Garrett’s 8th Birthday Party is (Literally) on Fire

This is what happens when you don’t blow out your birthday candles fast enough.

The birthday invitations had been sent out weeks earlier and the RSVPs had been returned. The cake had been ordered, the Game Truck had been reserved, and gifts were hidden throughout the house. There were a few “Happy Birthday” banners on the wall, but the real decorating was schedule to begin 24 hours later. Garrett went to sleep content in knowing that in just a few short hours, he would be celebrating his birthday with his family and friends from school.

What he didn’t expect was to be woken up at 1am by me whispering into his ear, “Garrett. I need you to wake up. We’re evacuating the house. There is a fire outside and we need to leave now.”

Two hours earlier, GWE stood at the back of the house overlooking the San Fernando Valley. She noticed a strange orange glow coming from behind the mountains to the left of us. In response, she turned on the news to discover a fire had started in the area. I brushed it off as not being a big deal and I went back to binge watching a Netflix series. Periodically, we’d flip back to the news and the fire seemed to be growing, but I still didn’t think it was serious. It wasn’t until I turned around to look out the back window that I realized that we might have a big, burning problem headed in our direction.

GWE asked me if we should prepare to evacuate. I thought it wasn’t a bad idea as a “just in case.” I honestly didn’t think we’d need to leave.  However, 5 minutes later, I saw the fire come over the top of the mountain and we raced into evacuation mode. Since this is the second time we’ve done this in 13 months, we’ve gotten pretty good at grabbing the most important stuff as quickly as possible.

I gently woke up Justin with the news that we were evacuating. He met the challenge head-on by going back to sleep. I tried again 10 minutes later. “Justin, I’m not kidding. There’s a fire outside. Time to go.”

Garrett was far more responsive. Once he heard what I’d said, he popped out of bed, jammed his backpack with stuff, grabbed his electric guitar, and he was out the door.

We left the house at 1:30am without any idea of where we were going. Hotels in the area were getting swarmed with calls and our friends and family were fast asleep (and not responding to our texts)…except for my mother who was awake at 4:30am in Atlanta because she’s become nocturnal, I guess? Luckily, my parents are Marriott preferred customers and she was able to use that status to get us a room at the Marriott Warner Center. It’s about 20 minutes away from the house.

We checked in, got to our room, and collapsed on the beds. GWE and I tried to bring some normalcy to the moment by getting the kids ready for bed all the while watching the local news coverage of the fire. Justin was asleep as soon as he hit the bed. Garrett was just about to close his eyes when all of a sudden, the hotel fire alarm went off. Crap!

Once again, Garrett popped out of bed, grabbed what was important to him, and then he demanded I take him down the 17 flights of stairs to the lobby because the elevators were deactivated due to the fire alarm. I protested, but he won. We walked down all 17 flights of stairs. (Fun fact: In the 5th floor stairwell, there’s a toilet just sitting there. I guess ‘when you gotta go, you gotta go.’) It turns out that there was so much smoke outside that it was setting off the fire alarms on the inside of the hotel.

At 3am, GWE texted, “Where are you?” I sent her a picture of Garrett and I sitting in the lobby.  She thought it was hilarious. I did not.

At 3:30, the elevators resumed and we made it back to our room. Garrett passed out around 4am. I think I fell asleep soon after.

At 8:30, I rolled over and saw Garrett staring at me. “Happy Birthday, buddy,” I said to him. With a look of concern on his face, his first question was, “Will I be able to go to school today so that all my friends can sing me the Happy Birthday song?” I explained to him that school had been cancelled for the day, but I’m sure they would be singing to him on Monday.

At this point, GWE and I had to balance a way to celebrate Garrett’s birthday in a spontaneous and care-free way all the while catching glances of the news to make sure that all of our stuff didn’t burn to the ground. First, breakfast!

We went to our favorite diner to grab a quick bite. It’s a real diner where the clientele runs the gambit from ultra-wealthy Mulhollanders to nightshift janitors. As we walked in, I recognized a former porn star who was leaving with her parents. (Only in LA.) We know the owner of the diner, so before we sat down we were able to fill him in our past 9 hours. We also informed him that it was Garrett’s birthday. He left and then quickly returned with a short stack of pancakes for Garrett with a candle in the middle. What followed was every patron of the diner singing “Happy Birthday” to Garrett.

