Car Trip

Yesterday, I had to drive to the Chicago suburbs to look at some equipment that a theater undergoing a renovation was selling off. At the last minute, I decided to ask Marty if he wanted to come with me.

10 hours non-stop with my 8-year-old son.

My first clue about what the journey would be was when we were first getting on the Indiana turnpike and Marty noted that the choices were Ohio or Chicago as we came out of the toll booth. A couple of miles down the road, he mentioned that it was good that we had chosen the Chicago ramp. "If we went to Ohio, we'd have to come all the way back through Indiana to get to Chicago."

A few minutes later, after he had already gotten tired of playing Zombie Duck Hunt on his iPod, I got this..."I don't understand the theories of football."

For the record, I only got about two questions into trying to find out what he didn't understand before just giving up (his answers amounted to "everything").

Then, I got the first joke of the day. "What kind of food does the Easter Bunny eat at the movies?," I was asked. "Hop corn."

At a rest stop, after he noticed some Chicago Cubs merchandise -- which he's designated as his favorite sports team for no real reason -- he also noticed the White Sox stuff next to it. "Who are the White Sox?," he asked. "They're a sports team," I said. "Yeah, but what do they play...football? Soccer?," he said. I explained that they were a baseball team and that Chicago actually has two professional baseball teams. "Why?," he asked. "Do they get to play if the Cubs get sick or something?"

A little while later, he noted another group of road signs. "We can either go to Chicago or Des Moines," he said. I told him that we most definitely weren't going to Des Moines. When he wanted to know why, I had to tell him that I was not going to Iowa and that I didn't really like the Hawkeye state. When pressed to admit why, I told the story of having a tire going flat in Iowa and being stuck for several hours trying to find any place that had an air hose that wasn't frozen.

That led to a conversation about Marty's new favorite subject -- U.S. states. He asked if he had ever been in West Virginia before and I had to tell him that while he's been close to the WV border, he never actually went into the state. When he said that he wanted to rectify that, again I was busted for my lack of enthusiasm. Turns out that I don't really care about going back to a lot of states. (He was later disappointed when his requests to go to St. Louis and/or Wisconsin were denied.)

I told Marty that mostly West Virginia was just hills and mountains. Turns out that actually appealed to him. He told me that was also why he wanted to go to Colorado. I explained that there was a significant difference between the Appalachians and the Rockies. I've been scared a couple of times driving in the Appalachians, but I've never thought that I was going to die, like I have driving down from the Rockies.

That made Marty laugh hysterically. "I don't know why I'm laughing about my dad thinking that he was going to die," he said, between guffaws. I could've let it go, but being his father, I felt the need to teach him one of the rules of comedy...tradgedy plus time equals funny. "So, it can be funny," I said. "Because nothing actually happened to me. I didn't die." "Well, of course, you didn't die," he said. "If you had, then there wouldn't be anyone driving the van right now."

At the rest stop, Marty had bought an Invisible Ink book based on "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" He was using his pen to reveal the answers and then asking me the questions. When I started getting too many right, he switched and started giving me the answers and made me guess the questions. He hit a question about mythology...a word that he surprisingly didn't know. When he asked for an explanation, I did so...branching out to explaining the mythologies of the Greek, Roman and Norse gods. To demonstrate the similarities between the gods, I brought up that there have been episodes of Spongebob Squarepants where they refer to Triton and others where they refer to Posiedon. When I finished, he said, "I didn't understand a single thing you just said because I was busy thinking about how much I love lemonade, but heard something about Spongebob. I heard that part since I like Spongebob so much."

I suppose that I should've asked if he loved Spongebob as much as lemonade.

He loved lemonade so much that when we finally arrived at the location of the theater sale, he ended up having to use the restroom three times in a half-hour period.

After we had first looked at the equipment on sale, I needed to think about what I was willing to buy for my community theater. So, Marty and I went to have lunch at a restaurant called The Sugar Bowl. Marty frequently dislikes restaurants, but how could he turn down one that had sugar right there in the title?

