Oh Honestly, Erin

You know how Chooch became obsessed with that dumb radio trivia game last year when I started driving him to school? And he programmed the radio station’s # into his phone so he could call every morning?

Well, it finally happened. Last Monday, he called, and they answered. My reaction? Aw, come the fuck on.

Especially when the co-host Melanie asked, “OK Riley, and who you got with you?” So, he introduced me (Mom Erin) and his friend Zakk who had hitched a ride with us (Friend Zakk) and now we all had to play the dumb trivia game.

I was pretty irritated because I really hate this radio station, and the hosts of the morning show are like, ugh. Not as over the top as some morning show DJs out there, but Bubba especially can get pretty wound up and they just play shitty music overall (Top 40 shit like Post Malone and that SUPER UNCOMFY Nicki Minaj song that plays every single time when they tell people to call for Escalation and I casually turn it way down because that is NOT the song you want your ears to experience in tandem with the ears of teenage boys.

Just, nope.

Anyway, now here we are, on hold while the rest of SUPER FREAK plays on the radio (it is always this song right before Escalation!), waiting for Bubba to put us on the air. Bubba is notorious for SCREAMING the Escalation announcement, super screechy and out-of-tune. As of late, he’s been giving callers the opportunity to weigh in if they want it loud or, I dunno, delicate. I usually turn the volume down because I can’t handle it.

He asked Chooch how he wanted it and Chooch was all, against everything we believe in, “I dunno, go big I guess, sure, why not.” UGH UGH UGH WE ARE SUCH SELL OUTS.

Very quickly, because I’m already tired of writing this since I have talked about it like 27 times since it happened, Escalation is 5 questions, starting at $5. If you get it right, you can give the money back and keep playing for more, or you can take what you’ve won and call it a day. The first question is always really easy. Ours was, “Blank on a shelf.”

Second: “Name a drink you can make with powder.”

I was .00005 seconds away from screaming Tang, but Chooch beat me to it with, “Chocolate milk.”

Mmm, ok. Go off with you chocky milk.

Third question is always – and here, Bubba pauses and makes the caller say MULTIPLE CHOICE: “How many pieces are on a chess board.” I flat out said, “Oh I don’t know this one” but Chooch the savant is over there counting the imaginary chessboard he drew up in the space in front of him and got it right. Thank god someone in our house knows how to play chess!

Fourth question they directed to me since it involved alcohol: Something about what the measurement of alcohol is called in liquor. This was fresh on my mind having just walked past like 7 moonshine distilleries when we were in Tennessee. Chooch was relieved because he didn’t  know it.

The last question, well, I’ll let you watch it:

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I mean, yay us for winning $100, but man, I can’t we sold out AGAIN by actually saying, “I love you” back. I always said I would never say it and there I was, being all fake. I told my hair stylist about it today and she was like, “I always thought that was so weird that he says that to every caller. I hate that for you.”

But can I just say that I don’t know where Waterloo came from? You can even hear it in my voice, I do not sound confident about this. In fact, after I said it, I was convinced that it was wrong and that there was some coven of actually smart Bubba Show listener-Yinzers out there scoffing at my blondness. Literally all of my friends were like, “You probably knew it from Abba.”

I assure you, even though I know Abba songs, that is not one of them. (I googled it and laughed so hard when I saw that the literal first line is about Napoleon surrendering in Waterloo?!) I clearly learned it at some point in school and it was just…repressed.

The one good thing is that this show is on so early in the morning, so I figured probably no one I actually know was listeing. But when I was telling my friend Margie about winning on the radio the next day at work, she goes, “Wait–WATERLOO???” She fucking heard us but missed the beginning and didn’t realize it was me. Great, now I’m Waterloo Girl, I guess.

Even back in high school, I never wanted to be on the radio but I was ALWAYS calling in to request songs. Every time, without fail, I would say that I was Susie from Clairton, but 95% of the time, I was calling LiteFM and I’m quite sure I was part of the 1% of teenagers tuning in for their daily dose of Gina Vannelli and Barry Manilow.

