Going Gypsy

by David James

  One of my first big revelations as a father came after a two-hour battle with our firstborn over a carrot. Obviously I had yet to learn to pick my battles. Just a couple of years into parenthood and I set the standard for what would forever stand as the lowest point of my fathering career.

  To this day I have mixed feelings about the incident. On one hand, I still think I was right about parental authority and children trying new things, but on the other, there is no doubt that I handled things in a horribly inappropriate manner. There simply isn’t any valid justification for a grown man spending the better part of two hours trying to coerce a two-year-old into eating one tiny bite of carrot. No matter how frustratingly obstinate that toddler could be.

  Like any new parent I felt like a Stranger in a Strange Land, but failed to heed Heinlein’s sage advice: “Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.”

  The Piglet was in her high chair and proudly proclaimed that she had finished her TV dinner (another low point in the parental record book) when, unfortunately for both of us, I noticed that the vile little reconstituted cubes of orange cardboard on her tray had not been touched.

  “You need to eat your carrots.”

  “I don’t like them.”

  “How do you know you don’t like them? You’ve never tried one before.”

  “I don’t like them.”

  “Try one before you say you don’t like them.”

  “I don’t like them.”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t like them. They could taste like ice cream for all you know—now try one.” I scooped up one of the little cubes with her spoon.

  “I don’t like them.”

  “Just try one, that’s all, then if you don’t like it, you don’t have to eat the rest.” I tried to move the spoon up to her lips.

  “I don’t like them.” She squeezed out through clinched teeth. The spoon was promptly emptied, having been transformed into a vegetable catapult.

  “How do you know . . .” I was getting fully agitated, yelling even, “until you try one?”

  Veronica called out from the other room, “What’s going on in there?”

  “I don’t like them.”

  “Nothing, honey.” No need to get the wife involved.

  “I don’t like them.”

  My brain was about to explode, so I backed it down a couple notches into silent seething mode.

  This would be the first of many standoffs that I would experience with The Piglet over the subsequent sixteen years. Looking back, I think I set a bad precedent right then and there, but I wasn’t about to give in. As a novice in the field of child rearing, I had no idea when to make my stand, or when to simply declare victory and surrender. I was ready to go to the mat. So was The Piglet.

  I tried to regain my composure. Quietly, but really pissed, I managed, “Fine, then we’ll just sit right here until you try one.”

  “I don’t like them.”

  How do kids ever survive to adulthood?

  This had become an epic battle of wills, and it would go on and on for an amazingly long time. Stubborn didn’t even begin to describe the two combatants in this altercation. At one point Veronica looked in, shook her head, and simply walked away in disgust. I heard the bedroom door shut. After another hour or so, I sat truly in awe at the display of obstinate tenacity this toddler was putting forth. Then I snapped. I’d had it.

  “Okay, that’s it. You will eat this carrot.”

  “I don’t like them.”

  I went for her spoon again, but The Piglet was not about to suffer that indignity. Before I could reload the catapult, she was free of her high chair and flying out of the room. All I saw was a diapered butt bouncing into the kitchen at top toddler speed.

  I sprung into action and was right behind her, cautiously balancing a couple of carrot cubes on the spoon, skillfully leaning into the curves so that centrifugal force would keep them in place, balancing with Cirque du Soleil precision, and bellowing at the top of my lungs the entire time. But The Piglet’s low center of gravity and innate lack of clumsiness gave her a distinct advantage. Not once did she bang a knee on a coffee table or slam a shoulder into a door jamb while the crazed pursuit took child, father, and vegetable through every room of the house.

  Finally, Veronica’s panicked pleas and my mounting bruises broke the psychotic episode. I gave up.

  The Piglet won, and this did not sit well with the young daddy. There were other showdowns over the years, as there should be with any healthy, intelligent kid, and we won them, as any healthy, intelligent parents should, but I couldn’t help feeling that somewhere in the furthest recesses of her mind The Piglet always knew that she had won the first round.

