I have been meaning to write for quite some time but I had a couple things going against me. First of all, my laptop suffered an untimely death when it did a number of things I didn’t approve of a few weeks ago. It felt good to destroy it until I realized I would have to buy a new one or just spend the rest of my life without a laptop. The second problem was that my work computer needed to update it’s browser, a task that would be simple for most people, but nothing is simple for me when it comes to technology. Ultimately, I was forced to switch my browser from Safari to Google Chrome in order to have a browser up to date enough to continue on with my blog. A lot has transpired at the Jansma household since Max ate Parker’s helmet, here are a few of the highlights:

• Aiden continually uses the term “deez nuts” in response to just about everything even though he knows it will result in a ban from his devices. His defense is that everyone at school says it. Shirley and I’s response is that it isn’t funny, Shirley claims it was funny originally, I disagree, regardless it is no longer funny.
• Our dog Max seems to have a thing for the neighbor according to Parker, he and Shirley take Max to the bus stop every morning and the red rocket comes out when August mom appears, to Max’s credit August’s mom is kind of hot.
• Shirley signed Aiden up for basketball in Caledonia and this past Saturday morning at the skills evaluation, or lack of skills evaluation in Aiden’s and a lot of the other kid’s cases there were roughly 100 parents there and only one dipshit parent was wearing a mask, hopefully the guy had diabetes, asthma, and cardiovascular disease, other wise he should be hurled into the sun for his stupidity and failure to go along with what everyone else is doing.
• Parker’s football team had a BBQ at the coaches house and Shirley and I attended. I haven’t broken into the inner circle of the football dads on his team, nor do I plan on it at any point in his playing career, but it was weird to stand around in a circle with a bunch of dudes (and one mom) and have absolutely nothing to say. There was a story I wanted to tell but I got too nervous as to how it would be received by the cool dads who are part of the inner circle so I didn’t tell it, it was similar to the feeling you get when you want to tell a joke to a group of people but you only know a few of them well enough to be offensive and have it be acceptable.
• Shirley and I were invited to go to Boo at the Zoo with Aiden’s friends parents family. Shirley told me she turned the invitation down, which is quite unlike her since she loves the opportunity to engage in awkward small talk with complete strangers. I felt kind of bad, no idea why, and asked her if maybe we should reconsider, her response “I already have enough friends”. I don’t know if I have ever been more proud of her, even though she didn’t truly mean it, this has been my mantra almost my entire adulthood and something I frequently tell her when she involves me in plans with people I don’t know.

Those are some of the highlights and now I will get into the nitty gritty. Two Saturdays ago Parker had his final game up in Rockford. He had somehow managed to make his way onto the starting defense and his coach told me in an email how impressed he was with Parker’s improvement over the season. A normal parent would be proud and tip their cap to their child but I’m not a normal parent. I keep an eagle eye on Parker during the games as well as the scrimmages I am present at and I have seen little improvement when it comes to his aggressiveness. I am not saying he’s not able to be a good football player, because I think he can, I think he just doesn’t really care. Regardless, his attitude did change towards the middle of the season and he insisted on getting to practice early to make the most of the experience. I was half tempted to ask the coach if he had Parker confused with someone else but I decided to keep my mouth shut so Parker would remain on “gold” defense. The final game was slotted for a 10:30 kickoff and Shirley brought Parker up to Rockford where he had to be by 9:30. Upon her arrival Shirley was informed the the game had been pushed back to noon. She left Parker in Rockford and headed to a work related Halloween party that thanks to Parker’s game I was able to skip.

