Chapter 58: Bumps in the Road

Friday, November 25, 1983

We both slept late, because ... well ... turkey coma. Perhaps the late-night philosophical discussion had something to do with it, too. I couldn’t remember any wacky dreams about predestination versus free will, at least.

We wound up spending the day with Mom and Dad. It felt like one of those good opportunities to take a day and devote it to the family that was, rather than the families we hoped might one day be. We would see Jas and Paige at the game tonight, anyway.

It was a good day for a leisurely lunch of Thanksgiving leftovers (including some sent by the Nguyens and Seilers, who in turn had received some of our leftovers), of playing cards and board games, of singing while Angie played piano, and of just enjoying each other’s company. These days wouldn’t go away when we left for college, but Mom and Dad couldn’t know that the way we knew it. They’d never had their kids grow up and leave home. I had, plus I’d been the one to grow up and leave, and so had Angie.

It was one of the many strange role reversals that were commonplace for us. In the back of my mind, I was sure that both of them knew we were different. It was a good sort of different, perhaps a great sort of different, but we were unquestionably different, even compared to the smart, motivated, mature friends we hung out with.

The thing was, there was nothing anyone could do about it. We were who we were. They’d raised me from a baby, and they’d known Angie since she was a baby. The differences hadn’t happened abruptly for them. Angie was out of sight (though likely not out of mind) while she was with Sharon, while I’d been changing naturally as I went through puberty and got ready for high school.

There are hundreds of parenting books to help you when things go wrong with your kids, but there really isn’t one to help when things go unexpectedly very, very right. Oh, there are books about parenting gifted kids (and Mom and Dad had both read some of those), but not about kids who are mature beyond their years.

Neither of us was trying to pretend to be anything but what we were. That would’ve been impossible. What were we going to do — fake some teenage tantrum? Mock up a spate of angst and rebellion? Get drunk or take drugs just to get caught at it? We’d almost certainly screw anything like that up. It just wasn’t us. We just hid the weirdest parts of ourselves and counted on the impossibility of us being the people we actually were to keep things under control.

I’d started to guess that, one day, the questions would be asked, just as I expected them from Cammie and almost certainly from Jess. They probably didn’t want the answers before we’d left for college, and we didn’t want to provide them. The truly impossible to explain part of things was that, while we didn’t need them in any true parenting sense, we also very much needed them in our lives with them as the parents and us as the kids.

For Angie, it was the childhood she’d never had. For me, it was the relationship with them I’d half-bungled by being too much of a quiet, introverted nerd. Even though our lives were far busier than my first life had been, we spent more quality time with Mom and Dad (by a wide margin) than either of us had in our first life.

Telling them too soon would wreck that. They needed to shift to seeing us as fully adult, which would take us moving out and growing at least a few years older. Once we were full adults, I had to hope that the truth wouldn’t create problems. As soon as the question came up, though, the most I could do would be to say what I’d said to Cammie: yes, we were different, very different, but knowing the whole story would change things profoundly (though also, hopefully, not all that much at all, in the end, since we’d still be the people they’d known for many years by that point).

There might never be a reason to tell them, but there might be a reason at any moment, too. Having thought it through as much as we could made sense. I’d never planned on telling Jasmine on a day’s notice, years earlier than I’d planned, but things might well have gone a lot worse if I hadn’t been thinking about it in advance.

In the meantime, we soaked up all of the family time we could. One day (hopefully many years from now!) they’d be gone, and we wanted to have no regrets about anything when that day came.

Mom and Dad passed on going to the football game in favor of going out to dinner together, something I wholeheartedly supported. The flip side of us spending more time with them was that they also spent more time doing things as a couple than they had when it’d just been the three of us. Angie said that it was more than they’d done when it was the four of them, too.

Almost certainly, I’d been the stumbling block both times. I’d been both an introvert and also a needy pain in the ass when I was a kid in my first life. If they went somewhere, I wanted to go, and they knew it. Iceberg Steve sounded like he’d been similar.

Now, Angie and I cheered them on, and that had long ago settled any qualms they’d had. Their relationship had been wonderful during both of our first lives, but unless familiarity really did breed contempt, we were hopeful it would be even more wonderful this time.

We left first, picking up Jas and Paige on the way, and headed off to the Astrodome. It was possible (by no means guaranteed, but quite possible) that either this game or the next would be the last high school game we saw there. The rest of this season’s games after next week would be held elsewhere. By the time our kids were old enough to be going to high school football games of their own, this building would be closed.

We’d be back here before then, I was pretty sure. I’d seen Pink Floyd here somewhere in the later 1980s and I expected to be at that concert again, for one thing. Perhaps we’d be back for another big concert or two.

For now, though, we were here for football. Our opponent this week was Aldine, who’d beaten La Porte by a touchdown last week. We were all optimistic, but also all too aware that every game was hard at this point.

Aldine spent the first half proving that point. Their defense was stellar, and so was ours. The difference in the first half was a single missed tackle. One of our cover guys slipped during a punt and Aldine returned it 75 yards for the sole score of the first half.

7-0 was hardly an insurmountable deficit, but it certainly had us nervous during halftime. Snacks and sodas calmed our nerves a bit, or perhaps just distracted us, but we were ready to cheer our hearts out by the time the second half kicked off. Jess might have had something to do with that. Tiny as she was at this distance, there was no mistaking her for anyone else, not for us.

Their defense returned the favor halfway through the third quarter. A safety slipped and missed the chance to tackle Andy, who ran 50 yards for the game-tying touchdown.

We went into the fourth quarter tied, but with Aldine threatening. We stopped them that time, but couldn’t do anything with the ball. In the ensuing possession, they scored to make it 14-7 with eight minutes to go.

Memorial tied it four minutes later after a long, slow drive. We kicked off to them, counting on our defense to get a stop.

Cal wound up with two sacks on the next series, forcing Aldine to punt. That gave us three minutes to go 60 yards. We ... didn’t. We went pretty much nowhere and wound up punting ourselves, leaving Aldine two minutes for their own attempt. On the next play, Cal came to the rescue again, this time forcing a fumble.

Memorial had the ball on their thirty. A field goal would’ve won it (if we could keep them from scoring), but two plays later Andy got loose in the end zone and caught a pass for the last score of the game.

That left the final score at 21-14. It was our closest win of the season thus far, and we had potentially three more games to play, all against opponents likely to be even tougher.

On the other hand, we’d won, and that made us tough, too. Didn’t it?

We wound up at the House of Pies after the game, again. That seemed like a good idea. Why mess with success?

We opted against going to Jasmine’s house to continue celebrating. Perhaps tomorrow, though. Instead, we wound up talking much too long (or, perhaps, exactly the right amount) about what we’d like to do in December.

The first part was obvious. If Memorial was playing on the weekend of the 9th, we’d be there wherever the game was (unless they did something insane like putting it in El Paso, of course). Finals the next week or not, we were going, and we’d stay the night after the game.

The second part was equally obvious. If we were in the State Championship, we’d be in Dallas for that game. Finals would be over and it was well before Christmas.