I was cruising on this adrenaline autobahn for quite some time because even though I hated hated hated having to be performative on the radio, it was cool to win, you know? But then that night, Chooch came down the steps and, apropos of nothing, scoffed, “I wish the last question was something different, something I knew the answer to.”

“OH, THERE IT IS!” I cried, knowing that this was probably eating him up inside, the little competitive bitch. “You can’t stand the fact that I won it for us!”

“It’s still my $100,” he said, retreating back to his room to pout.

Hi fam (lol why did I say that). Just popping in here on this lovely Monday at the end of August to give a shout out to Chooch who just started junior year!

Of course we had a fight this morning but then we quietly bonded and made up over our shared disdain for local radio DJ Bubba and his stooooopid game of Escalation that the SAME PPL always get picked for even though Chooch tries to call in every time.

Yep, we’re back to this old routine. Well, probably just for today because I think he will go back to taking the T / bus in the mornings after today.

Anyway, I know summer’s still here for another several weeks but the start of school always makes it feel donezo. I’m so depressed!! I love fall with my whole damn heart but this time of the year makes me feel panicked like time is LITERALLY LIKE SAND IN AN HOURGLASS, a la Days of Our Lives, and winter will be here soon and that is the bleakest time for me.

The lowest.

The coldest.

The saddest.

Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be about Chooch? Sorry, today has been really chaotic, emotionally (you know me! Everything around me is stagnant and quiet and I’m over here in the middle creating waves that aren’t real). Ok fine it all came down to buying NCT127 tickets ok, it really had me stressed the fuck out. You can ask Henry. He was here. Though he wishes he hadn’t been, probably.

We’ll discuss this on another day because I am still in the process of calming down and coaxing my skin to stop fizzing.

So yeah, add to this the fact that I have a son who is a junior in high school now and I’m all over the place, mentally!

And if you’d like to know how his first day back was, it was, in a word, “boring.”

Cool!

Also, can you believe he really tried to get out of this picture? Like I would suddenly be ok with NOT taking his picture on the first day of school after all these years?

Mm ok.

Chooch was bitching about wanting to play mini-golf and it got me thinking that I haven’t putt-putted around Sunset Golf in years – maybe 10! It’s always been one of my faves so I declared that we should do this on Saturday. Apparently, this was an open invitation because when we rolled up, it was so crowded that they had someone directing traffic in the lot.

That’s a hard pass.

I promised Chooch that we’d go back on Monday. Henry had to work so I billed it as a MOMMY AND CHOOCH DAY which garnered SO MUCH excitement from surly Chooch, as you can imagine.

I just want to say that i didn’t forget how awesome Sunset is but they have somehow gotten even more awesome with the addition of a bunch of clandestine water features. Maybe they were there last time but I surely don’t remember.

This might seem unbelievable to some and I swear this isn’t Opposite Day, but Chooch and I actually got along swimmingly! Like, we had FUN. And only marginally hated the mom and her kids in front of us who were soooo slow and even when our progress was halted for a solid 5 minutes when my ball got stuck in one of the Rube Goldberg-designed obstacles and Chooch had to go ask for a new one, we still managed to catch up to them.

Ok maybe chooch was also a little annoyed because I was kicking his ass and even got two holes in one.

“Wow, they really phoned this one in,” I said before both of us ended up furiously scribbling in a 7 after giving up.

The stance of a WINNER.

You guys, we had a really fun time! You can tell because m smile is real and not Henry’s favorite forced grimace thing.

Then we were going to eat lunch at the nearby Blue Line Diner but it was CLOSED so we found a place down the street in Bethel Park called PATSY’S PLACE and I think we may have eaten there once a long time with Tommy and Jessy?

