Silly boys

Last night I went swimming with Jordan and Jacob, my two youngest boys, and we played a silly game called “Chocolate Cake”.

You tell a story, and eventually you say the phrase “chocolate cake”, and then everybody has to jump into the pool. Last one in is the loser. They learned it in swim class at that same pool, and they love it.

For the three of us, I think the game is mainly an excuse to have a big giggle-fest, because we try to work in phrases like “chocolate steak”, “chocolate lake”, etc. This might sound lame to you, but for an audience of 8- and 10-year-old boys, it’s Pure Comedy Gold.

Usually I just do the story-telling part, but this time, I hauled my heft out of the water and played a couple of times. I even managed to win once. Pwned!

The stories go on and on and on … and on … and they are ridiculous. Stupid and silly and funny. We all make each other laugh a lot. One time I questioned whether Jordan said “cake” or “kake”. Hey, you never know.

And then when the “chocolate cake” kicks in, somebody wins and somebody loses, but we don’t care. Much. The end is actually anti-climactic, because we’re having fun with it during the game. An audience of 8- and 10-year-old boys can do that.

These are the kind of memories I don’t have enough of, and that I crave for myself as I grow old. My oldest son James is 21 now, and it bugs me that I can’t really picture him in my mind as an 8-year-old, or re-imagine what his voice sounded like back then. I don’t know why it matters—this imagined ability that maybe nobody else has—but it seems important to me, somehow, in a way that even I do not understand.

Remembering hobby shops …

Cecil Adams writes fondly about the hobby shops of yore:

Model airplanes figured prominently, but you could also find battleships, submarines, missiles, tanks, artillery, and other warlike gear, plus a smattering of sports cars, trucks, and similar objects of boyish fascination. … Each kit had numerous parts, many of them tiny, which were to be assembled in accordance with detailed numbered instructions, a process that could take days. It’s fair to say a good deal of extraneous detail was omitted by the more impatient participants, because the fate of the typical military model was to be blown up with firecrackers or filled with lighter fluid and thrown off the porch. I however was more punctilious about it, believing this to be in the national interest. To this day, were a crisis to arise, I’m sure you could find lots of ex-ten-year-olds capable of assembling a Nike Ajax antiaircraft missile, but if they’re anything like my brother they’ll slobber glue on the warhead and mount the thrusters cockeyed on the launch rail, to say nothing of omitting the decals. Should the Iranian air force come with nukes, therefore, be sure you stick with me.

Later he mentions passing the torch to his sons:

Years later a hobby shop opened up near my house. I took the little researchers there a few times to purchase B-17s and such, till one day a sign announced a going-out-of-business sale — everything half or more off, including a formidable inventory of trains. Here was an opportunity. The kids demanded their own locomotives, showing an impressive eye for quality, and naturally I felt the need to purchase a couple additional items just to fill things out. Before I knew it I had spent, well, a lot. We took it all home and set it up in the basement, and for quite a while thereafter had an extravagant display, with a tangle of switches and crossovers and multiple circling trains worthy of Casey Jones on drugs. Eventually it had to make way for a Ping Pong table, so we packed the trains away. Maybe someday I’ll take them out again, maybe I won’t — the essential goal had been accomplished. Some will deride this as a sign of eternal adolescence, but to me it merely shows a dream deferred isn’t necessarily a dream denied.

I loved hobby shops as a kid. We had one in Evanston, at Central and Green Bay Road, just a block from where we lived. They raced slot cars. I was about six years old, and I can vividly remember to this day walking in there on a Saturday morning and being mesmerized by the HUGE track they had set up. Of course, everything seems huge when you’re six, but that is part of the wonder of that age.

When I got a little older, I used to build models, too. Planes, tanks, ships. I remember distinctly building the Bismark battleship. It took quite a few days, if I remember correctly, but it was so cool when it was done.

I see there is a place called Oakridge Hobbies and Toys in Downers Grove, not all that far from here. They’ve even got slot cars and a track. I’ll have to check that out, and maybe I can get my kids interested, too.

Branching out with the blogging platforms

I’m spending more and more time at my tumblr.com “tumblelog”. For those who have no idea what that means, tumblr.com is like a combination of social networking and a really easy-to-use blogging platform that easily posts pictures, videos, text, links, and audio.

And frankly I’m starting to love the tumblr platform, because I can’t imagine how it could be any easier.

One thing I especially like about it is the emphasis on images and the visual. People post tons of pictures, and its easy to find them, especially via the hypnotic “popular” feed which streams recent updates past your eyes. If you think I’m exaggerating with the word hypnotic, I encourage you to try it sometime.

Of course, some people push the envelope with some of these pictures, if you get my drift. It is the Internet, after all.

This emphasis on the visual allows me to show an entirely different side of my personality. I like visuals, and have been huge into photography for a long time. I re-blog all kinds of things at my tumblelog that I just don’t bother with on this site, since it’s too much work to save it locally, upload it to the blogging server, and then write something around it.

