Cockpit Carl and Screaming Sammy

Earlier this week, I had a business meeting out in Chicago.  It was too early in the day for me to fly out the same day, so I arranged to fly in the day before.  In the past few years, I’ve had the chance of spending a good amount of time in Chitown, but as fate would have it, I could never coordinate my trips with dates when the Cubs were in town and playing at Wrigley Field . . . until this trip. 

While I grew up a baseball fan, going mostly to A’s and Giants games, I’ve had a list of the ballparks in which I would like to watch a game.  The list isn’t very big: Yankee Stadium (the old one), Fenway Park, and Wrigley Field.  Back in the late ‘80s, I lived in The Bronx and was able to attend two games at the old Yankee Stadium – once from the bleachers where I got Bo Jackson (who was playing for the Royals) to do a goofy pose for a photo and once on the lower level on the third-base side.  A few years back, my family and I were in Boston about two weeks after the baseball season ended, so we missed our chance to see a game but went on a tour of Fenway Park.  While I’m glad we did it, I still want to see a game at this historic park.  And of course, there’s Wrigley Field with the ivy-covered walls located smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood.  But I’m getting ahead of myself – sorry!

On my flight out to Chicago, just after we took off, the pilot comes on and says, “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  I’m Captain Steve Dauntless and assisting me here in the cabin is my First Officer, Douglas Bornhoffer.  We’re going to climb to 30,000 feet and find some good stable air for our flight out to Chicago today.  So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.”  First off, I’m not sure why they tell us their names.  It’s not like we have trading cards of the pilots and first officers that we’re all waiting to trade or we’re all playing “Fantasy Fly Boys”, and we’re hoping we get the right guys so we can rub it in our friends’ faces.  Also, in all the flying I’ve done, when the pilot has come on and made the introduction, I have yet to have one of my fellow passengers look over at me and say, “Oh my gosh!  I can’t believe how lucky we are!  We’re flying with Captain Dauntless.  Do you know what his ERA is?”  At that last comment, I would have a look of confusion painted on my face, and my fellow passenger would say, “ERA! It’s his End of Runway Accident record.”  My only response at that point would be, “Well, I hope it’s zero.” 

The second thing I find odd in these little feel-good announcements from Cockpit Carl is the need to tell us our cruising altitude, which is generally 30,000 feet.  I would be impressed if the guy came over the PA and said, “Ladies and gentlemen.  Most pilots like to cruise at 30,000 feet, but as you’ll notice in the next two or three minutes, we’ll be climbing so high that nothing on the ground is going to be evenly remotely recognizable.  I do that just to keep a little mystery in the flight.  Oh, and I’ll be deploying the oxygen masks just for the heck of it.  Don’t be alarmed, it’s your choice, really.  The air can get a little thin at 55,000 feet even in a pressurized cabin like ours.”  Telling us the cruising altitude is silly.  There’s nothing that tall that we need to be careful to avoid.  The tallest building in the US is under 1,500 feet.  Mount Everest is just a tad over 29,000 feet tall.  And I’m going to take a wild guess and say, anything over about 20,000 feet is probably difficult to gauge anyway.  With that in mind, the next flight you take, bring an altimeter along and announce aloud your aircraft’s altitude in 5,000 foot increments.  Your fellow passengers will thank you, I’m sure.  And if you don’t make it up to 30,000 feet, demand to speak with the pilot – they love to have their performances critiqued. 

A little over three hours later, we landed safe and sound (always my preference) at O’Hare Airport in Chicago.  After picking up my rental car and making it to my hotel, I fired up the Internet (God bless Al Gore for inventing that!) and mapped out the best way to get to Wrigley Field from where I was staying.  Knowing that Wrigley is located in the middle of a neighborhood and parking is a premium, I chose to catch a train out in the north suburbs that would take me within a few blocks of the park. 

When I arrived at Wrigley, I chose to purchase a bleacher seat.  The folks at Wrigley make a big deal out of their bleacher fans, so I thought this would be the quintessential Wrigley Field experience – and it was.  Upon entering the park, I was handed a pink t-shirt and was asked to wear it at the end of the second inning for a breast-cancer-awareness promotion and photo.  Gladly.  I chose to make my way to left field because there seem to be more right-handed batters than lefties, so the odds of catching a home run ball were higher.  One can dream. 

