More Fearless Moral Inventory
With respect to the last post--while I have yet to do a formal Al-Anon 9th Step amends on that one, it's been six years now, I've apologized many times, and my daughter and I have gotten to the point where we can laugh about my insane behavior. She and I have a great relationship, we talk and email all the time, and at age 23, living 2000 miles away, she has announced that if any family vacation plans are happening she wants to be included indefinitely, which of course she will be. But as long as I'm on the subject of Things I Will Need to Apologize To My Daughter For, there is one more event that needs Fearless Moral Inventory-ing.
This one happens in Cajun country. During the year she took off between high school and college she was headed back east and I said, why don't we take a trip to New Orleans and drive around the bayous and then you can continue on east from there. We were staying in Breaux Bridge and for breakfast I had way more Louisiana chicory coffee than I should have, I know what that stuff does to me, I was driving badly all morning, turning the wrong way down one way streets and missing stop signs, in spite of my daughter's repeated warnings and offers to take the wheel, and sure enough about half way to New Orleans--we were rushing to make it in time for our dinner reservations at Antoine's--I started into an intersection without looking, thinking or really being present at all, and our little rented Hyundai Santa Fe got clipped by, yes, an 18 wheeler going 60 MPH. The front end of the Hyundai was sheered right off, the battery was found in a field a hundred yards away, we did a few high-speed 360's, but by some miracle which I have yet to fathom my then 18 year old daughter and I walked away from the twisted wreck with a couple of scratches, mostly from airbag impact. After an aggravating series of less-than-compassionate Louisiana state cops and surly tow truck drivers we made it to the French Quarter in time to shower, change and get to Antoine's in time for our reservation. I thought the timing was critical; little did I know that the bloom has long been off Antoine's rose and we were sitting in a nearly empty restaurant. Didn't matter to me--I was still completely rattled and basically out-of-body from the accident and I went straight for the Sazeracks, a New Orleans concoction of whiskey and God alone knows what else, Huey Long's favorite, and after the second of these I turned to my daughter and asked "So have you slept with (name of her boyfriend at the time)?" Arrrgggghhhh! She was terribly embarrassed and I realized immediately what I had done and what can I say... I shudder at the memory of it. She handled it great, we went on to have a wonderful few days biking around that great city--a little like remembering Pompeii before Vesuvius now--but-- but-- it was bad, and I found out later how upset she was by it. She did not, by the way, dignify the question with an answer, or feel she had to. She's got way too much self respect for that. So I must have done something right...
The good news is, that really cleans up the 4th step on my baby girl.
The moral of this story is: ALWAYS take the Collision Damage Waiver on your rental car insurance. I dropped off a hunk of crushed smoking metal at the Avis office in New Orleans and walked away without having to pay one single dime.
This one happens in Cajun country. During the year she took off between high school and college she was headed back east and I said, why don't we take a trip to New Orleans and drive around the bayous and then you can continue on east from there. We were staying in Breaux Bridge and for breakfast I had way more Louisiana chicory coffee than I should have, I know what that stuff does to me, I was driving badly all morning, turning the wrong way down one way streets and missing stop signs, in spite of my daughter's repeated warnings and offers to take the wheel, and sure enough about half way to New Orleans--we were rushing to make it in time for our dinner reservations at Antoine's--I started into an intersection without looking, thinking or really being present at all, and our little rented Hyundai Santa Fe got clipped by, yes, an 18 wheeler going 60 MPH. The front end of the Hyundai was sheered right off, the battery was found in a field a hundred yards away, we did a few high-speed 360's, but by some miracle which I have yet to fathom my then 18 year old daughter and I walked away from the twisted wreck with a couple of scratches, mostly from airbag impact. After an aggravating series of less-than-compassionate Louisiana state cops and surly tow truck drivers we made it to the French Quarter in time to shower, change and get to Antoine's in time for our reservation. I thought the timing was critical; little did I know that the bloom has long been off Antoine's rose and we were sitting in a nearly empty restaurant. Didn't matter to me--I was still completely rattled and basically out-of-body from the accident and I went straight for the Sazeracks, a New Orleans concoction of whiskey and God alone knows what else, Huey Long's favorite, and after the second of these I turned to my daughter and asked "So have you slept with (name of her boyfriend at the time)?" Arrrgggghhhh! She was terribly embarrassed and I realized immediately what I had done and what can I say... I shudder at the memory of it. She handled it great, we went on to have a wonderful few days biking around that great city--a little like remembering Pompeii before Vesuvius now--but-- but-- it was bad, and I found out later how upset she was by it. She did not, by the way, dignify the question with an answer, or feel she had to. She's got way too much self respect for that. So I must have done something right...
