Chapter Seven.

And THAT'S why I read the fucking manuals.

     It's the holidays. And what's more holidays than sharing family stories? (I mean besides the shopping, the copious drinking, the nostalgic TV specials, and the new Star Wars film? Actually, "copious drinking" probably doesn't qualify as holidays. I do that shit kind of a lot.) Anyway, in the spirit of family, I give you the latest installment of my memoir Making Sh*t Up: An Improvised Life. If nothing else, you'll likely feel better about yourself...

Chapter Seven

Family, High Chairs, Strollers, and Trying Not To Kill The Baby

 

   [Author’s Note: I was married for nearly twenty years to the same person. We’re not married anymore, and the reasons for that are nobody’s goddam business. But I would be remiss in leaving out important [or just really funny] stories from my life that stretched over the two decades we were married. My ex-wife, Tracy, is a wonderful human being, and not just because she’s the mother of my child. We collected some good stories through our years together, and I’ll be sharing some of them. But if you think I’m going to slag my ex-wife, then you’re going to be disappointed. This ain’t that kind of memoir. It is pretty fuckin’ funny though, so I’d suggest reading on. Thanks.]

       When Ella was two or three months old, I was holding her one evening while Tracy was preparing dinner. I was happily dancing my daughter around the kitchen, enjoying every little coo and giggle I could illicit. Presently Tracy, who had her back to us as she was cooking, asked over her shoulder if I could grab something out of the pantry. I decided to set Ella in her high chair before I went to the pantry.

     We were fortunate enough to have almost everything we needed for our new child given to us by friends and family. This meant that everything came slightly used – and without instructions. If I’d had the instruction manual for the high chair, I imagine it would have said something in there along these lines: Before placing infant in high chair, please make sure that the T-strap is fastened together. Place infant’s legs on either side of T-strap to ensure infant is secure and seated upright. Placing infant in high chair without fastening the T-strap will guarantee that infant will slide right through high chair and onto floor, where she will look up at you with an expression that suggests she can’t believe she is the progeny of somebody so incredibly stupid. That is why I read the manuals. But I didn’t have the manual. And I am that stupid.

     Every experience for an infant is a new experience. So when she slid right through the bottom of the high chair and hit the floor, she didn’t cry right away. She looked rather puzzled, actually. But then I guess her pain receptors kicked in, but infants can’t just start crying, they have to build it up like tiny little pressure cookers on whom the release valve is temporarily stuck. My daughter turned bright red, then the most magnificent shade of purple. And then she cut loose with a wail that raised the hackles on every mother wolf from Dallas to The Rocky Mountains.  Other moms in the neighborhood suddenly appeared at our kitchen window. My wife spun around at the sound, and I so wish that I could tell you that what she saw was me, picking our daughter up off the floor and trying to soothe her like the good daddy that I was.

     What she actually saw was our infant daughter; flat on her back and flailing like an upended turtle (but with way more lung capacity), and me, with my back to the crying infant, looking at the high chair like it was the problem. I swear, as Tracy scooped Ella up off the floor and glared at me, I pointed to the fucking high chair, in a desperate attempt to place the blame elsewhere. Because I’m just that quick on my feet. I maintain to this day that Ella was bawling, not because the fall had hurt her, but because she knew I was her father, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

     Then there was The Stroller Incident. Just as in the previous High Chair Incident, we were living in a tiny little bungalow-style house in east Dallas, by White Rock Lake. Ella was a brand-new baby, and we were brand-new parents, trying very hard to figure things out, trying not to do anything that might kill the baby, and making shit up as we went along. One of the few new items we received back when Tracy had had her baby shower was a new stroller. The box said “stroller,” but it looked like an all-terrain vehicle for tiny people. The thing had giant, knobby wheels (for off-roading your baby, I guess), compartments for carrying all the necessary baby items, plus a magazine or six for Mom, and a bottle of Scotch for Dad. I’m pretty sure it had a clutch. This one came with a manual, which I read front-to-back over the course of the two days it took me to assemble. What I failed to do, however, was walk Tracy through the process. So by the time I got the thing put together, I knew everything there was to know about that stroller. Tracy only knew that it was time for our first Family Stroll.

     And so, with our new, high-tech baby transportation, we headed out the front door, and off to make a new memory. We waved to Darryl and Georgia, our senior neighbors across the street, as it was late March, and the couple were in their outside rocking chairs, enjoying the spring weather. (On our first day in the bungalow house, Darryl -then 92 years of age - introduced himself to us thusly: “I’m 92 years old. I still drive my own car, I still mow my own grass, and I still fuck my wife.” Georgia was standing beside him at the time.) They waved back, smiling at the new parents and their new baby, off together for their first outing as a family.

     Now, stop just a moment, and think about that image from our neighbors’ point of view: there goes Tracy, pushing her sleeping baby in a brand new stroller, a beatific smile on her face. And there’s Larry, just a few steps behind. They proceed down the sidewalk, turn left onto another street, and disappear from view.

