Dad always worked jobs that allowed him flexibility so he could do the things he loved on a moment’s notice. My mom always liked to have a plan – all her “ducks” in a row, but dads were always “scattered” all over the pond. My dad was a very spontaneous, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants kind of person. He could always drop what he was doing to have fun. One time on two hours’ notice, he and mom got a group of couples together and went to Jackson to the hill climbs overnight.
I remember when I was young, every spring in May when the ice melted from the lake, we were there fishing and camping. We would camp on the weekends, come home for school and work, do laundry and re-stock the food and go again.
I remember coming home from school on Fridays and finding my poor mom, running around like crazy putting stuff in the camper because he had decided on his way home from work that we would be going camping “right now”!
Sometimes he would come home from work in the middle of the week and grab the boys and the fishing gear (which was also always ready to go) and be gone in a matter of minutes.
Our day trips to the lake were the same way….hardly ever planned ahead, just very spontaneous and last minute. It was exciting growing up with a dad like that because you never really knew when or where the next adventure would take you.
Mom got wise to his ways rather quickly and the camper was ALWAYS stocked and ready to go… our clothes were in there at all times… there was always canned food, chips, cookies, licorice, etc. in the camper… all summer long. All she had to do was throw the perishable food in a cooler and we were off. Because of her wise ways, the camper became our play house (when it wasn’t parked at the lake or up the canyon). We would have sleepovers with friends or sometimes just myself and the bros would spend the night in the camper, raiding the snacks, playing cards and board games by lantern light until we fell asleep. In that sense, I guess we followed dad’s example of not needing a plan to have fun. Just round up some peeps and see what happens. I grew up in a ‘hood where there were about 30 kids the same age as my brothers and me within about 5 houses in any direction. During the summer, we spent our days, catching water snakes in the irrigation ditches, playing under the bleachers at the high school football field that was in our back yard, skateboarding down the sloped sidewalks at the church, having bottle rocket wars and every night after dinner, all the neighborhood kids would gather to play “night games”. We played Kick the Can, Eenie Einie Over, and many different versions of Hide and Seek, just to name a few. It was unplanned, spontaneous, come as you are, whoever you are, fun. It was childhood in a small town!
I have tried to instill in my own children this spontaneous kind of attitude, but they just think I am off-the-meds-crazy when I suggest they do things like this. (See my blog post, Encounter with the Popo to see what happened the ONE time they did decide to play night games!!) It seems that kids today have to plan out their fun and they frequently end up not doing anything, because no one can make a decision on what they should do and then it’s too late to do anything.
As I have gotten older, I realize how awesome my mom was for tolerating the spontaneous nature of my dad and for being flexible enough to just roll with all his last minute adventures. The older I get the more like my mom I am, in that I like to have a plan and have all the ducks in a row before I execute the plan. There is nothing wrong with having a plan. In contemplating this chapter, I have realized that maybe I was not enough like my dad in my parenting style. I need to relax a bit and have more spontaneous, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants adventures.
Being spontaneous can be uplifting and liberating to a soul that is depressed and anxious.. or any soul for that matter. It doesn’t have to mean getting together with 30 of your neighbors to play Kick the Can or going on unplanned camping trips every weekend. It can be found in unplanned fun like going to DQ for a Blizzard at 10 pm, grabbing a friend without notice and hitting Sonic Happy Hour, making an unplanned trip up to Claim Jumper for Mother Lode cake, getting in the truck and going for a drive to see someplace you’ve never been, or a spur of the moment board game with friends or family. There is a certain amount of freedom that can be gained by letting your hair down, and having a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants attitude once in a while. As I have been doing things this year to purge the negatives from my life, I am determined to emulate my dad and fill some of that void with spontaneous adventures… Be advised…this may land me on your door step with an invitation to do something random with only a moment’s notice!
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