Fancy Ketchup.

It is a difficult thing to drive down the road in your car next to a bag of McDonald's without shoving at least one wad of hot salty fries into your mouth. Some people could do it, no doubt. Civil people. People on their way home with dinner. In the evening. Patience in traffic /NPR people maybe.

But not me.

Oh nonononono.

The young kid handing me my large drink through the window gets his 'Thanks alot!' filtered through a mini blond Medusa's Head of potato hanging half-out of my face. By the time I swerve out of the lot and onto the main road, I am a thousand calories more powerful than I was five minutes ago. I roll the Honda through Sugarhouse dropping fries inside me; up 7th East with warm salt on my lips; and turn in at the dog park which, from personal experience, I know is a good place to kill a bag of McDonald's on a weekday afternoon without getting hassled by hobos or squirrels or The Man: all of whom are attracted by the scent of Mickey D's. Seriously.

I park and leave her running and put the bag of food on the fake leathery armrest between the two front seats and grab my drink and turn on the AC: and then I'm ready so I get out of the car, shut the door, open the back door and climb in next to Violet. She grins at my move to her row. I grin too.

Then, we have our lunch together. Fancy Ketchup, I say to her as I read it off the little packet. This ain't some cheap crap, Doll-Face. This is the good stuff. The FANCY stuff. I tear the ends off some fries and rub 'em in the ketchup smeared across the cheeseburger wrapper sitting in my lap. When I hold them up at Violet's lips, she opens wide.

"Mmmmmmmmm", I say. To let her know that's what people like us say every time we take a damn bite. We've been practicing this way more than ABC or anything.

"Mmmmmmmm", she says, with gusto. Then she adds on her own thing which sounds like: Eck-a-bubble-bubbleblooo-meppa-meppa-eeeeeee. I don't know what it means. No one could. But it sounds exciting, so I just go with it.

We eat fries and cheeseburgers and fancy ketchup together, side by side. A lunch date. It's so nice. Still, I invite vipers. And I drop the bomb.

"Daddy's gonna take you to the Doctor next, ok? We gotta get some needles today." I say that shit with a pouty face, as if that is going to help her come to grips with this little afternoon twist I'm unraveling.

My daughter just looks over/up at me with dried-ketchup-cheeks and smiles. She doesn't get it at all, I can tell.

Fuck.

I hate this needle shit.

I break off a little nub of cheeseburger and gently rub it on her lips. She opens up and eats it.

Mmmmmmmmmmm, she says, without prompting from me.

I just wanna drive home and skip the needles and the tears and just forget the whole damn thing. We could stop and get more McDonald's, I tell myself.

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There are three and they are fast. One. Explosion of crying. Two. Gagging, little crimson head sagging like a melted wax face. Three. The rampaging tears of someone desperately wondering why.

Sting! Sting! Sting!

And then they are done. The doctor is lightning fast; skills galore. She knows that the pricks will melt into one another if the timing is just right. The back-alley Villain jumping my daughter is thrown off a little by the quickness of the Super Hero. Right there in my arms, under my face, I watch as Violet gets so upset so fast, that her horror actually rolls over on its bad self and sort of dies in the face of all its evil plans.

Violet cries really really hard for maybe a minute, then she bites into her Binky and looks deep into my eyes. Some sobs still trickle out of her. The doctor is long gone. She is probably ten needles into the future by now. We are simply ghosts to her.

I kiss Violet's forehead.

Alone in the room, I use my finger and some spit and rub the ketchup specks off of her cheeks and chin as she calms down and does her little best to forget whatever the hell just happened.

Long Western Afternoon Fort People.

We have a tent set up in our house. It came with a tunnel. I got it for my daughter last Christmas when she was almost one, which means I mostly got it for myself because I kind of knew that she wasn't gonna care. It isn't anything nice. It cost twenty bucks at Bed,Bath,and Beyond and I think it's made out of spring roll. Still, it was the first Christmas gift I ever went out and got her and so it has a little meaning for me.

A few weeks ago I went back into the room we set up for Violet to play/hang in and there was the tent all set up. I forgot to tell you that after I let the kid shred off the wrapping paper on Christmas morning, the tent went in a closet, still in the box. Until now. My wife must've set it up. I haven't asked her. Christ, I hope it was her; otherwise some weird-ass freaks are sneaking in this house late at night while I'm curled up tight like a fetal squirrel. Anyways, I went in there and the tent was set up and the tunnel was out in the living room, probably because we don't have all that much furniture and a nice rainbow colored tunnel lying in the middle of the floor...well, it's something.

I went ahead and got in the tent right away. Violet wasn't around. No one was. But, I got in there and squatted down in the tiny space and pulled the flaps shut. The light from the window above was washing through the bright yellow and red and blue panels and so I felt like I was young again for a second. Squatting in hot vinyl and staring at the beams of color on your arm skin, whiffing that new plastic scent, wondering what to do with your free time in such a hidden little cove tucked away from the wide open world: I don't know about you, but all that makes me feel young again. I found myself hoping that my kid might crawl up in there one of these mornings and enjoy herself. That she might come to like the tent, and the tunnel, as magic places away from the dull kitchen and the boring halls.

