I’m telling my friends at work I’m coming down with a Canadian Cold. Knowing my travel habits (I have none), this invites a simple request: “explain yourself kind sir.”

As you may know, we spent the weekend at the modern melting pot known as Disney World. We were camping at Fort Wilderness – something like a Fisher-Price “My First Camping Trip.” We capped off the experience with a horse drawn wagon ride with thirty of our closest friends.

The wagon was packed like it was the last of only two rides for the day. (Funny thing, that.) Late arrivals were divided up based on available space, so Adam and Beth were sitting next to a young Canadian girl, whose mother was on the other side of the wagon.

This young Canadian girl, from the lands between Toronto and Ottawa, was picking on Adam!

I know! Our sweet, innocent Adam!

O.K., he wasn’t quite so innocent, but the young lass was clearly in the wrong. Way, WAY in the wrong. Canada Girl was running a fever and expelling germ ridden sputum like a rotating sprinkler head. It was so wrong. It was so disgusting.

It was SO not cool!

You may be asking me (futilely, from miles away in front of your computer screen) what about Canada Momma? I say to you, AMEN brothers and sisters! Who brings their kid on a packed wagon ride at Disney World when he or she is running a fever and sputum factory?

That’s SO not cool!

I understand crossing the continent for a moment with the mouse is pretty exciting, especially if it was planned months in advance. But it’s time to employ a little Vulcan logic here.

Say it together with me (imagine Spock dying in front of the captain, while good ‘ole James T is cursing Khan):

“The needs of the many out-weigh the needs of the few – or the one.”

Where are you Spock? You’re our only hope! Please don’t take it out on everyone else if I’ve misquoted you.

Given the nature of the typical Disney visitor, you could start a pandemic. Visitors come from around the world – and ultimately return to their homes across the globe. In fact, if I were a paranoid person,

Who are you kidding?

I thought I told you to stay in your box.

I might think this was a Canadian Terrorist plot to give the world a cold. Think about it, just passing the kid in a crowd would be like walking through those mist machines at Disney to keep people cool. Only in this case, it would be a cloud of germs, with the intent to keep people cold with feverish chills.

But what would Canada possibly stand to gain from the world catching a cold? How about WORLD DOMINATION of the O.T.C. cold medicine market? Do you have any idea how many cold medicines are made in Canada? Neither do I, so I let my Google do the looking. Have you ever heard of Buckley’s? Neither did I, but Wikipedia says it’s “…a cough syrup invented in 1919 in Sydney, Nova Scotia…. Noted for its strongly unpleasant taste….”

1919?!?

Strongly unpleasant taste?!?

Sounds like ‘ole Buckley could use all the help he can get, eh?

For some, this is obvious. For others suffering denial, this is a sign of a severe character flaw. For a blessed few who’s beatification awaits them at their death, who’s names will be remembered in song and psalm for all time, this is an inconceivable truth.

God did us this one favor – he made these people rare. This is not to say parenting is without its rewards. If it was, Homo sapiens sapiens would have died out long ago (no mater how much fun getting there was/is).

This little post is for all of you out there who live in the real world.

Fortunately, there are times that force the hard parts to the rest of life’s background noise, and this weekend was filled with those times.

We took the kids on their first camping trip this weekend. On Friday I worked half a day, Cheryl picked up the kids early from school, and we drove to Orlando for a weekend of camping, Disney style.

Admittedly, Disney, realism, and roughing-it don’t really belong in the same post. But this weekend did involve tents, sleeping outside, camp-side cooking, and relaxed standards of personal hygiene.

Being Disney, it also involved buses, pools, water-slides, campfires with Disney characters and shops stocked with grossly overpriced marshmallows.

We brought our own marshmallows.

While the kids enjoyed the Disney aspects of camping, they also enjoyed its traditional appeal: running around dark campsites with friends exhibiting all the signs of a marshmallow sugar high, setting foods dense in simple sugars on fire, and eating lots of grilled meat.

It warmed my heart just seeing them having fun, soaking up all the new experiences and never growing saturated.

One simple moment almost moved me to tears.

Adam and I were settling down for the night and I knew he was afraid of the dark, preferring to sleep with one or twelve of his stuffed, furry friends for safety. I asked him if he was o.k.

“Well, I wish Halo was here,” (his stuffed dog), “but I’m o.k. because you’re here with me.”

