Have you all met my youngest Max? …well Max is quite a character for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of spending time with him. He is 10 years old, in the 5th grade and is just about the sweetest little officer you could ever hope to meet. Just don’t step out of line or he will call you on it. Just ask me. It is funny how some kids are just prewired to stand on the principles of right and wrong and never waver. Max is just that sort of kid and I absolutely love him for it. This is all going to work out famously when Karah gets into high school. ;]
Just some insights into the way he approaches things are hilarious. Recently I came home from work and he came up to me with his sweet, spectacled but very serious face… “Dad” he tells me…”We had an incident at Safety Patrol today” just being about as grave sounding as he could. I wonder to myself who died but he continues…“We had a car that was making noises like a bus breaking down” and I am like Yeah? He goes “in the drop off lane…”. I asked him what they did and he tells me real matter of factly that they ran out and put cones around the offending vehicle. He states the resolution like it’s the obvious thing to do… I don’t know, maybe they train for this sort of thing in Safety Patrol.
He has been a full fledged member of Safety Patrol all year and never misses a day. At one point I asked him about who all was in Safety Patrol…because recently his friend Alex joined the force. Turns out that it is comprised entirely of girls along with Max, and now Alex. I think I understand the motivation a little more now. He never misses a day and takes his duties very seriously. Max has us keep a list of all the other Safety Patrol member’s phone numbers, I guess in the event of a crisis. He has even stood in for someone that was out for the day or was delayed… don’t laugh, one time he had a doctor’s appointment and he had to call someone to cover his “shift”. It is all quite serious stuff evidently. The safety of his classmates is something he seems to take to heart.
It is all pretty funny if you step back and realize that he is just 10 years old and weighs about 80 lbs soaking wet. Think of it this way… how funny would it have been to see a little mob of waist high Patrol officers running out with bright orange traffic cones to divert traffic around a stricken vehicle in the drop off lane? How would you have liked to have been that guy sitting in the broken down vehicle? I really wish there was a camera on that kid most days.
Another funny incident that happened at school recently was a small fire. Now bear with me, I know a fire is no laughing matter…and at a school no less. So we get home from work the other day and Max tells us in his serious deadpan way that “there was a fire at school today”. He said that “everyone moved outside” but that “a couple of backpacks didn’t make it”. His delivery is the funny part of it all. He said his class were all guessing at what might have caused it…cell phone and candles seemed to be the popular guesses. The school sent out a brief note the next day stating that the “small fire had started with outside influence and was contained in Pod C” and that they “were looking at closed circuit video of the incident… and would be speaking with the appropriate students shortly”. The tone made me think for a second that Max wrote the memo, or maybe that is just the way they speak to the students up at his school…
The kids all love to discuss my driving. Max regularly tells me when I am exceeding the speed limit. To him it is a hard number that must not be exceeded. Love that kid, or at least I will love it when he remembers this in about 6 years. They have taken recently to telling me that I drive aggressively. Luc pointed it out one day that I like to pull out and pass people if they are going too slowly, which I guess happens a lot to hear them tell it. I prefer to think of it as driving efficiently. I waste little time getting from point A to point B. A big time is had in the back seats when I take corners… the kids have made a small game of how much I can get them to slide and bump into each other. Of course I then take every opportunity to “enhance” the experience. Anyway, I guess I will never be as much fun as their Grandpa Daughtry when he does his “crazy driving”. Last told I think he must have driven up onto a sidewalk at one point… I didn’t ask anything further. ;]
Max tells us that he has a new girlfriend and the he is “doing things different this time”. His last girlfriend was a cute little girl back in Pflugerville that he had been going to school with since pre school. Her name was Paige and he was completely head over heals for that girl…she never knew. 5 years of classes together and he never said a word. I guess it was love from afar. The funny thing was that everyone else around could see what was going on. Amber was a substitute teacher at their school, as was Paige’s mother who also taught or assisted at the school. They would snicker at how the kids interacted, with Max always watching out for her but never really acknowledging her directly. He didn’t mind at all that everyone around knew that he liked her… he just wouldn’t talk to her.
So this time he tells us that he is doing things different… he is not going to tell anyone. He is not even going to tell us who he likes this time. I gently reminded him that he should probably consider telling the person that he likes them but I could tell he was not convinced. I am not sure I should even pretend to give advice about the fairer sex so maybe our little charge has the right approach. One of my favorite sayings seems to apply though… “Youth is wasted on the young”.
Interesting things coming up soon… and things I will probably post up about in the event you all haven’t given up on me. I am taking Amber to New York in about a week and a half. We are going for a long weekend trip and it should be a lot of fun. I owe her a trip or two and this one seems just about perfect for a birthday present. I will take a camera and take tons of pictures because I haven’t been there since I was a teenager and I am just as eager as she is to see as much as we can in the four days we will have there. We have already been out shopping for guides and books on what to do to make the most of our New York getaway. Amber has even come up with a couple of really cool unique things to do so I am sure its going to be a blast. Like I said, I will definitely post a blog about the trip.
I also did something recently that was a little selfish and may ultimately prove to be a little foolish… I joined a men’s over 30 soccer team. Now those of you who are still awake may wish to point out that I could in fact qualify to play in the over 40 bunch and you would be right. We got together yesterday for our first meeting which I thought was just to turn in paperwork and registration info… I am glad I packed gear to play in because we talked for about 10 minutes and just like all impatient little boys (a couple of us not so little) we started kicking the ball around. We ended up playing a scrimmage for an hour and a half before everyone decided that they had had enough. It was funny but one of the guys said that he had already mapped out the route to the closest cardiac center, you know, just in case. It was funny but it was a nervous kind of funny. Seriously though, it was fun to get back out there on the pitch but with each move today I am reminded of every aching and tender implication of my recent foolishness. Just wait till you hear what the name of the team is…
Talk to you soon. bb