But I had no idea.

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Fast forward here about two weeks. I'll be lowering long slashes of Wal-Mart roast beast lunch meat out over my tilted back head and down my throat with the awkward grace of a sword swallower, when all of the sudden I feel that tiny sweet hand upon mine. I feel the soft fingers all wrapping around a few of my fingers. And I feel the precious tug of her young effort.

I gulp down my factory beef and look below. Violet is holding my hand and leading me.

Oh my.

...What a sensation/what a feeling: the first time your kid comes into a room just to get you. I'm looking for you Pops, her grip says. I'm here for you. To haul your ass back to the playroom, or wherever. I smile inside and ask her where we're going. She doesn't answer or smile gappy teeth or look up at me with Question Mark Eyes. She doesn't say anything. She simply gets a hold of my thumb/turns directions/starts leading me to where she needs me to be.

I offer little resistance, of course. (Being swept off my feet hasn't been all that common for me in this life. No girls ever grabbed me on a Friday after a tough week and said, " Come with me, Bullet Boy!". They never drove me out on the Turnpike to one of those Champagne Glass hot-tubs in the Poconos or Vegas. I guess I never inspired that sort of spark in anyone. No one couldn't wait to get me to the getaway. No one fussed mid-kiss to lock the strange doorknob behind us. No one ever kept me behind any drapes drawn tight through the sunniest parts of some Saturday afternoon. I never answered the door in a towel in a rush/keep the change Pizza-Man /slammed the door in a lusty huff.)

So. If this is my fate, so be it. A New Kind Of Swept Away. If I am to be swept off my proverbial feet by a two year old I never saw coming, well...bring it on, I say. Sure the rules have changed. And the reasons too. But, still, some little heart wants to hold my hand and whisk me off.

We go to the tent, obviously. To the very first holiday gift. To the mega-colored ultra-flammable piece of crap I bought from The Man. We go, hand-in-hand, me towering above my leader, my heart pittering. She is deliberate in guiding me. We aren't distracted by the Dora on the DVD or anything. At the front of the tent, my daughter enters in her own special way; she walks straight into the vinyl above the hole where you go in, until her head bends back enough so that she just falls inside. Me, I smoosh down and sort of roll inside like a tilted meatball. And then, there we are.

Violet looks at me with a big smile and lets go of my thumb. I attack her with a Paddington Bear who is already chillin' there in the fort. She bursts into giggles. I pull in the SpongeBob drum and do some Indian beats, some war chants. Violet sticks her face into the corners of the tent and breathes her breath into them and I can tell she likes it when the thin walls flap and pop as her air moves in and out, the tent sticking to her lips and cheeks then falling away. Max comes in and pokes his head into the side port.

"Wolf!," I cry. Violet is ecstatic and pulls the wolf's ear.

Then I think about Jedediah Smith and Jim Bridger and Kit Carson. The long cold fur trader's winters spent holed up in squat caves of loneliness on the high plains of Wyoming. Then I think about how difficult it must've been just to take a shit when you were snowed in and miserable and three feet away from another tired hungry trapper who was finally seeing you for the tender Cornish Hen that you really are.

Then I stop myself, because to thrust poor Violet into a world of Mountain Man Pretend. I do enough of that in my own time.

So, we sit in the colored air of our tent, me and my kid and Max and then Milo too, their heads tucked in the holes, hoping not to miss whatever awesome shit must be about to go down in there. We all sit there and smile at each other in the late afternoon and I hit the SpongeBob drum with some weak Lakota beats. I tickle Violet with Paddington. And a Tigger The Tiger, too. She laughs and laughs. There's not a lot to do in there, but that doesn't really matter. Every two or three minutes I crawl out and walk away just to see if I'm still wanted, to make sure it isn't all just another damn dream.

And sure as hell, I'm not out in the kitchen fifteen seconds when I hear the little stumblings of her sock feet on the linoleum. I keep my hand way down my side so its easy to find.

A long moment passes. I don't dare peek.

Then, I feel her fingers on mine. Tugging again.

And we roll back towards the fort where we hang in the long western afternoon.

Papa Was A Soldier For Rome.

There is a scene at the end of Gladiator when Maximus, lying fatally wounded on the Coliseum dirt, begins to walk slowly though a late afternoon field of high grass. His slightly clenched hand gently skims the swaying blades as he moves forward. The camera pans back. And back. And we see him alone in the vast open place heading towards his murdered wife and son in the shimmering ancient distance. Heading home. To his family. Or maybe heading home to God, to Heaven. Or maybe both. Maybe they are inseparable. Who knows.

