My father continues to complain about his dentist.
He was telling my wife that he wants a new dentist. He's only been going to this one for decades, but, besides feeling that this one takes his money when he's not looking, he is positive that he has also screwed up one of his teeth. Once my father gets something in his brain, that's all he thinks about.
The problem is this, my father has one tooth that he fiddless with all the time. I'm talking about ALL the time. He pokes at it with tooth picks, flosses it, pokes at it with his fingers, and then complains to us that it hurts.
My father is closer to being 100-years-old than 90. I don't know how many times I've felt like telling him, "Dad, your teeth are about to celebrate their centennial. Be happy you still have them." I should also tell him to quit gargling with his tea before drinking it, but my wife says I should just mind my own business.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine is adding some personal aggravation to my life. Well, he's not really a friend, he's more of a co-worker. An EX-co-worker. We're both retired from the same company, but I can't say we were ever buddies. I'm not the only one who feels that way. He wasn't well-liked by most of the people he worked with, and that hasn't changed since he's retired. Once a month, some of us retirees get together for breakfast or lunch. It's always the first Friday of the month. The last time we got together, I invited him along.
I was gently asked not to invite him again.
He's a funny guy, but he is c-h-e-a-p! Jack Benny cheap. When his wife turned 60, their children wanted to throw her a party and were mad at my buddy--their dad-- because he didn't want to chip in.
When he was complaining to me about it, he said, "I told them, 'Hey! I'M not the one throwing her a party. Why should I have to chip in?'" While he may have had a point, the right thing for him to do would have been to put up his share, even if it was just for his kid's sake.
"You're right," I told him, just so I could change the subject to something where I could end the sentence with, "See you later."
He must get it from his father.
Once--many, many moons ago--my buddy asked me to help him with a fence he was repairing on some rental property he owned. His father was also helping him, so I thought, "Why not?" While it sounded like work, it also sounded like fun.
"What the heck," I thought, "at least I'll get a free meal out of it."
I mean, who asks someone to work for them and doesn't pay them back with some suds and sandwiches? As it turned out, not only did I work for free, but when we were done we went to a restaurant afterward and my buddy asked for separate checks.
I found out later that his father charged him $10 an hour.
Which is a long way to tell you that last year, my son-in-law tried to start his own construction company. Everyone tried to talk him out of it, but a man's got to do what a man's got to do. If there's one thing I've learned in life it's that the more people try to talk someone out of a bad idea, the more determined that someone is to do it.
In my own personal experience I know that when I was a kid, I never cared to listen to anything my Dad wanted to tell me. I knew everything, so what could he teach me? It's amazing that the older I got, the smarter he got.
Still, my son-in-law is young. He has time to fail and bounce back. His father, on the other hand, is old and broke, and that's who my son-in-law decided to go into business with. Besides some blue-collar know-how and a construction license with a low number, his father has nothing to indicate he was someone you would want to be tied to financially.
I told my son-in-law to go into it slowly. Have a game plan. Some money in savings. All that stuff. I--as a man who has made a lot of money and, I'll admit, has also lost a lot of money--do have a little knowledge about life and finances. But my son-in-law--being 30, still young enough to believe in his dad--did what his father told him was a great opportunity.
This is the same father who, after inheriting over $3,000,000 and several houses when his parents died, squandered it all, and now has to live with my daughter, her husband, and their son. The father's only income is supplied by Social Security and the only thing he owns is a truck. He has no more, and he has no less.
How does this connect with my cheap buddy I was telling you about earlier? Well, while he was still working, my buddy began buying rental property. He could afford it from all the money he saved not paying for birthday parties for his wife. The thing about owning rental property is, when something breaks, you have to fix it. And my buddy was one who would always look for the cheapest solution to any problem.
That's where my son-in-law comes in. Starting a new business, he and his father were willing to work cheap. Using my connection with my buddy, my son-in-law and his father did jobs for him as he needed them. They would also get their own jobs, make their own deals, and do their own stuff. This went on for about four or five months.
One day, my buddy hires them to install a floor for a very nice lady. When they were done, she seemed very happy with the work they did, signed off on it, and had no problem paying my buddy. My buddy, in turn, paid my son-in-law, who then gave his dad his share of the profits. In the meantime, my buddy continued to call them for other work.
