Sorry About That...
 

Where were we? I forget. Never mind.

I do know that I started a trip report a while ago and then fell off the proverbial digital radar. Nothing dramatic happened. Life just got in the way. So I apologize.

Which brings me to this piece. The 3 people who read what I sometimes write will be pleased to know that I have actually finished the whole thing. From soup to nuts. Start to finish. I am even quite pleased with myself. If I remember, I will post something every day until I get moderated into oblivion or Alexandra Daddario invites me over for a hot tub party with her bi-sexual female neighbor.

I am presently sitting in Melbourne. My home town. And a place I haven’t visited for around 18-months. Probably the longest I have been away.

The trip nearly didn’t happen.

Let me explain.

Sadly, I am the owner 2 teenage children. Yes, it’s been that long since we’ve talked. A 16-year old son and a very precocious 14-year old daughter. A few weeks ago a conversation like this happened,

“Dad, why don’t you ever take me anywhere?”
“I do”
“No you don’t”
“Yes I do”
“You love The Moron (her brother) more than you love me”
“Well, yes I do”, knowing that this response would tip her over the proverbial puberty fueled edge
“Really, I knew it”
“Well, you asked”

I could feel my wife’s familiar piercing gaze from across the room. She was somewhat displeased with me for my parental negligence and committing such a cardinal sin regarding the love of her offspring.

Now before the parents on FT go on a jihad against me, and while I am quite fond of both my children (most of the time) and according to my wife, should love them equally, the plain and simple truth is that is an impossible task.

If you don’t believe me, try this. Or remember this. (Non owners of kids go ahead and watch something on TV while we chat. Or better still, pour yourself a G&T, easy on the T, heavy on the G).

Take however many kids you have, load them into the now not so new car that they have literally trashed, drive them to the local park and remove them from the vehicle. Place them gently on the sidewalk. Then tell them to runaway.

If they are under 5 years old, they will squeal with laughter and take off like Usain Bolt. They will be like Minions On Meth.

Your heart rate will go from 12 to 4000 in two seconds flat. And then. And then you have to decide which one you go after first. On one side of the playground will be a homeless man in a trench coat who has a basket full of candy and has his hand out. And his minivan door open.

On the other side of the park will be 3 illegal immigrants with chainsaws who just saw the taco truck roll up so decided it was lunch-time. The fact that they put down the chainsaws with the engines still running and left the wood-chipper on “nuclear” mode was beyond them.

You need to act quickly because you can only attempt this experiment once. You will most certainly be arrested the second time.

Other mothers will look on in horror and total disbelief.

But I promise you it will prove something. You have to make a decision and you will run after the child who you think is the most likely to look after you when you are old and have a colostomy bag that is attached to a metal thing on wheels and that needs emptying 11 times a day.

My daughter, quite undeterred by my parental faux pas then went into WMD mode. (WMD = Wear Me Down mode). This is something that literally still amazes me when I see it in action, even after 14 years of exposure.

It works like this.

“Dad, can I have a puppy?”
“No”
“Why not?”
“Because we already have a dog. And we have a cat”
“But I really want one”
“No, go away”
“But Amy has 2 dogs”
“That’s because Amy is in therapy and her parents are crazy”
“I want to go to therapy too”
“I thought you wanted a dog”
“I do. And I want to go to therapy”
“Why do you want to go to therapy”
“Because I have issues”
“No you don’t, you just cause issues. And besides you are just a teenager”
“You don’t understand me”
“Yes I do, I was a teenager once remember”
“No you weren’t, you’re too old”

You get the gist. I know you do.

But unlike most kids, who will eventually give up when the shouting starts or the threat of a damn good thrashing, our daughter simply settles in for the evening, orders a vegetarian pizza and follows you around the house waiting for you to break. She knows you will eventually succumb to her relentless harassment. It is quite the experience. She knows it’s only a matter of time. And trust me. It is. Everyone has broken. She never fails.

