Big Day # 2

When I have a big day I always want to celebrate. So when Becky and Logan were finally at home I told them, "Drop everything, we are going out to dinner."

"What's the occasion?" Becky wanted to know.
"I've had a big day," I said.
"What . . . that wart finally fall off?" she asked.
"I'll tell you about it in the car."
"Are you kidding me?" Logan blurted out. "I've got a bunch of homework. I'm not going out to dinner!"

[Note: Picture here cartoon father picking up fifteen year old kid and spinning him around on the tip of his finger like a basketball then tossing him like a sack of potatoes out the picture window into the creek. It never happened, but I was imagining same in my mind.]

"You can order anything on the menu," I finally said. "Even that fifteen pound hamburger you've had your eye on."

[Note: Kid and wife load in old piece of crap car against their better judgment and I relate story of multiple editors who can't keep their hands off me, the books, the emails and the voice mail offer that is still saved on the message board at home.]

"You drug me away from the house for that?" wife asks. "I've got papers to grade. I've got lesson plans to create."

"Humor me," I plead.

"Dad," fifteen year old chimes in (he's not heard anything . . . listening to iPod with ear buds), "I'm ordering a steak."

[Note: Dad here considers driving old piece of crap car into nearest telephone pole and ending it all. But he knows his insurance rates will go up. He does buy his family a nice dinner; they keep asking why. He tells them again how much he loves them, that he would do anything for them, that they can have his liver, pancreas, or left lung in a pinch, and that he has, once again, spared their lives in the old piece of crap car. The son orders a steak and two large desserts. When dad gets back home from church meeting around nine p.m., he begins writing on old Sparky.]