Tag: comedy writing
Why is the Hottest New Bar in Los Angeles at the Gelson’s Grocery Store on Franklin?
By Zach Selwyn
I never knew that being drunk in a grocery store could be so much fun.
A couple of years ago, the Gelson’s at Franklin and Bronson decided to take out their magazine section and build a bar. Replete with rotating beer taps, three large TV screens, wine options and a full menu, it has slowly become the place to be seen in the Franklin Village neighborhood. And, it may not only be the best sports bar in Los Angeles… but also one of the best watering holes in the city today.
It just happens to be in a grocery store. And I was almost arrested there a few weeks back.
I first sat down at the Gelson’s Wine Bar a few Mondays ago, after purchasing a rotisserie chicken at the checkout stand. My sole intention was to check the score of the football game and head home. But, I started talking to a guy next to me named Tom. Two hours later, Tom and I were Instagram friends, I was on a first name basis with the bartender and I had devoured the entire chicken with my hands all while downing seven Hazy IPA’s.
Tom and I made a pact to come back for every Monday night game, and we agreed to each bring friends next time. Within weeks, the bar was standing room only, and we began having to show up two hours before the game started to even secure a seat.
Gelson’s has become the new No Vacancy.
Like the residents of this city, Los Angeles area grocery stores have ther own personalities. Hollywood folks know Rock ‘n’ Roll Ralph’s from the days when hair metal Gods slogged down the aisles with jugs of vodka in their hands… Influencers and Yoga Moms have made Erewhon the best place to be seen in LA and places like Trader Joe’s are full of everyday people buying cheap booze while mixing in a festive box of Peppermint Joe-Joe’s. Gelson’s has managed to remain innocuous, casually overcharging customers for basic foods and thriving in their deli counter and produce sections. As a grocery store, Gelson’s is a notch above, say, a Ralphs or a Vons, but they don’t have a smoothie bar or a massage chair, like Whole Foods or other gourmet stores. They do, however, happen to have the hottest bar in the city.
“I love it here,” a girl named Samantha told me after taking advantage of a two-dollars-off-draft-beer special. “It’s not dark, they don’t tax you and the food is decent. Plus, you just feel… safe.”
Samantha had a good point. What makes the Gelson’s Bar interesting and affordable is the fact that they are not allowed to add sales tax to bar bills and they refuse to let the customer tip the bartender. That’s a far cry from last week, when a bar on Cahuenga automatically added a 30 percent gratuity to my $23.00 bartab. The service wasn’t even good and the bartender complained about her dying acting career the entire time. And now, with everybody from fast food counter employees to Uber drivers expecting 20 to 30 percent tips on everything they do, it’s refreshing to be able to follow the old standard rules… Tip one dollar a drink. ( I normally go a little above and beyond this but I refuse to pay an extra $12.00 on an alcoholic beverage that is already marked up by 75 percent).
Also, there is a security guard, who I got to know fairly well after yelling obscenities at Dodgers players on TV during game three of the World Series a few weeks back. (For the record, I was detained for 20 minutes and told to not return until the series was over.)
“I totally understand… but can I pay for my chicken wings first?” I asked.
In Los Angeles, hot bars come and go. I still long for the days of Daddy’s, Dublin’s or even the old Powerhouse. But, did I ever think that I would choose to go grab a beer at a grocery store over, say, La Poubelle? No. But, where else can you shop for groceries and have four drinks while catching a Lakers game? Not to mention, the clientele is somewhat of a higher class than your average dive bar, which has been a a nice change from a place like the Frolic Room where two weeks ago a guy tried to get me to buy a tamale out of his coat pocket.
The fun thing is the sheer novelty of drinking in a grocery store. It actually puts everybody in a better mood. Jokes are made, drinks are bought and discussion often turns to what other institutions need a bar on the premise. (Most obvious suggestions have been laundromats and The DMV). Drinking at Gelson’s is a little like drinking in an airport. Everybody is in a good mood because they are bonding over the fact that the same place where they buy nine dollar boxes of Cinamon Toast Crunch for their kids also serves a Pineapple Cider for the same price.
