"Well, how did you hurt your back?"
It took a little coaxing, but my Dad was finally starting to believe I wasn't making fun of him.
"Picking weeds," I told him.
"Picking weeds?"
Yeah, picking weeds. I've got to come up with a more exciting story about how I hurt my back.
The guy I told you about, the one who couldn't help me load my cooler onto my truck? He was a Border Patrol agent, and he hurt his back moving the desk in his office.
What a wuss, I used to think. I guess I can't think that any more. (Although I probably will.)
He's been on light duty ever since, and no longer goes out in the field any more. Instead of paying him to be so bored he decided to rearrange his office furniture, our tax dollars are paying him to sit and play solitaire on his computer.
But I digress...
"You look fine to me," my Dad says, settling it.
His attention is immediately diverted when my wife places his breakfast feast in front of him.
It irks me that my wife caters to him so much, but she loves that old guy. I guess that's better than the alternative. She could hate him. It's been known to happen in some families. He could annoy her as much as he annoys me, in which case my life would be an additional circle of Dante's Hell.
My Dad, God bless him, enjoys being served. He thinks he's the alpha god in this household. I see him chowing down on the breakfast my wife just served him.
Maybe he's right.
Two eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast, lightly buttered. Coffee and a glass of orange juice, no pulp. After breakfast, she'll serve him a slice of pie or a pastry, something sweet.
There's a song by Chuck Brodsky, where he sings about how he and his father, ever since he was a little boy, have played Ping-Pong all his life. When he was a boy, his dad would let him win, but every once in a while, he would get in a good shot, just to show that he could.
When the son became a teenager, he started playing for blood. There was nothing he wanted more than to beat his old man, I mean, really beat him. And then came the day when it happened. Both father and son played as hard as they could, neither giving the other an inch. The son wanted to win so bad he could taste the chum in the ocean. The father didn't want to lose, because, well... any man of a certain age understands why.
I remember my Dad once telling me that turning thirty was no big deal. Forty, however, was another matter. When you hit forty, he said, you know that things aren't going to come as easily to you as when you were young.
So when the son won, he whooped and hollered and celebrated, but, as time passed, he discovered it was an empty victory. One that made him feel sad in the deepest part of him.
Things would never be the same
When I learned to beat him at his game
Now we play like gentlemen
Volley back and forth again
Neither of us keeping score
We don't need to any more
Now I don't want to slam at all
Don't want him to have to chase the ball
Let's just keep this thing in play
That's the whole point any way
My Dad's 94 years-old.
I guess I can let him be the alpha dog, if he wants.
Raising My Father
RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com
jimduchene.blogspot.com Fifty Shades of Funny
@JimDuchene
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