A Letter from Your Loving Father

Our family lives very close to the epicenter of the California Gold Rush. We happen to have moved here for the schools (and the abundant Chipotle locations), but a long time ago a bunch of people moved here for the gold. Ground zero for the gold frenzy was a little town called Coloma. All three of our boys got to go on fourth grade field trips to Coloma, to stay three days and two nights and learn all about the life of a gold miner.

One of the things the teachers ask the parents for, besides a ton of money for the trip, is a letter written to your fourth-grader as though they were an actual forty-niner in the gold fields.

For reasons unknown to me, my wife decided I should be the one to write those letters. Apparently, she doesn’t read this column.

Son Number Three just found the one I wrote for him last year, and I thought I’d share, as an example of how my wife is not paying attention.

August 16, 1849

Dearest Son Number Three,

Your ma and I hope this letter finds you alive and well in California. We sure hope you made it all the way out to the diggins in Coloma, and you’re not dead on the Missouri Trail somewhere.

I know the trip to the Mother Lode couldn’t have been easy for you, what with your wooden leg and all. Hopefully you still have it attached, and you didn’t run into any weirdo leg robbers, or God forbid, a pack of angry beavers. I know I taught you well with the shotgun, so hopefully you gave any highwaymen or uppity rodents a backside full of buckshot.

We miss you here on the farm in Indiana, especially now that your older brothers have up and left us as well. Son Number One ran off with a traveling circus act that came through Fort Wayne earlier this summer. He claims to be making decent money, but his official job title is Head Pooper-Scooper for the elephant show.

Son Number Two has gone off to run a barge company on one of the Great Lakes. The good Lord only knows what possessed him to become a sailor, but he seems to enjoy it. He brings iron ore from Michigan to Wisconsin and returns with tons of cheese. Go figure.

We had high hopes for all three of you, but so far we have one son who picks up giant piles of elephant dung and another who is a cheese boat captain. Hopefully you will make something of yourself out in Coloma and save the family name.

One piece of advice for you when it comes to gold diggin: Don’t handle any quicksilver. Stay away from it altogether. A lot of the uneducated prospectors out there will tell you it’s the best way to attract the gold dust and collect it, and it does work great for that, but they will all end up with mercury poisoning. As they get sicker they will make gurgling noises when they talk, they will shiver and shake, their pee will be a funny color, and eventually they will all go bat-guano crazy. Then they’ll die.

Ma says hello.

Best of luck. Try not to get shot by a claim jumper.

Love,

Pa

I have no idea why my wife puts me in charge of these things.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Release of Sanity

My grandfather left home to go out on his own at fourteen years old. Those were obviously different times, but now that I’m a father, I think that was very considerate of him. Son Number One will turn fourteen in a couple months, and he shows absolutely no signs of wanting to move out. Rude!

And it doesn’t end there. I just know that if he hangs around, his two younger brothers will follow his lead, continuing to live here and eat our food throughout high school.

Do you know what that means? Do you even realize the implications?

It means I have at least eight more years of filling out liability and medical release forms!

Over the past thirteen-plus years, I have filled out approximately two bazillion forms related to our three boys, and almost six-fifths of them were liability and medical release forms.

Can we just talk about liability release forms for a minute? I’m really hoping that after this discussion we can just be done with them, OK America? Great!

Liability release forms are useless. When I bring my kids to your trampoline fun park, you insist that I sign a document saying that anything that happens to my child under your roof, in your parking lot, or in greater North America is not your fault. I scoff at that idea, but I sign that document anyway, because if I don’t, I can’t leave my kids at your trampoline fun park and sneak away to have twenty stinkin’ minutes with no one yelling to me about how much of a giant butthole their brother is.

You and I both know that document means absolutely nothing if my child gets hurt because of, let’s say, your lack of trampoline maintenance and poor decision making with regard to reptile enclosure placement.

“Your honor, it’s simply not our fault that this man’s son was mauled when our obviously well-past-the-end-of-its-useful-life trampoline ripped and he fell through into our pet alligator’s tank that we placed underneath the trampoline so it would be out of everyone’s way. I mean, they signed the liability release, for crying out loud!”

If I brought my own form stating that you would hold us harmless if my son intentionally burned down your trampoline fun park because he loves barbecued alligator, would you sign it? Of course not. The only reason we parents sign these things is because we all know they won’t hold up in court if your business does something stupid, and we can’t get away from our children unless you take them.

And don’t even get me started on medical release forms. I mean, at least they serve an actual purpose – to communicate any medical concerns to the folks who will be watching our children – but they are still annoying, and here’s why: We are constantly filling out medical release forms for every single activity that our children do, but every organization’s form is “unique,” and they all ask the same exact set of idiotic questions.

We should be able to provide any child caregiver with our own pre-printed medical release form. Ours would be a business card that read:

This is Son Number Three. He is allergic to nothing. You already have my name and phone number or I wouldn’t have given you my kid.

Instead, roughly half my existence on this planet has consisted of filling out the same information on each special medical release form that I am given:

Doctor’s Name:

Doctor’s Address:

Doctor’s Phone Number:

Health Insurance Provider:

Health Insurance Plan Number:

Literally no one within a ten-mile radius of this field trip will ever use any of that information. I have never once been able to actually speak to my sons’ doctor on the phone, yet you want his number? And what on earth are you planning to do with his insurance information?

“Oh, no! That boy has fallen and seems to have broken his arm and he’s bleeding from his ears. Get me his medical release form so we can schedule his next six-month wellness check and hopefully get a flu shot in the same visit.”

It’s time to stop the madness, America. If we all band together and stay strong, we can do it. From now on, when we fill out the medical release forms, over the entire doctor and insurance information section, we’ll just write three numbers with a big black Sharpie marker – 911.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!