As a result of this behavior I created the $50 rule. You should try it. It works like this. Your child, as soon as they learn that you are only a walking ATM machine, will hound you quite literally for the rest of your life. I decided long ago that my drinking problem didn’t need to get any worse, and that I was already on blood pressure medication that really was more suitable for the equine industry as opposed to a slightly rotund middle aged man.

If whatever the small human wants is less than $50 stop right there. Write the check. Hand across the credit card. Fork out the bills. Take the money out of your wife’s billfold. Do whatever it takes. But get it done. It will literally save your life.

Think about it for a minute. My daughter used to take us to the brink of insanity. My wife and I would end up huddled in the corner of a room somewhere, both in the feotel position, waiting for the hounding to stop. But the child was only getting warmed up. Now instead of wasting 4 hours of our lives and getting yelled at by my wife for creating a mini version of the devil, we simply pay the ransom and move on. Nothing more to see. Tell me that’s not the most brilliant thing you’ve heard.

Except for one thing.

As your children get older, they start upping the ante. And the dollar amount. We’re way beyond the $50 mark now. We’re up to things like cars. Holidays in Mexico. And most probably – a divorce or too in the not too distant future. But hey, no plan is perfect.

* * * *

I used to tell my mates in Australia who also owned daughters, that my own daughter could date when she was 32. With 2 heavily armed Samoans following in a car a short distance behind.

But then I changed my mind. Thankfully, we have not yet had a pimpled faced youth show up at the front door, grunt and then mention something about taking our youngest out for an evening. Because I live in a gun friendly state, I used to think I would open the door and pretend to clean my 12-gauge shotgun. In the nude.

But then I told myself – what on earth am I scared of. Lets be honest, no member of the opposite sex is going to make it 10 minutes on a date with my daughter if she doesn’t want them to. They will be in tears long before she is. In fact, I’ll even offer the hapless young male money if he makes it more than 2-hrs.

Anyway. Where were we?

So, after my wife interceded and barked instructions that we head to Australia, I had to try and remember my FT login so I could try and figure out the best way downunder.

A fellow FT’er who runs an award booking service thankfully came to the rescue and took care of everything.

We would hoof it to Australia on UA’s Dreamliner and then we would worry about the return a bit later. All I knew is that I was going to head back prior to The Small One because. Well, because I could. And besides, I am consumed with work and that’s the excuse I am sticking with.

While I have never really ever written a formal travel report on an airlines hard or soft product, I will tell you that I couldn’t fault UA’s Dreamliner service.

Apparently they call it Polaris now and while the 787s don’t have the new seats, the soft product is more than lipstick on a pig. It is, dare I say it, quite good. Ok the food is still meh and the wines average (but a whole lot better than the dog wash they used to serve), but for good ole UA, not bad at all. I have always thought they had better than average entertainment and the new bedding is 1000 times better than the old hessian rag they used to give you and those tiny pillows, the size of which would not satisfy an elderly oompa-loompa with a mild case of dementia.

In a way, you have to feel sorry for UA. Talk about being in the cross hairs. I joined Mileage Plus in 1996 and in 20 odd years of travel with them, have completed just north of 1.8 million butt in seat miles. And during that whole time, not once have I been dragged down the isle, beaten up or even slightly abused. I’ve had some wonderfully senile old crew on the 100+ trips I would have done to and from Australia, had a person die onboard, got in a slight physical altercation with some drunk Russians and been re-routed more times than I care to imagine. But in the end, UA to me at least, is like a faithful Donkey. Not real intelligent, but always gets the job done.

My daughter, much to my sadness, has grown up way too quickly. For one, she has discovered make up and cosmetics. Her room looks like a Hollywood dressing room and she even has one of those make up tables you sit at with a big mirror and lights all around it. School starts at 830 I think. I have no clue. She wakes at 6am and then the process starts. Quite why she needs 2 hours to get ready for middle school is beyond me. At 825 or something, the screaming starts. Between her and her mother.

We live but 200 yards from The Small One’s place of education. But do you think she walks the meager distance every day? Nope, my hysterical by this time wife drives her every day.

