Month: June 2021

Categories
Childhood Family

Boxes checked. And the best is yet to come…

If there is a book title that accurately describes my son, it would definitely be, “Dude, seriously, what makes you think that’s a good idea?”

Ok that’s probably not an actual book. But it would sum him up pretty well, oftentimes when he is, say, stringing his hammock 40 feet in the air.

But if I were to pick an actual book title that accurately describes my son, it would be a 2017 book titled “I Love Learning; I Hate School.”

This sentiment is what made his high school graduation last week a wonderful end to a really long journey for him.

Many of you know (or know of) Parker. And often people most relate to him being outside catching critters or tromping in the mud or riding his unicycle. Before he was old enough to drive, he would unicycle through the neighborhood to one of his favorite fishing spots, his fishing pole on his shoulder. I would always remind him to make good decisions, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s pretty easy to narrow down suspects when it’s described as a “teenager on a unicycle carrying a fishing pole.”

But it was often tough to get Parker excited to go into a building and sit still for eight hours. (Any former teachers of his reading this are no doubt nodding in agreement. Also, any former teachers of mine reading this are probably thinking, “Gee, I wonder who he gets that from…”)

He yearned to be outside and he longed for nature. Now, before you say, “Well, tough. We all have to do it. Suck it up.” I agree, somewhat. That is the deal. We all have to do it. (Now, whether we should all do it the way it’s always been done is a debate for another day.)

And that is why he walked across the stage last Friday night and accepted his diploma. He checked the boxes. And he did so with a lot of help along the way, from some amazing villagers who all helped raise a pretty cool kid.

I am thankful for that elementary school teacher who understood that Parker just didn’t care about chapter books, but she still wanted him to read. So she let him do his book reports on field guides he was reading. She said it was the first time she’s gotten book reports on a salamander field guide followed by a mushroom field guide.

I am thankful for the middle school teacher who, during parent orientation, held up his cell phone. He said, “Parents, whether you like it or not, your kids have access to all of the world’s information. If you want your kids to memorize exact dates, you’ll have to do that at home. I’m not going to teach them when Gettysburg. I’m going to teach them why Gettysburg.”

I am thankful for the high school teachers who “got him” and realized Parker was a really sharp kid who was doing some really cool things, but maybe needed a tweaked approach in some of the ways he learned.

I am thankful for our many naturalist friends who have seen Parker grow up in the woods and in the swamp and on the water, and who have provided guidance, knowledge, and a healthy dose of humor to keep his ego in check.

I am thankful for wonderful friends who have been a safety net/cheering section all through the years.

And of course, I am thankful for a large, loud, wonderful family who definitely gets that Parker is a bird of a different feather, and how they have been there all along the journey encouraging him to fly.

A lot of people have asked us what Parker is doing post-high school. The answer: We’re going to figure it out. He’s taking a gap year and is first doing an internship tracking rare reptiles and amphibians in a nearby national forest, which is pretty on brand.

After that? We’ll figure it out. The idea of the traditional college life is not something that is appealing to him. He is far more interested in tegus than togas, of finding a Farancia, not a fraternity. (A little one-two herpetological humor punch for you there. If you didn’t get it, fortunately, you have your cell phone, and thus access to all of the world’s information.)

But wherever this next journey takes him, I know it will travel through marshes and deserts and rivers and swamps and mountains, with a lot of cool critters along the way. And lots and lots of learning. Because, man, that kid loves learning…

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

 

Categories
Family Home improvement

Rake rake

My wife and I have always had two levels of cleaning. I clean. She clean cleans.

I do what I would, I guess, is what the base level of cleaning most people do. Meaning I put up dishes, sweep the floors, maybe mop, etc. This is just the starting round for her. She has to go to clean clean level. That includes such things as scrubbing baseboards, which is something my wife is very big on. She loves some clean baseboards.

Fun fact: If you asked me what my baseboards look like, I might very well answer, “What are baseboards?”

So we have a good system in place. I do the general cleaning in the house, and every now and again, my wife comes in to clean clean. Which means getting on her hands and knees and scrubbing things that I have never in my life paid attention to. But it’s important to her, so go do your thing!

And so the other day we discovered that we can take our clean vs. clean clean differences outdoors. We found that I like to rake, and she likes to rake rake.

We were working in our backyard, trying to clean out under some bushes that had accumulated a rather impressive collection of oak leaves. Admittedly, these had not gotten our utmost attention over the years, so we had a good bit of catching up to do.

