Best Day

Dear Luca,

There will come a time, years from now when you’ll be asked a simple question. The question will most likely be posed after you’ve had three beers. Probably you’ll be sitting on a couch.

The question is, “What was the best day of your life?”

Now, you may be tempted to say something about a baseball game or a day you met a girl (or boy, no judgment) or a day you took drugs and saw a jam band.

But you will be wrong. Your best day was August 4th, 2011. Case closed.

Allow me to prove my point. Luca, you are one of those boys who love construction equipment. If it is yellow and moves earth of some kind, you love it. You have a set of yellow plastic loaders and dump trucks (dumb f*cks) that never leaves your side. You say goodnight to your construction equipment before bed. There is a book about diggers that you’ve forced me to read so often that I now know it by heart (A digger can dig a very big hole. A digger has a arm with two parts, the boom and the dipper…)

But your true favorite of the construction vehicles is the Backhoe Loader. The Backhoe loader is all you talk about. All you think about. You say the words “Backhoe Loader” so often, the words have morphed into a new word, “Backaloader,” which sounds an awful lot like “Baklava.”

On Thursday morning, August 4th, 2011, a trailer arrived in front of our house. Riding on the back of this trailer was, you guessed it, a Backaloader. When this fact was pointed out to you, you literally pooped your pants with excitement.

For the next 4 hours, you stood on our front porch shouting, “Backaloader!” and jumping up and down while clapping your hands. You watched the Backaloader do whatever it is they do with more awe than if a dinosaur suddenly appeared in our yard.

Eventually, the men and the Backaloader left and you spent the rest of the day asking, “Where backaloader go?”

Also making August 4th, 2011, the worst day of your life.