As I was looking things up on my phone, Marty was busy running through an idea for a Spongebob episode that involved Patrick and Spongebob peeing on everything. Conversely, the Greek family sitting behind us were discussing whether Columbia or Boston College offered a better Masters program. I was only half paying attention to anything, so I was hearing things like, "So, then they start peeing on a police officer..." "I totally love the neighborhood around Columbia..." "And, then just as they're about to pee on a jellyfish..." "I hate Boston..."

After we were done with our meal, our waitress -- who was actually part of the family behind us -- came to the table with our bill. "I was born in California," Marty announced. "Really," she said. "What part?" "Los Angeles." "LA, huh?," she said, "Cool." "I was born the day before Halloween," he added. "I was born the day after Halloween," she said. "No, I said the day before," Marty insisted. "I got that," she assured him. "You were born October 30th, I was born on November 1st. It's all good." That seemed to satisfy him, but...

He repeated his proclomations with the girl at the cash register -- who I'm pretty sure was the cousin of our waitress -- adding, "I was born the day before Halloween, not the day after like her."

Actually, that was a pretty good conversation with a stranger for him.

After I bored him by going back to the theater and buying a few lights and cables...and annoyed him by not allowing him to just go anywhere he wanted in the mostly empty theater...Marty finally wanted to know what fun Chicago thing we were going to do.

We decided to take a drive by Lake Michigan, since Marty didn't see the point of going to Chicago if you're not going to see the lake. As we got close, I got off Lake Shore Drive and drove by Lincoln Park Zoo. After asking Marty if he wanted to stop and take a quick walk through the zoo, I said that I was going to have to try to find someplace to park and that might not be easy. "Then why the heck did you get my hopes up to go to the zoo?," my son admonished.

We finally did manage to come up with parking and took our walk. A brisk walk because it was 29-degrees with a nice stiff breeze coming off the lake. Right after we got into the zoo, we stopped to try to decide where we wanted to go with our limited time. As we talked, a park squirrel started to approach us along the railing.

Marty eyed the rodent suspiciously. I told him to just ignore the squirrel, that it was just looking for food. "I don't have any nuts, Mr. Squirrel," Marty said. I started to walk away and realized that Marty wasn't coming with me. I turned around to see Marty turning out his pockets with the squirrel at his feet, trying to prove that he did not have any food with him.

As we walked around, I somehow mentioned his little brother Casey. "I've been having so much fun in Chicago," he said. "That I forgot all about that little devil."

Little devil is his new nickname for his sibling. Apparently there are more on a list on his iPod, but little devil is his current favorite. Of course, every time that I hear this, I think of the Harvey comics character Hot Stuff...who it turns out, Casey actually does look a little bit like.

The problem with having a kid that seems to be geared towards the bainy side, is that at places like zoos, they want to read everything. We got stuck in the bird house, as Marty had to read and then identify the different birds. And, he was a little too excited about the puffins. I also was treated to sea lion jokes at that exhibit (See? Lion.).

Finally, it was time for us to go. As I started down Lake Shore again, my cell phone rang. Being in the middle of a city with a tough cell phone law, I yelled that I didn't have any hands free options with me and handed the phone back to Marty. I heard him speaking to his mother for a few minutes and just as he was asking to talk to Casey, he complained that the line had gone dead.

He tried to call back, but he's not used to my Blackberry. Amy ended up with a two-minute voice mail that sounded a little like, "I did push that...now what? It says connected. I don't know, I don't hear anything. There was just that one ladies voice..."

We managed to make it home without too much incident. There was a reasoned argument by Marty about why he should be allowed a Happy Meal ("A, I'm hungry. B, I want a toy. A is obviously more important than B...but I really do want a toy."), that was hard to argue.

We're actually returning to Chicago in a couple of weeks as a family, but the banter will be more muted with the sibling arguments going on. Still, 10 straight hours with my 8-year-old son did help remind me why I love him so much. You only get so many times to build memories like that. Maybe, I'll even be inspired to take Marty on a road trip so that he can see West Virginia for himself.

Then again, probably not.