The Raging Elitist

The boys’ summer break is almost over, and the family’s lack of routine has gotten to the point that Cartter and Scotty can’t remember what day it is anymore. They got up early on a Saturday and claimed they thought it was the first day of school. Another time we were making plans to go to Cartter’s favorite pizza restaurant when Cartter suddenly froze and said, “Wait, what day is it?” knowing that Tony’s is closed on Tuesdays. It was Friday.

Since we got back from our two-week vacation in Sapphire, we’ve been in a period of limbo, trying to enjoy this last bit of free time while the heavily scheduled specter of school and swim team looms over our heads. A couple trips to the neighborhood pool were highlights. Those were prompted by my shoulder’s tolerance of swimming in the lake, and by the boys’ attitudes about my proficiency. I was in the kitchen making them dinner when Scotty asked dubiously, “Are you good at swimming?” I explained that I used to be pretty good, and Cartter said that I “didn’t look that fast,” going so far as to claim he wasn’t too worried about the threat I might pose in a race. The next day, I loaded them up in the golf cart and took them to the pool amid a light rain, intending to teach them that I am still their superior in the pool. The place was empty save for a couple lifeguards I once trained. One, a curly-headed nineteen-year-old named Jack, was keen to observe my swimming and came out from the guard shack to sit in the chair and watch. I had him film the race, a 50 freestyle which I swam very carefully so as not to aggravate my thawing left shoulder. I snuck a peek at Cartter swimming two lanes over at about the twelve-and-a-half. He was already behind. At the twenty-five, I threw a flip turn, pushed off, and opened up a wide gap, which only got wider on the second twenty-five. “Not quite,” I told him when he touched the wall. “Almost,” said Jack. Then, I grabbed Scotty by the waist as he came thrashing beneath the flags, carrying him across the surface into the wall.

The trip to Tony’s was another highlight. Besides the deep dish and the cold beer, I enjoyed Cartter’s obvious attachment to the place, something I’d never considered. Cartter’s been going to Tony’s since he was a toddler. The restaurant is Detroit themed with little toy cars atop a low wall separating two rows of booths. Cartter made some of his earliest memories eating meatballs and playing with those toy cars, the way I made some of mine listening to the Beach Boys on the juke box at the smoke-filled Pizza Pub in Chattanooga. At Tony’s we polished two small pies while Motown music played through the speakers, and I discovered that the boys didn’t know who Stevie Wonder was. On the drive home, we listened to “For Once in My Life,” and I explained to them that Stevie Wonder was born blind, prompting Cartter to ask, “And he made all this music?” Back at the house we learned Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up,” and Otis Redding’s “Sittin on the Dock of the Bay,” Cartter on guitar and I on piano.

Moments like my first time racing Cartter and Scotty in the pool and teaching them to play Otis Redding, the prospect of summer break’s end is a terribly sad one. For a portion of the time between, when the heat pushes the boys inside, and there’s nothing for them to do, when the house becomes a place in which there’s no peace and quiet and no real chance of thinking or being productive, I’d rather the start of the school year just get here already. All the neighborhood boys are back in town, and over the last week or two their presence has developed into a nuisance. When I left the house in the golf cart for our second morning trip to swim laps (Cartter declined to race on this occasion), the boy’s friend was riding down the street on his bicycle, no doubt intending to invade our home and strew Legos all about Cartter’s room. Cartter and Scotty waived to him from the back seat, and I kept the pedal to the floor. A few days later, one of the other neighborhood boys took umbrage with losing a game of tag and decided to start pinching Scotty and slapping his behind. He later declared that he only had three friends, namely the other boys present besides Scotty. I handled the news of these goings on by showing Cartter and Scotty youtube videos of wrestling takedowns. That night in his bed Cartter asked me, “Daddy, do we have to do those wrestling moves to Max?” I told him he didn’t have to, that I get carried away sometimes.

Bedtime has been anxious lately. Scotty has taken to reemerging into the living room within minutes of lights out, claiming that he can’t fall asleep and that he’s scared. He asks me to quiz him on multiplication tables before I leave him in his room. Cartter is worried that all the fourth-grade teachers are mean and that he might end up with a boy named Mason in his class. Apparently, this child likes to say “fuck” when the teacher leaves the room and is fond of words like “sigma” and “rizzy.” “What do those words mean?” Cartter wants to know. He wants to know why kids his age have phones. Meanwhile, I spend evenings confessing to Danyelle my fears about the upcoming start to swim season, my concern that I’ll be exhausted by late nights on the deck and early morning carpool, that parents won’t buy into the program and the kids won’t improve, that I’ll expend a whole lot of effort only to end up frustrated. At least I’ll have some quiet in the house. And I’ll know what day it is.

“It went by so fast,” Scotty said about his summer break on the penultimate night. I was sitting in his desk chair talking to him before flicking the light switch off and saying goodnight. “You know what else is gonna go by fast?” he said. “Weekends.”