Family - Why Do All Those People Look So Familiar?

"Four lift tickets - two adult, two children. That will be $112.50."

"You don't understand," Dad explains patiently. "We're here on the Mount Feverblister Winter Sports Paradise Package and All-You-Can-Eat Buffet. It says right there in the brochure, 'Lift Tickets Included.'"

The woman in the ticket booth puts down her Danielle Steele paperback and scans Dad's brochure. "What's included is Tickets to catch a Lift on the Mogul-Buster Express from the resort to the hill. See the footnote right there?"

 

"The Mogul-Buster Express? Are you talking about that panel van with four flat tires in the parking lot at the East Possum Bladder Best Western? The one with the 'Mogul-Buster Express' signs taped over the rust holes?"

 

"That's the one. Good thing you didn't have a lot of stuff to carry on the walk over here. Which reminds me, the Ski Rental is right over there. $112.50 please."

"To-ho-od Ju-hu-hun-ior, pl-he-he-ase st-ho-hop th-ha-ha-hat!"

Todd Junior, who has been rhythmically testing the soles of his new snowboard boots on the back of Dad's car seat for the past three hundred miles, thumps his feet down to the floor mat and punches Little Suzy in the arm.

Little Suzie clicks the "pause" button on her iPod, yawns, stretches, then shoves Bernie the Schnauzer, who has been sleeping in the rear window shelf behind Todd Junior's head, onto Todd Junior's head.

Two hours later, once Mom has mopped all the Schnauzer pee out of Todd Junior's hair and the AAA wrecker has pulled the family sedan out of the snow bank, the family is on the road again.

Well, the first leg of the Holiday Triathlon - Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year - is over. As usual, my family spent a wonderful Thanksgiving day eating way too much food, drinking what some of us consider just about the right amount of beer, and trying to ignore the score of the Detroit Lion's game. The only difference this year is that we did all this, for the first time ever, at my son Patrick's house.

I would like to just make sure that you have the whole picture here. This is the same Patrick who considers Slim Jims an essential food group. He drinks milk straight from the bottle. He eats his soup with a serving spoon, right out of the sauce pan. And if he happens to think of crumbling crackers into that soup, he sends a press release to Food and Wine Magazine.

I know this, because he learned all these things from me.

We went to a wedding today. The bride was the daughter of a couple who have been our friends for more than thirty years. Looking at this radiant, drop-dead gorgeous young woman in her wedding dress, beaming at the handsome young man who was the love of her life, I couldn't escape the memory of chocolate pudding smeared on the cheeks of the four year old little girl who used to light up rooms with that exact same sun-breaking-through-clouds smile.

We had never met the young man who found himself at the center of this whole operation. In the slide presentation at the reception we did get to see a photograph of him taken a few years back, in which he was walking away from the camera, holding a sippy cup in one hand and what appeared to be a stuffed weasel in the other, clearly enjoying a little "naked time."

His parents had obviously discovered that the secret of dealing with naked little boys is keeping their hands full.