100th Post

Well, here we are--100 moments into the life of a 21st century Dad. Since this blog began I've been hired to write part of a book, started a radio show with a republican, had my kitchen remodeled, and lost 5 pounds. All in all, not a bad start.

My Son has grown 1.4 inches in these 100 posts and now keeps setting off my instinctual alarm bells because I catch a glimpse of him in the corner of my eye and think some dude's walked into the house.

My daughter has joined Superhero High School and gained a laconic boyfriend who is exceedingly polite and apparently plays guitar better than I do.

My niece has moved in to the room we built for her in the basement and added organic flax seed and some kind of soft drink that is actually alive to our repertoire of victuals.

My attorney has entered into her third year and is undergoing the kind of unrelenting thankless grind you hear about sometimes in the same news story that ends with " . . . still don't know where she got the gun."

Only my gay dog hasn't changed. He still waits, poised on the edge of the couch, for someone to go scrounging around under the furniture for the remote, at which point he will strike without warning--and hump them into oblivion, tongue lolling out the side of his snout, big stupid frat boy grin on his face.

December will bring you four great Christmas posts, timeless classics of American family values that will leave you contemplating out-dopting your children or perhaps having yourself neutered. I promise.

Thanks for reading, for a writer, knowing people are digging your work can mean the difference between a single and a triple martini lunch. I genuflect honorably in your general direction.

My New Favorite Website

I predict great things for this upstart, um, anti-social networking site: rottenneighbor.com.

To play, you register, log in, then write about your neighbors. I assume you could write something good but given the title of the business, I think they discourage it. I've seen reports from Chicago titled: "Looney Daughter" (not mine), "Disgusting People" (not us), and "Hates Cats and Women" (Not me). I'm tempted to write completely wacky things about everyone I know, so if you're one of my neighbors, look for these upcoming titles:

"Recently Abducted--Probed"
"Weird Disney Christmas Creche"
"Dog poops in my yard"
"Drives a 1974 Toyota Diesel"
"Sculpts yard waste--political"
"Parking Pirate"
"Hangs lights for every holiday--even St. Patrick's Day. Weirdo."
"Sexy wife and/or housekeeper"
"Walks dog in bikini. Back fat. Fake tan."

When the kid becomes a doctor

My son wants to be a doctor. I'm still shocked about this. He's not talking about a fake video game doctor, but an actual stick your hands elbow deep in blood sawbones. I'm so proud.

I'm happy, too, because I know that when I'm old, he'll be able to give me drugs and somehow stave off the onset of early Alzheimers which I'm pretty sure hasn't happened yet.

I'm happy, too, because I know that when I'm old, he'll be able to give me drugs and somehow stave off the onset of early Alzheimers which I'm pretty sure hasn't happened yet.

When he does become a doctor, I hope he'll wear some decent Scrubs. If you've been to a doctor recently you know that fashion is definitely low on their priority list. Why isn't Nike or Old Navy jumping on this bandwagon? I don't know, but these guys, http://www.blueskyscrubs.com/categories/Scrubs/, might be game changers in the world of men's scrubs design and sales.

Knowing my kid, however, I'm sure he'll show up in baggy pants and a Bob Marley t-shirt.

TV on the Radio on the Audio Book on Good God Please Kill Me

It's Sunday. I am couch-ridden from some kind of teen delivered horror-cold that's making me all woggly and irritable. [My Attorney] is similarly afflicted and like all decent adults, when sick, we turn to the age old comfort of television.

Only, I turn to awesome television like Burn Notice and Game of Thrones and she turns to psychotic worse-than-a-grade-school-play British television in the form of Dr. Who.

From 1954.

And not just the horribly lit, badly acted, ridiculously written, STOOOPID black & white schlock available on the 985 DVDs she'd pulled down off of eBay. No, she's watching an episode for which there is no video available. So we're looking at a still photograph from the original and listening to the scene chewing, harrumphing of long dead British ACTors.

