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Childhood Family

I want to ride my unicycle, I want to ride my … unicycle

Prior to becoming a parent, there are plenty of sentences I had never uttered. In fact, I had never even considered saying plenty of them, including:

“Do not feed your brother crayons.”

“Take the underwear off your head.”

“Fine. You can wear a sombrero to school.”

Plenty of those were said when my kids were much younger and, by all accounts, living in a different realm of reality.

Now, my kids are teens, so I don’t as often say things that, as a standalone, make me sound like a person who is just stringing random words together.

But every now and again…

The other night, I was walking inside my house. There, right by the front door, was something that was not supposed to be there. So I came inside, went to my son’s room, and said a sentence I would not have predicted saying pre-kids: “You need to make sure you bring your unicycle inside.”

Yes, my son has a unicycle. It was a Christmas gift, and he was taken to it quite well. When he first got it, we went online and watched tutorials about how to ride one. By most estimates, it was going to take 15-20 hours of practice to learn how to unicycle.

My guess: That estimate is for adults, not teen-age boys who are blissfully unaware.

The first hour or so of practice was just getting to know the unicycle. He would lean up against the garage or the back of a car, and gradually ease up onto the unicle, just learning to balance. He would make a few pedal rotations before being dispatched to the ground.

Fast forward a few hours of practice, and he was moving up the distance a good 20-30 feet before falling off. Add about two more hours – I’d say five total – and we now have his primary mode of transportation.

When I pick him up from school, we usually have this conversation:

ME: Any homework?

PARKER: Yeah, some math.

ME: Well, why don’t you knock that out when we get home.

PARKER: Yeah, I’m probably gonna unicycle the neighborhood, fish for a bit, and then come home and do it.

ME: Sounds like a plan.

And it’s a quite good plan. Burn off some energy on a unicycle, hook a few fish, then come home and rock out some algebra.

That said, I do remind him that he should bring his unicycle inside. No, it is not likely that a thief will come to our porch, dedicate several hours of training to learn to ride a unicycle, and pedal off. It is also unlikely that a skilled unicycler will happen by and seize the opportunity. What is possible, however, is that someone sees it and decides, “I’m gonna take that.” Why would someone do that? For the same reason people vandalize street signs. Because they just want to make the world a little less better. I hate to be a cynic about things, but it’s just a sad reality of life. You have to be proactive in making sure the cretins of the world aren’t given the opportunity to be awful. And one way of doing that is to bring your unicycle inside.

My son has gotten good at making sure the unicycle is inside each time he’s done, meaning I do not have to utter the previously mentioned sentence often. Granted, I do have to occasionally say things such as, “Hey, don’t unicycle through the kitchen when I’m cooking.” But who doesn’t say that a few times a day?

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 or at www.mikeslife.us.

 

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Childhood Family

Choose wisely

Remember that scene in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” when the bad guy, Donovan, has to choose which one is the Holy Grail?

You don’t? Well let me refresh your memory. The knight guarding the Holy Grail (among scores of other goblets) tells Donovan, to “choose wisely.” He picks the wrong one, drinks from it, and, instead of eternal life, he ages instantly and is quickly turned into a pile of dust and bones. (Yes, I know Elsa actually chose the goblet, but isn’t it really his responsibility at the end of the day? Oh, and also, spoiler alert.)

The knight responds by saying, “He chose … poorly.”

Well, now you know how my daughter feels right now, as she tries to make her choice of colleges.

We have assured her there are no wrong choices. She has five schools she is looking at: University of Alabama, University of South Carolina, Winthrop, Elon and James Madison.

Depending on the day, a different one is a leader in the clubhouse.

I get that this is a big decision. I mean, I get it in theory. I never had this inner turmoil, as I had been sold on going to Alabama pretty much forever. I applied to a few other schools, but my plan had been to go Bama all along, which is what I did. My wife did not have a lifetime favorite, but when she got accepted to Bama, she said, “Meh, why not.” We met there, so I’d like to think it worked out for both of us.

So you might think there is pressure on her to go to Alabama, since in addition to her parents, countless relatives (including aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents) and family friends went there as well. (There is a reason my wife and I walked into our wedding reception to “Sweet Home Alabama.”)

