Lunch With Number two Son

Last week, number two son left town on a business trip. He took his team to a football camp. You see, he made history here in Des Moines approximately three and a half years ago. He was the first African-American Varsity Football Coach hired here in Des Moines plus he’s a history teacher who works at his al ma mater. Before he left, I received a call from him, informing me that upon his return he would take me to lunch. That made my day as I always consider it a privilege to spend any kind of time with any of my sons.

Number two son is your typical muscular, big shouldered, buff football, all around athlete type guy. I call him my “spoiled Brat.” Whenever I call the house and his wife answers, I ask to speak to my “spoiled brat,” and she in turns hands him the phone. He’s a "husky" football player, who once had a bully type personality, but to mom, he’s a teddy bear. Ha, ha. Coincidently the name of his football team is "The Hoover Huskies."

Yesterday, I called to confirm our luncheon date. I kept getting his answering machine and left messages. Finally I got in touch with him to the tune of “mom, I need directions to your office,” (my employer changes offices on me quite a bit and no one can keep up with me). I gave him directions which were not very clear to him so he just told me to go outside at noon. I agreed, but when noon came around, I remembered that he is usually at least one-half hour or so late. So I’m thinking – should I go outside at noon or wait a while and go out? Well, “just in case he fools me and just happens to get here on time, I will step out for a few minutes.”

Shortly after stepping outside, I noticed a young good looking guy standing outside of a car down a ways from me. He was yelling and waving his hands, and of course I became curious. I stood there watching for my son and caught just a few bits of the conversation. “Everything always has to go your way!” "You don’t think of anyone else but yourself"! He exclaimed something like that. Not wanting to be conspicuous, I came back in, but kept going out in spurts looking for my son. The young man was yelling and waving his hands as though he was on the defensive for something. His cute little girlfriend just sat there and listened. Next thing you know, I looked outside and he was standing on the other side of the street with a Kleenex in his hand and was crying. Of course I did the most likely thing a woman would do and shared this bit with another female co-worker. She came to my office and we observed the argument for a few minutes and then we determined that they may have discovered they had an audience so they went inside. By that time, it was about 12:30 and shortly thereafter, number two son drove up and off we went and enjoyed a very nice lunch and conversation. End of story.