Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
God is a pretty clever being.
The older I get the more apparent this becomes. Seems there is a good reason for everything.
Ever notice how the older you get, the more you like to sleep? Really old people are always napping. I think they are just preparing for the final, big sleep at the end.
When my wife got pregnant, I wondered why it took nine months before we had a kid. That's easy. It took that long for us to get out of the carefree, fun-filled, do-whatever-we-want-anytime-we-want mode of existence we were in before kids.
Later, when the kids were little, I started to think of the empty nest syndrome. How could God give me the gift of these wonderful, loving little beings and then rip them away from me some 18 or 20 or 22 years later?
Now that my kids are teens, the brilliance of that empty nest plan is becoming clear to me.
I have come to some disheartening conclusions. There's currently not enough time to do everything that I want to do. By the time I have the time, it will be too late or I will be too old to care.
Right now, I spend an inordinate amount of time in my car driving young people around. My only real connection to the outside world (and my wife) after business hours is my cell phone.
They say cell phones are distracting to drivers. That's a joke. Try cramming four 13-year-old girls in your car on the way to the movies. "You know I, like, like Johnny, like, a lot, but like, I don't know if he, like, likes me, like, ya know?" This query by one of the girls is answered simultaneously by all three of her cohorts creating a kind of vocal cacophony that only a 13-year-old could understand.
I strain to figure out what, exactly, they are talking about. I can't seem to figure it out. Maybe it was ... I think they were ... The cell phone rings. I pick up. "Hi, honey, how's it going?" the voice on the other end asks.
Ahhh, I regain my composure and can once again focus on the road. Don't tell me cell phones are dangerous in cars. Mine just saved my life.
My son - who now greets me with the salutation "Waz up dawg?" - has a learner's permit and is taking drivers education. This is simultaneously good and bad. Good because he soon will be driving and will eliminate some of the running I do.
Bad because my insurance agent will finally be able to afford that Porsche 911 he's always wanted.
Also bad because driving is power.
When I drive them around I hold it over them and make them feel guilty. I sit in the driver's seat and complain about all the driving I have to do.
Now my son does the driving. When it's time for me to drive, everyone has already been dropped off and the car is empty. When the kids are in the car, I'm relegated to the position of ride-along-guy and I don't like it. I can't complain as effectively from that position. The kid says, "Chill, paps, I'm doin' all the drivin'."
When I do sneak away from it all for a quick nine holes, not only do I feel guilty, I always get caught. That same cell phone that saves my life in the car catches up to me on the golf course.
Inevitably, a chirping sound emanates from the padded pocket of my golf bag before the end of the round.
"Daaaaaaaad. Where are you?"
I used to be honest. "On seven green, why?" But then I came to realize that most of the time they were calling me because I was supposed to be somewhere else. I learned to pre-empt the scolding I would receive from my daughter by answering this way.
"Oh, hi, Pooky. I love you. Where am I supposed to be right now?"
Then when she says I'm late for picking her up after cheer practice I can say, "Oh, yeah, I knew that. I'm on my way. Be right there. Traffic's pretty bad. See ya."
Then I pack it up and make a mad dash. Her cheer coaches have labeled me as the late dad and this, of course, thoroughly embarrasses the poor child.
I look around at all our friends - many of whom also are parents of teens. They all seem relaxed and cool about things. So I asked my wife, "Did we miss some class they offered about raising teens?'" She's the one that keeps everything organized and on schedule around our house, so I figured she would know.
She assured me that we hadn't missed anything. "But they all look like they're so much more together than us."
She just smiled and said that everybody is stressed out and that we're just good at masking it. Everybody thinks we're handling it better than they are, she assured me. When we meet these people we're all happy and chatty and we joke around. That's because we are so happy to see and interact with another adult that we don't show our misery.
That's it. I'm not trying to fool anybody anymore. I want them to know how miserable I am.
I noticed that in the midst of all the craziness, my wife has this one little moment to herself. Each night at 9 p.m. she plops down in her favorite chair and watches "Seinfeld" reruns.
Actually, that's pretty helpful, because no matter what happens, I always know if I really need to talk to her I can find her there, in that chair, at 9 p.m.
The kids asked me why mom watches "Seinfeld" every night. I speculated, at first, that she liked Jerry Seinfeld. Later I figured out that it's not Jerry. It's Kramer. She envies his carefree lifestyle. She watches him and it gives her hope that there are people out there in the world still doing wild, crazy, fun, unplanned things with no obligations.
So when the kids are gone, I have decided that I am going to whisk my wife away to New York City and we are going to sit in some little coffee shop and talk about nothing for hours.
Either that, or I'll whisk her off to our front porch and catch up on what we've been up to for the past six or seven years.