Rest assured, there is not. We have told her that she needs to go to the place that is the best fit for her. If that’s Alabama, super. If it’s one of the other four, good for her. (One caveat: Regardless of choice, we do have rules on who she can root for under this roof on football Saturdays. Some things are non-negotiable.)

We have told her not to fret too much about the decision, as she still has several months to decide. And we still have to visit some campuses to find out if it just feels right.

Here’s the main thing I want her to factor into her decision: What school wants her the most? And I am sure they will all tell her they want her. But I have a slightly different way of determining just how much they want you.

My wife and I were both fortunate enough to get out of college without debt. And that’s my main goal for her. I want her to find out what scholarships are available, and what the school is willing to do to entice her to attend.

It seems really bonkers to me that (a) we ask 17 and 18 year old kids to know what they want to be when the grow up and (b) give them ability to get into a debt that will follow them around for decades.

Yes, I get personal responsibility and all the jazz. But let’s be honest – if you are looking for someone to hoodwink with a really bad deal that will cost them for decades, a senior in high school looking for the perfect college is a great mark.

So over the next few months, we will team together to find what the best fit is, in terms of academics, social life and financial responsibility. I feel confident that, at the end of the day, she will choose wisely.

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 or at www.mikeslife.us.

 

Categories
Childhood Family

Exit stage left

When my children reach a finish line at various stages of life, I try not to get too sentimental about the fact that a chapter has closed.

Sure, some of them are easily celebrated – being done with diapers, being able to ride a bike without training wheels, and, of course, being able to respond to “I’m hungry!” with “Well, then make yourself something to eat.”

Others are tough, however.

Such as when you realize your child is no longer going to bring home school craft projects.

Or when your child drives off alone for the first time.

Or when you realize they are probably going to see that new superhero movie with their friends instead of you.

But I tell myself not to lament these closures. Rather, I tell myself to celebrate that my wife and I were able to successfully usher our kids to their next phase.

I found myself having a little bit tougher of a time not lamenting such a closure the other night, however.

I sat in a high school theater, watching my daughter take a bow onstage at the conclusion of the play “All Shook Up,” where she played Mayor Matilda.

And I said to myself, “This may be the last time I see her perform on stage.” At that point, the person to my left began cutting onions, and the person to my right blew dust in my face. Yes, that’s what I’m going with.

My daughter is a senior, and this was her final high school theater performance. She has been involved in theater since she was four, when she played a rabbit in a Winnie The Pooh play. (It was a tour-de-force performance, widely regarded as one of the greatest rabbit performances of all time, mainly because she was four and managed to not fall off the stage.)

She took to the stage naturally. Over the last 13 years, she has been consistently involved in some aspect of theater.

When she was 5, she auditioned for a role in “Best Christmas Pageant.” I took her up to the auditions and was pleased to see her taking an interest in it. I had done some theater when I was in high school, but drifted away from it in college.

As I sat back away from the auditions, letting her do her thing, the director realized that no men had come out to audition for the role of the dad. They asked me if I would read for the part, which I reluctantly did, mainly at my daughter’s urging. I got the part (yes, I realize I was cast out of a pool of one), and my daughter and I were soon on stage together.

Getting me back involved in theater soon led to my wife getting involved in theater. And with us came our son, and we spent the next decade with theater as our full-time, non-paying (but incredibly rewarding) jobs. Allie’s interest in theater was the snowball that brought us into that world, a gift she gave us that has had such a remarkable impact on our family over the years.

When we moved a week before her freshman year, she immediately found her tribe in the high school theater department, something that helped her transition into the scary world of starting high school in a completely new town.

But she’s a senior, and she is heading off to college next year. She has her eyes set on a major that is not theater. But as I can certainly attest, even if you get out of theater for a while, you can always get back in.

But I realized at that moment this was the last time I would see her on stage when we are a family of four under one roof. Because this chapter is closing. And as much as I want to be sad that it is closing, I have to remind myself that this is the best possible thing that can happen, because time only moves forward. So go write that next chapter, Allie Gibbons. And break a leg.

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.

 

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Adventures Childhood Family Uncategorized

Winter wonderland

Winter Storm Grayson has come and mostly gone, and I think I speak for plenty of folks when I say, “Alright, that’s enough winter for 2018.”

