel a couple of days after the wreck. The first time I offered the chance, she politely declined. I think she was considering just how bad it would be to ride a bike everywhere from now on. But alas (cliche alert) back on the horse.

We have definitely used the experience to be overbearing parents with copious amounts of lectures and lessons learned. Our daughter has dutifully endured them.

We will figure out what we do from here. She made a mistake, but we all do. I had a wreck when I was her age, as did her mother, and we both became much better drivers as a result. You’re in charge of a one-ton rolling box that, while designed to protect you, is not perfect. Don’t make the same mistake twice.

So we move on. And in the interest of avoiding any more cliches, I will just remind my daughter that her future driving performance should be improved by this, if she learns the lessons it taught. I am confident she will be a better driver now. And she will she show us that is the case with safe driving from here on out, as actions speak louder than words. (See what I did again?)

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

 

Categories
Animals Childhood Family

Hook, pain and Parker.

My son loves to go fishing. We have ponds near our house, and he spends countless hours with a line in the water.

Oftentimes, he goes by himself, which is an awesome thing for a 14-year-old boy to go do. Just set off on your own, fishing pole in hand, and chill by the water.

But this night, he wanted his mom to come with him. I was cooking dinner, and he asked her if she would come and see his new lure in action. “Sure,” she said.

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Parker, about 20 seconds before it all went south.

Fast forward about 10 minutes. I’m in the kitchen, happily watching Jeopardy! and getting our dinner prepped, thinking about how lovely it was that my wife was with our son, sitting on the bank of a serene pond, watching the bass tease the lure, just enjoying a lovely spring evening.

And then my phone rang. It was my wife. “GET DOWN TO THE POND NOW! PARKER HAS A HOOK IN HIS HAND!”

Now, first know this — my wife is the ace when it comes to first aid. She has tended to kids with a magnolia branch in the eyeball, stitch-requiring head wounds, and countless numbers of fluid expulsions from goodness knows where. She does not flinch at things like that. She goes into uber-cool robo-Docmom mode.

However, the one thing none of the previous medical emergencies had in common with this one – this one had a large bass attached to the medical problem. Even after more than 20 years in my family, she will admit to not being the biggest up close and personal fan of animals. She likes them at a distance, but certainly not inches away when she tries to perform first aid on her son.

I put dinner aside and grabbed a hook remover out of my son’s tackle box. It’s basically a pair of clamps on a long shaft that helps you remove a hook without getting yourself snarled in the hook when a fish thrashes. In retrospect, he probably should have taken it with him.

I arrived on the scene and my son was down at the base of the water. My wife was pointing to him, but that was really not necessary, as anyone within about 500 yards could hear my son. “THIS HURTS! THIS HURTS! THIS HURTS! DAD LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THIS BASS! THIS HURTS!”

I got to my son and assessed the situation. The lure had a total of four treble hooks. Two were in the fish. Two were in Parker. Using the hook remover, I quickly backed the first one out of Parker. I went to get the other one, and Parker let out an unholy yowl that you do not want to be responsible for causing in your child.

“OK,” I said. “Let’s get the fish free.”

The fish apparently heard me, as it decided that would be a good time to thrash wildly. At that point, a neighbor came over, having heard the commotion. The neighbor held the fish steady, and offered words of encouragement to Parker. I was able to free the fish, and he pitched it in the water. It swam off, no doubt laughing at the vengeance it had extracted.

There was one last hook stuck in Parker. Unfortunately, it has one of those reverse barbs in it, so backing the hook out was not going to be an option, unless I wanted to tear Parker’s skin to do it. Parker made it very clear he was not on board with that.

The neighbor got a wire snip, and I was able to clip the hook and slide it out where the barb didn’t catch. Free at last.

We got him home and cleaned up the wound. He’ll be fine, and no doubt back fishing probably by tomorrow. Just a hunch if anyone goes with him, it won’t be my wife.

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