I found my seat and sat down to watch the end of warm ups.  I noticed a lot of the people around me were “regulars” – you could tell by the way they talked to each other and interacted with the ushers.  As I sat on my metal bleacher seat, I realized I had come woefully unprepared for an evening game in early May in Chicago.  The cold metal beneath my hindquarters quickly seeped its way up into my body through my jeans and thin underwear.  (The only reason I added the detail about my underwear was that if I had finished the sentence at “jeans”, some smartass would invariably say, “What, you were wearing jeans with no underwear?”  I know I would have said it if the roles were reversed.)  I had only brought a thin fleece jacket and an ASU tuke (beanie) – not exactly the right outfit for 45 degrees with a mild wind blowing in from Lake Michigan.  The ironic thing was that the official organ player was playing Beach Boys songs to make everyone feel like spring had arrived.  I almost exploded when he/she busted into “Surfin’ USA”. 

As the players cleared off the field and before the ceremonial first pitch was thrown out by a cancer survivor, the field crew came out one more time to tidy everything up for the game.  The last thing they did was spray down the dirt in the infield with water to keep the dust down, and surprisingly, this took six dudes with just one hose.  The lead “hoser” – the one who actually held the end of the hose and guided where the water was sprayed – was dressed in a Cubs polo shirt and chinos.  The other five cats were dressed decidedly more casually, and they held the hose in three- or four-foot increments between one another – apparently, this is a very heavy hose (although it didn’t look to be more than twice the size of a standard garden hose).  What struck me most was the fact there was a disparity in the “uniform” of the lead “hoser” and the other “hosers” – obviously, there’s a pecking order, and this lead guy is the big cheese.  I’m not sure what he does better than the other guys in handling the hose and directing the water spray.  The ability to spray things is innate for practically every male on this planet – we’ve been doing it since birth. 

As the game began, I quickly realized something: the game of baseball is mind-numbingly slow and so boring that I believe we all lost a few IQ points for sitting there watching the contest between the Cubs and the White Sox.  Ironically, I grew up playing baseball, and I loved it.  Well, I might not have LOVED IT, but it was the only sport at which I had a modicum of talent and could hold my own on the field without embarrassing myself.  Basketball, football, soccer, etc. – none of these sports held any fascination for me.  Weird! 

Near the end of the second inning, a woman came to our section and reminded us to wear our pink shirts for the photo.  What made me laugh was this statement: “Come on all you White Sox fans.  We put the Cubs logo on the back of the shirts on purpose so you wouldn’t have a problem wearing this for a photo opportunity for a good cause.”  While the two teams are in different leagues, the cross-town rivalry is alive and well, and the “pink shirt” organizers knew their audience.  Kudos to them!  My mom’s a survivor and so are a number of phenomenally brave women I’ve been lucky enough to know in my life. 

The bleacher fans were some of the nicest people I’ve ever met.  Despite their “niceness”, I couldn’t take it any longer after the fourth inning.  The combination of the sports equivalent of watching paint dry and the cold assaulting me at every turn, I decided it was time to get back on the train and make like a baby and head out.  As I was leaving, I looked down and noticed that the ivy on the brick wall on which the bleachers sat was completely dead.  Apparently, this stuff doesn’t grow well in subarctic temperatures either. 

My train ride back to my car was moving along smoothly for the first three or four stops.  Suddenly, without any prelude, one of my fellow riders screamed at the top of his lungs – it was a sound one would expect coming out of the mouth of a 13 year-old girl watching “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (which would be odd because that movie is rated “R”, and no responsible adult should take an impressionable girl to watch such a thing, but that’s another topic for another day).  As I looked in the direction of the scream, I noted it was coming from a 40-something dude who proceeded to tell the entire train car the differences between what a heterosexual man and a homosexual man . . . prefer.  After he was satisfied that we were clear on this subject, he “educated” us on the correct terms for castration as it applied to the different genders (given the degree of detail he shared with us, I’m pretty sure he paid attention that day in biology class).  His stop came just in time – there was a guy on the other end of the car who didn’t seem to be following Screaming Sammy’s lecture, and I was afraid we were about to get a demonstration.  After Sammy left the car, the rest of the ride was practically silent.  I could tell my fellow riders were glad to see the back of this guy, but truth be told, I was beginning to be nostalgic for my days in New York City on the subway.  I still remember the guy who got into our car in Harlem and walked around asking for money.  When he didn’t get the amount he was seeking, he started playing a saxophone.  Of course, he hadn’t taken a single saxophone lesson in his life, and he WASN’T a child prodigy.  After about ten seconds (that seemed like ten minutes) of unmitigated noise, sax man said, “I won’t stop until you give me some money.”  And we all dug into our pockets for as much loose change as we could find. 