     Cut to FIVE MINUTES LATER: Darryl and Georgia, sitting in their same rocking chairs, and here come Larry and Tracy, walking back to the house. The baby is still peacefully sleeping. Tracy, however, is sobbing uncontrollably, trying very hard not wake the baby with her crying. And there comes Larry, about ten feet behind his girls. He has a cut above his left eye that is bleeding into his field of vision. His left arm is sporting some kind of abrasion from wrist to elbow, and the left knee of his jeans is ripped and bleeding. Please bear in mind: it’s been five minutes since the happy family left the house for their first stroll.

     Here’s what happened: the street we turned on to from our street was a long, downhill grade that led to White Rock Lake. Tracy was leaning back as she walked, to counter-balance the weight of the stroller. My ex-wife loves to walk and she’s strong, so I wasn’t worried at all that she couldn’t handle the downhill slope while holding onto the carriage with Ella. About halfway down the street, I noticed my shoe was untied. As I bent down to correct the issue, Tracy noticed I had stopped. She was about ten feet ahead of me on the sidewalk, holding the ergonomic handlebar of the stroller while looking back at me.

     As I was kneeling and tying my shoe, I heard Tracy ask, “What’s this button do?”

     At this point, my life went into slow motion, and I didn’t even need to use The Force to know what was about to happen. On top of the ergonomic handlebar of the stroller, near Tracy’s left hand, was a big button. A big, red button. And what you must understand about Tracy is that she is a take-charge person, in the best sense of that phrase, far more so than I ever was. Tracy was never afraid to jump in and try something, and this must have seemed to her like a very easy thing to try.

     Except that she didn’t know what the big red button would do, and I did. But I hadn’t taken the time to explain it to her before we left to go make the memory of our First Family Stroll, because it might seem insulting to a grown woman with a college degree to tell her that we can’t go off on our First Family Stroll until I explain to her the workings of this shiny new stroller. I mean, it’s a fucking stroller. So Tracy asked, “What’s this button do?,” and then, because she’s a college-educated, take-charge kind of person, she pushed the button with her thumb, which caused the stroller to instantly pancake down, where it was no longer attached to Tracy’s hands and promptly began rolling downhill.

     I was 36 years old when my daughter was born, and not in the best shape of my life. Because I am a competitive person, I had tried to match my wife’s pregnancy weight gain. Except I had, for maybe the first time in my life, overachieved. I wasn’t exactly a chubsy-ubsy when Ella was born, but I definitely was slogging around some extra bricks in my belly. But you’d have never known it in that instant, when I sprang from my crouched position, shoe still untied, took two running steps past Tracy, and launched myself at a pancaked stroller that was quickly picking up a head of steam as it motored toward the intersection at the bottom of the hill. In my head I imagined I looked like Superman; in reality I probably more closely resembled Dom DeLuise. (If you don’t understand that last reference, please pause in your reading and go Google Dom DeLuise. Seriously, how do you not know him? Blazing Saddles? The World’s Greatest Lover? Cannonball Run? You know what? Put the fucking book down right now, and go watch at least two of those movies. For me. Please.)

     While airborne, I hooked two fingers of my left hand onto the rear axle of the stroller, as it was making its getaway. And then Gravity – that most harsh of mistresses – took hold of the situation. I seemed to come out of the air one body part at a time, starting with my head, which bounced off the concrete and opened up a cut above my eye. My left forearm followed, scraping along behind the stroller and leaving most of the top two layers of skin curbside. The rest of my body weight then came down on my left knee, ripping a hole in my shitty jeans to expose yet more skin to the sidewalk. After what seemed a very long moment (that probably only took a few seconds), stroller and I came to a coasting stop. Lying on my face, on the sidewalk, with a short but concentrated blood trail behind me, I believe I said, “That button compresses the stroller to make it easier to load into the car, Hon.”

     Tracy helped me to lock the stroller back in its upright position, and I managed to scrape myself off the sidewalk. Ella never woke up. Not once. We pushed her back up the hill to our street, Tracy beginning to cry, and me being absolutely no consolation whatsoever, as I couldn’t even keep up with her. When we got to the front of our house I glanced over to see Darryl and Georgia, sitting exactly where they’d been five minutes earlier, Georgia clearly distressed over the site of us. She hurried across the street as fast as she could for a woman of 88 years, and I asked her to go inside the house, with Tracy and Ella, which she did. I sat down on the steps leading up to our porch, trying without success to not bleed on everything around me. I eventually raised my head enough to see Darryl across the street, still sitting in his chair, adjusting his glasses as if he couldn’t quite make out what his old eyes were seeing. As long as I live, I will never forget his words to me, shouted as they were for the whole neighborhood to hear:

     “What’n the FUCK happened to YOU?”

     Next Week, Chapter Chapter Eight: Sex, Contact Highs, and Rock N Roll