Rollin’…
On El Camino
With my rag-top down so my hair can blow…
Wait, no. Wrong decade, no rag-top, no hair. Just a van full of four kids rollin’ to the dentist. Mommy usually does every one of these but she’s working and Dada’s off so I’ve got the baton.
Liam is trying to whistle as we drive. He’s doing that thing where he makes barely audible sounds like wind outside a window and he wants to call it whistling. I’m a non-whistler so I can’t guide him, but I know that ain’t whistling and is probably the wrong technique.
“It’s not quite there. Wet your lips and keep it going. You’ll get it.”
“I can do ‘Misty White’ with my whistle,” he says.
“Is that a song or a name?”
“A song,” he says.
“‘Misty White’ is a song?”
Then he tries to say ‘Misty White’ through a whistle but it just sounds like he’s blowing out a candle with an odd rhythm over and over again. Definitely not whistling.
“I think it needs some work, bud.”
We check in and sit in the lobby. There are both kid and adult sized IKEA-looking chairs, and lots of black and white pictures of children with great teeth and no gaps in their smiles, which strikes me as false advertising. The girls are scratching the boys’ backs to try to trigger goose bumps. They chant as they do it: “Spiders crawling up your back, they bite you, they bite you. The blood rushes down, the blood rushes down!”
The girls are called back for their time in the dentist’s chair.
“So, what do you want to do?” I ask our guys. Lucas suggests animal charades. I’m in. Lucas starts with a softball, laying on the hazy blue carpet and inching along, hands glued to his sides. Liam yells, “snake!” No answer from Lucas, so I go with ‘worm.’ I win.
On my turn I stand on one leg and Lucas guesses ‘flamingo’ almost instantly. Lucas’s turn again. He walks around on all fours with his butt skyward, making a face like he has to poop. After about twenty seconds, he asks if we need a clue. Liam answers affirmatively for both of us.
“Okay, okay,” says Lucas, pursing his lips and smiling – his coy, ‘deep in thought’ look. “Hmmm. Lemme see…Oh, I know! He almost likes cheese.”
We both stare at him for a beat. I attempt to clarify. “You’re saying this animal almost likes cheese? How can an animal almost like cheese?”
“Dada! Just listen!” Lucas barks. “Oh, and it’s a predator too.”
Liam and I roll with his second clue and start naming just about every land predator in existence. One of us even throws out ‘kangaroo,’ even though I’m pretty sure a kangaroo doesn’t qualify as a predator. After about fifteen more guesses, Liam hits the outer ring of the target with “wolf!”
Lucas freezes and looks over, eyes wide. We’re close.
“Fox!” I yell out.
“Yes!” screams Lucas.
We’re euphoric. We high five all around and yell things like “Boom!” and “Yesss” as the receptionist leans back so she can see us past the small support pole blocking her view. Then I consider what just happened for a moment as our excitement fades.
“Dude, wait. Foxes ‘almost like cheese?’ Foxes don’t eat cheese.”
“Yes they do,” says Lucas, defiance and unshakable confidence in his voice.
“No, man. Foxes aren’t sitting around at cheese tastings. They’re hunters. They eat meat.”
“Dada, ask Google.” Oh really...
I find out in about ten seconds that foxes are omnivores. They hunt but they also eat berries and fruit, and foxes who venture into urban areas sometimes eat what people throw out. People sometimes eat cheese. And throw some away. Damn. It’s a technicality and a questionable one at that, but I can’t deny him this one.
“Alright, alright, foxes can eat cheese in certain circumstances.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means sometimes.”
He thinks for a second. “Like ‘almost?’”
I smile. “It’s in the ballpark, yeah. Alright Lucas, I guess we’ll make it official: Foxes do almost like cheese.”
Lucas has no time to enjoy his victory, as he’s up again. He tries to act out an animal who lives in snow. I blurt out “snow frog” because he’s hopping around. I regret it the second I say it. What the fuck is a ‘snow frog?’ I think. Get a hold of yourself, man.
“Dada, there’s no snow frog!” His animal ends up being ‘snow rabbit’ and he tells me Liam’s guess of ‘snow bunny’ doesn’t qualify because Lucas was acting out a grown up rabbit and bunnies are only young rabbits. I call bullshit once again and look it up. There are references on Google to bunnies being young rabbits, though it doesn’t seem conclusive. Liam and I both know Liam still got it right but the boys get called back for their turn and break up our game.
After they go, I’m on my phone again. My deep research reveals there actually is a snow frog, also known as the Chinese forest frog, who lives in Tibetan mountains and swamps. Damn right.
“I’m good at that animal game!” says Lucas after his appointment, as we are all walking to the van.
“I can’t argue with that, man. You cleaned up with the fox.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
I open the automatic van doors from thirty feet away, which are worth whatever we paid for them. They all race to the car, despite our thousands of warnings over the years not to run in parking lots. But it’s okay. There are no cars and I’m daydreaming anyway, picturing a fox and a snow frog, buddies at brunch, in front of a slab of triple cream brie with bright crimson grapes and mimosas on the side.