According to the Roman Zodiac I am a Libra. It’s the Scales which symbolize Libra, and just like that balancing mechanism wants to stay even, Librans want to be on an even keel.

I want to confess I have a sickness. I don’t know what it is called (probably OCD), but I do know it exists. I feel the need to have sets, pairs, or kits of things. Nothing makes me happier than a complete tool kit, with every single socket in its intended spot. On the flipside, nothing makes me feel despair (yes, it’s that bad) like an empty spot in the tool kit from a socket, or when a 12 piece flatware set has a missing teaspoon. I have been known to spend 4 hours tearing apart the garage looking for a missing 3mm socket (a useless socket size that comes in the kits) that I didn’t need for the 10 minute job I needed the 7mm socket to do.

Recently I needed to start getting allergy shots 2 times a week for 4 months. I hated the thought of getting shots and was going to ask them to stagger the shots, left arm on Mondays, right arm on Thursdays, just so I could get the balance of both arms hurting. When I arrived at the Doctors office for my first shot I was “pleasantly” surprised to find out that I was allergic to so many things that they had to give me 2 shots per day, one in each arm. Oh joy – true balance. See, a sickness. I told you.

My two youngest children are Libras just like me. I noticed my 9 year old son’s penchant for sets and kits a long time ago and chalked it up to just having a similar personality as mine. The recent occurrences regarding my 2 year old daughter, however, took us completely by surprise.

Last weekend, on her second birthday, I sat and played with my little girl and I marveled at the changes she had gone through just in the last year. There were the visible physical changes, but what struck me most was her burgeoning personality. I play rough with all my kids. No one gets treated differently because they are girls. I might hold back on the baby a bit, but that is just because she’s still small, but that too will change as she gets older. I made her voice sound funny as I playfully batted at her cheeks with my right hand. She was giggling and laughing until I stopped. “NO, NO DADDY!” she shrieked. “OTHER HAND!” she demanded. So I continued the cheek patting with my left hand as she continued to enjoy herself.  I thought about it for a bit and, after a few pensive minutes, came to the conclusion that the odd behavior was due to being a Libra, just like me. She wanted the balance of equal cheek smacking time from both hands. We all had a chuckle at her silliness.

Another instance: We have two mirrors in the bathroom upstairs and after she gets her ponytails done in the morning she has to look at herself in both mirrors before giving them the “stamp of approval”. When we don’t have enough time we do the “Fountain”. We collect all the hair on the top of her head and tie it up with one rubber band. She dislikes the mono-pigtail, but will tolerate it if she gets to see it in both mirrors.

I cited her other odd behaviors to my wife, ones that we’ve had difficulty understanding until now, which served no other purpose than to solidify the Libra stigma.  My wife rolled her eyes and said, “you and all your kids are freaks”. Having no evidence for a rebuttal, I concurred.

My Roman Zodiac Sign = Libra

My Chinese Zodiac Sign = Monkey

It started out like any normal day at a major attraction. The lines into the building snaked around the facility’s grounds, the sun was beating down on us. Children complained, parents grumbled. Finally getting into the building was a treat. We paid our admission fee and blended into the crowd of stroller pushing shlubs.

We meandered through the aquarium’s many vignettes, alcoves and rooms that peppered the facility until we came to a large enclosure that housed animals of the Pacific Northwest coast. Because it was supposed to emulate the Northwest I looked forward to it being nice and cool. Instead it was hot, crowded and noisy. A very large group of people dressed in bright yellow T-Shirts had taken over the facility and were climbing all over the chairs, handrails and static exhibits, shouting, laughing and yelling as they cavorted around the furniture. There were other people with the same yellow shirts with the words "STAFF", or some other similar word, emblazoned across their shirts scurrying about trying to keep the peace, but because of a combination of the staffers ages, inexperience, and general "outnumbered-ness" they were doing a pretty inefficient job of it.

I took a quick assessment of the situation and realized that the group was made up of individuals of varying ages and mental disabilities. I loosened my jaw and calmed down a bit. I have a difficult time with unruly behavior. I don’t allow my kids to act like wild animals, specially in public, and I expect other parents to do the same. This situation was different however, so I went from rolling boil down to tolerant simmer.

My baby sister belongs to a "Type C" group and they go on field trips all the time. She is considered "High Functioning", similar to some of the aforementioned yellow clad individuals, and is extremely affectionate – sometimes to the chagrin of family members. I am pretty familiar with individuals, and groups, of this nature.

I scanned the main room and found a small observation area tucked away behind a submarine display where we could view the Beluga Whales under water . I navigated my family through the melee and hustled them into the cavern like doorway. I breathed a sigh of relief as we ducked in and I started looking at all the informational plaques and doodads on the wall

Only a couple of minutes went by before I heard exited female voices shouting a boy’s name and "NO! STRANGER, STRANGER!" repeatedly. My parent radar snapped on as I whipped around and looked towards the source of the commotion. I fully expected to see a little boy running towards a group of people he didn’t know as his smother-mother ran after him, instead all I could see was a large, towering, big boned man on the other side of the little room as he lumbered quickly towards me. Two 5′ 2"/ 100 lb. women were wrapped around his waist and arms, trying desperately to keep him from walking in my direction. We locked eyes as he barreled towards me, as oblivious of these two small women as he would have been had he had dryer sheets stuck to his shirt. I reluctantly readied myself for a physical confrontation.

