On a gray Wednesday morning in November, in the marine mammal auditorium at Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Lyssa McGurren stood in a wetsuit, leaning against the glass partition and polished aluminum railing surrounding the ocean habitat. It was the day before Thanksgiving, not exactly the aquarium’s busy season, and she was fielding questions from the crowd as they filed out following the daily dolphin presentation. Her feet planted on a concrete ledge facing the pool, one of the aquarium’s Pacific white-sided dolphins streaked through the water beneath her. Growing up in the nearby suburb of Northbrook, she always wanted to be a dolphin trainer. She was a strong swimmer and diver from an early age, and fell in love with the ocean and dolphins while spending vacation time with her grandparents in Florida. She resolved to make working with marine animals her career. “I couldn’t see myself not doing it,” she says. “It’s my dream job.”
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There is a point when you’re cleaning out the drainage grate of an auto shop, on your hands and knees and up to your elbows in filth, when you realize that at 19 years old you ought to think carefully about your future. I worked on the cleanup crew for Expressway Dodge in Evansville, Indiana the summer after my freshman year at Indiana University. The drain was clogged after I attempted to clean a garbage can from the auto bay where we sprayed undercoat onto the bellies of new Dodge Rams, Intrepids, and Neons to protect them from rock chips and muffle road noise. This particular garbage can was used for empty containers of undercoat. Our spray nozzle didn’t completely finish a container before it tapped out, so the remaining few ounces of thick tar was tossed along with it, safety cap never reattached. Over the course of the summer, this residual goo trickled down into a three-inch thick layer on the bottom of the garbage can that, when I sprayed it with cold water trying to rinse it out, hardened into the consistency of licorice Twizzlers. The nightcrawler-sized chunks of tar that I managed to dislodge from the bottom of the can washed down the drain running the center of the shop and packed the foundation for an impromptu wading pool of ashy water and petroleum-based fluids that greeted me when I returned from lunch. The passel of mechanics gathered around the mess had a high time watching me reach through the swirling rainbows and soggy paper towels to fish out the blockage. The tide subsided eventually, and I squatted on the sidewalk behind the shop and wrung out my socks.
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Topham Hatt’s off to James for sending me this recall notice for a number of Thomas & Friends toys. Apparently, many of the red wooden toys have lead in the paint, which goes a long way toward explaining the slack jaws and drooling that seem to afflict any 2- to 5-year-old boy who comes near them. As a fervid Thomas collector, this could have been a devastating development for Carter, but fortunately we have mostly the die-cast metal trains (all the better to scratch your wooden floors with). The West Loop Railway shall remain intact.
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This week, an article about Bo Jackson by Joe Posnanski from the Kansas City Star has been making the rounds on the sports blogs. He notes that it’s been 20 years (20 years!) since Bo was a rookie, which makes me feel both incredibly old and gives me a nostalgic lump in my throat. Like every other 10-year-old baseball fan of that era, I worshipped Bo, putting him on a pedestal right next to my other favorites, Don Mattingly and Ozzie Smith. My love for Donnie Baseball and Ozzie was based on logic. Mattingly was from my hometown, a left-handed first baseman who was the one baseball player I always tried to emulate. Ozzie was the most popular player on my favorite team, the Cardinals, and I doubt that any kid who grew up listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon call Cards games on the radio would have picked anyone else. But for Bo Jackson, it was different. I didn’t give a whit for the Royals; in fact, they provided my first taste of true sports agony when the beat the Cardinals in the 1985 World Series. I had never followed Bo’s Heisman-winning football exploits at Auburn. I had probably never heard of him until I saw his first baseball card in the 1986 Topps Traded/Rookies set. But once I started to see and hear about the things he could do on the baseball field, I didn’t have any choice but to want to see more.
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If you had told me in college that just six years after graduating, I would quit my job to become a full-time parent, I probably would have spit my beer all over you. But now, that story now makes enough sense that I could explain it even to my former, drunken, fratboy self. After six years of work, my IT career had fizzled, burning too fast with youthful ambition after graduation before starving itself for want of meaningful work in the wastelands of a corporate cube farm. By the time my son Carter was born two years ago, I had become a terminally-bored software designer for a mega-bank in Chicago, watching the clock and surfing the internet all day while I did the minimal amount of work to keep my health benefits. Meanwhile my wife, Debbie, had become a successful Realtor who absolutely adored her career, which quickly eclipsed mine in both enthusiasm and earnings potential. So when Carter was born, the decision about who was to take care of him was a no-brainer. Given the state of our respective careers, we decided to defy tradition and I quit my job. As far as the IRS was concerned, I became a Realtor too; I had earned my license the previous fall so I could help Debbie while she was pregnant. Officially I’m her business partner now, but all I really do is keep the books and pinch-hit for double-booked appointments. My real boss wears diapers and thinks his name is “Caca.”
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Debbie and I have recently decided that it’s very important to socialize Carter, “socialize” in this sense meaning letting him spend time around other kids as much as it does “getting someone else to entertain him for a half hour so we don’t go batshit crazy.”
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This whole concept of children needing to sleep during the day is still hard for me. I’ve never been one to take naps. In my mind, I need to spend every waking hour of sunlight Getting Shit Done (TM), not lounging around on the couch. Once I grew enough hair on my chest to handle strong coffee, it solved any issues my no sleeping during the day policy caused by clashing with the fact that until just recently, I still liked to stay up until 2 AM fiddling with the stylesheet on my blog or reformatting my to-do list for the 400th time. Feeling groggy the next day? Nothing my friend Server #2 can’t fix.
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One of our neighbors in our old building had a baby about six months after we did. She was a nice woman, petite and pretty, with a soft southern drawl that let on that she was a transplant to Chicago from Alabama. I never spoke to her much until Carter was born and she was three months pregnant. Suddenly, she’d light up when she saw us, full of questions about how we planned to raise him.
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As is well-documented here, I love taking walks with both the boys. What used to be a chore is now my favorite way to kill time during the day, a nice break from running around the house pulling Carter away from light sockets and making him stop drinking the cleaning products. The one part of it that still is a chore, however, is coming back inside.
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Growing up, TV shows like The Wonder Years or movies like The Natural led me to believe that every epiphany or climactic realization in my life would come at equally cinematic moments, drenched in sepia tones with oboes and clarinets playing in the background, or maybe with fireworks and light standards exploding overhead. “And that was when I realized I should shave my head,” I’d tell Carter someday, describing the touching moment when I realized I was losing the fight with male pattern baldness. Me holding a mirror looking at the back of my head, a tear rolls down my cheek. I reach for the clippers. Cue the Coldplay song.
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