I’ve noticed in the comments that several of our more active members have recently welcomed children into this crazy world. I hope they keep them around because their kids seem to be good luck charms for our young franchise. To help them, I thought I might try my hand at offering some parenting advice as they attempt to juggle the grave responsibilities of watching both their children and their Carolina Panthers play the Miami Dolphins.
You see, there are many different styles to parenting but whether they are new or seasoned, straight cut or a bit curly, but all parents should share at least one fear: misplacing their new born child in a fast food establishment. What with all of the media circuses running around looking for new clowns, hi-wire acts, and lion food, this fear is evermore present in our society today than it was even ten years ago. Please consider the following: Now that you have arrived with your child, and put our two signature wins on their birth certificate, you are ready to take a little family road trip down to the Sunshine State. Little Panthers is too young, of course, to appreciate Disney World, but we can go to the beaches in Miami and appreciate all of the eye-popping bikinis their shores have to offer.**
Driving from Charlotte down to Florida in one shot is a difficult proposition, whether your child be in whiny infancy or angsty teenagecy. It is only reasonable that one must stop along the way to relieve bladders, and provide healthy or delicious snack and/or meal opportunities for everyone in the car.
One possible stopping place is the mythical restaurant known as Arby’s. They have a wide ranging menu from ‘Market Fresh’ sandwich options that look like they are served with real meats to particleboard roast beef sammiches that somehow taste like food sometimes. There truly are options for everyone (except vegetarians, who can go lick a hard-boiled egg). However, beware the shiny new modern/50’s-diner veneer they have recently installed, for danger lurks behind every ten gallon hat.They are a classic tourist trap.
It is easy to get lured in by the variety of options, become dazzled by the glitz and glamor that are the curly fries, and before you know it your child is on their promotional posters advertising their Mozarella Sticks a little to suggestively for your liking. This is how those media circuses destroy families. They pay you at first, make you feel real good. But from then on the pressure is pressuring you.
As we all know, pressure leads to fear. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to. . . sorry, wrong metaphor. Drugs. It all leads to nasty, back-alley drugs that will forever ruin your relationship with your fans and your family. Eventually, you won’t even see them on the posters anymore. You’ll ask your children what they are doing after school and they will shrug before locking themselves in their rooms. In the end, your picture will be taken by a local photographer and plastered in the newspapers with the headline: More Parents File Police Report On Children: Missing In Arby’s.
Nobody will blink an eye, it’ll be just another Sunday in the Admiral Ackbarian Odyssey that is a Miami road trip.
Now that we have explored a vivid and excellently written narrative of what happens to parent's who make pit stops on road trips, please allow me to give you my advice: Pack some peanuts and pee in cups. We can splurge on fast food and off brand sodas on the way back home.
*You might not want to actually take parenting advice from me.
** See what I mean?