Our oldest son went to the beach this week. It’s a deserved vacation. For the last several weeks Harrison has been working three part-time jobs. He’s been doing really well in college the past couple of semesters, and he’s working hard. A week at the beach seems to be the right thing for a 20-year-old to do.
I harbor no ill will toward him that he’s been at the beach. I don’t even harbor any ill will that he went to Amelia Island, which is our favorite beach. Nor do I harbor any ill will that I’m not taking a vacation or going to the beach this summer.
The fact is, I think everyone in the family would be okay with it if Harrison wanted to extend his vacation for a few more weeks. We’d all encourage him, if he could, to stretch this into a four or five month trip.
Harrison is gone, and we’ve stolen all his stuff.
It’s a fact that, being the newest, Harrison’s mattress is the best mattress in the house. This is a fact our youngest son, Robert, points out regularly.
Harrison’s bedroom is just off the kitchen, so anytime Jean is making dinner in the kitchen, 15-year-old Robert wanders into Harrison’s room, stretches out on his bed and says loudly enough so that Jean can hear him in the kitchen: “This mattress is so nice! It’s a lot nicer than my mattress. I need a new mattress.”
Harrison was not 15 minutes out the door on his way to the beach Friday evening when Robert came walking downstairs with all his bedding in his arms.
“I’m taking over Harrison’s room for the week,” Robert announced. “I like his mattress better than my mattress, so I’m going to be sleeping in his room.”
But it’s not just Harrison’s bed that Robert has confiscated. He’s also taken over Harrison’s bathroom.
Robert shares a bathroom with Nathan, and a bathroom shared by two teenage boys is a frightening and disgusting place. Once a year the Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Division send people to our house to examine, classify, quantify, qualify and kill all the living organisms they can find on the toilets, in the shower, in the sink and on the mirror.
Robert blames Nathan. Nathan blames Robert. The CDC and the EPA are just grateful they don’t have to travel into the deep, deep swamps of Louisiana and face all sorts of snakes and gators to find these samples.
So Robert has taken over Harrison’s bedroom and his bathroom, and we’re worried what kind of fight it’s going to be when Harrison gets home.
Nathan has spent most of the summer hanging out with his girlfriend, Christen, in our bonus room. They watch shows on Netflix.
But when Harrison and his girlfriend Amelia show up at the house, Nathan and Christen get kicked out of the bonus room and have to watch TV with me and Jean.
So in Harrison’s absence, Nathan and Christen are free to watch all the Netflix they can handle without concern of interruption. As the oldest sibling in the house, Nathan now doesn’t get kicked off the TV, but he sends Robert out of the room whenever he wants.
And when Christen isn’t here, Nate can play Game Box without worrying that Harrison will show up and turn off the game.
So Nathan has control of the upstairs television, and for him it’s the best summer ever.
Unfortunately, the air conditioning in our Explorer doesn’t work great. I don’t notice much because I roll the windows down most of the time anyway, but Jean has been complaining at me for weeks that the air needs to get fixed.
I don’t mind fixing the air in the Explorer, but I do mind spending money. So I haven’t gotten the air fixed, and here we are at the end of July, and I’m thinking if I wait a couple more months summer will be over and that’s money I won’t have to spend until next spring.
So Jean has commandeered Harrison’s Toyota Camry. Harrison got an amazing deal on this car several months ago, and because it gets better gas mileage than his Jeep (and doesn’t leak cold air in the wintertime the way the Jeep does), it’s become his car of choice.
He still has his Jeep, but that has turned into more a toy. He takes it out only on pretty days and drives it around with the top and doors off, and if he gets too hot in it, he comes home and gets the Camry. Because in addition to getting great gas mileage, Harrison’s Camry blows cold, cold A/C.
So if Harrison wants to extend his beach vacation for another couple of months, at least until it cools off outside, Jean will be okay with it. And this is really saying something, because mamas always miss their babies when their babies go away on a beach vacation.
And that brings me to me.
If you’ve seen me lately, you’ll know I’m not driving around in our Explorer, either. And if you’ve seen me and you’re in a Jeep, I’ve flashed a Jeep wave at you. Because while Robert has Harrison’s bed, and Nathan has the bonus room TV to himself, and Jean has Harrison’s air conditioner, I am tooling around town in Harrison’s Jeep.
I love this Jeep. It’s a 1990 Jeep Wrangler. It stalls out at stop signs and pretty much any other time I take my foot off the gas. When it’s running it sounds like an orangutan choking to death on an angry bear. I can’t get it to go over 50 miles an hour (and I’m not sure I would want it to). Without the top and doors, it is exposed to the elements, and so it’s about 500 degrees driving down the road.
But this Jeep is like a manifestation of my very soul. It is freedom and outdoors and the wind in my hair and 1990 and everything a 43-year-old man can remember about youth. The other day a 20-year-old girl with tattoos and piercings all over the place was chatting me up just because I was riding around in the Jeep. I haven’t had a 20-year-old girl chat me up since before this girl was born. I’m in heaven in this Jeep.
There have been several times this week that I didn’t have anywhere to go, but I went there in the Jeep just to drive it. And anytime I did have somewhere to go, I drove it.
One of my buddies was supposed to meet me for lunch the other day and forgot about me. He apologized for standing me up. “Are you kidding me?” I asked. “It gave me another excuse to ride down the road in the Jeep.”
We’ll all be glad to see Harrison when he gets home. He’s Robert’s and Nathan’s brother, and even though they seldom admit it, they love their big brother. He’s Jean’s baby boy, and she loves him. He’s my son, and I love him.
But his homecoming will also be greeted with a bit of remorse. Robert will have to go back to his own room. Nathan will have to compete for time in the bonus room. Jean will go back to sweating when she drives down the road.
But he’s not getting this Jeep back.
Rob Peecher is the author of Four Things My Wife Hates About Mornings. If you see him driving down the road, give him a Jeep wave.
