Conversations in the Car

Tags

boys, children, dinosaurs, fathers, kindergarten, parenthood, parenting, sons, stegosaurus, Stephen Roth, summer, winter

“Daddy, do you wish that dinosaurs were still around today?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”

“But if you thought about it, would you want them to still be around?”

“I don’t think so,” said the middle-aged man. “It would be kind of scary, having those big dinosaurs stomping all over the place.”

The little boy sighed, as if frustrated by always having to explain everything to his imagination-starved father. “But it would only be herbivores stomping around. No meat-eaters allowed.”

“Okay. Well, that makes me feel a little bit better.”

“What’s your favorite dinosaur?”

“Hmmm,” the man said, looking both ways before pulling onto the main road. It was a question he’d gotten a lot recently, so he should have been ready with an answer, but he wanted to come up with something flashier this time. “I’d have to say my favorite dinosaur is…the Stegosaurus.”

The boy giggled. “That can’t be your favorite dinosaur. That’s mine!”

“Why can’t we have the same favorite?”

“Because it was my favorite first,” he said. “I like how Stegosaurus has spikes on his tail, so he can use it against his predators.”

The father nodded, having seen his son demonstrate a Stegosaurus “tail sweep” more than a few times in the downstairs TV room.

The child looked out the window at the beige winter landscape. “Daddy, do I have to go to school today?”

“Yes, you do.”

“I wish it were summer already.”

The dad chuckled, thinking how the swimming pool would open in just three short months, which would have seemed like an eternity back when he was in Kindergarten.

“It’ll be here before you know it,” he said, trying to sound hopeful.

The Story Behind the Photo (Maybe)

Tags

1990s, 1991, friendship, high school, hormones, lolapalooza, love, lust, r.e.m., summer, teens

This picture was taken sometime during the summer before senior year. We called ourselves “The Group” that summer, and we did everything together. Or maybe it’s better to say we went everywhere together: Six Flags, Lolapalooza, baseball games, the beach at Hightower Lake, the big July 4th fireworks show. Jeremy was a ticket-taker at the Omni 6 multiplex, and he let us in for free if it wasn’t too busy. The Group saw a lot of great movies that way: Terminator 2, Thelma and Louise, Bill & Ted Go to Hell, The Naked Gun 2. Okay, so maybe they weren’t all great movies.

We were smart kids, but we weren’t nerds. We had friends who were popular and accepted us, but we were never in the cool crowd. We were ambitious. We talked a lot that summer about SATs and college applications, about how great it would be to go somewhere like Stanford or Duke or NYU, anyplace far away from Cantering Hills and its suburban ranch-house sameness. We shared a few of our secrets and insecurities with each other, but there was little talk about The Group enduring past senior year. We were all headed in different directions to realize different dreams.

Things started getting weird in late August. That was around the time of the infamous Saturday night sleepover at Shawn’s house. Someone brought a case of Keystone, and I think it was Jennifer who scored a 2-liter of Purple Passion. Most of us crashed on the king-size bed in the master bedroom and, at some point during the night, Shawn and Lexie hooked up. Shawn claimed he unsnapped Lexie’s bra, but Lexie swore that wasn’t true–it was just a lot of making out and maybe a little dry humping. Nobody took their clothes off, she said. At any rate, The Group was never quite the same after that.

That was followed by Jeremy’s Big Crush on Jennifer, an obsession that lasted six weeks and one that Jennifer did not reciprocate. At one point Jeremy made her a mixed tape titled “Shiny/Happy,” which contained the usual dreary alternative songs about heartbreak and rejection. That tape sat in Jen’s Mazda for a whole year but I don’t think she ever listened to it. Everything came to a head after the Fort Mill football game. Jeremy got into a fifth of Wild Turkey and decided to T-P the big oak tree in Jen’s front yard. Unfortunately, her father woke up before Jeremy could unleash all his rolls, and he chased Jeremy down the street while brandishing a 5-iron.

The Group still hung out that fall, usually Saturday nights at the Flowery Branch access on the lake. But the gatherings were less frequent and more awkward. The end came on a chilly November night in the high school parking lot. I had just finished band practice and was heading back to my car with French horn in hand when Jeremy stopped me.

“I don’t want to be your friend anymore,” he said.

I felt a tightness in my throat. I knew what this was about.

“What are you talking about?” I asked anyway.

“The way you treated Todd,” he said. “That was cold. I talked to Shawn about it and he agrees. We don’t want to hang out with you anymore.”

