A Gentlemen's Bet, but a Bet Nonetheless

We have a new custom that entered our home recently. It involves my birthday present from last summer - DVR. It has become tradition that whoever has the remote control at the time that a commercial comes on to hit pause at random times during the commercial to see who can get the funniest still photo of someone’s face. As we are very easily amused, this often brings on some riotous fits of laughing .

Not long ago on a Sunday afternoon, we were sitting at the dinner table having a snack while watching a Planet Earth episode on Netflix. Randomly hitting pause during a nature show is not nearly as hilarious as it may be while watching an Old Spice commercial or that cute little talking baby, but we still do it.

At this particular time, my 10 year old, Tyler, was in charge of the remote. He stopped the frame on a dusk mountain scene, with the reflection from a placid lake in the foreground and a cloudscape in the background. Tyler commented that it looked like the mountains were tilted sideways in the picture, or more likely that the camera was tilted sideways at the time of the still frame. I took a different approach to viewing the picture - I said that it looked like the scene was upright, but rather that the oblique cloud shape in the background was an optical illusion in depth, making it look like they were rising at an angle, and thus, skewing his perspective.

After some discussion, being one to never pass up an opportunity for a debate, Tyler casually asked me, “Wanna make a bet on it?”

I was intrigued by his proposition. I agreed to a friendly bet as to who was seeing the still frame correctly. He then stated, “Okay, I’ll advance it a few frames and we’ll see who’s right”.

As he was pressing the play button, he continued, “A gentlemen’s bet, but a bet nonetheless”. 

I won’t bore you with the details as to who won the bet. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is - when will he learn? He should know by now the three classic blunders: To never get involved in a land war in Asia, never go in with a Sicilian when death is on the line, and only slightly less well-known is this - Never make a bet with your vindictive parent when tv-watching privileges are on the line.

Gentlemen’s bet, indeed. Gentlemen don’t bet.

Do these shoes make me look old?

For a couple of reasons, I found myself in a Vans Outlet store yesterday for the first time in about 20 years. First, I have a daddy-daughter dance on Friday night, which has an 80's theme. I've always gone all out on dressing up for these events, which have included Disco and Roaring 20s in the last 2 years.

Secondly, on Saturday night our church youth dance, which I’ll be chaparoning, also has an 80's theme.

Being one to take my costuming very seriously, I set out to find a good 80’s outfit. On Saturday I found a killer Members Only jacket right next a nice pink Izod golf shirt, complete with collars that flip up perfectly. I'm still looking for a good pair of acid wash jeans, but have a couple of leads for places to look.

Not having any shoes to match the rest of the outfit, I thought that a nice pair of Classic Vans would go nicely. I picked out some black Classics to buy.

One thing to realize here is that I wore this same exact pair of shoes for about 3 straight years in junior high and high school. I was raised in the glory days of skating (boards, not rollers); well before Shawn White was even born and even back when Tony Hawk was still cool and still alive. And while I stunk on a skate board, I still rode. Everybody did. And nearly everybody wore Vans. After all, this was California in the 80s. If you didn’t wear Vans and sport a Flock of Seagulls hairdo, you may as well hitch your pants up to your chest and don a pocket protector.

As I was at the checkstand, the 20ish year old worker commented, "Nice! Going with a throwback pair. Did you wear these when you were a kid? Did you used to skate as well?"

I answered "Yes" to both questions and left the store to head back to work. As I was walking across the parking lot, it dawned on me what had just happened. He had just called me old. I had decided to pick up a pair of Vans, and the kid worker assumes that I wore them when they first came out and that I no longer skate, and only did so 20 years ago?

I was deeply, deeply offended, despite everything that he implied being true. Did I really look that ancient? Am I so old that I can no longer pull off wearing a pair of Vans and pegging my jeans without someone questioning my motives?

Is this my mid-life crisis purchase? If so, sweet. Its a lot cheaper than a corvette.

