The Walk

All of my anxiety, all of my panic and skittishness and social awkwardness can be traced back to one event in my life: The day our mom forgot to pick us up after school.

Through some miscommunication (pantomimes smoking weed), my brother and stood out in front of our school dressed in matching yellow rain slickers for hours. Crying. Granted, we lived less than a mile from the building. And in retrospect, it may not have been hours and was more likely minutes. But it scarred me for life and causes behavior like hiding in the bushes around the corner from a Elijah and Luca’s recent sleepover to guarantee I arrived at precisely 7 minutes early.

Luca is the proud recipient of my abandonment genes and requested we arrive at a recent Cubs game two hours early. Much to my delight.

Eli, on the other hand, is built a little differently. As evidenced by his reaction to getting totally abandoned at camp.

Everyone who cares for our son simultaneously thought someone else was picking him up and he found himself standing in front of his “Stage Combat” camp all alone. Not crying. Not in a yellow rain slicker. Rather than embark in a lifelong struggle with panic attacks, he decided to walk home across town.

This involved convincing his camp counselors that walking home was not only ok, but specifically requested by his absent parents. The counselors, who by nature are easily charmed by Eli, simply shook his hand and wished him well on his adventure.

When he told me about this, I thought, “Well, he had his fancy phone so if things went weird he could call for help.” But, no. He went on his trek phoneless.

I know a lot of you are thinking, “Kids today are too coddled. In the 1980’s, I hitchhiked across Utah when I was 8.” Yeah, I get that. But it’s 2018 and things are different and weird and this probably wasn’t the time to completely change a generation of child rearing.

Anyway, Eli made his way across the mean streets of Evanston. Dodging clusters of protesting college students and Priuses and the 60 pound raccoon that terrorizes Ridge Ave.

He says he only got semi lost a couple times and arrived home safe and sound. To the surprise of all who thought he was with someone else.

Since then, we require him to bring his phone to camp to avoid any other confusion and/or growth opportunities. But I also allowed him to go see a movie with some pals on Saturday, sans parents.

Which gave me the opportunity to smother Luca with overprotection.

Phone

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Elijah graduated from grade school a week ago. It’s one of those milestones I choose not to attend. Not because of some anti “everyone gets a trophy” philosophy. I was simply 100% sure I would cry heaving, snot-filled tears.

When Eli was 9, he asked when he’d be able to get a new phone. We absentmindedly said, “Uh…when you graduate from grade school or something,” thinking in the future he’d either forget or there would be an apocalypse started by an egomaniacal president with bad hair.

Graduation day came and Eli wanted his phone. He did us the favor of picking out a lovely $1,000 Apple model.

I ran out over lunch to buy a phone at the local store. Because I am 46. I was treated to the sight of an insane woman picking up every phone on the display wall and shouting in it, “Hello? I am on the phone!” The salesman told me she did this every single day at the same time and I was utterly jealous of his job.

We got him a white phone with buttons and a camera and, much to my delight, a parental spy app.

This app is amazing. It opened up my world to the wonders of monitoring your child 24 hours a day. It shows me how many minutes Eli has spent on the internet, or on Netflix, or any of the 4,000 games he immediately downloaded.

I found myself obsessively staring at my phone to check if Eli was staring at his phone. I also ruined his life by texting him constantly.

“Eli. It is 75 degrees outside and you are on Spotify. Go outside.”

“Eli. You have been on your phone for 2 hours. Get off now or I will lock you out of your phone.”

And occasionally I would laugh an evil little laugh and lock him out. I could feel his pout all the way from Evanston. After the third or fourth lock out, he told me, “You know. If I get abducted there is no way for me to text you when I’m locked out of my phone.”

Touché.

Eli has taken to retaliating by sending me hundreds and hundreds of texts over the course of the day. All hilariously nonsensical. My very important meetings are constantly interrupted by gifs of rabbits or hearts or “Family Guy” characters he doesn’t know the names of because we won’t let him watch it.

I do get the occasional “I love you,” which is worth a hundred phones.

*First Cubs Game

Luca can recite the middle name of every Cubs player. Plus their favorite pizza toppings. He even knows the names of their secret road families.

It would be high dad crimes not to take him to his *first Cubs game. I asterisk it because we technically took Luca to his first game years ago. But he doesn’t remember it. I remember it as when a bunch of old timer Cubs fans wanted to murder me for bringing a two year old into their hallowed row.

I bought three tickets, assuming both boys would be up for missing a day of school. Surprisingly, Elijah said no. After I shouted, “NERD!” I realized these were his last weeks at grade school and Eli wanted to relish the last few moments of youth before he becomes a jaded middle schooler.

Luckily, my pal Patrick loves playing hooky and snapped up the extra ticket. Plus, I wouldn’t feel weird about drinking beer by myself. Give or take 40,000 other beer guzzlers.

Because Luca is a Hamann through and through, he asked if we could go to the game 2 hours early. Mmmm…early. So delicious.

We sat in the bleachers section because Luca was 100% certain he would catch a home run. I explained to him that if the opposing team hit one out, the tradition was to throw it back. Luca said he would not be planning on giving up a well-earned ball. I explained the concept of getting a beer poured on your head and he reconsidered.

Batting practice began and baseballs started raining down into the bleachers. Luca prayed aloud one would reach our seats. He was drowned out by my prayers of the opposite. A few balls came close, but we weren’t in any real danger of humiliating ourselves in front of our sons.

The temperature was in the mid 90’s so the beer tasted delicious. But the pleasure I felt after 2 cold ones was nothing compared to the utter joy Luca felt being in the stands. I was almost brought to tears watching his face light up every time a Cub player so much as adjusted his jock strap. He was convinced the outfielder nearest us liked him best of all and not the lady in the t-shirt behind us.

We stayed until the very last out and sang the Cub victory song. Luca and I then experienced the time honored tradition of cramming on the El with thousands of drunk fans.

 I distinctly heard Luca whisper, “Best day ever,” to himself. And I could die a happy man.