The last time he came to visit us as at our house was a little under a year ago. I had just raked and their was a large mound of leaves in the corner of our yard. Like any exuberant lad, he ran over and started playing in the pile. He would jump as high as he could, hurl himself in, and them drag himself out, laughing hysterically the whole time.

I was standing nearby, watching him do this and somehow, maybe from playing with grown-ups in a pool, he got the idea that if I were holding him, he could spring, from there, into the leaves and that this would be even more fun and hilarious. He wasn’t much on talking at this point, but one way or another he got his idea across to me.

Now I realize, at this age, most kids are tougher and more resilient than you’d think. (This is why I’m a fan of toddlers. You can grab them, shake them up, hold them upside down, etc. and they’re fine. Newborns on the other hand, you have to treat like glass cylinders of plutonium.) Still, I wasn’t sure about this proposal. I didn’t know the kid that well. Even though he was acting like he wanted me to pick him up, he could get weirded out. And there was a chance he could get hurt. Something in eyes seemed to tell me he could handle it though…and I am a champion raker. I mean this was a thick, fluffy pile. You have could dropped a Volkswagen off a five-story building into that leaf pile and it would have landed with a soft bounce, completely intact.

So cut to half-an-hour later, and I am swinging him back and forth by one leg, whirling him around in circles, twisting him around in the air, then letting go at the exact moment that maximized his altitude. And he is making crash landings and immediately coming back for more. And he is laughing harder every time. And I am laughing harder than him. And Steph and his mom are watching us and shaking their heads and rolling their eyes, as women are required to do when boys are having their rough and tumble fun. All was right with the world.

Steph’s sister Jaime and Bishop were stopping in to see all their family on the east coast during this trip. They went up to Virginia the next day, and we followed that weekend. There was some downtime the first full day we were there, so I thought “I’ll make a giant leaf pile. Bishop needs to get some energy out and I know it’s something he likes to do.”

I spent a good two hours working in the yard, sweating and straining, moving leaves from all sectors and amassing them. It was going to be worth it of course.

When I was done, I went back inside and showed Bishop what I had made out the window. He seemed sort of indifferent to it, but I thought maybe it was just because he couldn’t tell exactly what it was yet. Steph backed me up in assuring everyone that he was going to enjoy this and that this was something they might want to see. They got Bishop in his play clothes and put on his jacket, everyone put their shoes on, we all went outside, and Bishop just stood there staring at the big amorphous blob I’d created as if to say “What am I supposed to do with this, exactly?”

In retrospect, what I should have done was maybe introduce him to the pile slowly, sort of let him discover it on his own, and then make the associations with how much fun we had a few days ago, in his own time. I don’t know, I’m no child psychologist. What I do know is I abruptly snatch him off of the ground, like a sack of potatoes, and sent him somersaulting into the cushioning with a “Wheeeeeeeee!”

He plopped down, then picked up his head and shot me a look that I will never forget. It was shock, confusion, hurt, and anger all rolled into one. Then he started crying. So everyone had to come together to comfort him. And then it was “Well, thanks for raking the yard at least, Bob” and it was time to go back inside.

I stood outside a bit longer, alone and bewildered in the autumn silence. A slight breeze came through and carried a few leaves away from the top of the heap.

The moral of the story here is: you can’t go back again. Don’t force circumstances to try to make them like good times you’ve had before. There’s nothing but disappointment down that road.

That, and before you go violently throwing the youngest member of your better half’s family to the ground in front of all her relatives, make sure you’re good and married in.

As I think yesterday’s post revealed, sixth grade was the hardest of my academic career. Coming in a close second though, was first grade.

In the Bridgeport school district, in Michigan where I spent my early childhood, kindergarten was the, oh, say geology of the grade levels. (All we did was learn to draw the forms of each letter in the alphabet — an activity I excelled in — and to scissor out shapes along dotted lines — an activity which I’m ashamed to admit was the equivalent of…well, whatever the hardest part of geology is, for me. I got several crying-sad-faces on “cut along the lines” assignments, but I eventually mastered this skill, thanks to many well-supervised home practice projects during evenings and weekends.) What I’m trying to say here is Level-K was not treated as a full-fledged participant in my education. We didn’t even do nap time like they do in the beginning years in a lot of elementary schools, but this was only because there was no need, as we were only there for three hours. That’s right, kindergartners only attend school for a half-day.

