After spending four days in the company of my nine year old son on a sports adventure weekend in California, I have found the answer I have been seeking for many a year. I no longer need to capture the party days of college. Gone are the days where I seek to be a teenager again. Goodbye to the present day with its responsibilities and worries.
I want to be nine again.
The age seems to be magical and full of wonder. Life is not about the next appointment or the next dollar to be made. It is about what has just happened and what will happen next.
Our journey began on Friday when we stepped on the plane. He had flown before, but not at a time where he could remember the occaision. At security, it was interesting how the metal detector worked. Once on the plane, no beach blanket novel was needed to entertain, just the pictogram card explaining the safety procedures. No DVD player. No newspaper. Think nothing of the two magazines I just bought him to keep him occupied. No, just the safety card.
Once we landed, it was off to get the rent-a-car. We were on the bus and he wanted to pick up a map. “Where are we” he asked. “Hey, can we get a Hummer” he asked. In LA, I said no… but the lady at Hertz gave us a sporty G6. Cool car, Dad.
Californians will tell you that life can begin and end with an In and Out Burger. For us, LA life began with one. After a long wait, the food finally arrived. “This is the best burger I have ever had in my whole life!”
To the hotel, we went, through the labyrinth of roads called the California freeway system. In the dark, we moved, for a while. At 10 PM, on a Friday night, traffic halted on the 110.
“Dad, is it always like this?” I recalled that it usually was and remembered when I got stuck in it trying to catch a plane or get to a TV shoot. But for him, the novelty of traffic at 10 PM was just that… a novelty.
At the hotel, the glass towers beamed skyward. We were met by the valets to take our car. “Is everyone this nice” he wondered. Then we saw movie posters lining the walls of the entrance, as the hotel had played a starring role in many movies. We passed by one poster in particular that grabbed his attention. Dad, ARNOLD!
Checking in was not a slam dunk. We entered the room using the cool key. He wanted to do it so I let him go first. As we went in, he noticed something was awry. “Dad, is there supposed to be a towel on the floor?” I said it probably fell off the bar. “Dad, why do the beds look slept in?” Okay… now this was weird.
We called down and they changed our room to one in the Circle Tower. That meant an unexpected surprise. We stepped onto the glass elevator, and there it was. “This elevator was used in the filming of ‘True Lies” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis.” He was in movie heaven.
The news was on as we prepared to go to bed. We heard it was “all time record heat for Los Angeles.” Oh, joys for me. “Dad, what is the hottest I have ever been?” He was about to find out.
Warn out from the trip, he could not get to sleep. Too excited. What were we going to do the next day? When does the pool open? What time does the soccer game start? Are they going to give our car back to us, or will they keep it? And at 2 in the morning, I heard him.
“Dad, you’re snoring too loud. Could you keep it down? I am trying to sleep!”
... to be continued.
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