Call Me Ishmael

The American author, Herman Mellville, penned these memorable words to begin one of the great literary classics of all time, Moby Dick. Or so I hear. You see, I’ve never actually read it. It fills one of the major voids in my knowledge base in reading the all-time classic works. Well, that plus about 95% of the other classics that have somehow evaded me as I have busied myself reading other great works, such as Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Magic Treehouse: Dinosaurs Before Dawn. Unrecognized classics, they are.

As the story goes, the narrator, Ishmael, is a wandering sailor who finds himself on a whaleship commanded by the eccentric and obsessive Captain Ahab. On a previous fishing adventure, Ahab encountered the great white whale, Moby Dick, and subsequently lost his leg, confined to walk the rest of his life on a prosthetic limb carved out of whale bone. He had devoted his life to exacting revenge on his nemesis, wanting nothing more than to find and kill his rival, the whale. 

This past summer, our family took a week-long camping trip to the Northern California coast near Crescent City. We stayed at a camp called Mill Creek Campground. It is set about 2 miles inland from the ocean, so its about 20 degrees warmer than the colder, damper campgrounds nearer to the water. There is also very little fog. It is one of the best kept secrets of the far-Northern California coastline.

We went with some of our close friends and had an amazing time. Our week was filled with hiking, biking, lounging, reading, eating, playing, and marshmallow roasting.

There was one other thing that we did during our trip - crabbing. No one in either family had done any crabbing before, but we didn’t let our lack of experience get in our way of trying something new.

So we went to a local fishing bait shop that was located on the public pier to rent some crab pots. We also bought some fish heads to use as bait for our pots. After a brief tutorial by the local crabbing experts, we set off for the end of the pier to go catch our dinner.

The process is pretty simple - you set up the crab pot, you put bait inside an enclosed plastic container, you throw the whole thing over the edge of the pier and then you wait. As this was our first time trying it, we weren’t sure where exactly to throw the contraptions or how long to leave them underwater. The first few times that we threw them in we likely pulled them out too quickly, as there was nothing inside but maybe an old shopping bag when we pulled it up.

Our friend, Dan, made the first catch of the day, hauling in a beautiful crab that was close to 6 inches in diameter. My kids and I then got into the act, pulling in a couple of nice, if slightly, smaller crabs.

Tyler, his buddy and I then moved to the other side of the pier to try our luck. And here is where the earlier Moby Dick reference will hopefully make a little sense.

As we dropped our crab pot into this new spot, several minutes passed before we tried to pull it in. As we did, I noticed that it felt quite a bit heavier than the last several attempts. As the pot broke the surface of the water, we peered over the edge to see what we were hauling in. As we did, we caught a glimpse of something else clinging onto the edge of the trap. It was difficult to tell exactly what it was, but the best guess of an aging 36 year old man with ailing eyesight was that we had just caught a giant octopus! Or maybe it was a squid. I couldn't really tell, as it fell off the edge of the pot when it was just a few feet above the water.

The two boys and I were going crazy. While we may have have only had about 2 seconds to inspect it from over 20 feet away, we still couldn’t believe what we had just seen.

“You should have seen it - IT WAS HUGE!!! It was 8 feet long if it was an inch!!!”

Everyone ran over to our crabbing spot to try and catch a glimpse of what we had seen. But, of course, by now it was much too late. The giant octopus (or squid) was now likely slowly floating back down to the ocean floor, covered by 20 feet of murky seawater.

As the excitement settled, we returned to our respective crabbing locations, wanting to try the same spot again after our brush with the sea monster. Moments later, as I began to haul the crab pot up once again, the weight of the load seemed eerily similar to the last attempt. As it broke the water surface into our view, what should we see, but the giant sea animal was once again attached to our crab pot.

I hurriedly pulled it up the remaining 20 feet to the edge of the pier. But this time something was different. Instead of the 8 foot long monster that we had caught the previous drop, now the creature attached was much, much smaller. Did I mention that it was much smaller this time?

As we pulled it onto the pier for a closer look, the octopus was a mere 18 inches from one tentacle tip to the other. And this estimate may even be fairly liberal, depending on who you ask. And it wasn’t even a vicious octopus. Or a man-eating giant squid. It looked more like a squishy 10-legged starfish.