A few thoughts on our big blizzard to kick off the year:

  • Yes, I know that five inches of snow isn’t a lot for much of the country. And yes I get that many people like to mock our (a) awe of the storm and (b) occasional ineptness in particular when it comes to driving. But I live in Charleston, SC, where we haven’t seen this kind of snow in nearly a decade. Congratulations if you live in a community that is prepared for this kind of weather and handle it without batting an eye. Please remember that we handle hurricanes and brutal heat quite splendidly.
  • But speaking of driving, we in the South do kind of earn that reputation honestly. I tried to stay off the road as much as I could. However, once the roads started clearing, I did get out a few times, mainly for groceries and a doctor’s appointment. I consider myself a fairly good driver, and approach driving in winter weather with caution and patience. Other drivers? Not so much. Fun fact: A four-wheel drive is not magically designed for driving over ice. I watched one big truck try and take a turn and slide sideways into another car. I also witnessed another big truck tailgate me as I went down a road covered in ice patches. Guess what? I’m not speeding up.
  • There really is nothing like watching kids play in snow, especially ones who have never seen it. We live in a neighborhood with a lot of little kids, and seeing them frolic and play was awesome. That said, there seems to be a pretty good chance you could take the wrong kid home, as they are virtually indistinguishable once they are bundled up and then covered in snow.
  • International Snowball Fight Rules must be adhered to, or there will be chaos. Timeouts must be honored, even it’s your big sister calling timeout. I mean it. Seriously. Parker – she called timeout. Do you want to go inside? Parker!
  • If you put gloves on your snowman’s arms, monitor them closely the next day. The gloves may be iced nice and stiff at first. But as the temperatures rise, the gloves may begin to melt. And once the four fingers not being supported by the stick arms melt, your snowman may inadvertently be giving one-fingered salutes to everyone driving by. Oops.
  • Ponds around these parts rarely freeze, so we thought it was pretty cool to see the ones near our house with a thin sheet of ice on them. Knowing we couldn’t get on the ice, we pitched snowballs at them to watch them explode on impact. Over the last few days, I have noticed that most every frozen pond has snowball plops all over them. Good to see other people are as easily amused as we are.
  • When I was a kid and winter weather approached, we had to watch TV or listen to radio and wait for the long list of closings to be read to see if our school was canceled. These kids today, with their smart phones and social media? Spoiled. And you can also tell when the announcement comes out, as you hear your two kids scream at the same time from different rooms when they get the alert on their phones about school being canceled.

So we have had our winter fun, and I am more than happy to let the rest of the country take on winter storms for the rest of 2018. I’m all for getting back to normal, and getting temperatures back way higher than my age. The snow was fun, but I’m good for one of these a year. Around these parts, I think it’s time to put our focus on what we’re best at: hurricanes and brutal heat.

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

Kids today…

I was driving in the car with my wife and son recently, and I had the opportunity to partake in one of my favorite pastimes: Telling my kids about a world they will never know.

We were talking about an article I read that said young folks these days don’t gather socially, at least not in physical locations, as often as they used to.

Kids today, with their new-fangled technologies that connect them instantly.

My wife and I began regaling our son – which he no doubt was super appreciative of – of a time when we were young, carefree 20-somethings, without the burdens of children but also without the conveniences of smart phones.

For a good chunk of our early professional lives, my wife and I would join friends at a local watering hole after work several times a week to play bar trivia over cocktails. Even though I am a bit older now and seldom play anymore, I am aware that bar trivia is still a thing. But I would bet that few groups had as consistent run of attendance that our crew did for a good four or five years. Also, for those of you still playing trivia, please remember one of the cardinal rules of playing it: Even if you are just drinking water, you have to tip as if you are drinking beer and getting food. You are renting time and space from a server, so drop a fiver at the very least at the end of the evening.

At that point, my wife decided to go super “Kids today!” and said, “And there’s not destination television anymore! And what about Saturday morning cartoons!?!?!”

Let’s unpack these one by one.

My kids watch most of their TV on their phones or computers. And they do it whenever. Our daughter, who is 17, watched the entirety of “Friends” in a couple of weeks, a feat she accomplished by ignoring such pesky things as cleaning her room or sleeping.

Well, when “Friends” was airing live, we used to watch with a group of our friends, and we had to do it 30 minutes a time, every Thursday at 8. And it took us 10 years to knock that bad boy out. (We also did the same thing with “Melrose Place,” but I’m not going to recommend that show to her. Or admit that I watched every episode religiously. No one can prove I watched “90210,” either.)

