Vol. 55 - A Happy Accident

On not planning it

A family trip to Philadelphia. A week at art camp. Plenty of ice cream. Tons of new playgrounds. A party with some of his favorite cousins. Even an evening at Philly's megauberfunplex, Dave and Busters.

Emily and I don’t do downtime well and, in turn, neither do our kids. As so, as Emily and I are wont to, we loaded our son’s spring break with action over the course of a week in the City of Brotherly Love; the land of cheesesteaks; the town where you’re perpetually mere seconds away from getting punched in the face.

Of course, none of what we spent untold hours (and untold dollars) planning and executing could hold a candle to what our five-year-old son now describes as “The Greatest Night of His Life.”

Let me rewind for a second.

As the art camp we enrolled our son in was just south of perhaps Philly’s most famous strip, South Street, we needed an Airbnb in the neighborhood so we could walk him there in the mornings and amble home after pickup. Problem is, most of South Philadelphia’s rowhomes come with some seriously hazardous twisting, winding, and all-too-steep staircases. Hardly ideal for our eighteen-month-old daughter (who, for the first time in her life, spent a week basking in the glow of the only-child treatment… another newsletter, perhaps).

And so, as she does one-hundred-percent of the time, Emily found us an amazing place; a three-bedroom loft overlooking one of the busiest stretches of South Street, with floor-to-ceiling windows running the entire length of two of the apartment’s four sides.

On our second night in town, the first warm, sunny evening of the year, South Street was alit with race cars of all colors, stripes, and volumes; motorcycles with window-rattling soundsystems; a crew of Slingshot drivers, all of whom had bedecked their rides in aftermarket neon; and, of course, groups of young men riding quads and dirtbikes up and down the street, most of them popping block-long wheelies. There were also burnouts, donuts, and at least one coal roller.

Like most five-year-old boys, our son is currently obsessed with all things cars, trucks, and motorcycles. And so, for hours that night, he stood in the window as the cavalcade of excitement rumbled down South Street, shouting, “OH! Daddy! LOOK AT THAT ONE!”

For hours, our son was occupied and perhaps as happy as I’ve ever seen him, darting from window-to-window, watching a parade that looked as if his collection Hot Wheels came to life. It was better than art camp. Better than playgrounds. Better than cousins. Better even than Dave and Busters.

Lesson learned: you don’t always need to plan everything in advance. You don’t always need activities and interaction and engagement. Sometimes you just need a little bit of luck to give your kids “the greatest night of their lives.”