Featured in the LMAO anthology by Humor and Adventure!
Here it is: https://my.w.tt/UiNb/Ud9n8Ht5zI

Gathering snow swayed listlessly against wind, a low-pitched hum of snow plows outside sweeping twelve inches of powdered water. As children dragged their sleds and parents shoveled their driveways, I was vomiting my lungs out. An unknown person had given me norovirus, me spending Christmas with a bucket and chicken noodle soup. As I laid bedridden in bleach-soaked sheets, my son Biff would read me a fairy-tale every night even if I refused. Could be guilt pricking his nerves and reworking his philosophies, even though none of this was his fault. It were these kind gestures that peeked its head up when I looked down, and when I caught sight of them made me rethink myself about him. While he wasn't doing tricks on his skateboard, he was helping me out: washing dishes, drying and folding laundry, et cetera. Sometimes he made dinner (which was a microwaved bowl of ramen of course, but dinner nonetheless) and clean my room when his next door held more garbage than our landfill. When I felt bored or sad, or looked bored or sad, he would project cat compilations onto the TV. Crazy transformations a teen boy can undergo after seeing his father puke nonstop for an hour into nothing but a paper bag.

    It all started with a Xeroxed map of Kentucky, rusted car keys, and twenty saran-wrapped tomato sandwiches I've spent the better part of my day making. Customary for Biff to crank up the sound system to play his favorite band, whom I never heard of and do not wish to hear. All I know blood started coming out of my ears every time a song played, and ended up stuffing alcohol-scented cotton balls in there.

We were heading out on a father-son excursion trip to Taloa Mountain, which literally translated to "Sing" in Choctaw, with no helpful labels on the pronunciation. Regardless of its distance, scaling the mountain has been a Roberson tradition for years, this 5,000 feet beast, up a twenty-five percent grade that you continuously bore with until the satisfying summit where you screamed at the sky. Guess that's where the name came from: singing at the sky. I've done it before with my dad who was a greater nature buff than I, owning a collection of taxidermied animals before it was declared taboo. Giving Biff the same experience made me feel I'm like a true father like my dad was, even if I didn't own cotton-stuffed animals and vintage fishing rods.

We piled into a rented Audi, Biff in the back, him gnawing on a tomato sandwich. We had just finished spaghetti lunch. For a teenage boy, he had a notoriously large appetite, surpassing his needs and treading into territory I hadn't even known; Biff seemed to be always breaking the rules of nature with the flick of his arm. This was the boy who could ride a tricycle into a ShopRite and clang against the cans of beans, the manager being called to escort me from the store forever. I could fantasize for days on having a child who could obey the rules (the opposite usually happened) and somehow, someday take his son to Taloa Mountain camping.

The first wave of relief came with no argument with Biff for the first three miles. Sedated with relaxation, I drummed my fingers in harmony to a Beyoncé song playing on the radio. The lapse was disrupted however, when the horrid thought struck me that I left the iPad charger at home. Hopefully he wouldn't notice, for he was finishing the sandwich for the most part, and listlessly staring out at the rolling farmland. It would be anytime Biff got bored with his thoughts and asked where the cord was. I could turn back now and get it, and I would be saved of the heated exchanges for the next hundred miles. On the other hand, this trip was supposed to stay technology-free. What if he used it at the campsite? That would intrude the entire tradition.

When my fingers started slipping off the wheel, that's when I realized thinking too hard had gotten me another fifteen miles. Now there really wasn't a turn back option. Surprisingly, there wasn't a complaint for the next fifty miles, until I felt something nudge my seat. I ignored him like I usually did with these petty whines, then-

"This thing doesn't have WiFi, I'm dying back here!" He bellowed, the sound waves working my nerves so hard I swerved onto another lane. After the toxicity of adrenaline wore off, I wanted to facepalm myself to Mexico.

The campsite was at least barren, acorns slathering the dirt. Trees towered above our heads, reaching into the stratosphere. Black vultures sailed in the light breezes. Fat white ducks bobbed in an aquamarine pond for plants.

    "Incoming!" cried Biff, bumping me on the shoulder with a supply box.

    "Be a little careful with those," I advised, feeling spears throb my shoulder.

    "Careful, smareful, I got this," he said before tumbling on his face, then crying out in pain because a tent pole smacked his face.

    This was going to be a long week.

   
    "This is how to do the clove hitch," I instructed, the rope rubbing hard against my skin. "Take the rope and tie it around a tree. You see, like a coiling snake. Then you bring the end under..."

    "When's it over?" Biff asked, adjusting the strap of his camera. "I need some cool pics for Instagram."

    "Can you pay attention?"

    "I can't pay anything, you didn't give me money."

"Well hahaha, Biffy, now focus."

    "I'm deciding on an angle. Should I lean a little to the right-"

    "Pay attention!" I must have moved my arm too much, because the entire tent fell over that sent me falling on my side.

    "Now that's how it feels," Biff grinned.

    "Wipe that smirk off your face and help me up," I demanded.

