Sunday, January 27, 2013

Jackets

Dad thoughts 101, or........... Weather versus Kids versus Dad versus the first period bell....... Mid January, school routine, a few years back.
I notice that we all repeat ourselves. The repeat cycle a parent must initiate in order to incite the slightest compliance is amazing. “Did you bring a jacket? Where is your jacket? Go back upstairs and retrieve a jacket”…. Moments later we are all miraculously packed into the car, buckled up and rolling down the driveway when it occurs to me to just have a look over at my passengers (AKA the kids, my boys )……… sitting fidgety and blank-faced in the back seat, without jackets! …..It’s snowing out and these boys both have the natural survival instincts of lawn darts. I might be inclined to roll down my window and collect some snow off the windshield and flick it at them, but it didn’t make an impression last time. Instead I stop the car, put it in park and exhale slowly out my nose. In a voice reserved for veteran parents that live in the trenches, this is the monotone of muted frustration. It arises parallel to a complete awareness that we have now officially become our parents. “Take off your seat belts” and “go back in the house” and “go up the stairs“ and “get your jackets and then come back to the car so we can go to school and you won’t die of hypothermia... O.K.?”….I think I got through… They say “uuuuughhhh” in frustrated unison and without looking I can feel the eye rolls I am receiving through the headrest. Is this the stuff I am supposed to look back on with warm fuzzy feelings? Gee, I hope not. And no… it ain’t over, they return with something on…. a “hoodie.” A sad modern excuse for a sweatshirt which would have almost passed inspection, but no…These thin cotton masterpieces are not much thicker than a common tee shirt, loose knitted so you can practically see through them, useless….. I am forced to roll down the window and stop them in their tracks “go back inside and get real jackets!” and the facial expressions are officially in. “Dad’s an idiot.” Do I really have to point at the snow again? Do I really have to quote the temperature and verbally explore pressing environmental factors like freezing to death? Do I have to point up at the sky as snowflakes as big as corn flakes float down onto my boys and their un-hatted heads? ….Yup. Yes I do, Parents are robots. No doubt. They are made. I need to call my mom and dad and thank them for not strangling me. To quote my mother out of context, “You two kids are turning my brain into guacamole.” Mom has a way with words and “guacamole brain” is a real condition, I need to write up a research grant and organize a public awareness concert. I return home to find the front door wide open. It’s my fault. I didn’t actually instruct them to “close” the front door on the way out. Wouldn’t you know it? I do feel warm and fuzzy about these thoughts. How strange.