As for Saturday morning cartoons, kids today, with their cartoons whenever. My wife and I were sharing with our son about how our Saturday mornings were the one day when we could see cartoons (with the exception of holiday prime time specials). We had about a three-hour block on Saturday mornings, and we liked it! Harumph.

I then took the helm and went on to share with him about how awesome Blockbuster Tuesday new releases were. “Independence Day” coming out and you’ve got a watch party scheduled? You better get to Blockbuster bright and early and make sure you get one of the 12 copies they were going to have available. If for some reason you couldn’t get there that early, you could hope and pray that some kind movie watcher had rented that morning and returned it the same day. I remember several times heading into my local Blockbuster, eyeing a new release in the return bin at the counter, and hovering like a vulture until I could catch the eye of the clerk and saying excitedly, “Can I get that copy of ‘There’s Something About Mary’ that just got returned!?!?!” That was my on-demand, my friend. (Oh, and fingers crossed that the person returning it had in, fact, had the decency to be kind and rewind.)

So the world is different now, and maybe that has led to a bit of a fracture in the traditional social structure. I’m not one to suggest the old ways are better or worse. Just different. Now, if you’ll excuse, my show starts in 10 minutes, and if I don’t see it now, I’ll have to wait until summer reruns.

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.

 

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Childhood Family

Sweet little lies

Years ago, a co-worker was debating whether or not his new daughter would be introduced to Santa Claus.

His conundrum was whether or not he was lying to this child, and if that was a precedent he wanted to set. At that time, I already had two kids, and we were full on into the “Of course you lie to them” mode, so I explained that lying to your children was probably one of the few things that would get you through parenting relatively sane.

Now, I’m not talking about big, impactful, harmful lies. I am talking about lies of extreme convenience. Maybe, just maybe, all McDonald’s weren’t actually closed for the day. Maybe, just maybe, the store wasn’t actually out of candy. Or maybe, just maybe, failure to eat your vegetables will not, in fact, result in all ponies being eradicated from the earth. But they didn’t need to know any of that at the time, and we had to sidestep some issues.

But Santa is certainly in the harmless camp, and can even be justified as not technically a lie, but a little necessary misdirection. (Quick aside: I read a comment on the web a while back that, when the Santa mythology was being formed, we should have all gone with the narrative that Santa actually leaves all of the kids’ presents with the parents, but not until kids are asleep. That solves bedtime and when a kid wakes up and walks into the den as you are cursing the fact that you are starting to assemble an indoor play fort at 11:00 and have just realized the directions are only in Mandarin.)

During this discussion with the co-worker, another chimed in with this two-word response: “10 years.” When pressed for what exactly that meant, she explained that kids have 10 years of their life when they are aware enough of the world to actually understand it but also not have (hopefully) a care in the world. A 10-year block when your parents are perfect and the world is still magical. There is plenty of time later in life for soul-crushing reality. Give ‘em some Santa for that blissful decade.

My kids are beyond that decade. They now know the full realities of the world: McDonald’s are open but I’m not stopping because I would like to get to Atlanta before next Monday. The store had plenty of candy but I’m not your personal candy dealer. And eat your vegetables, don’t eat your vegetables. I don’t really care, but rest assured when you get hungry later you’re on your own.

But there is always a little bit of Santa magic left in everyone (I hope). Santa still delivers gifts in my house. Granted, the way the kids write their Christmas wish lists are a little different these days. My kids used to love getting a toy catalogue and circling everything they wanted, or going to the store and sharing with my wife and me the various things they REALLY hoped Santa would bring them.

Our son is 14, and really into fishing. His main way of sharing his Christmas list: Rattling off a long line of fishing equipment he wants, with names that I will never remember so I end up saying, “Yeah, can you text me those?”

Our daughter is 17, so her Christmas list is really simple. “Cash. And ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ on vinyl.”

All that said, come Christmas morning, Santa will have come to visit, and he will every year for the foreseeable future. By now, it’s a collective lie that we are all a part of of, and we are all OK with. Because sometimes these things aren’t so much lies, but rather the spirit that lets us grab back a little of that decade where everything was perfect.

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 Food

Thanks, Thanksgiving

Dear Thanksgiving,

I just wanted to tell you that you are not forgotten.

