Jack

I was sleeping in Luca’s room and Grover was doing that thing where he shoves his wet, cold nose in my face to wake me up and take him outside. This should enrage me, but I love it more than anything. Life is so stupidly complicated, I wish all communication could consist of shoving our noses into each other’s faces.

As I slipped into whatever pair of pants I would occupy the whole weekend, Luca sleepily asked, “What’s that scratching on the window?”

 I said, “Probably tree branches,” as I opened the shade.

Nope. Not tree branches. It was a little bird. A little bird that had somehow gotten stuck between the storm window and the screen. It was flapping its little arms in a desperate attempt to escape. But no luck.

Luca, understandably, freaked out. Not scared. He was just really enthusiastic about this animal. But more importantly, enthusiastic about me saving it.

This went against my initial instinct just to close the shades and never, ever open them again.

“I’m not sure what to do here, pal. Maybe he wanted to commit suicide and this would go against his wishes.”

“I’m going to name him Jack,” Luca said. Now it had a name.

It’s time like these that I miss my dad. I desperately wanted to call him. Not because he would have any advice whatsoever, but I imagine he would have really enjoyed making fun of me.

Diana appeared in the doorway and Luca excitedly got her up to speed. The bird’s name is Jack and I was right about to save him. Any minute now.

Diana informed us that she would be closing the door now, so when our solution inevitably released the bird into Luca’s room, it would be trapped in there with us.

My painfully full bladder inspired me to find a solution fast. I slowly raised the screen a few inches. In a panic, Jack immediately evacuated his bowels and latched on. I inched the screen slowly, but surely. Jack rode the screen elevator, peeing and pooping his guts out the whole time.

Luca loved this. And I think he actually looked at me with a tiny bit of admiration.

Eventually, Jack reached the top floor and he flew away. I like to think he went off to tell his bird friends the story of how a hu-man saved his life. And one day when I’m cornered by wolves, Jack will swoop in and return the favor. 

But more likely he got eaten by a cat.

Gravitron

On Sunday, we packed up our camping tent, our sleeping bags, our 3 Kindle Fires, our 3 iPhones and another couple electronic devices and headed to Diana’s Dad’s place for some 3^rd of July camping.

Don Jacklich lives a block or two away from the big “Eyes To The Skies” carnival. Eyes To The Skies features a cavalcade of hot air balloons intended to cram the air with goofy shapes and heated helium. In the past 11 years I’ve attended Eyes To The Skies, I have seen exactly zero hot air balloons actually leave the ground. There is always some lame excuse like the safety of the occupants. Diana’s brother dubbed the event “Lies To The Skies.”

But that never seems to deter Elijah and Luca. They are there for the carnival rides, plain and simple. The boys have been inching closer and closer to scary rides* over the last few years. But I was still convinced they would stay in the kiddie area with the little cars that went in a circle or the little boats that went in a circle.

Nope.

They wanted to ride “The Gravitron.” You’ve seen this thing before. It’s a cylinder of sorts. Kids climb in and then it goes round and round real fast and everyone gets pinned to the wall.  This is a ride we had to wait to experience as they hosed off the vomit.

I tried to convince them they were both much too short to ride. Unfortunately for my lying, there was a little measuring thing right next to the entrance that proved me wrong. I suggested this would be a great opportunity for their mother to bond with them both. Sensing they would see me vomit, they insisted I go. 

Inside this monstrosity, I leaned up against the wall and a teenager very politely asked the carney if it was okay to “go do tricks.” What? What tricks?

The ride started and within seconds we were pinned to the walls. I immediately thought I had died in a Gravitron related heart attack and was currently occupying the fifth circle of Hell, also called “The Gravitron.” Centrifugal force caused children’s faces to take on demonic grimaces. The teen who wanted to “go do tricks” was suddenly upside down. Another kid was horizontal, along the roof of the Gravitron, crawling around like a cargo short wearing crab.

Deep from within me came an animal-like shriek. I screamed, “I don’t want to be here! I want to go home! Please let me go home!” I also could hear Eli and Luca screaming, but in utter pleasure.

As the ride drifted to a halt, my boys led the chorus of, “Again! Again! Again!” I informed the ride operator that I would use every penny of my vast Hamann fortune to sue him if he started it up again.

Instead, the boys went immediately to the end of the line and rode The Gravitron again. Thankfully, they found riding without me to be even more exciting. I clutched Diana, shaking like a leaf.

We had officially separated the men from the boys.

*A couple weeks ago, Luca rode “The Zipper” with our friends Kitty and Joe. Right before the ride started, he soberly admitted he stepped in dog poop once and didn’t tell anyone. He needed to clear his conscious before what he assumed was certain death.

Luca Jokes

I was working at a beach in France last week. I’ll give you a moment to let that soak in. Aside from suffering from some low level wine poisoning, I really missed the family and the time difference made it tough to connect.

We opted for a daily morning video chat. I would call in and find them all snuggled in bed looking cute and then they’d struggle to find things to talk to me about. “I dunno. Camp” was the most frequent response to my questions.