As a parent of a young child back in the day I would often be asked to run to Gelson’s to get diapers when we ran out. I happily obliged my wife’s request, because I knew I could sneak into the Birds Bar with my neighbor for two quick beers. Sometimes I think about what would have happened if Gelson’s had a bar back then? I may have never made it home.
The one knock on the bar is that it is super bright, and does not do any favors for the beer goggle wearing crowd. In fact, it’s impossibly fluorescent at times so there is no hiding your age, wrinkles or skin damage the way a dark bar might do. If Casa Vega feels like midnight at 1:00 in the afternoon, the Gelson’s bar feels like a racquetball court at 9 AM. However, the people watching is incredible, local shoppers often scoff at your party following their trip through the meat section and it becomes really fun to try and convince customers to ditch their shopping list and join you for a quick beer. Last week, we successfully got a local friend who was picking up sushi for his family to delay his return home with two glasses of wine at the bar. He has since become a regular.
For years places like Whole Foods have had wine bars or beer tasting areas in their midst. But I have never sat down at Whole Foods intentionally with the goal of getting hammered. At Gelson’s, I recommend taking advantage of the Tuesday night non-corkage fee, where you can buy a $15.00 bottle in the store and drink it at the bar while watching the NBA. Sure, the trend these days for men my age is to stay at home and be responsible adults, but every once in a while a new bar in Los Angeles pops up that everybody gets excited about. I never thought it would be at the Gelson’s grocery store up the street from my house, but I am actually thrilled to say it has.
Come find me whenever you are ready. I’ll be the guy eating a rotisserie chicken with a bottle of wine yelling angrily at the three large TV screens.
Longhauler by Bublles & the Shitrockers Streaming now! Five songs written by Zach!
Read Zach’s New Short Story, “Mice Capades.”
“Mice Capades”
There was something scampering behind my washing machine. Something rodential. Something with chattery little teeth that sounded like it could nibble the toenail off of a homeless man if there was a promised slice of cheese beneath it. A real man would have stood up, tore back the machine and smashed the skull of whatever creature was frolicking around his lint catcher. Not me, I heard it nibble something and screamed so loudly, my wife ran downstairs and asked me if I had accidentally cut off my finger.
I hate mice, rats, squirrels, possums, raccoons, boll weevils… whatever. They disgust me, not only for their collection of diseases, but because they have no bowel control and they love cropdusting the bowl of avocados in my house with fetid urine samples and freakish teeth marks.
I’ve never been an animal person. Ever since my dog ‘Buffy’ shook my pet kitty to death in front of me when I was a quiet, sensitive 5th grader, I have despised all pets. Maybe I’m afraid to get close to them… maybe I’m afraid one might attack me. Maybe the fact that Buffy was the subject of nearly six separate lawsuits from 1985-1989 involving other 5th and 6th graders who claimed to have been mauled by him while waiting for our local ice cream truck has something to do with it… I don’t know. I just don’t love them. Nor do I love miniscule vermin who invade my kitchen at 9 o’clock at night when I’m trying to have a glass of Malbec and watch college basketball.
I heard the scratching again. My guess was that he made his way in through the side of the house like an imprisoned Andy Dufresne before nestling near the laundry machine searching for any disgusting amount of dried food that might fall out of my kids pockets following a day at school. There was a chance that the invaders gathering behind my Kenmore were harmless and small. But I doubted it. I was guessing they were quite large. The type Westley from The Princess Bride would refer to as R.O.U.S.’. (Rodents of Unusual Size). I wanted nothing to do with these cheese-nibbling tick factories.
I was torn on what to do. Should I set a trap? Bait him? Call the exterminator? Not like they ever really help… First, they come and charge $100 to spray coyote urine all around my back yard. Two weeks later new turd droppings line the closets, the “safety screens” they installed become metallic snacks and eventually, a horrendous smell that resembles what I imagine the a rotting corpse of a tauntaun to smell like breezes through my house. 