Parker didn’t have his water bottle so I brought it over to him on the bench, as I was walking towards his team Parker was headed in my direction, but not to get his water bottle, he had to hit the porta potty. Parker’s team was on offense so he thought it was safe to take care of business but they ended up turning the ball over right as stepped into the john. I ran towards the team but it was too late, the defense only had 10 players on the field, fortunately Parker typically runs away from any action on the field so it didn’t really matter that he was in the can with his uniform pants around his ankles. As I headed back to the stands he passed me and informed me he only had to do a rewipe not actually take a shit. Parker’s team trounced Rockford but Parker didn’t see much of the field in the second half. Not sure if it was due to the rewipe incident or the fact that his head coach wasn’t there and the playing time was controlled by a group of the inner circle who decided to play their kids the entire time. Either way it was bullshit, I didn’t drive all the way up to Rockford to watch someone else’s kid shy away from contact and run away to the other side of the field when the ball came his way, I was there to watch my kid do that. As we walked back to my truck I asked him if he was upset that he didn’t get to play much in the second half, he wasn’t.

On Monday Parker decided he needed a haircut, Pokemon cards, and new shorts in no particular order. When I got home he insisted that I take him for all of those things. When I told him I couldn’t because I had to make dinner he asked me again thirty seconds later, when I gave him the same response he asked Shirley and then came back and asked me again. I told him we could go on Tuesday instead only to get a text from Shirley mid day that we had plans to go out to dinner with Aiden’s friends mom and her boyfriend. (different parents than the Boo at the Zoo couple) Parker was not aware of the dinner plans and called me when I was on my way home from work. Things are a little different from when I was growing up, instead of utilizing a land line to call me, Parker calls me on our Alexa and it comes up as Shirley’s number. By now I should realize when I receive a call before 7pm it is one of the kids and not Shirley. It always catches me off guard when I hear a prepubescent voice on the other line and they start out with “Dad” followed by “Can you” or “Can I” or “Will you”. I informed Parker it would have to be Wednesday since his mom and I had dinner plans. Five minutes later the real Shirley texted me that the dinner plans were canceled freeing up my night and allowing me to be Parker’s bitch. Is Parker creative enough to send me a text disguised as Shirley in the hopes that it would make his shopping trip happen? I’d like to think so, but probably not.

We also decided to take Aiden with us since he needed some wardrobe upgrades as well. The kids initially wanted to go to Tanger but it was too cold to go to an outdoor mall so we settled on Woodland and landed at JC Penny. There was a lot of stuff on sale and we managed to compile quite a few items for what I deemed to be a fairly reasonable price. However, I do regret not speaking up when Parker picked out a couple of the ugliest pairs of shorts I have ever laid eyes on. When we got home Shirley chastised me for not vetoing the purchase and said she was going to return them, which means they will sit at our house for months before we drop them off as a donation at Goodwill. I also regret letting Parker badger me into buying him a white pair of Champion slides that were $25. I am certain I could find similar slides for a fraction of the price at TJMax or Marshals. However, having Parker constantly bother me until I brought home new slides was definitely not worth the money I would have saved.

On our way into the mall I told the kids about a client I had who “assisted” in an armed robbery that had taken place at the food court in the mall. I figured since they had just watched the first three episodes of Squid Games they were ready for a real life story about gun violence. They were quite interested in my story but bummed that no one actually got shot. There was one thing that made our trip to the mall even more catastrophic than witnessing an armed robbery, the discovery of the Van’s store. Last week I bought a pair of Van’s at Dick’s Sporting Goods that I had had my eye on for quite some time (I admittedly have an Imelda Marcos sized shoe fetish) and already have had one unsolicited compliment from a black guy about the shoes. I have received other compliments from black guys when I am in court complimenting me on my suits, whenever a black guy tells me they like what I am wearing I know I have done well. My parents never took me on a spending spree to JC Penny where I was able to pick out whatever I wanted but had there been a Van’s store when I was a kid my parents wouldn’t have even let me enter it just to look around. The store is just awesome, that’s all I can say, it’s has this warmth to it that makes it so you don’t want to leave and the skateboards on the wall are a thing of beauty (even though I am not a skateboarder). Ultimately, I was able to resist the temptation of adding another pair of Van’s to my extensive shoe collection but I can’t say the same for the kids. They settled on the same pair of Van’s and both of them wore them to school today. While Aiden is a roller blader at heart (I will explain in tomorrow’s blog) my hope is that Parker graduates from the long board I bought him a few years back to a skateboard so I can take him on many more trips to the Van’s store and not feel like such a poser.