Did I say I take predictions of storms with a grain of salt?
Did I say it was more of a weather guess than a weather report? Did I say the weather forecasters are unreliable?
The view from my office window:
Current conditions according to The Weather Channel:
I may have been mistaken!
Yesterday, with Lil’B was not one of the more exciting outings I’ve had, but it was still good. I mentioned that last week his mother had asked that I help him with some of his school work that she couldn’t really help him with. I was happy to do so and it actually worked out kind of well, because I didn’t have a lot of money to spend this week.
I picked Lil’B up at 12:00 and we went to pick up a take ‘n bake pizza. I asked him what kind of toppings he liked and he said pepperoni. (Good start. I’m kinda finicky about my pizza toppings and I like pepperoni.) I asked him if he liked anything else on his pizza and he thought for a minute before telling me that he only liked pepperoni. I like extra cheese, pepperoni and black olives. I also like Hawaiian pizza but that’s not relevant to this story. I asked him if he liked black olives and he said, “What are those?”
We went to the pizza place, which happens to be inside of a mom and pop (actually, I’m fairly certain this one is pop and pop) video store. I put in the order and got half with black olives and half just pepperoni and while we waited for them to make the pizza we did our usual dance where Lil’B wanders around in no discernible pattern and I follow him to see what he finds. He headed toward the “Sci Fi” section of the store, and I put that in quotes because some of those movies seemed more like horror to me, and as far as I’m concerned Horror is not Sci Fi. First he was attracted to the Star Wars DVD covers. He picked up Episode IV (the first one) and I asked him if he’d ever seen it. He said he had not and then I looked at the back cover only to realize that the movie came out only two short years after I was born. Then he picked up Episode I and he told me had seen this one. When he asked me how old that one was I turned it over and saw that it came out in 2000 (IMDB says 1999, I’m not sure what the discrepancy is.) I told him, “This one came out in 2000. Before you were born! And I’m getting older by the second!”
He perused some more titles, grabbing the cases and ooing and ahing in typical seven year old fashion, showing great cinematic discretion as his level of excitement increased in direct proportion to the gruesomeness of the cover photo. When he picked up one (the title immediately forgotten) with a giant picture of a snake on it, I turned away. “Ooo. This one looks cool!” he said. “Yeah?” I asked, still not looking.
“It’s got a snake on it,” he told me excitedly. I’ve told him I do not like snakes.
“I know,” I said steadily, “that’s why I’m not looking.” And wouldn’t you know that’s when they called my name and announced that my pizza was ready. Bummer!
I took Lil’B back to my house, where I baked the pizza while cleaning up my kitchen. For a few minutes Lil’B just stood in the kitchen watching me, still wearing his jacket and backpack. I told him to make himself comfortable and he loosened up a little bit. Still wearing his jacket and backpack he began counting. He counted my light fixtures. He counted my windows. He counted my cupboards. Then he noticed the superman dry erase board on the side of my refrigerator and thought that was pretty cool. I asked him, “What else do you see on that side of the refrigerator?”
“Cat,” he said.
“Cat?” I asked. “There’s a cat on the side of my refrigerator?” He pulled a magnet with a picture of a cat just like Mischa off the side panel and showed it to me before putting it back. “Sure enough. There’s a cat on the side of my refrigerator. What else do you see?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he told me, as he so often does. It’s all one word that I’m not sure how to type. Something along the lines of “iontknow”
“You don’t know?” I asked him again. “There’s something else over there,” I told him. There’s actually a few somethings else over there, but I was looking for one thing in particular.
“Kevin Riggs,” he read aloud. “Oh! My picture!” he said with great pride.
On our very first meeting, we wrapped up our play time by drawing pictures for each other. He had written my name on the paper. When I got home I put the pictures he drew for me up on my refrigerator. I knew he’d come over sooner or later and when he did I wanted him to see that I appreciated his gift.
The pizza was ready and I took it out of the oven. I have marble counter tops, which I love because I could put the pizza down right on the counter without worry. I let it cool for a minute while filling a couple of cups with ice for beverages. The cups are from The Rainforest Café and they have flashing lights in the bottom of them. I surreptitiously pushed the button and the lights started flashing and he was absolutely dazzled, thought it was the coolest thing ever!
The kids at the pizza place over shot “half” by a little bit so some of the slices on Lil’B’s side of the pizza had olives on them. I told him this and said, “Give it a try. If you don’t like them you can pick them off.”