  Years, and two more offspring, taught us to understand the difference between a toddler refusing to try something new and a teenager about to try something that could have lifelong consequences. We learned where to draw the lines so that confrontations could often be avoided completely.

  Some passed-over food seemed mighty inconsequential once kids were making decisions with real weight, and we wanted them to be comfortable including us in that process. We learned to encourage our kids to voice their opinions, strove for actual discussions, tried to stay engaged in their lives, and made an effort to see things from their point of view.

  There were still plenty of disagreements, especially when final rulings came down. After all, we were not running a democracy. That would have been crazy. We were outnumbered! It was more like a constitutional monarchy. One where the royals maintained ultimate power.

  As time went by, the ability to have real conversations came to play a huge part in our transformation from the child-parent relationship to an adult-to-adult one. But in getting to that end, there were times when a good translator would have come in handy.

  The Great Puberty Wars may have been the worst of it. It was like the terrible twos all over again. Only this time we were dealing with bigger, smarter, wilier entities. Entities that were convinced we were out to ruin their lives. No matter how many times we tried to explain that our decisions were made with their best interest at heart, it didn’t seem to sink into their hard little heads.

  Teenagers feel that every party is the after-party at the Academy Awards, every game is the Super Bowl, and every day is their last day on earth—so denying them anything really is the end of the world to them.

  Basic stuff like, “No, you can’t go to a party at someone’s house if their parents aren’t home,” became the Hundred Years’ War. Or at least an all-night battle.

  “No, you can’t use the car tonight—I need it, but I’ll be glad to drop you off,” somehow sounds just like, “I hate your guts and want to destroy your very soul,” to the ears of an adolescent.

  Child rearing is a war of attrition, and we were fairly sure that if we could just hold our ground we would emerge victorious. I held onto the hope that one day my kids would see things the way I’d heard Mark Twain had:

  “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

  By The Piglet’s senior year of high school, peace (or at least an uneasy truce) had been restored. But there was one last parting shot left in the adolescent arsenal.

  “I’m eighteen now. I can do what I want.”

  That dreaded time when the teens are technically adults, but still in high school. At that age when they think that being an adult means the freedom to head out and start being stupid at top speed, without any of that pesky earning a living and paying bills stuff.

  The standard “Not in my house” or “As long as you live under my roof, you’ll abide by my rules” replies didn’t gain much traction with our young ’uns. A resolution with a little more weight behind it was required.

  While driving The Piglet to school one day, as she rambled on about how we no longer had
any authority over her, I got fed up. I pulled into the drop-off lane and calmly laid out to her what became known in our family as “THE Talk.” No, not that “the talk,” this one:

  “Yup, you’re right, you are an adult, which means we are through with our job of raising you. Anything we do from here on out is as a favor to you—out of the goodness of our hearts—because we love you. Get this straight: we don’t owe you anything anymore. We don’t owe you a college education. We would like to help you with one, because we want what’s best for you, but we don’t have to. We don’t owe you a place to live. We will be glad to provide one for you temporarily, until you graduate from high school, but we don’t owe it to you. Don’t like our rules? Fine, leave. We can’t, and won’t, try to stop you. In fact, legally we can kick you out of our house right now, today, because—oh yeah—that’s right—you’re an adult. There would be no repercussions for us because we’re done, we did our job.”

  A similar version was repeated as each offspring reached voting age. Happy birthday.

  Harsh, but very effective.

  The results were remarkable. Almost immediately the uppity teen attitude changed. No more yelling, just a little brooding as reality set in. Then they started actually seeing themselves as adults, not just using the word as an argument to stay out all night. The understanding that real life has real consequences began to dawn on them. A bridge had been crossed. Though not as fun, this transition was every bit as thrilling to see as a toddler’s first steps.

  THE Talk became less harsh with each chick readying him- or herself for flight from the nest. The younger ones had the benefit of seeing their siblings go over the bridge before them. By the time The Boy was making his transition, I barely had to mention it. He knew the drill.

