I’ll leave you in the dust, thank you

Star Beacon

April 09, 2008 05:57 pm

— Having kids isn’t cheap.
If you can get past the hospital bill, there’s clothes, food, diapers, formula, nursery school, you get the idea.
Later there’s band instruments, the orthodontist, car insurance. Hey, I could probably retire today on what we spent on band uniform dry cleaning.
And college. Oh, baby, that doesn’t come cheap. Why, what my kids paid for one book paid for my full college degree! I think.
If you were thinking you were going to save money and have a boatload of rug rats, forget it right now.
But sometimes there is payback. Now I’m a big Rolling Stones fan and a new film about the band came out a week or so ago. It’s directed by Martin Scorsese, one of the big film directors.
Big film, big director. Sounds big, right?
It’s been released in two formats, your normal 35 mm film and in the giant Imax format. Imax is like six stories high. If you’ve seen films at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, you’ve seen Imax.
So naturally, a true-blue Stones fan will want to see it in the biggest format around.
What, you ask, does this have to do with payback from my kids?
Keep reading. It’s Sunday. What else do you have to do?
Son Derek happens to live in Rochester, N.Y.
I have become a firm believer everything has its purpose.
I knew there was an Imax theater in Rochester. I checked the Internet and was blessed to learn the Stones film “Shine A Light” was showing there.
I called Derek and told him the good news. Myself and his mother would be visiting.
I think he or his wife, whom I call the daughter-in-law, were crying. Must be tears of joy.
So anyway, if you’ve ever been to New York state, you know everything costs. Gasoline taxes are sky high, all major roads are tolls. You have to pay deposits on bottles and cans. Fortunately, they haven’t discovered pay toilets yet.
And according to the offspring, property taxes there are closer to what we shell out in mortgage payments.
So naturally, when you hit I-90 going from Pennsylvania to New York, you hit your first toll.
A few years ago, as a Christmas present, Derek and wife Jessica gave us an EasyZPass subscription. A box connects to the windshield on our car and when we hit a toll road, a device there reads the box and records the toll.
Now here’s the best part, the charge goes to son Derek’s account.
So while at one point I cringed at yet another toll road, these days I look forward.
No waiting in lanes with the great masses. I zip into the EasyZPass lane, slow down to 20 miles an hour, get the green light to go and I’m off. Sometimes I call Derek to tell him I cost him more money. Sometimes I just say, “Yeeeeee-haw!”
So think how perfect this is. We get to see the Stones film in Imax, we stay with Derek and he pays our tolls. Jessica even made tacos.
EasyZPass, by the way, has been used recently in divorce cases. Seems some spouses have exited the freeway for extracurricular love and it has been duly recorded by EasyZPass.
So not only does EasyZPass generate revenue, it chronicles where you’ve been and where you shouldn’t be.
It gets better. Our own George Distel, former state representative, is Ohio’s new turnpike commissioner.
He says by the summer of 2009, he plans to have EasyZPass in Ohio.
Imagine, we can zip along the turnpike across Ohio and head for Toledo and the offspring way up in Rochester has to foot the bill.
So if you are ever tooling down the freeway in the Empire State and are slowing down to scramble to find some loose bills and change for the tollbooth, you may hear in the distance a “yeeeee-haw.”
I’ll be leaving you in a cloud of dust while securing another fee for Derek.
And the Stones sang, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” What do they know?
Lebzelter is special sections editor. E-mail him at bobleb@starbeacon.com.

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