“They look like wheels!” he told me. He thought that was pretty great.
Since I don’t have a table I had to improvise and then I remembered when I was a kid, sometimes my mother would spread out a blanket on the living room floor and we’d have a “picnic” right there in the house. I have a tray with legs like you’d use in bed that I set up on the blanket so he’d have a steady and somewhat elevated place to work from and we sat down to eat while I looked over his assignments.
Man it’s been a long time since I was in the second grade. I found a lot of the work to be tedious and I was surprised to see how long it ook us to go through it, about two and half hours that felt like five. But I knew that it was right on the level it needed to be for him and he did a good job with it. Some of the instructions on the pages weren’t very clear, which is a bad thing, but other than that we got through it just fine.
On Saturday, Michelle and I made a quick trip to Target and I looked at the toys and games. I wanted to have something for him/us to do if and when his school work was finished. I found Monopoly Junior for only $10.99 and decided that it fit the bill. When we went back to Michelle’s apartment, I made her play a couple rounds, while my clothes were in the wash, so that I was sure I knew how to play with Lil’B. I found the game very – almost too – simplistic, designed in such a way that the games are pretty short; however, I guess that’s ideal for a five to eight year old as the box said.
After all the schoolwork we could do was completed, I put his papers back in his backpack and we set up the game. I wasn’t sure how it would go over, but he thought it was “Aaawwesoooome!” so I guess that’s good! We got three games in before I had to take him home. I wasn’t sure how he would react to losing, (I know I was a pretty sore loser at his age) but he took in stride. I’m sure it helped that of the three games we played, he won the first two.
It was a nice change of pace from our usual outings, which, while I want to show him new things and have fun doing things he might not otherwise get to do, I also want to do more normal, down to earth things with him. My only concern is I don’t want to have our relationship relegated to being his tutor. I’ll have to keep a close eye on this and make sure that doesn’t happen.
I was supposed to have a phone check-in with Hadley, the Match Support Specialist, today, but she didn’t answer the phone when I called and her office hours are officially over for the day. We’ll see when she calls me back. I’m hoping she can give me some input about it.
I decided that I had been spending too much money on dry cleaning, just to have at least three shirts come back every time with broken buttons, all because I hate to iron, so I broke down and bought an iron and ironing board last week-end. After I dropped Lil’B off I went back home and spent three hours ironing twelve shirts and three pairs of pants. When I finally stopped (with twenty more shirts to go) my legs were kind of twitchy from standing on them on my hard floors for a few hours.
I sat down in my recliner for a little while to give Mischa so much demanded—er, deserved attention and watch one of my favorite TV hows, Brothers and Sisters. My legs were a little sore and my muscles were twitching a little but I put the foot rest up and relaxed. No big deal.
My DVR’d recording of Brothers and Sisters ended just in time for me to see the weather report and the description of the massive storm headed for the Bay Area. I take these reports with a grain of salt because anything more than a light drizzle is so uncommon along the California coast line and the weather reporters are so unreliable that it should be called a “Weather Guess” instead of a Weather Report.
The graphic swirled with colors and three dimensional rain drops and lightning bolts and the weather woman mentioned high winds and it all evoked images of The Day After Tomorrow and I wondered if I should plan my root to the main library branch (or build an arc). And then in a moment of random thought I said to Mischa (‘cause he pays attention) “Looks like earthquake weather.” For those uninitiated, there is no such thing as “earthquake weather”. I turned the TV off, checked the locks and headed toward the back of my apartment for my bedtime rituals. When I went to bed at 11:45 my lower extremities were much relieved to be horizontal.
In the “unnecessary details” department, I have sham pillows on my bed that I don’t have anywhere to put when I’m actually in the bed so they sit leaning on the headboard which reduces the amount of space for me to sleep in. This is generally not a problem but I hadn’t realized I was lower on the mattress than normal. I was lying on my stomach and had my left leg extended straight down with my foot pressed up against the foot board. I was just dozing off at about 12:05 AM when I heard a loud popping/creaking sound and felt my bed shake. I was wide awake after that, certain there had just been an earthquake.
I grabbed my trusty iPhone and pulled up the USGS website with the recent earthquakes maps to see what magnitude the quake had been and there was nothing for the Bay area. I waited a couple minutes and refreshed the page to see. Still nothing. I waited a few minutes more and checked again, with the same result.
