My family spent most of Wednesday driving from Denver to Salt Lake City, where our son, Gabe, hopes to be one of a handful of players who is chosen to represent USA Hockey’s Rocky Mountain District on the national team this summer. It was a long drive — about 10 hours — and I’d like to be able to report that we discussed hockey or history or geology or religion or almost anything meaningful along the way.

Instead, there wasn’t much talk at all — Kerry and I were very tired, our daughter, Lindy, watched movies on a portable DVD player, and Gabe is 14-years-old, which means he keeps to himself much of the time because we’re old and boring and useless and ruining his life, except of course when it comes to supplying him with food, scratching his back or helping him solve complicated math problems. What little talk there was seemed to center on Gabe’s urinary and alimentary tracts, which is a polite way of saying that we talked about pee and poop, or bodily functions related to pee and poop. I am half British and more than half squeamish, and therefore generally opposed to talking about pee and poop, subjects that not only seem impolite, but downright disgusting. Nevertheless, here’s a sampling of several of our longer conversations while riding inside the protective cocoon of the Toyota mini-van:

Exchange #1

Mom: “Gabe, please don’t fart in the car again.”

Son Gabe: “It wasn’t me, it was Lindy.”

Daughter Lindy,sighing heavily: “It was Gabe.”

Mom: “Gabe, knock it off.”

Gabe: “Ha, ha, ha, ha. That was a good one.”

Dad: “Oh, Dear God, I can’t breathe. That can’t be good for you. That’s toxic.”

Mom: “Gabe, I mean it, stop it.”

Gabe: “Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

Exchange #2

Gabe, at the rest stop: “I just peed like a hillbilly.”

Dad: “What’s peeing like hillbilly?”

Gabe: “I just peed for like 2 minutes, and I wasn’t holding back or anything. I mean I peed a lot for two whole minutes straight. Some guys in there were sort of freaked out.”

Dad: “Why is that peeing like a hillbilly? Do hillbillies pee a lot? I’ve never heard that before.”

Gabe: “I don’t know. It’s just something I say. I peed a lot. I mean A LOT.”

Dad: “OK.”

Exchange #3

Gabe, after lunch at  Qdoba’s Mexican restaurant:  ”That was amazing!”

Dad: “What, your burrito? What did you have?”

Gabe: “No, not the burrito. It was the Humpty Dumpty.”

Dad, fearfully: “What’s a Humpty Dumpty?  Did you break something in the restaurant?”

Gabe: “No. You know. When I was in the bathroom. I did a Humpty Dumpty. Humpty DUMPty! Ha, ha, ha, ha!”

Dad: “Oh. That’s WAY too much information for me, but I’m very happy for you.”

Gabe: “It was amazing! You should have seen it. I think my butt’s demon possessed. Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

Dad: “Alrighty, then.”

I could go on — he did — but I think you probably get the idea, which is about as uncomplicated as concepts get. I’m still a little horrified and shocked that I spent an entire day in the van with my family and came away with the scant — perhaps I should say scat — knowledge that my son thinks his butt might be Beezelbub’s home.

To be honest, though, I’m worried that he might be right. Given the air quality in the mini-van for most of the trip, the horned one definitely could be living in his colon. I probably ought to call an exorcist as soon as possible — certainly before we drive back — because I don’t believe that what his intestines did to that burrito was normal. My eyes are still burning two days later.

My wonderful neices, Kenzie and Kodie, wrote some terrific tongue twisters last week that I thought you might enjoy. Here, unedited, they are:

TANGY TERRIFIC TONGUE-TWISTERS

B

Bed, Bath and Beyond bodies bathe beautiful belugas bouncing about on Bouncy Beluga Bubble Street.

Bear Ball Bob Beth bathes beautiful beds in Buzurk Breezier Barney Towne. Bear Bob Beth Ball befriends bobagonush’s best buddy, Bubuh Bubuh Bryan from Boise who blesses Bronte, his beloved bra baby wearing banana bubble butt bikini bottom Blake Break bumble, bumble.

 T

Trendy Trixy tries to tantalize terrific tires, now Tom teases Trixy for her tasteless tonsils. Tara wears a turquoise tutu in translation class while she produces teal turds in the toilet. Tim tears tulips in terrendis tasty tea. Tiny Tawny teapots take over Tritoaci tand land trying to tarender.  

