Daniel and "The Punch"

Now that Noah is getting ready to start daycare, I have been thinking he needs to be prepared to protect himself against bullies or if there aren't any bullies there, he may want to take that role up himself.  Every daycare needs a bully you know.  There are some roles parents are great at teaching, but I have to say I don't think Lisa or Karl are good role models for bullying, they are just too nice.  So while thinking about this subject my mind went back to little Daniel and how he used to protect himself or avenge wrongs to himself such as us turning off the cartoons, taking away his Calvin and Hobbs book when he got too sassy, or denying him his third baloney sandwich. In these and other cases of extreme mistreatment Daniel developed what I would call "The Punch".  The first part of "The Punch" is the indignant rage, and little Daniel had this down pat.  Red face, angry arguing, unwilling to listen to reason- this would all precede "The Punch" so everyone in the room had fair warning before it would happen and could wisely give in to whatever little Daniel wanted to avoid being hit with "The Punch".  Before I describe "The Punch" I need to make a disclaimer- I did not teach it to him, in fact I don't think any of us did, I think Daniel developed this offensive weapon by watching cartoons, probably Popeye with his classic "Windup Punch" gave him great inspiration and I would not discount an angry, out of control Woody Woodpecker from influencing him either.  So "The Punch" for those of you fortunate enough to not have endured it or who did and have blocked the trauma from your mind to survive- I will now explain what it is.  As already stated, first the outrage would build up in little Daniel to something akin to a little human volcano, then because he was such a fair fellow he would warn us we were about the receive severe punishment, this was our last chance to give in to the little guy and save ourselves,  I don't think we ever gave in, but there was always that option.  Next came "The Punch" which was quite dramatic in appearance, Daniel  would start backing away while getting his fist outstretched and ready to do great damage.  He would continue to back up to the furthest corner of the house, so if you were sitting on the living room couch he would probably back all the way up to the far corner of the bathroom.  Once there he would take off in a tear with his fist protruding out like a sled hammer mounted on the front of a speeding freight train.  When this train started down the tracks there was nothing you could do but just sit there and await your punishment.  You could hear the rumble of his feet before you could see the enraged avenger charging at you with protruding fist, red faced, and ready to knock you into the next decade.  Now in actuality the impact was not as great as Daniel's toddler mind imagined, perhaps we would feign hurt in order to keep him from repeating the process while trying to subdue a laugh.  At any rate "The Punch" made a great visual impression and probably to a fellow toddler would have been pretty impactful.  So my suggestion to Daniel and Lisa is that this Christmas during the time to celebrate peace on earth and good tidings to all men Daniel take some one on one time to try to teach Noah "The Punch" just in time for the Holidays.  Noah can practice it on Lisa and Karl for lots of  reasons this season- unwanted naps, healthy foods at dinner time, or lame Christmas presents.  That way he will be in fine form when the new year starts and he heads to daycare.  To make sure "The Punch" has all the impact it can I think Daniel needs to do a little weight training with Noah too, Noah is not heavy enough to pack a big punch yet.  I think Daniel could teach Noah how to open the frig and make sure it is stocked with plenty of baloney for between meal snacks just like Daniel used to have.  It's a beautiful thing when families come together and we learn from each other.

Mom bought me a clock

Years ago I went to visit my Mom and she told me she had bought me a grandfather clock at a yard sale.  I was excited because at that time I was a fan of grandfather clocks and wanted one. Then she told me it only cost her 10 dollars and my excitement level went down a notch or two.  I thought that either she got the deal of a lifetime or there was something lacking in this grandfather clock she bought me.  She told me it was in her mini van and was too heavy and awkward for her to get out so I could go get it out for myself.  When I saw the grandfather clock she got me I was more than disappointed.  Instead of a real clock made from  real cherry or walnut wood with a mechanical mechanism I found a cheap particle board and plastic cased clock with a battery operated clock mechanism.  The sight of that clock triggered my disgust of all the times she bought cheap imitations of something good and thought it was good when it really wasn't.  It also triggered my annoyance with her habit of shopping for things just to boost her mood and then trying to cram everything she owned into her living space and then frequently telling me how unhappy she was with all the clutter around her and how much she would love to have a more open uncluttered home.  Not to mention the fact that getting her to part with anything- junk or otherwise was almost impossible.  Right then and there I decided it was lesson time for Mom,  I was not about to take that cheap grandfather clock out of her van, that clock represented everything I did not like about my Mother and it could sit in her van and rot as far as I was concerned.  So I went back in the house and basically told her the clock was no good, I didn't want it, and I wasn't taking it.  She asked what she should do with it then and I basically told her I didn't care, it was her problem.  I went home annoyed but satisfied that I had finally showed her the error of her way, maybe this would be the turning point when she would stop buying all this junk and start getting rid of it- I could only hope.  A few days later we talked on the phone and she told me the clock was still in her van and she didn't know what to do with it.  I started to feel a little sorry for her so I said I would take it and put it in my garage.  So there it has sat these past 5 or so years just collecting dust and not keeping time because it didn't work when she bought it- did I tell you that yet?  That the stupid thing didn't even work?  As time has gone by (not that the clock could tell you) and Mom has passed away I realized this was a clock with a story and since I hadn't the heart to throw it out yet, perhaps I should fix it and make it at least useful.  This past week I brought it in the house, dusted it off and installed a new battery operated mechanism in it and then put it back out in the garage.  At least now it works.  That is the least this clock can do for me, but it does more- it is a reminder.  It reminds me of my Mom and her flawed ways and it reminds me of me and my flawed ways too, although it seems to me my flawed ways are not nearly as bad as her flawed ways.  Hmm, maybe that is flawed thinking too....  By the way, when Mom died we had a LOT of junk to get rid of, it appears my little lesson did not work.