I wanted to kill these little shits, but as you may have devised, I lack the courage to kill anything besides a bottle of wine. In college, I killed a few moths, spiders and cockroaches, but that was a long time ago – and these massacres took place while drunkenly squealing with my eyes shut and frantically whapping a rolled up Rolling Stone magazine against a nest of invaders who had settled into my Futon. “Bastard son of a bitch slut sons of WHORES,”
I yelled at the noisy bunch gathering in numbers behind the aforementioned washing machine. “I’ll kill all you fucks.” They didn’t listen. They just seemed to slog me off like the guys trying to get me to take a “StarLine Bus Tour” of Hollywood every time I pass through Highland.
I watched the rest of the Arizona Wildcats game admiring TJ McConnell’s presence and smiling with every play drawn up by coach Sean Miller… But every time the applause died down, I heard the little Ratatouille party happening a few feet away. God-damn disease-ridden little whiskered gargoyles. Why wouldn’t they leave? I finally had the courage to take a hand towel and smack the washing machine a few times trying to get them to scamper and disappear. Instead, what I heard was the following:
CREATURE #1
Squeakity squeak. Squeak. OoohOoh. Squeetz Sysqweek.
CREATURE #2
SQUIIZZIIZIZIIZIZIZIZI . SQUEAK! SQWZZIZIZTTZYZYZYYT.
CREATURE #1
Heeheheeeheeehehehehehhehehehehhe.
CHRIST. At this point, they were mocking me. Laughing. Squeaking their way through my house like furry rabies-riddled bastard hobo squatters. I finally decided there was only one thing to do. I had to KILL. These beastly gargantuan monsters had to go. I was going to go all Chris Kyle on these little pricks. I was about to assassinate.
Using all my strength – no doubt brought on by the wine and some anxious anger – I ripped that Sears Model Top Load Elite away from the back wall and prepared to face the dragon I knew I had to slay. Armed with an iphone flashlight and a paper bag, I was ready to battle these medieval beasts with all my timorous might – hoping to get it done in one schmack. A kill shot on the first swing. In my mind, I was the house-husband American Sniper. I was a silent assassin. In football terms, I would have chanted “I Must Protect This House.”
When the snarling creature and I came face-to-face, I was immediately humiliated. Sitting on the floor, behind my washing machine, was the tiniest most timid, miniature little mouse I had ever seen. The type of mouse they feed to snakes in terrariums at desert museums. A little guy who was just trying to find his next meal and a nice comfy tube sock to sleep in. I stared him down. He stared back at me. His head tilted left. Mine went right. He squeaked. I smiled…
And then he screamed and ran away as if I was the John Wayne Gacy of homeowners. After he left, I went to the mirror and took a look at myself. My lips were purple. My teeth were dressed in the stains of the evening’s red-wine. My hair shot forth in a bundle of curls. The bags under my eyes spoke of a few too many late evenings. In reality, I did somewhat resemble a serial killer. If anyone was scared, it was that little mouse. He was just a cute little thing. I looked like I was about to go on a Manson-like mass murder.
I decided to drag myself to bed. Around the same time the next night, I heard similar chattering coming from behind my washing machine. More nibbling, more squeaking… more odd noises that made me think I was 90 seconds away from having a honey badger tear through my kitchen and rip my scrotem off. However, instead of panicking and dropping rat poison behind the Kenmore, I took a moment and tilted my cap to my cute new friend behind the major appliance. After all… he was more scared of me than I was of him.
In prison, that would mean I was in control.
After a few minutes, I explained to my wife that I was totally cool with having a few rats and mice run around our house. As far as I was concerned, if they don’t bother us, let’s not bother them, right?
She looked me in the eye and shook her head ‘no.’
The exterminator came the next morning.
Read Zach’s new Short Story “Father of the Year”
Based on my calculations, I have probably nursed more than 3500 hangovers in my adult life. Most of them have been passable- usually unraveled before 10 a.m. with some coffee, greasy food and copious amounts of water. Others have traveled into the afternoon, unable to be defeated by all the old tricks – like boxes of coconut water, bottles of Kombucha and the occasional trip to the steam room.
