Thursday the 21st.
Tonight I took the boys to Winston-Salem to buy a whitewater helmet while Amy
worked. Near the end of the drive I turned on the radio and hit the cool drum
intro to Steve Miller's Dance, Dance, Dance just perfect. By the time
the song was over I had totally taught both boys the art of air drumming and air
keyboards. They already rule at air guitar. So with their new found skills,
along with Ben's awesome head banging (he's self-taught, total natural at it),
we rolled into the next song.... The Scorpions Rock You Like A Hurricane.
I was so proud, it was such a moment. I almost had a tear in my eye when I
looked in the rear view mirror and saw both my boys biting their lips and
wailing their air guitars and nailing some fake drum solos. Of course Jackson
later asked if we could maybe see The Lobsters in concert sometime. I said "You
mean The Scorpions?" "Yeah, The Scorpions, I thought you said The Lobsters."
Some time ago, a very long time ago, Jackson heard that you could log onto the Captain Planet and the Planeteers website and become an Official Planeteer. (Information like this doesn't make it past him, you should hear him repeat commercials like it was something he learned on the Discover Channel. "Hey Dad, did you know that there is only one mattress that is certified by the Space Foundation?") So I printed the form, Amy helped him fill it out, then took him to the post office to put it in the mailbox. Let me just say that he was very excited about this. And as you can already guess, the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months. The website had said "while supplies last" and we've all been there before right, you know, the kid running to the mailbox day after day looking for the thing you ordered off the back of a cereal box. He finally quit asking about it on a regular basis, it would still come up every once in a while, but not as often. Then yesterday Jackson had a great big brown envelope in the mailbox with his name on it. He called me at the office and couldn't breathe because he was so excited. It came with a four episode DVD, a cut-out board game, an iron-on (this really is taking me back to being a kid), a sew-on patch, and a certificate. Not bad at all for a freebie. Jackson was even okay that it didn't really come with a power ring that would give him actual super powers (I guess he's growing up, a year ago that would have floored him). So I would just like to say thank you to Mister Ted Turner and his broadcasting company for coming through to make my kids day when I fully expected them to leave him hanging.