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When I was seven, we lived in a little town called Rialto.
I went to Ramona Elementary. I was an average student. Mom worked part-time at Sages Grocery Store. Dad was an auto mechanic. Both my parents loved the outdoors, and pitching a tent fit our budget pretty good, so we spent a lot of time camping. Mom, dad and I drove the blue Ranchero all across Montana, visiting every state park within a weekend’s reach. Then dad got two weeks off at the end of May and we headed west. I thought we were aiming for Yellowstone, but mom and dad had something grander in mind. Yosemite! I was only seven, so I wasn’t thinking in spiritual metaphors (at least, not that I’m aware of). But looking back, I can say now it was a Burning Bush experience. Yosemite was holy ground, and I ran across it with a joy my parents had never seen in me before. My mom wrote about that first visit in her journal. I still have her slim little books. “After two weeks, he refuses to leave,” she wrote. “Says he’s going to build a house in the valley. I wish now we hadn’t taken him to that John Muir exhibit.” John Muir! Riding an avalanche off the rim of the Valley! Spending a storm-tossed night yahooing in the top of a pine tree! Setting off for the wild with just two loaves of bread in his coat pockets! Other kids wanted to be astronauts or superheroes. Me, the moment I stepped out of that exhibit and back into the Valley, I wanted to be John Muir. The last morning, when it was time to pack, I was nowhere to be found. Dad was frantic. He knew how easy it was to get lost in those endless woods. He ran for the Rescue Rangers while Mom waited at the tent, in case I came back. As she waited, eyes raised in that instinctive and prayerful way we all seem to carry, she saw the sun ignite the spray atop Upper Yosemite Falls. A rainbow faded in and out with the breeze, like Nature’s holy ghost. Later she wrote, “Suddenly, I knew where Bobby was.” She found me on the bridge below the Falls. “He looked so happy, so right, that I couldn’t take him away.” Mom told dad we were staying. Dad was furious, but when mom made a decision of heart and mind, that was that. So dad drove east to work while mom and I stayed another week in Yosemite. We would take a bus home. Looking over what I’ve typed, I’m not sure how to end, or what to draw from all this. I just want Chip to know how deep Nature runs in me. I want him to understand why his dad takes him to Yosemite every year. I want him to realize, deep down in his heart, that Yosemite is holy to me. When I stand in the mist of those mighty falls, I am baptized. I believe in God, I hope in heaven, but I know Yosemite. I guess I just want my son to remember that. Comments 
Media Jean: Wow. I don’t think I feel like that about anything. 
Chip: Maybe you can come with us to Yosemite. You’ve seen my dad in Nature, but he’s 10x that in Yosemite.
Media Jean: That’s funny. I can’t imagine your dad being any more Thoreau than he already is.
Chip: He’s like Thoreau with the annoying parts left out. He walks and hikes and smiles, writes poems and skips rocks. No sermons. He’s just there.
Media Jean: Thoreau without the annoying parts, that’s hard to imagine.
Chip: Media Jean, do you think we’re missing something?
Media Jean: What do you mean?
Chip: The way my dad feels about Nature. I wish I felt that way about something.
Media Jean: I know what you mean. I love technology, but it’s just a tool. It’s something I use. With Nature, it’s itself. And your dad is part of it.
Chip: Yeah. I wish I had that.
Media Jean: I never thought about it before, but I wish I had that, too.
Chip: I love computers and coding and and AI and YouTube and all that.
Media Jean: But they’re just tools and toys and stuff.
Chip: I think I’ll ask my dad to take us camping.
Media Jean: Yeah! Maybe it’s not too late for us!
Chip: Maybe we can learn to be part of nature, the way he does. Connect with what my dad calls his inner North Star.
Media Jean: My inner North Star. Wow. I love that. 
Johnny: OK, before you say it, yes, I was lurking. Get over it.
Media Jean: What do you want now, Johnny?
Johnny: Nothing. I was just thinking.
Chip: Do you want to go camping with us?
Johnny: Really?
Media Jean: Really?
Chip: That’s what you wanted to ask, isn’t it? You feel the same way we do. You want that inner North Star feeling.
Johnny: All right, all right, I admit it! I want to go!
Media Jean: Wow. I thought money was your inner North Star.
Johnny: Capitalists are human, too, you know!
Chip: I’ll go ask my dad right now.
Media Jean: School’s out in a few months. Maybe he could take us to Yosemite.
Johnny: I’ve never been to Yosemite.
Media Jean: Me either.
Chip: Hold on. I’ll be right back!