This year I’ll try to keep my head out my but. I’ll try to think about other people more than myself. I’ll try to give more than I receive. I’ll try not to let politics and current events have the final veto on my mood.

Fate isn’t waiting patiently in line to help, but I’ll try not to use it as a crutch – or an excuse.

Speaking of friends, a BIG thanks goes out to a friend I won’t name… we’ll just call him Butch. Adam has a project for Cub Scouts: building a “pine wood racer.” You start with a block of pine, four wheels, and turn it into car that will roll down a slotted track. Done right, it will get to the bottom of the track before at least some of the others.

Well, you may not know this about me, but I’m not a master carpenter. I’m not the lumber whisperer. I’m competent (sort of) with a hammer, drill, and saw, but you’ll never look at my work with anything approaching awe. So a block of wood representing a car’s potential is pretty intimidating.

Enter Butch. He’s the man with the skillz! Thanks to my friend, both my kids have really cool cars.

I promise you though – I won’t go there today. Today I want to cheer myself up as much as anything.

I do this with full knowledge of the consequences: this will be a boring post. Ask the news director at your local television station. Misery, desperation and destruction sells! You show me a local news program that leads with a story about a local kid’s puppy finding his way home to Kansas, after being dog-napped in Kalamazoo, and I’ll show you a local news director who doesn’t care about being employed.

I won’t be discussing puppies or their heroism, but I will be discussing kids – mine in fact. Both seem to be blossoming this year in school, and not just academically.

Beth took a test last spring to determine which materials the school would order for her this year. She’s in ninth grade, for those of you keeping score. It’s traditionally known as the first year of high school ’round these parts. It’s the freshman year, or the year of feeling REALLY young. You may recall she attends a small private school due the social problems she had in public school, attributed to high functioning Autism (or Aspergers). The classes are small, have mixed grades, and are self paced – thus the need for personalized materials. We learned how she did on the test in August.

Beth essentially tested out of high school before she started. As a result (in part), she got involved in some extra curricular activities to keep school interesting this year. She decided she’d like to work on the yearbook. The teacher who oversees the group said she’d be assigned tasks according to her strengths. If you know Beth you know she wasn’t satisfied with such an open ended statement. So she pressed. “Oh, we’ll probably have you doing a bit of everything.” She was recently asked to attend a sports event to take photographs. She thought it was the coolest thing since the penguin experience at Sea World.

She’s been volunteering at the YMCA one day a week and attending drama club another. (Like we need more drama in our lives.) This spring she’ll be taking the entrance exams necessary to take dual enrollment courses at a local college starting next year.

Discussions at home have been filled with university degree programs and the prerequisites she’ll start taking next year. It seems like just last year she was in middle school and now we’re talking about her starting college.

They grow up fast!

Meanwhile Adam’s been coming home with tests for me to sign, and I can’t recall the last one I saw with a wrong answer. He’s been an information sponge that never seems to fully saturate.

He joined Cub Scouts this year – something I’m not completely happy about. He desperately wanted to join and I wasn’t sure how to explain discrimination based on sexual preference to my precious, sweet little boy. I know it can’t last forever, but the loss of childhood innocence is a door you can’t close – and I don’t want to open it yet – not if I can help it. He’s smart enough to know not everyone is perfect, and the world as a whole is similarly flawed. But living out in it gives us a deeper knowledge I can’t bring myself to share. However, the emphasis on community service complements his kind soul, and he’s having a great time.

Maybe the best thing is they both still want to spend time with their dad. Adam still pines for “a catch,” the American ritual of father and son throwing a baseball across the back yard. When I think about it (and sometimes I think about things far too much), I’m awestruck that such a simple thing as a baseball passed back and forth can seem so important. It’s almost as if it’s a bonding ritual written into our DNA, designed to be hard wired into the areas of the brain where love, nurturing, and long term memories reside.

I remember dismissing such things as a parent in waiting.

Were we all such fools when we were young?

Beth still seeks my opinion on a wide range of issues and accomplishments. Apparently she still thinks I know things. Were we all such fools when we were young ;-) She is a teenager, isn’t she? Doesn’t she know parents stop knowing things when their kids reach thirteen?

If Cheryl didn’t intervene with trivial matters like, “Beth, you need to get some sleep tonight,” or “Beth, the house is on fire, you really should get out,” we’d talk for hours. The only thing larger than my self-doubt is her curiosity and confidence in my words. Recently she wanted to know if she should be afraid about overpopulation and diminishing world resources. That was an especially long conversation, meandering between light topics like the environment, climate change, and population dynamics across the social-economic spectrum.