Then there are those hangovers that creep into the next day. Those hangovers that have you seriously considering a treatment program or moving out to a deserted island- far away from the temptation and distraction of the real world… A place where you can dry out and kick the need to party every time your favorite team scores a run, you watch a film like Pulp Fiction or read a rock-n-roll autobiography.
As I have grown older, those 2-3 day hangovers happen a lot less frequently. My body just can’t recover as quickly as it used to, and I can barely recall the last time I even had a head-splitting, mind-crusher that took me out of an entire day. However, on October 27, 2012, my screaming two-and-a-half-year-old daughter woke me up at 5:42 in the morning to the largest mule-kick, thunder-fuck of a hangover I have ever had in my 37 years on planet Earth.
It was one of those “I’d rather just die here” hangovers. One of those “I’m considering just vomiting in my bed” hangovers. A shrieking anguish pulsated throughout my brain as I attempted to focus on any inanimate object in my bedroom. It was useless. I was as useful as a deflated pool raft. I felt like a moppish blob of failure.
It was at that moment that I remembered it was Saturday morning, and I was expected to fulfill a laundry list of activities throughout the day. Activities I had no memory of agreeing to.
At 10 am, my family was scheduled to meet another family at the Los Angeles Zoo for a Halloween-themed afternoon where there was supposed to be all types of fun activities, free candy and spooky decorations… The event was called Boo at the Zoo, and my wife had planned it a week earlier. Unfortunately, my wife had forgotten that she had to work all Saturday, so I would be hanging with both kids by myself.
Then, at 3 o’clock, we had RSVP’d to a one-year-old birthday party at a park in Sherman Oaks.
It should be noted that my six-year-old son had broken his foot a week earlier by jumping off of a jungle gym and was sporting a massive, immobile cast, so I was dreading any activity that would take place outdoors and make him feel useless. Unfortunately, both of these plans were outdoor events.
To top it all off, I checked the demonic weather forecast for the day… 90-plus degrees in late October.
Fuck me.
The piercing screech of my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter demanding a bowl of Cheerios was a fierce reminder that I am no longer able to drink like I used to. In fact, I could barely walk when I carried her downstairs into the living room, where I promptly did what any terrific, hands-on parent who cares about his children’s future would do…
I turned on the TV and crawled beneath a blanket.
Beneath the din of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, I was able to quickly re-discover my sleep pattern and I drifted in and out of consciousness as Mickey and Goofy talked about calling some freak named “Toodles” for help with their project. I figured I was good to go. The blanket was a little thin, but the couch never felt better – and I was convinced I could skate by another two hours and be in fine shape to take the little ones to Boo at the Zoo. Unfortunately, then my six-year-old son woke up.
“Are we going to the zoo yet, daddy?” He asked.
“Uhghghg… I think the zoo is closed today…” I said.
“No… mommy said it was open… Can I have Frosted Flakes?”
When my wife woke up, she was bounding with ebullience over the fact that she was set to be spending the day interviewing orphans for a documentary film she was producing. Even though her project is important, understanding and impressively daring, I managed to insult the entire thing by moaning an insensitive bad joke from beneath my shield of a blanket.
“I’m real glad you care more about the orphans than you do your own kids,” I remarked.
And with that, she was gone. Out the door for her interviews, obviously pissed off at me – not only for my immature comment – but also for my Jurassic hangover.
As I hobbled myself into an upright state, I tried to piece together my activity from the night before. I tried to remember exactly where it all went wrong. What moment the tables had turned and I had blacked out. For some reason, I was running a lot of blank tape…And then it hit me… it was my trainer Tony’s fault!
