Apr

1

Tranq gun: loaded

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Verdict: I decided to RSVP that we’d be happy to go on the DC trip. My thinking is to plan for the worst, that way I will at least be prepared if everything goes tits-up and I find myself ball-gagging a 3-year-old mid-flight and shooting him full of elephant tranquilizers.

I am not without lingering concerns, of course, but I’m thinking above all how nice it sounds to do something together, just the two of us. Even if I end up regretting it, I can’t pass up the chance to have an adventure that’s all our own. So much of my time lately is spent distracted by my 14-month-old — chasing Dylan, trying to feed Dylan, pulling clumps of dirt out of Dylan’s mouth, attempting to calm Dylan down as he screams bloody murder about the mighty injustice of being restricted from the dirt-choking he so deeply enjoys — that I often feel like I barely get a chance to focus completely on Riley, and how awesome of a kid he really is these days. Sure, he sometimes causes my ears to firehose giant arterial spurts of blood and brain matter when he cranks up his Whine-O-Meter to full capacity, but on the rare occasions we’re out and about by ourselves it’s a real joy to be able to fully experience him for who he is right now: smart, funny, articulate, weird as an LSD-dosed Martian.

Some of you mentioned that he probably wouldn’t remember the trip and thus it might not be worthwhile, and while I know what you’re saying my feeling is that it doesn’t really matter to me if he’s unable to detail this trip with perfect clarity in his bestselling memoir someday down the road. He may not remember it when he’s older, but if that was the only criteria we used for providing our children with interesting or pleasant experiences, we’d just keep them in feces-filled cages for the first few years of life until they grew out of this miserable business of being so YOUNG and NEEDY and cramming DIRT in their mouths all the damn time, right? Okay, maybe not, but with little kids it is sort of about making happy moments when you can, with no particular expectations about the effects of doing so.

Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if he does remember it, because his memory has shocked me on more than one occasion. Recently we drove by a Bartell’s where I’d taken him with me at least six months back and bought, among other things, earplugs, and he pointed to it and announced, “Hey! There’s the earplug store!” Just two weeks ago we were talking about Easter and Riley described looking for eggs and how there were M&Ms inside the eggs, which is what we did last year. And strangest of all, maybe a year ago or more he told me about how we had once had Christmas at Uncle Joe’s house, which did in fact happen — when he was, like, 14 months old.

Nine times out of ten the kid can’t remember where he put his shoes, but he’ll turn around and describe with great accuracy the plot of a Curious George show he’s seen exactly once. You never know, is what I’m saying. Children’s brains are mysterious things.

I did talk to him about the trip last night and he was very excited, if a bit confused (“We will ride in a ROCKET to a MUSEUM!”). We talked about how planes are kind of loud and he decided he would bring his blanket to cover his ears, and he requested that we bring a “tiny TV” so he could watch old Battlestar Galactia episodes cartoons.

So! We’ll see, I guess. After all this pondering over things I’ll probably find out I’ve been bumped from the invite list. If we do end up going, I’m thinking I’ll need to get an easy-to-carry umbrella stroller, arrange for transportation that includes a booster seat (is this even possible? Don’t tell me I have to carry a carseat across the US for a freaking cab ride, please god), and a prescription for a large amount of alprazolam. For ME, of course. Come on, it’s not like I would carefully grind it into an undetectable powder and mix it with some apple juice and have it in a sippy cup ready to offer at the first sign of trouble, or anything.

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