Surviving A Car Trip With Teenage Girls

Yesterday I had to drive a small, Toyota Corolla populated by two teenage girls for 20 minutes. And then I had to do it again a couple of hours later. I survived. Barely.

I'm not entirely sure I can say the same thing about my ear drums. As it is my tympanic membranes were weakened after I recently saw a movie at an IMax theater -- which, judging from the volume, was designed for the near-deaf.

(SPECIAL NOTE TO THE GUYS WHO OWN AMC THEATERS: Please include Q-Tips so ticket-buyers can clean up the blood that will inevitably ooze from their ears after they see the previews; if you're too damn cheap to buy Q-Tips, consider the volume switch, because they could hear that movie on the moon.)

So my ear drums were not entirely prepared for the steady pounding they took from a pair of over-caffeinated sophomores talking about ... well, to be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure what the heck they were talking about. But it involved something about shots of Espresso and some dude named David who they don't like anymore and is not related to me but is somehow important enough to be the subject of a conversation.

And here is one portion of the conversation I recall:

MY NIECE: Remember Macy's?

MY NIECE'S FRIEND (laughing): Yeah.

ME: Uh, Macy's?

MY NIECE: It's a long story.

ME: I have time (what am I thinking?)

MY NIECE: Let's just say it involves a lot of espresso.

MY NIECE'S FRIEND: And the mannequins were looking particularly fine.

ME: OK, I just realized that I don't quite have the time for a long story.

They both were laughing throughout this story, then proceeded to laugh some more. And when they were done laughing, they found another thing to laugh at. In fact, I'm pretty sure that in the entire 40 minutes in the car they talked for a total of 5 minutes and laughed for the other 35. Except for the time I decided to take up some of the time embarrassing my niece by playing the annoying uncle and telling her friend stories from my niece's childhood, like the one where she announced loudly in a restaurant that she farted, or the one where she tried softening her mom up with an "I love you" before requesting some gum. But that's my prerogative -- nay, my duty -- as an uncle. All it accomplished was the generation of more laughter.

Still, when I got home I hugged my boys and thanked them for being male. Yes, girls are fantastic in many respects, but they scare the living hell out of me, mostly because they're complicated and I'm not, and despite having lived with hordes of them for most of my life I have yet to figure them out, let alone raise one. All I have to do with my boys is make sure they make it until they hit 18. A dozen pillows and some duct tape and I'm good.

(And, as if on cue, at one point this evening I was the witness to a pair of high school boys sitting on the open moon roof of a speeding SUV ... yup, pillows and duct tape.)

At some point throughout yesterday evening, in response to a comment I made about my sons, my niece said something to the effect of, "Well, at least you don't have two girls. With two boys, you don't have to put up with all the drama."

Indeed. Or the constant, loud cackling.

Stuck With Another Dreaded Climber

There are two types of children: runners and climbers. And if you have a little one, or are thinking about it, pray as much as possible that your offspring will be a runner. Because climbers are a big, giant, frightening pain.

Runners can be stopped from running by simply bringing them inside or fencing them in or taking them to the track or attaching them to a hoe to get your garden tilled. But you can only do so much to stop a climber. I have two boys. Both are climbers. So my overall level of stress is somewhere just to the north of "Bomb Squad Technician."

I'm not much of a risk-taker. Yes, I went skydiving once. But it was enough of a death-defying act to satisfy me pretty much for life, and about the most dangerous thing I've done since then was climb the stairs two steps at a time.

(Voluntarily, at least; I once ate raw chicken and periodically say things to my wife before my brain kicks into gear, but those were involuntary actions that, had my brain been operating in full capacity, I would have never authorized.)

My eldest isn't a risk-taker, either, judging from his healthy fear in most situations. But that healthy fear ends when he sees something that needs climbing. He has, on multiple occasions, elicited gasps from nearby people by leaping off tall platforms and climbing things he has no business climbing. If we go on a walk, and he sees a wall, he needs to climb it. If some public space is decorated with stupid public art, he must climb that art. This is why I don't take him to art fairs anymore, and it's why we'll never visit the mountains.

I held out hope that No. 2 would be a runner, because God would not "bless" me with two climbers, knowing the fragile state of my cardiovascular system. And yet, shortly after my youngest began to crawl, he discovered the art of stairs. And then he discovered the wonders of a ladder.

We had already gotten a set of bunk beds in anticipation of the day that the youngest would be able to sleep in the bottom bunk. The Boy took the top, of course, because that's the smart thing to do -- nobody above you, wetting the bed.

(This is before I realized the awesome possibilities of turning that bottom bunk into a fort; now, any child who must pick between the top and bottom bunk should weigh the total awesomeness of your own little bed-fort versus the prospect of being urinated upon during the middle of the night; it's quite a decision.)

We had a little ladder leading to the top bunk. The Sequel discovered this ladder. And he began climbing. And climbing. And once, after turning our back for about 30 seconds, we found him near the top, proud of the fact that he had just climbed a ladder while his parents weren't looking. The little sneak.

We removed the ladder. He'd just do it again, this time on a slide we have in our basement -- the one he fell from before we could reach him. He was OK, but my life expectancy shrunk by about four years. At this rate, I'll be gone by next week.