In the few seconds after bracing myself I realized that although he was much larger than I was, and his unblinking gaze looked very determined, he meant me no harm. He wore a yellow shirt, just like the rest of the group, and an inordinately small child’s backpack was strapped to his back. The "dryer sheet’s" shirts helped clue me in also.

He finally reached me and grasped my shoulders as I put my hands on his shoulders to hold him at bay. This finally gained the girls some leverage. He struggled to pull me towards him as one of them caught her composure and sternly said his name along with "He’s a stranger! We don’t hug strangers!" to no avail.

I realized that developmentally he was probably the equivalent of a five year old and only wanted some affection, so I told the girls that it was OK (like there was any difference at this point). I loosened my grip on his shoulder and he gave me a big bear hug (something my sister likes to do to me). I hugged him back and patted his back. After a few seconds he gave me a gentle kiss on the cheek, released his hug, and allowed the girls to easily lead him away from the small crowd that had developed behind us. One girl gently, but firmly, tried to reinforce the "STRANGER!" rule to him as the other, in damage control mode, apologized to me profusely, and thanked me for understanding. I waved off her apology telling her there was nothing to apologize for.

As they walked away I unclenched every joint, and muscle and tried to shrug off the adrenaline. I knew that I had just broken a cardinal rule that the staffers try to reinforce to all their "kids" time and time again, but just saw no other way around the situation. I hoped they understood my position, and I hoped I didn’t just undermine everything they worked so hard to instill in their wards.

I replayed the incident in my mind several times over the course of the day and tried to figure out why he was so focused on hugging me specifically. There were other people in that room, and I am not particularly cuddly or huggable, just ask anybody who knows me (If I were a zoo animal I’d be more of a porcupine, skunk, or possibly even that dung flinging monkey). Of all the people that it could have happened to that day I’m glad, and thankful, it happened to me! Can you imagine how bad it could have been for him had he chosen to hug a jumpy homophobe, jacked up on testosterone, as he tried to impress his cadre of similarly minded, intolerant friends (I saw a few of those in the facility that day). The outcome could have been very, very different.

I come from a large family, and cramming 7 kids and 2 adults in a 5 passenger Japanese car (don’t forget luggage) was a common occurrence for us. This was back in the day when child safety seats and seat belts had not yet been invented, or enforced.

A little background:

We lived in a podunk little backwoods town and the closest "Metropolis", was over 500 kilometers, which equated to 10-12 hrs due to bad roads. We would journey to the big city every summer to get school clothes, visit relatives, and see the sights. This was also a business trip. Mom and Dad had a small grocery store back then, and Dad was always searching out new products to sell in the store. He would buy samplings of new items from the big stores in the big city and put them on our shelves back home to see if they would sell locally.

The road to Metropolis was called "South Road". It was mostly a two lane road riddled with potholes, switchbacks, hairpin turns, road construction and the occasional washout (roads destroyed or carried away by heavy floods). This was THE only road from the North to the Southern part of the island, and because of this, Diesel exhaust belching commercial vehicles plied up and down its length like confused Salmon to deliver goods and passengers to the rest of the island.

Back to the story:

In an effort to get on the road early to beat the traffic Mom would boil eggs and hotdogs in the wee hours of the morning and put some boxed orange juice on ice in a cooler. She would then wake each of us up, have us change into comfortable clothes for the trip and they would both hustle us into the waiting vehicle and bed us back down in specific locations, which was dependent on our sizes, ages, and tolerance for one another. We’d be on the road by 4 or 5 am and Dad would drive for about an hour or two before some of us would start waking up looking for something to eat.

The fun begins….(not really):

Mom would start handing out paper towels with a hot dogs and boiled eggs to each kid. After eating we’d be thirsty so out would come the triangular juice boxes we called "Tetra Paks". They tasted like unsweetened fake orange juice concentrate.

I’m a poor traveler to begin with. An inner ear problem necessitates me to be able to see the road so I can face my head in the general direction of a turn. Looking in one direction while turning in another causes me to get dizzy. Compound this with sitting in the back seat (can’t see the road) with a "hey look at that!" head snap, the smell of boiled eggs, hotdogs, diesel fumes, freshly paved asphalt, Dad’s jackrabbit pothole avoidance slalom, the country’s summertime temperatures and humidity…..it was just too much for my poor stomach to handle.

Sometimes I’d get my head out the window fast enough, sometimes I wouldn’t. Either way, and at those speeds, there was always the dreaded "splashback". Dad would grumble and pull over and I’d get out quickly and let my stomach retch the rest of  breakfast up. While the nasty, fake orange juice’s acidity burned my nasal passages Mom would clean me up with some lemon scented wet towelettes, make me rinse out my mouth, give me a mint or some gum, and off we’d go again, to the tune of 6 siblings calling me names and chiding me for my weakness. Woo-hoo, only 8 more hours till we get there.