Jeremy was referring to Todd Baker, the sixth member of The Group. I knew Todd had a crush on me. I had known it since the beginning of the summer when we went swimming in the lake and he kept running his hands through my wet, tangled hair. At the movies, Todd would always find a way to sit next to me and sometimes he would thread his popcorn buttered fingers into mine. I finally let him kiss me on the bus ride back from an Honor Society rally we all attended. He had thin lips and was a delicate, almost cautious kisser. We never did anything after that, but now he was pissed off because I was seeing Darren Barnhorse.

“You led him on,” Jeremy said. “You shouldn’t treat Todd like that. He’s your friend.”

“Exactly,” I said, striding toward my Volkswagen Rabbit. “We’re friends, and that’s it.”

I made it to my car and reached for the door handle, but Jeremy blocked me. He leaned in, his breath smelling faintly like a bean burrito. It was 5:30, and the sky had a purplish tint. It felt like it could rain at any moment.

“You think you’re so cool, don’t you?” he said. Then he pressed his lips against mine, hard. It was an angry kiss, but I more than held my own. I pulled away after a few seconds, or maybe it was a few minutes. Jeremy stepped aside and I got into my car and cranked the ignition. He offered a tiny wave as I backed out–not the kind of gesture someone gives you when they don’t want to be friends anymore.

I drove off with two thoughts in my brain: 1.) I had left my French horn somewhere on the asphalt parking lot and, 2.) The Group was seriously fucked.

 

 

Happy Birthday To You

Tags

birthday, boys, disney world, family, fatherhood, fourth, kansas city, kansas city royals, parenthood, parenting, playgrounds, summer, toddlers

Dear Son,

Saturday is your fourth birthday. I hope you will enjoy it. Nothing could top your third birthday, which we celebrated by spending a week at Disney World. You may remember your birthday dinner at Chef Mickey’s in the Contemporary Resort, the procession of Disney characters who stopped by our table, working you into a sugar-fueled, nap-deprived frenzy. You became so uncontrollable – rolling around the floor, hooting and screaming, doing somersaults out of our booth – that we had no choice but to put you in time-out right next to the gift shop and below the monorail station. Your mama and I felt awful about it, but that was the only way we could calm you down. It was really the one black mark on a trip that involved four Disney parks, countless character encounters and, amazingly, us training you how to go potty on your own.

Your fourth birthday, which will be spent with your friends at an indoor inflatable playground, won’t hold a candle to Disney World. But it will be the celebration of a year in which you continued to grow and thrive and learn so many things. As already mentioned, you graduated from diapers (at least during the day). You spent almost the entire summer at the swimming pool, finding the nerve to hold your head underwater, paddle around the shallow end, and even jump in all by yourself. You rode a big-boy bike with training wheels, learned the basics of football, soccer and basketball, and saw your first movie in a theater (Turbo: the animated tale of a snail who has the need for speed). You sat still and paid attention in your pre-K class, earning innumerable smiley faces on your performance chart. You learned that a pepperoni and sausage pizza from Casey’s General Store was the best food in all the world, except for your mama’s own spaghetti and meatballs.

The year 2013 was a challenging one for our family. You were a joy and inspiration through it all, however, even after you stopped taking naps on the weekends. When the weather was nice out, we toured the area playgrounds, including your beloved Penguin Park. When it was lousy outside, we did puzzles, played “catch” in the basement, and watch the same episodes of My Little Pony over and over again. We took you to your first Kansas City Royals baseball game, where you sat through two innings, devouring a hot dog and Cracker Jacks, before moving on to the outfield playground. You began a fascination with dinosaurs, and the T-Rex Café became your favorite dining spot.

Through all of this, you talked, sang and laughed constantly. Not a day passed when you didn’t say or do something that cracked your mama and me up. You showed a knack for one-liners, as I sometimes documented on my Facebook page (Me: We don’t ever whine in this house, now do we? You: Yes, but we can pretend to whine). You were smart-alecky, sassy and spoiled, but a blast to be around most of the time. When you got out of hand, you would reluctantly accept time-out, serve your punishment, then greet us with a grin and a hug. You were happy most of the time, and you never held anything against us for very long. Every single day, you said “I love you” to us, and that more than made up for all the unfinished meals, spilled bath water, and arguments over TV time.

These are just a few of the observations I can conjure up from what was another memorable, discovery-filled year with you, son. I know your fifth year is going to hold even more adventures, shenanigans and hilarious quips (“We ran out of batteries!” you said when the house lost power last summer). I can hardly wait for it to begin.

Love,

Daddy

Hardy? Hardly.

Tags

horticulture, humor, kansas city, mexican petunia, plants, southern living, summer

This is a photo of our Mexican petunias. We bought the plants three years ago, expecting them to be tough sons of bitches capable of weathering the hot, humid summer months of Kansas City. When I hear the name “Mexican petunia,” I imagine a stubborn, hardy bush defiantly blooming its purple flowers on the cracked desert floor or in the middle of a concrete median along a Tijuana boulevard. I imagine something like the plant described in this Southern Living article.