Daniel tried to kill me

Why am I laying on the porch waiting for an ambulance with a tourniquet on my upper arm, a towel cinched with a belt around a hole in my forearm, surrounded by Daniel's football team, while one of them is praying for me?  You know it is bad when the football team is praying for you.  It all started innocently enough with a football team party in our back yard.  Daniel invited his team over and I and my two sisters put on a hot dog dinner for about 20 guys.  After the meal was done and the food put away one of the players broke out the ice cream bars which he had in a cooler with dry ice.  Eventually the natives became restless, they did a little boxing with Daniel's boxing gloves, went over to Mullaly field for a while then came back and Daniel needed to do something to make the event more memorable.  I was in the house laying down resting after cooking and feeding a bunch of hungry guys and Daniel called me on my cell phone.  He wanted to make a pop bottle bomb, but he didn't call it a bomb, he called it something else- later the state policeman called it a bomb, but I am getting ahead of myself.  The conversation went something like this- "Hey Dad, OK if we make a pop bottle rocket?"  "What's that Daniel?"  "We just take some dry ice, put it in a 2 liter bottle, add some water then throw it into the field and in a minute or two it explodes making a big noise"  "No Daniel, that does not sound safe"  " Oh come on Dad we have done it lots of times- it is safe"  " No, Mrs Bliss will call the police on us"  " No she won't Dad, come on Dad, Trevor and his Dad do these all the time"  " No Daniel it just doesn't sound like a good idea to me"  "Come on please, please Dad?  You can talk to Trevor he will tell you it is safe"  "Well....... OK I will talk to Trevor"  So I go outside and talk to Trevor, now I ask you, why would a grown man think a 16 year old kid could give him good advice on what is safe and what isn't?  Trevor tells me he and his Dad do this a lot and it is perfectly safe.  I decide to trust his judgment- but I will stay out there and supervise just to make sure it is safe.  The trouble is Trevor did not make the pop bottle bomb that day, Daniel made it and Daniel does not know how to make one.  So the first one he put together is a dud, it just sits out in the field and does nothing.  The second one is going to be much better though because he uses  a smaller pop bottle,  and more dry ice than the first one.  I hold the bottle while he puts all the mixture together, and sure enough this one looks good, it is steaming strong as soon as he adds the water.  Then Daniel screws the cap on, I step back while he starts to throw it.  But just as he throws it it explodes and the bottle tears apart and the cap shoots back behind him.  This all happens so quick that I only hear the explosion and I jump from surprise.  But then what is that burning feeling coming from my left forearm?  I look down at my arm and blood is pulsing out of my arm at about the same rate as a heartbeat.  This is not good and I tell someone to call 911.  Josh Glick takes somebody's cloth belt and puts a tourniquet on my upper arm.  Daniel not to be outdone, raps a towel around the gaping hole in my arm and cinches it down with a belt.  I hold my arm above my head to slow the bleeding and head for the porch to wait for the ambulance.  The 911 dispatcher tells Daniel to get the bleeding stopped and he tells them it is, then they tell the ambulance it is a non emergency run since the bleeding is stopped. While waiting on the porch a state policeman shows up and asks me why we are making bottle bombs.  I start to worry that maybe I will need to go to jail right from the emergency room.  But he lectures the guys on being safe and leaves.  He probably doesn't want my blood in the back seat of his car.  I waited on the porch for what seemed like a long time before the "non emergency run" ambulance arrived.  Once the EMT got there he took off the towel around my arm and pulled out the bottle cap that had made almost a perfect hole there.  He also seemed really puzzled that I wasn't bleeding very much.  Once we got in the ambulance and he started cutting off my favorite plaid shirt with scissors he was pretty shocked to see the tourniquet on my upper arm and asked why we hadn't told him about that.  I guess I just didn't think about it.  Once we got to ER about 6 people surrounded me, three on one side trying to figure out how to stop me from bleeding and three on the other side trying to get a blood sample.  I told them they should just switch sides but they didn't.  Turns out I had a ruptured artery in my forearm and it took a couple tries in surgery to get it patched back up.  They stripped a vein near my wrist and used that to put the artery back together again.  The surgery nurse told me a couple weeks later (when she called to see if I wanted to go out on a date of all things- what did I say to her under anesthesia I wonder?) that the first attempt to put it together failed and it came apart when they took the clamps off it.  I ended up in ICU so they could hook me up to monitors and make sure it stayed together and healed OK for a few days.  They also did some skin stretching over the hole so you couldn't see the artery move every time my heart beat.  Later Daniel apologized, I forgave him, he said he needed to be more careful, I said I needed to be better at saying no to him.  All was well.  I got a month off work and my arm is a good as ever.  (By the way I did not go out on the date.)