After breakfast and a few other errands, we returned to the hotel so that Garrett could open some of his gifts. He was thrilled to get a massive box of 12 different “speed” Rubix cubes along with some Lego sets. He was thrilled with every gift he got.

At some point during the day, we heard from our friends Jon and Nkechi because they had finally seen GWE’s texts. They graciously took us into their home. They fed and entertained us refugees with an evening of dinner and a movie. At the end of the night, we all parted ways and returned to our hotel room.

It had been a long day. Garrett had only slept 4 hours over a span of 24 hours. He had evacuated both his home and his hotel room. He didn’t know if he’d ever seen his stuff again and it was his birthday. Anyone else would have had a meltdown at some point during the day. (Including me.) Not Garrett. As he climbed into bed, I asked him how his birthday was.  His response: “This was the greatest birthday ever!”

Live! Naked! Grills! (Not a Typo)

A few nights ago, we decided to leave both boys home alone. We felt confident that Justin could take care of himself and his younger brother for just a few hours while we had an evening with other adults. Not only did Justin meet my expectations, but he far exceeded them in a very classy way. Garrett, on the other hand, is barred from any and all electronics device in the house that have access to YouTube.

The evening began with me giving Justin one simple instruction: ‘Make sure you leave your cell phone on so I can contact you in case of an emergency and to let you know when the pizza is going to arrive.’ When the time came, I called him and his phone went directly to voicemail. He had clearly turned it off. That was the one thing I told him not to do! After three or four tries, I resorted to Alexa. I knew I’d be able to ‘Make an Announcement’ from my phone and the whole house would be able to hear me. Once he heard the announcement, he called me back. (There’s a reason he turned off his phone. I’ll get to that in a minute.) The rest of the evening was uneventful.

When we got home, Justin pulled GWE into his room for a brief conversation. I joined Garrett in the den and watched tv with him before I had to put him to bed. After speaking with Justin, GWE came up the stairs and told me that she needed to tell me something in private. I met her in our bedroom, and she proceeded to tell me this story, from Justin’s point of view:

Right after we left the house, Garrett ran upstairs to watch television and Justin went into his room. It didn’t take long for Justin to get bored, so he went to see what Garrett was watching. As soon as he opened the doors, Garrett quickly shut off the television and looked very guilty. Justin, realizing something was amiss, asked Garrett what he was doing. Garrett refused to tell him or hand over the remote. Justin spent several minutes trying to build up Garrett’s trust by promising not to say anything to us…and that’s why he offered to turn off his phone as a sign of good faith.

Once they had an agreement, Garrett handed Justin the remote. Justin turned on the TV and discovered what Garrett had been hiding. He had gone onto YouTube and decided to look up, “LIVE NUDE GRILLS.” That’s not a typo. That’s really how Garrett spelled it. Garrett was watching video after video after video of half-naked girls making out with each other. (By the way, the Parental Control were on and he was still able to watch this stuff.) In a very nice way, Justin reprimanded Garrett and told him that this was not appropriate for him to see and the he shouldn’t watch it anymore. Garrett agreed, in theory.

GWE and I were half hysterical/half horrified as she told me this story. Because our YouTube account is under GWE’s name, she was able to look up what he was watching. WOW!!!

GWE and I agreed that YouTube needed to be removed from the family television in the den. It took me a few minutes, but I got it done. Several days have passed and Garrett has not mentioned anything about it. He must have noticed that YouTube is gone by now, but maybe the unsaid is better than the said.

You’ve Got A Friend in Me

Who wouldn’t want to be friends with this guy?!?!?!?!

Garrett came home from camp in a foul mood. I heard him stomp through the front door, turn the corner, march into his room, and slam the door shut. I decided to give him a few minutes to calm down before approaching him. After about 30 minutes, I found him sitting on the sofa and gently asked, “Hey buddy. How was camp today?”

“Terrible,” he replied.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I inquired

He let out a long, audible breath and looked at me. “Fine. I had a terrible day because I asked ‘Sarah’ (not her real name) if she would be my best friend at camp and she said yes.” Confused, I replied, “Isn’t that a good thing?”

He continued, “…but then, her friend whispered in her ear and then she told me that she didn’t want to be my friend anymore.”

“Oh. I see. I’m sorry to hear that.” For a moment, we both sat in silence. He had vented and I was trying to determine what to do with the information. I could have gone with the theory of “Boys Rule, Girls Drool,” but that only goes so far. Ultimately, I chose honesty.