So you can imagine my bewilderment when, once I began first grade, school went on for twice as long as I thought it would. It seemed like forever. Rather than eat lunch before or after we attended school (depending on whether one was in the morning or afternoon program that week) we consumed our food at school, in this giant room of substitute kitchen tables. This was particularly traumatic. I mean, what were we? Savages?

For months, I came home in tears. Was I really expected to submit to classroom life, for that chunk of time, five days a week?

I was never a fan of school, but somewhere along the way I at least grew accustomed to it and accepted the fact that — save 10 glorious weeks every 12 months — this was what my life was going to be like for the next 12 years and I should probably suck it up and try to get something out of it. It didn’t take me all that long to come to this conclusion, but, up until very recently, I’d remembered this as a struggle I’d made it through all on my own.

Of course this wasn’t the case. When I burst in the front door to our house, there was one person ready to accept at least a hefty portion of the weight that I had to get rid of. I was too bogged down by my problems to reflect on this at the time, but I have no doubt that during the most agonizing parts of my longest days of searching for rooms numbers and trying to comprehend math problems and being forced to socialize, this person was thinking of me and worrying about me and praying for me.

And this one person is now in the middle of the most difficult period of her life (at least in the time that I’ve known her). And, though the fact that I’d ever have to do this came as a total surprise, it’s now my turn to do the thinking and the worrying and the praying.…

And I guess it’s her turn to show me that she can get through this, and come out okay on the other end.

I am speaking of Reese’s. Those delightful confections produced by a division of the Hershey’s corporation.

This moniker, I think we can all agree, was chosen because “Reese” was someone’s last name. Who was Mr. or Ms. Reese? The visionary genius who first had the idea to combine peanut butter and chocolate to create a snacking experience unlike any other? I have no clue. What I do know is that you say the last name in question like this: “Ree-sss.”

I’m sorry, but it’s “Ree-sez.” They are “Ree-sez Cups” and they are absolutely “Ree-sez Pieces.”

I am at a loss as to why some folks choose to go with “Ree-sees” as their pronunciation of choice.

I guess it really bothers Kate, as she recently called both Steph and Bliss out when she heard them her utter this treat’s name.

Bliss did present a pretty good argument for the two of them when she pointed out that if you say it like that, when you say “Reese’s Pieces” the two words sound just alike. I’d never thought of it that way and the more I considered that fact, the more I realized that it is not even close to true. For it to work that way it requires “pieces” to be said “pee-sees” as in “This will be a pee-see of cake” or “Does anyone want this last pee-see of pizza?”

What was funny was how this small problem dawned on the two of them, just as Bliss finished stating their case. “I think ‘Ree-sees’ is the way it’s said. [Steph nodding emphatically.] Then when you say “pie-ces” it…will…rhyme? [Steph, no longer nodding, clearly lost in thought.]”

In conclusion, don’t listen to the Ree-see-ers of the world. Their reasoning is a complete pile of fee-sez.

Where the Wild Things Are was the #1 children’s book in our house when Kate, Kevin, and I were growing up, so I am monitoring this trailer with intense scrutiny.

Some initial thoughts:

