The Free Press won 11 North Carolina Press Association Awards in Chapel Hill last week. (For the nimrod that continues to send in hate mail written in crayon, that’s all of your toes plus three fingers.)
Traditionally, I don’t attend these award shows because it involves around five hours of driving, hanging out with lots of dudes in berets and driving in a town where pedestrians cross the street with the velocity of molasses in winter. I don’t know if it’s the lack of red meat in their diet or the irreversible influx of northerners pouring in over the Virginia border, but these people routinely walk out in front of traffic.
Not only do they walk out in front of you, they’ll stop in the middle of the road and start having a conversation with people on the sidewalk AND get in a huff if you try to run them over.
Since I was able to rope my parents into babysitting Tax Deductions 1 and 2, I convinced The Wife to attend the awards banquet with me. This would be the first time both of us were away from the children overnight, and let me tell you — it was right on time. I’ve been about 3 feet away from enrolling both of them in West Point for the past few weeks, and their brochure is still hanging on my refrigerator.
The highlight of the awards ceremony was the chance to meet Carl Kasell of the “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me” radio show. Also, I must say the chicken tenders on the buffet were sublime, and watching Free Press Managing Editor Bryan Hanks fill the pockets of his sports jacket with them was priceless.
He wore that same jacket to work today, so we’re gonna grab a lint brush and some mustard and have a pic-a-nic.
After the awards ceremony The Wife and I, along with Hanks and his better half Tina, drove around Chapel Hill looking for a place to eat. I suggested the Top of the Hill restaurant, but Tina and Hanks didn’t want to eat there (honest to God) because of all the UNC memorabilia they’d be surrounded by while eating.
I defecate you not, that’s what they said. Tina is a diehard Duke fan, and Hanks is scared of his woman, so he played along with the insanity.
I myself am a UNC fan, but something happened earlier in the day that may have justified Hanks’ position. As he was driving to a meeting on the UNC campus in Tina’s car (that features a giant “Duke” sticker on the back side window), he stopped to allow a student to cross the street. All of a sudden, the student looks up, notices the Duke sticker on the car and flips Hanks the bird.
If I’d been driving, that little schmendrick would’ve become a hood ornament.
We eventually found a restaurant that was devoid of sports memorabilia and had a nice meal — despite the fact that Hanks insisted the waiter address him as Der Kommissar. You haven’t lived until you’ve witnessed one grown man say to another, “Would you like some cracked pepper, Der Kommissar?”
At one point, I motioned the waiter close and whispered in his ear, “don’t turn around; Der Kommissar’s in town.”
During our meal, we noticed a rather boisterous group of newspaper people were having a good time near the back of the restaurant. When it was time to pay, we told the waiter we were part of their party, so sometime next week an accountant for the Shelby Daily Dispatch is going to wonder who charged 17 T-bone steaks to their company credit card.
While we were out of town, The Wife and I called home every few hours to check on the Tax Deductions. We warned my parents that TD No. 2 had been sleeping erratically as of late, but I told the wife that she’d probably sleep like a little angel for my parents — which she did.
“She slept till 6:30 a.m.,” my mama said. “She was no trouble at all.”
This made me simultaneously happy and a little ticked off. I’m glad that my parents didn’t have to call the fire department on our kids while we were out of town, but why can’t the little boogers sleep like that when we’re home?
Maybe making the little one sleep on the porch one night after writing on the wall wasn’t great parenting after all. Maybe my parents drugged them.
As we edged our way back to my parent’s house the following day The Wife and I agreed it was nice to get away for a while, but we really missed the children. When we picked them up from my parents' house they seemed glad to see us and all was well with the world.
The sun broke through the clouds while a herd of yellow butterflies made a rare March appearance and fluttered around each child’s head as if it were a portal to heaven. Birds chirped an insane medley of “Whistle While You Work” and “Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard” while a stray dog raised its leg not to relieve itself, but to salute me.
It was a good day.
Within three minutes of walking back into our home, TD No. 1 came down with a stomach ache that was apparently going to require anesthesia, while TD No. 2 decided it would be a good idea to play patty cake with the TV. When a fight broke out over which TD was sitting too close to the other one on the couch, everyone was sent to bed early.
In a startling display of self-preservation, one of the TDs hid the West Point brochure. It doesn’t matter though; as soon as I get all the Playdough out of the electrical sockets, I’ll plug in the computer and send off for another.
Jon Dawson’s columns appear every Tuesday and Thursday in The Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or jon.dawson@kinston.com. Purchase books, music and fan letters from Richard Clark at jondawson.com.