    When night fell things started receding into normal. My ribs ached, and to preserve the peace I didn't tell Biff. I had to lie down for a while, entrusting my eccentric son to set up the tent and build a fire. Boy couldn't cook pasta, but that shows you how desperate I was.

    I woke up from a nap to find a blazing fire kept going. Biff waved and I waved back, the sickly scent of gasoline thick in the air. I guessed it might have been the car emitting the stuff.

    "Good morning pops," he smirked, tossing a log into the flames. "Gonna roast some marshmallows, are you in the mood?"

    We skewered Peeps Biff found lying in the garage, which I recognized was a party favor from his seventh birthday party. I said nothing because the fire had been so mesmerizing. Upon their entrance into the flames, the Peeps decided it would be a good time to detonate and splat their hot flesh on Biff's clothing. Lucky there was a pond right by us, else I definitely would have splashed ice cooler water on him. That's how I became a burn victim, he would tell my older sister Bertha later. I didn't laugh once, regardless of how much of an overreaction he elicited. If I knew these sequence of injuries, I'm going to be next. How did I develop keen foresight?

    The morning we decided to make Taloa Mountain early. Today we were originally planning to indulge on the aquatic delicacies of Abernathy Pond, before discovering a heaping hill of dirty diapers swimming amongst the fish. When I camped here with my dad, the place was open to naturalists, photographers, and government officials, who knew the unwritten rules of nature. Since this place wasn't under permit people were allowed to do whatever they wished for their own damn convenience. Would Biff's son be able to see the pond at all? What if people decided to drain the thing and make a lake from a river further up north? Well, if dollar signs were engraved in their eyes, they sure wouldn't mind. Throw all the dirty diapers they wished, because the paid cleaning crew would tidy it up.

    The first leg up the mountain was the initiation stage, and after that it's smooth sailing. Hiker traffic was so congested it was like traveling through a squeezing mountain road. When I went almost nobody climbed this path, an old thing ready to be demolished. I didn't know twenty-five years later things would transform so drastically, and a restaurant would be built atop of it. From the numerous chitter outside the entrance I heard they were planning a scenic road as well (for convenience's sake, oh well to you, nature). My dad would say there wasn't a single object like Taloa Mountain which could withstand wind and water and lightning, and human colonization wouldn't make a dent. If only he could see the heaped diapers.

    We ate the remaining tomato sandwiches which had turned soggy, and oranges for dessert. For once Biff didn't complain, probably due to his hunger. I didn't argue either, even if his hiking sticks knocked my legs every minute, and his slinging sass going at me like a cannon. A stream slinked beside us, with clear as crystal waters. It wasn't ordinary sediment brown. These were God's springs, out in a tourist's petri dish, peeking below a restaurant which sold overpriced greasy food. How can it be so clean?

    "I need some of that," Biff declared, my mouth hanging for a protest but was too late when he shoveled a heap on his tongue.

    "Biff, no! Do you realize why they do Giardia and e.coli tests?"

    Send him to Yellowstone and crowds of tourists would be huddled around to see the latest geyser. That's how mighty this spew was, sending shards of crystal onto the trees, and the immediate dragging of a tongue onto his jacket, which only sent him on a never ending cycle of drinking and licking.

    There wasn't any Giardia or e.coli here because I've drank from this water before, but telling him for the heck of it made the break a lot more entertaining.

    Biff and I reached the summit many hours later, when the sun was heaving its final gasps on the horizon beyond. We sat at the edge of a cliff and drank Giardia-free water from a Denali bottle. We laughed- he told me a joke about my innate desire to disrupt everything he did. Although he chuckled afterwards, it sent my mind reevaluating my parenting methods. What was going wrong, what was Biff truly capable of? Questions my dad never raised, because he being an easygoing fellow, assumed I liked what he liked. But I frowned at tying clove hitches; I wanted to take pictures like Biff. There was one experience in particular which sent my senses in total abandonment: my dad's departure. It wasn't on a deathbed (and often I maliciously wished for that so my happiness still lingered) nor did he take the time to produce a proper goodbye. He took off one bitter October morning, never returning, and not even like wind, cycling back to bring me comfort in my most lonesome of times. Despite being an engineer if there ever was an instruction manual my dad never understood how to build... it was the vehicle of love. It wasn't a forcible thing; he wasn't commissioned to assemble it. Yet I could feel the emptiness staring into my soul, exposing a chasm so deep I tremble from its sudden quakes. And to attend to a vehicle so broken would loosen the restraints on his rigid personality. What if the exhaust pipe fell off? Now I wouldn't have a chance at redemption, he would say. Even worse if the bonnet came off. Now there was no way it could protect the engine, although it was already dead.

    I admired Biff for his ability to constantly speak his mind, something I was incapable of. Remorse, a deeper sense of guilt coursed through my body. I have gone wrong, I wanted to tell him, and prove my father wrong that I wasn't a coward. Tell him now, tell him now, I coaxed myself.

    I grabbed Biff's shoulder and wound it around my own and said, "Next time, why don't you choose the excursion?"

    Baby steps, right?