“Well, Garrett. Sometimes boys and girls (and grown men and women) like each other, but their friends get in the way.  If you like someone and want to be friends, you should tell them and don’t worry what their friends say. I’m sure it made Sarah feel good to know that you wanted to be her friend.” I suggested he try playing with her again the next day. If she wasn’t interested, that’s OK too.

He seemed satisfied with the answer and refocused on the video game he was playing. Garrett is clearly going to be OK. It’s Sarah’s loss…and Sarah’s friend will eventually be shunned by her friends because of her terrible judgement and gossipy ways. She will then grow old alone, spending her nights eating single-serving frozen dinners, and living with her 40 cats who will ultimately eat her face off when she runs out of cat food. (Is that too harsh? Not when you reject my son, it’s not.)

 





White-Man’s Overbite

What started as a funny, throw-away line in “When Harry Met Sally” has become our family’s “call-to-action” when it comes to dancing. It’s called, “The White Man’s Overbite.” It’s a silly, seductive dance I used to perform for GWE to make her laugh or let her know that I was really appreciating the Yacht Rock radio we were listening to. But, once Justin and Garrett took notice, the dance has taken on a whole new (even sillier) life of its own.

Here’s how you do the dance: put your two front teeth over your bottom lip (show your teeth and curl your upper lip,) both thumbs in the Fonzi “HEYYYYY” position, and then gyrate your hips. The instructions are simple, but each person’s dance is completely unique…and a guaranteed way to be single for the rest of your life.

I now present to you, two different versions of “The White Man’s Overbite!”





My Sommelier

I’ve never been much of a wine drinker. My preferences lean more towards harder liquors like scotch, bourbon, and whiskey. Occasionally I’ll order a Dirty Vodka Martini or Moscow Mule (because I like that Pimm’s Cup.) But, I have had a difficult time appreciating wine. Maybe there are too many varietals or maybe I can’t wrap my head around tastes described as “leathery” or “dirt.” The appreciation has been lost on me. Until now….

Now, I’ve begun to appreciate it a little more. I’ve discovered that it’s not about the tannins, body, or alcohol content. It’s about the Sommelier. And, I have the best!

Occasionally, GWE will have a glass of wine with dinner. Garrett and Justin aren’t very interested in tasting it, but they do insist on smelling what we’re drinking. One evening, Garrett decided to take it one step further by serving us.

Once my glass was empty, Garrett vanished into the kitchen only to re-emerge minutes later with a towel over his arm and the wine bottle tilted as to “present” the wine label to me. I thanked him as he poured me a healthy glass. He returned my bottle to the kitchen, but promptly returned with GWE’s bottle. We had both been served.

Garrett has served us over and over again during family meals over the past few months. At first, I was concerned that we were enabling him in some way…or that he was enabling us. I decided to Google whether on not I was a good parent for allowing this to happen or if I was adding to his already long list of issues that he’d have to discuss during his “Mommy and Daddy Messed Me Up” therapy sessions as an adult.

According to the World Health Organization, if children see adults appreciating wine – smelling, tasting, discussing, and consuming it with meals – it may bode well for their drinking habits in college. And, those who learn to appreciate wine, become “pricklier” about the alcohol they consume, which reduces their consumption at parties.

So, while you might see an underage child Sommelier serving his parents alcoholic beverages, I see this as a great moment in parenting! (And, yes – I wrote this sober!)





Garrett Pitches Garrett a Movie Idea

My son, Garrett has a special bond with Garrett Morris. It’s gone far beyond, “that’s who you’re named after.” At this point, my Garrett demands to speak with Adult Garrett whenever he calls me on the cell.

While at a restaurant one Sunday evening, Garrett called for an update on a project. After quickly discussing the status of the film, my Garrett request my phone so he could speak with Adult Garrett. Immediately, I watched my son take on my business mannerisms and phone etiquette. And then, Garrett began to pitch Garrett:

Ok, Garrett! I have an idea for a movie. It’s a car chase movie with a Tesla. I want you to write it. When will you be done? (Turns to me) Dad – we’re making a movie. (Back to the phone.) Ok, Garrett. Next time I see you we’re gonna make this movie. Don’t forget about the Tesla car chase. Bye!”

I sat across the table from Garrett in bewilderment. He got on the phone with a Hollywood legend, told him what he was going to do, and ended the call…like a BOSS!

I probably should call Garrett and let him know that my son isn’t kidding. He wants that script and he wants it by yesterday!