That's Hot

The next couple of Thursdays are going to be a little busy, so the content here might be a little rushed, under-considered, half-baked and/or wanting for an editorial hand. Business as usual, then.

This Thursday I've got packing to do as I've got last-minute preparations to make before we take off on Spring Break. Don't worry, I'm not out to try to recapture my misspent youth. It wouldn't be much of an effort, as all I'd really be recapturing would be long nights alone with my best friends, Dr. Pepper and Zork.

What we're about to do actually is another one of the severed legs of the sort-of annual Tour of American Cities project I've been working on with my sons over the last four years or so. The idea behind it is that exposure to other occupied spaces in this country of ours, both physically in infrastructure and organization and socially in the economic and racial strata inherent in every American polity, is an invaluable part of their development as people with the ability to project themselves into the circumstances of humans living in conditions outside the self-protective bubble all children build for themselves. The theory is that the confrontation, the conflict between what they have assumed to be not a but the standard for living conditions and experiences and what they see in other places, literally outside their comfort zone, will excite in them the antibodies of empathy and gratitude to fight the creeping infections of entitlement and douchebaggery.

Also, I want them to like me more than they like my ex-wife, their mother. She takes them camping. I take them to hotels with rooftop pools and room service. These are the kinds of exchanges upon which long-term bonds of love are formed.

Just to update you, so far we've been to San Francisco, New York, Detroit,* Chicago, DC, New Orleans and Atlanta. So far their preferences are for the most foreign things to them, mostly meaning the places with subways. I get the novelty for Southern California kids. It works on me as well, as I didn't ride on a train until I was an adult (London, 1998). As a bonus, I already talked about inoculation, but it also works literally. Evolutionarily, I think they're preferring to expose themselves to as many strains of streptococcus they can get their hands on.

No help there this year as we're only going as far as Phoenix. 2015 has been a little bit of a challenge for us so far, so it made more sense to keep costs down and stay close-ish. There aren't any trains of note and the climate is hostile to the type of bacteria that thrive in dampness, but maybe we'll get lucky and accidentally kick up some desert-dwellling extremophiles.

And even if we aren't forced to confront mortality by exposure to the sorts of diseases that frequent urban humanity, we'll certainly see it shuffling along in wrap-around sunglasses in the middle of weekday afternoons. I don't have the data in front of me, but I think the median age for some of those Phoenix area communities is in the mid-eleventies. My kids will be able to ponder serious questions about end-of-life quality-of-life decision-making and whether it's worth living if all you've got going for you is the concept of "a dry heat." And for me, I'll be able to drape an arm around my son's shoulder and say "See, boy. This is what it would be like if we ever visited your grandparents."

Also there will be spring training baseball and, I don't know, probably some other bullshit. We're driving four hours each way in a Prius. By the time you read this, we'll probably all be dead at one another's hands. Goodbye.

---

*Look, I can't help where my family lives. THEY can help it, and yet they still live in Detroit. Feel free to convey your disappointment and I will be sure to pass it along. They deserve it.