Man Takes Toddler Son to Central Florida by Himself; World Gasps

There were far too many people with Cass and I---my mom, Norm and Holly and their boys---for the title of this post to be really true in the sense of being by myself, but it surely felt like it often, and that's not a knock on anything or anybody. As a trio in a cramped apartment near the edge of the continent, when that becomes a duo of us two boys, it feels like the world is at once tiny while also opened up.

Familiar people become living facsimiles of memories, and interacting with them is both joyous and side-eyed, as I tried to keep my kid from cracking his head too hard.

My mother took herself, my boy, me, and the four of Norm, Holly, and their boys, Norman and Simon, all the way to the collection of Disney Parks in Orlando.

She flew us from Southern California to Phoenix, where we saw my son's great-grandmother, then to Orlando; and afterward from Orlando back to Phoenix, and then onto OKC to surprise other-grandma for her birthday (where we'd meet up with Corrie), and then head back to LA.

LAX to PHX to Orlando to PHX to OKC to LAX...five airplane rides for a three year old who already flew to and from Rome the previous month.This is...our kid?

It was an amazing time, hot, sweaty, muggy, rainy, bizarro-world replicas of places that exist in other parts of the world...AND three kids bonding in ways only one may remember but all will feel later in their lives...AND old friends getting precious hours to reconnect...AND a grandmother getting some time with her babies' babies.

One thing that was the same as the park in Anaheim is the quality of the paper used for the maps.

I made a joke about it, but from the standpoint of the parks, they have to print so many pieces that it makes sense that that's one of the areas where they save money.

Because I liked they way they looked after a while--tattered and weathered by hours spent in my pocket getting wet on one side from rain and the other side from ass sweat---I laid out all four maps from the four parks in the order of our visit and took a picture:

If you zoom in you may be able to see it better. The first is the Disney-equivalent to Universal Studios, called Disney Hollywood Studios; the second was the Disneyland copy, Magical Kingdom; the third was from Epcot; and the fourth is the Animal Kingdom.

One of the things my mother got for the grandkids was a nifty vinyl holding packet for the pressed coins visitors can make using a penny and two quarters. When unfolded all the way, besides showing off the nearly 50 different options of pressed penny, it shows those same four parks, albeit in a different order, with each's signature architectural identifier:

It looks like they're using the Tower of Terror ride as the piece for the Hollywood Studio park, but I felt like it was more the replica of Grauman's Chinese Theater; that building was far more centrally located like the castle or the tree or the giant golf ball...

I tried to take a picture of Long Beach on our way out of town...

And, at the very center of this, the Boy and I got to give Corrie a few days by herself. This was the very first time she was ever away from him for more than thirty hours.

As cute as he is:

Everybody would need a break.

We arrived in Phoenix the day before we were to leave for Florida, and met up with and mobbed deep as a group with Norm and Holly and their boys. And, if Norm and I had final say, this would have happened:

Southwest allows you to choose your own seat: they have priority boarding, and that's so folks can get whatever seats they want.

Above, we see Simon (5 1/2 years old) at the window, Cass (3 yr old) in the middle, and Norman (8 yr old) on the aisle. It would have been a wonderful disaster, and great to start off the week: MADNESS FROM THE GET-GO.

What follows will be a series of posts about the trip with pictures and the like. The usual treatment...