Except for Tuesday.

On Tuesday, I called in as usual. My screen first filled with Diana’s lovely face. She told me about the mystery leak in our dining room ceiling. A team of plumbers cannot discover what is causing a slow drip drip every time someone showers. We’ve decided to just call it a water feature.

The screen then filled with Elijah’s face. He spent the entire time looking at his own reflection in the phone screen. Like father, like son. I couldn’t get anything good from him so I asked that he hand the phone to Luca.

There was a little fumbling with the phone and then my screen was filled with…Luca’s penis. There it was, in all its glory. A screen full of 6 year old wiener. I politely asked him to move the camera away from his junk, because that’s how Jared from Subway got arrested. But nope, the rest of our conversation was man to wee wee.

When I got home, we had our postponed Father’s Day celebration, delayed while I was in Cannes. My jetlag forced me awake at 6am that day, so I tried to be extra quiet. But Luca heard me and came out of his room to scream whisper, “Happy Father’s Day!”

He then extracted a hand made card from his room and presented it to me proudly. It read, “Happy Father’s Day Chad! Oops. I meant Dad!”

You gotta hand it to the kid. He’s got skills.

Poop Instructions

We’re entering a weird time in HamannEggs. Elijah reads the blog now. He has a pretty good attitude about it, but got a little embarrassed by the “love of his life leaving” post from a couple weeks ago.

I toyed around with shutting the whole thing down because I worried I was screwing Eli up by sharing my innermost thoughts about him to the 30 people who read this. But Diana said, “Your blog is a gift.” And since I am a sucker for compliments I’m going to keep it going.

I am, however, going to protect the innocent when there are particularly embarrassing things to write about. Like this week. So I will not reveal which son this happened to.

A month or so ago we were at That Little Mexican Café in Evanston, wich is neither little or a café. And I can’t really verify its Mexican-ness.

After dinner, I was beaconed across the restaurant by my son who was definitely not Eli. This child who was totally not Eli brought me into the bathroom and explained a rather embarrassing predicament.

He Who Is Not Eli had had an accident. The kind of accident that happens when you eat at That Little Mexican Café. We were there with friends and he felt trapped in the bathroom and didn’t know what to do.

I felt a sense of purpose unlike I had in years. This was what fathers were put on the earth for. Teaching sons how to tie a tie. How to change the oil in the family car. And how to dispose of poopy underpants in a public place.

With the care and sobriety of a dad instructing his son how to throw a curve ball, I explained to Not Eli the proper technique for burying underpants in the garbage can and how to lay paper towels over it as camouflage.

He looked at me with genuine awe. It’s honestly one of three times in the last 9 years when I actually felt like a dad. We rejoined the table and this child asked me to never reveal what had happened.

And if any son of mine happens to read this and gets embarrassed, I would like to admit to the world that I’ve absolutely pooped my pants in the last year.

Where There Is Smoke

A week or so ago, I asked Luca if he knew what to do if the fire alarm went off in our house.

He said, “Sure. I sit in the hall and wait for my other classmates and then our teacher takes us outside and we count heads.”

Wait, no. That’s not how…never mind.

If you’ll recall from past seasons of HamannEggs, Luca used to be crazily obsessed with Firemen. We would watch hours of this insane Welsh TV show called “Fireman Sam” and you were guaranteed to step on at least 2.5 fire trucks on your way to the bathroom every night.

So you can imagine how disappointed he was when he was told he slept through firemen stomping all over our house the other night.

I awoke at 3am to someone clunking around in the dark. I thought to myself, “Really? Another burglar? I just installed that stupid alarm system (after letting it sit in its box for 8 months).”  After arming myself with a pair of boxer shorts, I discovered Diana walking around our house, sniffing.

Sniff. Sniff. Something was burning. Not burning burning, but there was a faint scent of plastic or electricity. Or something. But we couldn’t see any smoke. And our detectors were silent.

Through sniff detective work, we figured out the smell was coming from our front room. But it wasn’t that strong. We felt the walls because isn’t that what you are supposed to do? We also felt the electrical sockets. But I couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on.

Diana and I just looked at each other. What were we going to do? Go to sleep and wake up in the middle of an inferno? Call the fire department and have them smash our walls with their axes?

Because we are responsible for not killing our sons, we went the ax route.

Within 3 minutes (we live in upper middle class white suburbia), we had the surprisingly young Chief of the Evanston Fire Department clomping around our house.

They poked around the house with a device that looked like those things that told the soldiers they were about to get eaten in James Cameron’s “Aliens.”

The Chief went so far as to open Luca’s door, clomp around and say rather loudly, “He sleeps through everything, huh?”  Luca just slept, dreaming of one day getting to meet a real life fireman.

In the end, we discovered the culprit was a burnt out ceiling fan motor. 

The next morning, Luca learned we had real life firemen in our house. I told him they were also joined by Darth Vader and the Transformers and his stuffed animals were briefly alive.