So at this point I just added 3 new "scents" (lemon, mint, puke) to the car that could trigger another event. This is about the same time that the digesting boiled eggs and hotdogs started making themselves known in the car’s cabin. More "scents" added on their part = more fountain action on mine. It was at this point in the trip that "Pull over Dad! He’s gonna blow again!" would be shouted repeatedly for the rest of the trip. By Lunchtime I’d be dry heaving; Time to reload. More new smells, more new projectiles – yay! This scenario was replayed several times a year for well over a decade. I AM SO GLAD I’M ALL GROWN UP!!!!

People have the misconception that I am a control freak because I insist on driving during long trips. Oh contraire! They don’t understand that I NEED to be behind the wheel for the sake of the rest of the vehicle’s occupants. It’s been many, many years since the last time I emulated the Diet Pepsi/Mentos phenomenon, and if I play my cards right, it’s going to stay that way.

The "Silver Lining":

It wasn’t all bad. Because of my solid reputation of being a bad traveler I always got a window seat, No one’s arm or elbow was resting on my stomach, and everyone always gave me a wide berth. When you have a hair trigger stomach, while in hot, cramped, fetid quarters, that’s a good thing.

Just for the record, now that I’m an adult, my own family goes on road trips all the time. Five people – air conditioned, DVD player/video game havin’, seven passenger vehicle. No hotdogs, boiled eggs or paint stripper fake orange juice allowed. My kids will never know how good they have it.

Mom and Dad….I forgive you. 

While my daughter was visiting last Christmas the scene I mentioned above played out once more, like a bad version of the movie “Groundhog Day”. So I geared up, told my wife and my kids that I would be outside, hoping that someone (namely my kids) would take pity on me and help. My daughter took the bait and we were out there for half the time it normally takes me. Because she was out there I held my tongue and didn’t curse the plow, and all was well. We had dinner watched Christmas movies and went to bed.

In the morning we all gathered for breakfast. My daughter was noticeably missing so I went to her room to call her down. She was weepy, groggy and didn’t feel well so we tried asking her what she was feeling, but she could not say (She does not explain herself well.). All she could say was that she wanted to die, and that she felt horrible, and that she felt dead inside (drama, drama, drama). It took me a little while to realize that she was achy from the workout from the snow shoveling.

My daughter, an extremely active 16 year old cheerleader, who does Pilates and Yoga daily, is about 11 percent body fat, and fit as a fiddle, had been beaten down by a few clumps of soggy snowflakes. I gave her some Tylenol and kicked her out of bed and made her eat breakfast. She was fine after that. We all chided her for the rest of the day about the “I feel dead inside” quote. and had some laughs.
If this overweight, paunchy, high cholesterol havin’, balding old man can haul his butt out of bed in the morning after shoveling some snow the day before there is no way on this earth I’m going to feel sorry for someone less than half my age who can’t.

After World War II large American and English companies, like International Harvester, Texaco and Smith Bell, started moving into the Philippines for commercial gain. The tiny little seaside villages had no shipping ports, or airports to speak of so the companies contracted with the locals to build gigantic scaffolding, called ‘Pantalans’ in the local vernacular, out of local materials (Bamboo, Rattan and Buri). These were solid Bamboo structures used to load, and unload, cargo from ships. The locals were well versed in the use of these materials since all their homes were made in the same fashion. They were simple folk who lived without everyday amenities we take for granted like running water, indoor plumbing, toilet paper, or electricity.

Everything went well for the first few months after the structure’s completion, but after a short time the scaffolding inexplicably collapsed into the sea. The large companies re-contracted with the locals to rebuild new scaffolding quickly until the scaffolding’s concrete counterparts were finished. Oddly enough, even the new scaffolding ended up falling apart after a few months, and so began the vicious cycle of rebuilding and falling apart. None of the well schooled engineers, with scads of degrees, could figure out what was causing these usually sturdy structures to collapse.

It finally came to light that families living in the local area would meander down to the beach after dinner and climb the scaffolding and, with pants down around their ankles, would perch on the different levels of bamboo beams, hang their rear ends off the side to do their “business”. Stories and conversations were shared in the smoky darkness as the glowing red tips of the grownups’ cigarettes flitted about like fireflies. Sometimes people would even bring guitars and sing and enjoy each other’s company, all while relieving themselves. After they were done, people would twist off pieces of the Buri or Rattan lashing and use it to clean their posteriors (don’t ask me how). Month after month of this “Community Togetherness” depleted the necessary lashings a few inches at a time until the weakened structure would eventually succumb to the laws of Physics and Gravity and plunge into the sea.

Eventually, the concrete piers and docks were completed, the last of the great Bamboo structures fell one last time and the evening escapades of the locals came to an end. All that is left of the Pantalans are these hilarious stories passed down to me over the generations. To this day my Uncle still cannot recount this story without breaking out into laughter due to its absurdity.

I’m all for family bonding, and even neighborhood unity, but I would have to draw the line well before community crapping.