Spring Break (Part 1): A Long Road Trip to a Hotel Pool

In the 80’s, there wasn’t anything to do on a long car trip except sweat on a vinyl seat, get beat on by an older sibling, and bitch.  That was it.  It’s hard to convey how poorly I traveled as a little fat kid.  I vividly remember our late summer road trips to Augusta, Kansas (about a three hour drive from Kansas City) to see our grandparents.  I still get claustrophobic thinking of that old beige Dodge minivan and how it wheezed slightly-cooler-than-outside air through dusty vents, air that had no chance of making it into the rear where we kids sat baking, and how little beads of sweat would run down my back beneath my ever-present Kansas City Chiefs tee shirt and collect in the seat of my jean shorts.  Any metal buckle or even a darkly-colored surface would straight up burn the shit out of you if you accidently grazed it with some sensitive part of the body, like the backside of the upper arm or a chubby thigh. 

I kept time in an unconventional way: How many episodes of He-Man (thirty minutes) could I hypothetically watch before we got there?  While this may seem kind of funny or even cute to someone who wasn’t my parent, the way in which I asked the question was, in retrospect, most likely infuriating.  Every fifteen minutes I’d screech/whine,   

“HOW MANY MORE HE-MANS?!?” 

My parents’ exasperated responses to this question usually came as an impossibly high number, one that never seemed to deviate from the previous answer.  How could the clock move so slowly on this sun-baked Kansas highway and yet run so quickly when watching He-Man on the sofa?  Einstein must have been a sweaty fat kid in a Dodge minivan.

I was thinking about all this as I listened to the silence coming from the back seat of our Jeep as we all headed across the Texas Panhandle toward Colorado.  Every now and then I’d turn around and see the girls with their headphones on, rapt in some Disney movie playing on their little car DVD player. 

Thank you, science. 

Now, don’t think this was the case the entire time.  It wasn’t like they switched off like C-3PO in Star Wars (although how freaking AWESOME would that be?).  No, the second the batteries would run down, the onslaught of whining would commence as they suddenly found themselves having to live in the world outside their own heads for a few minutes.  I don’t know how to feel about that.  I mean, we all, ALL, think the world we grew up in was better than this one.  It pains me to see kids plugged in all the time, completely unaware of the world around them.  And it’s weird to see them grab an I-phone and be able to intuitively work it with their sticky little fingers, even though they’ve never seen one before.  I mean, I can’t work one.  So why can a two year figure it out when they can’t figure out a toilet?  It’s weird.  And it makes me think that kids are turning into cyborgs.  But isn’t that what our parents said about us?  I think my mother opened the basement door yelled down the stairs “Turn off that God-damned Ni-Tendo!” about a million times growing up.  And didn’t my grandparents think that about my parents?  That the television didn’t leave anything to the imagination, and that radio programs like Howdy-Doody and the Lone Ranger were the way to go?  We can play this game forever.  I mean, most of our great-great-grandparents had to crap in holes outside their homes in a shack with a little crescent moon carved in the door.  I’ll bet they wrote long journal entries by candlelight with a quill about how kids today are spoiled because they’ve never had to dig a new latrine and move the outhouse each spring or whatever.  So I’m not going to play into that nonsense.  They also used to pull teeth and hack off arms with just a shot of whisky, and I’ll bet it was total bullshit.  So when I think about sweating in that damn minivan, bored out of my mind, alternatively getting yelled at by my parents and punched by my brother, I say plug the kids in and let’s just get there.

Any-who…

The reason we were all able to go on Spring Break together is because I am a grad student (don’t ask me why because most of the time I don’t even know) and Amy is a professor at the same university, so we both have that week off.  In addition, the Amarillo school district’s break matches with the university’s break.  Since this will most likely never happen again, we took advantage.  Road trip to Colorado!  See the mountains!  Yaaaaaay!

The girls had never seen mountains before.  Once we tried to figure out the places they had been, but it was pretty patchy.  This conversation also made me realize that kids suck at geography.  I mean, BAD.  Maybe it’s a Texas thing (too…many…Texas…jokes…head…may…explode…) or maybe it’s a school district thing, but man, I gotta get on the ball teaching these kids about a map.  It’s disconcerting when we leave the neighborhood and they ask if we’re in Kansas.  I don’t even know what to say to that.  So as we’re driving, occasionally one would pipe up and ask if “that thing over there is a mountain.”

“No, honey, that’s a hill.”

“Oh.”

The Panhandle is about as flat as can be, so any rise in the earth is a mountain to them.  As the miles went by, the ground began to swell around us.  In New Mexico there’s a bunch of mesas and smaller, solitary mountains, and at one point along the route there’s an old volcano (The Capulin Volcano).  We stop at this thing and they’re pretty impressed.  But then I start talking about volcanoes and magma chambers and magma bombs and flows and nerd nerd nerdy-nerd.  The looks in their eyes tell me that I’ve just ruined it for them and that it was time to go.  As we’re getting back into the car, I’m thinking,

Good God, I just ruined a volcano.  A VOLCANO!

If I would have run into my high school self right then and there, he probably would have thrown himself into an actual volcano.   