• I am worried. With the exception of the first two X-men, Spiderman, and Batman movies, every film based on a beloved element of my childhood has felt soulless and haphazard. (See The Grinch, The Polar Express, Alvin & the Chipmunks, Superman, that new Indiana Jones, the Star Wars prequels, Scooby Doo, and Charlie & The Chocolate Factory to name a few).
• Ok, this looks amazing. No traces of cheesy CGI to be found.
• I guess I’m seeing some evidence of the new subplot(s) that will be necessary to turn an 11-word-story into a full-length movie. I wonder what Dave Eggers cooked up.
• I also wonder if they worked in the classic lines from the book that kids love so much. (“Please don’t go, we’ll eat you up we love you so.”, “They gnashed their terrible teeth and showed their terrible claws,” etc.) Hard to say if those will work here or not.
• Great choice of song for the trailer. I was fearful that Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” would kick off in the background, and I’d have to rip my computer off of my desk, hurl it across the room, and flee to a cave in the Appalachian Mountains where I would spend the rest of my life.
• Ok, this is just a knee-jerk reaction based on incomplete information, but these wild things might be a little too cute and friendly to be in keeping with the book. In the context of this movie, I suppose there could be a valid reasons this.
• Also, this kid might be a little too sweet. Max was an utter terror at the beginning of the book. Again, could be a valid reason for this.
• I hope this kid can act. Nothing ruins a film like a crappy child actor.
• Spike Jonze is the director and it seems he hasn’t made a bad feature yet. In fact he made Adaptation which is one of my favorite movies of all time.
• After much deliberation I have settled on my stance towards this movie and that stance is “cautiously optomistic.”

Perhaps our most ambitious undertaking to date…. Which is saying very little.

Yeah: Bangers ’n’ mash? Steak and kidney pie? Blood pudding? I have to say, traditional British cuisine weirds me out a little bit.

Of course this made me think of some of the unusual stuff I have eaten in my lifetime. Here’s my top ten list:

10. Grits
And right now all you southerners are smirking at the screen, ’cause, c’mon everyone has had grits. Hold on there, Jethro. North of our Mason-Dixon line, no one has had grits. Some of you northerners are aware of grits, I’m sure, but can you describe them? What do they taste like? What are they are comprised of? During my early years in Michigan, I’d sometimes hear about “grits” and envision all kinds of different objects in a bowl. All I was ever told was they were sort of like oatmeal. Which led me to just imagine oatmeal…but perhaps purple in hue. Although the name “grits” meant this entree must be gritty. Was it a pile of very small rocks? Did Uncle Randy and Aunt Myrl eat rocks? Or maybe it was a type of meat? I saw all kinds of strange animals down south. Maybe it was something related to the guinea hen?  We soon moved to North Carolina and grits-consumption ensued. I recall not caring for them the first, oh, 200 times they were force-fed to me, but eventually I had a good batch and something clicked. My advice to any yankee planning to try them at some point in their lives: add lots of butter, lots of salt, lots of pepper, and — these last two things are not as widely used as “additives,” but if you can get your hands on them I’d recommend it, as grits are fairly bland — cheese and chives or a similar herb on top.

9. Steamed Oysters
These are not strange or exotic exactly, but I’m counting them as unusual because I don’t know many people who’ve tried them. I love steamed oysters. The only time I’ve eaten them was at an oyster roast two years ago. I watched skeptically as the oysters were dug out of a barrel with a garden shovel, placed on a scrap plate of steel heated above a fire on the ground, and covered with a wet burlap sack. After maybe two minutes, they were scooped up with the same shovel and spread out on the newspaper-covered sheet of plywood we were all standing around. What happens next is you pry the shell open with a knife, slurp up the slimy matter inside, and toss the shell in a trashcan. Didn’t really seem like my deal, until I learned that hot sauce is often applied to the slimy matter before you ingest it. I have something of a spicy-ness dependency, to the point where I would inhale a rotting hunk of buffalo carcass, if it were doused with Texas Pete or Sriracha. So I got started on the bivalves and, when I reached the point where I was considering placing my tongue on the scorching steel plate to cool it off, I sucked in a few oysters sans sauce. They were really quite good. I don’t know that I’d ever order oysters in a restaurant, but, in this context, I happily downed 80 of them. Oh, and you drink beer the entire time at an oyster roast. So, yeah, I love steamed oysters.

