a merry sunshine

Obô Giant Snail (Archachatina bicarinata), family Achatinidae, endemic to São Tomé and Príncipe

ENDANGERED.

Theo’s favorite place in the world turns out to be the wilderness park in Redondo Beach, probably because he’s determined to drown himself jumping in the pond after gigantic koi fish. It turns out that the wilderness park is a hotspot for little kid birthday parties, which is how Buck makes this discovery—they go out there for three birthdays in two months, and every single time, Theo winds up in the pond. The gross, algae-slick, surprisingly deep, surprisingly expensive pond full of giant koi fish and turtles and bugs. 

Buck has tried literally everything, okay? Bribery doesn’t work. Theo accepts the ice cream and then jumps or falls or trips into the pond anyway. Threats (I’m going to count to three, Theo. One, two….two and a half….two and three quarters….THEO!) don’t work.  He’s even tried hiding birthday invitations to the wilderness park from the kid, which is truly pathetic, and that didn’t even work, because birthday parties are the hottest gossip four year olds at a daycare have to talk about. So: they keep going back to the wilderness park. Theo keeps jumping in the pond, and Buck has to keep rescuing him from snapping turtles and terrified three-foot-long koi fish and the wrath of park employees and the judgy eyes of all the actual parents who manage to keep their four year olds on dry land the whole time. 

So here they are, on a Saturday morning birthday party at the wilderness park, and Theo is (for now) running gleefully through the tall mustard grass on the other side of the park from the pond, and Buck came prepared with a tote bag with a towel, a giant bottle of hand sanitizer, neosporin, band-aids, and a change of tiny clothes. He’s chatting with Peyton’s mom while he keeps one eye on Theo, doing his best to make normal small talk—but the conversation gets weird when she starts telling him about sending Peyton to church camp and he asks some polite questions about that and then she’s showing him how to sign up for it on her phone before he can explain that he’s not actually Presbyterian and Theo won’t be going to vacation bible school.  A weird thing about parenting, even the weird almost-parenting that Buck’s doing, is that your social life isn’t just your social life anymore. If you want the kid to have friends, you have to hang out with their parents socially, even if you don’t like their parents. Which is weird! Nothing else in adult life really prepared him for that. He complained about this at work the other day, and literally everyone except for childless Ravi and Harry laughed at him about it.

“What church do you two go to,” Peyton’s mom is saying, and Buck winces and knocks back his lemonade. 

“Whoops, looks like I gotta go avert disaster,” Buck says without looking at the kids, and jogs over to Theo—who, in fairness, is climbing a tree and getting uncomfortably high up. 

He rescues a wiggling Theo, who complains that he did not want to be rescued because there’s a BIG SPIDER up there, so then Buck has to hold Theo on his shoulders so they can both solemnly investigate the BIG SPIDER until Theo gets wiggly again, which happens in about thirty seconds. Theo manages to drop Buck’s sunglasses on a tall branch next to the BIG SPIDER, then tugs on Buck’s hair. “Put me down,” Theo orders him.

 “Theo,” Buck says, wincing. “What do we say?”

“Put me down PLEASE,” Theo says, his tiny hands tightening to fists in Buck’s hair. 

“Okay,” Buck says, bending carefully over so that Theo doesn’t wiggle right off his shoulders. “Could you be a little more gentle with my hair, though, bud?”  “SORRY,” Theo says, loud in his left ear, somehow kicking him in his right ear before he jumps the rest of the way down to the ground. His feet barely touch the grass before he bounds off after the pack of four year olds in the mustard grass.

Buck looks up at his sunglasses perched on a branch that’s juuuust a little too high for him to reach, sighs, and climbs up into the tree. He tries to avoid disturbing the big spider, but definitely can’t avoid the judgy stares coming from the parent cluster by the picnic tables. 

So, like, how is parenthood going? He doesn’t know. He feels like crying at least five times a day, and sometimes it’s because Theo is driving him crazy, and sometimes it’s because Theo is stupidly cute and sucks his thumb in his sleep. Sometimes it’s because he’s sad about Connor and Kameron, and sometimes he tears up because he doesn’t know if he’ll get to keep Theo or even if that’s what would be best for Theo, and he tears up that he took a step back when Theo was born, because look at the beautiful person he was missing. He also gets teary because Theo wakes up at six am every day, even when Buck was up at one am the night before. Buck’s a little teary right now, up a tree in the Hopkins wilderness park, for literally no reason, except that Theo just kicked him in the head, and he looks so happy, playing with his friends. 

Buck retrieves his sunglasses and levers himself down out of the tree. 

We clear the place out in 40 minutes or less and...be a lick big enough for us to sit back for a minute.

He becomes a consultant who shitty teams trying to not suck, good teams who want to last further into the playoffs, great teams who want to finally win the cup, call to Fix Them.

He is paid absolutely bonkers amounts of money to watch a team play for five minutes and immediately diagnose what’s wrong with them. He is always right.

Ok 5 minutes is probably an exaggeration. The coaches send him a bunch of tape to review in advance. They probably focus on their best players or the ones they think need the most improvement, but half the time Shane requests more, focusing on players they hadn’t paid much attention to before. Then one day at practice, the players look up into the stands and are filled with awe, terror, and wonder, because Shane Hollander is sitting there staring directly at them with a scarily thoughtful look on his face.

He meets with the coaches and gm and reports his conclusions. Who to trade and for who , how to get better results from certain players, how to run power plays and penalty kills, changes in line makeups.

Some lucky players get to meet with him. He takes about five minutes to list off or demonstrate everything they need to do to stop sucking. He has no time for chit chat or hero worship. Focus, listen, learn, and do exactly what he says and you will be good. Fail to do what he says and you will shame your entire bloodline.