Honea Express

Archive for the ‘Posts Where I Offend People’ Category

This is my best post. I’ll tell you that right now. You might smile. You might sigh. You may have to step away from your computer and touch something to make sure this is real. That something is your focal point. This post is your anchor. I am the captain of your ship and we are sailing on an ocean made from the tears of so many children.  All children cry. Yours, because you don’t love them enough. Mine, because I love too much. All tears taste of salt. All tears flow to the sea.

I’m trying something new. Do you like it? If you do then please paste this on your car bumper. Page a friend. Yell it from the assorted rooftops. This is me excelling in a new direction, and the direction is up. It is like the rapture, but with more hype.

I am a giant redwood among the pines and oaks of daddy blogging. Other dads cut holes at my root, because they cannot reach my heart. They drive their cars through me. They are part of a fast-food forest. I am a seven course meal and the wine is an “h” short. Dessert is layered in metaphors. It is nearly as sweet as my words, but without the linger or the bite.

I will not rewrite this post, which makes it even better, because it is raw. It is trending.

I know things about parenting that you do not. You have told me so with your actions. Save your words for Scrabble and friends. This is sticks and stones territory. This is tough love. There is no reach around. There is no spoon.

Some of you may not get this. It may seem too deep. It may seem too powerful. If that is you, then congratulations, you just Googled directions to where love lives. There are hugs nearby.

If this post makes you angry then you are reading it wrong. If it makes you cry then you are probably Glenn Beck. Or me. Let it out. That’s how love flows. It sounds like Kenny G on a train in the distance.

There is a box and you are in it. I am on the outside, thinking of ways to help you get more traffic. It starts when I open the lid.

I was born in Tucson, Arizona. I lived in the area for over 28 years. I ran barefoot through the green-spotted desert as it turned from the square quilts of cotton fields to the oval patches of over-watered golf courses. I rode my bike on gravel-lined dirt roads that grew overnight into car-filled highways. I shot a BB gun in my front yard and waved at passersby, calling to each by name.  I remember when that Dairy Queen was the only thing out there.

The majority of my youth was spent in Marana, a town just north of the city that my family helped to settle and govern. My father has served the town of Marana through seats on the council, and now as the mayor, for over 30 years. Unlike the indigenous vegetation in the area, the roots of my family have grown thick and deep into the clay-baked soil of the Sonoran Desert.

I attended the University of Arizona and graduated without honors. Somebody has to. I met my wife on two-for-one night in a bar just off campus. I was drunk on whiskey, and I’m still hearing about it.

Many of my family and friends remain, meaning my ties to Tucson are more than just margaritas and sunsets, although both are fantastic.

I grew up in a conservative home. The earliest jokes that I can remember had Jimmy Carter as a punchline. We went to church every Sunday, and on holidays my uncles would sit in the shade of my grandparents’ porch, sip iced tea and wrap themselves in layers of racism, homophobia and laughter. I didn’t know innocence from ignorance, and I laughed just as hard as they did, happy but to be there.

My parents taught me things that transcended politics. They taught me how to be happy with very little money, and how to treat people with respect, courtesy and humor.  They never suggested that I consider violence as an option, and when I outgrew religion they never tried to tether me to it.

Ours was built firmly on trust and understanding.

I left Tucson as an adult, and although I’ve returned for weddings and funerals, each visit made it more and more clear, you can’t go home again.

It used to be the heat that kept me away.

And then technology went forward as technology is prone to do, and suddenly I found myself looking into metaphorical windows, staring into a world that I had left behind — a world where many never noticed that other paths diverged, and so they continued along the only way that they had ever known, easy and slow and bending forever backward. The path most traveled is paved without thought, and it has made all the difference.

I found that I missed it less and less.

Days ago a young girl was shot and killed. A judge joined her. The tally rose to six innocents dead and many others wounded. The target had been a congresswoman, full of courage and reason.  The shooter had been a boy, full of madness and confusion.

I blame the line between fear and reason. It zigs where we are told that it should zag.

Of the victims, know that their story is not here. I am not qualified to write words on the victims or their loved ones. I cannot comprehend the depths of their loss, nor will I cheapen their memories by attempting to do so. Just know that I grieve like we all grieve. I anger like we all anger. I can only wish things weren’t as they are and think thoughts of better days for those they’ve left behind.

I once thought of Tucson as a beacon of light in a state of gray and darkness, but in the years since my absence I have watched it grow overcast and haunted. Or, I thought, perhaps I am only now seeing how it has always been.

That’s not to say that there are not stars there. They are many, and I reflect upon them fondly. But the night is bold, loud and howling. It twists words like the wind and wrings sweat from the brows of the misguided. It is spreading swiftly.

