Home videos

I moved away from Missouri in 1997. I left town in a yellow Ryder truck full of junk and a few buddies who were willing to make the drive to Jackson, Mississippi for a day. When I left, I did it without a plan. I didn’t know when or if I was ever going back to the Show-Me State.

If you know anything about me, you know I never really went back. I moved again, fell in love with the South Carolina foothills, and came to enjoy most everything around it. Though I could’ve gone back to Missouri five years ago, I discovered I’d established more than a home base here. I’d built a home with family, friends, and just about everything I need.

That’s a long way of explaining why I sat down last night and spliced together a quick video of my older boy being himself.

See, my folks have had quite a bit of freedom over the past five years. When we’re not able to make it up to Missouri to see them, they’ve done all the can to make it down here to visit us and their grandkids. Recent events back in Missouri have made it so they can’t travel much in the short term.

I’ve got quite a bit going on right now and can’t make the trip up to see them until after the holidays. And, I honestly feel pretty damned guilty about that. So, I put together a video that was meant almost entirely for them. And then I showed it to my boy and he did something…well…something that’s both like him and not like him at all.

He watched it with wide eyes, then turned to me and gave me a giant hug and kiss. Then he called it the ‘sweetest thing anyone had ever done for him.’

And that sorta made me misty.

So, in an effort to push down the Halloween story below (the one that was described by one person as “twisted”), here’s a long, poorly-edited video of my kid being my kid.