This afternoon Little Jack and I headed out to do a little indoor rock climbing. If you are not familiar with it you can click here and enjoy a virtual tour of the joint.
I climbed the wall in the canyon area and learned that I am not 20 years-old anymore. Before you start guffawing about how this must mean I am out of shape let me clarify that I clambered up the wall like a monkey. Moving up that wall wasn’t hard, what was hard was looking down.
In my youth I spent all sorts of time climbing up trees, buildings, mountains and all sorts of odds and ends. I was fearless about it. If I decided to go up, well that was what I did. I went up and down and never stopped to consider the consequences of my actions.
Apparently in my old age the fear gene has begun to function. I haven’t any problem saying that when I made the mistake of looking down I suddenly began to wonder what it would feel like to fall from that height. Now mind you I was in a harness and was belayed.
However, I didn’t totally trust the rope to hold my weight. Intellectually I knew that it would be fine. There wasn’t any reason to be concerned that it was going to break. But thirty feet up I wondered if it really would, or what would happen if the guy down below somehow lost his grip.
Suffice it to say that it did a good job of scaring me. However, it didn’t scare me enough. I want to do this again. I want to do it a bunch of times so that I gain complete confidence in the equipment. Once I have that I am going to want to scramble up the walls again and again.
Side note. Little Jack watches me put on the harness and then starts to giggle. I ask him what is so funny and he points at my crotch. I look down and he is snickering about how it must be squeezing my nuts. I smile and tell him that it must be great to be almost eight.
He looks at me and asks me why my voice sounds normal. I ask him why he asks and he tells me that everyone knows that if your nuts are squeezed your voice changes. I explain that this is not really true. He seems disappointed.
I remind him that some of this conversation is better left for us to discuss in a private setting. He tells the woman standing next to us that she needs to move because his father needs to talk about how the harness is squeezing his nuts.
Is it any wonder that I am losing my hair.
Later on he and I are driving home and he decides to ask me to explain exactly what they do, the nuts that is. He can’t say it enough. He and his friends are at that age where body parts and bodily functions are the height of hysteria.
I mull over an appropriate response to his question and am about to answer when he hits me with a new question. When you are making a baby, do your nuts go in as well. Great Googly Moogly, that is a loaded question.
Now, the big guy and I have discussed this on a couple of occasions so I had kind of expected that for the time being this sort of thing was handled. But the question was there so I opted for the standard, “what do you think” reply. Which was far better than making a crack about tying stick to your, well if you know the rest of the joke you can just keep it to yourself.
Anyhoo, there was a long pause and I steeled myself for some sort of off the wall comment. As the silence grew longer I looked into the rear view mirror and noticed that he had fallen asleep. Ah, the pleasures of the mighty 101 freeway and it is gentle caress.
Saved by the snore, so to speak. Although if he stays true to form I’ll get a chance to answer the question a bit later this week. In the meantime I am going to wrap this tale up so that I can get a bit of shut eye.
See you in the A.M.
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