RaisingDad

What's the appeal of cartoons?      Today, my grandson and I decide to relax, so we go into the great room to watch cartoons. We just got back from a pretty busy two days of hiking, camping, and sleeping under the stars, and we were tired from all that good-time-having.      No sooner do we turn the TV on, than it happens. I see the kitchen door open, and in walks my Dad. How did he know? How does he know? Why does he know?      I can hear him as he walks into the room.      Click, click, click! he clicks. Smack, smack, smack! he smacks. Mumble, mumble, mumble! he mumbles.      "Ahhh... ohhh... weee..." he says, as he makes his way to his ( my ) favorite chair. My grandson and I are laying on the floor on some pillows.      My Dad sits down, slowly, making as much noise as a 94 year-old human being can possibly make. Some times I don...

After what seemed like hours of my explaining a pretty bad accident that made the local and national news to my Dad, I asked him: "Dad, what do you think?"      "What do I think about what?"      "About the accident."      "What accident?"      "The accident we were talking about."      "I thought we were talking about dinner."      "No, we were talking about the accident."      "There was an accident?"      "Yeah."      "Did I ever tell you about that time I saw an accident in 1934? Or was it 1984?"      "Dad, we were talking about the accident that made the news. You know, the speeding... the texting."      "You got a text?"      I explain the accident again to him, and, before he can ask me about his bank statement, I ask him,...

My brother asked me, "Just what is a Rolls Royce TV tray?" I told him, if he has to ask, then he can't afford one.      To me, a Rolls Royce of anything means the top of the line of that particular product. For example, I'm the Rolls Royce of all my brothers and sisters. My brother, on the other hand, is more of a Yugo.      Believe it or not, my brother used to drive a Yugo in high school. It belonged to our grandmother, until even she realized what a piece of crap it was, and gave-- GAVE --the car (Technically, it qualified. Barely.) to my Dad.      My Dad, in turn, gave it to my brother, because my Dad--who grew up so poor that, if he hadn't been born a boy, he would not have had anything to play with--was too embarrassed to be seen in an automobile that was one step down from the Flintstone-mobile.      He offered it to me first. I thanked him, and told him I'd rather take the bus. I ...

Looking back at what I've written, there's two things I seem to do a lot of. One is drink coffee, and the other is shop at Costco. The ONE thing I don't seem to do as often as I'd like is get frisky with my wife, but that's neither here nor there. Literally. I don't get frisky here. I don't get frisky there.      "You used to be nicer before we were married," my wife's been known to tell me.      "That's because I used to get lucky more often back then," I've been known to tell her back.      Anyway...      My wife and I were at Costco earlier today. My Dad, for once, wasn't with us. He decided to stay home and turn on all the lights. Myself, I like to wander through the DVDs and CDs and books. I don't necessarily buy anything, but I like to see what's new.      We go up and down the aisles. I'm not particularly interested. My wife is going blah, blah, blah and I'...

My Dad walks out of his little father-in-law house at the front of our property wearing the Senior Citizen Summer Outfit. He walks into the kitchen via the door leading to or from the patio that separates our two homes.      "I'm going for a walk," he lets us know.      I'm sitting at the kitchen table, enjoying a nice hot cup of coffee. I drink it black. I'm not saying I like it black, I'm saying I  drink it black. My brother recently told me that life's too short to drink your coffee black.      "Add some flavored creamer," he told me. "Live a little."      While I like the various flavored creamers--Hazelnut is my favorite--what I don't like are the artificial colorings, flavorings, and sweetener they're made from. It's my honest opinion that my generation is such a young-looking generation, especially compared to what Tom Brokaw calls the greatest generation, because of all the...

I'm ready for a hike.      A hike without water. Across the Mojave Desert. In the middle of summer. I'll start at high noon. I won't take my hat or my sunglasses or my Under Amour t-shirts that make me feel like a superhero because they're so tight. I won't wear my super-duper hiking boots. Instead, I'll wear my 1960's black-cloth Chuck Taylor Converse high-top all-purpose sport shoes.      And nothing else.      Now, why do I want to go on such a hike? Because this morning I walked downstairs, and--you guessed it--all the lights were on. Every frakking light. The TV blasting. My Dad MIA. The only physical trace that he was there were the dirty dishes, cups, utensils, etc. left on the kitchen table.      Okay, I guess I can live with all that. I guess I have to. I get to work turning everything off, and cleaning everything up. My wife's a saint, I've told you that. But I'm not too shabby myself. ...

Today I went downstairs. Here's what I found:   1) All the lights on in the kitchen,   2) All the lights on in the great room, and   3) The television set turned on and blasting away.        My Dad? I'll give him credit, he was sitting in his ( my ) favorite chair... sound asleep! How he could sleep with the TV as loud as it was, I don't know. I couldn't even concentrate from all the racket it was making, and I was upstairs in my bedroom at the far end of the hall.      When my wife and I had this house built, we made it a point to have a father-in-law house built at the front part of our property in case one of our parents needed to move in with us. That was the story I gave my wife. I actually thought it would make a nice office for me. I thought it would give me a place to get away, but be close by. If my wife needed me for chores, I could always hide in one of the closets.   ...

Again I walk into the great room and every darn light is on and the TV is blasting away. Even the kitchen lights are turned on... and it's the middle of the day!      I look for my Dad, and my Dad is MIA.      I turn off all the lights in the kitchen, in the great room, I turn off the TV, and I go back upstairs. An hour later I make my way downstairs. Everything is just the way I left it. The kitchen lights are off. The great room lights are off. The TV is off. Only...      I see my Dad sitting in his ( my ) favorite chair. He's sitting in the relative darkness of the great room. In front of a turned-off TV. I don't know what he's doing, I don't know if he's waiting for my wife to come downstairs and turn on the TV for him and bring him some snacks.      I get a drink from the refrigerator and pretend like I don't see him sitting there. I go back upstairs.      Lest yo...