Feels like 1982.
Fast Times At Ridgemont High was on cable the other night, and as I watched, it occurred to me that somehow I gave birth to not one, but two Spicolis.
My forever barefoot sons are teenagers who have only surfed once, but based on their gnarly ‘tudes, shaggy hair, and Spicoli-isms, you might mistake them for seasoned beach bums.
Remember Sean Penn’s Jeff Spicoli? “All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I’m fine.”
Our younger son J. has earned the code name Surfer in my essays, but the elder son L. suffers from surfolalia as well. Both boys are lazy, laid-back, ocean lovin’ strong swimmers who draw out ‘dude’ to describe every possible emotion.
When something tickles them, we hear the happy, high tenor, sing-songy “Duuuuuuuude!” When creeped out, it is the quieter, baritone, staccato “Dude.”
Living with surfers is mostly rad, but sometimes it can be bogus. Like last week when L. forgot how to properly back the car out of the garage.
{We are fairly certain our son was neither wasted nor asleep.}
VIKING (my husband is a French-Norwegian from Minnesota): L. just wrecked the car door AND the garage. I’ll bet he was texting. That kid left the door wide open as he was backing out.
Me (scanning kitchen counter for Xanax): Wait. He smashed the garage with the door?
VIKING (exasperated): Yes. HIS door. Not the passenger side one. Driver side door. Demolished. I’m thinkin’ fifteen hundred dollars to fix it.
We do not reach for Merlot...not immediately.
I enter the garage to assess the wreckage and to determine whether our son is alive. The Honda’s door is truly mangled—not even close to shutting. My husband describes it as a wrinkled version of a Lamborghini scissor door—opening upward not outward. It’s worse than I expected.
Then I assess the boy L. who is sitting near the driveway with his head in his hands. I gently massage his back and ask if he was texting. In a broken tone, he tells me he just wasn’t thinking. Any frustration or anxiety I felt a few minutes before melts away. All I see before me is a dude I love. A cool imperfect dude created perfectly to be loved. He feels like a complete moron, and before I leave him I tell him I’m happy it is the car, not him, that is damaged.
My husband suddenly shoves up his sleeves, grabs a steel box, and begins to pry off the Honda’s door. No one says a word as he toils. I become aware that in spite of my son’s screw up, the familial vibe level is eerily calm. This is surprising given the number of similar scenes accompanied by intensity and volume. In fact I begin to worry my husband has been body snatched.
Then he says something confirming my worst suspicions.
VIKING: Remember in Fast Times at Ridgemont High when Spicoli wrecks that Z28 and says “RELAX, ALL RIGHT? MY OLD MAN IS A TELEVISION REPAIRMAN. HE’S GOT THIS ULTIMATE SET OF TOOLS. I CAN FIX IT!”?
I kid you not. Dude. Body snatched.
I wish I could paint a better picture of the Biblical poetry in our garage: the gnarly crumpled car door, the weeping repentant son, the patient, Viking pod father modeling grace. It was all nearly too much for my heart to bear. Like totally the most righteous emotional porn. I smile. My husband smiles back.
Our son L. may be Spicoli reincarnated, but the long board doesn’t fall far from the tree. Brah—his old man is the Big Kahuna! With a bitchen set of tools, the old man fixed everything—including the garage.
The car door remains wrecked but functional.
Dude.
Just like us.
***update: that same Spicoli became a repeat offender: I kid you not. He ruined the fixed door once more when he backed out of our garage AGAIN with it fully open. Rain and snow were to become his driver seat companions for several years before we located a matching door at a junk yard, and he and the Viking installed it. The car was passed down to the other surfer and lived a happy life until May 2016. RIP, surfmobile.
Michele has a husband, two children, a master's in counseling and a blog at hellolovelychild.blogspot.com.