There is the liberal use of the F word. Back and forth like ping-pong. It’s like listening to the swearing Olympics. We’ll come back to the language thing in a minute.

My daughter then spent 2 full days trawling the interweb, calling Denver Airport and then launching a detailed investigation into the TSA rules and regulations – specifically to find out the liquid limitations. She had to work out how to get 32 pounds worth of make up into zip loc bags.

We left Denver sometime last week and much to my amazement my daughter had managed to squeeze all her “product” into a wheelie and just had a backpack for the rest of whatever it is teenage humans drag around with them. I was somewhat surprised, thinking we were going to have to check multiple suitcases. By a stroke of luck, we were both TSE Pre (although that is somewhat of a joke at DIA) because the TSA Pre line is now longer than a queue of Grateful Dead concert goers lining up at the window which says “free weed”.

The Small One then decided she needed to go to the bathroom so I was left there, half way down the TSA queue, holding the proverbial bags and being trampled on by every agitated traveler in Colorado. Incidentally, why does time stand still when women go to the bathroom? After 50 years of standing upright I still can't figure it out.

If I’m honest, I dislike traveling with other people. I’m way too old and a creature of habit to worry about other people. Even people who share my last name. In fact, especially with people who share my last name.

I have a routine at DIA. No checked bags. TSA pre. Clear security. Get shoes/boots cleaned. It must be my old army days. I find it somewhat therapeutic. My daughter on the other hand starting questioning me as to why I needed to sit in a chair like a plonker with my pants pulled up and someone cleaning my shoes.

She simply gave me that roll of the eyes and stormed off to the gate, which was thankfully right beside the shoe-shine stand.

The other thing I will tell those childless among us – is that to raise teenagers in this digital age, you actually need to learn an entirely new language.

First off, teenagers the world over all think their parents are dorks. That much is known. You’re not allowed to touch them in public, hug them, kiss them goodbye or tell them that you love them. You will be met by them shrieking “pervert” at the worst to a complete look of disgust and disdain at the very least.

When our daughter became a teenager she lost the ability to speak English. I would like to think that she has been to good schools for most of her life. My wife and I would look at each other across the kitchen counter in complete bewilderment when our daughter would enter the room and yell:

“Yeet”
“What?”
“Yo, what up?”
“Excuse me?”
“I said Yeet”
“What does that mean?”
“Yeet!”

So here we are then. About to jump on ole faithful UA. A quick push to LAX, a few hours in the new United Club, and then a 15-hour trek down to Melbourne.

And a daughter who keeps bleeting the word “Yeet” and is slightly perturbed at the fact that her father will be sitting beside her for 24 hrs.

See what my life is like. No wonder I fell off the grid. Back in a day. I promise.

OMG eightblack is back!

Nice to see you back!!

Ditto!

Great to have a new thread by 8. Also great to read that everything is fine (as fine as it can be with two teenagers and a wife).

A new Eightblack Trip Report! Thank god it's a long-ish weekend.

in "Kath and Kim" style

much excitement

Eightblack is back

I wasn't on FT in your original heyday, eightblack, but I am so glad you are back!

For anyone not familiar, eightblack's trip report about being snowed into the EK lounge at JFK is probably the funniest thing I've read in my entire life. I hope you have a fun trip with your daughter! And I'm happy to hear you're not divorced yet, lol (referencing your musings from earlier trip reports).

I had kind of a low weekend but coming home to an EightBlack TR make me happy. Welcome back. Now I am going to go read it.

yo Eightblack, you're back! glad everything's okay.
always enjoy your story, so I'll keep myself updated with this one too.

*obligatory Michael Jackson eating popcorn meme here* this is gonna be GOOD!

a pleasure to see you back Sir.

Thought I was seeing things but hell NO, he's back (at last) ^

Me looking at new threads and seeing one by eightblack
:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Good to have you back!!

Welcome back to Melbourne ^ :)
I was wondering why is was so cold here now.
Something to do with you and the small humanoids you own?

ya, me too. figured the long absence could not have been good for the marriage

The lunatic returns to the asylum - how marvellous.

