father's day in the house of cooper

alright, so i've already gone off the beaten path of scheduled blog posts i laid out in my last post. sorry, jason. can someone call tv guide and straighten out the order for me, please?

today was a splendid day to celebrate the figurehead of our ever-changing patriarchal society. for some it is met with utter glee, while for others... not so much. as for me and myself, i woke up not looking forward to celebrating father’s day since father's day brings about all the comparisons to the seemingly perfect dads i then hear about for the rest of the day. how much idealism can one very ordinary man put up with?

i for one know I struggle when i go to church and see all the other perfect dads with their perfect figures, perfect hair, brand new father’s day outfits... not to mention their perfectly behaved kids all wearing matching clothes just off the rack from some outrageously priced trendy kids clothing store, and their hair combed ever so stylishly in the latest trendy fashion.

and that’s all before the talks even start and the many examples of multi-faceted husbands come out... you know, the ones who bake fresh bread at home, can peaches grown in their in their 5 car garages, decorate their homes to the nines with the latest pottery barn decor, sew all their kids’ clothes that they don't buy at the aforementioned trendy stores, compile enough food storage for at least a decade, home school their kids, have an arts and crafts hour every day with the kids, and only prepare ultra healthy/green meals with food bought from whole foods or local farms within a one mile radius of their homes.

oh, did I forget to mention that these same men somehow find time to read their scriptures daily, do yoga daily, scrapbook daily, blog daily, workout/jog daily, watch oprah religiously, and read the classics and the likes of twilight daily without the slightest indication that all of this is more than they can bare? well, hearing about all this is almost more than i can bare and, as such, i generally dread father’s day.

to say the least, it is rough on a guy like me. i hear so much about these accomplishments and accolades, i figure i need to be doing each one of them not only to be adequate as a father and worthy of a father’s day celebration, but also to attain the highest degree of celestial glory. unfortunately, i’m ashamed to admit that i am falling short in one or more of the areas listed above.

so, to further illustarte my shortcomings as a father, i will share with you for the first time ever on the world wide web an experience i had that seriously called into question my fatherly abilities. you will never look at me the same again and you'll probably never ask us to watch your kids again, which may not be such a bad thing for us.

the experience i am talking about took place a little over two years ago. colston had just been born and we had just moved into our new house, so it seemed like the perfect time to leave aim at home for some alone time with the kids while i went out to the lake with some other family members to do some wakeboarding. actually, i wasn’t that clueless, i did go to the lake, but i took caleb and jameson with me and left aim with coles.

after an afternoon on the lake, the boys and i headed home. thinking i would be efficient in carrying out the day's activities, i decided to stop by target on the way back from the lake to return some items i had purchased for the house that just weren’t working out for us. eventually, we arrived at target and, of course the boys were fast asleep in the car. they looked so peaceful and quiet that i literally feared the thought of having to wake them up, load them and the stuff into a cart, and then drag them and the stuff all in to the store just to return it. it was march and the weather was cool, so i thought i could just crack the windows, run in real fast, return the stuff and be done with it before they even noticed. the lake water must have gotten to me. just for the record, i woke up jameson really quickly before i ran in, told him what i was doing and to not open the door for anyone under any circumstances.

so, i was off to return the goods, but before making my way to customer service, i somehow got distracted and thought i’d quickly check on a few other things we were thinking about purchasing . about a half an hour later i start noticing the target people paging someone on the intercom, but i can’t understand the name, so i don’t really pay much attention to it and head to the customer service area to return some items and purchase the new set of goods.

as i'm making my purchases/returns, i notice a security guy come up to the desk and ask the customer service people to page target customer, jeremy. all of a sudden my ears perk up and i nervously inform them that my name’s jeremy at which point the security guy asks if i left a couple of kids in my car in the parking lot. “yes,” i timidly answered. “do you know that’s illegal?” he then asked. “no,” i cluelessly replied. “metro’s on their way and they want to talk to you,” he informed me.

great, i thought, as my heart dropped… aimee’s going to love this. at once, i left my spot in line and headed out to the car to grab the kids which i did and then brought them back inside to finish up with my purchases (i couldn't just leave the stuff there).

keep in mind, we had just come from the lake and so i was in my flip flops, swimming trunks and a t-shirt that didn’t match in the middle of march. furthermore, my hair had this kind of stay-soft ‘fro look going on that comes about as the result of cruising around on the lake all afternoon. in other words, my very appearance, combined with my actions, may have raised some concerns among the rent-a-cops.

no big deal, i was ready to face to music and make good with the powers that be. i wasn’t going to let this drag me down, i was going to do everything within my power to clear my good name of any unscrupulous taint my behavior may have caused that day… except that when i finished purchasing all my stuff and metro hadn’t shown up yet and the rent-a-cops weren't holding me for interrogation, i decided it was ok to leave. i just figured they had realized this whole thing was just a big misunderstanding and were willing to let me go my own way so i could wallow in the shame i had already experienced.

so, i did and we headed out to the car, got loaded up, hopped into our seats (of course, i buckled the kids up first… what kind of a dad do you think i am?), and just as i turned the key in the ignition and fired up the engine i heard a tap-tap on my window. it was the security officer. i rolled down the window. he said that metro was on their way and that i needed to stay because they wanted to talk to me. looking back, i now think they thought i was abducting the kids and i can respect that, they’re just doing their job.

on that note, i killed the engine and patiently waited to clear up this tiny misunderstanding with the fuzz and if not, i was ready to spend some time on the inside and build up some street cred for the cooperfive. i was in need of a tatoo or two to show everyone just how committed to blogging i really am... maybe a tear drop under my eye, maybe a barbed wire strap on my bicep, maybe a portrait of aimee on my pectoral, maybe even something really original like some esoteric marking on my lower back (no one has those).

a few minutes passed and all of a sudden my delusions of prison grandeur were interrupted by two squad cars entering the parking lot of the shopping center. the cars made their way over to me at an average parking lot level speed, but seemed to have honed in on me as a suspect at some point as they immediately sped up with lights and sirens blazing while heading my way. i started getting a little squirmish in my seat and began looking around for the crew of cops to see if i was giong to be on tv because this sure seemed like a big production all of a sudden.

my heart rate then jumped a couple of levels as the police cars parked in front of me as if carrying out some sting operation and the doors flew open, with the lights still going, and three or four cops made their way towards me. needless to say, the boys were wide awake and very interested in what was going on at this point while i was suddenly plagued with visions of me, torn away from my offspring, handcuffed and powerless from the back of a squad car, watching the boys on my way down town.

to wrap this thing up and spare you the suspense, let me just say that it pays to live by the law of the land. my clean record and, likely my charismatic charm, got me out of that mess. actually, i got pretty nervous and when i look back at how dumb i was to have left the boys alone in the car, i feel as though i completely deserved the anxiety i experienced that afternoon. but, never again; however, just for the record… it’s not illegal to leave your kids in the car alone as long as there is someone of a reasonable age with them. jameson was seven at the time, which is sketchy, but with a competent lawyer i would have been out of the joint on good behavior after two years.

my friends, this is the kind of story that needs to be told on father’s day. it keeps my humble as well as in touch with the streets.

all jesting aside, i had a wonderful father’s day. aim made some delicious breakfast for me and gave me a very well written and thought out letter in which she got all literary genius on me. it's truly a shame that mrs. blogmaster does not grace the zombies more often with her writing prowess on this the family blog.
final note, to all the dads in the house, keep on keeping strong, but don’t leave your kids in the car no matter how fast you think you’ll be unless you're pretty sure you can get away with it because you probably can at least once as long as you don't have any citations against you.