On a recent Saturday afternoon, my wife attended two high-school graduations. Meanwhile, I got to entertain our two little boys. Finding activities that appeal to brothers ages 7 and 2 is a challenge. To her credit, my wife, given the same baby-sitting task, would have engaged the boys in constructive pursuits such as watering the rhododendron, naming the continents and making life-like reptiles out of Play-Doh.
Not to be outdone, I cooked up an afternoon of age-appropriate educational activities to help prepare our young men to be model citizens and good providers. I came up with marshmallow-eating, floor wrestling and Sir Goony’s golf.
“Yeah!” said the 7-year-old when I announced our afternoon activities.
“I want six marsh-me-yellows,” said the 2-year-old.
The beauty of marshmallow eating is that it stops brotherly bickering. It’s hard to trash talk with a mouth full of mush. About the only thing coherent you can say with marshmallows in your mouth is “Huh?” and “Mo.”
“Mo,” said the little one as he stuffed the last of six marshmallows into his mouth.
“Huh?” said big brother.
Floor wrestling, on the other hand, is a dicey game — like trying to contain a nuclear reaction. Once it gets started, it takes on a life of its own.
The boys prepared for our wrestling session by pulling all 17 pillows off the bed in the master bedroom. The pillows serve as both landing pad and weapons cache.
Before I can signal the start of the match, the 2-year-old already has me in a headlock and the 7-year-old has begun pummeling my abs with a memory-foam pillow that’s about as pillow-like as a sack of hammers.
I retaliate with my trademark submission hold, the “ham tickle” — I grab each boy by the back of a leg and squeeze. This is a hold designed to elicit the universal tap-out phrase: “Daddy is better than me!”
It works.
Next, we’re on to Sir Goony’s Family Fun Center across town in Brainerd.
“Are we there yet?” my 2-year-old asks as we pull out of the driveway on Signal Mountain.
“You’ll know we’re there when you see a giraffe,” explained my 7-year-old.
“Huh?” said the 2-year-old.
I knew we were in trouble as we slowly made our way up the Ridge Cut. The normally fluid Saturday-afternoon traffic slowed to a crawl and then to a complete stop. We were mired in a traffic jam behind a multi-car pileup. It would take us almost an hour to travel less than a mile to the nearest exit.
Meanwhile, the three of us immediately retreated into testosterone-induced insanity. The 2-year-old began to scream with such ferocity that I rolled up the windows.
“Dis not Goony Golf!” he bellowed endlessly. “Dis not Goony Golf, Daddy. Dis not giraffe!”
Meanwhile, the 7-year-old began writhing in his seat clutching the front of his pants.
“Bathroom,” he squealed. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”
In moments like this you begin to question the wisdom of human reproduction.
Ever the resourceful father, I handed my older son an empty Gatorade bottle and encouraged him to do the right thing.
The baby was so engrossed by the sight of his older brother filling the bottle that he stopped crying and started asking questions.
“What you doing?” he said. “You doing Goony Golf?”
Ahead, the traffic parted and we finally made it to Sir Goony’s, where we played 18 blissful holes and still made it home before dark.
Later, when my wife returned home, the boys were already in bed.
“Everything go OK?” she said as she dropped her car keys on the kitchen table.
“Piece of cake,” I said, never looking up from my magazine.
