What The Flask

In this new year of 2015, I really need to get up to speed with pop culture and all the new local trends. For me not to do so reveals my age, and maybe how out of tune I am with our kids. I literally have become my father, as I can remember a time when our conversations revealed a lack of connection, just like me now and my connection with our 17-year-old daughter.

I remember riding in the car with my dad, and since he was driving, the radio was tuned to his station: talk radio, namely talk show host Tom “Dynamite” Dancer. We kids hated that channel, but my dad would have no part of our music, which, at the time, consisted of tunes that were playing on MTV. He caught glimpses of that show, maybe with Billy Idol or Flock of Seagulls playing, and he would have a fit. I guess every generation has that parental difference with their children.

Fast forward to today, and my lack of connection can be something as simple as a water bottle. Our daughter is on the girls basketball team for her school. Their team is really doing great this season, so I’ve been trying to make all of their games. My wife and I will try to attend them together, but because of work schedules, either I will go or my wife will attend. At least one of us is there for every game. At the last game, which I attended solo, our daughter forgot to take her water bottle, and so she asked me to make one up for her and bring it to the game. Both she and her mother are really hot on a particular type of water bottle known as a Hydro Flask. I didn’t know it at the time, but the Hydro Flask is to water what Keurig is to coffee.

Anyway, I couldn’t find her Hydro Flask, so I filled up the easiest thing I could find, which was an old Hello Kitty thermos. When I showed up at the game and tried to hand her the water bottle, all she could do was utter, “Really?” and then she refused to take it. That was fine with me, for as my Portuguese father-in-law used to say, “mosh vika,” which means “more for me.” After which I took a swig of water, only to find a bunch of kids laughing at me, as here I was, a 56-year-old man, drinking from a Hello Kitty water bottle. I just looked at them and said, “My SpongeBob bottle was dirty.”

rnagasawa@midweek.com