The rest of my time in Chicago was fairly uneventful.  And the plane ride home was okay except for the toddler who sat behind me with restless leg syndrome and a mother who was absolutely oblivious.  I can’t blame the kid because, well, he’s a kid, and his mother obviously stayed for all nine innings of the game the night before and lost too many IQ points to be a responsible adult. 

Everybody Out of the Pool!

I'm at the gym today and make my way to the pool to swim some laps.  When I walk into the pool area, there's one other dude that I can see, and he's on the side of the pool busy getting ready to swim a few hundred miles - I could tell by the swim cap he was wearing that he was serious about all of this. 

I get into the pool with my back to the other end of the lane in which I'm about to swim and do some stretching (so I can look like I know what I'm doing – I can’t have a dude in a swim cap mocking me either).  Just as I turned around to face the opposite end of the pool and affix my goggles, this other guy comes from out of nowhere and plops himself into the pool at the other end of THE VERY LANE IN WHICH I’M GETTING READY TO SWIM.  I’m wearing goggles for Pete’s sake!  How do I NOT look like I’m about to swim here? 

Mind you, there’s no one else in the entire pool – there are four lanes for the taking, and Swim Cap McHundredmiles has yet to wade into one of the lanes.  The interloper at the other end of the pool could have jumped into any one of the other three lanes, but he chose mine. 

Now, I’ve seen something similar to this before.  The lane in which I’m getting ready to swim is closest to the Jacuzzi, and there’s a ladder in the pool in my lane next to the Jacuzzi.  I’ve seen people pop out of the Jacuzzi and jump into the pool to cool off and then quickly exit the pool again via the ladder – I thought this was what Mr. Personal Space Invader was attempting, so I stood my ground and waited for him to exit the pool.  But he didn’t.  He proceeded to jump from foot to foot all the while staring at me from his end of MY LANE! 

I kept staring at him, wondering when he was going to finish his little exercise jig and depart.  Swim Cap turned around and noticed what was happening and looked at me.  I looked at him and said, “You can see me, right?  I’m not invisible, am I?”  At this point, I had a decision to make – which of the four options do I exercise:

1. Engage the dude at the other end of the pool in a game of Marco Polo?
2. Stealthily sidle up and pants him?
3. Get out of the pool, run along the side, and cannonball him?
4. See if he's ticklish?

What would you have done?  Let's take a poll, and then I'll tell you what I did.  

Season's Beatings

Once, when Jack was much younger, we were grocery shopping, and he asked for a bag of Cheetos.  We agreed to buy it for him (because you know us, the ever-indulgent parents that we are) on the condition that he couldn’t plow into the bag until after he ate his dinner.  Agreement reached, we made the purchase and headed home.  Dinner that evening consisted of lime chicken, and Jack was being a trooper.  Normally a rather adventurous eater (still is), this night’s fare was presenting him with some challenges.  Between bites he would ask for his Cheetos, and we kept reminding him that he had to eat all of his dinner before getting his hands on the orange-food-stuff-cheese-flavored treat.  So, on he went with the task of choking down the lime chicken.  He plopped the last morsel into his mouth and swallowed it; no more than three seconds later, he puked it all back up.  We scrambled for towels to clean up the mess, when Jack looked up at us both from his high chair and asked, “Can I have my Cheetos now?”  Whether you view our yearly Christmas letter as the chicken, the Cheetos, or what came in between, we hope this little missive is just as memorable. 

One step closer to adulthood – the right to vote, registering for the draft, appearing on “Jerry Springer” without parental consent – Sam became a teenager this year.  This also means that we’re less than five years away from selling our house, buying a 1976 Winnebago, and touring North and South America to find the best places to take a nap.  The year started out with Sam making the volleyball team at his junior high school.  On the whole, the average volleyball “parent” is pretty calm and cool.  You get your occasional wingnut screaming instructions from the stands to his son that involve rocketing the ball into the opponent’s chest like a bunker-busting missile, but their ferocity is usually met with looks from the rest of us that could be interpreted either as “relax, dude, Nike’s not going to be here until next week to hand out sponsorship contracts” or “up the voltage on your shock therapy, please.”  In years past, we’ve been involved in other sports that have seen bleacher-clearing brawls between parents over who was responsible for snack and why it wasn’t peanut free.  Sam is also taking Latin this year so he can learn how to ask for directions to the bathroom in a dead language.  That should come in handy when his ever-so-alive bladder is full. 