Lisa goes Catholic

So how does a Baptist girl end up at a Catholic college?  Good question, but like they say if you follow the money you will usually get to the bottom of most things.  For whatever reason Lisa got a full scholarship for Aquinas College in Grand Rapids.  Even though it was a Catholic school the price sounded good to me and she wanted to go there so that was how she ended up at a Catholic college. I also liked the fact that she would be pretty close to home so we could still see her on weekends.   I don't think they were all that religious there anyway so it didn't make a big difference it seemed.  Lisa spent her first two years of at Aquinas and met one of her best friends there- Kara.  But by the time she was a junior she realized Aquinas did not offer what she needed and switched to Western Michigan to get her Music Therapy degree.  It probably was a good thing she got out of Aquinas because she told me later that the head of the college who was new to that position gave too many scholarships away and had to be removed from his position.  Too bad he didn't move over to Western it might have been a better deal for Lisa.  But all in all she got an education much cheaper than at a place like Wheaton and made some good friends to boot.

Daniel and the chainsaw video

So why was a scented candle burning in the kitchen when I got home from work?  Daniel who was studiously practicing piano was home from school when I walked in the door and to my inquiry about the candle just said that it made the house smell better.  Didn't I agree?  Well yes it did make the house smell better but since when did Daniel care about making the house smell better?  He was the human living opposite of a scented candle.  I was instantly suspicious so I started firing questions at him.  Eventually he broke and told the truth.  Seems he had some buddies over and they were making videos on the Mac in the kitchen when Daniel decided that a running chainsaw was just the thing for the video.  It's a wonder he didn't accidentally cut some one's arm off.  Once they all left Daniel realized the smell of the chainsaw running was in the kitchen so thus the scented candle "just to make the house smell better".  I never did see the video, it was probably rated for a more mature audience than me.

Lisa and the disappointing marching band

Why were Ben, Daniel, and I at a motel in Indianapolis waiting for a marching band event that was not going to happen?  Well it all started when Lisa joined the highly acclaimed and successful Reeths-Puffer marching band.  I found out quickly that this was one winning band.  Mr. Hodson had a firm grip on those kids and they worked their butts off for the marching band every year.  This particular year was no exception and good old R-P won top state honors in their division again.  I was very impressed.  I had previously joined the old man's club sitting around lamenting the general lack of discipline, poor work ethic, and low moral character of today's youth when Mr. Hodson and the marching band blew those assumptions out of the water.  After the regular marching band competitions in Michigan the band was headed to Indianapolis to compete at a national level.  I decided Daniel and I would go down and watch and invited Ben along too.  We drove down and got a motel room in plenty of time for the second round of competition but we didn't have much information and this was early cell phone days so we were having some trouble getting information from Lisa as to when and where the next competition would be.  Finally we got through from the motel room phone to some one's cell phone who was near Lisa and found out they did not score enough points to go on to the next level of competition.  I never expected that, I thought the band was almost guaranteed to win every time they stepped out on the field.  Little did I know that the rest of the country had good bands too.  So we took stock of our situation, decided to drive over to Terre Haute where Ben and I could see the old town where we used to live and then head home, oh course Daniel came along to see how many fast food joints he could get me to stop at since he was not a natural born Hoosier.  It was another lesson in don't count your chickens before they hatch.