The good news is, that really cleans up the 4th step on my baby girl.
The moral of this story is: ALWAYS take the Collision Damage Waiver on your rental car insurance. I dropped off a hunk of crushed smoking metal at the Avis office in New Orleans and walked away without having to pay one single dime.
posted by Tom at 10:11 PM
5 Comments:
OMG Tom...that damp air must have gone straight to a moldy spot in your brain and mushroomed!! That's just too funny! Apparently your daughter is more mature than one of mine would have been tho....they would STILL be rolling their eyes about that! And thank God ya'll weren't hurt in the wreck. Things happen..but knowing that it happened because you were a goober would have been a real load to carry if there had been injuries.
HA! I bet she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her! Daddy's are so funny.
Wonderful story.
"Message therapy" - I like that phrase. The message of love and truth. "The truth will set you free." Anyway, hearing you talk about your interatctions with your daughter, I have to say, is more hilarious than heart-warming. I laughed when I read about that. I can only imagine what her reaction inside must have been when, with some whiskey in you, you popped that question!
Anway, with the jumping the architecture ship thing - I have yet to do that. I may, I may not. Not sure yet. I don't remember exactly what I said to you in that comment I left about Lou Kahn who designed 2 buildings on the campus of your School-of-the-Touchy-Subject (if that's the school you're talking about in regards to the "human, all too human" snobbery). The story there is that I LOVE Architecture, fell in love when I spent a semester on a Study Abroad progarm in Europe. I said to my professor once, "I'm going bring good Architecture in the world, and no body's going to stop me." What I meant by "good architecture" was moving, of the heart, architecture that is simply present, that arouses the senses rather than the greed and comfortable numbness.
My professor's candid response to that prideful statement was, "Well, maybe you won't be stopped by someone, but you will probably be stopped by the social machine." He was referring to Descartes and Newton, the "social machine" model for the world that is the guide for how our society works. I didn't know quite what to make of that comment, but now I look back on it and realize that he probably said that out of some anger and resentment. After all, he, at that point, wasn't a practicing architect. Had been sort of forced out of the working world by the social machine. And there he was in the ineffectual ivory tower of academia teaching kids how to go out in the word and get just as aggrevated and resentful as himself. I think I may have inherited it (which was the same anger carried by Nietche).
So here I sit, resentful toward society, wanting to just quit and go to Kenya and help refugees learn how to build their own houses by simply digging a hole in the ground and building a dome next to it using the chemicals and tools acquired by my friend's company "The Solis Foundation", whose dream is the end of the shantytown. But, as I said, I love Architecture. I dont' know where that question of yours came from! You must be a prophet or something...
Part of it too is that I have been extremely disheartened by the happenings in regard to the World Trade Tower Memorial competition (http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,11711,1317187,00.html). Usually, each generation seems to have at least one architect that keeps the vision alive on the public scale. The death of the vision seems to have been wanting to die for fifty years or so now. I'm afraid the results of that sitation are the mark of the official death. If I'm going to be relegated to building houses, it might as well be for those who raelly need them rather than for those who just want a piece of real estate!
Jason
Newbie to your blog, but it's been added to the Favorites List.
Your human, a jerk sometimes, like the rest of us.
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