We are LISTENING to Dr. Who.

The All In Kid Strikes Again

I was reeling from the funk of old tennis shoes and [OH MY GOD] recently, in my tiny car, driving the boy and his stinkmates home from a movie when my mind tried to alleviate my distress by playing old home movies in my head from back in the day. Particularly, of when I taught the boy poker.

I know what you're saying: "Jesus, Garlington, first you become the designated porn hub of your street, then you let him drink beer, and now you're teaching him how to gamble? We're calling the cops!" But it's not like I handed him a credit card and pointed him to Poker Sites U.S.A.

No, I just decided it was a healthy way to teach him math and cunning. What I didn't realize is the sheer insane glee with which he gambles. It's like he's Richy Rich's dark twin let loose in Vegas or plopped down in front of Online Casinos for USA Players with a bag of digital greenbacks (which is one of the Best US Poker Sites I've ever lost a hundred bucks on . . .)

I showed him the basics and we ran through a couple of games. He was mildly interested. Mostly because I'd shut down the cable feed. After I figured he had a grip on your basic five card game, I introduced him to betting and watched in horror as he morphed from a cute kid playing poker to a full grown man in a double breasted leopard print sharkskin suit throwing money at me, screaming HERE'S FIVE BUCKS, BUY YOURSELF SOMETHING NICE!

It took a couple of rounds before he really understood we were playing for real money.

Roon: Wait, you mean if I win this hand I get to keep the money?

Dad: Yep.

Roon: And you won't say anything? I mean, I don't have to mow the lawn for this, right?

Dad: Shit.

Three hands later, the kid's rainmanned me out of ten bucks. I get a hand that makes my knees weak, a flush of such staggering rarity I kick myself for not being at the "fishcamp" poker cabin. I go all in.

Roon: What the hell is that?

Dad: I'm betting everything I have on my hand. You match my bet.

Roon: What if I can't match it?

Dad: You have to bet everything you have.

He matches my bet and loses gracefully. I drag the pot over and deal another hand. He looks at his cards and on his bet he says "All in." The next three hands he goes all in. Every hand after that, he goes all in. Every bet, every time, he's all in.  By the end of the afternoon, he's smoking a cheroot and I'm drinking straight Rye whisky from the bottle.

You know those signs for casinos that have a tagline at the bottom in print so small amoebas go blind trying to read it, saying If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call 800-blah-blah-blah? I called them.

 

800: Do you have a gambling problem?

Me: My son just took me for everything I had.

800: Has your son's gambling affected his job or friendships?

Me: Well, I don't like him anymore.

800: Has he asked you for money in the last 30 days?

Me: Every day.

800: Oh dear. And how old is your son?

Me: Ten.

800: . . .

Me: And a half. Here's the thing, I can't seem to explain to him that "all in" is a rare gambit.

800: We're here to help gambling problems—

Me: It is a problem. How's this kid gonna play two games in a row if he's all in every hand.

800: Every hand?

Me: Every bet.

800: And . . .

Me: Cleaned me out.

800: I can't believe it works.

Me: Wanna bet?

800: [click].

Hello, I'll be your lunch mom today.

Wednesdays are lunch mom days.  I stand scowling in front of 21 highly articulate, devious, well-heeled know-it-alls and try to prevent them from destroying their classroom in the 19 minutes we dedicate to peanut butter and jelly mayhem.

I debated how to play these half hour displays of volunteerism. I thought maybe I'd be the cool dad who only steps in when the flames are creeping toward the fetal pig storage bins; I thought maybe I'd be the funny dad who tells hilarious stories and knock-knock jokes hat are just on the verge of inappropriate, just enough to make them think you think they're thinking; I thought maybe I'd be the wise, erudite elder, sitting buddha like at the front of the class dispensing brilliant bon mots, changing lives. But I'm not any of those.