Tony and I had met at the gym a year earlier. He was solely responsible for transforming my body from doughy, out-of-shape 36-year-old into the only slightly less-doughy out of shape 37-year-old writing this essay. (Truth be told, Tony has helped me shed 10 pounds and get into my best shape since high school…but that’s another story). Bottom line is, Tony is a beast. At the gym he throws me into gravity strength training classes, punishing me with his signature moves called “Burpees,” “Oil-wells” and “Gorilla Thumps.” I leave the gym in pain every time we work out together, but I have also seen incredible results and I look at the guy not only as a trainer, but as a new friend. However, up until the night before, we had never been out drinking together…
Tony had texted me that he wanted to have a beer somewhere in Hollywood. Feeling a little loopy following the bottle of wine my wife and I had split during bath time with our kids, I was motivated and intrigued to go and join such a healthy athlete like Tony on a pub-crawl. My wife told me to have fun and specifically warned me not to drink too much.
“Please,” I said. “He’s a trainer, I highly doubt he likes to drink excessively…”
Oh, how wrong I was.
The thing with Tony, was that he has the same sort of mentality in a bar drinking, that he does in a weight room or a gravity class. He is a leader. The kind of guy who pushes you to do the kinds of things that don’t make you feel good… So, as easily as he made me do 20 pull-ups in the gym, he just as easily made me do nine shots at the bar. It was his trainer mentality. The mentality that said, do it or you’re a pussy.
So, I did it. And I did it a lot. Convinced I could easily dust him in any kind of drinking contest, I was shocked when he continued blasting through shots of Jameson whiskey as I casually switched over to light beer. His constant ribbing of my “weak liver” only fueled me to turn my attention back to doing shots, and by the time midnight rolled around, I was so hammered, I stumbled outside and bummed at least two menthol cigarettes from a black prostitute named “Mouse.”
The last thing I remember was having a final glass of red wine at the bar down the street from my house before walking home to my awaiting bed, where I promptly knocked over a shelf full of books upon barely making it under the sheets. I slept in my contact lenses, and my wife said my breathing was so beleaguered, that she feared I might asphyxiate during the night. To top it all off, I tried to listen to music on my iphone as I went to sleep, but I ended up dropping it and extending a small crack in the face of the phone all the way down across the home button. And then, 5:42 am arrived and I was carrying the little girl downstairs.
After my wife left, I tried another tried-and-true father maneuver to try and divert children from wanting to go to a Boo at the Zoo celebration… I bribed them.
“Listen,” I said to the boy. “If we skip the zoo today, I’ll buy you any Skylanders toy you want.”
“What?
“Either that, or I’ll take you to get ice-cream sundaes later…”
“Can’t we have both?” He asked.
I rubbed a moon-rock of sleep from my eye.
“Sure,” I relented.
Roughly 30 minutes later, the cereal was all over the floor and the kids were fighting over what channel they wanted to watch. Feeling somewhat guilty, I informed them that we were going to not watch anymore TV and that we were going up to the park.
“But what about the zoo?” The boy yelled.
Raising children is not an easy thing. Especially when you are an aging almost-rock star who once released an album called “Alcoholiday.” You get used to the night life for so long, it is a 180 degree wake-up call the first time your kid jolts you up in the early morning ruining what was once uninterrupted sleep. I am not the first person to write about this type of stuff, but I may be one of the first to try and do what I used to do whenever things didn’t go my way in life: Drink through it.
I managed to put together the most comfortable outfit I could, compiled from a dirty floor-sweatshirt and cargo shorts with flip flops, and I loaded up a bag full of kids snacks and bottles for the zoo. 10:00 was quickly approaching, and I thought that perhaps, with a little more water and a power bar, I could get through the 20-minute drive to the zoo for what was sure to be a fun day for my kids. After all, my wife would absolutely kill me if I kept them at home to nurse a hangover, so I sacked up and decided that a little fresh air might do us all some good. (By the way, if you are wondering why I have yet to pop an Advil or Tylenol, it’s because I am afraid of pain-relief medicine. Yeah, I know. I will take nine shots of Jameson, but I am afraid of the physical damage two Advil might have on my body.)
I admit it. I am an idiot.
