Shutting the Shuttle Down

Twenty years. That's how long My Lovely Wife and I have run the shuttle. This September will mark twenty years of transporting the transportationally-disadvantaged to any number of locations within a 20-mile radius of our home for any number of reasons.

• Doctor appointments
• Daycare
• Day camps
• Pre-school
• Gymnastics
• Dance classes
• Elementary school
• Sunday school
• Girl Scouts
• Boy Scouts
• Birthday parties
• Middle school
• Dance recitals
• Sleepovers
• Summer camps
• Church youth groups
• Band camps
• High School
• Band competitions
• Concerts
• Robotics competitions
• Track meets
• College tours

Logging sufficient hours each month to earn a chauffeur's license isn't the half of it. Child safety seats required for small children come equipped with a complexity of straps and harnesses worthy of the greatest puzzle masters. When strapping your first born into a car seat outside the hospital, they ought to warn you to prepare yourself for a buckling system so ridiculously intricate it should come equipped with a flight attendant to guide you through the procedure every time you leave the house.

"Take the right shoulder strap, feed it through the plastic chest thingy and down between your child's legs. Take the left shoulder strap, feed it through the other side of the plastic chest thingy until you realize you have the chest thingy backwards. Undo the right shoulder strap, reverse the chest thingy, feed the right shoulder strap back through the chest thingy, then the left shoulder strap, and place the two metal tabs at the ends of the straps together. They should fit like puzzle pieces, but they won't snap together because that would be cheating. Holding the two metal tabs together with one hand and picking up your child's fallen binky with the other, press the conjoined tabs into a narrow, invisible groove that lies directly beneath your child's heavily diapered buttocks. Spend the next three minutes struggling to fit the conjoined tabs into the invisible slot while cursing. Once you find the narrow slot and have inserted the metal tabs, press with a force much greater than you believe is safe for your child. If your child is not crying when you have finished, then he or she is probably not securely buckled. Return to step one and repeat the entire process."

It isn't just infants who need car seats. As your children grow, car seats morph like Transformers from back-facing infant seats, to forward facing infant seats, to half-infant/half-toddler seats, to small toddler booster seats, to large toddler booster seats, to the my-child-is-way-too-freaking-big-to-need-a-booster-seat booster seats. If there weren't a cut-off for age, most people I know would be riding with booster seats because the cut-off for height is six-foot-three.

If you're silly enough to have more than two children -- in fairness to us, effective family planning is impossible when they choose to arrive in pairs -- you'll need a vehicle of size, if not two. When our first child arrived, half our fleet was instantly hobbled because the Mazda Miata was not designed to serve as a baby-transporting device. The Miata, itself, is barely bigger than a pram, with almost enough leg room for a tall dwarf and head clearance adequate for a medium-height badger. With the invention of twins, it didn't take long for us to embrace the minivan, and later the minivan with automatic doors. Scoff if you must at the unsexy middle-aging of my family unit, but few things liberate the middle-class American more than pressing a button to eject children into the school drop off line. It's like all the convenience of tossing them out the window, only with a brief stop and the assurance of a soft landing.

Don't think older children are any easier to shuttle. Sure, you can celebrate ditching the diaper bag, bottles and spare onesies, but they are quickly replaced by school bags, instruments, dance bags, and after school club supplies. If children aged without taking on extracurricular activities, which I believe is a perfectly reasonable expectation, then life might get easier, but they don't. Before you know it, you're running each of them in a different direction for a variety of reasons that all begin at the exact same time at locations miles apart, and finish in 30 minute intervals conveniently spread over the dinner hours. Artistic programs such as band and dance are the best, by which I mean the most obnoxious, because there's something about artistic people that instills in them the belief that their programs represent the most important commitments your child will ever make. Every rehearsal and performance is mandatory. Absence or tardiness -- regardless of how many of your relatives just tragically died from powdered sugar inhalation at the donut factory explosion -- results in the stripping of privileges or public shaming. As if you weren't already stressed about managing a multi-stop municipal bus route, now your child is fussing at you to drive faster so she won't have to do push-ups in front of the rest of the kids in marching band.

With one child halfway through college (how the fu-hell did I get that old?) and the twins mere months away from being granted their driver's licenses, it might be possible that M&D Taxi is coming to the end of its days. I say "might be" because we so far have been colossally wrong about each coming stage being easier than the present one. I can not, however, in my wildest imaginings foresee the need for continued shuttle service, at least not on a daily basis, even with the twins sharing a vehicle.

Should the end of the shuttle era truly be at hand, the ramifications will ripple through our personal and professional lives with immeasurable results. My Lovely Wife and I will be able to spend the kind of time together we haven't enjoyed since September 1997. If we're smart, we won't leave the house for a month.



© 2017 Mark Feggeler

The Z Rating

For years, My Lovely Wife has displayed a tendency to doze off while watching movies either at home or in the theater. She masterfully exercises her stealthy catnapping skills in everything from family-friendly fare, to melodramas, to hyperkinetic action flicks.

The napping itself shouldn't be immediately mistaken for dismissal because good or bad, interesting or not, the nap will most likely happen. Sometimes she regrets having slept through a movie that otherwise was enjoyable. Other times there is no regret for having missed it.

When you closely examine the behavior, as we have done throughout the years, you'll find movies fall into one of six categories of what we have come to call the Z Rating System.