That’s when it dawned on me that with my foot pressed against the foot board, I must have had a muscle spasm in my leg and shaken the bed. And shaken myself…awake. I turned on my side, pulled my knees up a little closer to my chest and was out like a light.
In other news:
It’s Monday again. A Monday that should be a holiday but apparently my company hates Christopher Columbus. I’m not sure if BART was running a holiday schedule today or what, but the garage was very full when I arrived this morning.
The weather has turned and it’s very cold. Of course in the Bay area cold is 63 degrees with cloudy skies, so I expect little to no sympathy from my readers in the great white north today, but it’s still cold to me! Monday’s are the worst in my office after a cold week-end ‘cause the heater hasn’t been on since Saturday afternoon and it takes a long time to get warm. My hands have been like blocks of ice most of the day and I literally just took my coat off for the first time today, just so I can put it back on to go home in about forty-five minutes.
My iPhone Genius play list seems to be racist. The last two play lists have been all African American artists (both based on Jennifer Hudson songs) unless you don’t consider Maria Carey to be black. How “genius” can you be if you’re racist, I ask you?!?
Children are cruel. I don’t think this comes as surprise to most of us in our no-longer-children years, but just in case you don’t know this already, children are cruel!
We go through so much as children. Our bodies are constantly growing and changing, and people tend to focus on that when talking about how cruel children can be. But what we tend to forget is that children’s minds are changing as well. I wish I was prepared with research documents to cite, I’m not. But I learned in the special training I went to a couple weeks ago for Big Brothers and Big Sisters that scientists are learning more about the cognitive and intellectual development of children and finding that their brains literally do not function in the same way an adults brain functions. It’s an extreme example to be sure, but one example they gave us was a kid who steals his dad’s car to go for a joy ride and gets in trouble. Dad asks the boy, “What were you thinking? What did you think was going to happen when you stole my car and went for a drive?” The answer, it seems, is frequently that the boy wasn’t thinking, or at least wasn’t thinking of consequences. Dad gets angry when the boy won’t answer, or doesn’t give a satisfactory answer, when the truth is, the boy really doesn’t know what he thought would happen. This is not the point of this post, and I’ll get to the point shortly, but I do want to say, that while the boy’s actions should not be excused based on this information and should be punished so that he may learn consequences, Dad should be certain to express that the punishment is because he loves the boy and wants him to learn from his mistakes and that how Dad feels about the boy, how much he loves him, is not going to change because of this!
Children go through so many changes as they grow up, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well and for the most part children are not equipped to deal with the changes. They need to make sense of their existence and they need to feel like they have some sort of control over their lives and one of the ways children try to do that is by being cruel and hurtful to others. Most of the time the reasoning is not thought out, I’m sure, but the idea is that “If I can make that kid feel bad, like they are somehow less than I, then I will feel better about me.” Children are cruel.
I don’t know, and I hope it’s no longer true, but when I was a child at least, there was a societal stigma against homosexuality. There were no gay characters on television, there were no openly gay public figures and the public stereotype of a gay man was of a very effeminate, weak, joke of a man. Gay men were undeserving of respect and courtesy. Being gay and having anyone know it was just about the worst thing that could possibly happen to a guy and so it made for excellent fodder for school yard bullies.
When I was in elementary school, I was a damaged and confused kid. My parents split when I was two years old because my father had an affair with a woman who worked for him and my mother kicked him out of the house. My mother was depressed and she wasn’t emotionally available to her children at a time when they needed her to tell them everything was going to be OK. I was the youngest of three kids, three years younger than my nearest sibling and my brother and sister were more interested in their friends their ages, than they were in spending time with their “baby brother”. I was socially awkward (still am) and always on the defensive. I was overweight and had a double cowlick and freckles. I was highly self-conscious. Oh, and have I mentioned that children are cruel?
The kids in my school tormented me relentlessly. They made fun of how I looked, they made fun of how my hair stuck up funny on the crown of my head and when they made me cry they called me names, which only made me cry more. And this was just about the parts of me they could see. I couldn’t imagine what they would do with the parts they couldn’t see. I didn’t want to find out. I hid myself as much as I could. I wore long pants and long sleeved shirts, even on triple digit days of summer. When I was forced to take gym class, I dawdled around as long as I could before changing my clothes, just hoping no one would see me and when I did change my clothes, I did it as fast as possible. When I was in elementary school, the school I attended didn’t have individual urinals in the boys’ bathrooms, they had urinal troughs, and the boys would gather around the troughs during recess and lunch breaks to relieve themselves and it was all a big game. They’d cross streams, they’d bump and nudge shoulders, and they’d jostle each other. And when they weren’t playing at these games, they’d talk about what they saw. Those boys, stood around that disgusting trough looking at each others twigs and berries. Those boys, stood around that disgusting trough, completely free (or so it seemed to me) of shame or embarrassment, taking care of their business and talking to each other and about each others bait and tackle!