Yet, here are our proud Mexican petunias, wilting in the full sun of an 81 degree day.

“Those plants look sad,” my 3-year-old son says as we drive up to the house, where the petunias droop like a pair of sad-sack sentries.

“They do, don’t they?” I reply. My wife or I will get out the garden hose and water them down, a part of our daily routine during the summer. If there’s a 90-plus degree in the forecast, I’ll drag the plants into the garage for a while to give them a break from the heat. And I will stare down at them with the pitying look of man who has invested in a thoroughbred colt that’s too scared to come out of the stable.

In a week or two, those purple flowers will bloom and all will be forgiven. Maybe we’ll even have some nice, spring-like weather, and the petunias will perk up the way they did that day we brought them home from the nursery. They seemed so happy back then.

Chlorine Dreams

Tags

fiction, lifeguard, pool, romance, satire, sexy, steamy, summer, swimming

It was 11 o’clock and already pushing 90 degrees when Trudy arrived at the Whitehaven Estates Aquatics Center, dropped her three-year-old son into the shallow end of the pool and settled into a recliner that was within chatting distance of her favorite lifeguard.

“Good morning, Todd,” she said when she caught his eye.

“Good morning, Mrs. Connor.”

Trudy winced. After everything she and Todd had been through together, she had hoped he would finally drop this courtesy title shit. It made her feel every single one of her 36 years whenever he said it.

“Looks like it’s gonna to be another scorcher,” Todd said, his eyes fixed on the gaggle of kids, parents and teenagers that populated the Olympic-sized Whitehaven pool.

“Tell me about it,” Trudy said, shedding her cover-up to reveal the bikini she recently purchased from JCrew.com. “I don’t know how much longer I can take this heat.”

She pulled sunblock from her beach bag and began slowly applying it, working her hands all the way from her upper thighs to her ankles until she noticed the lifeguard stealing a glance.

“What SPF is that?” Todd asked.

“Fifteen.”

“With your light skin, you really should go with 30 or higher, Mrs. Connor. You can never have too much protection.”

She laughed. “Oh, Todd. You are so right about that!”

This was Todd Baylor’s first summer working the pool, and already the housewives of Whitehaven had taken to calling him, “Todd the Bod.” He was a little old for a lifeguard, probably in his late 20s, which didn’t say much for his ambition or career prospects. But, physically, he was more than all there. His sun-bleached hair, his bronzed, chiseled frame, the way he pressed a whistle between his full lips and let out a quick, confident little tweet. He was a man who was in firm control of his pool.

“Hey!” As if on cue, Todd leaned out of his chair and pointed at some urchin who was scrambling around the water slide. “STOP RUNNING!”

Then he blew his whistle. Trudy sighed.

The two of them had struck up a friendship over the summer. And last Saturday, Trudy decided to take things to the next level. Not saddled with watching her three-year-old for the day, she headed down to the pool and waited for Todd to call an adult swim. A few minutes later, she wandered out to the parking lot where she found the lifeguard sitting in his weathered Ford Explorer, playing Angry Birds and smoking a cigarette. He seemed startled to see her.

“Please don’t tell anyone, Mrs. Connor.”

“I would never do such a thing, Todd,” she said as she climbed into the passenger seat. “And you can call me Trudy from now on.”

“Where is Mr. Connor?”

“An insurance seminar in Sarasota,” she said, pressing her body against his and moving in for a kiss, “and he’s going to be gone all week.”

They hadn’t talked since that brief, groping encounter, which didn’t last as long as Trudy had hoped due to the 10-minute restriction on adult swims at Whitehaven. But now here she was, a mere five feet away from Todd the Bod, and she intended to learn why he hadn’t called the cell phone number she had carefully tucked in the pocket of his swimming trunks.

“Mrs. Conner?” Todd maintained his eagle-eyed stare over the pool, but he had moved his chair a little closer to Trudy’s recliner.

“Yes, Todd.”

“I, uhm, wanna apologize – Hey! NO EATING IN THE POOL! – I wanna apologize about what happened the other day.”

Trudy squirted more sunblock into her hand and rubbed it under her shoulder straps. “It’s really no big deal, Todd.”

The lifeguard leaned in close enough to whisper.

“It’s just that, well, Mrs. Connor. You’re so damn pretty. And we’ve only got three weeks left this summer.”

Trudy lowered her sunglasses so that she could get a good look at the bronze, aquatic god sitting next to her. She heard her three-year-old from the pool, screaming about getting a snack or something.