The kids were gaga upon seeing this creature, despite its less than impressive size. We took several moments to look at it and take pictures before returning it to its watery home.

Fast forward 6 months later to the present day, and all I have to prove the existence of the 8 foot long sea monster on that cold, windy day in Cresent City is the image burned into my mind and the creative, corroborating imaginations of two 9 year old boy witnesses. The second boneless creature that we had captured couldn’t possibly have been the same one that we had caught just moments earlier. No, our sea monster was likely miles out to sea, leaving only his undersized and underwhelming step-cousin, the squishy, slimy starfish, as a prize to some unsuspecting vacationing crab fishermen. No, he’s probably still laughing at us to this day as he thinks about the old bait-and-switch (pun intended) that he pulled on us in that faraway port.

The legend of the elusive Moby Dick of cephalopods  will continue to live on in the lore of Goss and Bickmore family vacations. So until our next crabbing adventure when I am able to once again capture my nemesis, please don’t call me a liar or a big-fish storyteller. Call me Ishmael. Or, more accurately, call me Captain Ahab.

The Search For The Holy Butterchew

We had a coming of age experience at our house this past weekend.

No, we didn’t have “The Talk” with the kids. It was something much more meaningful and impactful on the kids’ future happiness and development.

I introduced my girls to Brown Sugar See’s Candies.

More specifically - Milk Butterchews, Milk Bordeaux and Butterscotch Squares. You might know them as the Fruit of the Gods.  I’ve known for a long time that these were the greatest candies ever made. My girls, Abbie and Emma, made that discovery for themselves this past weekend.

A friend recently gave us a box of mixed Milk Chocolate Candies from Sees. I am eternally grateful and now indebted for life to this person for this gift. After all, the greatest birthday gift that I have ever received was a pound of Milk Butterchews from Jaylynn a few years ago, so this random act of kindness certainly qualifies him a place right between Mother Theresa and Saint Peter.

In this most recent box, knowing what candy that I was looking for from the outset, my family and I proceeded to take small corner-bites out of each piece in the box searching for our favorite flavor. It was on my 5th attempt that I finally found what I thought I was looking for. It turned out to be a Butterscotch Square - the second best flavor that Sees makes.

Thinking that Sees could not possibly be gracious enough to gift me with TWO of my favorite flavors in one box, imagine my surprise when my 6th candy turned out to be the greatest chocolatey morsel known to man - a Milk Butterchew. I was in heaven. With my benevolence knowing no bounds, I offered a small (very small) bite to my 3 kids. Tyler has never been a real chocolate kind of guy, so he was somewhat ambivalent about it. But the girls, on the other hand, being the chocoholics that they are, reacted appropriately. They absolutely loved it.

Abbie’s best friend, Natalie, had a birthday this past weekend. Her party is not scheduled until the following weekend, but Abbie and Emma wanted to give her a pre-party gift on the actual big day. The gift that they wanted to give her was a box of Sees Candies. When I told them that Sees now allows you to hand-select your box, they asked if they can put all Brown Sugar ones in the box. A tear came to my eye as I told them, yes, yes you can. So off to Sees we went.

On my recommendation they decided to diversify the box just a tad, adding some Bordeaux and Butterscotch squares in with the Butterchews. After selecting the 12 pieces that we were told would make up the half pound box, we were thrilled when the counter worker told that there was room for 3 more pieces. A distant second to chocolate as a favorite treat for Abbie is peanut butter. So, for her three additional pieces, she selected 2 peanut butter disks and one peanut chunk piece. Fine choices in and of themselves, but nowhere near the quality of “The Big 3”.

The only problem is that the Peanut Butter piece looks fairly similar to the Butterchews. Eerily similar. The only difference being in geometry - with the Buttercream being a square and the Peanut Butter candy being a slightly larger rectangle. Not realizing that this could be a future problem, we completed the box with these peanut-y morsels.