8. Eastern North Carolina Barbecue/Deer Jerky
This is a tie between two meats that I think everyone would love if they would just try. Going back to my north-to-south transition, I remember the first “pig pickin” (an event at which Eastern North Carolina barbecue is prepared and consumed) I attended. Everyone was saying we were going to eat “barbecue” which I found odd, as “barbecue” was clearly a verb. You used a grill to barbecue hot dogs and hamburgers. Then again, these people went around during the winter claiming they were wearing long wooden sleds on their heads, so I just let it go. Then I got to the front of the serving line and saw this huge swine splayed open on the rack, it’s head and feet still attached. Eeeeeeewwwwwwwwww. I have no idea how many toys or chore-free days my parents had to promise me to get me to try the pulled pork concoction, but, once it did, I found I had met the one true food-love of my life. To this day, I enjoy watching people who aren’t familiar with this niche cuisine get acclimated at a pig pickin. (And the reason the word “eastern” keeps appearing capitalized and in italics, for those of you who don’t know, is there is a on-going struggle between eastern North Carolina and the rest of the world — including western North Carolina — regarding which type of sauce is best on the hog. It’s not a matter of national security or anything…it is far more important and I will die a thousand deaths before any tomato- or mustard-based swill touches my pork! Ahem….) Deer jerky on the other hand is bizarre in name only. It is virtually identical in taste to beef jerky. And who can’t get down with some beef jerky? Even though, yes, they must be slaughtered before we can eat them, deer are allowed a natural, free existence beforehand. Also, most people who hunt deer are responsible outdoorsman who love the environment just as much as your average vegan, tree-hugger patchouliite. I just don’t get the aversion to eating deer, and I like throwing my Bambi DVD on and crying my eyes out on a rainy Saturday afternoon as much as the next dude. Wait, what now?

7. Chicken Livers
This is the thing I liked second-to-least on this list. Strange flavor and even stranger texture. And before you liver-lovers take the time, during the Matlock commercial break, to leave me comments telling me the livers I had probably weren’t done up correctly, you should know that these were wrapped in bacon. I think we can all agree that once a food item is enveloped with strips of bacon, there is no way said food item can be improved upon. Mathematically impossible. Case closed.

6. Peanut Butter, Banana, & Mayonnaise Sandwiches
My mom used to make these for us all the time when we were kids. Despite the unlikely pairing of ingredients, I find them delicious.

5. Moonshine
Do you enjoy a persistent burning sensation in your esophagus? Headaches? Getting completely hammered off of a thimble-sized amount of liquid? If so, low-grade moonshine is for you! This is the thing I liked least on this list.

4. Tomato Soup Cake
This one always takes some explaining. Apparently this spice cake recipe made its way into the Witchger family’s life via my great-grandparent’s straight-off-the-boat German housekeeper. The batter actually calls for two cans of tomato soup. Someday I’d like to witness someone trying this confection, without their having seeing what went into it or knowing what it is was called. Based on their reaction, perhaps I would understand if it’s any good. This cake is hands-down my dad’s favorite. He grew up with it. I grew up with it. I’ve sampled hundreds of them. And I still can’t make the call on its quality. Sometimes they seem scrumptious; sometimes they seem almost inedible. My mom claims they’re very hard to make consistently. Of course, this doesn’t really matter, because once this dessert’s name is out of the bag, nine out of 10 people won’t touch it. When I was old enough to start having friends over for my birthday, I was still asking for tomato soup cakes, primarily, I suppose, because it was the only cake I knew the name of. And so I’d tell everyone we were about to have “tomato soup cake,” not realizing it would likely be a deal-breaker for a group of second- or third-graders. A lot of double-portions of ice cream were doled out at my birthday parties.

3. Chocolate-Covered Crickets/Ants
I had a few of these at the “Bugfest” that the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science holds annually. The chocolate completely overpowers any taste the bugs might have. Additionally, they are roasted before they’re covered in chocolate and this crunchy texture in the middle of the chocolate is quite pleasant. No big deal.

2. Cheese & Coffee
This is my wife’s family’s food-related anomaly, dating back further than any of her relatives can remember. To make it, you drop a few chunks of cheddar cheese into a piping hot cup of coffee, then you spoon the resulting sludge out onto a couple of biscuits. It’s a unique flavor, but I like it. Interestingly the only time Steph’s mom or grandma will make coffee is to have this for breakfast. No one in either of their families is a coffee-drinker. They end up pouring their mugs out at the close of the meal. One might think you’d want to do this regardless of your feelings towards coffee, but Steph’s grandma told me that, after he’d taken all the cheese he was going to eat out of it, her father used to sip on his mug until the coffee was gone. This seems like true hard-scrabble farmer behavior. I’m currently working up to it.