Long story short: I’m happy to report the kids are more than fine. They’re pretty great.

Saying I “had to do it,” is anesthesia for the conscience.

I take that back. Saying is not believing. You have to believe it. Your sanity depends on it.

Anyhoo, I took his TV away.

Adam apparently is an attorney in waiting. He’s following the letter of my ruling – if not the spirit.

He’s watching Netflix on his iPod.

“Great!” she said.

“Why did you decide to volunteer here?” I asked, thinking of yesterday’s post.

“I wanted to give something back to the community and this was the first place I thought of since we come all the time.”

My heart swelled.

Later, she asked me an interesting question. “Why is it significant the Earth doesn’t cool very much at night?”

“Well, think about it,” I said. “Why do they call CO2 a greenhouse gas?”

“I get it. The Earth has energy in the form of heat all day, not just when the sun is up. It can’t cool after the sun goes down because the heat absorbed during the day can’t escape back into space at night either.”

Although the subject of the last conversation continues to depress me, overall, it was a good day to be a parent. I’ve been a good influence after all.

Now, if there was just some way we could get adults to catch up to the accumulated wisdom of a fourteen year old.

For Adam, it’s first grade. These days the jump from kindergarten to first grade isn’t much different from first to second. The era of standardized testing and school “accountability” has leached most of the fun from learning, as schools standardize curriculums, and reduce every moment between bells to drill English and math into childrens’ heads with the subtlety of a jack-hammer.

It’s why Adam is in private school, although his school isn’t immune to the pressure to kickstart the academics early. Private schools aren’t “accountable” the way public schools are. Florida’s ultra-conservative state government says it’s because private schools are held to an even higher standard: “the free market.” Oh the irony! Private schools lack the woeful standards of “accountability” of public schools, allowing them to devote more time to a rounded education. They can dabble in frivolous things like music, art, and the study of foreign languages and cultures – all the things I got from my public education in Florida before the “accountability movement” started.

Heaven fucking forbid.

Beth starts high school today, though she too will remain at the same, private school she attended last year. As you may recall, our hand was forced when it became clear “accountability” didn’t apply to kids with Aspergers.

I didn’t mean to begin this post with a rant about the school system. It just kind of happened. I guess I still have unresolved issues.

What I really wanted to say is I’m really proud of my kids.

Beth has her first interview today. She’s starting ninth grade, so we were a little leery of her working in her spare time. However, it’s not about money. Beth wants to volunteer at the YMCA, watching the little kids after school and working the front desk.

How could I say no to that? I’m a little worried. Social skills are not her strong point, but if this works out it could be a great experience for her.

Here’s what warmed my heart: she came up with this on her own. While we were there working out one day, she sought out the director, spoke to him, and came home with an application – without any prompting from us. Hell, we didn’t even know she could volunteer at her age.

Lots of kids have good hearts and take initiative to do good things. What surprises me is I’ve brought up one of those kids.

No, she isn’t working to solve the problem of world hunger, but she is willingly giving her time to do something she enjoys – helping other people.

Proud doesn’t begin to explain how I feel. Pretty damn lucky comes close.

It’s a really big room. I thought you should know that, I don’t know why.

I went to pick him up afterwards and he came storming out breathless, exclaiming “Man! There was this girl in there who was a beast and she was chasing me like I was her favorite food!”

I laughed. He didn’t seem injured in any way, either mentally or physically, so I think it was defensible.

Adam didn’t didn’t share my view on the subject.

Still, I woke up early this morning and a thought struck me: I could get in the car, leave right now and be with them by lunchtime.

There were just a handful of problems with this plan. It was four-thirty in the morning. I’d slept about three and a half hours. They weren’t three and a half good hours. And Florida is a really big state. Still, you have no idea how close I came to packing a change of clothes, a box of snacks, a thermos of extra strong coffee, and some Tylenol in a backpack and riding off into the sunrise to meet my family in Stone Mountain, GA.

It’s Saturday afternoon and my head is pounding away with each shuddering heartbeat, so it’s probably a good thing I’m here with my iMac instead.

They’ll all be back tomorrow.

That’s the real reason I didn’t jump in the car early this morning.

I haven’t felt like sitting in front of the iMac’s camera for another “Home Alone” video, but this seemed fitting.

So here it is, just the audio this time, reading an old post from my heart.

John reads: “What writing means to me”