Fast forward to Natalie’s house last night. After dinner and after the girls had their go at the box, her dad offered the leftovers to the adults. Not wanting to appear a glutton, I agreed to take just one piece. As I opened the box, horror entered my person, as I realized that of the two remaining possible Butterchew options, one was most certainly the Peanut chunk piece. One piece was a smallish square piece, while the other was a slightly larger, rectangular piece. Aside from their size difference, the two pieces were indistinguishable. I could not for the life of me remember which piece was my fave, and which one was “the other”.

Here is where my mind then turns to a classic scene from a childhood favorite movie of mine - Indiana Jones and Last Crusade.  The scene to which I am referring is the pentultimate scene in which Dr. Jones enters the chamber that is full of dozens of chalices, one of which is the sought-after Holy Grail. If he selects incorrectly, it means certain death for him. He scours the room, thinking aloud  of what the Grail would look like. Ultimately, he correctly decides that the holy cup would not be the largest or most ornate container, but would be the smallest, most humble, plain and ordinary cup in the room.

If only I had the same wisdom that Indiana had. Instead of choosing the smallest, most ordinary remaining piece, I chose the biggest chocolate in the box, reasoning that if a little piece of Butterchew would be a good thing, then a larger piece of Butterchew would be a better thing.

I could not have been more disappointed as my teeth penetrating that deceitful outer layer of milk chocolate, revealing a crunchy, nougat-y, peanut-y center. This was my only shot at getting a Butterchew and I had chosen incorrectly. Now, that creamy, delicious Butterchew sat in loneliness in the box full of discarded paper wrappers, laughing, mocking me for my greediness, knowing that now someone else, who could not possibly appreciate it as I would, would be devouring it shortly.

It was a lesson that will remain with me the rest of my days. One that I hope to pass on to my children before they suffer the same fate that I have suffered.

Good things come in small, simple packages. And remember the Holy Grail.

Early Signs Of My Failings As A Parent

What is the matter with kids these days?

Okay, now I am starting to really sound like the grumpy old man that lives down the street, who, if he is not yelling at the kids to get off his lawn, is complaining about how easy kids have it these days. “Why, in my day, we didn’t have all these new-fangled electronical tv boxes. If we wanted some entertainment in a box, we would go outside and catch a badger and a raccoon, throw them in a crate and see which one came out alive.”

Well, in my day, we didn’t have all of these fancy, hi-tech gadgets that kids have today. If you wanted to play with pretend guns, picking up a Wii or XBox controller wasn’t an option.  Video games were just starting to make an appearance. The animation was slightly more sophisticated than a pixelated puppet on strings. A totally awesome puppet on strings that looked like PacMan and Frogger, that is, but I digress...

No, you scoured the back yard for just the right tree branch and broke it off piece by piece until it was just right. If you wanted your pretend gun battle to be at all realistic, any sound effects for your gun or sword or trebuchet (Didn’t every kid build their own trebuchet at one point or another?) came straight out our mouths. From the rat-a-tat of a machine gun to the booming sound of an explosion, realistic toy weapon sound effects were an artform to most kids that I played with.

The early indicators of my failings as a parent began about 7 years ago when Tyler’s creative play really began to become more animated. I remember one such instance in particular - the time that he had finally discovered the cardboard roll found inside a roll of wrapping paper. 

Tyler did what God intend for little boys to do with those cardboard rolls - he started playing swords with it. It started with some light side-to-side swooshing motions as he was getting a good feel for his new weapon. The speed of the hacking movements increased until he was inflicting real damage on my back and arm. Okay, maybe not real damage, but it would smart a little if he got me just right.

There was only one problem - the poor kid didn’t know how to make a sword sound effect. Instead, with each swoosh of the sword, he shouted out “Sword! Sword! Sword!”. This continued as he played with pretend guns - “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”. You want to chop something with your Samarai Sword, you say? “Chop! Chop! Chop!”.

I was aghast. How could I have allowed my first-born son to reach his fourth year of life and not teach him to make a totally RAD sword, gun or explosion sound effect? Maybe there is something wrong with him. “Honey, should we take him to the doctor and have him checked out?” Every normal little boy knows how to make a real gun sound, don’t they?