C

Cwick cat counts crazy crumbs combing cittens’ countless hairs on their confused carcasses on Colorado cit-cats.

G

Gabe, the Ga-nome, Ga-nat, and the Ga-new grosses George in Georgia with Georgeea grabbing great, great, great, great, great grandpa goose saying goble, goble. We’re the gostal goobers. We like ganastic glazes, spoke in Glapeneeze. I ga-know it might sound ga-nonsense, but gaba gaba in Gieco green! It may sound ga-nold fashion but glare around Georgens you’re glaring at the gesture!!!

L

Lame Larry lays lacks of yellow leather on Lacey’s long lawn. Lacey laughs loudly at Larry’s lame liracs that Lame Larry left on the yellow leathers left leg.

F  

Freaky Frank feeds Forgotten Foreign Flordian fountains in the Arvada fast food “Fried Friendly Fred” for Friday flowers in France. A friendly fairy decided to fairly free these Forgotten Foreign Flordian fountains in their foax folks famine of Fairbanks, Alaska. Freely, these Foreign Flordian fountains flow fantastically forgotten feeding on “Fried Friendly Freds French Fries”. And they haven’t found their friendly fairy, Fan Fanny Frenzy Fandana of Freaky Frank’s Friday, filmed in France.

A

Aunt Arvada always appreciates apples on occasional vacations.  Ardvarks antlers and ABC’s avocados in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, and Arkansas ate apricot- mangoes and awesome awes jaws at maw’s,  pa’s and aunts angry accessories shaw staw straw shop ontawp of an oblivious actor and actress of Arizona and, and, and, and, and a, a, a, a, a at an awesome acre up in Alabama and Delaware.

E

Everybody enjoys everyday ensembles at Evergreen Elementary Ellie Avalanche eels School. Eyes enlarge everyone’s easy abilities to engrace embrace embarrassing emails to eat elephants entirely extra extordinary ebany ebay of eyelashes.

IT’S SAD SO YOU MAY BE TEERING UP BUT IT IS THE END OF OUR TANGY TERRIFIC TOUGUE TWISTERS!!

Editors can be irritatting. I mean, irritating. Good catch, spell chequer.

One problem with editors is that they hate it when you mix your metaphors or dangle your participles. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like dangling my participles, either — it’s uncomfortable and can be embarrassing if you’re caught doing it in public. But I believe the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees journalists the right to freedom of expression. If writers want to dangle their participles or, even weirder, split their infinitives (ouch!), I say let them. Nobody’s forcing us to read that crap.

Another problem with editors is that they’re sticklers for staying on topic. Let’s say you’re writing a story about federal income taxes. Naturally, your mind starts to wander. Before you know it, you’ve completely forgotten where you are, let alone that you’re supposed to be writing about an obscure clause in the tax code that allows Alaskan whaling captains to take a $10,000 deduction for the money they spend fixing their boats and buying equipment. The clause was slipped into the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 by then-Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, which is not only home to a lot of unemployed moose, but also, apparently, whalers who need financial assistance.

Whaling is really interesting compared to federal income taxes or even writing. Recently, instead of doing something productive like studying little-known passages of the tax code to figure out how to save money on my taxes, I read an entire book about the true story that inspired Herman Melville to write his classic, Moby Dick. I enjoyed the book a lot. Not Moby Dick — it’s way too long and ponderous for me. I mean the other book, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathanial Philbrick. I highly recommend it if you don’t have a queasy stomach.

There’s a good reason why you need to be highly vomit resistant if you decide to read Philbrick’s book.

In it, I learned that whaling was the messiest, slimiest, smelliest job in the world. It involved traveling long distances on the open sea to catch whales, then lifting their carcasses onto your boat, and carving them up and boiling the fat to make oil.