  However, I still felt like I had one nagging piece of unfinished business as a dad. The Piglet was visiting us on St. Croix during her senior year of college, and we had developed a tradition of stopping at the Paradise Café on the way to the airport whenever she was leaving. She loved their vegetable soup. It had tons of carrots in it, but, as The Piglet had done for years, she would leave them in the bowl. She had become a carrot detection and extraction expert.

  For over two decades, no stewed, boiled, shredded, pot-pied, ranch dressing–dipped, or even baked-in-a-cake carrot made it past her lips. Her stubbornness knew no bounds. She had never consumed a carrot in any form. Ever. She could find microscopic bits of them in dishes no one ever suspected contained carrots. Many a time I looked over at her plate at the end of a meal only to see a tiny pile of tuber bits gleaned from some unknown source. It wasn’t like I was trying to sneak one past her. Who knew Rice-A-Roni had carrots in it?

  On our way to the pre-airport lunch, she had been begging me to change her ticket so she could stay a few more days, but I was pretty sure that it would cost too much. Over her soup she continued the pleading. The Piglet is nothing if not tenacious. Suddenly, a long dormant ember sparked in the deep recesses of my mind. The statute of limitations had not run out, as far as I was concerned.

  “Let me go outside and check what it costs to change your flight.” I offered (cell phones didn’t work inside the four-hundred-year-old brick, hurricane-proof dungeon of a restaurant). She was so happy, smugly confident that she had charmed her old dad and was going to get her way.

  Until I said, “But if I change it, you have to eat a carrot.”

  I didn’t wait for a reply. I was out the door to let her stew on it.

  She must have been doing some pretty serious stewing, because by the time I got back inside, she was nearly hysterical. A grown woman bawling and causing a huge scene in a crowded restaurant. Customers were staring, and the waitress looked at me like I had been outside killing the family cat.

  Sometimes it’s hard to tell with The Piglet whether she is putting me on or not, but she had worked herself into quite a state. All red-eyed and trembling with fear, real fear. Carrotphobia.

  I started to feel bad, like I really had scarred her for life, but I snapped out of it. Victory was too close; this was no time to go soft. I had to buck myself up so I could go through with my diabolical plan.

  “It doesn’t cost that much, so if you eat a carrot, I’ll go back out and change the ticket.”

  A tiny little “Do I have to?” came from across the table. She was actually sobbing. But I refused to allow her attempts to weasel out of the bargain weaken my resolve.

  “No, you don’t have to. It’s your choice. Leave today, or eat a carrot and stay ’til Monday.”

  “Okay, here goes.” But she couldn’t do it. She gave the little orange bit a sniff and whimpered, “I’m concerned it might be pungent.”

  Seriously, that is exactly what she said.

  “We’d better get going to the airport, or you’re gonna miss your flight.”

  I started to get up from the table.

  “No, no, I’ll do it. Do I have to swallow it?”

  “Yup, but we have to go.” No cracks in my armor.

  She popped the small piece into her mouth and chewed between sobs. I was watching like a hawk for any napkin spitting, but she managed to gag the morsel down.

  I was actually starting to feel sorry for her, she made herself so pitiful, but then I thought back twenty years and went in for the kill.

  “You didn’t really have to eat it, I already changed the ticket. Oh, and by the way . . .”

  I inserted a long pause for dramatic effect.

  “I win.”

  22

  Lessons Learned in a Walmart Parking Lot

  While the idea behind getting BAMF was to avoid going broke on our long overdue visit excursion, camping can still be a little costly. Our rolling home can seriously suck down the fuel, and RV parks generally run anywhere from twenty to fifty bucks a night.

  In order to keep those expenses down, David and I quickly discovered the beauty of dry camping, often known as boondocking, by pulling off the road to sleep without any services like water or electricity. BAMF is reasonably self-contained and can provide all the comforts of home even without a campground, at least for a few days.