Now, he is 10 years old and things have gotten slightly better. He can make a decent explosion sound, thanks to some intense tutoring from his buddy, Jason. His airplane engine and his walkie-talkie static sounds aren’t too bad, and he is working feverishly on perfecting his machine gun rapid-fire.

However, our story has taken an interesting turn over the past several weeks. He hasn’t had much occasion to display his sword sound effects lately, but now he is communicating his grammar, punctuation and many emotions as if he were reading about it in a book. “This is so awesome, Exclamation Point!”.  “You want me to do what, Question mark?”  “Read my sisters a story tonight, Question Mark? Grooooannn.”

Trying to rationalize this as something other than more signs of my failings as a parent, instead I am looking at it this way - this is just a sign of how advanced and literate he is. He is a reading machine, after all. I would put the number of pages he turns in a year against any adult that I know. As a result, life has become a book in his mind. He’s simply a brilliant author in the making, likely already working on his opus magnum. Move over Steinbeck, comma, Goss is the next great American author and he’s coming after you, Exclamation Point! Period.

Still Chasing Windmills

I love Broadway musicals. There, I said it.

I haven't always been this forthright about my love for the musical theatre. As an awkward, impressionable 4th grader, I would have been more likely to admit that I enjoyed my teacher, Mrs. Caldwell’s, sloppy cheek kisses, bestowed upon her tardy students, than to admit that I had watched “The Music Man” or “Oklahoma” over the weekend. But watch them I did. This charade lasted for years. That is, until my 3rd semester of college.

In the fall of 1995, I was fresh off of a 2 year church mission and had just returned to school. I was back in the dating scene and was settling comfortably into my coursework. I was oozing with self confidence and devoid of insecurities. The time was right for a long-awaited inner wakening.

It was easy for me to say yes to an invitation by a friend to see the college production of “The Man of La Mancha”. I was ready for any new adventure and experience which came my way. I had never seen a live stage musical, but what the heck? I was game for anything.

From the opening rise of the curtain to the final standing ovation, I was smitten. I loved it all. The witty dialogue, the ornate decorations, the costumes, the free-flowing storyline.

And then there was the music. It began with the title sequence, “I, Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha”, and continued with the soothing, serenade “Dolcinea”. There was the faithful admiration of Quixote’s squire, Sancho, shyly crooning “I Like Him”. Then, on to the gallantry surrounding the main character’s knighting by the innkeeper, with “The Knight of the Woeful Countenance”.

And finally, there was the blissful rumination found in “The Impossible Dream”. I was spell bound. After several years of inflicting irreparable damage to my eardrums, thanks to the likes of M.C. Hammer and Spinal Tap, I had once again found my way. I had rediscovered my love of musical theatre.

Since that time, I have watched dozens of musicals, both on stage and on the big screen. At one point Jaylynn’s and my favorite movie was Doris Day’s “Pillow Talk”. We have kept ourselves awake on all-night car trips singing harmony parts of “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Les Miserables”. We have spent long weekends in San Francisco watching very expensive, but expertly done, stage productions of “Phantom” and “Wicked”. 

Finally, just this past weekend, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, the kids and I cozied up on the couch as we watched the 1972 Arthur Miller production of “The Man of La Mancha”. I was taken back to that cold, October evening just over 15 years ago when I was first introduced to the gallant and chivalrous knight, Don Quixote of La Mancha, and his faithful squire, Sancho. To the reformed and renewed Dolcinea, and the manipulative and ill-intentioned future-nephew, Sanson Carrasco.  

My two girls, Abbie and Emma, unabashedly loved the show. And even though he continued to play games on the iPod the whole time, I can’t imagine it was simply a coincidence that my 5th grade son, Tyler, sat nearly motionless by my side for 2 hours while the movie was playing.  So who knows? Perhaps in 25 years, Tyler will be sharing his own story of when he dreamed the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe, to bear the unbearable sorrow, to run where the brave dare not go.....

