Saturday afternoon, my good friend, Peter Klett, drove up from Brentwood with his son, Cort, who was born about three weeks after John Patrick. Earlier in the week, Pete had mentioned he and Cort would like to join me on my regular Saturday afternoon neighborhood stroll with John Patrick.
By way of background information, Pete and I have been close friends for a long time. We played City League softball together for several years and played against each other in the Nashville Bar Association softball league for just as long. I was in Pete's wedding when he married his wife, Charity. Actually, Pete set Jude and I up for our first date more than ten years ago, back when she was working at his law firm, but that's another story.
We have a lot in common, Pete and I, because we're both first time fathers and we're both old as the dinosaurs. Pete is 46 years old and I, of course, just turned 42. In a strange twist, when Pete's wife, Charity, went into labor and delivered Cort at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, they ended up in the same hospital room Jude, John Patrick and I had been in, three weeks earlier. Seriously.
It's been fun for us to compare notes, as we both struggle to learn what in the hell we're supposed to do, day in and day out, as first time fathers. It's been helpful, as well, since we're such good friends and we're going through so many of the same things at the same time in our lives (notwithstanding the fact that Pete is A LOT older than me).
Pete and Cort arrived at the house at 2 p.m. Saturday afternoon. At what was probably the hottest time of the hottest and most humid day of the year in Nashville, we hit the sidewalk rolling, each with our son in his respective stroller. As we strolled up 10th Avenue, Pete joked that people in passing cars probably thought it was nice that two grandfathers were out for a walk with their grandsons.
After a walk of about a mile in stifling heat, we arrived at our destination -12 South Taproom and Grill - a veritable oasis in the urban desert. There, we bellied up to the bar, which was nearly empty on a lazy Saturday afternoon, and had a couple of "popsicles," while our sons slept peacefully in their strollers. Pete prefers domestic "popsicles," while I'm a little more partial to the imported variety.
As we sat at the bar and chatted, our friend and fellow lawyer, Dwayne Barrett, stopped in for a sandwich. Dwayne has two sons of his own and, being the experienced father that he is, seemed to get a good laugh out of our struggles. At one point, as Pete was giving Cort a bottle and telling a story, Dwayne reached over and gently nudged the bottle a little higher, so Cort would get more milk and less air.
It's always nice to have a veteran to help the rookies learn how the game is played, once you actually make it to the big leagues.
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