I used the stalls, every time.
And the boys noticed and made fun.
I had a high pitched voice when I was a child, when people would call the house and I would answer the phone they often thought I was my sister, and by “people”, I mean my parents. I sang alto in the choir until the 8th grade, the only boy in the whole of the regional competitions singing the alto part.
Children are cruel, and when they find something that works they stick with it and so the first time someone called me the F word, and it got the reaction they wanted, it stuck. Being the F word was out of the question for me. First, I could tell by the tone of their voices that the children though of it as an insult, as a derogatory thing to say, and if it was an insult, a derogatory thing to say, then it must be a terrible thing to be. More importantly, though, I learned from a very young age that to be gay, means to spend eternity in hell and I sure didn’t want that. I had to do whatever I possibly could, not to reinforce the idea with the kids in my school and in my thinking at that time, hiding myself from them was the way to do it.
I never learned how to be friends with boys. I never learned how to talk to them or touch them. I never figured out the apparently very fine line between appropriate, friendly affection and “inappropriate gay stuff”. To this day, when I see guys interact as “buddies”, I don’t understand. When a guy puts his arm around his buddy’s neck or leans on his friend’s shoulder, when two guys hug, I’m conflicted. Put those guys at the beach, wearing only board shorts, or in a locker room in just a towel? My confusion is off the charts!
In my irrational memories of childhood, these actions, any one of them, would have been crossing a line. Putting my arm on a guys shoulder, especially if he wasn’t wearing a shirt, would have gotten me insulted and teased to no end, maybe even beaten. I never really learned how to navigate these situations and so instead, I simply don’t touch. Oh sure, I hug my close friends (all of whom happen to be female) and I shake hands when I meet people, but other than that, I do not touch. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable to have my personal space invaded, no; I don’t touch, because I’m afraid to. I’m afraid how it will be perceived, how it will be received.
I think about those boys in elementary school, standing around that God-awful urinal trough and whipping out their noodles as if it was as pedestrian as…well, a pedestrian, nary a thought in their pre-adolescent heads about what the other boys might think and it occurs to me that as best I can remember and with the exception of my father when I was a young boy, I’ve never seen, live and in person, a Meat n’ Potatoes that wasn’t my own. That seems abnormal to me. Who makes it into their mid thirties and never sets foot in a gym locker room, or public pool changing area? But it’s true.
The societal stereotype of what a gay man is has changed since I was a boy. Where it used to be that everyone assumed that a gay man was effeminate, possibly a cross dresser, wished he was really a woman; today it is more often assumed that a gay man is a sex fiend, a predator even, cruising the streets and parks for anonymous sex. And now with the advent of the home computer and the World Wide Web, guys can cruise for anonymous sex without ever leaving their homes. Hell, there’s even an app for that. I once heard a line in a movie (which one is escaping me at the moment) that for gay men sex is equated with a handshake. For a lot of Conservative, Republican, Christian types out there, this is a disgusting thought. To me? It’s just terrifying. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to come off as a prude or as some sort of high and mighty, judgy type (I’ll leave that to the afore mentioned Conservative, Republican, Christian types). I am interested in sex, for sure. But I’m interested in sex with substance. I’m not interested in sex for the sake of sex and I’m not interested in dating as a means of getting to the sex.
As a gay man, I do not fit the current stereotype. Think of me as your fairly average American, Christian male. I want to live a respectable life. I want a job that satisfies and fulfills me and pays a decent salary. I want a nice home. I want a great car. I want plenty of money in the bank. I want to travel. I want to find the love of my life, settle down and have a family. That the love of my life will happen to have the same anatomy as I do is but a minor differentiation from the accepted norm.
I can’t help myself, though. I’ve fallen victim to the stereotype. I buy into it. Partly because, the only men I’ve known were gay, were the ones that were living up to the stereotype. It’s so easy to identify a black man or a Hispanic or Asian man just by looking at them. It’s not so easy to identify a gay man just by looking. Oh sure, sometimes it’s really easy, but it’s not always. And when it comes to this, I am still very much that scared little boy who is afraid to lean on another man’s shoulder. I do not know what the proper etiquette or decorum is. I don’t know how to feel out a situation and make my interest known in such a way as to make progress with the guy if he’s gay, but not insult or offend (or risk my personal safety) if the guy is not.
