Fixed Moments: Sitcoms in Real Life

I wrote what I thought was a poignant post about a family event relating to marine life, but upon further review it seemed to be making fun of a helpful albeit Napoleonic park ranger, and there was some question as to whether Nan’s budding relationship with a seal might constitute a violation of the federal Marine Mammal Act, so I decided the better part of valor was to keep that one to myself. Instead, I’d like to take a few moments to apologize to writers of sitcoms everywhere. For years I’ve muttered “I’m so sure that’d happen…”and flipped off the TV during those preposterously dumb, obviously contrived scenes that seem to be inserted in sitcoms just to create opportunities to add canned laughter. I now apologize, because the last few days in California and especially San Francisco have provided an ongoing set of sitcom-esque scenes. They'll likely lose something in the translation, but just the same, here are a few examples:

- At our last campground, Kerby and I headed into the bathhouse for showers. There were three separate showers, and he and I took the back two. The hot water blasting away was making it pretty steamy in there, but I could still smell smoke drifting in from a campfire at one of the nearby sites. It smelled like they were cooking something good, and I shouted to Kerby over the shower-wall, “It smells like Bar-B-Que in here!” Without missing a beat I heard a man’s voice call out from one of the biffy-stalls, “I’m pretty sure it’s nothing I’m doing in here…”

- While I was checking into our campground here on the ocean just ten minutes from downtown San Francisco, two older guys came into the office to check in behind me. They were obviously traveling together, driving their huge RVs. The one guy said, “Did you notice coming through the toll booths at the Golden Gate Bridge that there were wide lanes and narrow lanes for paying the toll?” The other guy said he’d noticed. The first guy said, “I didn’t, and I wound up in a narrow lane. As I pulled out, a post pushed my right-side mirror flat against the window. I couldn’t see a thing!” The other guy said, “I was wondering what you were doing. You started cutting across lanes and cars were jamming on the brakes all over the place. I’d never seen you drive like that—and I don’t think anyone else had seen that kind of driving either. Well, at least you had your signal on...like always.”

- At Fisherman’s Wharf we sat and ate big bread-bowls of clam chowder, enjoying a nice lunch in a restaurant. After we finished eating, I waited at the table with our stuff while Nan and the kids headed off for a restroom break (adhering to our family traveling-motto "Never pass up an opportunity to pee"). Sitting there, I couldn’t help overhearing a conversation between an older woman with an obvious hearing problem and a younger woman who was proving why, when you look up the word “patience” in the dictionary, you find her picture. The older woman was going on like this: “Fish tacos are interesting. I think they’re interesting—do you think they’re interesting—fish tacos? I’ve heard of fish tacos lots of times. I’ve never had one, though. I’ve never even seen a fish taco. Have you ever had a fish taco? I’d like to try a fish taco sometime. Do you think they have them here? Fish tacos? I’d like to try one…” And on and on it went. I so wished I had a fish taco handy...

- It’s San Francisco, and of course you’ve got to ride a street car in San Francisco. So we figured out where to board, got our exact change ready, and waited a few minutes for one to come along. The first car that turned up had a big “Board in the rear” sign, but as we approached the rear doors we saw the car was packed with people. We decided to wait a few minutes for another one. After just a few minutes, a second pulled up, and as the doors opened Kerby and Joelle immediately jumped on at the rear. As soon as they entered, the doors shut literally right in our faces and the engine revved as though it was taking off. For a second Nan and I were on one side of the doors and the kids were on the other and we just looked at each other---our own variation of a scene that’s been played out on a thousand sitcoms. As the stunned-moment passed, Nan pounded on the door and I looked ahead wondering how many blocks I was going to have to run through traffic before it’d stop again. Fortunately for me and the nearest cardiologist, as I looked ahead planning my run to the next stop I saw that the front door was open and we were supposed to board via the front on this car. Dopey tourists. So we hopped on, paid our dough, and had a herky-jerky ride on A Streetcar Named Defibrillator down The Embarcadero.

- And finally, from some suspect reports via Nan, I’m not above filling the role of a stereotypical sitcom character myself. Nan has been telling me for weeks that I sound like a sitcom dad on vacation. According to her, as we drive along on our various adventures, I’m apparently maintaining a running monologue about things like our gas mileage, how windy it is, how bumpy it is, how long it’ll be before we get there if the traffic gets better or worse, how many road signs we’re seeing for one thing or another, how the sun always seems to be shining in on my side as we drive… An ongoing driver’s monologue that she occasionally thinks is hilarious and that occasionally annoys her into telling me to stuff a sock in it. Of course, she’s doing her own stereotypical-character thing. The kids and I are consistently making comments about how, on her behalf, we should have titled our trip “Gift Shops of the United States—Trying to Visit Them All!”

So that’s my apology to sitcom writers. We at times feel like we’re making our own sitcom as we go, but I suppose that’s normal when life is as odd as it’s gotten to be these days. Anyway, in the morning we leave San Francisco and head north to the giant redwoods. We’re living in serious denial about the approach of April, but it’s coming whether we want to admit it or not. Just the same, I think we’ll continue to enjoy every last minute of March…

Morton