Sidestepping Adulthood

You can’t pick your parents and you can’t predict what your kids will be like.  You have images and hopes, but you have little say in what you bring into being.  They may be of you, but they aren’t you.  They might end up nothing like you.  All you can do is enjoy them.

Charlie’s first-born comes into town today.  If we were mature and responsible, we would have followed a strict plan of getting up early and working until her flight arrival at 4 PM.  A mature person can cut the day short without cutting the whole day.  We’re getting more immature every day.  We’re getting better at it every day, too.

It gets bad when the skateboarder does more in the day than we do.  We’re learning to overcome the guilty feelings.  We’ve heard it’s important to find a balance.  We figure the first half of our life we worked hard.  By doing nothing the second half, we’re achieving that elusive balance.  People pay good money to learn these kinds of lessons.

Before our caffeine had kicked in, the skateboarder was already bored.  He’s not aggressive with filling up his day in the first place.  Boy is he ever going to have to work hard in the second half of his life.  You’d be amazed at how much time he can waste making a shoe purchasing decision.

We decided to do a quick errand or two before working on the house.  This was when we still had dreams of doing work on the fixer today. Then Charlie’s daughter called to say her flight was delayed.  We would have a full day to fill in this case, had we chosen this route.  We took an alternate route.

We thought and thought of things we could do that couldn’t wait.  Things to do, places to go, stuff to buy and exchange, so we could get out of the screaming-for-attention fixer.  We’d already thought of a few errands we’d do when we were trying to fill the time until 4 PM.  We’re creative people.  We could certainly come up with a few more important errands that couldn’t wait and stretch it out.

The skateboarder has been trying to download songs on Charlie’s MP3 player for two weeks now.  Charlie typically buys the cheapest thing available, and he didn’t change strategy on this purchase. 

Typically, the cheapest thing doesn’t work and he has to then spend another couple of hours back at the store, waiting at the exchange line.  This can only occur after many frustrating hours trying to get the cheap thing to work like a normally-priced thing. 

You can only justify buying a regular-priced item after you’ve wasted the better part of a day forcing the cheap thing to work.  Then, in guy economics theory, its okay to buy the thing you should have bought in the first place.

“Quit being so lazy,” Charlie tells the skateboarder.  “You’re following in my footsteps.  Don’t do what I do, do what I say.”

The skateboarder gets up like he’s going to go do something.  He walks by Charlie and pokes him in the stomach. 

“Hey!” Charlie says.  “You even poke lazily.  Let’s go do something, you lazy bastard.”

That’s how we ended up in the skateboarder’s car, once again, driving toward CompUSA.  I had the feeling this wasn’t going to be a cheap trip.  There was a lot of time to waste.

By the time we got out of there, we had a new MP3 player, and a new digital camera, too.  The skateboarder and his friends film each other rippin’ and shreddin’ so with a five minute video feature, this camera became not only necessary, but necessary to have right this minute.  How did we live without it?

I was doing just fine with my cheap Walkman and disposable cameras.  I didn’t say anything, though.  I sit in the back of the car for a reason.  I’m outnumbered.

After spending many hours getting to know our newfound friends at CompUSA, we didn’t have time to do much else.  We dropped off the skateboarder at home, along with the bags of things with batteries and cables and instruction manuals.  He was practically drooling with the future improvement in his geek life. 

We thought we had plenty of time to grab more caffeine at the airport, but Jennifer arrived just as I tasted the first sip of a very strong Americano made by people who hate their jobs at “Coffee People.” 

When you work at an airport, you don’t see repeat customers.  It doesn’t mean you have to try your hardest to be creative in interpreting your drink.  When you’re addicted to one beverage, you ask for it in the same way everywhere.  You can’t believe the variety you receive.  It’d be funny if you weren’t so addicted.

Jennifer was in a good mood considering she’d taken a flight rerouted from Albuquerque to Denver to Phoenix, just to get to Portland.  We listened to the grumblings of her fellow passengers at the baggage claim area.  Good thing the bus is so much worse or nobody would fly. 

It takes an extremely long two hours to drive to Eugene.  It’s longer than a regular drive because it’s so boring and we’ve done it so much.  It was nice, then to have Jennifer in the car telling us her plans and telling us about all the relatives we haven’t seen for a while.  She has a lot of plans, so the ride down went pretty quickly.

It’s only the second time I’ve seen her.  By far, she’s got the most natural beauty of anybody who shares our gene pool.  And of all the people who share our gene pool, she has the most tattoos.  Of all the people I know, put together, she has the most tattoos. 

I could think about what it would be like, or make some sort of parent-type judgment, but to tell you the truth, I like the tattoos.  They’re not on me – I’d get bored of looking at the same ones every day. 

On her, they’re not boring at all.  They give you something to look at when you are bored.  We found a Winnie-the-pooh on her ankle we never saw before, while waiting for the hotel clerk to get her room ready.  All you’d find on me is the stain on my pants where I dropped a piece of salad a few hours before.

We left her with her boyfriend who came to Eugene a month before to get a job and apartment.  He hasn’t done either, as far as we could tell, hence the hotel and Jennifer reaching in her purse to pay for it.  If anyone can start a new life with $650 in her purse, it’s Jennifer.  She has tattoes and plans, and you don’t doubt someone with that particular combination.

“Tomorrow we’re getting a temporary place to live,” she said.  “Then we’ll get jobs, both of us, then a real place to live.  First, I want to do something.  Let’s go swimming.”

“I heard about this place where the moss grows thick on these sloping rocks,” her boyfriend says, sounding relaxed.  “You can slide for fifty feet down to the water.”  I notice he holds a skateboard.  You can’t look stressed, holding a skateboard.

Jennifer looks back at us and says, “Come back down.  We can do that or you can take us to the lake by your house.  I know you have the week off.”

Charlie says, “You didn’t forget that, did you?  I only told you once.”

We figured out on the way home that driving four hours to Eugene and back is not as fun as wasting the same amount of time at CompUSA.  We also figured out that people with skateboards are much more relaxed about their productivity than people with tattoos. 

Of course, being parents, we’re hoping to teach Jennifer a little something about balance.  We’ll teach her a little about sidestepping adulthood like we’re doing, while the skateboarders are out busting their butts being productive.

A little help? [] 7:47:27 PM