So for most of the way we’re talking about the mountains and how big they are and great they are and on and on and on, and when we get to the front range, there’s a thick blanket of clouds hanging around 1,000 feet.  So no mountains.  We look like total dicks as we pass through Colorado Springs saying things like, “if you could see through the clouds, that’s where Pikes Peak would be!” 

They were not impressed.

But, lucky for us, we had booked a room at a hotel with a pool.  And by the time we were supposed to see the mountains, they were way more ready for that damn pool than anything, which at the time had me wondering why we left Amarillo in the first place.  We could have just found a place in town with a pool and called it good.  Kind of like when you get a toddler an expensive present and they’re far more interested in playing with the paper or box.  Why the hell did I buy that kid a gift?  Next time I’m just getting him a box to play with.  Sure I’ll look like a jerk to the parents, but so what?  The kid won’t ever remember what I got him or her later in life.  You really only have to start giving good gifts when their little brains are forming lasting memories.  I can remember what I got for my fifth birthday.  That’s about as far back as I remember.  Everything else is just images and emotions and vague dream-like hints and recollection.  So friends of mine with children under five:  Your kid’s getting an empty box next year.  Don’t worry, they’ll love it. 

So we finally get to the hotel in Aurora.  Now, in the past, the girls have told me how well they can swim, that some uncle somewhere had taught them.  They know that I swam in high school. They think I was an “awesome swimmer” back then, and they probably picture something like Michael Phelps cranking out a 200 yard butterfly.  Well, better that they have that image then what it actually looked like, which was an oddly mixed chubby/stocky guy gracelessly punching the shit out of the water for 100 yards then dry heaving in the gutter after coming in at fifth place. So they want to show me their swimming prowess.  They’re absolutely giddy as they put on their new bathing suits, drag us down to the pool, freaking out about how awesome everything is, jump in…

And promptly sink.

Good thing I was in the pool with them.  Have you ever watched a submerged kid wiggle their way toward you with outstretched fingers peering quizzically back up at you with those weird wide open under-water eyes that seem to be saying, “I’m moving my arms and kicking my legs…why isn’t this working?”  It’s off-putting.  It takes me a second to realize that this squirming thing lurching toward me needs some help.  Then I say,

“Oh…oh! Shit!  Oh!”  And pull up the sputtering child up into my arms.  She’s all smiles.

“Did you see?  Did I do good?” 

What do you say to that?  I’m not going to tell her no, that she sucks at swimming and needs lessons, which is what I wanted to say, so I tell her,

“Good start!  But we need to work on some stuff so I know you’re safe.”

“Okay Dad.”       

So I spend the next few hours trying to teach them how not to immediately sink.  I used to teach swim lessons, but I find that when I’m not 16 and not getting paid, my patience is a little thinner than it used to be.  But we made some progress, and they can at least kind of do a “dead-man’s float” now and turn their heads to breathe.  It’s something.

That night we all slept hard.  Tomorrow, the girls were going meet our friends who live in Denver (which was the REAL reason we went to Colorado in the first place) and all their kids.  We had already confused the hell out of them by calling everyone “aunt so and so” and “uncle so and so,” so now they thought they were about to meet around fifteen new cousins.  Well, we didn’t try to correct it.  We wanted them to be excited to meet their new “Big Family,” which is what we termed everyone who isn’t directly related but that we love.  Given our awesomely-quirky insta-family, we figured it was a pretty good term.

I’m running out of steam here, so I’ll continue this Spring Break saga later. 

But I’ll leave with a few funny exchanges with the girls.

Amy (while helping them put together a sticker book with all the Kings and Queens of England):  “That one is Henry the Eighth.  He cut off a bunch of his wives’ heads.  I’m sure glad your Dad hasn’t done that to me!”

Shay:  “…yet.”

 

Mo (in the bathtub with her sister):  “Dad!  Daaaad!”

Me (running in):  “What?  What’s the matter?”

Mo (looking really, really upset):  “Tell sissy to use a washcloth.  She just used the soap bar to wash her feet and armpits and va-genie and butt…and now I have to wash my face!”

Shay (whispering): “Wash your face with it…wash your face!”

Me:  “Ugh.  God.  Shay, use a cloth.  Gross.”

Shay just giggles.

 

Me (on the way to school one day after discussing the morning announcements):  “You mean that you say the pledge of allegiance to the American flag then right after that say another pledge to the Texas flag?”

Mo:  “Uh huh!  ‘Honor the Texas flag…’”

Me:  “I don’t need to hear it, honey.  I won’t ever say it.”

Mo (very confused):  “Why not?”

Me (very proud of my impending answer):  “Because I believe a man is only good for one pledge at a time.  What would happen if you had to choose between the two?  Like, if what if you had TWO best friends and they got in a fight?  Who would you choose?”

Mo:  “Hmm.  Well, I’d probably tell them to stop fighting or I wouldn’t be friends with either one until they made up.”

Me:  “Uuuh…well…touché darlin’.  Touché. “

Mo:  “What?!?”

Me:  “Nothing.  Let’s hear the pledge.”