Big Daddy Paul

Our lives are pretty good.  We live in a nice little neighborhood, with our nice little boy.  We drive around in our nice little cars, and have nice phones.  We are surrounded by nice things, but they rarely seem to stay nice.  Why is it, you ask?  Because Amy and I fuck shit up.  All the time.  We are the ying to nice thing yang.  We’re the bull in the glass shop, just waiting for the time to be right, when we can bring the whole house down.  I am not sure why we do this, but, after countless episodes of us ruining perfectly good things in our life, I have given up feeling bad when it happens. Here are a few of the more significant fuck ups.

Most recently, I got into a fender bender.  On the way home from my stay at home dad’s playgroup, the car in front of me locked up its brakes and hit the car in front of it.  I was unable to stop in time, and hit the car in front of me. The car behind me hit me, shoving me farther into the car in front.  I thought that it was a bit of cosmetic damage, but an $8,000 repair job later finally restored our car to its original front bumper lustre.  Except that Amy, decided to one up me by hitting a column in a parking garage one week after we got the car back from the shop.  So much for that brand new bumper!  She, in fact, one upped herself as she ripped off the rear view mirror of the car while backing out of our driveway two whole days after we bought the thing.  Our car, not so nice.

Our brand new home has also taken a beating. We remodeled our house not four years ago, and it already shows like a run down piece of crap.  You can’t read the clock on the oven, because I made nachos once and they caught on fire while under the broiler.  I opened the oven door and flames jumped out and licked the console, thus blurring the clock.  After putting out the fire, I made another plate of nachos, and bam, those caught on fire too, burning the instrumentation even worse. The only thing worse than having to extinguish a plate of flaming nachos by throwing them into the sink is having to do it twice in succession. I could go on and explain why the ceiling of our kitchen is stained with wine, or why I choose not to fix the leak on the rear door, but it really doesn’t matter.  Our house, not so nice.

All this has me worried about how Malcolm is going to turn out.  For the most part, we have ruined every nice thing we have ever had.  Think I am lying?  Ask Amy where her wedding ring is.  When you do, she will probably inform you that I have lost three, count them three, wedding rings, and that yours truly doesn’t even wear one anymore because I can’t seem to hang on to the darn things.  As for Malcolm, here is already showing signs of wear.  (He threw my Iphone in the tiolet!)  I can only hope that as he gets older, the teachers in his life will set him off on the right path and that we won’t fuck him up as much as we do the cars and clocks and doors and ceilings in our life.

My friend Leo has a sweet vacation pad in Jamestown, and he graciously invited some of the softball guys and their families up for the weekend.  We went and decided on Saturday to go boating on Lake Tulloch, thinking that we would spend a lazy day swimming and touring around the lake.  The weather was perfect, the water inviting and so we set out in our rented pontoon to find a slice of the lake that we could call our own.  Then, we saw the wave. 

A power boat pulling two adrenaline loving kids in inner tubes  barreled in front of us leaving a wake that looked like it was the size of the empire state building.  We were heading full steam right at it, and Leo, who was driving, cut the engine in a seemingly wise effort to slow the speed at which we hit the rapidly growing wall of water.  Instead, the nose of the boat dipped into the water, and the now tidal wave sized wake hit us like paddle hits a fraternity pledge’s bare ass.  I was sitting in the front of the boat, holding my friend’s seven month old, and held on for dear life as a wall of water smashed through the boat, destroying everything in its path.  People in the back of the boat watched in disbelief as the wave crashed off the ceiling of the boat (!) and swept through, drenching everyone and everything on the boat.  Some say that a second wave hit us equally hard, but I was so focused on not shitting my pants that I really didn’t notice.

The aftermath resembled the chaos of D-Day, with all of us wandering around looking shell shocked and wondering what to do.  Daniel, the father of the infant I was clinging to, jumped up, and, with the vacant look of an infantryman looking for a missing limb on the ground, muttered that the boat was going down and we needed to get to the back of the boat.  The parents of the six kids on board scrambled to make sure that their loved ones were indeed still on on board.  Of course the seven year old with us jumped up and down and immediately asked if we could do it again.

Daniel and Suzi’s camera got doused, and every towel, diaper, and extra piece of clothing we had on board was sopping wet.  A couple of articles of clothing had washed out of the boat, and, after retrieving them, we cautiously made our way over to the side of the lake to swim.  In an unsuccessful effort to dry out our stuff, we transformed the boat into a shanty town by hanging all of the wet stuff from the top and sides of the pontoon.  The people who drove by didn’t see the disaster strike, and stared at the ridiculous collection of towels and clothing that hung all around us.  We had a relaxing time the rest of the day, although talk of the rogue wave was never far from our lips. 

At the end of the day, we ran into a flotilla of young people in boats basking in the sun, playing loud music, and generally acting hip.  We didn’t really have the heart to join them, as we knew down deep inside that we had almost been done in by a motorboat towing some kids.  We cautiously made our back to the dock and kissed the ground upon our return to dry land.  Back at the sweet pad, we smoked cigars, drank whiskey, and reenacted the whole event as often as we could. I hope we can do it again next time!