Vincent Hears Voices Saying: 'Feet, keep WALKIN'

It seems like only yesterday that Vincent couldn't even walk, and now the 8-year-old's on the run. Well, not now, but he was on the lam for awhile the other day in an incident that panicked everybody.
Except him, of course — after all, he was the only one who knew he wasn't lost, or worse.
One of his parents usually picks him up at school, parking out on the street and walking up to the school. (That’s a far sight better than the other option of queuing up in a snaking line of cars longer than the phalanxes of girls who elbowed their way into theaters during the recent opening weekend of "The Twilight Saga; New Moon." I've picked him up a couple of times, so I can attest to the fact that the procession offers a grueling experience, sometimes leaving you feeling as if you're camping overnight to get concert tickets for a Gene Pitney concert.)
Some days, though, Vincent walks out toward the street to wait near the traffic light/crossing guard for Mom or Dad. But one day, his feet didn't stop at the light but veered right, and he kept right on walking — off the school grounds, and down the sidewalk heading home.
When Melissa trekked up to the school, the teacher said he had started walking, so they assumed he would be out by the light.
Bedlam ensued. School officials were concerned, and Melissa was frantic. Those who might wonder why Vincent would have abandoned kindergartener brother Jack at the school door must be only children: There comes a time when a cool, self-respecting second-grader just has to break out on his own, and leave younger siblings in his wake.
Melissa retrieved Jack and handed him off to a mom friend who kept him in her van while Melissa leaped into her own van with 3-year-old Luke and 1-year-old Patrick, who were asleep. Then she drove around frantically searching for her first-borne, urging herself to be calm while her Mama Bear instincts surged at the thought that something might have happened to him.
"I told myself," she confided to me, "that first I was gonna HUG him, and then I was gonna KILL him."
Of course, she forgot to kill him, but she nearly hugged him to death. She explained that she wasn’t angry at him (rather, she confessed a little pride at his showing an independent streak he inherited from her).
But she made it clear that NEXT time, he would, indeed, be in trouble.
He assured her that there wouldn’t be a next time.
She allowed as how his escapade had surprised everybody because it was so out of character for him. He normally is a rule keeper’s rule keeper.
Indeed, he said, "You know who it surprised the MOST, Mommy? ME! I was walking to meet you and when I didn’t see you, something in my head kept saying, 'Feet, keep WALKIN'. Keep WALKIN.'"
The day after the incident, Melissa told me it was 45 minutes until she had him in the van. Chances are, it was more like 20 minutes, maybe even just 10, and she’s just being dramatic. But I suppose it seemed like almost an hour, to a frantic mom (but what do I know?).
I’d wager that, as years go by, some day, when Melissa’s my age and Vincent, hers — and I’m a distant memory and a faded picture on the wall whose grandfather tales have long since been relegated to some dusty archives in cyberspace — they’ll be sitting around a holiday table regaling each other with stories about adventures long past.
By then, the story will have grown legs and Jack will pipe up, “Remember the time Vincent abandoned me at school and was lost for HOURS, and nobody could find him, and the school went into lockdown, and the sheriff’s department sent up helicopters and marshaled the canine patrol, and the state police have blasted forth an Amber Alert, and the national guard called a battalion back from Afghanistan, and President Obama called on ACORN to quit organizing communities (and votes) and organize a search instead, and the United Nations declared an international emergency, and we STILL couldn’t find him?”
Melissa will rock back in her chair, bouncing a couple of grandkids on her knees and nod knowingly, saying, “Yes, you little dears, we almost lost your daddy that day. Land sakes, what a DAY. I searched for that boy for DAYS!”
But for now, she thought he needed at least to apologize to the assistant principal. She doesn’t believe in idle exercises, so she had the lad convey his remorse, and contrition, in writing.

Although I can make light of the incident now because it had a happy ending, the sad side is that we have to be so frightened today about our kids’ welfare. Back when granddad was a lad, our parents admonished us not to take candy from strangers, but I never ran across a stranger even offering an all-day sucker (believe me, I was on the lookout for one, because I was a poor drycleaner’s son who got only a few pennies every other Friday [if it was a good week] to buy some penny candy). And none of my friends saw that stranger, either.
What’s more, we could roam our little towns at will, disappearing in the morning and not darkening the doorstep ’til dark. Nobody worried.
These days, you can’t let a child out of your sight.
Vincent has vowed that there won’t be a next time, but I can imagine that if there happened to be, he wouldn’t be listening to his feet.
Rather, he’ll be pleading with them, resurrecting that saying that even predates granddad: “FEET, don't FAIL me now!”