Media Jean: I gotta say, Johnny, you surprise me sometimes. It’s like the Johnny-I-think-I-know just went away.
Johnny: Will your folks let you go all the way to California?
Media Jean: They’d let me go to the moon if Chip’s dad was the tour guide. How about you?
Johnny: My dad will see it as a great character building experience. He’ll say this trip will give me a story to tell when I’m a CEO. You know, something to dupe the worker bees into thinking I’m relatable.
Media Jean: And just like that, the Johnny-I-think-know is back.
Chip: He said yes!
Media Jean: We’re going to Yosemite!
Chip: He had already reserved a spot for our annual two week trip. It’s in Housekeeping Camp, so there’s plenty of room. He’s going to call your parents tonight.
Media Jean: I’m going to give my folks a heads-up.
Johnny: Me, too. This will be great!
Chip: Let’s get together tomorrow and read John Muir stories!
Media Jean: It’s a date! 
Comic strip from the series "Chip's Upgrades"
(Kid, Inc. Volume 2: The Batcave of Childhood) Have a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected]
Sitting here trying to decide which stories to tell. Stories I haven’t told Chip before. Stories to leave behind when I move on.
Sometimes a little snack helps me get started. But there’s not a bag of chips to be found. No tater tots or pizzas in the freezer. No tubes of Pillsbury biscuits, no tubs of butter, no shrink-wrapped cold cuts, and no mayo in the trusty fridge. The pantry is usually dependable. There’s always something forgotten in the back, behind the cans of pinto beans and creamed corn. But not today. No crinkly bag of Newman’s O’s. No long matinee boxes of Red Vines. Where’s my backup stash of Ginger Ale? Where are my Slim Jims and vacuum-sealed pouches of jerky? Top shelf, right side. My stack of Jell-O boxes are gone. Not one box of my beloved cook-and-stir chocolate pudding! Even the cookie jar is empty. When I ask Chip and Media Jean where all the snacks have gone, Chip shrugs and says, “That stuff isn’t good for you anyway.” Media Jean gives me one of her all-knowing looks and adds, “You’re entering the Drop Dead Zone, Mr. MacMurray.” “Drop Dead Zone?” “She means risk factors,” Chip smiles. He always tries to soften Media Jean’s straight talk. Before I could ask another question, they flew out the door. Something’s going on, and as usual, I don’t know what it is. Comments
Media Jean: He’s going to figure out that we threw out all his unhealthy food.
Chip: Then he’ll just go to the store and buy more artery-clogging food.
Media Jean: Maybe we need to take a stand.
Chip: Uh oh. When you say “take a stand” we usually get in trouble.
Media Jean: This time will be different.
Chip: That’s what you say every time.
Media Jean: And I’m right. Every time is different.
Chip: That’s true. We get into a different kind of trouble every time.
Media Jean: Ha ha! I’ll give you that one. But not this time. I think we should just tell your dad the truth. Hit him with statistics on heart disease, POW! Prostate cancer, BAM! Osteo-what-cha-ma-call-it, SLAM!
Chip: Osteoporosis.
Media Jean: Right! This is serious, Chip! It really is life and death. So let’s step right up and say, “We love you, and we want you to live a long, long time. So shape up!”
Chip: But what if he wants to compromise?
Media Jean: I’m not much of a compromiser. I say we declare a health war.
Chip: Ha ha! A health war?!
Media Jean: He brings a bag of Doritos in the house, we take it out. He sneaks in a box of Twinkies, we sneak it out.
Chip: He could hide food where we’ll never find it.
Media Jean: Not if we install hidden Nanny-cams with night vision to catch those midnight munchies.
Chip: I see only one flaw with this plan.
Media Jean: Impossible! It’s foolproof!
Chip: If there are no snacks in the house, what will we eat?
Media Jean: Uh oh. I hadn’t thought of that.
Chip: Tomorrow is our Ray Harryhausen Film Festival. We’ll have to eat carrots and celery during Clash of the Titans.
Media Jean: We can have the Harryhausen Film Fest at my house.
Chip: I don’t know. If we start this war, I bet my dad calls your dad.
Media Jean: Yikes, I hadn’t thought of that!
Chip: Your mom is always trying to get you to eat healthier.
Media Jean: A Parent Team-Up! That’s the Dr. Doom and Magneto of Childhood!
Johnny: You can have the Harryhausen Film Festival at my house.
Media Jean: The lurker surfaces like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.
Johnny: I wasn’t lurking! I just logged on to see what you idiots were talking about. And why wasn’t I invited to this Harryhausen thing?
Media Jean: Do you know who Ray Harryhausen was?