Z-5
A movie with a Z-5 ranking is one that, in the opinion of My Lovely Wife, should never have been committed to celluloid. Its very existence is a noteworthy offense and should require a full refund. Napping during a Z-5 is less a comment on the quality of the film and more a defense mechanism to protect the brain from injury caused by rampant stupidity, plot holes, sloppy acting, bad dialogue, the presence of an actor she finds objectionable (i.e., Michael Caine), or westerns (not excluding Blazing Saddles). As someone who fully appreciates Michael Caine and has been known to enjoy westerns from time to time, I don't always understand the application of a Z-5. Then again, it isn't my rating system.

Z-4
Almost as bad as a Z-5, the Z-4 is the kind of movie that frustratingly fails to live up to its full potential. There might be one or two redeeming qualities, but overall the movie is disappointing (such as every comedy featuring Diane Keaton or Steve Martin (or both (with the exception of the first Father of the Bride)) since the early 1990s). Napping during a Z-4 is My Lovely Wife's way of avoiding the annoyance of a good idea or a strong cast being wasted in a story that doesn't go where it should.

Z-3
The Z-3 ranking is reserved for average movies -- not great; not awful. They're better than mediocre, but not enough so to make them laudable. A Z-3 might also be a perfectly good movie that just does not interest her, such as any of the recent string of Marvel superhero movies. The nap during a Z-3 probably doesn't impede the understanding of the plot or detract from the enjoyability of a film's positive attributes. What was missed was missed and that's okay. Snoring has been known to obscure bits of dialogue from time to time, requiring those of us in close proximity to raise the volume. In the end, the Z-3 nap doesn't necessarily represent punitive judgement; it simply doesn't matter one way or the other if any portion of the film was napped through.

Z-2
The thing that differentiates a Z-2 from a Z-3 is the expression of mild regret at having fallen asleep. The occasional "I was trying to stay awake" might be uttered and there is often genuine interest about the sections of the movie that were lost to unconsciousness. However, the need to revisit the film to see the missed portions is sketchy.

Z-1
A Z-1 is a movie during which My Lovely Wife fights with all her might to keep her peepers open for the entirety of the showing. If it was something we rented, you might find her watching it again the following day before we return it. If we own the movie, she might suggest watching it again within an uncharacteristically short span of time. And, finally...

Z-0
Yes, there actually are certain movies through which My Lovely Wife manages to remain awake and alert from opening sequence to final frame. The Z-0s are few and far between, but they really do exist and are often the films we end up purchasing. The best thing about a Z-0 is its unpredictability. For years, I had tried to get My Lovely Wife to watch Dodgeball. When she finally broke down and allowed me to play it for her, she giggled all the way through and Dodgeball is now a family favorite in our household. Other recent additions to the Z-0 ranking include The Hundred-Foot Journey and Mr. Holmes. They are almost always met with the same expression of disbelief: "I loved that movie! I stayed awake the entire time!"

Meatballs, Feathers & Rocking Chairs

Having children means staying busy. In our children's younger years, it more specifically meant busying ourselves with changing diapers, preparing bottles, giving baths, and keeping them entertained.

Among all the requirements of parenthood, I always was most taken by the responsibility to entertain. When you get it right, I imagine the sensation you experience is akin to what actors or comedians must feel when they are on stage. Smiles, laughs, and applause from an audience delighted to watch you perform.

But you must remain topical and current. As your audience matures, you find peek-a-boo and funny faces no longer cut the mustard. You've got to expand your repertoire or risk being replaced by someone or something funnier, like an uncle or a cardboard box.

When the kids were big enough to take baths in a proper bathtub, one of my favorite things was to pretend to eat their feet. I know what you're thinking. Pure genius, right?

Bath time would progress normally and quietly when, suddenly, I would declare the need to eat me some kiddie toes. Giggling would give way to a manic, panicked laughter as I searched the surface of the soapy water for digits. Eventually -- because they simply could no longer resist the temptation -- one of the children would lift a toe through the bubbles. As quickly as possible, I would launch my face into the water, mouth open, fully prepared to have a tooth kicked out, and splash around like a thresher shark after my prey.

At some point, however, children mature to the point where not only would my trying to bite their toes while they're in the bathtub leave them emotionally scarred, my mere presence in the room would cross the line into the zones of "creepy" and "disturbing."

While still young, our kids now are miniature adults and more sophisticated than the toddlers who once thrilled at the idea of being pushed on a swing. They now entertain themselves with an arsenal of Nerf guns, a vast selection of movies, video games for the Wii or PS3, or the kids next door.

But every now and then, on wintery days like today or slow summer days when they tire of their electronic gadgets, we get to play with them again. Maybe just a few quick volleys of ping pong on the new table in the basement. Maybe we join them on the Wii for some fun, sporty games. Maybe even a board game. We've been fortunate that they continue to enjoy our family time.

Just the other night, after yet another threat of winter weather caused the cancelation of a dance at our Darling Daughter's school, we found we had quite a bit of time to enjoy not only our own children but a couple of our daughter's friends who were sleeping over.

We knowingly did not crowd the three 13-year-olds, but when it came time for dessert we offered both our homemade cookies and a game of Apples to Apples. Before long, the seven of us were laughing it up around the table at the mismatched combinations of words we came up with during the game -- like my favorite, "Meatballs, Feathers and Rocking Chairs." We laughed at each other and ourselves, enjoying each other's company as we always have and hopefully always will.

I'm curious to see what new entertainment will keep us close as the years advance. Who knows? Maybe in another decade or two I'll have a chance to dive after new little toes through the bubbles. Until then, I'll be a happy idiot and enjoy what comes.



© 2010 Mark Feggeler