Subscribed :D

Yes!!!!

Welcome back, Sir.

Waiting, waiting....

I was on the train on my way to work this morning browsing FT & then happen to come across this thread. I "froze" for a second and a guy looked over my shoulder to see what I was reading and all of a sudden he shouted, "Holy s**t, eightblack is back." He pulled out his phone and started browsing too, I never got to know his name or chat with him as my stop was next.

I will echo everyone by saying welcome back, the (your) FT family missed you!!!!

What an unexpected treat.

Welcome back :)

Welcome back! Best. Trip. Reports. Ever. (And one heck of a do-organizer!)

Well that’s a bit embarrassing then. Some of you people need to get out more. Or move out of your parent’s basement. Or stop sleeping with your cousin. But seriously, thank you for all your comments up thread.

Anyway.

This is a bit of a first for me. Having a travel hiatus for so long. I’m not sure if I actually missed it because after 15 years it was becoming a grind – but there are certain things about travel which I will never tire of.

Talking of grind, wait until you hear this.

So there we were, my wife and 2 kids having lunch at the local hamburger joint. It’s an acceptable place to eat but more importantly, I have trained them to let me order Gin and Tonics in pint glasses, which is how every cocktail should be delivered if you ask me.

“Dad, what’s your email address?” quizzes no 1 son
“Why?”
“Just tell me”

There’s a sly smirk on his face…

“We need it for school” he says innocently enough
“Ok”
“Can you fill this out?

He then hands me his phone and I fumble for my reading glasses and then proceed to fill out the box on the impossibly small screen with my Gmail address. Think nothing of it. We finish lunch and move on with our laid back Colorado lives.

Apparently, Grindr is an app for the male gay community. I’m sure it is a lovely website and does an admirable job of connecting Hamish and Robert for an innocent weekly tryst.

As soon as I got to the car, my iPhone had gone Super Nova and even Google’s Gmail tech support center had started to leave messages along the lines of “are you sure you should be getting this much email from a man called Edward with a lot of photos of his tackle box”

Son was AWOL. Daughter had gone shopping. And wife was rolling around the floor laughing her you know what off.

Have you ever tried calling a gay dating website. It’s a challenge.

“Welcome to Grindr, this is Patrise. With an S”
“Hello is this Grindr?”
“Yes Sir how may I help you?”
“This is Mr Eight Black. My moron kids signed me up for Grindr. I just wanted to let you know I appreciate all you do for the gay community, but I really am not gay”
“I understand Sir, all married men say that before they join our tribe”
“But I’m serious. I’m not gay. Ok, I like Elton John but that’s as bad as it gets”
“Uh huh”

I could just feel Patrise With An S rolling his eyes at this point.

“Can you take me off your list? And tell some guy called Edward to stop sending me pictures of his thing. As impressive as it is, it’s getting old. I went to an all boys school when I was a kid so I have seen plenty of them. And besides I’m about to have my Gmail account closed down”
“Sir I thought you said you weren’t gay”
“For the love of God, and for the fifth time, I’m not”
“But you just said you went to an all boys school”

I was now starting to lose the will to live…

“Why don’t you just calm down. A lot of men, when they come out of the closest feel what you are feeling. Lonely. Confused. Slightly nervous…”
“Patrise With An S that’s called marriage. And I’ll show you calm. I’m going to throttle the life out of my son when I see him next”
“Sir we can’t remove you from the site. And please don’t beat your son. It’s not nice”
“What!”
“Your account will simply become inactive after 30 days if you don’t use it”

So here we are then. 6 months later, I’m still getting emails from Grindr every 11 minutes asking me to complete my profile and that I am but minutes away from finding my perfect match. I’ve tried moving house, changing phone companies, switching internet providers, and changing my name to Doris. But no joy.

I’ll be sitting in meetings and receive those stupidly annoying pop up alerts that iPhones deliver. The Grindr alert thingy literally has tourettes. My wife and I were sitting with our mortgage guy not long after this drama occurred and I remember him looking down at my phone after he saw these “Hamish has a new photo for you” message. About 4 times in 30 seconds. And then pictures of Hamishs tackle box fill the screen.