I know you see when the Christmas decorations start appearing in stores around August.

And I know it makes you sad. But you don’t complain, because that’s the kind of holiday you are. Stoic to the end. That’s you, Thanksgiving.

Sure, you feel a little bit better when people lament such early appearances. Sure, you get a little solace when you see people posting on Facebook that they don’t want to hear “Deck the Halls” on the store radio when Halloween decorations are still out. But never a word from you, Thanksgiving. You are strong, T’Giv.

Let me tell you something, Thanksgiving. Despite the fact the stores’ halls have been decked with holly for months, you hold your head high. You know why? Because you matter, my friend.

You may not be a holiday with a lot of marketing oomph behind it. Even if we have been buying Christmas wreaths before we’ve even set our clocks back, you’re still on our minds. You, Thanksgiving, are a humble holiday. And we dig that.

I don’t care how many inflatable Christmas Snoopy dog houses are on sale before Veterans Day, we are still not bailing on you, Thanksgiving.

This past weekend, we were all planning for your big day. Some of us have started shopping. Some of us have thought really long and hard about planning to start shopping at some point. But you rest assured, noble holiday, we are thinking about you.

On Thursday, we will gather around tables with families and friends and celebrate your big day. We will feast until we are full, and then feast a little more. We will relish the background noise of NFL football (even if it’s almost always the Lions). And we will oh so love your gracious gift of a turkey sandwich the next day. You, Thanksgiving, are the holiday that keeps on giving.

For me personally, your day is a day of some of my most wonderful family memories. When I was a kid, we would have dozens of people at our house for your big day. Our home was always the place for anyone who needed a family for the day, and we always became a great big family on your day. Thanksgiving, you brought me some of the fondest memories of my childhood. I remember football in the front yard with tons of people, including one time when one of the players was an awesome giant sheep dog someone had brought to the celebration. I remember my dad’s annual tradition of calling out, “Who wants to carve the turkey?” to which we all respond in unison, “I don’t!” (I have no idea of the origins of that, but I am pretty sure a Gibbons Thanksgiving cannot legally commence until that has been done.) I remember watching my mom deftly add card tables and folding chairs to the sprawling, growing array of tables that she started with, happily accommodating surprise (and very welcome) guests to our home. The more the merrier. (See what I did there, Thanksgiving? I took merry and used it for YOU.)

Unfortunately, Thanksgiving, I won’t be able to go to my parents’ this year to celebrate you. But I know the rooms will be full of friends and family and fellowship, and that warms my heart. But as is your tradition, you continue to make sure that people are together on your big day. A neighbor has invited us to join them on Thursday, an opportunity we embrace.

So keep being you, Thanksgiving. You may not get the retail love of other holidays. But that’s OK. That’s not your style.

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

Gone fishin’ (for an explanation of what in the world you’re talking about)

parker-tackle-boxAs a parent of two teenagers, I spent a good bit of my time asking, “What are you talking about?”

This can range anywhere from goings on at school to current pop culture to inside jokes that I probably don’t want to know what they are talking about.

But of late, the main cause of this line of questioning has been related to fishing.

Yes, fishing. My son got into fishing a few years ago, and he was content fishing the way I did as a kid: You had a pole and maybe some worms or two and you just did your thing. The point really wasn’t to catch fish, but rather enjoy some time at the water. If you caught a fish, bonus time!

What a difference a few years makes. Since that time, he has taken himself to the furthest corners of the online fishing universe. He follows fishing YouTubers and is constantly watching to learn new techniques. (From some of these YouTubers, I have learned there are a surprisingly high number of people who fish in urban sewers.)

And he studies up on various lures and fishing add ons. This is where we have found a great divide.

My fishing gear vocabulary consists of pretty much rod, reel, line, hook, weight, bobber and bait. And that has served me pretty well for most of my life.

Not Parker. He has amassed multiple rods and multiple tackle boxes for different occasions. Every month or so, he spends some time on the floor, rearranging his tackle boxes and working on his lures.

Speaking of lures, in my youth, there were, simply, lures. I was an unrefined fisherman. My son delights in telling me about all of the lures he has and their functions. And when he has saved up some money to go buy some, I stand utterly clueless as we are at the sporting goods store and he tells me is looking for, among other things, a lipless crank bait, a swim jig, a jerk bait, a senko, a rattletrap, a whopper plopper or a chatter bait. He will pace the aisles, and say, “Dad, I can’t find a buzz bait.” I am pretty much as helpful as a hologram at that point, because I can’t find something if I have no clue what it is.