I loved that each table had rando’ coffee cups. Mine was Christmas ducks! And our waitress was soooooo personable and exuberant. When I asked for coffee and waiter, her eyes widened and she gushed, “Yeah! Of course!” and she called us dears numerous times too which was cute because I’m pretty sure she was much younger than me.

Chooch and I both got grilled cheese – he ordered for me and said, “But she’ll have tomato on hers” and made a “I know, gross right?” face. We got to choose our bread and I loved that – it’s so rare these days! When she said “rye,” I was like I WILL STOP YOU RIGHT THERE, I WANT THE RYE.

My only issue with this place was that it was $$$. First of all, our drinks were both $3 which seems like a lot, the grilled cheese was $7.99 (!!!) and the fries were extra!!! Our bill was $30!! Hey Patsy, you ain’t Melt!

Whatever, the food was decent at least and the service was great. I overheard our waitress telling another table that she just came back from her honeymoon (Key West, in case you care) and I was like AW I WANT TO SAY SOMETHING but then I didn’t get a chance.

After I paid, I said to Chooch, “OK hurry. HURRY HURRY HURRY” and he was like, “what why” so on the way to the car I told him that I write a note on the check congratulating her on her recent marriage and Chooch cried, “No, you didn’t! WHY? You’re so embarrassing! Now we can never come back here!”

LOL.

On the way home, I showed him where I used to live in South Park and he was like, “Cool don’t care” until he saw that there’s a 7 Eleven at the end of my old street so that got his attention.

(Literally can’t believe it’s still there, never been remodeled, and still smells EXACTLY the same. America, please tell me why 7 Eleven is so Elite in Korea and Japan – for good reason – but ours are decrepit and full of old hot dog stench??)

Anyway, we had to stop because Chooch has numerous store apps that he loves to use like they’re games and the 7 Eleven app is one of them. He was like, “WE HAVE TO GET ICED COFFEE HERE” which I knew would be disgusting but this was CHOOCH AND ERIN DAY so I guess I was going to get a taste of how modern teenagers live their lives. As I was trying to doctor my cold brew to make it semi-palatable, Chooch appeared next to me and said, “OK let’s go, I paid” and I was like, “But I’m still getting my coffee, how did you pay” and he was like, “I did mobile pay” and I was like, “HOW DO THEY KNOW WE’RE NOT STEALING” and so he showed me how you go over to the mobile thingie and scan the QR code and I was like, again, “HOW DO THEY KNOW WE’RE NOT STEALING.”

Ugh, I’m so old sometimes when it comes to all these new ways to pay. He has to help me use Apple Pay every time, to the point that if I’m alone, I panic and just pay with my regular credit card.

Then we came home and he disappeared to play some game and then went to the gym and visited his old McDonald’s and I barely saw him for the rest of the day. But at least he penciled me in for the morning/afternoon! And we didn’t fight once!

I mentioned several times in passing that Chooch has been attending some “Mentors in the Making” program at the Carnegie Science Center’s “Fab Lab” since October.  I had no idea really what it was but he came home with a sign-up thingie from school and expressed interest because all students who stuck around until the end of the program got to keep the laptop they were each assigned, which came loaded with various programs they were going to be using during the…thingie.

I will be honest – I only half-understood what was going on, but I know they made small projects using a vinyl and laser cutter and lots of shit using a 3D printer, which is how we came to be a 3D printing household. Mostly I had no idea what he was doing for two hours on these Tuesday evenings.

What I also didn’t know was that in addition to these small projects, each student also had to develop, research, and complete a capstone project, which they then worked on with their assigned mentor.

Anyway, two weeks ago, I got an email from someone at the someone at the Fab Lab informing me that I was invited to some such “we are done with the program” ceremony thing at the science center. When we dropped Chooch off for his last class, I reminded him to ask if there would be refreshments & he became very annoyed because I allegedly asked him this twice in two days & also the word “refreshments” is annoying in & of itself apparently. These are the things I learn, just from mom’ing a 15-year-old.

The EVENT was last Thursday evening and GUESS WHAT?