David in slow mow

Why was I yelling at David telling him to get his butt over to Mrs. Shoup's and and not come  back until her lawn was mowed?  It was an exasperating time with David working for Mrs. Shoup that summer.  I knew he didn't like mowing her lawn, I knew she was kind of hard to work for, and David had told me how difficult it was to mow around all the trees in her orchard and other obstacles in her yard.  But I was getting really tired of finding him on the old computer in the basement working on one of his video game programs and learning that he was just taking a break from mowing and still had more to go.  I figured he just needed to stick with it and get it done.  It was taking him a couple hours or more to get the lawn mowed with all those breaks he was taking.  I figured Mrs. Shoup was good training for whatever future boss he might run into, in the real world bosses are not always easy to work for.  So that day after finding him home a couple times taking breaks from the lawn mowing job I just lost my temper and scolded him and sent him back over to get it done.  After that I don't remember it being such a problem.  David finished out the summer mowing her lawn without further incident between us.  Although he did seem a little sulky about it.  The next summer David moved on to some other work and Lisa took over the mowing job at Mrs. Shoup's.  She was younger than David and I was a little worried it would be too much for her especially since David had to work at it so hard the year before.  The time came for Lisa to mow and I wondered how it would go, but before I knew it she was home.  I figured she had learned from David and came home for a break before going back and finishing the lawn.  But no, she said she was done.  I'm was a little puzzled, "didn't you mow the whole lawn?"  "Yes, the whole lawn" she said.  It had only been about an hour or less, I couldn't believe it.  And that was how it went every time she mowed, she just went over to Mrs. Shoup's and mowed and got done quick and came home, no breaks, no stalling.  I figured after that David must have hated mowing so much that he just could hardly force himself to do it.  Especially when that old computer in the basement still had a half finished computer game to program.  Now I can say I am glad he is a professional computer programmer rather than a professional lawn mower so I guess it all worked out good in the end.

Ben gets Joe Guiverra mad at me

Ben had lots of friends at Terre Haute Baptist School.   Why did he come home one day with a nasty scar on his head?   He was in a class with lots of competitive boys and he was right in there in the thick of it.  They battled it out in the classroom in academics and on the playground in soccer.  All was going well in the raising of First Born Super Child- destined for greatness of course, anyone could see it, right?  But that day when he came home from school with a scar on his head I first was puzzled then alarmed once he told me how it got there.  He said Andy Guiverra put the scar on his head,  I asked how it happened and Ben said Andy was slamming his head against the cement wall in the boys locker room.  According to Ben, Andy was doing this for no apparent reason.  Suddenly alarm bells went off in my head.  How was my First Born Super Child going to reach greatness if his head was being slammed into cement for Andy's entertainment?  How could this happen when Andy was much smaller than Ben?  Had I over taught the "turn the other check message"?  Where was the fight in this kid?  Maybe we should have let him play with toy guns like the other boys did.  Lots of thoughts raced through my head at that moment and I could tell this was one of those defining times in life when an important speech was called for by the main character  (I had seen this plenty of times in the movies).  So I sat Ben down and I told him his head was a very important part of his body because his brain was in there and you can't do anything without a brain.  I told him you don't let some kid slam your head into a cement wall and just helplessly let it happen, you fight back with all your strength.  In fact I told him if someone is hurting you bad you do whatever it takes to get them off you, even if it means kicking the kid in the privates to get him to stop, you do whatever it takes.  So I make sure Ben knows and understands what I am telling him, he assures me he understands.  I went to bed that night feeling I had added one more block to the building of a man even though he may only be in the first grade now, this is a life lesson for sure.  The next day Ben goes to school, finds Andy Guiverra and kicks him in the privates and tells him I told him to do it.  Andy goes home that night and tells his folks what Ben did and that I told him to do it.  Andy's dad Joe Guiverra is a hot head and a former Marine,  I'm not afraid of him but he does have a loud bark, plus he is my barber and I don't like knowing that he uses a razor on my neck to trim up after a haircut.  What if he just can't resist a little slip of the razor next time I go in for a haircut?  I call Joe, try to explain if from my viewpoint, he doesn't seem too mad so we consider it settled, but it is one of those things were you never feel the same about each other.  Then I have an exasperated talk with Ben, I did not instruct you to kick Andy like that, it was only if you were in trouble I told him.  Ben seems to understand but then I thought he understood the little talk the night before too.  This raising of a great person was not going as well as I thought it would, maybe I needed to lower my expectations from future US President to future US Senator or something.

Steve calls my bluff

Why was I walking into Terre Haute  Regional Hospital with Steve just waiting for him to tell me he really wasn't hurt?  It all started with some kind of ruckus most likely between he and Ben when Steve got a minor injury and was crying about it.  After the obligatory cry to prove Ben's guilt I was ready for some peace in the house and told Steve it was time to stop crying.  He wouldn't stop, he obviously did not look hurt to me but also had not finished crying- perhaps he was looking for just a bit more sympathy but I was not giving it.  So I hatched a plan, I told him if he was hurt that bad I would have to take him to the hospital.  This was sure to shut him up I thought.  But Steve agreed he needed to go to the hospital.  So what does a parent do who has over played his hand?  He keeps on over playing his hand.  So I put him in the car and said we are going to the hospital.  I looked at him to see if he was going to admit he wasn't hurt that bad- he's not saying anything.  So we start down the road toward the hospital, by now he is not crying and looking like he is enjoying the ride.  The hospital is not that far away and in just minutes we are in the parking lot- I am watching him to see if he is going to cave once he sees the big hospital building, he says nothing.  I figure he needs to be shocked into believing he is really going in there so I park and we get out of the car- I look at him, he says nothing.  "Alright Mister Cool Cat," I think,  "I will take you inside and watch you squirm".  We go inside, Steve isn't squirming, he seems genuinely interested in going into the place.  Now it's obvious to me "I know what you are thinking Mister Steve, you think I'm bluffing don't you?"  So I decide we need to get on the elevator and head to the third floor.  This will get him, doesn't he know a hospital is the place where germs abound, where gangrene legs get sawed off, and where tonsils are carved out of little kid's throats?  Any moment now and fear will grip him like a bear hug and he will tell me he is OK and beg me to take him home.  The elevator door opens to the third floor, I have no idea what is on the third floor,  I look down at Steve and he seems to be enjoying the elevator ride.  The game is up, I played my last card and it was a dud, I say to Steve "Let's go home"  he looks at me and says "OK".  We both save face, he doesn't admit he is not hurt, I don't admit the hospital run was a fraud, but somehow I felt a 6 or 7 year old got the best of me that day.