Johnny: No.
Media Jean: That’s why.
Chip: My dad will call your dad, too, Johnny.
Johnny: So? You think your dad can out-negotiate my dad? Give me a break!
Media Jean: Really? What about Screen-Free Week? Remember how Chip’s dad talked your dad into banning all screens in your house? No TVs. No tablets. No phones. You cried.
Johnny: I didn’t cry! That was stress. But you have a point. Chip’s dad might be an economic failure, but when it comes to the moral high ground, he’s tough to beat.
Media Jean: By the time he’s through, you’ll be eating rice cakes!
Johnny: All right, you made your point!
Media Jean: Your dad will start investing in broccoli stock!
Johnny: I said all right!
Chip: We have to call off the war.
Media Jean: I think you’re right.
Chip: If we tell our parents the “right” thing to do, but then don’t do it ourselves, aren’t we doing what we always criticize them for doing?
Media Jean: Hmm, a “we have become the enemy” kind of thing.
Chip: Right. Either we all do the right thing, or we live and let live.
Media Jean: Rats. OK, call off the health war. We’ll have to find another way to get your dad healthy.
Johnny: So... does that mean the Harryhausen Film Festival is still on?
Media Jean: Just kidding! Yeah, the festival is still on. Your house, tomorrow after school.
Johnny: One of these days I’m going to buy this company and fire you.
Media Jean: Yeah, yeah. Just don’t forget the snacks, Mr. Surround Sound. 
Comic strip from the series "Johnny Green's Avatar"
(Kid, Inc. Volume 2: The Batcave of Childhood) Have a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected]
Just flipped back and read my last journal entry. All those memories. All that time passed.
Now here I am again, awake at 3 in the morning, sitting with my mortality and a cup of hot cocoa. We all take turns at the wall; we all have dark nights of the soul. Soon, too soon, all my atoms will be recycled into cosmic potting soil and that’ll be the end of me. Or, soon, still too soon, my soul, my essence, my Me, will continue on to the grand, mysterious Whatever Comes Next. Is there a heaven? What form will it take? Is reincarnation the way it works? If so, I’ll be like Albert Brooks in Defending Your Life, trying to prove myself fearless enough to continue onward rather than being shipped back to remedial earth. Or will heaven be scriptural, and if so, which scriptures apply? Will heaven be purely metaphysical, consciousness without form, and if so, what the heck does that even mean? Or will heaven simply be another place? Just as we go from the womb to the world, will we go from the world to some wider place? I could keep spelunking on mortality until these typewriter keys are hammered flat. Instead, I’ve decided to do something immortal here and now: I’m going to tell my life story for my son. Not the whole story. I’ll try to leave out the boring parts. I just want to leave enough information for my son to know me and remember me after I’ve traveled on. I want to leave him a typewritten time machine through which he can meet his father as a child, as a teen, as a young man. I can secure that small immortality for him and for myself, here and now. As for the Big Forever, I’ll just have to wait and see. Comments
Media Jean: Have you seen Defending Your Life? It’s hilarious!
Chip: I like “The Pavilion of Past Lives.”
Media Jean: You know, your dad overlooked one kind of possible heaven: man-made heaven!
Chip: You mean bioengineering?
Media Jean: Bioengineering, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, cloning, resetting biological clocks. There’s a lot happening on the frontiers of mortality.
Chip: I don’t think any of that will be ready in time for my dad.
Media Jean: Actually, it probably won’t be ready in time for us, either.
Chip: Yeah. If it was ready, right now, would you use it?
Media Jean: Heck yeah! Wouldn’t you?
Chip: Definitely! But I don’t think my dad would. He’d probably say it was unnatural.
Media Jean: You know, technology usually leaps ahead faster than we think.
Chip: Yeah! Maybe a longevity treatment will be ready in time for my dad!
Media Jean: Exactly! We just need to make sure he lives long enough to take advantage of it.
Chip: How are we going to do that?
Media Jean: First, he goes on a low calorie diet! I read that reducing your caloric intake by 30% can increase your lifespan by 30%.
Chip: Really?
Media Jean: In lab rats, anyway. But I’m betting the science holds up for humans.
Chip: I don’t know. My dad loves food.
Media Jean: He’ll need to start exercising, too.
Chip: He hates exercise, unless you mean hiking?
Media Jean: Hiking, jogging, walking, aerobics, pilates, weight lifting—all of it. He needs to hit the gym!
Chip: He doesn’t belong to a gym.
Media Jean: We’ll sign him up online. We have to extend your dad’s lifespan a little until science can extend it a lot.