Meanwhile, here’s the reunited family, with Vincent on the right, with the others, from his right, being Mom (age classified secret, although I think she looks pretty dadgummed good for somebody who's damnnear 40!), with 1-year-old Patrick Michael on her lap and 6-year-old Jack behind her, and Dad holding 3-year-old Luke.



Melissa obviously can keep her mind on the task at hand, while the others’ eyes seem to be straying. Whatever on EARTH could be attracting their attention? Well, perhaps they are staring, in awe, at the 9-pound, maybe 10-pound, bass I caught Thanksgiving Day (don't fret, though, I pardoned him and released him, unlike turkeys throughout the land). And that's no fish tail tale — as this photo proves. Also, lest you imagine that's a huge paunch you see me (left) carrying, BESIDES the bass, before even partaking of a Thanksgiving repast, my abs obviously are bulging to hold the behemoth from the deep.)


HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO YA.

Now We'll NEVER Get the Kid Out of His (or Her) Womb

Well, they — whoevertheHECK they are — say parents-to-be should talk to their budding offspring in the womb.
Actually, parents-to-be is the wrong term, because when a bun is in the oven, they technically are parents already. And, even though Brendan is firm in not wanting to know the gender, and Erica is honoring his wishes (as far as I know, anyway, although there’s the distinct possibility that she knows and already has bought a bunch of blue, or pink, clothes), they are parents.
They — and, as I said, whoevertheHECK they are — say you should play calming music to calm the budding infant; perhaps elevator music of Barry Manilow’s greatest hit, I suppose. (I use the singular form of “hit” at the risk of offending Manilow fans because, well, the world is made up of two kinds of people: Manilow fans and those who make fun of him, for some reason. Seems kind of mean, because he’s obviously a huge talent. I’m not sure how I ended up on the wrong side of his soundtracks, but here I am.)
I suppose it would be better to play Manilow’s “I Can’t Smile Without You” to calm the child rather than scare the hell out of him/her by exposing it to the “Hellboy II” flick that featured the song. (If we only KNEW whether it’s a boy or a girl, and if it were a boy, I could say the song would scare the HELL outta the boy.)



I suppose there’s some truth to the singing-to-calm-the-baby-in-the-womb theory, which basically seems to be it eases the baby’s angst about all the other noises out here in the netherworld. But who can prove it, because none of us remembers what we heard in the womb? After all, we were preoccupied with kicking Mom so she and Dad could watch the poke from her belly.
Anecdotally, though, I have these observations:

Either Vincent wasn’t prepared properly inside the womb, or he was just too sensitive once he got outside, or, MOST likely, Melissa and Skip were just too dadgum protective. All of us visitors literally had to tiptoe around the house because the lad jumped at the slightest noise and squinted if you even tried to open a shade. So they lived in nearly total silence and darkness for his first several months.

Mom and Dad let their guard down a tad with Jack, and you could even carry on a conversation above a whisper when he was a baby. He just wasn’t as jumpy as the firstborn.

The decibel level rose a bit more when Luke was in the womb, because it’s hard to keep a couple of toddlers quiet, and Vincent and Jack were anything but quiet.

By the time an egg and a sperm got together to generate what one day would emerge as Patrick, the noise level around their household was nothing short of the junction of all the runways at a major airport.
In short, by that time, Vincent, Jack and Luke had become accustomed to raising such a ruckus that Patrick has been able to sleep through any noise from the get-go. He had become accustomed to the thunder in the womb.
Which brings us back to Brendan and Erica. Erica slipped me a photo of my son singing to his son — or daughter, who knows? — at a recent wedding they attended.
Well, they’ll be lucky if child services doesn’t come knocking on their door, because I’ve heard Brendan sing, and I think it could be classified as child abuse. (I know, because I think he inherited his pipes from me, and the list of my greatest hits isn’t anywhere near as long as Manilow’s.)
But Erica’s note made it sound like such a sweet gesture, singing “Sweet Child of Mine” to a baby in its mother’s womb. Erica noted that the DJ was playing that song at the wedding reception they were attending (pay no attention to what appears to be a beer cup in Brendan’s hand; I’m sure he’s the type who would forgo imbibing out of sympathy for mommy’s having to do the same).
My assumption of sweetness arose from the fact that I never had heard of the song, but it seems so lullabyish, not unlike a Barry Manilow song. So I checked YouTube, and found THIS:



Well, I guess the Guns ’N Roses melody (if you can call it that) isn’t about a baby after all — at least, not the infant type, although it’s obviously a girl.
But if he/she survives the eardrum-breaking cacophony of Brendan’s doing a Guns ’N Roses karaoke gig at a wedding reception, the child should be able to survive anything.
It’s better than facing post-partum depression if he/she were dragged out of the womb, kicking and screaming out of fear that Barry Manilow wrote all the songs that made the whole world sing — Barry Manilow songs. Speaking of, let's at least give Manilow his due — he's a good sport, after all — with a sing-along:

Good GOLLY, Kids, You're in for a LONG Haul!

I never have given voice to the old saying, "I can sleep when I'm dead," because I appreciate a strategically placed nap.
By that I mean: a nap I place strategically during the day, in a strategically comfortable place. Or, if I can’t do THAT, I’ll just nod off anywhere, as long as I’m not on a ledge of the umpire state building. (No, that’s not a typo, but rather a genuflection to the fact that the umpiring in the various stages of the Fall Classic this season makes the boys in blue likely candidates to be, well, pushed off the Empire State Building.)
Still, lots of party animals and workaholics live by the phrase, allowing them to party hardy or work their fingers to the bone. Thus, they end up with bloodshot eyes and boney fingers.
And THAT reminds me of the old Hoyt Axton song, “Boney Fingers.” Come on, set a spell and sing along:

Kinda makes a guy need a nap, eh?
It'll be up to the boys and Amelia and the mystery grandchild to decide whether to be nappers or surrender to boney fingers. And even though they resist naps today (well, the extra-wombals [kind of like extraterrestirals] do, anyway), they'd better wise up, and soon, because they could be awake years, or even DECADES, longer than today's partyers and workers.
ForGET about the impact on Social Security, because that will be long gone by the time today’s babies reach 100, as more than HALF of the babies born today in rich countries will do, if present life-expectancy trends continue, according to a study in a recent issue of The Lancet medical journal.
The kids will rue the day they spurned Papa Mike’s exhortations to take a nap when they’re 97 or 98 and just dawg tired.
In the 20th century, most developed countries saw an increase of around 30 years in life expectancy, according to an AFP story on the report. In 1950, only 15 percent to 16 percent of 80-year-old women, and just 12 percent of octogenarian men, made it to the age of 90 in advanced economies.
In 2002, this had risen to 37 percent and 25 percent, respectively. In Japan , the survival rate from 80 to 90 is now more than 50 percent for women.
"If the pace of increase in life expectancy in developed countries over the past two centuries continues through the 21st century, most babies born since 2000 in France, Germany, Italy, the UK, the USA, Canada, Japan and other countries with long life expectancies will celebrate their 100th birthdays," AFP quoted the Lancet study as saying.
So, if I get to retire by, say, 85, I wonder when my grandkids will be able to (especially if I’m sleeping in their back bedrooms, assuming they don’t just slap me in a nursing home).
The researchers thought of that angle, too, saying that, instead of working for a long, intense spell and then retiring, "individuals could combine work, education, leisure, and child-rearing in varying amounts at different ages."
"The 20th century was a century of redistribution of income. The 21st century could be a century of redistribution of work," the study authors wrote.
In other words, kids, PACE yourselves, or your boney fingers won’t last as long as the rest of your bodies.
As for your faces, you might consider some exercises to banish the wrinkles:


But eventually you still could end up as wrinkled as an elephant’s trunk, singing Raymond Crooke’s Twilight Blues. I don’t know whoinhell Ray Crooke is, but I think his song’s got a nice beat and the message is morbidly humorous:


And I’ll close with this thought, kiddos: Have a good (and looonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng) life! But don’t eat too much of your Halloween candy at one setting. Speaking of, I don't have pictures of ALL the grandkids in their outfits, but that's OK, because I don't want to be like those totally obnoxious grandparents shoving pix down people's throats.
However, I do happen to have one of Amelia, the little bugger:



Not to be outdone, here's Patrick, a cute little Yoda is he, eh? Chowing down on a cookie at a Halloween party is he.