Janell and the (almost) broken back

Why was Janell being carried out of the woods behind the block house on a stretcher while we all looked on worriedly?  Well, it started with a new sled, probably given as a Christmas gift (not sure about that but it is a good guess).  Then one snow covered, sunny day we decided to head to the block house to look for a good sliding hill.  All the other kids brought along whatever old sled they happen to have, but Janell brought her brand new, shiny- and soon to be revealed slippery sled.  This baby must have been waxed up good at the factory to give the maximum sledding experience.   Once we found a great spot to slide in the woods behind the block house I noticed that someone had made a small jump out of snow at the bottom of the hill, it looked innocent enough to me.  We had the hill to ourselves and the first couple of sledders came down just fine- the jump was not a problem because they stopped before reaching it.  However Janell was a different story, on her first ride on the new sled she took off like a jet down the hill and by the time she reached the bottom she was really flying.  A great first ride except for one issue, she was heading straight for the jump and still going strong.  I saw her hit the jump and go airborne immediately, she screamed as she and the sled parted company.  I didn't measure the distance she traveled in the air but is seems to me like it was about 20 feet before she landed hard on her back.  I figured she would have the breath knocked out of her but did not expect her to be in so much back pain.  She just laid there moaning and crying about how bad her back hurt.  We decided she needed to be carried out and that we couldn't do it, so one of us ran back to the car and got to a phone to call for an ambulance.  Once the ambulance crew got there they had to trudge through the woods with their stretcher to get her out.  They very carefully strapped her down to the stretcher and carried her out to the road where the waiting ambulance was.  In the hospital we found she had a "cracked" back not a "broken" back and it would just take time to heal.  In time it healed, we avoided sledding for a while and her sled eventually got roughed up so it wasn't so fast anymore and all was well in Winter Wonderland again.

Daniel and the burning shed

Daniel and the burning shed- kind of has a biblical ring to it doesn't it?  Sort of like a cross between Daniel and the Lion's Den and Moses and the Burning Bush.  This story may have had a biblical origin because one Sunday after Church Daniel decided to burn something in the shed wood stove that he didn't want around anymore.  Which was fine, except I had been putting oily rags in the stove all summer knowing that the first burn of the winter in that stove would be a hot one.  And it didn't help that Daniel thought he needed to add a little lamp oil to the mix to make it burn better.  Neither did it help that I had a cardboard box of stuff sitting on the stove of which Daniel thought no consequence.  So with the match lit and the stove burning Daniel came into the house just in time for lunch.  During lunch David said "Whoa, there's smoke coming out of the shed"  to which Daniel replied "That's just from something I was burning in the wood stove"  to which David said "NO THERE IS A LOT OF SMOKE COMING OUT OF THE SHED!"  At this point I decided to take a look out the window and David was right, there was a tremendous amount of black smoke billowing out of the open shed door.  I raced out and saw that the inside of the shed roof was just dancing with fire.  I told someone to call 911 and I stretched out the garden hose to the shed.  Of course the hose was just barely long enough to reach the shed door but I stood back a little and sprayed away hoping to douse the fire.  However, the water seemed to evaporate before it could hit the flames, the shed was burning hotter and hotter and the water from the little garden hose had no affect on it.  The fire department got there quickly with a tanker truck and soon was drenching the inside of the shed with about 500 gallons of water.  The fire in the shed took notice of the fireman's hose, unlike my garden hose and instead of just burning hotter as when I sprayed it, it gave up and went out with barely a whimper.  All that was left now was the lecture from the firemen about fire safety and of course they had to find the illegal fireworks in the shed and I got a tongue lashing over that too, all the while remembering that they were the ones Daniel talked me into buying when we passed though Indiana a year or two ago.  My attitude toward Daniel was on the decline at that point, but my insurance company must have know he needed some help and gave me more money for that shed and it's contents than I ever dreamed possible.  Soon Uncle Bob was helping me build a garage with the payoff for the burned shed and Daniel's stock began to rise again.  In fact I think he looks at the garage rather proudly now knowing he had a hand in it and wouldn't mind a pat on the back from me for it.  Not sure I am quite that forgiving yet.