1. Chocolate Gravy
This probably sounds much worse than it is. It is, in fact, the opposite of worse. It is better. Than anything. Ever. My family in Alabama are the only people I know of who make this breakfast dish. It’s really hard to describe, but I’d place its consistency somewhere between chocolate milk and chocolate syrup. I think there’s a mixture of milk chocolate and baker’s chocolate in it, so it’s not as sweet as you’d think. You cover a plate full of buttered biscuits with it and eat the whole thing with a fork. Then you run ten miles at a full sprint to offset the chances of having a heart attack later in the day. Fortunately, thanks to amount of sugar you’ve just eaten, you have plenty of energy.

Currently we’re at 886 views with 23 comments! And even though every comment is essentially the same thing (i.e. “congrats :) sooo cool!!! imo yer version of this song is gr8 lol rofl :)”) it’s all very exciting and even a little overwhelming.

Congratulations to all the other winners, and thank you to Bushman and everyone who’s watched our submission!

She showed it to Kevin and I while she was home, and I guess it got us thinking: “1) we both have ukeleles, 2) this contest is free to enter, 3) this contest gives us a reason to make a ridiculous music video, and 4) this contest offers the chance for each of us to compete with our sister.”

We knew we had to do it. We kept putting it off, however, until The Day Before Kevin Was Leaving to Go Back to London with Kate, or — as it is more traditionally known — Christmas. As a result, we sort of had to throw together a rendition of a song and an accompanying video that afternoon. We even had to enlist Kate to film it for us. (It may surprise you that she assisted us, given the circumstances, but this is something of an unwritten rule in our family: if one of us is trying to accomplish a task and you are better at/more experienced with said task, you have to help the lesser skilled party, regardless of the fact that doing so could lead to your eventual demise.) She did a great job.

So here is Kevin and I’s contest entry:

Witchger Boys Bushman\’s 2008 Ukulele Contest (Bobby and Kevin\’s Entry)

And here is Kate’s far more elaborate production:

Our Entry in Bushman\’s 2008 Ukulele World Video Contest

And if you don’t need a little time away from ukeleles and cover songs after watching those, something is terribly wrong with you.

In all seriousness, it would be amazing to see either of these videos win. I bet there are other, completely mind-blowing submissions. The last day to turn one in is tomorrow, so I guess we’ll see very soon.

Hope everyone is having a happy and safe holiday!

Excluding bodily functions, I’ve always found the subjects that the fam chooses to settle on during meals to be interesting. Sometimes it’s family history. Other times it’s engineering processes. Other times it’s politics. And just as interesting is the means by which conversations travel from topic to topic. A couple of nights ago, my family took the stream of conciousness and diverted it into the rapids of my repressed memories, reminding me of a particularly embarrasing detail from my past.

It started with a comment about our dog’s weird eyes. (Lilly’s right iris wanders off to the side of her head. I’m not sure if canines can have lazy eyes, but if so, she probably does.) Kate made a joke about how we needed to get her a pair of those thick, plastic glasses with a patch over one lens, the type they have very young children wear to try to correct their vision early on. Steph chimed in about how her sister had to wear them, and that, in a lame attempt to make something really bizarre and uncomfortable seem “exciting” and “not horrible and freakish” for all involved, the patch had Mickey Mouse on it.

Now, even though I do wear glasses now, there was never anything wrong with my eyes while I was growing up. Like a woman in the beginning stages of labor for a second child though, sitting through this was slowly reminding me of something I’d gone through before — something bad. The whole “lame attempt to make something really bizarre and uncomfortable seem ‘exciting’ and ‘not horrible and freakish’ for all involved.” Seemed familiar….

Then it came back to me.

No, there was never anything wrong with my eyes while I was growing up, but my mouth was a disaster area. Not only did my amply-sized permanent teeth decide to come in well before my head was even close to full-grown, they all decided to come in on the same day — my 10th birthday I believe it was — resulting in a 12-tooth pile-up growing out of my gums. To fix it all, not only did I have to have braces (two rounds of them) but for almost the entire year of 1992, I had to wear the large and very unnatural jaw-aligning device known as headgear.

