Snowbirds Volume II--Krissy and the Boys

Patience isn't my strong suit--never has been and I don't expect that to change as I grow older. Waiting behind a slow foursome on the golf course grates my nerves like nothing else. As if my game could use any more challenges, getting worked up due to pace of play is my number one frustrator on the course. Today as an example, choosing the wrong line at the emissions place cost me about 10 minutes and you would have thought it was the apocolypse. Good lord I need to get some counseling one of these days. It is good to have Lauren aboard to hear some of my choice words--there is nothing cuter than a three year old repeating what you have to say like a Macaw later at the dinner table. (By the way, I responded to my brother's blog today with a Macaw reference, and I believe that this may be the only time in my life or anybody else's who is not involved in aviary sciences or works in a pet store that someone actually utilized the Macaw appropriately on more than one occasion on the same day). Fortunately, we had the sweet sounds of Sirius radio kicking out KidStuff for Lauren to sing along with during my tirade that I may have gotten away with one today.
Just watching TV and having to pause the show (Oh, you torturous DVR) and wait for Kim to come back from tucking in Hunter or going to the bathroom makes me insane. I realize that we will catch up by Fast Forwarding through the commercials, but there is something within me that absolutely hates waiting or slowing down my pace.
The most extreme example of this is during a road trip. I have had the pleasure of taking many long journeys in my life. I have always enjoyed the cameraderie that is realized on such a trip and I can't even recount how many times we have diverted a thousand miles or more off course when we had the opportunity over the years just for the chance to see one more friend or experience one more adventure. But the joy that I always derived from the highways and byways of the American road were completely enhanced by the company that chose to embark with me. I have taken these trips with Mike M., Dan and Matt D., Mike P., John B., Elliot B., Scott V. (what the hell ever happened to that guy--holy crap he has to be dead by now.), Clark C., Eric J., and once with Shari (picking up the Opamobile). The purpose of these trips was not always the same, but the destination was never nearly as important as the trip itself and the belief that we could get wherever we were going (and get back before we got fired or kicked out of school). There were copius amounts of alcoholic beverages consumed on most of these trips when we arrived where we were going, and quite frankly along the way most of the time as well. I am sure that I will explore one or several of these trips at some juncture of this blog, so Matt D., get your lawyer ready now--you will most certainly be involved in most of the incriminating segments of these journeys, you sick little bastard.
The first real road trip that I took with Kim and Hunter was a different experience all together. It was what one might call eye-opening for all three of us, and it made me quickly realize that my impression of a road trip needed some immediate amending if we were going to continue our relationship. I was pretty sure that she would have left me by the time we arrived at our destination after dealing with me from Oklahoma City to Phoenix if she were able to afford the plane ticket home and find a way to the airport, but after a few days, (let's not kid 0urselves, after a few years) her fear of being trapped in a car with me again for more than a routine trip to the grocery store subsided.
There was one major problem that was the root of all of the anger and frustration that boiled over that day and it wasn't the fact that I nearly ran the Saturn off the road in Albuquerque when we blew the right rear tire going 85 miles per hour on Highway 40. It was the birth of Connor Knoch, nothing more, nothing less. You see, I was heading out to Arizona to start my career in the hotel industry. I was set to begin my new job at some magnificent five-diamond property, and I wanted to get there by the time my job started--you know, first impressions and all. His mom, Krissy, aparently didn't give a damn about my new job. She decides to go into labor literally as we are pulling out of Meemaw's driveway at 6AM. Could anybody be less freaking considerate?
It turns out that Krissy's husband Tony isn't into that whole "birthing babies" thing and Kim has become her side kick in the delivery room. Kim was in there coaching her ass off when Connor's older brother Kade was born, and Krissy expected her to be around for this birth as well. Never mind that she had a perfectly able-bodied husband lying around, most likely watching video tapes of the Sooner's 1983 spring football game, we're apparently supposed to delay my career so that Kim can hold her hand. I know--ridiculous! But here I am again, the bad guy--see how that works? I'm sure that my new employers would be just tickled pink for me to come in a couple of days late to start this gig because my girlfriend had to stay in Oklahoma to babysit somebody else's wife in the delivery room. So I won the battle, and we got in the car and made our way to I-40 for the longest 18 hour drive of my life. It may very well have been the longest 18 hours of my life period (or maybe second to the time my parents told Shari that her dog was dead on the phone in an airport in Detroit after we were flying back from Scotland for Dan's wedding without his wife--that was fun. I can still hear her uncontrolled sobbing in my sleep 10 years later--thanks Dad).
The rules of the road as I knew them were pretty simple.

