If it were up to me, I would seek out some dark cave with wireless internet, and spend my days writing about life in the wilderness and learning to survive. I could probably convince my son that it was a good idea, but my wife would never be on board. There’s a certain level of domesticity that she has come to expect: not necessarily the decadent distractions of the United States, but at the very least, indoor plumbing and electricity. For Flor, the excitement of a more outdoorsy type of life would probably be dampened by the constant fear of hypothermia, mountain lions, and various forms of foodborne illness. And the first time that she accidentally grabbed the Poison Ivy after making due with her restroom with a scenic view, I would be treated to an inability to walk correctly for several months or more. I’m not saying I would be the one to pass her substandard tissue alternatives, but I am fairly certain that I would be held accountable. Pinche Mateo y sus ideas tan tontas! Este guey! Que hago con El? No mountaintop or depth of cave would remain free from the ringing of her curses. And in the winter (or late autumn, depending), the echoes of her fury could lay low sheets of snow and send them down upon us. Of course, that would somehow be my fault as well…
And then, trapped behind a wall of snow, my son would begin to feel that his life was incomplete without a television to press his face right up against. He would start running around our cave, literally bouncing off the walls, complaining that he didn’t want to drink the moss-infused premium mineral drippings, and why couldn’t he have soda? He would demand that I stop writing on my laptop, and put on some sort of animated feature, before running up and jumping headlong into our makeshift bed of leaves and gravel. No matter where we were, he would still find a way to make it so that my wife and I couldn’t sleep that comfortably.
“But Dad!” he’d start in with a shrill accusation, “All the other woodland creatures’ parents let them jump up and down in their beds!”
“David,” I would patiently explain, “there are just a couple flaws in your logic. Number one: woodland creatures don’t really have beds like us. Number two: You’re not a woodland creature, despite how you have been behaving! Number three: I got How To Train Your Dragon ready. Why don’t you just settle down and come and watch the movie?”
“I don’t want to!“
“Dude, you can either sit and watch the movie, or help your mother collect more dung and firewood.”
“What’s dung?”
“Animal poop.”
“Ewww… nasty!”
At that point my wife would turn to glare at me, and demand to know why, exactly, that I seemed to believe that she would go around in search of combustible excrement, when I had just as many working arms and legs, and wasn’t already spending almost my entire day foraging and hunting, just so I could come home and prepare what I had managed to procure, only to see the look of disappointment in my wife’s eyes at another evening of woodland surprise (crippled squirrel and berries. Surprise!) cooked to perfection over a flavorfully smoky firepit filled with flaming scat. My wife, having never relied upon subtlety during the entirety of our relationship, would possibly have a point. Sure, I would have had money trickling in from my epic 10 part series, “Let’s All Go To The Mountains, Huh?”, but my wife would still be providing the majority of the tangible effort. It wouldn’t be so difficult, I might then realize, to give her a hand, from time to time, with some of the more taxing elements of roughing it. At the very least, I would come to understand, I could go in search in of some of the more overlooked amenities, like something we could fashion into pillows, and maybe even dig a refuse pit somewhere closer to the cave. Only the best for the light of my life, after all. Once the wall of snow had melted.
Eventually Spring would come, and find that we had been digging our way out of the avalanche all Winter, mainly as a way to avoid having to spend time with one another. It will have turned out that all of David’s pent-up energy was exactly what we needed, as a couple seasons spent out of doors, sleeping on the earth would nearly cripple a lady as sensitive as myself, and even hobble someone with the brute strength of my wife. But David, fueled by Snickers bars and my secret stash of Mountain Dew, would have clawed his way through the impassible glacier after overhearing someone musing that Amazon should have delivered that Xbox 360 by now. There exists no obstacle so great that a child steeped in sugar and caffeine cannot overcome it in search of something to allow him to do nothing. Whereas he could have spent all Winter sitting in the cave and napping, which seemed a pleasant enough way to pass the time, he’d been determined to perform feats of superhuman strength, just so he could come back and vegetate before the glow of LEGO Batman 3. Of course, even if there had been a video game console just outside, there would have been no television to which he could have hooked it up. It is doubtful, however, that we would be inclined to share that with him.
Having escaped our prison of forced familial quality time, my wife would kindly inform me, most likely with a series of punches to my abdomen, that it was time to think about returning to a world free of pine cone pillows and worm and beetle soup. She would stalk back down the mountain, a figure of both power and grace, and I would follow, as I always have, and always hope to do. About an hour later, she would send me back up to go get David, who would still be looking for the Xbox that we’d told him would be there.
-Tex