I should have turned the car around when I saw the traffic entering Griffith Park. We were backed up for 25 minutes. The number of cars going left seemed endless, and I immediately knew that the zoo would be a madhouse. Still, I turned up the volume on the back seat TV and let the kids watch the final half hour of Monsters Vs. Aliens. I also took the time to begin texting the other family we were going to meet at the zoo. Scott and Joely weren’t close friends, but they had a six-year-old who my son enjoyed playing with. Besides, I thought, another two sets of eyes would make the day go by a lot faster.
I texted Scott.
How close are you guys?
He didn’t reply.
After we successfully made the left turn into Griffith Park, we followed the winding road around past the golf course and up towards the Gene Autry Museum and the Los Angeles Zoo. I slouched forward and noticed the alarming number of cars already parked in the adjacent lot. Families of four all pushed strollers towards the entrance, roughly 2000 feet away from the nearest parking space. It was massively crowded. I should have turned around. Instead, I passed through the barricade and committed to the afternoon. I looked at my phone… 88 degrees and rising.
My headache only worsened as I wrestled the stroller from the back of my car. Sometimes, trying to maneuver a stroller into position is like attempting to fold a 30-pound Origami napkin. Wheels get turned sideways, diaper bags get caught in bottom carriages… it truly sucks. Of course on this day of hangover hell, everything you can imagine was going wrong. When I finally straightened it out and prepared for the half-mile hike to the entrance, I carried my daughter towards the stroller, praying she’d take a nap for the majority of the zoo adventure. Instead, she wanted to walk. The boy, already lame in his foot cast, wanted to go in the stroller. Realizing that it would probably be a better idea for him to not put as much pressure on his foot, I let him ride. Of course, this made the girl want to ride as well.
The brother-sister battle began. As I strained to push the stroller with a 55-pound boy inside, my daughter screamed that now she wanted to be inside. I compromised by carrying her in my left arm while pushing the boy with my right. Impossible to steer on a straight line, we made it roughly 25 feet before I had to readjust and try another tactic. This continued for the rest of the walk. Her only other desire was to be carried .It was finalized. I would be carrying my daughter the entire time we were at the zoo.
I think it was the minute we made it up to the entrance when Scott finally texted me back.
Dude, waaaay to crowded and hot. We’re not gonna make it. Beer later?
Fuck you, Scott.
Boo at the Zoo was one of the lamest things you could choose to take your children to. In the newspaper ad, kids were promised trick-or-treating and huge bags of candy. Upon arrival, they were handed a tiny paper bag with five treats inside – sponsored by 99 Cent Stores. The giant pumpkin maze turned out to be about 7 bails of hay arranged in a small stack surrounded by random jack-o-lanterns. The “spooky crafts” they had been promised was a table where you could paint a stick. Finally, there was a lame attraction where zookeepers fed chimpanzees pumpkins and let the crowd watch. Not exactly a fascinating thing to witness.
At one point, while leaning over the Tapir cage, a father standing next to me sniffed near my body and made eye contact.
“Dude, I didn’t want to say anything, but you smell like booze,” he said.
I slowly turned my head towards the sober-looking instigator.
“Walk away,” I said before slumping my way down the railing.
The boy seemed to get heavier as the day wore on, possibly because I let him eat his entire treat bag, and he simply refused to get out of the stroller. The girl and I actually saw most of the animals, which was somewhat enjoyable – especially when she called the giraffe a “firaffe” and the zebra a “webra,” but mainly, it was just another day at the zoo with a ferocious hangover… and 2000 families in Halloween costumes jockeying for position to watch a Brazilian rodent called a “Red-Rumped Agouti” eat pumpkin seeds.
Having nursed mild hangovers everywhere from Disneyland to farmer’s markets, I have to say the LA Zoo has one terrific feature about it. It serves booze. At first, I didn’t notice it, but as the day dragged on, more and more moms and dads were nursing 12 dollar beers in the now 91-degree heat. I even saw a kiosk offering up red and white wine, and toyed with the idea of a little hair-of-the-dog, but my stomach pains eventually won out and I kept swallowing water at a feverish pace instead. About two hours into our zoo journey, I broke a natural sweat. It felt terrific. I let the girl run around near the elephant display as I soaked up the sun like a Jersey Shore cast member in a tanning booth. I finally felt, for the first time all day, alive.