1. The person in the passenger seat was responsible for keeping the radio tuned to appropriate selections, navigating and flipping quarters over the top of the car into the toll booth machines--missing was not an option.
2. The driver was limited to three beers an hour (did I say an hour, I meant couldn't drink until we stopped for the night--crap).
3. Pee breaks did not exist until all members of the vehicle agreed that it was time to stop--whining just made it worse. (Mike P can attest to the hardship of this rule and Dan and I never knew that he was peeing into empty beer cans for the last 8 hours that time we went to New York, but again, that story may have to come at another time).
4. Burning out the radio 6 hours into a 2800 mile trek by falling asleep with your knee pushing in the cigarette lighter is a sure way to find one of the members of the journey dead or extremely missing by the end of the trip.
5. Unnecessary stops do not happen. When you stop for gas, fill up on Dandee sandwiches, oreos and Doritos at the gas station and pee there. I can't tell you how many trips we took with less than $30 in our pockets and a gas card--it's pretty amazing the purchasing power of the old Chevron card.

Suddenly, on this trip, the rules had changed. First of all, traveling with one of those (what do you call them--oh, yeah) girls made the pee break rule obsolete right away. She wasn't going to pee on the side of the road, and the fact that we had a four year old strapped into the car seat in the back only encouraged her road rules. We were stopping for bathroom breaks without the need for food or gas--unheard of, and completely contrary to anything that I could grasp.

And the worst part of the stopping thing was that Kim felt the need to make multiple phone calls at each of these stops. Back in the day, her ass would have been left at the phone booth at pit stop number one. She would've waited there until her mom came to pick her up and the wedding would have been off. In my mind, it probably would have been justified, but I hadn't even paid off the ring at this point, so I figured leaving her for dead in Western Oklahoma or in Amarillo might have been construed as the wrong thing to do. But my blood was boiling. I mean, the kid had been born already by the second stop--what the hell could they have been talking about anyway?

"So, it was a boy?"

"Yep. A boy."

"That's great, Krissy. What did you name him?"

"We're going with Connor."

"How much did he weigh?"

"6 pounds, 12 ounces."

"Oh my goodness, that's so small. I bet he is just beautiful."

"Oh he is, Kim. You should just see him. I think he looks more like Tristan than Kade."

"Well, I wish I was there."

"Me too. Tony is a complete ass."

"Well, get some sleep Krissy. Once you get home from the hospital, you probably won't sleep for a month."

"OK. Have a safe trip."

"Bye."

"Bye."

What the hell else could they possibly talk about? How far apart were the contractions when you started pushing? Did you get the epidural? Did Tony pass out? There is only so much information to share, but at every stop along the way (and to the best of my recollection, there had to be at least two or three hundred stops on this trip), she had to call Krissy and Meemaw and talk for ten minutes. The progression for me was subtle at first, but the changes in my mood, personality and demeanor clearly evidenced itself. It starts with the eye rolling and loud sighs. It then progresses to the death stares. Finally, it expands to beating the steering wheel as if breaking a dozen bones in my hands will in some way end the torturous hell in which I had found myself trapped. It peakes when I screamed at nobody in particular when the french fries that I had placed precariously next to the emergency break inevitably tipped over and spilled all over my pristine automobile.

But nothing I could do would deter her from making these inane calls every time we stopped. I am relatively certain that she made at least a dozen of these calls to local authorities so that they could track us and make sure I didn't attempt to bury them somewhere beneath a giant Mesa in New Mexico, but I can't prove anything. We somehow made it out to Arizona and after a few days we were speaking to each other again, and I am pretty sure that by the end of the week, we were both planning on proceding with the wedding (at least that's what we told the other). Deep down, I believe that she just wanted to get on that airplane, lose my number and go into hiding.

Since that trip, Krissy has been involved in our life. I have tried like hell to shake her, but she keeps tracking us down. She has three boys, Tristan, 8; Kade, 5; and Connor, 4. Our lives are somehow intertwined with these people and this is the second trip that they have made out here to Arizona in our time here. The last time they were here, I became the tackling dummy for four insane boys for a week, and this time they have had two more years to grow. I fear for my life.

I can make all the redneck jokes that I want to here, and to be perfectly fair to all, most all of them would apply, but I believe that might be too easy. In the big picture, my home will be inundated with three crazy little freaks, whose sole purpose in life lies in creating havoc upon anything and anybody with whom they come in contact. I will lose visual contact with our floor for eight days in March as the tornado that attacks my home will have no mercy. This time, I understand that they want to take a road trip to the Grand Canyon (4 hours trapped in a minivan with the caffeine-riddled equivalent of the shrunken Manson family--the authorities may never find their bodies).

With regard to my ability to take a road trip with my family at this point, we have come a long way. I bring enough peyote to calm the nerves, and I have learned that the days of the classic journey's of my youth are long gone. We do have cell phones now, and at least we don't have to stop every six miles anymore. I still blame Krissy for the rocky start of my engagement 4 1/2 years ago. Every time I get into a car for a long trip, I still get those nervous ticks that go along with the fear that she's going to pop out another freaking kid today. If she ends up packing four of those crazy little boys the next time we see her, I swear we're changing our phone number, packing up the u-haul, loading up the kids and moving to Saskatoon. Four Knoch boys would be enough to send the earth off its axis once and for all.