Mountains and Ministers

Nathan is bored. His usual speed of ninety mph with his hair on fire has been hampered by a recently fractured humerus. Worse, his orthopedist won’t clear him for Sports until after this week’s Little League try-outs. My twelve year-old son can play sans try-outs, due to “extenuating circumstances,” but his injury means he has to forego today’s Little League skills assessments and watch his siblings from the sidelines instead.

Yeah, right.

Spectator status lasts for about two minutes, just long enough for Nathan to notice The Mountain. Directly beyond the Little League field towers a monstrous wooded hillside glistening with muck and mire from last night’s rain. A hair pin trail meanders up its slimy flanks. A couple of other testosterone-impaired life forms have already bolted for its feet. Might as well hang out a neon welcome sign.

Undeterred by my vociferous warnings about injury to life and limb mixed with my best momish predictions of his imminent demise, Nathan scrambles up the minor Matterhorn, gawky limbs flailing like a buzz saw on Speed. Nathan promptly throws caution to the wind in typical Guy fashion and prepares to tackle this conifer-clad Himalaya with little more than sneakers and a sweatshirt. I swear that Guy is part chimpanzee. This, and his brothers haven’t even finished shagging grounders and pop flies yet.

Seeing how I acquiesced to Nathan’s mountain climbing request in a moment of weakness brought on by an untimely lull between chocolate infusions, big brother Daniel goes scrambling up the rocky hillside a hair’s breath behind his sibling. You know, just barely out of squabbling range.

Empowered by some kind of innate geo-synchronous navigational system known only to Guys and nut cases, Daniel and five year-old Josiah soon join Nathan to form a trio of intrepid mountaineers. They’re as determined to find a pass through the 1,000 foot wooded hill as the Donner Party was to crack the Sierra Nevadas. Never mind how THAT expedition panned out.

I watch from the ground, noting that my Guys refuse to follow the carefully cleared, neatly manicured trail up the mountain. Instead, they favor a brush-busting, mosquito-ridden, Grizzly-infested muddy swamp disguised as The Abominable Dust Bunny. This thin ribbon of foot prints resembles a vertical mud slide more than an actual path.

My Guys are thinking Adventure! I’m thinking Spray and Wash, as in an entire month’s worth of dirty laundry in one fell swoop. Not to mention the First Aid that is sure to be required for scraped knees and razed elbows.

So it goes here in Guysville, U.S.A. Gee. All this and a month’s worth of stains and suds, too!

Struggling valiantly to keep up with his big brothers, Josiah charges up the hill. He reaches the halfway mark just about the time his brothers have summited the hillside and are heading back down. Sure as night follows day, the little Guy gets stuck, hamstrung between a thicket of blackberry brambles that could shish-ka-bob King Kong and a mud puddle the size of Lake Geneva.

“Maaaah-meeeee!” Josiah’s shrill imperative clangs, “I’m stuck!” His pronouncement commandeers my immediate attention, demands my swift response. I briefly consider sending the dog up the swampy mountain to haul out the kid. After all, she’s a yellow Labrador retriever. Oh yeah. Until I remember that Yours Truly decided to leave Eve at home. Chalk one up for that stroke of brilliance.

“Okay” I holler, fresh out of options. I hike up my brand new warm-up suit and roll up my sleeves. “Hang on. Mommy’s coming.”

Half a year and a half-ton of slime later, I intercept said kid. By now, Josiah is beaming and chirping, waving at the “Friends, Romans, and fellow countrymen” far below. Adding injury to insult, he’s looking at “all the pretty birdies” twittering in the hemlocks and tracing deer prints in the inky, oozing ground. He then regales me with the newest additions to his “zoo”: three big, fat night crawlers. Naturally, I’m thrilled. I grab Josiah, extricate him from the blackberry bushes, and beat a turbid retreat downhill. By now I’m a sight for sore eyes--dripping sweat, mud-spattered, caked with grime.

“It could be worse,” I mutter under my breath. “I could run into someone I know.” Just about the time our feet hit terra firma I hear a nauseatingly chipper voice call my name. I turn around and identify its owner.

It just got worse. In spades.

Here I am, newly emerged from my Edmund Hillary exertions, rumpled sweatsuit coated with mud, spitting moss out of my teeth and looking only slightly less disheveled than Death when I’m greeted by our pastor. He flashes me a Mary Poppins grin and asks, “How’s it goin’?”

Does his salary include Hazardous Duty pay?

Pastor Paul steps forward in a starched shirt and spotless cotton twills, the poster boy for a Clorox commercial.

Drooping like damp crepe paper, I waft a self-conscious palm over my matted hair and grime-encrusted face. I briefly consider claiming deaf-mute status or temporary leprosy, but I’m not sure that either condition is reversible. I feel my face flush. The color is no doubt lost beneath a nice, smooth varnish of mountain mud. So I bat my mascara-less lashes, wondering why this guy can’t at least have the good manners to pretend he doesn’t notice me?

“Oh, uh, hi Pastor,” I wheeze, gingerly extending my messy paw. By now I figure this Guy deserves whatever he gets. Pastor Paul saunters over and slaps me on the back with a beaming, buoyant “hello!”

Why do guys do that? You’d think a simple hand wave or a paw shake would suffice. Sure, Paul’s just being congenial, but he’s also a former linebacker for the Oakland Raiders. I suspect my back will resemble Quasimodo’s by morning. Perhaps to compensate, he grips my hand in the standard ministerial “dead-fish” handshake.

I flush again, but Paul doesn’t seem to notice. He stands there chit-chatting with the Creature from the Black Lagoon for another twenty minutes. I’m keeping an eye out for the nearest edge of the world, looking for a likely jumping-off spot while he’s grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Only a Guy would do something like that.

Story ID:	916
Written by:	Kristine L. (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Story
Location:	-- WA usa
Year:	2005
Person:	Sons x 4