I’m also fairly oblivious, unable to recognize flirtation when it’s happening. And as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I wouldn’t necessarily know I was being asked on a date if I were, let alone how to react to it. Not to mention what a nervous wreck I would be! How off-putting is that?
I was asked if I’d been on a date since coming out. The answer is, “No”. And now we know not just that I haven’t but, possibly more than you ever wanted to know about the reasons why.
Recently, my newest regular reader, Jody took the time to peruse my entire blog, from the beginning and had a few questions when she was finished. It’s actually kind of funny, because like some sort of obsessive/compulsive, neurotic freak in desperate need of attention, I check the stats on my blog, like, every few minutes and I could actually see her (well someone) making their way through the monthly archives of my site. I suspected it was she, but wasn’t sure until she left a comment on one of my last entries with a series of questions about what she’d found.
Over the next few posts, I shall attempt to answer some of those questions as best I can, and hope not to bore everyone to tears. Her first question was “Have you had any dates yet?” Since I’ve discussed in recent posts that I was once engaged to a girl!, and since I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m gay, I assume Jody is asking me if I’ve had any dates with guys since coming out.
My immediate, gut reaction answer to that question is, “No. I have not had any dates.” That’s the simple answer and tomorrow, if I can eek out the time during my hectic and swamped day of reading twitter, playing Fish Wrangler, reading other peoples blogs and avoiding any semblance of real work and if I can muster the courage to be completely open and honest with myself, let alone all of you, I will write a more in-depth answer to that question.
I’ve been pondering the question today, though, and it suddenly occurred to me that there is a little more to the story. Once upon a time, I owned a blog similar to but just different enough from this one, before the birth and development of Riggledo. And on that blog, the details of which will forever remain dead and buried, I wrote a post that speaks to this question. So, because it’s already a quarter till six and I still have to copy and paste, review for errors and then post this bad boy, and because I am lazy, I give you the story of My First Gay Date… Sort Of.
I’ve had my job, in the Facility Management office of my building, for just over six years. In that time, I’ve had interactions with many types of individuals: vendors, repairmen, engineers, etc. When I started I was, among other things, responsible for approving and coordinating building wide events in our building lobby.
There is an individual with whom I dealt on a number of occasions, who coordinates education fairs. He works for the University of Phoenix here in Oakland, CA. I will call him UOP Guy.
UOP Guy and I communicated on multiple occasions about education fairs in the lobby. One day when I was sill an Administrative Assistant UOP Guy invited me to lunch as a show of appreciation for my efforts to help him coordinate his education fairs.
I spent the next few days after the invite, experiencing anxiety over the possibility that this might very well be a date, I just wasn’t sure. I was still very closeted, and still in denial to myself. And yet, I was willing, at least at that moment, to take the chance that this was in fact a date. How would I handle it if it were? I had no idea. Part of me hoped that it was just that.
UOP Guy and I met up for lunch that day and I was very nervous about the whole thing. I imagined it was a date. I tried to make sure I said the right things. I complimented UOP Guy on his choice of restaurant and the type of food/environment it provided. I smiled politely, I laughed at all the right moments. I commented on what a great time I’d had and how we should do it again.
When the lunch was over, UOP Guy walked me to the door and bid me farewell…
I walked back to work befuddled as to what had happened, and what might come next. While we had a few interactions in the interim, UOP Guy and I didn’t communicate much for a good year or two. By that time my title had changed and UOP Guy and I didn’t have much interaction at all, yet he invited me to lunch again.
It was at this lunch that UOP Guy began to talk to me about his girlfriend and their living arrangement as a couple living together in San Francisco, apartment life, parking problems, et. al.
I was even more befuddled. My instincts told me that UOP Guy is gay, and I’ve fantasized about a lovely life as a same-sex couple living in San Francisco with a great social life, healthy bank account and a great apartment in which we’d live. If only that damn bitch (he said playfully) weren’t in the way… Assuming she even exists.
To this day, I have very little interaction with UOP Guy. I wish I had the courage, strength and knowledge of our culture to know what is welcomed and whether/how to make an advance, but I don’t. I just get to wonder…
I would sure like to find a guy with whom I have things in common, and I can be myself. But from where I stand now I don’t know how to tell who’s who and what they represent. I sure wish we wore signs or something.
