Image by Fonzie's cousin via FlickrAre you one of those people who think that it's Superman's cape that allows him to fly? I tend to differ from the norm since I think it's the fancy pantyhose (tights). After all, Batman has a cape but he can't fly. I think it's special pantyhose that all the superheroes get from a special superhero store. The color of which determines which superpowers you get. My reason, all the superheroes always wear fancy pantyhose but not all of them wear capes. It is thoughts like this that have caused me grief on more than one occasion, for example.
When I was about five years old, I was out in the backyard playing with my friends. We were playing with a kids archery set. The kind with a little bow and arrows that have little rubber suction cups on the end. As children are prone to do, we got bored and started shooting the arrows straight up into the air. This led to several arrows landing on the roof of our house. It just happened that someone had left a ladder leaning against the house and I headed for the roof to retrieve the lost arrows. Once I had retrieved the arrows I found myself unable to get down from the roof. It could have been that someone knocked down the ladder or most likely it was my lifelong problem of getting back off the roof and down the ladder.
So I am standing on the roof enjoying the view and trying to figure out how to get down when my "friends" go and tell my mother that I am on the roof. My mom comes out to see what the problem is and just happened to be holding a flyswatter at the time. Not a good sign to a five-year-old. She proceeded to use my full name while ordering me down from the roof. When your mom yells something along the lines of "your full name here" get your butt down from there right now! You have no choice but to comply. Having watched a few too many episodes of Superman and having no prior knowledge that this was a bad idea, I said OK and jumped off the roof. You can imagine my surprise when instead of floating down to the ground in slow motion like they do on TV, I landed with a thud on the concrete patio breaking my leg in the process. Confused and in a considerable amount of pain, I could not understand what had happened. All my TV heroes jumped off stuff all the time and they never got hurt. Since I knew that my TV wouldn't lie to me the only explanation was that maybe I wasn't a superhero after all. Well, I had plenty of time to think this through while laying around with my leg in a cast. I was pretty sure that I was still a superhero, I just hadn't been given my superhero outfit yet. Once I got some of those fancy pantyhose this would never happen again.
As the holidays began to approach, my mom began to ask if I was going to come to visit for Christmas. Well, I already had planned my recent trip to Las Vegas, so a trip to Florida in December seemed like a bit much to pull off, so I was noncommittal but did like the idea of spending Christmas with the folks.
During a call to mom a couple of weeks later, she mentioned that my sisters were thinking of going to Florida for Christmas and it sure would be nice if everybody could come. Well, my sister, Suzanne lives in Southern California and sister Leigh Ann lives in Alabama, so if they were going to go, then it would be nice to see them and it has been a long time since we all spent Christmas together.
On the next phone call, I was told that both my sisters were definitely going to Florida for Christmas and were making plane reservations or other travel arrangements right away. Well, if my sisters were going to find a way to go to Florida and since I certainly did not want to be the selfish, ungrateful sibling who could not make the trip, I committed to going to Florida for the holidays. All of us in the same house at Christmas would be great fun!
All was fine and dandy, and everybody was happy until .... my sisters and I began to call each other to talk about the trip. Each phone call between us seemed to go the same way. "I am so glad we are all going to be together for Christmas! I really can't afford to go to Florida right now but when I heard that everybody else was going, I did not want to miss out on the fun or be the bad child who would not go." Well, we may all be morons but it did not take long to figure out what had happened. We had been scammed, played off each other by our very own parents to get us all to go to Florida for the holidays. Each of us had received the same phone call informing us that the other two children were coming and how it sure would be nice if we all came. I am not sure who the mastermind of this plan was, but I'm putting my money on dear old Dad, it seems to fit with his style. I don't know who was the first of us to figure out what was going on but will credit it to Leigh Ann. She said that when she confronted Pop with the accusation he did not deny it and let out an evil little laugh.
So the whole family will be together for the holiday's, but some form of retaliation must be done for the blatant manipulation from those nice people I call my parents. We are still working on a plan but so far the best we have come up with is to go and eat all their food and leave the house messy when we go.
It is official, the stork has made a delivery. My daughter Caroline gave birth to the lovely Rachel a little after noon Las Vegas time. Both mother and daughter are doing fine and the proud dad is wearing out his new camera. Hopefully, they will share some of the photos soon as I am not scheduled to go to Vegas for another week or so. Anyway here are the details. Rachel is nineteen inches long and weighs in at seven pounds six ounces.
The whole family is thrilled and excited as you can understand but I still have not seen the child yet so my excitement level has not yet peaked. I tried to get one of the engineers from work to build me one of those Star Trek transporter things so I could get there sooner but he claimed to not have all the parts. So I will just have to wait a little while longer. Since I have some time before my trip I will do what any self-respecting grandpa would do. Look for some really loud toys, ones that make loud and continuous sounds that make little babies laugh and drive parents mad. After all, isn't that my job now, to do anything to make Rachel smile and laugh regardless of what her parents think?