A parent can only do so much to stop a climber from climbing. I suppose I could rid the house of all furniture, which would do a lot of good, then rip all the trees from our lawn, but he'd probably just climb my van, and then one day I'd not see him on top of my van and would drive off with my youngest son, surfing atop my grocery getter.

So perhaps I should just adopt the strategy employed by Paul Romero out of California. Mr. Romero's 13-year-old son Jordan has always been a climber. I know this because Paul is helping his son to climb the highest mountain peak on each continent, and is currently trying to scale Mt. Everest. Rather than fight off his son's desire to climb, Paul gave Jordan an outlet through mountain climbing.

Or, come to think of it, maybe that's not so much of an example of how to handle a climber as it is a warning for parents considering giving their kids a climbing outlet. And frankly, I'm afraid of heights.

An Obituary For My Free Time

My Free Time, age 40, passed away this evening after a long battle with parenthood. It is survived by my exhaustion. It was preceded in death by my excess spending money, my sanity, my IQ, all household space not occupied by some random toy, and my eardrums.

My free time lived a good life. It was plentiful early on, and enjoyed playing and running around and participating in sports and playing with friends or reading books, mostly history books or sports books or comics or newspapers. Eventually, it turned to hobbies, some of which were brutal failures, like model airplanes, but some of which became lifelong sources of amusement, like drawing, mostly on materials like textbooks and notebook paper. OK, really it spent most of its time on the couch eating Doritos and watching television, but I wanted my free time to do those things.

It disappeared for long stretches during college years, but when it returned it, uh ... thoroughly enjoyed doing things that, well, we just won't discuss here.

In adulthood, my freetime evolved into vacations to places like Florida, or Ireland or Toledo, Ohio. It went hiking and mountain climbing and going to see Twins games or making long drives to North Carolina to meet women and get married. And yes, more television. Lots more TV. The Internet was invented and then our free time enjoyed finding out information such as the German translation for "I want a crazy cat in my pants." (Answer: Ich habe ein verruckte katze in meinen hosen.)

One late July night, my pregnant wife walked into the kitchen of our South Carolina home and said, "Oooh, that one hurt." It signaled her upcoming labor and, with it, the beginning of the end for all my free time. No more nights watching bad TV and eating cookie dough for me. After that day, time I had once spent finding excuses to avoid performing household chores was thus spent changing diapers or finding ways to avoid emptying the diaper pail. Or wiping barf off of myself. Or using the snowblower to clean the kitchen floor beneath the high chair after dinner.

As my boy got older, that diaper time became time spent in the bathroom begging him to use the toilet, or cleaning up some random mess. Or we had to attend a preschool function. Or school function. Or doctor visit. Or dentist visit. Or T-Ball. Or some school meeting or "thing." Or some dumb fundraiser. Or just spending time with the little bugger. And then we decided to have another child, because for some reason we missed all those diapers and baby barf and, apparently, we hated what was left of our free time.

This evening, even as I regularly lament a very packed calendar, I went to a Cub Scout meeting. And then, my sanity and IQ long gone and what's left of my brain fully occupied with trying to fold a paper car, I mindlessly agreed to let my kid join Cub Scouts. My free time thus went into cardiac arrest, and I declared it dead in between dreadful sobs.

My free time will be greatly missed.

Funeral services will not be held because I just don't have the damn time. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Dorky Dad Big Screen Television Fund.

Forgetting About The Junk Rule

I've never claimed to have a clean vehicle, but for most of my life I figured my problem was simple: My cars were too small.

Small cars are easy to mess up. A paper here, an uneaten lunch there, a few empty pop cans in the back seat, and suddenly my vehicle looks as if it had been the residence of hoarding squatters. When kids arrived, this made things much, much worse, because they added crumbs and toys and, on top of that, more crumbs and more toys and the occasional piece of homework or artwork that The Boy brought home from school. And I swear that all this stuff multiplies, like the toys and crumbs and junk procreate in my back seat -- much like the cardboard boxes do in my garage.

So I developed a plan: Get a bigger vehicle.

We bought a minivan, ending years of resistance on my part and solidifying my own dorkish credentials. I figured that my new van would look much cleaner, because it was larger. Which just goes to show that age and parenthood can damage a person's brain, because I completely forgot about The Junk Rule.

The Junk Rule is simple, and everybody knows it: The more space you have available for junk, the more junk you accumulate. Junk accumulates to fill space. If you buy a bigger house, you find yourself with a lot more stuff. If your garage is large, it still gets filled, and probably looks junky -- or at least that's how my garage looks.

My house has a big kitchen and when we first looked at it we marveled at the miles and miles of counter space. We fantasized about the ability to keep our appliances on the counter, toss our mail anywhere, keep spots for people to eat breakfast and still have enough space to make dinner for 20. And then we moved in. Now I find myself shoving stuff aside just to have enough room to make my coffee in the morning.

We also had lots of storage space. But now we don't have any storage space because somehow, all of it is miraculously occupied. And had it not been for craigslist we'd probably be buried in stuff right now.

So the van, of course, did not look any better than did my old Civic or my pickup trucks. If anything, it looks worse, because we drive it more than we do the other car. Perhaps the solution then is to just start driving The Wife's car all the time, because no matter how big it is it always manages to keep itself clean.

I wonder how she does that.