This
morning I decided to give my wife a small respite. Following breakfast and a
short stint in the playroom to get some early morning energy out, I packed
everything up in the diaper bag and strapped my son in his car seat. It was
time for a little road trip to someplace new. I had been thinking about driving
my son to the main line for some time now to show him a new place but also
somewhere where he could walk. I also wanted to test something out.
As
we passed the sights that our son has seen dozen of times before he was rather
talkative and wanting to play peekaboo with daddy from the back seat. While on
the highway he also wanted to hold my hand as we coasted past the slower cars. Eventually
we made it to some unfamiliar roads and his demeanor changed. Like his daddy,
he wanted to see as much as he could and was glued to the window of the car
taking in each new sight, street, and intersection.
It
was actually rather interesting for me as well since it had been a long time
since I had driven down these roads and some of the things that I remember
passing were no longer part of the suburban landscape (like the Granite Run
Mall). Surprisingly on schedule, we made it to Media shortly after ten and,
shockingly, found a legal parking spot along the street about a half block from
the surprise I had planned for that morning. Similar to during our drive, he was wide
eyed as we walked passed all the new buildings, turned the corner, and slowly
climbed the steps.
Inside
he was mesmerized by the small shiny disks lining the cases and gladly kept
browsing as he finished his morning snack. Given my sons previous interest in
pocket change and, more so, in paper money, I knew that this would be something
to hold his interest and it wasn’t surprising when he decided to meticulously
analyze each of the coins in the display case through the glass. This also
allowed me to catch up with the proprietor of the store whom I had not seen in
years. When I had finished catching up and my son had finished his snack, I
finally asked for what I had hoped to pick up while we were there… wheat pennies.
I
guess you could say that this is something that I am passing along from my
youth as I remember sorting through bags of them and filling in the empty spots
in the folders. It is also a way to connect our families as we have a few that
have been passed down from my wife’s grandfather that I want to make sure that
our son has in the future. They’re inexpensive and every coin shop has them
making it easy to pick them up from time to time. What did surprise me this
time around was that the store owner handed over a full bag and refused payment
saying that my son was “the most well behaved that that has ever been in the
store.”
We
gratefully accepted and parted ways that morning with my son eyeing his bag of
treasure all the way to the car where we locked them up for the remainder of
the morning. After strolling up and down the street a few times we returned to
the car (with time left on the meter) and made our way back home pretty close
to schedule. Tracing back through the same streets and excited from our time
out, the baby babble was much more intense on this leg of our excursion and I
enjoyed every minute of it.