  The most plentiful, and easiest to find, boondocking locations are Walmart parking lots. Many of the stores are open all night, have security patrols, and actually encourage overnighters. It brings in business. But it is usually just a place to spend a night and then head on down the highway. For obvious reasons, a Walmart lot is not often considered a destination.

  It’s rare to be the lone boondocker in a Walmart parking lot. Usually there are quite a few fellow blacktop bivouackers, but the Supercenter in Bozeman, Montana, caught us by complete surprise. We met people from all over the world in that lot. It was a veritable RV rodeo of motor homes, campers, trailers, pop-ups, buses, and trucks pulled in every which way. And a bunch of them looked like they had been there awhile. As the closest Walmart to Yellowstone, this Supercenter had indeed become a destination.

  On our first morning in Bozeman, after percolating a pot of coffee and attempting to sweep out some of the hefty layer of western dust BAMF had accumulated, I took a seat up front in order to do some though-the-windshield people watching. Tucked in amongst the behe moth bus-type motor homes, the giant fifth wheel trailers, and the more conservative pop-up campers was a classic Volkswagen Bus. It looked like a bevy of hippies might soon emerge, trailed by clouds of suspicious smoke.

  My curiosity piqued, I sipped my coffee and settled in for the show. Before long, a lithe, blonde, dreadlocked woman stepped out, stretched, and fired up an outdoor cook stove. She started a pot of coffee, leaned into the Magic Bus for a quick word with the other yet-to-be-seen occupants, grabbed a tote bag, and headed into the Walmart. I was now fully engaged. My own personal reality TV show, Bozeman Walmart Parking Lot.

  Out popped a rambunctious, sippy cup–toting, curly-headed toddler, followed quickly by a disheveled young man. Slightly bent and sleepy looking, the poor guy, I reckoned, couldn’t wait to get back home to a comfy
bed.

  Watching their morning routine, my mind wandered back to our family’s crazy cross-country Chevy-Van-and-tent trip when The Boy was still in diapers. The extra supplies needed to maintain a traveling toddler took up most of the back of our full-sized van, so I couldn’t imagine how these folks were cramming it all into their little bus.

  I needed a scheme to get myself a closer look. A book for the little one, that would do it. Grabbing a copy of Charlotte’s Web I had picked up at a campground trading library, I sauntered over. I was sweetly offered coffee—the only hospitality that the Magic Bus was capable of managing.

  “I am pleased you brought a cup. We have no space for extra things. I think of disposing a fourth spoon for some additional space it can make to us,” the man half-joked in a lovely German accent. Could this get any better?

  “I am Hans, my son is Michael, and my wife is Ana. She is back soon.”

  Little Michael reached up to me, and was soon riding on my hip. He informed me that he was two, then skipped seamlessly from English to German when he addressed his father. What a sweetie.

  When Hans proudly gave me the nickel tour, I was floored by the interior. A skilled carpenter, he had transformed his little pop-top hippie wagon into a thing of extremely functional beauty. Rich wood had been fashioned into an elaborate configuration of cabinets, counter space, and sleeping areas. I was blown away. Still, it was damn tight in there, and there was no kitchen or bathroom.

  “How long are you on holiday?” I asked. “Are you going to see more National Parks?”

  You could have knocked me over with a Montana dust particle when he answered.

  “We are to go around the world.”

  What? I didn’t say it aloud, just let my dumbfounded bovine expression carry the conversation.

  “We will drive to Pacific Coast and follow south to the end of South America, where we find a boat that accommodates the autobus and go it to New Zealand.”

  Hans politely gave me a moment to let that all sink in.

  I still had some nagging keeping-up-with-the-Joneses feelings when I compared BAMF to some of the half-a-million-dollar showcase mansions-on-wheels we saw on the road—heck, right in that parking lot. There was always someone with a bigger, shinier new toy. But BAMF felt like Graceland compared to the über-pared-down lifestyle of this family. My brain was bouncing between sheer awe and what-the-hell-are-they-thinking. I went with awe.