ENTROPY: January 2011

"Its dead. Look at it. It's all curled up in a nasty ball", Justin said.

"Hey shut up. O.k.? Just shut up!" Collin's face was pale white. By the sound of his voice there was an epic failure. Something had gone terribly wrong.

3 days earlier...

"Dad, don't forget the Philippino sweet bread..." Collin reminded me as we were loading our bags for the three day getaway trip.

"Don't worry bud, I got it. I just need to take it out of the freezer before we leave." I assured him.

Collin wanted to take some of his favorite Philippino sweet bread back to Cornell. Naturally, being a parent that can't help but indulge every little ounce of neediness of his child, the father in me enthusiastically obliged by making a special trip to Jersey City to buy the sweet bread the night before the trip.

I even took careful measures to freeze it in the garage freezer to keep it fresh so my son can take the sweet breads back to school and ravish them upon his whimsical pleasure. Just the thought of it pleased me immensely and at the same time made me realize what a pathetic parent I have become.

"Don't forget your own backpacks" mom barked at everyone as we loaded the car.

Mom had planned this Martin Luther King holiday weekend trip to Greek Peaks Mountain Resort, a brand new ski resort with a gigantuan indoor water park that was conveniently thirty minutes from Cornell. The trip was methodically coordinated with driving Collin back to college for the start of his second semester and simultaneously squeezing in a long overdue family vacation. Only mothers can find treasures like this.

"Honey, don't forget the adapter for your laptop", she reminded me since Justin planned on studying for his mid terms and Ethan planned on finishing his Martin Luther King essay. Mom was determined that this trip was not only going to be fun, but darn productive for everyone!

We finally finished squeezing everything into the car with a last minute chaotic frenzy and readied ourselves to hit the road when Ethan blurted "Hey, what about the tarantulas?"

Sometime back at the beginning of Collin's winter break...

"Hey mom, is it o.k. if I baby sit a couple of tarantulas for a friend from school?" Collin nonchalantly asked.

"Tarantulas? You mean those deadly spiders?" mom squealed incredulously.

"Absolutely not! Collin, how do you intend on taking care of tarantulas when you can't even take care of yourself?" mom asked not waiting for an answer...

"I mean, you have things to do this break. You need to look into your summer internship, plan course work for your junior year, and start thinking about your future..." Mom was now on a roll.

"Mom, I kinda already said yes." Collin interrupted. "Actually, my friend dropped them off already", he sheepishly confessed.

"Where are you going to keep them?" Mom asked with a sense of indignation and resignation.

"I'll keep them in my room mom. They are really low maintenance. I just need to feed them and they'll be fine. And they're not deadly." Collin assured her.

"Collin, you will absolutely not keep them in your room. What if they crawl out of the box in the middle of the night and go into Ethan's room and bite his face and poison him?" Mom was very serious about this possibility.

Ten years ago after coming back from family vacation in Aruba when Collin was Nine years old

"Baby, that goldfish looks dead", I astutely observed.

"Are you sure? It looks like it's still floating", Jeannie replied.

"Yeah, it's floating on its back..." I noted.

"...did you turn off all the heat before we left for Aruba?" I asked.

She didn't need to reply. The look on her face said it all. Apparently, Collin's pet goldfish had frozen to death.

"What should we tell Collin? He's going to be devastated." Jeannie thought Collin would be permanently scarred for life.

"We'll just tell him that he died of natural causes...that he had a heart attack or something." I assured Jeannie realizing the need to take control over the situation.

"Goldfish have heart attacks?" She asked, desperately wanting to believe.

"Yes, sweetheart, they do have heart attacks like everyone else. We just need to give him a proper burial that's all..." I said in my stoic wisdom.

"Proper burial? What do we have to do?" She inquired apologetically for not knowing.

"I think we need to flush him down the toilet..."

Back to the future...

As we finally hit the road heading for Greek Peaks, mom reminded everyone, "When we arrive at the hotel, make sure we leave Collin's things in the car."

"Oh, but make sure we bring the tarantulas in the hotel room because it will be too cold for them in the car", she said as her maternal instincts were kicking in without her even knowing.

