Vitamins and Funerals

Well, Oprah was doing a show about a White House intern turned crack addict. Not really my thing, so I had to find something else to watch this morning at 3:30 AM. I considered watching A Bronx Tale in memory of Cody (read below). But, I settled on American Wedding. I watched that for a while before falling asleep.

The reason that A Bronx Tale reminds me of Cody is because of the car door test. For those of you who have never seen the movie, the gangster (Sonny) at one point explains to the teenager (C) about how you can tell the worth of a woman. I can't remember exactly how it was worded, but essentially, you use the car door test. When the guy picks up the girl for a date, he gets out of the car, locks all the doors, and goes to get her. When the two of them return to the car, he unlocks and opens her door. Then, the guy goes around the back of the car to get to his door. If the girl leans over (this was set in the 1950s before power locks) to unlock his door, she's a "good" woman or something like that. Having never seen A Bronx Tale until a couple of years ago, I would not have known about the car door test except for the fact that Cody had told me about it in high school. He told me that he was going to test any potential girlfriends with the car door test. I laughed and told him that it was a silly test, but I never forget it, and always made sure that I unlocked the doors if the situation presented itself. The thing is, any man I've ever met knows about the car door test. I even found a different version call the Barbed Wire Test which I found pretty humorous.

Cody was like that. At his funeral, they had a point where people could come up and say a few words or share a memory about Cody. These were some of my favorites (paraphrased, obviously).

1. A young woman stepped forward and explained that she had driven 6 hours to come to his funeral. She was an ex-girlfriend, she said, and explained how Cody had given her chocolates for Valentine's Day. Later on, he gave her a rock. Told her that it would be something that she could always remember him by. When they broke up, she tried to give him the rock back, but he didn't want it. She then went on the say that she would never forget that day in 3rd grade. She still has the rock.

2. A girl got up to ask it anyone remembered when Cody had just dyed his long hair blond and he convinced three old ladies on the airplane with him that he was Tom Petty's son. Typical Cody.

3. A guy stood up and prefaced what he said with, "I only met Cody a couple of times..." He went on to relate the first time that he met Cody. Cody and his roommates were having a party at their house, and Cody was dressed as Thor. He was saying things like, "Thor needs another beer!" and "Thor requests the pleasure of your company!" One party-goer had the audacity to mention that maybe Thor shouldn't have any more. Cody's response, "You would dare deny Thor another beer!"

4. A friend of ours from high school shared his memory of leaving school for lunch. He started by saying that he had a POS car with a huge back bumper and a hatchback. Someone would always call shotgun (usually my brother). Cody never even tried. "I call hatch!" he would say, and he would ride home hanging onto the bumper (we didn't live that far away) or stuffed in the hatchback (Cody was about 6'3" tall).

5. The first person who got up to speak was a friend of Cody's from high school. This friend, Cody, and another friend had gone to the local livestock arena to ride the bulls. Cody said he wanted to ride a bareback horse. The two friends rode the bulls and were quickly thrown. Cody rode the horse and was barely on it before he was thrown off. He decided that was great fun, but he didn't want to do that again. The friend went on to explain that the horse was older than the arena itself. He was thrown by a geriatric horse.

The funeral was beautiful, and, as expected, I cried through most of it. My brother, his best friend an roommate, was doing better than me. My mother brought 10 Kleenex for us to share. I told her that wasn't going to be nearly enough, but she thought it would be. Then she proceeded to give 2 to my brother. Needless to say, I ran out of Kleenex about halfway through the service which happened to be about the time that they played the video.

Actually, it was more of a slideshow of about 25 pictures with music. Talk about a tear jerker! The pictures that got me the most were the ones with my brother in them (we all grew up together -- any pictures before high school often had my brother in them), one of the first ones that had him about my daughter's age getting a haircut, and the one from my wedding. Our wedding was in Cody's parents' backyard. It was a carefree shot of Cody with a bunch of friends. He had his arm around my brother's shoulders.

Well, I didn't want this to turn into another Cody post, but, as you can see, I'm still working through my own grief and memories, so it did. But, I did have a little story about my daughter as well. She's starting to learn events and consequences.

Last night, she started coughing really bad. The poor thing has allergies, and she always has mucus dripping. I told her that she needed some medicine.

"No." We've been giving her Pediacare since she was born, but we recently switched to the children's rather than the infants. She doesn't like the children's.

"Do you want a vitamin?"

She ran down the hall to the kitchen pointing to the cabinet where we store the vitamins.

"You have to take your medicine first."

"No." The internet does not do justice to the tone she uses when saying this.

"Yes." At this point, I pull out the dropper and start getting her medicine ready. When I'm done, she's nowhere nearby. I look down the hall where she's peeking out from her bedroom.

"Come get your medicine."

"No."

"You have to take your medicine if you want a vitamin. Do you want a vitamin?" Let me just say here that the child lives for vitamins. Absolutely loves them.

She looks at me really carefully and thinks for a minute. "No," she finally says.

"Well, too bad, you're taking your medicine anyway, so you might as well have a vitamin."

She choked down the medicine and then gladly accepted the vitamin.