Petta Reddast Against Parental Risk Aversion
Icetown was awesome, literally producing awe in my mind with its bizarre geography as a largely uninhabitable island way up against the Arctic Ocean, gifted the warming Gulf Stream as a lifeline. I prefer to focus on the negatives in life though because suffering well seems to average out better than chasing undulating happiness.
Take the vaunted northern lights.
I won’t lie to the inexperienced. That electric green is a camera trick for the sheep. At moderate levels of solar activity with moderate visibility, it all just looks like some misty discoloration in the sky to the naked eye, more gray than green. You might not even notice walking down the street.
Yet according to an iPhone 12 mini camera on Night mode, we were at an EDM club. Hypocritically, I was probably the giddiest of observers along with my wife because we caught the elusive light show on the very night of her 40th birthday and it was so exciting and novel coming from suburban Texas. But I did try to poop on the rooftop party by openly questioning, “So how is this materially different than taking a picture anywhere and adding a Snapchat filter?”
This is my fraudulent existence, trying to be cooly rational and logical yet routinely swept by emotion. At the intersection was the realization we don’t need to take any more bucket list trips without our kids. By no means would they have enhanced the adventure. We brought them to a wedding last weekend for the first and last time, and they absorbed all our fun.
I was supposed to be on that chair with my shirt off. He tore up the dance floor like a maniac all night while I cradled the needy 3-year-old in the lobby. People were saying the party animal reminded them of his father, as if I were dead already. Never have I gone to a wedding and people not noticed whether I was there. The next one I am going harder than ever, and everyone is going to have hell to pay.
No, the reason why I don’t want to travel with my wife and without the kids is the risk of us both dying. I suppose that’s insanely morbid to prefer the kids die with us than be orphans. I don’t know. I just don’t like it.
I don’t even like driving at high speeds with my wife in the car. One of us has to survive. They are so young and need us so badly. On the way back from sick ice caves and the dangerous black sand beach visited by “Game of Thrones”:
Our tour guide drove in absurd conditions. Otherworldly winds from the side swayed the van on the icy highway. We passed another from the same tour company stuck off the shoulder. The overpass through the mountains was shut down. The view out of the windshield was hard to believe, a snow-globe wall of white. Driver, what road are you seeing that I’m not?
Back at the hotel, we heard about the plane crash in the Potomac. Our flight was delayed 55 hours because Iceland was expecting a monster storm. Meanwhile, both kids back home had fevers and probably the flu. Three of the four septuagenarian grandparents were knocked out as well.
Ten years ago, an extra weekend in Reykjavík with the love of my life would have been cause to sneak some of that Icelandic gin into the Blue Lagoon for some more glamor shots in 100-degree water surrounded by lava rock and 30-degree air.
Or an encore trip to The Icelandic Phallological Museum because it’s difficult to reach the upper limit of cock you want as a consumer.
Instead we were absolutely desperate to leave an idyllic land of natural wonders for Frisco, Texas. My wife was in tears. Kids change everything and in the case of travel, drastically. Our dominant concern on the way home, besides getting home, was transporting intact a couple of oversized plastic Viking axes. Partly due to questionable parenting, our kids are obsessed with weapons. They sleep with plastic swords I bought at a tourist trap near the Tower of London, which breezed through security at Heathrow Airport without resistance.
The axes were the opposite ordeal, not because they stuck out of my backpack like Leonardo’s swords, but because, we were told, they looked too realistic. Stopped by airport security in Iceland, Amsterdam and even Second Amendment-reverent Houston, we had to put our hearts on the line negotiating, pleading, strategizing, escalating to supervisors.
At Keflavík Airport we dumped out the dry cleaning bag holding my dirty clothes and wrapped the axes in it before checking them in at the “odd-size” baggage counter. In Amsterdam and Houston, the bosses miraculously let us carry them on after some lengthy discussion as if this were a real problem requiring multiple adults to analyze. The Texan was visibly annoyed and initially rejected us before a reluctant dismissive wave and saying, “Don’t bring this stuff again. That is ridiculous.”
Miss, I am a pre-911 O.G. who remembers walking through security in shoes and picking up people at the gate. My buddy was telling me back in the day he carried on an actual sword from England and stowed that mother effer in the overhead bin.
Anyway, the axes made it home to join my heart.
P.S. — The heads of the axes broke off after a week, but the handles are still used for battle and result in crying every three days or so.