My silly wife then attempted to explain to the very conservative mid west mortgage guy that I was in fact straight and that this was nothing but an innocent trick our kids had played. Needless to say we never heard from the guy again.

So back to travel. This is actually the first trip I have taken solo with my daughter. Which I am reminded of constantly – by her and by my wife. You’d think I had run over their dog by the way they carried on.

The good thing with boys is that they are very simple creatures. There’s a lot of empty space in their brains. Ok lets face it, they aren’t that intelligent. For one, they cant multi-task. If you ask a boy to do 3 things when he wakes up, his head will literally explode. Our son can barely get dressed in the morning.

If you have an argument with your son, within 5 minutes he has totally forgotten about it and is your best friend again. Which is the way it should be.

Daughters on the other hand are a different animal altogether.

When this trip was all confirmed, my daughter starting lobbying my wife and giving a list of instructions and asking 100 questions.

“Is Dad going to embarrass me?”
“Do I have to sit beside him on the plane?”
“Why can’t I go on my own?”
“How come I can’t have a credit card?”

Don’t believe for a minute that trips like these will bond you together for the rest of your lives. The problem modern parents have is that you are actually only renting your kid for a finite period of time. Because the rest of the time, actually no, for most of the time, they are connected to a lot of ones and zeros via their silly phones.

To annoy me, my daughter has her headphones in all the bloomin time. Everywhere she goes. Which makes it impossible to have a conversation with her. She knows it drives me crazy. Which is why she does it. This is something women learn from the moment they arrive into this world.

The flight from Denver to LAX was uneventful enough. I had to laugh though because even though I was on an award ticket, I still managed to clear the First Class upgrade. But my daughter didn’t because of the way UAs computer splits the res into 2 when you check in.

Its funny – when you don’t want the system to work (or you just don’t care) it seems to. And that’s the good thing about summer travel to Australia. There’s award and upgrade space up the wazoo. Every man and his dog is in Europe. Not many people want to head downunder for an Aussie winter.

Which made the planning of this trip a piece of cake. Actually the reason it was a piece of cake was because I outsourced the whole thing to someone else. It would be remiss of me not to thank him publicly. If you need award or travel planning help, and your wife barely speaks to you and your kids keep signing you up to dating websites, then fellow FT’er Jasper2009 is your go to guy. Best service I have used.

It was actually fun to see how UA’s product had changed. Forget about the domestic segment because if you ask me, that’s always going to be nothing more than a shuttle. Although the FA was completely perplexed when she handed me my First Class boarding pass and I said it was ok, I would sit with my daughter in coach. She was confused.

“Are you sure you don’t want this seat?”
“No it’s fine”
“But it’s a First Class seat”
“No it’s all good. Is Amber Heard my seat mate?”
“Umm no”
“Then its fine. I’m all good. I’ll sit with my daughter”
“Dad you’re being creepy”
“Give it to someone else. Give it to a crew member. You can buy me a drink”

The FA was slightly taken back at this gesture but nonetheless she waltzes off, talks to someone else, they point to me as if I had just had a mental breakdown and then she gives the seat to a deadheading pilot.

About half way through the flight – the same FA comes back with a full size bottle of white wine (for me) and some desert for my daughter. Thinking it rude not to accept it or consume it, I proceed to drink the entire contents by the time I got to LAX. Even my daughter started to ask questions about whether or not I should be allowed to travel alone anymore.

We head to another first for me. The new UA Club in LAX. Not a bad place at all. I actually went to the new UA Club in London about a year ago so I know the UA team are trying to do more than run a feather duster over their lounge network.

I ask The Small One where she would like to sit. Being the teenager that she is, she chose a seat far away in a corner and I chose to sit close to the bar. Not for the reasons you would expect, but it seemed more comfortable sitting at the workstation thingy with my laptop. I was super impressed that you could in fact buy the tiny bottles of Moet and they were in fact bitterly cold.