Lisa was mom at age 16

Didn't know Lisa was a mom at age 16?  Her baby might have been 10 years old, but regardless she was a mom.  This story might be painful to write, but I can't come up with another one so it must be the one I need to write.  This was a bewildering time for me and I am sure it was as bad or worse for Lisa and Daniel.  We found ourselves suddenly alone in the world and I for one was scared to death about how to run a house, work a full time job, and care for 2 kids all at the same time.  My biggest concern was Daniel, the 10 year old baby.  How was I going to get him where he needed to go when I was at work?  Who would supervise his shenanigans?  Who would keep him fed?  As it turned out Lisa became a second mom for him.  She could drive and carted him around as needed, she kept her thumb on him to keep him from straying too far from normalcy, and she kept him fed.  In fact she pretty much helped run the household.  She even called 911 and went with him to the hospital when he chopped his fingers in the snow blower.  (I was at work- not just busy watching TV)  Lisa even learned to play the song No Blue Thing and would play it while I laid on the couch and imagined a life that wasn't sad anymore.  For all of this I feel really bad.  Here was a 16 year old kid who normally would be busy planning subterfuge to keep her parents off track of what she was really up to and  instead she had been drafted into the ranks of parenthood herself.  I feel any day now I will receive the summons to appear in a counseling courtroom to be condemned as a failed parent and Lisa will demand restitution.  My only hope is that my free babysitting of Noah will make her think twice before getting too heavy handed with me.  I think it is the only card I have to play in this situation and I plan to use it as needed.  As for Daniel, well, she could be bitter about him too, but I think that just the knowledge that she helped turn a kid with a skull full of mush into a scholar working on his Dr. degree must make her feel all the trouble was worth it.  Kind of how most parents feel about their kids in the end.

David and the Frankenstein go cart

Why in the world would David buy a little trailer to be pulled behind a lawn tractor from a yard sale?  It was a homemade thing with a wooden deck over the frame of an old riding mower.  We didn't have a riding mower to pull it with, all we had were some old hand-me-down push mowers that I barely kept running.  Soon I found out this was the start of a go cart project David wanted me to help him build.   Once we tore the deck off, we found it had four wheels, a frame, and the front wheels could be steered- sort of.  A rather sparse set of parts to begin a go cart with but David was excited and I was dragged into the project with reservations that this may never work.  First we found the frame too short to comfortably fit anyone but a small child so we hack sawed it in two and added some angle iron pieces to stretch it out a bit.  A small steering wheel from the junk yard and some welding from Grandpa Schotts got the front wheels to steer adequately.  An engine from an old snow blower was somehow mounted on the back end of the frame perched rather high above the rear wheels.  A small plastic chair was attached just ahead of the engine and a brake pedal and throttle pedal were rigged up out of scrap parts.  It seemed we had the makings of a go cart.  We had left the v-belt drive unit that connected the engine to the snow blower auger, and connected it as best we could to the rear wheels.  The good thing was the engine ran great, the bad thing is the v-belt system worked terrible.  The pulley size from the engine to the wheels was all wrong and every time David tried to make it go it would only make the belt squeal and smoke.  For some strange reason lost to me now it was decided Sandy should try to test drive it instead of David.  I remember it did move somewhat and when she got near the grape vines behind Cam's house she turned the wheel and proceeded to slide off the little seat right onto the ground.  I heard about a sore butt for it seemed years after that incident.  A seat belt was the next item added to the go cart.  Eventually we decided that the go cart was a failure and it just sat behind the small shed.  It had taken so long to build that David got a drivers license during the process and he could then drive a car so what was the use in a go cart?  Then when I found out the reason David wanted the go cart was so he could drive it around while pulling one of my old push mowers and thus mow the lawn without all the work of pushing the mower I didn't feel too bad not feeding into his laziness by finishing the go cart.  And so the go cart sat there and did nothing but attract young Daniel's attention.  He kept telling me we needed to get the go cart working and I kept telling him he was right,  knowing that I had no plans to get it working.   One day after much prompting from Daniel,  I decided I would do a nice thing for the go cart and bought a $30 centrifugal clutch for it to replace the non working v-belt system.  Got it all installed and guess what?  That previously good running snow blower engine would not stay running no matter how many times I cleaned out the carburetor.  So it got pushed back out of the way and I would pass by it occasionally and grumble about wasting $30 on it.  But Daniel kept after me about it and one day when I had too much to do to think about a stupid go cart I told him I would work on it one more time for 2 hours max and if it didn't run I would not work on ever it again.  I was sure it would not run while I cleaned that carburetor the next Saturday morning and was thinking about all the other stuff I needed to get done as soon as the two hours I promised Daniel was up and I could shove this go cart out of the way, hopefully for good.  To my amazement the engine started right up and ran fine.  The centrifugal clutch worked fine.  The go cart actually worked.  But now I stood back in fear of this Frankenstein, it was about the most dangerous thing on wheels you ever saw.  The frame was too narrow  and the engine mounted too high for a good center of gravity, if you turned the wheel too sharp the whole go cart would tip up on two wheels and almost roll over.   And of course there was no roll cage.   The engine was too big and it made the cart go too fast.  There were no guards for the moving clutch and chain and all those mechanisms were just a few inches behind the driver head while sitting in the little plastic seat.  But we made that go cart ourselves out of spare junk, and it was a blast to drive.  To my surprise the go cart interested David again for the first time in years.  He liked it so much he even invited a couple friends over and they all took turns driving it around.  We had it around here for a few years, it would run, it would break down, I would fix it, it would run again, it would break down, I would fix it... over and over.  Eventually the novelty wore off, everyone who wanted to ride it got to ride it and it started to get neglected.  Then one day I needed to borrow the carburetor for a lawn mower engine.  I was going to just borrow it for a while then put it back on.  Something happened, I lost some of the parts, no one complained and so again it sat behind the small shed.  David went off to college, Daniel started driving a car and one day in a fit of neatness I decided to take all my engines and junk to Todd Hinkle the neighbor who had a whole yard full of this stuff.  The go cart went away that day with all the other junk.  Not sure what happened to it from there, maybe it was put on display as the worst go cart ever made.  Probably not, that would have given it too much fame, it probably got turned into scrap metal and came back as a metal toilet seat in a state park outhouse.