I feared that the Tucson I knew, or thought that I did, was on the verge of disappearing forever.

And yet, the stars shine brighter but for the darkness.

Last night I watched a memorial for the fallen. The president spoke. My father was in the stands. There were tears as far as the eye could see.

For the first time in a long time I saw a glimpse of what I once took for granted. What has always been there, only hidden too often by levels of bureaucracy and the sad fact that ignorance and hate sell more papers than rational quotes and the good deeds of everyday people.  Amid the pain and loss of a country I saw the courage and strength of a city, and from its collective diversity came a roar of passion that the media couldn’t comprehend. I saw Tucson’s heart and it was sad, but strongly beating.

For the first time in a long time I saw the place that I used to know.

I saw Tucson, and it felt like home.

According to people that know such things, 40 is the new 30, green is the new black and LeBron James is the new Michael Jordan. They are the new they, same as the old they. They may be right. I may be crazy.

And then there are the lunatics you’re looking for. Or four, as the case may be.  You see, the one stat that they don’t share, possibly due to its lack of pizazz or perhaps its frightening truthfulness, is that four is the new two.

Hello, and welcome to the frightening fours.  They suck.  No refunds.

Two? Two was puppy dogs and ice cream.  Two was barefoot on the beach, fresh flowers in every vase and your favorite team winning the championship.  It was bliss and the fact that they said it would be terrible only added to the majesty of it all.

Enter Four.  Now exit, please, as fast as you possibly can.

Four is screaming and not sleeping and the inability to use one’s arm for feeding one’s self yet somehow maintaining the upper body strength to fling said arm in wild, exaggerated gestures to emphasize said point (which, in case I’ve lost you, was the inability to use said arm).

We sent Two a thank you card.  Every holiday season Two gets the family newsletter.  My wife knit Two a sweater and she doesn’t even knit.  Two will never be cold or want for affection.  When Four is said and done we’re sticking it with the bill.  The only thing I’d willingly give Four is a rash.  Maybe a cold sore.  Maybe a kick in the pants.  Don’t let the door hit you, Four.

Our youngest son was once happy and innocent.  He was a soft, cuddly cartoon bunny with dimples and the smell of bacon and cinnamon.  Then at age three he built a cocoon, disappeared into it and came out like Mothra on a bender.

Sure, he still has moments of sweet cuteness, but that’s just Darwinism at its finest.  Darwin knew what he was doing when he sewed thumbs on monkeys.  If you want to throw crap at people and still continue to evolve you need to be mobile. The thumbless can’t hitchhike. It’s survival.  What allows Four to survive is the laughter, the dimples (damn the dimples!), the wonder and the peace one feels once Four goes to bed –  until it wants a drink of water or the pillow is no longer comfortable.  This usually happens about four in the morning, or as we call it, the witching hour.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my four-year-old son more than anything. I’ll just love him more once he’s five.

I’ve done some research, i.e., what I do online when not surfing porn, and it seems like I only have two options to get through this trying period:

1) Patience
B) Exorcism

I don’t know that I can afford either.

Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating, but consider this list of people that have been four:

• Adolf Hitler
• Joseph Stalin
• Ted Bundy
• OJ Simpson
• Kim Jong il
• George W. Bush
• Lady Gaga

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the heptagon of evil, or H.O.E., which kind of sugarcoats it, but is still evil in a venereal disease sort of way.

What can you do?

There’s only one thing that you can do to help us, and by association, yourself, and that is the power of prayer.  Prayer and money, but mostly money.  Like 99% money. Through your kind contributions my family and I can live out the remainder of Four on a beach in Hawaii, because only sand and grass skirts calm the savage beast.  Darwin knew it and they know it.  In fact, they are the ones that suggested it, and they are never wrong.

Usually.

I’ve had a song in my head for days. This happens. Sometimes I’m stuck on a Waits tune or I hang my hat on the perfect pitch of Miles ’round midnight. Other times it’s the haunting chords of Jeff Buckley or the lonesome road beneath David Gray. I get lost in both kinds of music, country and western.

And sometimes I’m on a motherfucking boat. Yes, this boat is real.

The boat song, not to be confused with that Banana Boat Song or the theme to Love Boat, was floating on my deck for days. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It’s docked there now, just off a memory.

I’m riding on a dolphin, doing flips and shit
This dolphin’s splashing, getting everybody all wet

It’s like poetry.

And then I sunk my battleship.

It was gone, out with the tide.

Straight flowing on a boat on the deep blue sea.

That song had sailed.