Thinking it rude again not to support the bar - I promptly ordered a bottle of champagne and had a pleasant time just doing nothing for a few hours.

I had forgotten to tell my daughter that we had in fact, a decent amount of time to kill. This did not please her. I think we got to the lounge around 5pm ish and we didn’t board until 945pm.

But give any teenager their phone and a wifi hotspot and they will literally sit there for days. I did not hear a peep from her until it was time to go.

I had selected 1A and 1B – because I like the fact that you can put the trays up on the top of the unit in front when you’re done eating.

So yet another 15 hour trek downunder. I’ve done so many that I stopped counting a long time ago. The new menus looked good, the TV worked, I was semi hungry and definitely could use a drink. And then it started…

Dad, do I have to sit beside you the whole way to Australia...?

Yeet!

excited that you are back on FT posting another report! Can't wait to see the rest. Even my wife thinks your trip reports are hilarious!

Just got the tipoff that the (in)famous eightblack was back in town. Started the first paragraph, realised I was empty-handed, and dutifully went to pour myself a drink before reading the full post. :P

Good to have you back. ^

(And since I have no bloody clue what "yeet" meant, I had to resort to asking the interwebs. Let's just say that the top definition provided by Urban Dictionary has now enlightened me to the various...usages...of aforementioned word/sound...)

Eightblack is back and as funny as ever-- this has made my day!

Awesome!

:)


I have to remind myself of this quote whenever I fly United: "But in the end, UA to me at least, is like a faithful Donkey. Not real intelligent, but always gets the job done."

If I’m honest, the meal on the flight to MEL wasn’t that bad. It was in fact edible. My daughter resigned herself to the fact that she was stuck beside me for the 15 hrs and that if she put her headphones in, her eye mask thingy on and converted her seat into a bed, she might forget that I was there.

I was also dead beat so was quite looking forward to catching up on some sleep.

Sadly, there wasn’t wifi on the flight (did they ever have it?) I think at some point that they did.

I managed to sleep for at least 7 hrs – which in our family is a record. My own mother sleeps with one eye open in case she misses something in the night.

Teenagers on the other hand can sleep for days. For those of you not based in Trump-ville, you need to know that this particular time of the year is the worst time for parents. It is the dreaded summer holidays. A break that literally drags on for eternity.

At the start, parents are quite excited and happy to have their offspring at home. Mom’s are driving their kids around in their minivans, singing and clapping, their kids are mildly interested in what Mom or Dad has to say and as we all say in The Land of The President With Bad Hair, we are living the proverbial American dream.

However it’s not a dream at all. It’s a hologram for a train crash. A very big one. Fast forward the tape and in around 8 weeks, you will see stories on the news where slightly plump soccer mums in their tennis gear went postal in the grocery store and tried to insert both her kids in the machine that makes peanut butter out of the raw material.

Or something like this.

The stranger thing is the Mom isn’t even arrested. She is led away by someone wearing a health and safety vest, clutching a vodka and soda and there are pictures of her kids being led away in an Animal Control pick up (you know the ones with a cage on the back) holding the middle finger to the local channel 5 news anchor. And urinating on the cameraman.

It’s not pretty. It really isn’t. School holidays strikes fear into every parent in the USA. Guaranteed.

I got a taste of what was to come a few weeks ago. My wife has been complaining that her children have become zombies, captured by the digital age. As you now know, one blurts the word “Yeet” all the time and the older child has lost the ability to communicate at all and just grunts and only appears from his room in the basement when he is hungry. Or the internet breaks.

Which brings me neatly to this story.

We live in a relatively small town in Colorado. 93,000 people according to the last census. Or survey. Take your pick.

Anyway, not so long ago, some enterprising young person decided to start a trendy tech company, which was going to install a ballistic missile fast fiber network and one which would provide lightning fast internet speeds to the whole community.

People waited with baited breath.

They waited some more. And then the little tech company rudely ran out of money and the 22 year old who ran the thing promptly jumped on a plane to Puerto Vallarta and was never seen or heard of again.