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I like it a lot. The scene of the Roman General/Gladiator in his moment between this cruel world and the promising next one. There is a feeling/chill that comes with it. A vibe. He's heading towards something that feels like forever. The music, the rolling plains. The far off road where his family await him. His young son's eyes. The cinematic lighting. Wind. Wheat. A dying handsome hero. It's good Hollywood.

And we're walking beside a soul. I dig soul art. How can you not, really?

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I emerge from a strand of ridiculous willows with my fly rod thrust high above my head so it doesn't snap like the overpriced bread stick that it is. Sweat beads up on my eyebrows and in my ears. Plops of it trickle down behind my sunglasses and slip into my eyes and burn a little. Everything is hazy. I'm in waders and a flannel shirt and a big chest pack and its like 85 degrees and I'm Meatloaf in his second encore.

But there they are.

My wife and daughter off in the distance, sat upon the bowling ball stones beside the river. Monica had called me just as I was starting to nymph a good cold pocket; she told me they were there, to visit me as I fished. And the notion of catching a trout in front of Violet had made me instantly delirious. It was something I'd been wanting/hoping/dreaming for awhile.

That right there says a little about me, I guess. Other men dream of threesomes and financial nirvana and Super Bowl titles. Me? I dream of catching a slender mountain fish for my little girl who could give two shits. Whatever. Our minds are our minds and there is no use arguing with them when they set their sights on things like this.

So, off I went: off to find my wife and child somewhere out there where the tall grass grows.

When I came clopping out of the trees a mile later, I started waving my rod in the air and grinning and stuff. Monica saw me after a second and gave a short brief wave back and said something to Violet. Then, I thought of the scene. From the movie.

I slowed down a little. Almost stopped. I saw Monica raise her hand to her brow to shield out the sun as she watched me approaching from pretty far away. The slender dirt trail I was on cut through, I shit you not...some tall grass.

I let my free hand spread. I let my fingers tickle the tops of the blades. I began to move more deliberately, like human molasses. In my mind I began to morph into something dangerously handsome; here's me walking a glorious reunion walk towards my family squinting to watch my approaching silhouette from the banks of the cold rushing stream. For perhaps a hundred steps or so, I was, for the first time in my life, a fallen hero walking towards glory. I didn't dare wave anymore. Or smile. That's sissy shit when you're a Roman legend moving through the fields of the Lord.

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Of course, when I get over there they're not even actually looking at me. Violet is bouncing pebbles off of stones in a puddle of lost river water. My wife is messing with her new phone. But, it doesn't matter because what's done is done and I feel closer to them now somehow. I ruffle my daughter's curls and kiss her head top. Monica offers me cold pizza and soda beside a kingdom of eager trout.

And that's pretty much heaven right there.

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I am determined as hell. I wade into the current and lob my size 18 Rainbow Warrior up and across the slashing water. Never before have I felt an actual need to catch a fish, but I feel it now.

I watch my indicator with hawk eyes.

Nothing.

I lob it all upstream again.

Same thing. Nothing.

I turn around nervously. Monica is staring at me blankly. Violet is licking a wet rock.

I cast again.

Take it. Take it. Eat it you slippery bastard.

Boom. My indicator nudges an inch and I set the hook and I've got one. My heart explodes. The fish clears the water by a foot and a half and I announce to the world that I've got him/ HE'S ON!

"Ooooooh, look Violet!," I hear Monica say, "Daddy's got a fish for you!"

The trout is not big in the physical sense, but in my galaxy at that moment: he is my ticket to the next level. He darts upstream and then turns and races back down, jumping and pulling, fighting for his life as it collides with mine, with ours.

Finally, I slip him to the bank. He's maybe ten inches tops. A small fish anywhere. I slide my hand in the water under his belly and carry him over to my little girl. It's all exactly how I hoped it would be/could be. It's all a beautiful fucking blur.

Violet stares at the trout. She giggles. He gasps evenly for his liquid breath. She touches his nose. I let him kiss her and she likes that a lot. She touches his small mouth and he seems to let her. Or at least he doesn't seem more pissed. The whole scene takes a few seconds and I tell her to say goodbye to him and she picks up a pebble and loses interest. With a heart made of thanks, I set him down gently to swim away forever.

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I live a lot in my head. A hundred times a day I pretend that my life unfolding around me is the final scene of a really great movie. I don't have to be lying in the arena dust for it to work either. Hell, I don't even come close to that really. Mostly it's just me behind the wheel of the Honda at a stoplight with the dogs way in the back and Violet in her car seat. The satellite radio on the 50's channel, RIP IT UP by Little Richard comes on. I crank the volume. I get goosebumps. I pretend the credits roll right over my face and the cinema is filled with people smiling and staring and feeling good as hell as my story wraps up.

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Maximus is dead maybe fifteen seconds when the gorgeous woman turns to the people.

"He was a soldier for Rome."

"Honor him."

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Empires are everywhere. Rule 'em all if you can.