We raked leaves into piles, and I began the job of bagging them. If you live in a place where you can load all your leaves on a tarp and just drag them to the side of the road where they will be magically sucked up via giant city-owned leaf vacuum, thank your lucky stars. We have to bag ours in these big, brown yard bags that always weigh more than you think they will once you will them. One upside – “The Leaf and Lawn Chute,” which was created by a modern-day Prometheus. You put it in the bag, and it makes it so much easier to put leaves in the bags. Why The Leaf and Lawn Chute creator hasn’t won a Nobel Prize of some sort (Nobel Prize for Lawn Care?) is beyond me.

We kept raking and bagging, and dragging each bag to the street. But every time I would return from dragging one bag off to the road, my wife would have a new pile, right where I had just scooped up all of the leaves. Finally, I said, “You know, you don’t have to get ALL the leaves, right?”

Her look told me that we would, in fact, be getting ALL the leaves.

I kept hauling bags, and she kept finding new leaves, despite the fact that, so far as I was concerned, any leaves left were merely survivors who earned their place in my yard. Turns out, leaves in our backyard do not, in fact, get rewarded for sticktoiveness.

I eventually hauled all of the bags to the street, and I have to say, it looks really nice. I don’t know how many bags I actually took out to the street. (Side note: Yeah, I do. It was 19.) But at the end of the day, I am glad we accomplished the task to her level of rake raking, rather than just my usual level of raking. However, I am not sure I can bring this enthusiasm inside, at least for team projects. I am all for working together, but there are some times where I will have to let her fly solo. Such as when it comes to baseboards, which may or may not actually exist in my house.

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

 

Categories
Uncategorized

Kitchen warrior

I am not normally one to suffer kitchen injuries.

Now, for those of you are not regular cooks, you may be asking yourself, “And what exactly is a kitchen injury?” Well, just google “Avocado injury” and you will see that the kitchen is a minefield that has to be navigated carefully.

I am a big fan of avocados, and I have never suffered the avocado injury that many have. Thus, clearly I am a pro.

The main kitchen injury I have endured over the years is when I am doing a skillet dish in which you sear your meat of choice on the stovetop, and then bake it in the oven. After about 20 minutes, you bring the skillet out of the oven. And I have on occasion, after having brought the skillet from the oven, grabbed the still-hot skillet by the handle. Fun fact – When you pull a metal skillet out of a 400-degree oven, the handle stays kinda hot for a while.

But for the most part I have remained unscathed. Until the other night. I was preparing some squash, zucchini and radishes for pickling, as my wife and I have gotten into pickling most anything we can find and keeping them in jars in the fridge for tasty snacks.

When we first started pickling things, we did some onions and cucumbers. After the first batch, we decided that we had cut the cucumbers too thick. Easy solution to that, we thought: We’ll use our mandolin slicer and get some super thin pieces that would be just delectable treats.

So I sliced up the latest batch of veggies and put them in their pickling jars. Success! Only thing now was for clean up. 

Now I normally take on clean-up in the kitchen, as that’s kind of my zen time. Put on a movie, put on some music, put on some game show I like and just kinda robotically clean. 

We were getting ready to head to a neighbors’ house for a cookout, and I told my wife to head on over to their house, and I would clean everything up and be there shortly.

She was just about out the door when I called out to her, “Hey, Jenn, can you come back? I think I cut my finger off…”

If there is one thing I know about my wife, she is Usain Bolt-fast when it comes to things such as this. In no time, she was in the kitchen. She said, “How bad is it!?!?!?”  I assured her that I had not, in fact, cut my finger off, but that I had dropped the mandolin while I was cleaning it and it had fallen and taken off some of my pinky. She asked me how much. I held up a paper towel wrapped hand. I said, “I’m not sure but…” She looked around at the spray of blood that was all around the kitchen and said, “Lemme see it. You may need stitches.”

At this point, we were at an inflection point. Yes, I may have cut the end of my finger off. But we were also heading over to a cookout in which a neighbor was cooking fresh fish that was caught earlier in the day. Decisions had to be made. “Never mind,” I said. “I’m fine.” I do love fresh fish.

But she was having none of it. She made me take the paper towels off. It … wasn’t pretty. She said, “You need to go to the doctor.” I said, “Fish.” Not the best rebuttal.

I assured her that the wound, while gross and really bleeding, was one that a repair would merely be cosmetic. I’d be fine. She went into nurse mode and bandaged me up with dressing that a field medic would have been proud of. The next day, we assessed the damage. It’s not pretty, but it seems to be healing fine now. Yeah, I probably could have gone for a few stitches. But I would have missed the fresh fish. 

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