Entries Tagged as 'Guest Post'
This weeks guest-posts are all brought to you courtesy of my Dad.
How often does a parent catch their kids doing something wrong but it's just so totally unexpected and so damn funny we can't bring ourselves to follow our own rules and allow the law of retribution be tossed aside? Not very often ? but it does happen.
Adam was young, maybe in 1st or 2nd grade this particular time. It wasn't the first time or the last, but it was probably the one time I just couldn't stop laughing out loud.
It wasn't very late at night but still well past the kids' bedtime. Kitty and I were sitting in the living room watching TV or talking (I don't remember that part). We heard something in the next room so I called out "who's in the kitchen?" Adam answered that it was just him.
I could have said anything, like "go back to bed" but for some unexplained reason I asked what he was doing.
His answer, "nothing" wasn't very reassuring. Why would Adam get up more than an hour after he had gone to bed and come into the kitchen to do "nothing?"
I asked Adam to come into the living room but he didn't want to, instead saying he was just heading back to bed. Naturally I told him to wait and Kitty and I went into the kitchen to investigate.
My son, who I love very much and always thought was an extremely smart kid, was standing there in his underwear looking almost panicky. It must also be noted for the record that Adam was wearing briefs and they were probably Thunder Cats, Voltron, or some other designer undies ? but that they weren't boxers. That's an important point.
It took me a second to see how distressed he looked and I realized his underwear had a huge bulge in the front.
We're taking about a bulge of enormous, massive proportion! And while some fathers might take pride in this and be thinking "that's my boy!", in this instance that wasn't exactly appropriate.
Sticking out the top of his briefs was the top of several large chocolate chip cookies. They were also sticking out both sides, nearly as big around as his small legs.
My son was packing something close to a dozen cookies in his shorts and wanted desperately to make a clean get-away. The cookie crumbs made the "clean" get-away impossible, and in good consciousness I couldn't let him just finish what he started.
"What's in your pants?"
"Nothing"
"Nothing? Are you sure you don't have a bunch of cookies in there?"
"Uhh, yeah."
"What are you going to do with those cookies?"
"Nothing"
"Really! Weren't you planning to sneak them into your room and eat them?"
"Uhh, yeah."
At this point I'm trying hard not to laugh, but it was too late. The sight of Adam holding a dozen cookies (without using his hands) was too much. I think I asked Kitty to take over. I don't really remember the details after that.
Adam didn't get to take the cookies back to his room, and I'm pretty sure they made it into the trash. At least I really, really hope that's where they ended up ? because I like chocolate chip cookies too.
All of this weeks guest-posts are courtesy of my Dad.
Since you?re reading this website you know that Adam spends a lot of time with TuttleTree and several other sites. He does websites for a living and never seems to get tired of this.
I remember being more like that when I was younger. I could work a 12 hour day and come home to see how many of my 10 downloads actually made it over my 2400 baud modem (upgraded from 300 baud ? but we didn?t download much at that speed).
On a good day I could get more than half of my new programs so I?d have something to keep me occupied for several more hours and on weekends. It was exciting for me, and looking back I think it was exciting for Adam too. Adam was always interested in what I was doing on my computer and probably a little frustrated that he couldn?t be more active. I showed him what I was doing and let him bang away on the keyboard. I explained some of the programs I was writing and how I used them to track time I spent with client projects, keep notes of my activities and stuff like that. Adam knew I had to compile my programs and that it converted my instructions to machine language, and that was cool, but it wasn?t what he was mostly interested in.
Thinking back, it?s possible he was mostly interested in tracking details on the computer.
My computer came from the office so I could some work at home. Since I had something to work on it wasn?t a huge priority for me, but I did see that Adam and his brothers (mostly Adam) were very interested in learning.
So the search began. I started surfing through catalogs (this was before the Internet, too) and choosing the parts we?d need to build our own computer. We were way past considering a Commodore or TRS-80. I wanted to be able to work with the kids on the computer so they needed something that ran MS Windows (version 2.11?).
Luck prevailed and some upgrades at work resulted in me getting an old computer for the boys to share. The boys and I spent a couple of hours going through how to turn the computer on and off, how to run programs and what programs they needed to run to do stuff.
There wasn?t much on the computer but Adam asked about typing stuff in the computer and I showed him how to use Notepad. Adam never looked back.
Our next problem was that we had 1 computer and 3 boys that wanted to use it. The two younger boys didn?t yet know how to read and write so there wasn?t much they could do so Adam usually got the lion?s share of computer time (that?s fair ? right?).
Adam kept a diary. I don?t know what he wrote because he never chose to share it. I don?t remember what happened to that old computer or whatever became of his earliest works. I really wish I had thought to keep them. It would be interesting to know what he spent all those hours plugging away on that old beat up computer.
One other thing I did that always thought was cool. I added a sound bite of a Pink Floyd song as the start up WAV file. Whenever he turned the machine on it played him this little snippet:
?Welcome my son? to the machine?.
At the time it was a way of saying ?welcome to using this computer?. In retrospect, I think the ?machine? ended up being a lot more than we ever imagined.
This weeks guest-posts are all brought to you courtesy of my Dad.
Adam was about 8 or 9 when Kitty and I got our first cell phone. They weren?t nearly as common as now but we decided it was something we needed. I think the phone weighed 2 pounds and our plan was for something like 40 minutes a month (for emergencies).
We did what most people would probably do, calling a few friends and to our home number. ?Guess where we?re calling you from now?? was probably getting old for a few people but it was fun and very cool to be able to call the kids at home and let them know we were out shopping a little longer than we planned and that we?d be home before dinner.
Sometime within the first couple of weeks of getting the phone Kitty and I were shopping for something (who remembers?), but I do remember it being a craft store with lots of baskets and stuff. We were standing in line waiting to check out when we heard a phone ringing. There was several people standing around waiting for someone to answer, when Kitty and I suddenly realized it was our phone ringing. It was our first incoming call!
The call was from Adam (at the time he went by Jason). The kids had been running through the house and Justin fell and cracked his head open! Adam said that he had called 911 and someone was on their way to the house. Justin was lying on the floor with his head bleeding and we needed to come home right away!
We made it home in about 10 minutes and by the time we got there the paramedics were already there. Justin had a gash on his head that would take stitches but it wasn?t crippling or life threatening. Mostly the boys were just scared.
The medic said that Adam had been very calm and had done almost everything the right way. He could tell that Adam was a in the Scouts because Adam made Justin lie still and had propped his feet up. BTW, propping up the feet isn?t the best thing for someone with a head wound, but the training had kicked in and no harm came from this.
There was some blood on our new carpet but the medic explained that some peroxide would get it out (it did). He said that Adam had done a really good job!
Justin ended up getting 3 staples in his head. They were big ones too. When they mentioned staples I though of something like a paper staple that would bend around the wound and fold up. No so, the staples were just pushed in holding the sides together and sticking out about a half inch above the cut. Creepy!
We later found out the kids had been playing football in the house and Adam had tackled Justin knocking him into a door jam. Even though rules had been broken and some kind of punishment was deserved, we were all happy with Adam?s clear thinking in a moment of crisis. He called 911 first and then called us.
I?m sure Kitty had talked to Adam about calling 911 because I don?t remember ever having that conversation. That he called 911 before calling us was pretty smart. I probably would have called my dad and asked him if I should call 911.
That day Adam showed us he was able to be trusted when it counts ? even while we knew he was also up to breaking house rules.
That?s a tradeoff I would always be willing to take.