I'm exactly the same guy  I am at home when the boy's asked me for the mac like the four hundred and sixty-seventh time and I lose my self control and embed it in his forehead like a crushed keg tossed off by Andre the Giant.  I'm . . . cranky.

This bothers me a little as I wonder where it comes from. I have, in the past, been the child dazzler. I was famous among four year olds in my previous career as a middle manager at a cavernous bookstore where I did the Friday night storytime. Seriously--it was standing room only. And I have had to swerve off the side of the road while carting scouts home from camp because I made them laugh so hard they were about to ruin my upholstery. I can make kids laugh. I can entertain. I could be the Chris Rock of lunchroom moms. But I'm not.

I'm the guy in the picture up there. Why? I think it's Wednesdays. I'm the Wednesday lunch mom. Wednesdays are hump day from way back and by 11:30 on Wednesdays I've had just enough time after dropping off Dr. Whines N. Ces'antly at school, to grab a shower, finish my coffee and get into a project just enough to develp a little wind which I then have to let out of my sails so I can go play sheep herder for the sixth grade.

When I get back, I have to start all over. I have to get the coffee, re-open the project, and worse, somehow wrestle my original train of thought back into submission so I can get it down on paper and get paid.

So being a lunchmom, precious and altruistic as it is, wrecks my day. I don't know how people with real jobs do it. I saw one mom furiously texting on her blackberry because she's in the middle of a big real estate deal (probably the only person in the United States who is in the middle of a real estate deal) and had to break off the meeting to come utter such prestigious chestnuts as "Do NOT chase the ball into the street!" and "Please do not throw candy through the open window of the first grade, McCorski!" Tell me a 1.9 million dollar contract can compete with that.

Monday is Manday

My friend Dave and I were sunk into a couple of wingbacks smoking some illegal cigars and drinking 21 year old Bushmill's when someone mentioned a local restaurant that makes great meatloaf. They make it in muffin tins and call their result a meatmuffin (which is the nick name of my third girlfriend). There was a long pause wherein Dave and I stared off into the thick smoke while we absorbed the genius of a meatmuffin and allowed the image to rattle around in our craniums and we suddenly realized we could improve this thing by lining the muffin tins with bacon.

You're welcome.

Death By Chronic Weepy Girly Man Syndrome

I cry at movies.

I’ve been struggling with this for a long time because I’ve never been able to truly understand it. I still don’t. But I’ve decided it’s some kind of weird benefit, a decision that came from the reaction of my children, those mongrel dogs, when they caught me wiping tears out of my eyes at Ice Age 2.

Never mind that I cried in Ice Age one, as if that’s not bad enough. No. I was cranking out the juice in the sequel. I am a sad, sad little man and I’ll never be cool. I’ll never be Indiana Jones.

The list of guys who are cooler than me is long enough that it fades off into the distance like some desert highway. Everyone is cooler than me. Everybody’s Steve McQueen.

Take the guy remodeling my house. He can build stuff that doesn’t fall down, he scuba dives in the Caribbean, he goes off to Galena on the weekends to work on his boat, and he beat up three guys last year who were trying to steal his tools. Oh, and he was a Navy rescue swimmer.

Take my buddy Pat Greene (not the gay country singer). Last year he moved to New York for the hell of it, worked for three months as a superluminary in a play in Ashville where they put him up in a luxury apartment, and now he’s going to travel the world in the ground crew for a blimp. He gets a cool flight suit.
Me? Here’s a list of movies and commercials that have reduced me to a blubbering girl man:

• Ice Age
• Ice Age 2
• Over the Hedge
• American Idol when Gina G got voted off and had to sing Smile as her goodbye song and pulled it off with supernatural grace and aplomb.
• The Sylvan Learning center one with the kid with the skateboard? Every time.
• Chicken Little
• Spiderman I and II
• Shrek
• Lord of the Rings I, II, and III
• The hallmark commercial where that kid gives that girl that card.
• Finding Nemo
• Click (This claim is contested as RahRah is admant that I was tearstruck, where Roon is equally adamant that this is the only movie where I didn’t cry. Personally, I have a hard time crying in Adam Sandler movies. . .)
• Stranger than Fiction (like a busted dike)

Just now while compiling this list, I asked my daughter, Queen-of-All-14-Year-Old-Heartless-Daughters-and-Anime-Superfan, what movies I’ve cried in and she gleefully rattled off more than I could bear then cut herself off and said “basically, any movie where it’s not manly to cry.”
Hallmark commercials? What the hell is wrong with me?