Chip: You’re right! I’ll go through our kitchen and toss all the high fat stuff.
Media Jean: Great! I’ll come over and help. I bet we can boost your dad’s lifespan to 100, maybe 110!
Chip: Which should give technology enough time to develop a more permanent solution!
Media Jean: Right! Immortality, here we come! 
Comic strip from the series "Johnny Green's Avatar"
(Kid, Inc. Volume 2: The Batcave of Childhood) Have a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected]
I grew up in a little town called Rialto. Just the three of us, me and mom and dad. I have so many vivid memories from those days. Real memories from real experiences.
When I was 10, a big avocado tree stood in the front yard. I loved to sit high in those smooth branches, read and think and, on windy days, feel the whole world move. If the wind was really gusting, we’d drag tumble weeds to one end of the street, turn them loose, and race them down the block. Sometimes the wind was so strong we could lean into its buffeting arms, held up by the breath of the spinning earth. When the wind dropped us onto the warm grass, we rolled onto our backs and stared up at so much blue we couldn’t move. 10-year-olds spellbound by nothing but the sky. Am I the only one with these kinds of memories? Collecting blue belly lizards from the sunny library wall; racing stick-and-leaf boats down rain-rushing gutters; trying to catch red autumn leaves before they touched the ground; carrying one precious quarter like a pilgrimage to the bowling alley arcade; spending all afternoon flying, losing and finding kites made from the Sunday comics; riding our bikes round and round the same residential streets, slipping into a meditative stillness long before I knew what meditation was; camping in the backyard with just a sleeping bag, searching so long for constellations that the moon crossed half the sky before I fell asleep. These memories sound like clichés now. But only a great truth can become a cliché, and my childhood feels like a great truth—though not knowing exactly what that truth means does diminish the satisfaction a bit. I hope my son, with all his technology and social media, with all the libraries of knowledge at his fingertips—I hope his memories are as rich. I hope his virtual experiences carry the same heft as my physical ones. When he’s my age, I hope clicking and watching will be as real to him as touching and seeing were to me. I doubt it, but it’s a father’s nature to hope. Of course, that’s a cliché, too. Comments
Media Jean: No offense, but your dad’s memories do sound like Hallmark Cards. Sheesh.
Chip: He doesn’t come right out and say it, but I think he feels his memories are better than our memories.
Media Jean: I wonder if parents have always been that way.
Chip: You mean, throughout history?
Media Jean: Yeah! Like during the Industrial Revolution. Did dads walk around saying, “When I was a kid, we grew our own food. We sewed our own clothes. Those were good memories! What’re you going to remember when you’re my age? Factories and machines!”
Chip: Ha ha! I bet that’s exactly what they said!
Media Jean: We spend a lot of time doing things virtually, but that doesn’t mean our experiences and memories are less real.
Chip: According to the latest brain research, everything is virtual anyway.
Media Jean: What do you mean?
Chip: Our brains convert data into images and sensations. Things don’t exist literally the way we experience them. Our brains create a simulation so we can interact with the information. I mean, a rose isn’t red just because roses are red. A rose is red because of the way light in the red spectrum bounces off the rose and is interpreted by our eyes.
Media Jean: So everything is virtual!
Chip: In a way. Especially memories. All my dad’s “real” memories are just bits of information stored in his brain, kind of like a text file or photo is stored on the internet.
Media Jean: I love that!
Chip: When he accesses a memory, it’s like accessing a web site. He’s retrieving information.
Media Jean: That puts everything he said into a whole new context.
Chip: What context?
Media Jean: The “You’re Wrong” context!
Chip: Maybe we can keep this one to ourselves.
Media Jean: I don’t know. It goes against my deepest beliefs to let a grown-up off the hook.
Chip: I know, but my dad is so overwhelmed already.
Media Jean: OK. For you, I’ll give him a pass.
Chip: Thanks.
Media Jean: Heck, I’d give him a pass anyway. Your dad can be annoying with all his “those were the days” sermons, but he’s never mean about it. He’s as sincere as Charlie Brown.
Chip: He calls himself, “The Charlie Brown of the Google Age.”
Media Jean: Ha ha! See? He knows he’s fighting a losing battle, but he still has a sense of humor about it. I love your dad.
Chip: Me too. 
Comic strip from the series "So-Duh"
(Kid, Inc. Volume 1: Look Out, Tomorrow, Here We Come!) Have a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected] |
AuthorHey, I'm Bob, and I hate technology. So why am I blogging? Because I love my son. He upgraded my typewriter to wirelessly post every keystroke online. It makes him happy, so here I am. Archives
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