Janell and the mysterious ring

Where is that ringing sound coming from?  I couldn't figure out what I was hearing when the phone in the kitchen rang.  It sounded like another phone was ringing too, but that just couldn't be.  This happened in the good old days of the home phone, when cell phones were as big as a typewriter and cost more than the average person could afford.  It seems I heard the ring a couple other times but it was intermittent, so in the busyness of life I forgot about it.  Then one evening while sitting in the living room with Sandy, the kitchen phone rang with that extra ringing sound coming from somewhere and all of a sudden there was a "clunk" sound from the floor above- it was Janell's room.  We looked at each other and instantly knew something was going on with a mystery telephone and it had something to do with Janell.  I don't remember if the mystery phone was brought up to Janell and she admitted it or if Super Sleuth Mom did a room search the next day while Janell was at school.  But either way we found the phone.  It was unplugged and hiding in Janell's room, she must have been grabbing for it the night before to shut the ring up when it slipped and clunked on the floor.  Janell by some lucky chance had the only private kid's room in the house at that time, and it even had a working phone jack in it.   It also seems Janell had a boy friend or something like that- it is always hard to tell what really is going on when there is a lot of denying going on too.  And apparently they liked to talk on the phone.  This was against the rules in the oh-so-strict Barnhart household, so the phone was confiscated, Janell was lectured, and I even took a wire loose in the phone jack that was in her room so a phone would not work on that jack any more.  It would be many years before teenage kids had cell phones to make all the calls and texts they want and no amount of removing wires from jacks would prevent that.  Today I hear there are parental control programs to keep control over the calls and text messages, back then parental controls was more hands on with just plain old detective work.  Either way is was and still is the parent trying to keep the brakes on an eager teen who wants to join the adult world a little too early for the parent's liking,  If only Janell had a cell phone back then she might have gotten away with it.