I managed to make it through this ordeal without ever being seen in the face-hugging plastic contraption at school. (My orthodontist — perhaps privy to stories of patients who were forced to wear headgear to middle school and eventually gave in to post-traumatic stress and climbed clocktowers with machine guns, their perfect teeth making their maniacal smiles extra chilling — told me to wait until the second I left for the busstop and then to take it off, and conversly to put it back on the second I got home. For the “no school” plan to work I had to sleep with it on too, which meant I couldn’t really roll over on to my stomach or even on to my side. This was a small price to play for flying under the bully-radar.) So it could have been worse, but the fact that I had to don headgear at all had me convinced I was a dweeb.

It actually feels good to get this out there. Back when I had to wear this get-up, the fact that I did was a level-10 family secret. Such information was not to extend beyond the walls of the house. At this point, it’s just one of the things that made me who I am. I probably would have told more people about it along the way, but I honestly think that I buried it in my subconscious. Until now, Mom, Dad, Kate, Kevin, and Steph (who I revealed this to when I briefly remembered it years ago) were the only people who knew about my sordid “oral history.”

As for how the medical professionals tried to make the steel wires making giant curves out of my mouth and attaching tightly to mounting brackets wrapped around the side of my face via a support piece behind my neck “fun?” Well, there were college-team-themed slip covers for the fabric portion of the support.

And this is how my dental check-ups during this phase typically went:

Dental hygentist (after fitting me with the contraption and adjusting it to the proper tension, speaking with that special kind of enthusiasm that is obviously inversly proportionate to what your foreseeable future is going to be like): “Ok bud, check out these wraps we have for your ’gear!!! Do you like State or Carolina!!?!!”

Me: “I vill dethroy you.” (It is very difficult to talk properly with headgear on.)

Dental hygenist: “Oh, you’re a Duke fan!!?!! We’ve got some super-cool Duke wraps!!! Goooo Blue Devils!!!”

Me: “You vill svend the west of your rife in ak-gony.”

Dental hygentist: “Can’t really understand you there, sport!!! Just to review we’ve got Duke, State, and Carolina!!!”

Me “….”

Dental hygentist: “….”

Me: “Caw-wolina.”

Snarky quotation marks seem appropriate here, because Kevin is going to continue taking classes at NC State next semester, just as he’s been doing for many years now, in preparation for earning his master’s. He’s already received a scholarship to pay the tab for his first semester, which is pretty cool and I think even warrants a non-quotation marked: congratulations.

I know, dear reader, exactly what you’re saying to yourself. “But please, expound on how this affect you.”

Well, once Kevin gets into his graduate program (which he will) I will be the only member of my immediate family, including my wife, who is not in possession of, or in the process of getting, an advanced degree.

Yes, I will be “the dumb one.”

This may not strike some of you as that big a deal, but when you’re an oldest sibling, you get used to knowing more than everyone else at the dinner table. You’re learning things that your brothers and sisters haven’t had the chance to yet, and that your mom and dad have long forgotten, or weren’t exposed to as they weren’t in existence yet.

Isosceles triangles. The finer points of driving. Which science classes to take. Classic works of literature. I was the authority on these subjects and many more. But soon all the people I shared such knowledge with are going to be engaging in sophisticated, graduate-studenty conversations, containing so much theoretical gibbrish that all I’ll hear are the sounds of the grown-ups from the Peanuts cartoons.

We’ll be at a fancy cocktail party (which my family, being highly educated, goes to all the time) and my parents will introducing Kate and Kevin and Steph to local diginitaries and then we’ll get to me and they’ll say “Oh him? [Sigh.] This is our oldest son Bobby. He just has a four-year degree.” Gasps will ripple through the crowd, monicles will go plinking into drink glasses, and I will be sent out to the car for the remainder of the evening.

My mom has her master’s in journalism. My Dad has an MSW and is working towards a doctorate in adult education. Kate’s post-graduate was in visual anthropology. Steph’s earning her MLS. Kev’s about to start his master’s in engineering.

At least I’ll get the first crack at taking all these nerds to noogie-town.