While many may disagree and view this as one of the signs of the Apocalypse, we view this milestone as one step closer to our liberation from carpooling and errands: Jack turned 16 and obtained his driver’s license.  Gone are the days of our having to ferry the boys to and fro (the “to” wasn’t half as bad as the “fro” – “fro” always seems to take place late at night when we’re in our pajamas and lying in bed reading; and by “late”, I mean after 7:00 p.m.).  Now, Jack gets to do that – and quite often he does it with a spring in his step because it means we put gas in the truck he drives.  One night this past summer, Erin and I were in bed reading (I’m sure I was reading something profound like “Dad is Fat” by Jim Gaffigan or “Not Taco Bell Material” by Adam Carolla) when Erin jumped up, panicking, looked at the clock and said, “Oh my gosh, it’s almost 11:00 o’clock.  We need to pick up Sam from (insert overly creative boy name that either sounds like a medieval land baron or a color from a J. Crew catalog)’s house.”  Without losing my place in the book I was reading, I calmly replied, “No, we don’t.  That’s why we had Jack – he can go pick up Sam.”  Then Erin asked, “Is that the ONLY reason?”  Looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling as if I were weighing the many merits of our eldest son – much the same way an art lover would gaze before a great collection of The Masters – and said, “Yep.  THAT’s the reason we had him.”  As is the case with both of our sons, the fact they’re doing well in school, they’re not on drugs, and they don’t have a criminal record is gravy. 

Over this past year, I’ve repaired more leaks in our sprinkler lines than the busiest urologist in the state of Arizona.  When I’m not doing that, I’m still visiting exotic locales like Lubbock, TX, and Toledo, OH – livin’ the dream!  Erin continues her Masters program in Waste Management – her current course load is pretty rigorous: Toilet Paper Yard Clean-Up 352 – “Use a Shotgun Next Time The Punks Come Around”; Navigating The Boys’ Bedroom 419 – “There Really is Carpet Under There”; and Dish Washing Elementals 298 – “What Does and Does NOT Go in a Garbage Disposal”. Come visit us anytime.  We won’t make you stay in the boys’ room.  Have a great year!

Divine and Sublime: The Love of a Mother

My blog is normally reserved for general snarkiness and flippant disregard for all things serious.  With that said, I'm not exactly sure why I'm posting this here, but I did want to warn anyone reading this beforehand: if you're expecting this to be funny, it won't be.  Ooh, that sounds far more serious than I meant it.  Sorry.  What I meant to say was that this is a talk I was asked to give in church last Sunday for Mother's Day, so it's not directed at your funny bone.  This is your last chance to stop reading before it gets too serious.  I mean it.  

The year is 1989.  The place is East Harlem, otherwise known as The Barrio.  Walking east along 103^rd Street between Fifth & Madison Avenues, you spy an 11-year-old boy, Luis.  The school day is over, and he’s heading to his home in the projects just a few blocks away where he lives on the 17^th floor with a mish mash of family and relatives squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment.  As he left PS171, he descended a small set of concrete stairs in disrepair and littered with hundreds of discarded crack vials – the school a popular place for the local dealer and his clients to do their business and feed their addiction. 

It’s December, and the first snow has long come and gone, leaving the snow banks along the gutters black and dirty from the exhaust of cars and trucks racing by on their way to someplace else.  There is a chill in the air, and Luis tightens his scarf and ensures his coat is zipped up to his chin.  He shoves his hands as deeply as he can into his pockets almost to the point of ripping the seams, and he soldiers on toward home. 

Luis passes through a short brick tunnel under the railroad tracks that separate the northbound and southbound sides of Park Avenue as a Metro North train rumbles overhead.  He’s reminded of the night he passed by this very spot on an errand to the local bodega when he came upon a man whose throat had been slit, the blood fresh on the sidewalk, just as a police car pulled up with lights flashing – he just kept walking.  This was not the first time he’s had a front-row seat to what plays out on the mean streets of The Barrio. 

