Driving Mr. Parks

Much Ado About Deodorant

Very few people can muster up genuine excitement over a stick of deodorant... but one of those people is William T. Parks (shown above - proudly displaying the Adidas symbol imprinted on his deodorant, which, unfortunately, is not clearly visible in the picture).

Yes, Mr. Parks was indeed on Texas soil (visiting from the Land of the Rising Sun); and, for the past two days, I have been his faithful chauffeur. We had many adventures, which included the viewing of 3 movies in 3 separate theaters... the consumption of every heart-clogging menu item available in the area... a scavenger hunt for various items requested by his quirky friends back in Japan... and the seemingly unending quest for memory cards and public restrooms. Let me explain...

Monday morning - Will's mommy leaves him at an Office Depot off of 59 in the morning. I arrive fashionably late to find him entranced by the aquarium screensavers on all of the computer displays (interesting note: the fish in the screensaver are the same ones that you used to have in your aquarium, Oliver - the little pink and yellow one that mysteriously disappeared). Fast forwarding... ate at Texadelphia... watched Lemony Snicket at AMC 30... walked around Galleria (even took the risk of becoming one of the 6 yearly pedestrian fatalities on Westheimer by crossing the street to Barnes & Noble). But, perhaps chronological order is not the best way to describe our adventures.

Let me organize it this way...

Movies watched - Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (AMC 30); The Incredibles (Edwards Grand Palace); Finding Neverland (AMC 24)

Meals consumed - Texadelphia; Bennigan's; Burger King; BW3's

Items we failed to collect on the master scavenger hunt list - black peppercorn; Red Hot Chili Peppers' single; US magazine; ghost that says 'boo'; George Bush doll or cow

We were also on a quest for a 1Gb SD memory card for his brother's mp3 player. This involved going to MicroCenter, Circuit City, Fry's, and two CompUSA's. FYI - in CompUSA's inventory codes... apparently 7 in stock = 0 and 12 in stock = 6.

Finally, our adventure was sprinkled (no pun intended) with frequent stops at various public restrooms. It brought back fond memories of those crazy days at UT where we (Andrew and I) were perpetually waiting for Iris and Will to come out of the restroom.

Ah, good times.

Well, sadly, our trip ended at a BW3's in the Woodlands (suburbia on steroids). We met up with Will's brother, his brother's friend Martha, and his mom (who is extremely cool - how many moms wear red leather, drink Corona, eat blazin' hot wings, cheer emphatically for Michigan State, and can joke around with their kids' friends?).

All in all, a good reunion. It's always nice to know that some things don't change that much (at least while there are no spouses and rugrats involved). A few oceans and a few years are no match for eternal immaturity.