Nobody said parenting was easy. Late nights, early mornings, heavy car seats, expensive medical bills, uncomfortable conversations . . . yeah, this could go on for a while. And as if providing for their basic needs wasn’t enough, you actually have to keep the little home-invaders entertained! This can be as simple as playing peek-a-boo which can be fun and incredibly cute but starts to lose its shine after the billionth or so cycle. As they grow older, their tastes become more refined; dad making a funny face ain’t gonna cut it anymore. No, they want screens filled with cartoon canines, trips to the zoo, and playground shenanigans that leave mom and dad panting for breath. And if it sounds like I am complaining about, well, being a parent, I guess I kind of am. I love my kids. And engaging with them can be one of the richest, most inexplicable joys of my life. But it can also be soul-sucking, like when they ask to watch Paw Patrol and burst into hysterics when you suggest something else (seriously, Chase can go play fetch on a train track). So finding an activity that I can enjoy with my kids prolongs my life expectancy. And I thought an airshow would be a slam dunk.

Long story short: the airshow was actually a win. Just not as definitive a win as I was expecting. But, seriously, what could go wrong? After all, I am a die-hard airplane nerd. Learning about aircraft, especially military aircraft, just makes me happy for some reason. And my son, being four years old at the time, loved anything that rolled, floated, or flew, a stage that I cannot say I ever entirely grew out of. So when I heard that a whole gaggle of aircraft, including the astounding F-22 Raptor, would be at a local military base for a show, I figured it would be a golden opportunity for some father-son bonding. “Golden” turned out to be a bit too accurate.

We started the day at a 3-year-old’s birthday party (keeping with the theme of things we hate doing but we do for our children). After we had made an appropriate showing and expressed our well-wishes for the birthday boy and our solidarity with his parents (who were also only doing this for their child), my oldest son and I started driving to the air base. Before we got too far, we made a bathroom stop during which my son assured me that he did not need to go potty. And, like an idiot on his first day of parenting, I believed him.

The airshow, it turned out, was a much bigger and more popular deal that we had anticipated. My son and I found ourselves in a traffic jam to get on base that was so terrible that I’m pretty sure time was going backward. We were moving at, if we were lucky, walking pace. And there we stayed for about an hour and a half. During this time, as all but the very densest human beings would have predicted, my son expressed a need to go potty. And I had exactly zero ideas of what to do about that.

“I asked you if you needed to go potty, and you said no. You’re just going to have to hold it.” Yeah, that line wasn’t going to last as long as a four-year-old’s bladder. But I tried. And tried. And tried. Eventually, it dawned on me that we could be in this traffic jam until my four-year-old was a five-year-old, and it was time to start getting creative. And, since we were moving at the approximate speed of a dehydrated snail, I reached back and unfastened the buckles on the car seat. And then . . . I handed my son an empty water bottle and gave him some instructions. The good news was that my son no longer had to go potty. The bad news was that I now had a bottle of urine in my cup holder.

At long last, we made it on base and found a parking space. Having expended a sufficient amount of sanitizer on our hands, we got out of the car and headed for the aircraft. And it was a bit hit or miss. Great father-son moments like taking pictures of my kid with an F-15 Eagle were interspersed with moments of trying to figure out which vendor still actually had food to vend since we were both pretty hungry. My son’s face would light up like a Christmas tree while looking at a plane the size of a city block and then fall when I said we would get to the bouncy castle eventually but not now. But all of that changed when we heard the furious roar of jet engines and the announcer hyping up the crowd for the F-22 Raptor demonstration.

We dropped what we were doing, secured our ear protection, and looked skyward. If you don’t know what an F-22 is, it’s a bit hard to explain. Calling it the Ferrari of military aircraft gives you a bit of a picture. But it’s more than that. It’s a technological quantum leap with wings. It’s a flying Bugatti Chiron so stealthy that it makes Wonder Woman jealous. It’s actually due to be phased out over the next few years because, as far as I can tell, it’s too expensive and not as Bluetooth capable as its younger brother the F-35. Despite this, it is probably the greatest air-superiority fighter ever created. And seeing it in action did not disappoint. Its maneuvers were so radical that even my four-year-old (who thinks nothing of seeing a talking dog driving a police car) wondered what it was doing and how it was possible. In terrestrial terms, imagine a drift car, a drag racer, and a tank that are all the same vehicle. And as my son and I watched in awe, it was all worth it. The traffic jam, the long wait for food, missing parts of the airshow because we were at a birthday party, and, yes, even the bottle of urine. It was all worth it.

We got back in the car and prepared to head home to tell mom and little brother about our adventures. But it wouldn’t be so simple. In fact, with the mass of people who all chose to leave at about the same time we did, it would be an hour before we even got out of the parking lot. And my son needed to go potty again.

Thankfully, there was a bottle in the cup holder for just such an occasion.