Steve and the overweight bridge

So what was Steve doing nervously cutting way at a balsam bridge?  And why were those parents standing around looking nervous too?  Well to answer those questions you have to go all the way back to Steve's enrollment at Duck Creek elementary.  He was there because the Reeth's-Puffer Elementary building near us was too full to take him and since we had just moved to Muskegon MI from Terre Haute IN as a new student he got sent to Duck Creek.  Now Duck Creek was not a bad place to be, it was smaller and friendlier it seemed.  In fact the principal was very friendly and struck up a conversation with Sandy about the Odyssey of the Mind program which she thought was just the thing for Steve.  Of course there is always a catch to these things and in this case they needed a team leader for his group.  Somehow I got volunteered to be a team leader.  So what do you do when your spouse volunteers you for a school project that you know nothing about?  You volunteer for the project.  Soon I was reading the instructions for being an Odyssey of the Mind coach and it didn't make a lot of sense to me.  The kids had to come up with the ideas and carry out all the work for the project, the coach was there to help facilitate the process without telling them what to do.  I would liken it to teaching a group of kids how to drive a car but you as the instructor have to sit in the back seat and can only give hints about how to drive a car.  You tell the kids in the front seat things like- "You might find that a key will start the engine which is necessary to make the car move"  "Turning the steering wheel makes the car move from side to side on the road"  "Pushing on the gas pedal with the car in a forward gear makes it move forward"  "Stepping on the brake pedal slows the car down"  All the while realizing that the kids in the front seat don't know a brake pedal from a gas pedal and think that operating the radio while driving has a greater priority than steering the car.  So we spent our time playing word games that were supposed to build up the kids mental abilities then they could attack the problem they were required to solve, which was to build a wooden bridge under a certain weight that would span a certain distance and hold the maximum weight all while the group is engaged in some type of creative activity of their choice.  Time went on as we played word games and talked about ways to make strong bridges and they had no idea what to do for the creative activity.  One night I was absent from the group and one of the other group leaders took my place.  He was a teacher at the school and had two kids in my group.  He must have seen our desperate situation and somehow that night they came up with a creative activity to go along with the bridge being tested for strength.  They decided to put on a game show and with each wrong answer more weight would be put on the bridge.  Finally we had a goal to work towards and kids came up with costumes, props were built, and a script was written.  We even had a buzzer which I brought from home hoping it wasn't against the rules.  We got everything ready and went to the regional competition.  To our amazement the skit went well, there was suspense, the audience got into the game, and the bridge held quite a lot of weight with each wrong answer.  We ended up placing and going to State for the next level of competition.  Now we were really under pressure to perform, the next level would be much harder because the competition would be better.  By this point Steve had become the lone bridge builder and the rest of the kids were just part of the show.  We all knew the new bridge (the original one broke once it was overloaded) would have to be stronger.  So Steve used thicker wood and more supports to make it hold more weight all while keeping it under the required weight- or so we thought.  Somehow we did not have an accurate scale and when the bridge showed up at state competition it was over weight.  The only thing Steve could do was start shaving off wood and removing supports to make it light enough for the program.  We all watched nervously as Steve  peeled away piece after piece of his creation to make the bridge lighter.  Once the bridge passed the weight test we were free to put on the program.  Everyone got ready for the suspense as the game show started up- the first wrong question came and the first weight was put on the now legal bridge.  But the first weight was too much for the bridge and it was crushed immediately.  Too much cutting away at the bridge made it weak and now the show was over.  The kids just stood there not knowing how to end a skit that had only just started.  In a few seconds we all realized the skit was over, there was no reason to ask any more quiz questions because the bridge had collapsed on the first question so we were done.  So much for state competition.  So much for fame and placing Duck Creek Elementary on the kid genius map.  I breathed a sigh of relief, tried to hide my embarrassment and privately vowed to never volunteer for another program like this again.  Now as for Steve, apparently it did not dim his spirits too much because he went on to become a Mechanical Engineer, and who knows?  he may be designing the next light weight balsam bridge for an Upper Peninsula river at this moment.

Ben and the bad speedometer

So how did we find ourselves in what seemed like a sleazy lawyer's office being told if we pay him a couple hundred dollars he will talk to the judge over lunch and get Ben's latest speeding ticket fixed?  This is not what I envisioned as the start to Ben's adulthood way back when I held my first born in my arms and dreamed of him being a famous or successful person some day.  It happened because of a bad speedometer and Ben's lead foot.  You see, Ben was a very confident new driver, and why not?  He was at the age when confidence just oozes out of a teenager, and driving a Vette didn't hurt either.  Of course it was a Chevette not a Corvette- big difference in case you know nothing about cars.  The car was the first in a line of cars sold to our teenage kids from Uncle Pat and it had to be towed here from the other side of the state because it wouldn't run.  I think it cost around $350, was blue with a white hood and was Chevy's answer to the Yugo (possibly the worst car on the planet). Somehow we found out what was wrong with the car and Ben was off to the races.  Well, not literally, but he did drive fast.  He told us that he was told that police do not pull you over for speeding unless you are going at least 7 MPH faster than the speed limit, and being the bright young man that he was he just added 7 MPH to any posted speed limit sign and he was on his way.  Adding to this situation was a high school girlfriend who seemed to keep Ben's attention until the latest possible second before he had to leave her house and drive across town to meet his 12:00 AM curfew.  So you take a teenage kid in a heap of a little car racing though the streets just before midnight, what more could a cop ask for?  They must have taken turns pulling him over- I can hear them on the radio talking to each other, "He's heading your way Mac, I got him last night, you can pull him over tonight, blue Chevette with a white hood, man did he try to weasel out of a ticket last night, he will really be desperate tonight!  Ha Ha Ha!"  So after the third ticket, the visit to the lawyers office to fix it, and the new high risk insurance policy for Ben and his "Vette" I decided something had to be done about this situation.  Clearly fatherly lectures were not cutting it, so I decided to put the car through a speed test and guess what?  The speedometer was 5 MPH slow!  So now the light began to shine on this problem clearly- we have a teenage driver in a bomb of a car driving at least 12 MPH over the speed limit late at night, it's a wonder he ever made it home at night instead of going directly to jail.  Problem solved.  To my knowledge that was the last speeding ticket for Ben, even his juiced up teenage brain was able to comprehend the situation and realize he needed to slow down.  So things settled down after that, eventually the Vette was replaced with a more respectable Audi 5000, the girlfriend moved on to other boys, and Ben became that famous, successful son that I always knew he was destined to be.