So I encourage you to check it out. The RSS feed is here.

Sweet Home … Carbondale

We took a trip down to visit our oldest boy in college this weekend, after he had moved himself down there on Thursday. I’d been having a bit of a rough time with the move, as I noted Friday: Goodbye is the hardest word.

I feel a lot better now, after taking this trip to see him. We’ve got mental images now, of him in his house, in his neighborhood, on campus, at the rec center. We’ve seen the streets that he rides, and the sidewalks that he walks. So, instead of just being “gone”, he is in a new place that we can picture. It seems to help. Now, it’s less about his absence, and more about his new presence somewhere else.

We left early Saturday, drove 5+ hours, arriving around 12:30 p.m. Lunch, then a grocery run, some errands, rest for a while, then take a cruise around campus. Then in the evening, hang out at his house on his front porch, have a couple beverages, while our kids play XBox in his living room. On the flat panel LCD. A roommate with some cool electronic gear? Priceless!

Pizza around 9, then head off to the hotel so that James could go out and enjoy his last Saturday night before the start of his first semester away at school.

Sunday morning, to Wal-Mart for a bike lock and a couple of SIU items, then drive around campus a little more. Late a.m., pick him up and to the bookstore to buy his books. $550 and 30 minutes later, done. College has gotten expensive, in case you hadn’t heard. Then lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings, back to his house, and time to head back home.

I’m really glad we went. And I’m thankful, too. I’m thankful that he’s so excited about being there. It’s probably more about being on his own, away from home and everything that goes with it, than it is about college itself. But he’s so much more grown up now than he was a year or two ago, and about as ready for college as he’ll probably ever be. So like I’ve mentioned to him once or twice, this is his one big chance to finally take advantage of his abilities and talents, and do some hard work, and get a degree, and use it as a ticket to success in life. I see the degree itself as more important than the major, much of the time, and especially if you are a people person, like he is.

So life is chugging along for us. We were all definitely a little bit sad when it came time to leave Sunday afternoon. After we pulled away, nobody said anything for a few minutes. Jake, our ten-year-old, took it especially hard. But he perked up after a while.

He told me later that listening to “Sweet Home Alabama” on his iPod helped him feel better. Neither of us knew why, exactly. But then, who cares?

And at least for today, we’re all mostly focused on how great an opportunity this is for James, how much he needs this as a young adult whose time has come to move on, and how happy he is to be moving on with his life.

It was a good trip. For all of us. For a whole bunch of reasons.

Goodbye is the hardest word

My oldest son James moved down to Carbondale yesterday to go to college at Southern Illinois University. They are known as the Salukis, but please don’t hold that against them.

It’s been a rough week in all kinds of ways. Last minute preparation, including him finishing painting our house (!), plus packing up the rented truck. Then he hit some horrible weather on the way, featuring a tornado warning. Good times!

But the roughest part is feeling like a major part of our life together is now just … over. It’s done. He’ll be 21 soon, and he has lived at home longer than most kids that end up going off to college, so there is that. But even if he comes back in December for awhile, or next summer for a couple of weeks, it’s never really the same any more. You can’t keep pretending they are still kids just because they live with you.

We can’t go back in time, but sometimes I think it would be nice. I’d go back to the days when he was 4 or 5 years old. We had fun together. I’ve never forgotten that. Neither has he. We bonded really well, and I loved being his Dad, and he knew it. I’m pretty sure he loved having me as his Dad.

As I write through my tears, I don’t know why this bothers me so much. It just does. Maybe I regret missed opportunities, or just worry too much. Maybe I depend on him to give me something in my own life, and maybe I shouldn’t do that. Maybe we’ll all be better off and he’ll be fine. Maybe this will be the best thing that ever happened to him, and I’m over-dramatizing.

I do know this: no matter what happens, I’m going to miss him.

I learned a lot being his Dad. It was challenging plenty of times, and I can’t say I always earned passing grades, either. But whatever it was, it was there, every day, like the Sun rising in the morning. There is immediacy and intimacy about living with people that disappears when they aren’t part of your daily space and time any more.

But he’s all grown up now … more or less … and he’s all moved out. And so that time of our lives is over.

And I grieve for that.

It was quite a ride, featuring laughter, tears, ball games, disappointments, injuries, and arguments, all the things that fit together when you live with your child. O-v-e-r.

Tomorrow we leave, early in the morning, to go see him in his new digs in Carbondale. He is so excited, you can just hear it in his voice every time on the phone. I’m very happy for him, and happy to see him so enthused and primed for his entire “away at college” experience. It’ll be very good for him, in all kinds of ways.

And then Monday, it’s back home, and his room will be just as empty as it is right now.

Maybe someday that won’t sting so much.