REFRESHMENTS.

The cookies were very good. They also had pizza, and the lady in charge of the Mentor program thingie kept trying to push more and more slices on everyone and I was like, “I ALREADY ATE DINNER I JUST WANT SUGAR THANKS.”

So, the one thing I wasn’t aware of was that the refreshments were essentially a RUSE to get us to sit quietly and endure nearly two hours of the kids presenting their capstone projects. YES, CHOOCH WAS GOING TO BE DOING A PRESENTATION.

“Did you know this?” I whispered to him, and he just casually shrugged because literally nothing fazes this child.

Because he’s Chooch and has my great fortune, he was the first one called up to present. Of course, my heart was racing because WHAT WILL HE SAY?? He is so unpredictable!

First, he introduced himself, his mentor (I already forget his name but he was slated to get his Doctorate the very next day, that I do remember) and his project – A SQUIRREL FEEDER. He explained to everyone in the room that he came up with the concept because, and this is a loose quote though pretty damn accurate because this moment is seared in my mind: “when the pandemic started, my mom had nothing else to do so she became obsessed with the neighborhood squirrels.”

So everyone in the room started to laugh and look over at me which you all know I hate being under the spotlight, so I was sitting there with my face in my hands and a wad of half-chewed cooki in my mouth. Henry loved every second of it, of course. Chooch maybe could have mentioned at least that I was also working from home, instead of painting me as a shut-in, sitting by the window with squirrels climbing all over me.  Meanwhile, the other kids made projects like a distance sensor for the visually-impaired and an anxiety puzzle for people with ADHD & depression.

My kid: SQUIRREL FEEDER for his crazy mom. But…I fucking love it.

And another mentor (the guy in the picture up there) helped Chooch make a very dramatic commercial for the product on Blender:

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And he got an award thing!

There was one extremely obnoxious teen girl there but I am trying to turn over a new leaf (for the billionth time) by not publicly dragging children and parents on the Internet but OOOF, it’s hard. I might have to take to my old trusty paper journal to get this one off my chest. I will say that while she was presenting, I lost my cool and texted Chooch a puking emoji because I am just that mature.

I haven’t tried this bad boy out yet because Chooch made the opening too small and peanuts won’t fit in there so now I have to get sunflowers or something.

But yeah, what a cool thing that the Carnegie is doing! The fact that such a fascinating array of brilliant minds took time out of their busy science-y lives to help a bunch of high school kids learn and become more interested in basically engineering is just really heart-warming for normal people who have hearts and I guess I must because I’m getting all SOFT-LIKE just thinking about the impact they made. Ugh. But on the other hand, I can’t imagine being  that kind of person who would choose to work with kids unless it was like, court-appointed or a work requirement. So I guess I still got some charred sections of the ol’ pumper.

And because he completed this program, he is now eligible for internships and other mentor programs (like, he can be the mentor for a younger kid) that they have. Of course, the first thing that was offered to him he had to decline because he will be studying in Merida during that time. I love that he has these options now though! And that this isn’t something we had to force him to do.

Don’t we always celebrate that jerk tho.

Anyway, Chooch maintained his 4.0 on his most recent report card and we were like, “cool I guess we will feed you at some point” and literally like a full month later, we finally made plans to take him to dinner to “celebrate.”

We had Houlihan’s stuck in our heads because he mentioned it once in passing that he wanted to go there because he had never been, and I got super nostalgic because that was my PLACE when I was in my late teens. I guess because it was like the next step up from Denny’s and my friends and I thought we were SO SOPHIS eating there and honestly we probably mostly only went for dessert. I sincerely can’t remember any actual food I would have eaten there aside from whatever their fried mozzarella app was – maybe the triangles? Or was Dingbats the ones with the triangles?!

