One toke over the line

I looked at the black-and-white picture I was holding in puzzlement: My dad running down a white road in shorts and a hat, surrounded by palm trees and fields. I was stumped: what was this all about?

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I’ve always liked taking pictures, capturing moments in time, Dead Poets’ Society stuff. During my leisure time, I enjoy putting them in photo albums…reliving those moments, preserving them for my kids. They also prompt ideas for stories.

Some are easy to recall: My two friends and I on the roof, 15 feet up, holding umbrellas and sheets. My helpful older brother encouraged us, told us we’d “land like paratroopers” and offered to photograph the epic event. The pictures showed a different story…the three of us plummeting straight down, umbrellas bent backwards; then us laying in a pile, writhing in pain.

Or the one of my cousin racing his dirtbike toward a jump ramp made of cinderblocks and a 4×8 sheet of plywood. No “after” picture there, I think in the swirl of events before heading to the ER, nobody remembered to record it for posterity.

But the one about Pop baffled me, until I turned it over: Sanibel Island. Ah.

It was Florida in the 1970s; the four of us and our dog were driving to Sanibel. My brother and I had latched on to a Disney commercial where Mickey says “Huh huh HI, Jeff!” to some dopey kid. After we said it continuously for about 15 minutes, my mom finally turned around. “Would you two shut up with that!” She was wearing big 70s shades and a scarf but her scowl was easy to see. Hmmm.

For the next 40 miles, we said it nonstop; a pair of mynah birds right behind her. I could see her temples move as she ground her teeth. After several more warnings, she settled into her totally PO’d pose….hand on the chin, staring out the window, a frigid silence.

About 10 miles from Sanibel, she turns and eyes us. She says slowly “If you two jackasses….say that ONE MORE TIME…..I’m gonna get out of this car and never come back.” She turns around; we just had to see. “Huh huh HI, Jeff!” I can see her flinch as through struck.

We arrive at the hotel and my dad gets out to register. My mom gets out and slowly walks down this long road to nowhere, paved with white crushed coquina rock and lined with palm trees. She walks until she’s a distant dot on the horizon. My dad finally comes back. “Where’s your mother?” We point to the dot. “Oh you two jackasses.” He takes off running and we can’t breathe from laughing, but one of us did manage to take a picture.

So as I post this picture in my latest album, I’ll think of Mom and apologize…sorry, Ma, we’ll laugh about “the Sanibel incident” someday