Much to the amazement of the community, the actual City stepped in and said that they would finish the network and buy the assets of the failed little start up. Which is basically like the Pope saying he is going to now take over changing all the candles in the Vatican.

We all pulled up a chair and poured ourselves a very tall bourbon. This would be fun to watch we all said to ourselves.

When the thing was finished, people actually started buying this new Internet service and then the rumors dissipated into a raw truth that this new offering was in fact the ducks guts (Aussie for brilliant).

Sadly, our son got wind of this. Faster Internet speeds to a 16 year old teenager who spends most of his waking life playing video games is like a new drug. He was addicted at the telemarketers “hello”

Unbeknown to my slightly unhinged wife and I, our enterprising young son had taken matters into his own hands and ordered the service without us knowing.

Except for one thing. When they come to “install” this new pipe, they basically have to rip up your entire back yard to run a physical cable to your house.

My son decided that on the day of the installation – he was in fact needed at home to supervise the swarm of people the city had outsourced the last mile to. School was nothing but a distraction on a day this important.

I remember pulling into our humble abode and seeing a bevy of workman like trucks parked in the drive and out on the street. My son was out in the yard waving his arms and speaking fluent Spanish. My wife and I were literally gobsmacked as the child barely speaks English, let alone another language.

Lets just say that things had not gone well. In the workman’s haste to install the cable, they had inadvertently ripped into a sprinkler line and water started going everywhere. The workers, following the time tested guide for all illegal workers in the US, rapidly ran into the proverbial weeds and were never to be seen of again.

The back yard looked like Beirut. There was a huge trench from the back fence to the house. A lot of impressive digger looking machines were simply left where they were, a huge roll of cable which had the City Of X stamped to the side of it was left to one side and our moron child was standing there blurting out the word…

“What?”
“Explain yourself”
“Um, were getting new internet”
“Ah good, I thought you had ordered a new pool”
“What?”
“Never mind”
“And prey tell, why is there a huge trench in your mothers back yard?”
“It will buff out”
“What!”
“It will be fine. Calm the farm Dad…”

My idiot child has this maddening habit of telling his mother and I to “calm the farm” whenever he thinks were about to blow a fuse. Which happens more frequently now.

“I’ll show you calm the farm. Who’s going to fix all this mess?”

There was that useless shrug of the shoulders followed by the equally vacant “I dunno” answer.

In the end, more men rolled up and the water subsided, my wife calmed down and the little Internet that could, finally started working. Like crazy in fact. Performance is off the charts.

We have a permanent speed bump in the yard to remind ourselves of the damage which the mower has now neatly leveled out – and there is in fact, a neat landing strip going from one side of the lawn to the other.

“How much does this new wifi thing cost?” I demanded
“No idea” grunts the child
“What?”
“I don’t know, they didn’t tell me”
“Well how did you order it?”
“Online. And then I had to talk to someone”
“Didn’t they need our permission?”
“Yes”
“Well who gave it to them?”
“I did”

The problem is that the person selling the Internet service probably had kids too and couldn’t be bothered arguing with the dimwitted teenager on the other end of the phone.

Which is another thing that drives me crazy. Kids and phones. And specifically their ability to actually use them as a telephone.

“Son, call your mother”
“I sent her a text”
“Call her”
“Why?”
“Because I said so”
“I don’t want to”
“Why not? She made you”
“That’s gross”
“Look you idiot, call her now”

Much fumbling around with the phone and then he hands it to me…

“No you speak to her”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes”
“But what am I going to say?”
“I don’t know – how about you start with the time tested word called Hello”
“You know this would have been easier in a text”

And there you have it. Young people have literally forgotten how to actually talk on the phone.

I then asked the moron son how on earth he expected to get a girlfriend.

“I’ve got one”
“Really. Whats her name? Robert?”

He ignores my insult.