The Houlihan’s I used to go was replaced by a WALGREENS ugh many years ago and at some point moved down the street to the Galleria, but I hadn’t been to the new location. Now that I think about it, the last time I was at Houlihan’s may have been in 2001/2002 when I was going through a heavy “meeting people on the Internet” phase by placing personal ads FOR FRIENDS (lololol) and had a FRIEND INTERVIEW with some dude there right around the time Henry and I started dating and you can imagine how well that went over. Don’t worry, I talked about my cats the whole time and never heard whatever that dude’s name was ever again.

We also invited Janna!

Sunday afternoon, while Chooch was still at work, Henry made CHOOCH PINS for us to wear that night.

This is the one Janna wore! I don’t have a picture of Henry’s and he almost blew the whole charade anyway by not having it on at first and then Chooch caught me mouthing “WHERE IS YOUR PIN” across the table; Chooch caught me and immediately asked, “WHAT” in a panicked tone but I said NOTHING and he moved on quickly because he only has so much interest in adults.

So then Henry to excuse himself to go to the bathroom and put the damn thing on; meanwhile, Chooch came down from Teenage La La Land long enough to actually SEE Janna at the table with us. He did a slow doubletake and asked, “Why are you wearing a pin of my face?” which was rather hurtful because I had mine on the whole entire time we were walking around the Galleria before Janna got there and he never noticed because I AM INVISIBLE TO HIM.

I pointed at my denim vest and yelled, “I HAVE ONE ON TOO” right when Henry came back and now Chooch was legit surrounded by people wearing pins of his face. It was like a TEAM CHOOCH huddle.

Chooch, after he realized what was happening.

We had a really stiff middle-aged (ugh probably like my age) waiter who looked like he was late for a Drive-By Truckers show at a craft whiskey festival in Williamsburg, NYC. He made me SO FUCKING UNCOMFY. He was for sure sneering at us and was also visibly anxious and annoyed when Chooch didn’t know what he wanted to drink right away. My favorite was when he asked Henry a question and then walked away before Henry had a chance to answer and Henry said something like, “How am I supposed to answer when he’s already halfway down the road?” and the fact that he said “road ” had me and Chooch dying.

Also, he was wearing a VERY FITTED short-sleeved flannel to show off his SUPER COOL tattoos.

Also, I chose Janna’s meal for her. Fish tacos. You’re welcome, Janna.

Chooch and I both got a veggie burger and it was fine, but also kind of unsatisfying. And they served it to us on these gigantic, oblong plates just to really illustrate how little food we were given. I made some comment about how we should have went somewhere better and Chooch said, “Yeah why did we come here, anyway?”

“Because you wanted to come here!” I snapped.

“Yeah, with my friends,” he snapped back.

OH DANG SON. Wow, just wow!

We didn’t get dessert (ironically, considering that was why I used to go there back in the day!) because the Galleria has a CUPCAKE vending  machine! I already knew what I wanted, and then I told Henry which one to get, and Chooch picked his pretty quickly too, but then JANNA hemmed and hawed like it was A Big Life Purchase, and she kept trying to choose ones that weren’t available!

Meanwhile, there was a young couple waiting behind us and I felt so bad because we were taking so long (well, I wasn’t, I made my selection right away because I’m a pre-planner and thought about which one I was choosing all during dinner to the point where I was nervous none of them would be available). Janna finally chose a vanilla blueberry one or something – it was the very last one and she chose it after the girl behind us told her boyfriend that’s the one she wanted! Chooch and I were trying not to crack up.

Then the vending machine deployed its slowest snail to gather up our selected ‘cakes and I honestly had to walk away after mine was deposited because it was so awkward standing there with those people behind us.

But holy shit, these bitches were worth the hassle and the wait! Mine was matcha and strawberry, and Henry’s was white chocolate pistachio. Chooch’s – not pictured because he absconded to his bedroom with it as soon as we got home – was lemon. The Galleria is only like 15 minutes from my house and I’m seriously considering going back there as soon as I post this for ROUND TWO.

The end Congrats Chooch, on your big brain. Next time we’ll go somewhere you don’t want to go with your friends, I guess.