“Father?” Said the almost five year old. “Listen, there is something I’ve been thinking about. You and I have been watching a lot of classic television programing lately. Shows like Tom and Jerry and Dumbo and I’ve noticed that in them, often a Stork drops off a baby to Moms and Dads.” “Yes?” I answer
How different his world is in 2014 than mine was when I was his age in 1978. This is the blessing of the late blooming father. Had I begun the child rearing phase of my life a decade or more ago things would be different. We could enjoy the Hunger Games together, we could both
I fear my son will think I don’t read… or listen to music… or vacuum since that task has been assigned to the robot. It’s been years since I bought a physical book and I can count the number of physical CD’s I’ve purchased in the last decade. I have neither of these things lying
On Woensdag (Wednesday), we left Amsterdam for Reno. Well, we attempted to leave Amsterdam for Reno. The daily Usairways flight from AMS to PHL was full and rather than roll the dice on one flight we figured a safer bet would be to roll the dice on two relatively full flights out of Frankfurt. And
The whole houseboat is IKEA! We’re in a neighborhood a bit outside of Central Amsterdam. Although it’s only a 30-minute walk or an easy tram or bus ride into the center of it all, we are far enough away to feel more local. Buying a cup of coffee yesterday down the road, a man asked,
With her off for the summer, I ‘bid’ to have some weeks off with her. I was awarded six weeks from the end of June through early August. Eager to kick the summer off, I asked for—and was granted—a drop of a trip at the end of June that leads up to my vacation. Now,
A four-day trip the week of Thanksgiving took me to Columbus, Ohio. Since I was to spend the holiday alone in the hotel, S. decided to drive up from visiting her grandparents in Pittsburgh. She had our cousin Troy with her, so we figured we’d play in Ohio for the night and let him see
I got to Walmart at 4:30 am armed with a large coffee and my hacked PSP, ready to play an hour and a half of ExciteBike on a Nintendo emulator until the store opened. The Wii was to go on sale at 6 am, and I was number 11 in line. Rumor had it there
We were woken up by several very abrupt knocks on the front door at 2 am this morning. Luckily, I’m feeling under the weather and had called off a two-day trip. I say ‘lucky’ because if I had not called out, my alarm clock would have been going off in about an hour, and I’d
Jesuit high school. All-boys. Shirt and tie. A Beanie for freshmen, Catholic guilt baked into the curriculum. Everyone else had cars or rides or parents with flexible schedules. I had the city bus. The H.A.R.T. Line. Hillsborough Area Regional Transit. Big red heart logo, which, after a few sunburned summers, faded to a kind of
I grew up in the theme park Busch Gardens and its water park sister, Adventure Island. They were my babysitters. They were my Grandma’s house. They were home. They were where I went when school was out for the summer, where I went when I was too sick for school or where I went when