Crossing Lexington Avenue and nearing the projects that he’s known as home since he came to the United States, Luis spies a solitary figure walking toward him struggling under the weight of a bag full of clothing in one hand and groceries in the other – he quickens his pace.  The very sight of this figure puts the visions of crack vials and violence completely out of his mind, and the chill disappears.  Who has this seemingly magical power to transform and transport him from The Barrio to a place where, for even a mere moment, there’s no worry about drive-by shootings or being pressured by the local dealer to be one of his corner boys on the lookout for approaching police?  Who else but his mother, Maria! 

She works at a dry-cleaning plant in Brooklyn six days a week and has to take two trains and a bus each way just to get to and from work.  On her way to and from the local subway station each day, she drops off and then collects clothing that needs to be tailored, mended, and hemmed for extra money.  She is a dutiful visiting teacher with sisters living at the extremes of Manhattan island – this involves even more trains and buses.  And she holds two callings: Sunday School teacher and Second Counselor in the Relief Society.  The demands on her time are endless.  And yet, she has never let a moment of doubt slip into Luis’s mind about whether he is her priority.  When I served in the New York City Spanish Speaking mission back in the late ‘80s, I met a mountain of mothers like Maria and witnessed time and time again the transformative power of their love in the lives of their children.  Knowing women like this – knowing women like my beautiful wife and my own wonderful mother – it seems almost a disservice to dedicate only one day to the celebration of mothers.  In fact, I would urge you today to make it a point in your own way to celebrate the mothers in your life as often as possible – let’s face it, we wouldn’t be here without them. 

    

Just out of curiosity, I Googled “great women” and was greeted by numerous entries from magazines and profiles.  I clicked through a whole host of these entries and learned some very fascinating things about these wonderfully brave women – the common themes running through these sites were “political successes”, “net worth”, and “overcoming insurmountable odds”.  All great feats, of course, and ones that are laud worthy!  One woman especially intrigued me, and as I read through a short biography, the writer extolled her many virtues and accomplishments that detailed both her revolutionary and iconoclastic nature.  Kudos to her!  However, in this and other profiles, it is never once mentioned whether she’s married or has children.  I had to go to the source of all truth, Wikipedia, to learn that she is, in fact, married and has children and grandchildren.  Why do I mention this?  The reason is simple: the world – especially popular culture – does not rank “motherhood” as something that qualifies for greatness.  That’s sad!

    

The French poet, Charles Baudelaire, once wrote, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”  I’ll add to Chuck’s insightful observation: the second greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that motherhood is not one of the absolute pinnacles of accomplishment.  For too long, women have been relegated to roles of subservience.  In many cultures, women are still considered second-class citizens.  This is the doing of a world who has been tricked. 

    

In order to understand the true value and equality of women in the eyes of Our Father, you need only turn to the Scriptures for myriad examples.  Motherhood is so central to a plan conceived and implemented by a loving Heavenly Father that the Christ child was introduced to this world by being born to a woman – to a mother!  Mary was not just a willing soul who happened to be in the right place at the right time.  In Luke, Chapter 1, verse 28, we read of Gabriel’s pronouncement to Mary of her value – that Our Heavenly Father knew her by name and chose her specifically: “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.”  After Christ was crucified, laid to rest in a borrowed tomb, and three days passed, to whom did the resurrected Savior very first appear?  A woman – Mary Magdalene.  This was not a chance meeting.  Christ’s esteem for Mary was incredible!  He surely sought her out.  In fact, He made a point to visit her even before He had ascended to Heaven to complete his resurrected transformation.  We mustn’t forget the undaunted courage and unwavering devotion of the two thousand young men who followed Helaman into battle and specifically and unreservedly credited their mothers for their strength and success.  You would be hard pressed to convince those two thousand boys to believe that motherhood was NOT at the pinnacle of accomplishment – in fact, if you tried, you might find yourself on the business end of a very sound beating. 

    

I believe it’s fair to say that motherhood is among the most far-reaching and important callings in life.  It has possibly the greatest effect on lives that stretches from the cradle to the grave and into the eternities.  We would underestimate the value and power of motherhood at our peril! 