Its a Christmas Miracle!!!

There are very few movies that I will watch more than once. Especially on an annual basis. This was not always the case. As a teenager, several friends and I would get together on Saturday night to watch movies. This was always followed by Saturday Night Live, which was in its prime at that time, in my humble opinion. We would occasionally find our way down to the local Blockbuster Video and pick up a new release, but more often than not we would come back to one of our standby favorites. At the top of that list were Better Off Dead, The Princess Bride and Monty Python and the Hold Grail. I’ve seen each of these movies dozens of times. To this day, I can still quote each of them by heart, nearly word-for-word. They are cult classics for me in every sense of the term.

There is also one seasonal movie that I can watch each year during this season and never tire of seeing it. That movie involves a certain pink bunny suit, a carbine action, 200-shot range model air rifle, and of course the soft glow of electric sex sitting in the window. That’s right, I look forward greatly to my annual viewing of The Christmas Story.

As the story goes, Ralphie wants nothing more than to receive a new Red Rider BB gun for Christmas. He asks his parents for one; he writes a school essay about one; he asks the mall Santa for one. Each time his answer is the same - “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid”.

Imagine his surprise on Christmas morning when, after seemingly opening all of the presents under the tree, his parents brandish one remaining present which was hidden out of sight. Could it be? Could this be the answer to a young boy’s often uttered pleadings and prayers? He tears into the wrapping paper and finds that it is indeed his very own Red Rider, complete with “a compass in the stock, and this thing that tells time”. It was truly a Christmas Miracle.

Several years ago, while Jaylynn and I were living in Nebraska during graduate school, her parents were facing their first year of not having all of their children home for the holidays. This was very hard on them, especially on my mother-in-law, Irene.

Omaha is about a 10 hour drive from their hometown of Gillette, Wyoming. It is a difficult drive under the best of circumstances, not taking into account the possibility of in-climate weather while driving on I-90 across the Badlands of South Dakota in December. Add to that the fact that both of us were working to help pay for schooling expenses. There was no feasible way that we would be able to make it over to see them this year. Or at least that is what we told them.

However, in reality, Jaylynn wanted to see her family for the holidays just as badly as they wanted to see her, err, I mean us. It would have taken blizzard conditions to keep us away from Gillette that cold Christmas season. The difficulty arose when we found out one of us, I can’t remember who, was working until late afternoon on Christmas eve.

On finding that the weather just might cooperate with our covert operation, we packed up the car and readied ourselves to hit the highway at the earliest opportunity. That opportunity came at quitting time, 5:00 pm, on Christmas eve. So onto the highway we went, driving hundreds of miles through the night, across three states to our destination in Gillette, Wyoming. We alerted one person of our travel plans, Jaylynn’s sister Emily, who agreed to leave her front door unlocked for us to enter when we arrived.

At about 6:00 in the morning, we pulled into the neighborhood and parked our easily-recognizable car a half block away from her house and stealthily crept in through the front door, hoping to not awake any of the other people in the house. We hid ourselves in the spare room in the basement, hoping to catch a few minutes of sleep before the designated time when the entire family would arrive for the Christmas morning festivities.

Seemingly within minutes, people started to arrive at Emily’s home. We remained hidden until the last of the family members arrived. As they remained scattered throughout the kitchen and dining area preparing breakfast, we emerged from our hiding place, shouting, “Surprise! Merry Christmas!”

Irene stood there, motionless for several moments, speechless and unable to register what she was witnessing. Tears immediately welled up in her eyes as she then let out a joyful scream and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Its a Christmas miracle!!!”  

This phrase has stuck with our family over the subsequent 12 or so years. Whenever anything pleasantly unexpected occurs, regardless of the time of year, Its a Christmas miracle! When our sub-saharan climate hometown received 12 inches of snow on December 27th, 2003 (close enough for us), Its a Christmas miracle! When I showed up yesterday with donuts for breakfast, Its a Christmas miracle!

So Merry Christmas to all and here’s to many more Christmas miracles for years to come.