I bought the kids some chips and a hot dog to split, but neither of them seemed interested. Frustrated with the lack of enthusiasm for the fact that I just dropped 15 dollars on a hot dog and bag of Doritos, I decided that I would be eating them myself. I wheeled the stroller to the edge of the “Gorilla Grill” and proceeded to wolf down a nitrate-blasted chemical dog, a bag of Doritos and even went back inside to order a chocolate-dipped churro. The boy sulked that I wouldn’t let him have any of the churro, but I felt that my health was more important to surviving the afternoon than his was. I told him he needed to eat something healthy before he could have a treat. This coming from a guy who just poisoned his body with 30 gallons of liquor and a frankfurter made out of pig lips, intestines and assholes.
The next sign of humanity came when I had digested the food and washed it down with a soda. Some color returned to my face and I felt less pekid. I wheeled the stroller around the lion display (which was closed) and past another Halloween activity – the pumpkin-carving specialist – before announcing that this day at the zoo was over.
I steadied myself for the nearly mile-and-a-half walk back to the car, and threw my daughter up on my left arm while navigating the boy in the stroller with my right. All I cared about was getting home, putting the girl down for her nap and turning on any college football game on TV. I could blame her nap schedule for us missing the one-year-old birthday (everyone does it) and I knew that if I didn’t lie down soon, things might get really ugly. My wife wasn’t due home until 7:30, and it was approaching 1:30 – so I figured that some coffee and some TV might help me drift through the rest of the day. I limped off towards our ride home.
30 minutes later, I struggled with the stroller again and climbed into the wretchedly hot interior of my 2005 Honda CR-V.
I sat and let the air-conditioning pulsate through the car. The boy looked miserable, and was jamming a pretzel stick into his leg cast as a way to scratch an invisible itch. Of course, the pretzel broke off, and I spent the next 14 minutes trying to dig it out. My daughter repeatedly asked for a bottle, and since we were out of milk, I tried to pass her a half-water concoction instead Of course she could tell the difference right away and threw it back at me in the front seat.
My head still pounding, I pulled out of the parking lot and turned the wheel towards home. I knew the day was only half over, but the worst part of my hangover had passed… or so I thought. My head was still pounding and now, following my disgusting lunch, my stomach had kicked itself into high gear as well. As it rumbled through the 20-minute drive home, I did my best to text Scott back and curse him out for skipping the zoo altogether. At this point, I had two choices. I could tell Scott how lucky he was that he had skipped it – and give him the sense of satisfaction that he had made the right decision to stay home instead – or I could talk up the experience as one of the best we as a family had ever been a part of… I went with the latter.
Boo at the Zoo RULED! Best day ever – we missed you guys… it was amazing and not too hot!
Evil, I know, but it made me feel a little better.
Five minutes from the house, I nearly puked in my car. I realized that it was probably going to happen within the next 30 minutes or so – so I did my best to hold it in as we rambled down Franklin Avenue. As I fought back the acidic demons in my stomach, I looked back at my kids and hoped that they had at least a morsel of fun. I know the boy was too injured to do much, but he at least got to see a few neat things – and for that – I felt proud of myself as a dad. I had braved the crowds, the heat and the zoo and even had a little laugh about the entire experience. I asked my daughter what her favorite part was, and she responded with, “The firaffe.” My heart nearly melted.
When I proposed the same question to the boy, his response was a little different. Aware that he had just been wheeled around a 91-degree zoo with a broken foot, he threw back something that only a six-year-old could hold onto after nearly half a day spent surrounded by strange families in costumes eating bags of treats from a 99 cent store…
He scratched at his cast and the bits of pretzel stick still hanging around the itchy part of his poor leg and caught my eye in the rear-view mirror. He squinted his eyes back at me before responding…
“Dad?” He said. “When are going to get ice cream sundaes?”
