Endless summer for dad, 14-year-old twins
Summer break is upon us, and I have a house full of kids home from school. Well, not a house full, but I have twins and they can make it seem like there are many, many more of them.
I think I speak for most parents when I say summer break seemed long as a kid and seems even longer as a parent. What to do? Swim team was fun for them when they were younger. For about an hour. We live next door to a country club that has a pool, and my wife was determined that they would have something to do for the summer. So swim raised its head for them. They had two swim practices every day, one in the morning and one in the early evening.
First, morning practice was at 8 ayem. Can you say, "Yeesh?" I think you can. Getting your sons up that early when they've been up half the night playing video games was no easy task. It's like waking a bear up in the middle of hibernation.
Second, there were evening practices which began at 5. Every day at 4:30 one of my twins would say, "Looks like rain." Every day.
The meets were fun. Watching them in races was fun. Watching them get better and better was fun and then ... they got older and the first thing that went bye bye was swimming.
One of the fun things about being a parent and getting older in general is your memory gets a bit fuzzy. I couldn’t tell you what they did in summers after that if my life depended on it.
OK, they're 14 now. and money has become extremely popular with them. This I know. They figured out you can buy “things” with it and go “places” with it as well. Things tend to be more video games and places tend toward movies like “The Avengers” and “Black Panther.” So off we went to Publix to fill out applications to work there.
One was like, “I have a very busy schedule, and I’m only available to work on Saturday afternoons.” Sounds like he has a lot to do, right? Actually most of it is bupkis, nada, whatever you want to call it.
The other one was like, “If I work every day, I’ll bring home $150 a week! Cool!”
Turns out the kids working there are in high school, and since mine go to ninth grade next semester, it was a no-go. Close but no cigar. We did go to the Y together the other day. That’s something, right? It’s barely June. Like I said,