Ok, I cried at my daughter’s play where she had the lead in Annie and did such a FREAKING AMAZING JOB and got several standing ohs and who wouldn’t cry, right? That’s cool. That’s manly. But I didn’t cry when the cat died and my kids were decavitating and flooding the room up to my knees with tears. Me? Dry as a piece of sandpaper.
If it had been a movie, I’d have been soaking my shirt sleeves. But in real life I’m bone dry.

Well, not always. About three months after I retired for a life of leisure, I had some kind of bizarre housewife crying jag which freaked me AND my wife out. I just walked into the kitchen and started weeping. My wife crept into the kitchen like I'd sprouted wings and asked me what was wrong and I remember looking at her with total bafflement and saying “I have no idea!” It was like having a seizure. Apparently this happens a lot—TO WOMEN who retire from the workforce and stay home. My sister told me it had a lot to do with missing the people I’d befriended at my job, like they’d disappeared off the face of the earth—oh and that I was a wussy little girl.

I get those. They make sense. But I opened one of those glurge mails the other day, you know the kind, about some act of angelic kindness that is so hokey and saccharine you actually get diabetes at the end of the letter, that kind of glurge, and I weeped up.

It’s an affliction. My daughter says I have CCB—chronic cry baby syndrome.

But it’s a part of me and I gotta get right with it because believe me, it ain’t going anywhere. And I’m thinking it teaches something to my kids. I don’t know what, but they love it. They can barely pay attention to a movie for all their neck craning to check me for tears. Whatever chemical deficiency causes me to leak so often also causes me to display a kind of genuine tenderness in front of my kids. I mean, it’s funny, they don’t let me forget that, but it’s also real.

So I’ve decided to take it as a kind reverse badge of manliness. I weep openly now. I cry with abandon. Hell, I’m crying right now—you got a problem with that, bub? Huh? Do ya?

Pantsed in the Dells

We went to the dells. Growing up in Florida, we had a lot of cool natural stuff to enjoy--rivers, lakes, Disney--and we had beaches. A lot of them. No matter where you are in Florida, you're never more than an hour and a half from the beach. So in my childhood memory box are sweaty trips down the Bee-line (that's a highway, not a train) to New Smyrna and Daytona beach.

But in all my years there, I never learned to surf. Believe it or not, people in Florida surf. You don't get the same kind of waves they get in Cali or Hawaii for the love of God, but you can catch a wave and stand up and do some tricks before you run over the pale people of Michigan standing in the shallows looking for sharks.

I did learn to body surf which is a remarkable skill for a fat guy. I can jump in the face of a wave and ride it in and let me tell you, it's a very cool feeling and I can only assume it's twice as cool on a surfboard.

And being a teen in the land of lakes and Daytona, I can tell you stories of women losing their tops i the waves or behind a ski-boat, it's happened millions of times. How many people do we know who've dived into a pool only to leave their shorts on the surface with their pride. But it's never happened to me.

Until the Dells.

Our son, the Finagler, finagled his way into the vacation plans of some close friends who were visiting a Ukrainian Youth Camp in Baraboo, WI. A Ukrainian Youth Camp is a clapboard motel refurbished only enough so that live snakes and bears can't actually reach through the walls to eat you. It is not the height of luxury. My son went there and we met them a few days later, booked a room 20 miles north in the Dells, picked him up and took off.