“You still have the phone number I gave you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Call me when the pool closes tonight,” Trudy said, “and I’ll meet you in the pump house.”

Image courtesy of http://www.shape.com.

Your Official Summer Movie Guide – Four Weeks Late

Tags

arnold schwarzenegger, batman, E.T., hollywood, jack nicholson, man of steel, movies, one flew over the cuckoo's nest, satire, schindler's list, shirley maclain, spielberg, Stephen Roth, summer, superman, tarantino, terms of endearment

Today, my wife and I are planning to go see the new Superman movie, Man of Steel. I feel a little sheepish about shelling out $10 a ticket for Hollywood’s latest revival of a tired superhero franchise, but I’ve always had a soft place in my heart for Superman movies. I’ve been hooked since my mom took me to watch the first one shortly before Christmas in 1978. I even kind of enjoyed Superman III with Richard Pryor (I was 12 years old at the time), as well as the maligned 2006 sequel, Superman Returns. I’m looking forward to the latest interpretation, even though I know from reviews that young Clark Kent will be portrayed as a brooding, conflicted loner, and that the battles with the General Zod will involve collateral damage on a ridiculous scale, and that I’ll probably be annoyed by the self-important seriousness of it all, just as I was with the latest Batman series. Okay, maybe I’m not so excited to see this movie.

Clark Kent and other Kansans react with shock to the Jayhawks’ overtime loss to Michigan in the 2013 NCAA tournament.

As you are well aware, Hollywood almost never produces original movies with unproven story lines and fresh characters anymore, especially not during the blockbuster summer season when the financial stakes are highest. However, this summer does feature some intriguing sequels to beloved films from the days when Hollywood actually cared about artistic side of movie-making. Here’s my guide to the ones that are getting the most buzz from the entertainment press:

One Flew Back to the Cuckoo’s Nest (R) After years of wandering the Columbia River valley, Chief realizes he misses the “gang of nuts” at the hospital, and decides to re-commit himself. It is the early 1980s, during government budget cuts and de-institutionalization, and Chief and Nurse Ratched become unlikely allies as they testify before Congress to save their mental hospital from closure. Jack Nicholson makes a brief appearance as the ghost of R. P. McMurphy during the nuts’ annual fishing trip off the Oregon coast. My rating: 2 1/2 jolts of electroshock therapy.

Schindler’s Sh*t List (NC-17) Shortly after the end of World War II, Oskar Schindler and a ragtag team of Holocaust survivors exact revenge by hunting down Nazis hiding in South America, then subjecting them to sadistically inventive deaths. Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited sequel to the 1994 Steven Spielberg classic signals a career comeback for Arnold Schwarzenegger, who puts his Austrian accent to good use as the cocksure, swaggering Schindler. My rating: 43 1/2 original ways of using the F-word.

Batman Begins Again (PG-13) In what promises to be the darkest, most ominous Batman movie ever made, Bruce Wayne loses most of his fortune in an elaborate Ponzi scheme, and joins the Riddler’s crime syndicate as a way to fund his exotic drug habits. It’s up to the Boy Wonder, heroically played by Seth Rogan, to get Batman back on track and teach him how to trust humanity again. My rating: 3 1/2 fight scenes in which Batman should have broken his spine, but emerges unscathed.

E.T. in 3-D: The Extra, Extra Terrestrial (PG) His planet taken over by the evil Admiral Zurd, E.T. returns to Earth to enlist the help of his old friend, Elliot, who is now a NASA scientist. Elliot convinces the government to green-light a massive rocket program in an effort to fight off Zurd’s forces, who now threaten Earth. Several space battles ensue, all to the soundtrack of Neil Diamond’s new single, “Reboot Your Heartlight.” My rating: 3 1/2 spectacularly exploding planets.

Terms of Endearment II: Aurora Returns (R) Shirley MacLain reprises her greatest role as Aurora moves back to Houston to care for aging astronaut and ex-boyfriend Garrett Breedlove (Jack Nicholson), who is dying from a rare venereal disease. Jeff Daniels steals the show as Aurora’s former son-in-law, now a best-selling author who helps Garrett get into a world-class hospice/spa resort. My rating: 2 1/2 boxes of soggy Kleenex.  

Suddenly, Summer

Tags

fireflies, food, grill, grilling, summer

We finally moved the grill out on the backyard deck this week, and tonight we cooked chicken breasts lathered in a Hawaiian marinade, topping them with grilled pineapples. Then I took the boy to the swimming pool, got him to bed at a decent hour, and am writing this under the stars, hoping to see the season’s first firefly.

It’s finally summer in Kansas City, and life is good. If it were Friday instead of a Wednesday night, it would be perfect.