One of the things I really enjoy about being a Big Brother is that I have an excuse to do things I might not otherwise get to do. Sometimes it’s as simple as going to kids movies, like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and, later this year, Alvin and the Chipmunks. Sometimes it is something more touristy. Either way it is new to Lil’B (formerly known as “Little”) and it is fun for me.
This week, I decided to take Lil’B to the Cable Car Museum in San Francisco. From my first experience on a San Francisco cable car, I have loved them. If you’re lucky enough to get to “hang on”, a San Francisco tradition of standing on the step of the cable car and holding on to the poles (sometimes for dear life), it’s one of the best ways to see the sites of The City, and every trip, as the cable car passes by the Cable Car Museum I think to myself, “I’ve really got to get in there.”
I picked Lil’B up at 11:30 in the morning and we went to Boston Market to get some lunch and while we were eating it occurred to me that I had to buy cat food and the store I have to get it from would close before I got back across the bay. I told Lil’B we had to make a detour and we headed off to the pet food store. I had opened the last can of food that morning and if I came home empty handed Mischa wasn’t going to let me in the house.
With the cats ransom demand in tow, we headed to the BART station for our ride into The City.
By the way: For those who do not know, there are, apparently, three separate “the city”s. There is “the city”. This is how anyone who lives near but not in an urban metropolis refers to said metropolis. There is “The City” which as anyone who’s anyone knows, is San Francisco. And then there’s “THE City”, New York City.
Anyway, Lil’B told me he had never been on BART. Hard to imagine a kid growing up in the Bay Area has never been on BART but that’s what he told me, never been on BART, never been on a cable car, so this outing was full of new experiences for him. I purchased the BART tickets and showed him how to use his to get through the turnstiles.
The previous week, Lil’B pointed out an Oakland Police SUV in a parking lot as we drove by and I took advantage of the opportunity to ask him some probing questions about how he feels about the police. I found out that Police are not his “friends” because “they’re adults and I’m little” and he’s been taught not to talk to strangers. This is good advice for sure, but I assured him that policemen were his friends and if he was ever lost or in trouble and he saw a policeman he could trust them to help him. I gathered from this, though, that Lil’B has some apprehension about strange adults and it showed on our outing.
Riding BART on a Sunday afternoon, there is no guarantee of finding a seat and when we first boarded the train there was one open seat available. I offered it to Lil’B and at first he did not want to sit down. There was a woman sitting in the seat next to it and I suspected he was nervous about sitting next to a stranger. I assured him, I’d be right there with him and he finally sat down. Very quickly after that a seat adjacent to him became available and I sat down as well.
Once we arrived in The City, the plan was to take the cable car from the Powell street end of the line and ride it to the Cable Car Museum, which also happens to be the “barn” where they park the cable cars overnight, but when we arrived at the “turnaround” (they literally turn the cable cars around on giant turntables) the line was out of control. It would have taken hours to get on a cable car, so we started walking toward the museum, toward a very steep hill, while I tried to think of an alternative method of travel. I saw one of the cable car operators sitting on a cable car waiting his turn to go down the way and pick up passengers, so I stopped and asked him, “Short of taking a cable car, what’s the best way to get to the Cable Car Museum?”
“Taking a cable car,” he answered. My face smiled, but my brain was rolling its eyes.
“But there’s a huge line,” I said as I gestured back down the hill, “That’ll take three hours.”
“No it won’t,” he told me, “walk up to O’Farrell and get on at the first stop.”
Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that? We didn’t get to ride on the section of cable car with the outward facing seats and the “hangers on”, and we didn’t get to sit down, but at least we got on and made our way to the museum.
The Cable Car Museum is a free attraction in the center of the routes, which doubles, as I mentioned, as the over-night storage facility for the cars.
It is also the source of the power for all the cables that run underground and power the four cable car routes. In other words, the machinery that powers the movement of the cables is all right there, out in the open in the museum and it is very loud.
There is about 800 square feet of museum, which is not guided and requires a lot of reading, and not a whole lot of meaningful pictures to look at. We walked in and Lil’B trotted off, with me following behind, making his way…to the gift shop.
