Sadly, the Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

I’ll be honest: We sneaked off to Peet’s to run away from the kids.  Charlie took time off to work on the house, but there’s a bunch of kids everywhere.  We need to reward ourselves for even getting up in the morning and facing them.  That’s why we’re at Peet’s.  We’ll face the offspring only after many ounces of caffeine and lots of sitting around.  We wouldn’t dare get out of bed otherwise.

Charlie found an outside table and saved it for us.  This might be dangerous.  Whenever we sit outside here, especially when we’re hiding, we see lots of people we know.  Lots of these people have kids.  Their kids all do wonderful things like graduate from High School and have hobbies.  Our kids do wonderful things like sleep.

People we know drive by and wave while we sip.  It’s turning out to be a wonderful morning.  Only other people’s kids are running around making noise.  Ours won’t wake up for hours.

A couple we know from Church saw us and stopped.  There are some people who you just know are perfect.  You know they think their biggest sin is saying “Hell” or “Damn.”  That would be this couple.  They’re tanned, fit, good-looking, and they have three perfect-seeming kids.

 I have to gear up for conversations with people like this who seem so much better than me.  I put a protective coating on certain subjects, so the truth and the frustration don’t come out in a weak moment of conversation.  No matter how perfect their kids, I’ll try to keep smiling.

“Our kids just got back from Christian camp,” they said.

“That’s nice,” I said, thinking nasty thoughts I won’t admit to.

 “I don’t think that hotel will be inviting them back,” the husband said.  “Last year they rented two houses side by side, one for the girls and one for the boys.  The Cops kept getting called out, so they thought the kids would be better behaved in thirty hotel rooms. 

“A hundred teenagers is still a hundred teenagers,” the wife said.  “They won’t be showing lots of video of that trip.  What happens in Church camp stays in Church camp.”

The husband added, “When we picked them up they said, ‘Last year’s camp seemed more spiritual, somehow.’”

“It’s hard to hear anything with burrito beans in your ear,” the wife said.  “They don’t admit to knowing how those got there.”

“At least they told you about it,” I said.  Usually parents don’t hear about when their kids end up with burrito beans in their ears.

“Yeah,” the wife said.  “Still, we never surfed on hotel ironing boards or streaked at Christian camp.  We went skinny-dipping, but that’s different.  There’s water, so it’s okay.”

“You draw the line at water?” I said.  I felt like a good Mom all of a sudden.

We felt less good when we returned home.  Jenn was looking pretty depressed. Getting accidentally pregnant by a druggie who dumped her after she’d burned every bridge back home seemed to be weighing heavy on her today.  As she says, she didn’t move to Oregon to live with her Dad. 

She wanted to be left alone, which is pretty hard when she’s living in a halfway fixed up house with hardly any living space full of a bunch of teenagers who come and go all day long.  There was nowhere to be alone except in front of the TV, right in the middle of the house.

We did her a favor and kept busy outside as best we could.

We hadn’t returned the borrowed rototiller, so I convinced Charlie it was time to use it again.  I stood next to him and pointed where I wanted him to work, looking like I was directing traffic.  I think he liked me standing near, if only to have someone with which to share his dust cloud.

The skateboarder said he wanted to help in the yard, so he left to go get a friend to join him.  He works, eventually, but he needs lots of prep work.  He has to eat, sit around and mentally prepare, then go get a friend to help.  He did the first two things quickly, but getting his friend who lives ten minutes away took him an hour and forty minutes.

“What took you so long?” Charlie asked.

They stared at him and at each other.  They’ve learned if you don’t say anything, you can’t get caught in a lie.  They ran up to the skateboarder kid’s room and got right on the computer, like they were in a hurry to trade stocks or something.  I wonder if they’ve ever surfed hotel ironing boards.

They were supposed to be finishing the drainage pipes outside.  We’ve been quietly waiting all summer for this job to be done.  We haven’t looked at their progress: they disappear, work on it for a few hours, then come in and say they’re almost done.

Charlie decided to have a look.  “You guys screwed up the pipes,” he yelled from outside.

John, the skateboarder kid’s friend, who’s very polite and says, “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” said, “it’s good enough.”

“Mr. Polite, Mr. Perfection says, ‘it’s good enough?’”

“Just put a 45 degree angled pipe on the end of it,” John said.  “Nobody will notice.”

“Yeah they will.  It’ll stick out all crooked.”

“The pipe went in further than we thought,” the skateboarder kid said.  “We were off a little bit in our measurement.”

“Off a little bit?  You were off about ten inches.  Nevermind,” Charlie said.  “I’ll fix it.  Your 45 degree pipe would take longer to do than just fixing it.”

I noticed the good shovel was sitting in the dirt, unused.  As soon as the skateboarders were done with whatever was making them giggle so hard, I knew they’d steal it and use it themselves.  I decided to shovel everything and anything nearby, including scraping the driveway weeds and creating wonderful edges on the once and future lawn.

I was outside and the phone was inside with Jenn.  This turned out to be one of those days where everyone I knew called me up.  So every ten minutes, Jenn would stand all weepy at the front door, phone in hand, and say, “It’s for you.”

I was so into my dirt I didn’t hear her the first or second times.  She’s not loud, but I am.  Even my thoughts are loud.  She had to walk out right to my dirt cloud and stick the phone in my face.  Not what you want to do when no one’s calling you and you have to sit in your Dad’s unfinished living room stuck in the results of your bad decisions.

I decided it was time the boys could help me, so I went upstairs to tell them they’re sharing my hot, dirty fun outside. 

“Look what we did,” they said.  They turned the screen around so I could see what was wasting their afternoon. 

“We took a still from a skateboarding video,” John said.  “We photoshopped over the skateboarder and turned him into the Hamburgler.”

 “The Hamburgler’s shredding a rail,” the skateboarding kid of mine said.

“Charlie,” I said.  “Look at what they're doing instead of the drainage.”

“You’ve done it,” he told the skateboarder kid.  “You’ve finally corrupted John.  He used to be so polite and resourceful.  Now he’s giggling at a photoshopped Hamburgler shredding rails.”

 We're going to go broke at Peet's.

A little help? [] 11:57:42 PM