In the days preceding that, my son had gone to a place called Noah's Ark which is water-park heaven, and lost his water park cherry, and grown fierce and brave and determined to find a slide, somewhere, that was actually vertical and hopefully deposited riders into the open air a half mile over a shark infested vat of radioactive yak vomit. That would be perfect for him.

We booked a hotel that included the world's largest indoor water park and when we gazed upon it's polycarbonate glory, my son punched me in the arm and demanded that I ride every slide with him to which I acquiesced then vomited into a garbage can.

The first slide we go on is called the Man-Eating-Blade-Choked-Maw-of-Death-Python and like most of the slides is an enclosed tube modeled somewhat on the lower intestines in which you are voluntarily flushed into a small pool whereupon you crack you skull on the cement berm at the far side. The tube has something like 75 turns and 131 drops and it lies somewhere between 88 and 90 degrees of vertical so at some points you're not sliding so much as falling feet first in total darkness with nothing but the sound of your own scream--but it's ok because it only lasts about 45 minutes.

To get to the beginning of these slides, you walk up 44 flights of stairs, the elbows of the slides resting just inches away so that everytime a body slams into the turn, you can feel the concussion, like a piano dropped off the back porch. So it's great, after throwing yourself down "The Well" which is an unlighted vertical pit with rocks and dead bodies in the bottom and getting your heart rate up to 300 beats per minute, you then have to carry a 3-tone raft back up all 631 flights of stairs. I fnally threw myself off the top to commit touristocide but landed in some guy's commemorative Mai Tai.

Once we'd exhausted the terrifying out door slides we went to the indoor park for the terrifying indoor slides and as we walked in noticed theri was a surf ride, a standing wave. You stood at the top and simply dropped in. It was far too cool to pass up AND had the benefit of only being about 10 feet tall and SLOPED so not only were there no dark turns, I could slip down the thing and survive. We stood in line and watched the Wisconsin lifeguard/superjock/surf nazis do their little hot dog routines to impress the girls. They flipped, spun, rolled and finally fell down the front of the way rolling headfirst into a flip out which they simply walked up to the nearest blushing girl-will-go-wild like they'd just stepped out of their dorm. I fugured if a perfectly buff 19 year old hot shot farm boy can do it, so can I.

So my son's turn came and he was surprisingly adroit, staying up on his "board" and having a blast before he fell off and was blasted back up to the landing area. Then my turn came.

I know from my writing you probably think I'm some George Clooney/Matt Damon double and
thanks for the compliments, and the flowers, really. But truth is, I'm sligtly overweight. And hairy. And by slightly overweight, I mean it looks like I might give birth to a fully grown wildabeest at any moment and by hairy I mean I can braid the hair on my back. And I don't tan well. Furthermore, Id like to say that I'm bringing sexy back. Mostly because it looks like a minitaure orange speedo on me.

So I drop in from the top, half expecting the thing to shut down and management come out and have a talk with me but, amazingly, I glide down the face of this wave with real grace and panache and then I kind of hang there in the middle, just like you're supposed to, surfing. My inner nine-year old retarded sociopath takes the controls and convinces me to try to skim from side to side like the surf jockies were doing so I lift the edge of my raft and it throws me off into the three hundred mile and hour wave and eats my pants.

Now, in a lake, if you lose you shorts, you can stand there and try to get the attention of your friends and hope to god they'll help you out. Even in a pool you can stand in the deep end and beg someone to throw you a towel. But the standing wave water that shoots out of the wave machine at a fierce three hundred miles an hour is only six inches deep. There's nowhere to hide.

In slow motion, I feel my pants ripped down to my knees any my own personaly indoor water park is exposed to the horror and permanent scarring of all the prepubescent teens (now all in queue to become monks) lined up to surf.