There’s a song by the band Madness called “Our House”.  Throughout the song, the lyrics describe the comings and goings of the different family members and the fact their house is the central gathering place for the entire neighborhood.  After describing the madness within the walls of their home, there’s a line: “Something tells you that you've got to get away from it.”  But the very next part of the song is very telling – you hear this, referring to their mother: “She sees them off with a small kiss.  She's the one they're going to miss in lots of ways.”  And that may perhaps be one of the toughest but most noble aspects of motherhood: letting them go with the hope that they’ve prepared their children to take on the world.  Fortunately, though, we have an eternal promise found in Proverbs 22:6:  “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  This sentiment is echoed in Doctrine & Covenants.

    

As I prepared this little homage to mothers, I searched the scriptures and found many wonderful examples to cite, but I had a great deal of trouble putting my own thoughts into words.  So, in light of this loss for words, I decided it would be better to quote directly an Apostle of God, Jeffrey R. Holland, who said it perfectly in a Mormon Message found on the Church’s website: “May I say to mothers collectively, in the name of the Lord, you are magnificent. You are doing terrifically well. The very fact that you have been given such a responsibility is everlasting evidence of the trust your Father in Heaven has in you. He is blessing you and He will bless you, even—no, especially—when your days and your nights may be the most challenging. Rely on Him. Rely on Him heavily. Rely on Him forever. And ‘press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope.’”

    

To that, I can only add the following: Motherhood is a divine calling – it is at least equal to if not greater than the calling of prophet.  Without mothers, we would not have prophets and a Savior!

Christmas 2012

Traveling recently on the Subway, a woman and a small boy sat down next to me and proceeded speaking with one another in a language I’m going to presume was of Asian extraction – trust me on this one.  The conversation went something like this:

Woman: “Asian words, Asian words, Asian words, Asian words, Asian words.”

Boy: “Asian words, Asian words, Asian words, Asian words, Asian words.”

This went back and forth as the train made its way uptown.  Suddenly, after a long string of consonance from the boy, this is what I hear the woman say:

            Woman: “Asian words, Asian words.  Yeah, something like that.”

Huh?!!  Did I suddenly become fluent in a language in which I’ve had no previous experience?  Sadly, no.  Just as I was considering this possible moment of genius, the boy rattled off another barrage of wild words with the woman responding in kind – I was alone again in a sea of linguistic loss tossed about by waves of strange sounds and foreign phonics. 

This annual note from the Greene family will probably have the same effect: long strings of senseless ramblings punctuated by a short burst (or two, if you’re lucky) of coherence. 

Having reached the age of 12 (with all body parts intact) this year, Sam is now in junior high.  This rite of passage has brought the inevitable: the need to see how long he can keep his P.E. clothes in his locker and go without bringing them home to be washed.  I don’t know about other parts of the country, but in our neck of the woods, the junior high and high schools don’t have lockers for the students in which to keep their books – they (school administrators) are fearful that someone might conceal a weapon or explosive device in a locker.  That’s all fine and dandy, but shouldn’t it be just the opposite: if Sam’s P.E. locker is anything to go by, he’s concealing a deadly weapon that drops a stink bomb each time he opens it and allows his clothes to air – make the boys (at least) take their clothes home every day instead of 75 pounds of books.  The chiropractors lobby won’t be happy about it, but the rest of the free world will be grateful. 

While there were times we weren’t sure he would live to see 15 ½ (he’s had his death-defying moments, and we’re just talking about our dealings with him as his parents), Jack has obtained his driving permit.  In preparation for his eventually obtaining his actual license next month, we purchased a small used pick-up truck for him to get himself to and from school.  Jack keeps referring to it as “my truck”; each time he does so, we quickly remind him that the truck belongs to us and that we’re allowing him to use it for OUR convenience.  To the best of my knowledge, the truck hasn’t been Christened with a name yet, but if Erin has her way, I’m sure it would be named something like “Carpool Freedom” or “The Great Emancipator”.  Recently, Jack has joined a shooting club (trap and skeet, not drive-bys and contract hits – those come later, I think), and he’s really enjoying it.  He’s graduated from “pull my finger” to just “pull” – we’ll take our parental victories wherever we can get them. 

Although Queen Creek has yet to live up to its name – still no sightings of hordes of cross-dressers roaming our suburban streets – it’s still a great place to visit.  Come over to our place: we can sit on the front porch, watch a haboob or two, and then go inside to escape the oppressive heat.  (We write a heck of a travel brochure, don’t we?)  If that doesn’t sway you, we promise to buy you a Coke the size of a kiddie pool – it’s the least we could do.