“Yes but we broke up”
“Really”
“How did you break up with her?”
“I sent her a text”
“You sent her a text”
“Yes”
“How did that work out for you?”
“Not well”
“You’re an idiot”

Anyway, after all the kerfuffle died down about our new internet service, my current wife lost it one night and demanded that the kids hand over their phones and sit down at the dinner table and have a conversation with her.

They both looked at her in the same way that they looked at me when they saw me naked on the toilet a few months back. (Look there’s a particularly dodgy burrito truck I go to not far from me, but the thing is while their Asada Burritos are probably the best thing you will ever eat, its not pretty a few hours later and the safest way to handle things is to strip naked, find a large candle and some matches, enter the bathroom with an oxygen mask and then perform your ablutions). You asked.

I was out the night that this all went down. I forgot where. Probably at the local bar. I get home quite late and see my wife in bed with the 2 dogs and she’s clutching something. To my amazement it’s not a bottle of hard liquor. To my surprise it’s the cable off the wifi router.

“Honey what’s wrong?”
“Your children are driving me crazy with their phones”
“Why are you holding that cable?”
“Because I am teaching them a lesson and I disconnected the wifi”
“Really, you disconnected it?”
“Yes”
“Well, why is the house lit up like a Christmas tree. There are strange kids watching Netflix in the living room, your son is in the basement playing some killing game with a Russian kid called Vladamir and your daughter and her friends, when quizzed what they were doing all yelled out in unison “watching German porn””

My wife did in fact rip the cable from the router. But she is no match for a 16-year old boy who lives and breathes the internet. I am convinced he has built some self healing network below the bowels of our house and removing one cable simply set off some warning light on one of the 3 computer screens he has and he would have literally walked 10 feet to a box, grabbed a new cable and would have had the network up and running faster than Pablo Escobars IT guy…

Talking of efficiencies I read recently that the Aussie government has decided to do away with those pesky arrival and departure forms that were mildly annoying. Probably because most Aussies on their return into the country are badly hung over and have trouble remembering their own name, let alone where they have been, whether or not they have ever had foot and mouth disease, who they slept with while they were abroad and what their religion is.

Actually talking of religion the Australian government are quite unhappy with the state of affairs as it relates to the national census. This is a document they send out every few years and its supposed to keep all the government men with cardigans happy – because they get to ask every householder stupidly inane questions.

Anyway, they’ve had to seriously do away with asking people what religion they are because in the last census, 56,000 people put down “Jedi” when asked what their faith was.

I think this is a good thing. From a travelers perspective, the less paperwork the better.

I have no idea how we got to this point but I will tell you that after a week with my completely mad mother, I am ready for the next leg. And the next leg is a quick trip to HKG, a stop for the night and a catch up with an old friend from Singapore (who now lives in HKG) and then a lovely, soothing, solo flight on my own on CX F to LAX…

No idea where my daughter is going to be. But hey, my job was to get her here. From A to B. I have nothing to do with C…

This is epic and don't feel your alone, you could be describing my satanic little sh**t teenagers as well

I honestly have never read anything funnier in my life.

I am now greatly enjoying the eightblack archives :D

I have a seven year old daughter, she is lovely.

I fear the future....

if some of commenters thought your previous TRs worth published as book, I think this one can be adapted into movie! (or sitcom at least)

it also reminds me that my parents have similar problem with my youngest brother.

Seriously great stuff. You should write professionally, though I admit this bit made me cringe:

Goading your teenage son by joking that he's gay? Then gleefully retelling the "insult" to strangers online, some of whom are in fact gay?

:rolleyes:

I love reading this, thanks so much for doing it!!

Hurray! The long wait is over.
Great to see you again, Eightblack.

Thank you so much for coming back with another epic tale.

Welcome back mate !

eightblack is back!!!! Hooray!!!!!

Sitting back with a cup of tea to read this . . .

The first post is reminiscent of when my husband asked my father for my hand in marriage:

"That's all you want? Her hand?" Looking over at my mother, "We can finally start saving for retirement, honey! That poor guy, OTOH . . . " And, finally, "Congratulations, _______. You are a very lucky man." And then, in his best Last Crusade imitation, "You have chosen . . . wisely."