Let my just report that I kept my cool, knowing there is nothing NOTHING you can do in this situation except try to make it as brief as possible. As I rolled up the wave to be deposited onto the "bank" at the top, I managed to yank my suit back up to the frugal position it originally occupied while rolling in such a manner that the poor afflicted youth were merely mooned and not faced with the full Monty. And let it be further known that I was man enough to make a joke about it and walk calmly down the stone steps back out into the water park.

Then I went right to my hotel room and locked myself in the closet.

Mission Accomplished

The father and son fishing trip is perhaps one of the classic moments of fatherdom. The Roon and I were fortunate enough to b invited to one by my friend and political antithesis, Dave Haynes, Republican Committee Chairman, CPD Sergeant, and talk radio superstar. Dave's family rents all the cabins at Sunset Bluff Resort every May and has a fishing weekend.

Fishing is more than a sport, fishing is a kind of religion. Its rituals are ancient and the man who pays them due regard is participating in an ancient and honorable ceremony of petitioning the earth for sustenance. Should he pronounce the sacred words correctly, should he furnish himself with the proper instruments of his office, should he perform the illustrious dance with the proper form then he will be rewarded and the earth shall give up her bounty, the robust and filling, mysterious small-mouth bass; and the man shall hold it against the palm of his hand and appeal to the gods of the water in the time honored fashion and with the following proper oration: Jesus Snot Barking Christ in a Hat Basket, I didn't drive five hours and pay $900.00 to catch more bait! And then ceremoniously throw his Shakespeare rod and reel into the weed choked briny depths of Lake Hamlin, Michigan.

Fun on a father-and-son fish camp vacation is hampered by several obstacles, not the least of which is the bizarre and unexpected skill possessed by one's son in knotting his fishing line, mid cast, in the wind, into a perfect model of an Amazonian jungle spider's massive web, large enough to catch a man (which we proved). How Roon managed this on nearly every cast is completely outside the scope of science. But, like in a cartoon, I'd set up his hook, his bait, the bobber, turn around a gently place my Rapala with the grace and precision of a man comfortable with his place in the world, turn back to the kid to find him entrapped in a monofilament cocoon.

There s an etiquette and a collection of best practices associated with fishing that can easily be translated for the man who, like me, hasn’t fished in a long time and who, like me, is about to embark on a weekend excursion among a group of uncles and brothers and sons and nephews who’ve been fishing this lake since Sinatra was on the radio and the first lesson is this: watch where they fish.

One of the draws of Sunset Bluff is that the cabin cost includes a boat, a nice open topped Boston Whaler aluminum john boat with a 9 horsepower outboard motor hanging off the back. We woke the first morning, fled our cabin to the dock where ten or twelve guys are all standing on the docks and the banks fishing worms. There were a couple of guys in their boats but they weren’t going anywhere. Their boats were still tied up, fishing off the back of their boat three of four inches from the pier. Me and Roon jump in our boat and take off across the lake.

Aaah, the open water! Spray in our face, wind at our backs, lures lodged firmy and irretrievably in the carpet of weeds that lie thick and mocking in every direction on Lake Hamlin just three inches below the surface of the water, the ping of your son’s lure catching on the keel of the johnboat, where it will dangle like an inverse trophy hood ornament, a badge of your lack of paternal instruction, throughout the trip.

About six minutes into the weekend, Roon and every other 11 year old child, threw their arms into the air from sheer exhaustion. They were bored and they needed guns so while we were getting our fishing licenses at Wal Mart, I talked Dave into letting the kids get air soft guns.

When I was a kid, I remember the Titanic task of begging my mom to let me have a BB gun. My mom would say “You could put an eye out with those things,” and I’d shrug, staring of at the rack of high powered pellet guns, shiny black and lethal as hell, and say “Yeah--barely.”

And air soft is a wimpy version of a BBgun, molded out of high impact plastic to look exactly like an AK 47 or a Glock, the pistol most favored by drug dealers and Gary Busey. The producers finally started making them out of clear plastic so the neighborhood watch people would stop calling in their kids as gangbangers. They fire little plastic pellets that can hardly hurt you and probably would merely give you permanent diminished sight, not total blindness, not like a BB gun.