After we looked around the gift shop we went on to explore the museum, but it was pretty clear that nothing was holding his interest, however at the far end of the museum was a clearly antiquated documentary video that lasted about 15 minutes and it talked about the history of the cable car system and how it worked. I found it fascinating, Lil’B did not and as I’m writing this, I’m remembering that I wasn’t really particularly interested in history when I was a kid…teenager. I don’t think most people can have a real appreciation for history until they’ve actually experienced some of it. In other words, until you’re old enough to remember how things have changed in your own lifetime, the way things used to be isn’t really all that interesting. And unless you have a desire to know how things work, perhaps museums in general aren’t all that interesting.
Anyway, I was interested in what this video had to tell us, but it quickly became apparent that Lil’B was not into it. But here’s the cool part: he fidgeted, he squirmed, and he eventually got up and walked over to a wall where there were some pictures to look at but was still within my view, but he never complained, or whined, or asked to leave! I was just waiting for that to start and it never did.
Not long after the video was finished we left the museum, but we still had almost four hours to kill before I was supposed to take him home. I thought the museum would take all afternoon and it took about 40 minutes. What was I going to do?
We walked back to the cable car stop and boarded the next one to come by, taking us along the rest of the Powell/Hyde line and depositing us at the western edge of Fisherman’s Wharf. I decided we’d go to Pier 39 to see the Sea Lions that live there year round. We walked for what I’m sure seemed to him like forever, but he never complained or asked where we were going, or how much farther. He just kept walking with me. I assured him we really were going someplace specific and it wasn’t too much farther.
As we got closer to the pier, we began to encounter more and more tourists and at one point we encountered a woman taking pictures of her group. We were headed straight toward the gap between the camera and it’s subject and before I could say anything, Lil’B ducked right and went behind the woman with the camera.
You may be sensing a theme in what I’m saying here, which is that, I am consistently impressed with this kid. When he goes to the restroom, he washes his hands without being asked; when we’re driving in the car he doesn’t complain about how long the trip has been or where we are going; he saw the woman about to take a picture and ducked out of the way; he waited semi-patiently while I watched the video at the museum; and he never complained that the museum was boring. I admit that I don’t have much experience with kids, but I imagined that he would be more unruly and I’m consistently just so impressed that he’s not.
Anyway, I’ve gone and gotten long winded again and there’s not that much more, exciting information to tell. 
We got to the pier and looked at the sea lions for a long time. I was kind of bored but I was going to allow him to look for as long as he wanted. Once Lil’B had his fill of the sea lions we explored the pier, spent some time touring the arcade but not playing games (he never asked or complained) and then we watched a “street performance” at a little outdoor theater on the pier where they have juggling and “comedy”, after which we began to make our way back home.
We still had to get back to the BART station and the easiest, best way to do that is by way of the SF Muni Historic F Line, old street cars from all around the world that have been donated to The City and restored for the Market and Embarcadero Streets Metro service. Once again, though, it was Sunday and there is reduced service so the cars are fewer and farther between and very crowded when they do arrive. Lil’B handled it like a trooper though and soon we were back on BART and headed for more familiar territory.
When we got back to the car, I asked him if he had any ideas about what he wanted to do next week and he said, “Um, actually, I think we’re going to Disneyland.”
“Um, OK. I wish his mother had told me this before now, but OK.” I thought. I said, “Oh. You are? OK. Well, I guess we’ll just– Wait a minute. You say, ‘we’re going to Disney Land’ I assume you mean you’re family, right?”
He did not. I told him that sounds like fun, but unfortunately, Disneyland is really far a way, and really expensive and there’s no way we could do it in one afternoon. I don’t think that’s going to be possible.
When I returned Lil’B to his home and spoke with his mother, I mentioned that neither of us had any ideas for next week and so I’d pick him up at the regular time (2:00) unless I came up with something else. She looked at Lil’B and said something to him in Spanish and he smiled at her, then at me and then he ran outside to play. His older sister, who often translates, chuckled and said, “She told him you ought to take him to the park and help him with his homework.”
Turns out, while Lil’B is smart and does well with his school work, he doesn’t like having his mother try to help him along with his other siblings and would rather have undivided attention (wouldn’t we all?). She also doesn’t understand all of it because her English is only so-so. I told her that I’d be happy to help out if that’s what she needs.
Now our plans for Sunday are for me to pick him up at 12:00 and bring him to my house where I’ll feed him lunch and do his homework—er, rather, I’ll help him do his homework, which, since I don’t have a table should be interesting.
A table is definitely the next big purchase on my list!
Riggledo 