Hours passed on dry land.

Then an unknown phone in an unknown pocket in an unknown part of town rang, and its melody was like the Siren’s:

I’m on a boat, I’m on a boat
Everybody look at me
‘Cause I’m sailing on a boat
I’m on a boat, I’m on a boat
Take a good hard look
At the motherfucking boat

Seriously? There are kids on this bus, man.

But it was back and there I was, sans flotation device, and I slowly felt myself drown.

I looked at the guy who had unknowingly relaunched the ringing of my soul, and he was all, “What?”

And I was like, “What?”

I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell him that with one unanswered booty call he had undone minutes of therapy. With one ignored debt collection he had thrown me to the sharks. I wanted him to hold me.

I wanted to cut him with my iPhone app for cutting a bitch.

Instead I just gave him some stink-eye.

“Boat.” I said.

And I meant it.

He backed the fuck up at that point. I let him drift. Bon voyage, motherfucker.

T-Pain carried me home.

My phone rang a few days later. It didn’t play anything by The Lonely Island, but it did play something by Islands, because that’s my ringer, and that was close enough to feel suddenly landlocked. My waters run deep.

It was the wife in another state in our other yard, and parked where it shouldn’t be was an unknown boat. A boat.

“Take a good hard look at the motherfucking boat,” I said.

“The boat is real,” is how she should have replied. She didn’t, but she knew what I was talking about so I forgave her.

“There’s a boat,” she continued, “in our yard.”

“Tow that shit!” I yelled. My neighbors stopped pretending not to listen to me and gave me their full attention.

I put my hand over the phone and whispered into the street, “I’ve got a boat!”

“We’ll get our towels ready!” they screamed as one WITHOUT EVEN MOVING THEIR LIPS!

“I think I’m hearing things,” I said into the phone.

“Are you drunk already?” she asked.

“Already? Woman, it’s Sunday and I’m sans family. There is no already, there’s just is ready. And, still.” I nodded at the neighbors. Someone in the back raised a fist into the sky. There may have been a beer in it.

“Whatever,” she said. “What should I do about the boat?”

I was quiet for a moment. It was too much and my mind was doing a montage. I let it play. I owed it that much. In hindsight, the ascot may have been overkill.

“Hey,” I whispered. “Is T-Pain there?”

“Um, no.”

“Just checking.”

“I think the boat is the neighbors,” she added.

“Bastard.”

I was reaching for my app without even realizing it.

“Did you at least get our water slide?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s in the car,” she replied. And then she said other stuff about something else(s).

I hung up the phone and looked past my sea of neighbors and their constant waves that crash until heeded. They could have been smooth as glass.

I almost had a boat. Then I didn’t. Easy come? Yes. Easy go? Not so much. Still, I do have a water slide- a huge, awesome, double slide with a rock wall, tipping bucket, wadding pool and this thing which tells time. Also, it’s inflatable.

Hey ma, if you could see me now
Arms spread wide on the starboard bow
Gonna fly this boat to the moon somehow
Like Kevin Garnett, anything is possible

Except it’s not really a boat.

The water slide is real. And I’m on it.

Motherfucker.

So a long time ago I told the good people at Chick Chat that I would participate in a video segment featuring the dads of teh internetz (is that how they write that?), and then I forgot about it.

Then I loaded up all of my belongings into a shipping container and sent them to another state. My belongings include my video camera and lamps.

Then I had the week from hell. There is much stress in me. We’re moving in a few days. We decided to sell the house rather than rent it sometime last week. Today we met with the Realtor. We’ve got a lot of shit to do.

Then my grandmother started the painful, downhill slide into losing her battle with cancer. She’s not expected to survive the week.

That’s why my video sucks. It’s dark and grainy and I’m guessing a little cruder than the people at Chick Chat were hoping for. Sorry about that.

You’ll also notice that my video does not have any fancy edits or credits or a soundtrack of any kind. That is because I suddenly had an hour less than I thought, thanks to someone explaining to me that there really is a Central time zone. Also, there’s a really goofy-looking guy blocking the nice blue wall.

Who knew?

That said, here’s my contribution, and despite the fact that you’ll surely hate it, I had fun.

Please visit the other dads and their obviously better videos: Kevin at Always Home and Uncool, Tyler and Kacey at Three Bay B Chicks, and Husband of The Scattered Mind of a Tattooed Minivan Mama. Also, my condolences to Jason that couldn’t make the video due to his own grandmother passing. He’s at DadCentric and you should be, too.

Holy crap, I just realized that this thing is over 9 minutes long – and apparently the sound was dubbed later. That’s the kind of awesome I bring to the table.