We also got him something called Mystery Tackle Box for his birthday. This is something that arrives each month in the mail, and it contains a handful of “mystery” lures. This is pretty much the highlight of his month, and something I proudly lord over him.

ME: (Holding the box high in the air): Look what arrived today!

HIM: MYSTERY TACKLE BOX!!!

ME: (extending it a little higher)

HIM: I know. Homework and room cleaned…

One month, the box came, and once I finally stopped being mean making him do homework first he tore into it. He looked at the contents list and screamed, “OHMIGOD! A Project Z Shroomz Micro Finesse jig!!!”

I responded, “What are you talking about?”

He explained it to me, but was speaking at such a fast rate I have no idea what he said. As he searched the box, he found the packaging for this prized inclusion. And he saw it was empty. Somewhere along the way, the packaging had come open and Project Z Shroomz Micro Finesse jig had not made the journey. The look on his face was as if I had said, “Hey, by the way, Christmas, Star Wars and Alabama football have all been canceled forever. Also we sold the dogs.”

I assured him the folks at MTB would take care of this, and a quick email exchange confirmed just that. In no time they had righted the situation, and a package arrived a few days later. As my son was frantically tearing open the package, he again explained to me just what this exciting addition to his collection would be used for.

I responded, obviously, with, “What are you talking about?”

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.

 

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Childhood Family

Wait, wait, don’t call me. Until 11.

My daughter and I were in the car the other day, listening to a stand-up special we had downloaded from Netflix.

Before I continue, please take a moment to realize how awesome that is: I pushed a couple of places on my phone screen and an hour-long stand-up special was suddenly playing over my car speakers via, I guess, magic. Or maybe technology. Who really knows.

Anywho, the special was from comedian Hasan Minajh, who is an eloquent and gifted storyteller. His special weaves in both stories of his life as a first-generation American with immigrant parents as well as general stories from life.

One of his bits was about being a child and dreading when the phone would ring, out of fear that your parents would answer it before you. It’s a great bit, and I won’t unfurl it here, as you should listen to him tell it, as it’s his comedy.

That said, I told my daughter, “You will never know the struggle of trying to make a late night phone call with a friend.”

She gave me the look that can only be interpreted as, “You’re old.”

“Look,” I said. “You’ve got it great. You can talk to your friends whenever you want. You can text, call, Snapchat whenever you want, and you can do this in your room.”

Again, Dad is old.

That’s when I decided to lay out the “I walked five miles uphill to school both ways in snow and the occasional lava flow” for my generation.

“You don’t know what it’s like to try and coordinate a late-night call with someone using call-waiting and the movie listings recording!”

Blank stare.

It occurred to me that my daughter has no idea what call-waiting is (was?) or that there was a time when you had to call the movie theater and listen to a recording of what was playing when.

That second one hit her especially hard. “That seems awful…” Indeed, child. The struggle was real.

I explained to my daughter that if you wanted to talk to someone late at night, without your parents being woken up, you had a very well coordinated strategy.

Step one: Synchronize your watches. Gotta get on the same time page.

Step two: Designate a time for said phone call. 11:00 was usually a good time, as parents were presumably asleep.

Step three: First person calls the movie theater at 10:59 to listen to the recordings of movie show times. (“Adventures in Babysitting will be playing at…” “Revenge of the Nerds 2: Nerds in Paradise will be playing at…”

Step four: Second person calls your home number at 11:00.

Step five: Click over to accept call.

Step six: Victory. And a 30-minute conversation about probably some of the stupidest stuff ever uttered into a phone.

My daughter’s response: “That seems like a lot of work just to talk to your friend.”

A lot of work indeed, child. A lot of work indeed. We did the heavy lifting of the 80s that I can only hope ushered in the era of technology that lets you communicate ad nauseum with your friends into the wee hours of the night without disturbing your parents.

I am sure my daughter has a new appreciation of the struggles of my youth and is now eternally grateful for how easy her life is compared to the hard scrabble world of an 80s kid. Should she, at some point, fail to show that grasp of the divide between our worlds, I will have no choice but to sit her down and have a long talk about what encyclopedias and card catalogs are.

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.