I also learned that in the olden days whales could sink whaleships. A huge, really pissed-off whale with a skull like a battering ram did it in 1821, which is how a bunch of unlucky sailors ended up floating around on the ocean in small, leaky boats for so long that they had to eat some of their shipmates in order to survive. Philbrick devotes entire pages to describing how these unfortunate whalers were forced to suck the marrow out of cracked sailor-bones or slice up rotting sailor-flesh and wash it down with their own sailor-urine. This was even grosser than reading the parts about slicing and dicing whales to make oil, and I strongly recommend that you don’t read the book while you’re eating something with a lot of sinew and fat, like roasted chicken or pickled pig’s feet. Actually, no book is well-suited to eating to pickled pig’s feet, in my opinion, but I’m sure you get my point.

Reflecting on Philbrick’s book now, I feel really sorry for the person who had to edit it. Editors may be irritating, but that had to be an unusually difficult job. For one thing, the book contained a lot of old-fashioned, Nantuckett-style language that must have required a lot of tedious spell checking. I don’t even want to know where you get a 200-year-old dictionary to do that work. I’ll also bet the editor wasn’t too happy about being required to read and re-read all those nasty passages about whale slaughtering and sailor-cannibalism. Plus, I’ll bet the editor had to constantly worry about what that prankster Philbrick was up to. I could easily see a writer like him trying to pull a huge practical joke on his readers by sneaking in a quick-and-easy recipe for making soup out of sailors’ dangling participles.

Whaling, like editing, can be a messy business.

My neices drew these self portraits on our message board with dry erase markers. Kodie, 8, is on the left. Kenzie, 11, is on the right.

My nieces, 11-year-old Kenzie and 8-year-old Kodie, are two of the funniest, smartest, cutest girls I know. They spent the night at our house Friday night while their mom and dad enjoyed a night out at the Macaroni Grill. We opted for one of our family’s favorite joints, Johnny’s New York-style pizza.

I don’t know why, but I was surprised to see that Kenzie’s slice was sprinkled with parmesan cheese.

“Did you put parmesan on your pizza?” I asked.

“Yes, there was a snowstorm on Pizza Island,” Kenzie said, laughing loudly (she says she was laughing like a thunderstorm!).

I laughed out loud, too. And this is just one more reason why I love my nieces.

How would you like to get crushed by Rob Blake's ass? Not very much, thank you.

One of the things I like most about hockey is that there’s always a chance somebody will get their nose bloodied. I’m not a violent person, I just think most non-contact sports are boring.

Soccer, for example, is a civilized sport with very little physical contact, unless you count it when a goalie jams a finger trying to stop a ball or when a mid-fielder’s teammates pat him on the hieny after he scores. Soccer’s as dull as watching grass grow.  In fact, last time I was at a soccer game, I swear I not only saw the grass growing, I heard it growing. Maybe it was just the gin and tonics playing tricks on me, but I would be willing to testify in a court of law that millions of blades of grass were making that stretchy, squeaky, whiny, rubbery noise plants make when they’re growing. I’m sure you know exactly what I mean — unless you’re hard of hearing, because while it’s a distinct noise, it’s not very loud.

Hockey is action-packed by contrast. Once, for example, I was watching a game with Rob Blake on defense. He had a microphone in his helmet so the audience could listen in as he crushed opponents with his ass. In case you’re not familiar with Blake, he’s about 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 225 pounds, at least 175 pounds of it centered in his giant buttocks. Blake owes most of his career’s success to his rear end, which is sort of like an incomprehensible new life form that Capt. Kirk might have encountered while exploring a distant, ass-shaped moon on TV’s Star Trek.

What’s amazing about Blake’s ass is that it apparently has psychic abilities allowing it to predict where opponents are going to be, and then back into them at just the right second to deliver devastating, disorienting blows with its monstrous pillows of pain. In this game, you could literally hear every last micro-liter of life-giving oxygen being squeezed out of his opponents’ bodies as they collapsed to the ice gasping for air. I re-wound the ol’ Tivo about 10 times every time Blake’s ass went to work in that game, and it was both frightening and awesome to behold. If you ask me, Blake’s ass should be awarded its own honorary Stanley Cup. It could sit on the pedestal right next to the one Rob earned in 2001 while playing with the Colorado Avalanche.

I know that some people disagree with me about most non-contact sports being boring. I’m not backing down, however. I’d even be willing to put my nose at risk of being bloodied to defend my position – but only if Rob Blake’s ass is there to back me up.