I was able to let myself finally bask in that warm patriarchal glow knowing that everything was accounted for and we managed to accomplish the insurmountable task of fitting all the bags, equipment and boxes into the suv. Even the tarantulas were tucked away safe and sound in the protective crevices somewhere in the back. I was feeling rather good about myself.

But then, all of sudden, without warning, in a very creepy way, things started to take a strange ominous turn.

"Honey, where did you pack the laptop?" Mom asked as if running through a checklist in her head.

"Laptop? I thought YOU packed it since you asked me about the adapters." I said with incredulous wonder.

"Honey, do you know how many things I had to get ready for this trip?" she barked back.

But before I said anything I might regret, I reminded myself it wasn't the end of the world. Not a big deal. No need to get all riled up. And I decided to take the higher road.

"I'm sorry sweetie. I just assumed you got it. My bad. It's all good." I humbly supplicated, patting myself on the back at the same time.

But the pendulum had already started to shift in the direction of the twilight zone as mom then muttered in passing, "I hope you didn't forget the Philippino bread..."

The Last Day...

No laptop, no Philippino bread, no matter. It was all good. All in all, it was three glorious days of skiing, snow boarding, swimming, arcade game playing, eating, sleeping, and just corny good old fashion family bonding.

"Everyone wake up! We're going to the outdoor pool one last time before we check out" Mom was determined.

It was the coldest of all three days. But swimming in the backdrop of the snow capped mountains in the steamy heated pool perched on the cold brisk open air was the highlight of the trip.

After the swimming and finally checking out of the hotel and loading the car, mom had one of her brilliant "lets make the most of it" ideas to head back to the slopes one more time for family snow tubing before heading off to Cornell.

Oh it was glorious indeed. Mom was right yet once again. We tied our tubes into a family formation and all came down screaming together. Up and down the hill we went. It was frost bite freezing cold but we drank hot chocolate, we laughed, we cried, there was not a worry in the world. Everything in the universe seemed to be in a perfect state of equilibrium.

And so we thought.

The Epic Failure...

"Its dead. Look at it. It's all curled up in a nasty ball", Justin said.

"Hey shut up. O.k.? Just shut up", Collin's face was pale white.

"What happened?" I asked as I was the last to walk in the dorm room with the box of vitamin water.

"It's dead dad. The tarantula froze to death while we were snow tubing". Ethan cried.

"How do you know it's dead?" I inquired while cautiously approaching the dead tarantula as if it might jump out of the box without warning.

"You know sometimes these suckers defrost and come back to life." I said with a National Geographic authority.

"Really dad?" Ethan asked with childlike wonder about the possibility.

"My friend told me that when they die, they curl up into a ball just like that." Collin said with a heavy sigh pointing to what looked like a curled up black cotton ball in a box.

"If only we didn't go snow tubing he would be alive..." Ethan said looking toward mom.

"Maybe it's in a cocoon", mom said feeling the need to say something.

"Mom, it's dead. It's not in a cocoon." Justin said with a matter of fact indifference.

We all looked at each other and shared an awkward moment of silence for the tragic death of a tarantula. Afterwards, we realized we were hungry and decided to have Asian wonton noodle soup for lunch.

The Dead Goldfish...

As we were walking to the restaurant, in my attempt to comfort Collin as a loving dad, I wondered out loud, "Hey, remember Collin's pet goldfish he had in the fourth grade?"

"Oh yes honey. I remember. He was a such a good goldfish", mom agreed realizing the need for consoling.

"Didn't he die?" Justin was good enough to reminded us.

"Yup, that good old boy also froze to death while we were on vacation in Aruba and we ended up flushing him down the toilet" I said.

"You flushed Collin's goldfish down the toilet?" Ethan asked.

Collin suddenly stopped and with a look of a dazed deer lost in headlights, mumbled, "My pet goldfish froze to death and you flushed him down the toilet?"

The Resurrection...

"Son, I did a little story on the blog about the tarantula. I hope you enjoy it." I emailed Collin.

"HAHAHAHA dad, the tarantula came back to life the next day around 2 o'clock in the morning..." HAHAHAHA!