My Son...A Chip Off The Old Block In Florida

"My Son...A Chip Off The Old Block In Florida..."

by John S LES

I know that my personal life stories are among my most popular writings on this blog.  That being said, I am quite happy to share yet another family story that occurred this past week while I was vacationing with my family in Florida.  However, my next post will deal with some political revelations that I discovered while traveling across Florida.

So before we get to the political stuff, here's a humorous moment that occurred with me and the family while in a restaurant in Sarasota.

From the moment we landed in Florida, my son who is six years of age, kept bumping into things, tripping and falling at least once a day.  However, it was on our 4th day in Florida that he out did himself.  While my daughters, my wife and myself sat a table awaiting our lunch order, my son kept fidgeting on and off his chair.  He would sit halfway on it, stand up, sit down, squirm, etc.  We warned him several times to sit still in his chair, but he would only listen for a few minutes and then repeat his fidgeting.  Well, on one of his fidgets, his behind did indeed miss his chair.  To the surprise of us (and other patrons in the restaurant who happened to be paying attention to him) he does a head over heels, feet up in the air, Chevy Chase like pratfall.  Now you see him, now you don't - as he fell backwards.

Although people around us flinched to see if he was okay, the rest of the family and myself took a more relaxed reaction to see if he was okay.  We dusted him off, and checked him out and made sure that he wasn't hurt - and he wasn't.  He was actually more embarrassed because he could see that people were now watching him.  In addition, he was embarrassed because he thought we were going to yell at him for not sitting properly in his chair.

So he finally sat down properly in his chair with a sad face.  I just couldn't help my self to try to seize the moment and highlight the fact that his restless, bad behavior was probably from his mother's side of the family.  I proudly boasted to my wife and daughters that I was much a quieter and calmer kid when I was his age.  I then began to recall the "bad things" that I did at his age, thinking to myself that they would pale in comparison to my son's behavior.  So I continued with my declaration, "Let's see, when I was 4 years old, I helped set my mother's apartment on fire.  When I was 5 years old, I foolishly ran up to the kitchen table, slipped and fell and knocked out my two front teeth clean out of my mouth (costing her corrective dental procedures years later).  And when I was 6 years old, I put my grandfather's car in reverse while it was parked on the hill of the driveway at his house and nearly sent the car into a 10 foot ditch, some 80 feet away.  Luckily a cousin ran out and jumped into the car and was able to put the car back in park before the disaster."

It was at this very moment that I had an epiphany and realized that if I were my own son, I would have killed myself by now.  I then looked at my family sitting at the table.  All eyes were still staring at me, but those eyes were also straining to keep from laughing at my ridiculous outburst.

I then looked over at my son and said, "So son, I guess you aren't so bad after all, because I was clearly a lunatic at your age." 

About a half hour after our lunch was over, I called my mother and thanked her for not shortening my life for all the grief that I caused her in my first six years of living.

I did calm down by about age 8 or 9, and never really walked too much of a checked path after that.  Reflecting back at those early stages of my life, made me truly appreciate the struggles my mother went through with me.  God bless you mom.