Red was here

Yesterday, I put up a poster on my bedroom wall. On purpose. I don’t think I’d done that since Ryne Sandberg posterized my wall in high school.

It’s a Shawshank Redemption poster. Andy Dufresne is basking in his freedom after his escape from Shawshank prison, rain beating down on his no longer confined self. The caption reads, “Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.”

My son took the poster out of its box and wanted to know about it, so I explained as best I could why Andy standing in the rain was so significant. He had crawled through a river of “poop” and came out clean on the other side. He wasn’t guilty, his imprisonment wasn’t his fault and he deserved the freedom that he acquired.

And today, my boy got to experience a little taste of that. We went to Coco Key water resort. He was terrified of the water slides. I kept telling him he needed to try them. He refused with a look of near terror in his little eyes.

Then, out of the blue he tried one of the slides. His face at the bottom was priceless. He loved it and couldn’t wait to go again. I grabbed both of his ears and pulled his forehead into my forehead and told him how proud I was of him.

Then at dinner I told him that I realized he had lived out exactly what my poster was about. Fear held him in a little box, allowing him to only enjoy a small part of the water park. But, he faced that fear, which set him free to enjoy all the other slides.

I should have done a mini-Shawshank replica poster pic of the boy arms spread wide, basking in yet another giant bucket of filthy Coco Key water being dumped on his white blond mop.

Man what a great day. Good time teaching the boy to face his fear, but damnit if the kids didn’t teach me a lesson too. On our way to the water park the kids began speculating as to which ones of their friends were going to be there. By the time we got there they had no doubt that their friends would appear. I decided not to tell them not to get their hopes up.

On our first walk through the park, we bumped into four of their friends. Blake spent the next few hours chasing around his “ex-girlfriend” and Riley played with an old pre-school friend. Of course friends would show up on a random Tuesday, 30 minutes from home.

I love the optimism my kids have. Riley entered a KCP&L contest last school year. Third place in the city. $50. Duh. Guess the number of gumballs in the jar in the library? They both won for their grade. Riley asked if she could have a bake sale for the first grade for the Haiti earthquake. They turned it into a school-wide sale and raised $2,000. “Daddy you should go on Deal or no Deal so that you can win $1,000,000.”

It’s so cool to watch my kids grow up facing their fears and believing that good things are going to happen. It was the opposite for me. No matter how great people have always told me I am, I’ve always been plagued by self-doubt. So much fear of failure. Fear of rejection.

But, that’s all changing. It’s beginning to sink in. I’ve got so much to give. And if I could just find half the belief in myself that my daughter has in herself I’d be on my way.

Fuck the practical. Fuck the doubt. Why wouldn't stuff work out? Just need to jump in that tunnel, knowing that I’ll have my Shawshank moment on the other side.