Today, April 26, is our son’s 36^th birthday. I guess, if I had thought about it before he was born, I would have thought that the 36^th would have just been another birthday in a long line of birthdays. But when you are a parent, any birthday of one of your children is a special day. When you only have the one child, it is even more so. With the surgery I have just endured, we got to see Adam and his wife, Kim. They came in from Ohio the day before and stayed several days. The surgery itself was on Kim’s birthday, so the night before we had a joint party. But I was distracted, to say the least. My mind was elsewhere. Now it is his birthday and I am letting my mind wander.

          As I said in this blog a couple of days ago, I often use situations as learning experiences. This didn’t always set well with Adam. One day when he was a sophomore in high school, I was eating breakfast when he strolled into the kitchen. Like a lot of teenagers, he was pretty well convinced his parents didn’t know half of what was going on in the world. At least, not the important stuff.

          “Dad, what do you know about the lottery?” Apparently, because he had never heard the lottery talked about at home, he figured I hadn’t heard of the wonders of the lottery.

          “Well, Son, I’ve heard about it. Why do you ask?”

          “Well, Dad, the lottery is this thing where you can buy tickets for a buck. Each ticket has a series of numbers on it and if those numbers come up at the weekly drawing, you can win a LOT of money.!”

          “OK, that’s kind of what I have heard, too. Long odds, though. Anyway, what brings this up?”

          Now he got real serious. This was something he had been practicing, I think. He reached into his pocket and pulled out three dollars.

          “I know you probably wouldn’t want to risk any money on the lottery, and I’m still too young. But, I will give you these three dollars and you can go down and buy the tickets. Then we can split the winnings. No risk to you and I still get to play.”

          Pretty good thinking, especially for a 15 year old. I reached over and took the three dollars.

          “You want to play? Follow me.”

          We walked down the hall and turned into the bathroom. I have always wondered what he thought was going to happen in the bathroom. There was a safe in the wall in the bathroom. Maybe he thought I was so enlightened now I was going to get more money. (I know. Why was there a safe in the wall in the bathroom? I don’t know. It was a parsonage. Parsonages can be weird places. I do know we kept no money in the safe.) So he followed me into the bathroom. I walked to the toilet and threw the three dollars in and flushed.

          “WHAT!??! YOU JUST THREW MY THREE DOLLARS AWAY!!! WHY??!?”

          “You just played the lottery, Son. And, you have virtually the same chance of winning.”

          He wasn’t amused.

          It didn’t always work out that well. Adam wanted to put a computer in his room in the basement of that same parsonage and he wanted to be able to hook up with the internet. We had dial-up back then, as did most people, so the biggest hurdle was running a phone line into the basement. He was helping me. A small hole in the floor was all we needed and I was able to put a line into the basement. Once there, I ran the line into a junction box just in case we ever wanted to put something else phone related down there. To do that, back in those days, you opened the box and cut open the line and splayed out the five little wires and attached them to the leads in the box. Adam, being inquisitive, asked what the five wires were for.

          “Specifically, Son, I don’t know. They are color coded, so they are easy to hook up. Mostly, I assume they carry all the data to a phone or a computer. One of these wires, though, carries an electrical current. That’s what makes a phone light up when it rings.”

          I was on a step ladder ready to attach the box up high. One hand had the wire, one the box. I needed both hands to attach the box. The smart thing, actually the normal thing, would have been to hand the wire to my son. But not me. I am too smart for that. I have three degrees. I’m a thinker. I had just told Adam that one of those small wires carried an electrical charge. Rather than hand him the wires, I put the five ends into my mouth. I am really fortunate that the electrical charge wasn’t a full 110 volts. As it was, it knocked me off the ladder. Adam looked down at me and said, “You want me to go get Mom to finish this up?”

          You do things for your kids, things you wouldn’t do for yourself or for anyone else. In Cleveland, Ohio the is a large building called the International Exposition Center, or I-X Center for short. It is massive. The complex started life just after World War Two started and was the facility most American tanks were made in during the war. After the war, it was repurposed several times until it was made into the current I-X Center. It is one of the largest such buildings in the United States. The same year of the lottery tickets my son brought be a newspaper ad that talked about a big computer show at the I-X Center in February. He really wanted to go. (He was really a geek.) He really wanted me to go with him. My mind started to whir through the reasons to say no. 60 miles away. February in Cleveland. Snow, ice, a computer show. Ugh!

          “Sure, Adam, we’ll go.” It was the least I could do. I had already flushed his dream of wealth down the toilet.

          That Saturday was cold, snowy, miserable. Marsha felt that we needed to just be two guys, so she stayed home. We fought the horrible weather all 60 miles there. I was a little shocked to see the huge parking lot packed out. We had to drive around to find a place. For a computer show? How odd.

          I found out why when we got to the door. Big letters, mammoth letters, “WELCOME TO THE ANNUAL RV-OUTDOOR SHOW---MAIN FLOOR.” On a small sign right next to the door and written in chalk, “Hewlett Packard Computer Show---Basement.” Just so you will understand, the I-X Center hosted this outdoor show every year in February. After a hard, unforgiving Cleveland winter it was the most amazing place to go. RVs, boats, fishing gear, a one acre pond you could fish in…..you name it, whatever you might need to camp or fish or hunt. It was all there! People would come from all over the Mid-West and spend a couple of nights to see it all. I had always wanted to go, but something had always come up. But now, here I was at the I-X Center on the same day of the Show!

          You do things for your kids, things you wouldn’t do for yourself or for anyone else. “Come on, Dad, the door’s over here.”  "Right, Son, lead the way.” Five hours in Geek City. It was worth it.

          Happy Birthday, Son.