Not sixteen seconds after opening the passage, homeboy had already had his gun confiscated for pointing it at one of the grown men in the cabin—all cops—who wholeheartedly disapproved of the toys, especially their propensity for filling the damn things by, apparently, tossing all 15,000 bright green plastic BBs into the air, hoping a few might make it into the ammo slot. By 11:30 one of them had shot the other in the leg and both guns were on top of the fridge and they were sulking around the property. Bored.

But some rights of passage are vital and must be endured. Most vital, on a father and son fishing trip, is the entirely unnecessary profitless run. This is a trip by boat at a time when even comatose fishermen know that no fish in their right mind would get off their warm lake-bottom bed to eat a lifeless worm dangling from a rig transmitting our every word like a loudspeaker into the black water beneath the boat.

It is vital that this trip be undertaken under threat of rain, when it is far too cold to even creep slowly past an open kiln, much less fly across the open water of a deep water lake in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan. (Not many people know that Lake Hamlin, in Mikasoukee, means “dress in layers”).

But we did that right of passage. Four of us, Dave, Connor, Nate, and myself, in a tiny rowboat with an 8-horsepower engine (and by horse we mean dead horse and by dead horse we mean a three legged, diseased, malnourished ancient asthmatic dead horse) cutting a deep wake across the very center of the lake. Boats flew past us, barely touching the water, their keels just slicing through the very tips of the whitecaps, their Ray Bans following us in silence as they skimmed by, the look on their face the same look you give to someone limping to a four way stop in a purple 1973 Gremlin.

We got to the furthest edge of the lake, dropped anchor, and began fervently casting in all directions, the water cool and perfectly clear, calm as glass in the little cutaway glade we found, the bottom riddled with shallow pans of fish beds. We were silent, studious, our lures and bait in the water for all of, I don’t know, three maybe four seconds before Roon start reeling furiously.

“They’re not biting, let’s move.”

After getting his lure snagged on the anchor rope, and after getting mine snagged under the boat and onto Nate’s line and after a beaver swam up to stare at us with that same Ray Ban glaze the pros were using out on the open water, that there but for the grace of God go I stare FROM A BEAVER Dave and I chucked it all and raced (I’m exaggerating) across the lake to a waterside restaurant and order fish baskets and beer. We’re all puttering along toward the docks under a gray sky and the waves are low mounds, the reflection of the clouds like silver jewelry on the surface of the water and just as I’m thinking that, Roon notices it too and he says “Dude, this lake has excellent graphics!”

Later, after docking the boat, we saw that nearly everyone who had elected to stay at the docks had caught enough fish to feed Bolivia. We all took positions on the ends of the docks and dropped our bait in the water. I watched as mine drifted all the way back from the middle of the slough to just in front of me, a shaft of setting sunlight gilding the worm just a few feet below the surface and by some miracle, two fish, a bass and a northern, spun their slow motion front fins and idled up to my bait and I swear to you I SWEAR they looke
d at the worm, looked at each other, and shrugged.

About that time, Roon got a bite and reeled in a gorgeous 2 pound bass and his inner cave man perked up and said hey, wait, that’s kind of cool, and Roon got bit by the fishing bug and we stayed there until it was so dark he couldn’t see his bobber anymore.

The next morning when the insane bird that kept flying into my window every morning had finally committed birdicide and I finally crawled out from under the blankets, Roon was gone. I found him down on the bank with his rod, my rod, and someone else’s rod, working all three, eyes on the bobbers like a bird of prey. He caught a couple of bluegill and we took the boat our one last time for the hell of it. Roon road silently in the boat for like ten whole minutes before he finally spoke and I braced myself for the inevitable, for him to say I’m bored, or this is better on x-box, or fishing is gay, but instead he just says “This was pretty cool, dad.”