Sixteen days after they installed the floor, my buddy calls my son-in-law and tells him that the very nice lady is now not so nice and not so happy with the work they did.
They go back and forth, back and forth about it. Blah, blah, blah this. Blah, blah, blah that. My son-in-law tells my buddy that he will redo the whole floor... but not for free. Free is what my buddy wants. My son-in-law tells my buddy that the lady was happy sixteen days ago. What's changed since then?
Well, my buddy "hees" and "haws" and "therefores" and "woebegons" and things went down hill after that. My buddy would only say that thing's weren't right, but he wouldn't say exactly what it was that wasn't right. Even more than that, he couldn't explain why was it right sixteen days ago, but not why it wasn't right now.
In the end, my buddy tells my son-in-law that the customer is always right, but the truth is, for my buddy, the customer is always right as long as it doesn't cost him any money. He tells my son-in-law that he is going to advise the nice lady to go after my son-in-law's bond. A bond, in the state where I live, is like insurance, but a kind of screwy insurance. When my son-in-law got the bond, he and his father signed it, assuming nothing would go wrong. Nothing wrong with assuming, but you know what they say, "When you assume, forget that making an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me' stuff, sooner or later you're going to get screwed."
Weeks later, my son-in-law and his father got a letter from the bond company. Basically, the very nice lady was filing a not so nice complaint against the work they did. It went back and forth, back and forth--yadda yadda this, yadda yadda that--and ended with my buddy throwing my son-in-law under the bus. To make matters worse, my buddy even wrote the bond company a letter on behalf of the unhappy customer.
My buddy did what he had to do, right or wrong (mainly wrong) to clear himself of any responsibility or wrongdoing in the matter. In the letter, he wrote a lot of stuff against my son-in-law and his father. Some of it was true, and some of it wasn't (mainly wasn't).
Personally, I never saw the work that was done, but my son-in-law had the foresight to take pictures of the finished job. (You're welcome, America.) I saw those pictures and it appeared to be a good job. Everyone was happy for the sixteen days prior, so I really can't say what happened to change that nice lady's mind, because I don't know. In a court of law, I would be useless. In politics, I could be president.
As far as I'm concerned, bond insurance is a rip-off, but it's needed in my state. How it works is this: you make monthly payments to the bond company. If a customer doesn't like the work you've done, they file a case against your bond company. Now, this is were it gets iffy: any expenses that the bond company incurs investigating the complaint is paid by the holder, in this case my son-in-law. In other words, anyone they hire to go inspect the work, write the reports, pad their expense account, the holder has to pay for it. If the bond company finds that there is, in fact, a problem with the quality of the job done, they will pay the customer what they think is fair and the holder has to reimburse the bond company all of that money. The bond company is final word. Like my wife. They're also like our government, in the sense that they're never out any of their own money.
Sure, you could try taking the bond company to court, but their lawyer will just show the judge the document you've signed agreeing to pay for any and all of the bond company's expenses EVEN if they are in the wrong.
They never lose.
During the bond company's investigation, my buddy tells the investigators some truths and some lies (mainly lies). On and on, back and forth, Kay and Peele.
The more I hear about it, the more it seems to me that the very nice lady just wants the job done for free. She told my buddy that she did not like the space between the tiles and wants it all replaced. She told the investigators that my son-in-law only showed her three different samples and should have shown her more. My son-in-law's arguments were that she never asked to see any more samples, was happy with the spacing between the tile when she was signing off on the job. She paid her bill without complaint, and was living in the house for the week the job took to get done and not once did she complain about anything.
Sixteen days later, she wants it redone.
The company found my son-in-law and his father at fault, and the judgement went against them. The bond company mainly based their finding on my buddy's letter and testimony. If he had just kept quiet or stayed out of it, or backed up his employees, perhaps my son-in-law would have had a better shot, but that's neither here nor there. Well, it's less here and more over there as they now have to pay the bond company various fines and other costs.
Like most broke people, my son-in-law's father has all kinds of suggestions for how to get out of it. He wants his son to file bankruptcy, to sign his (my son-in-law's) house over to his (the broke father's) girlfriend, or...
...to not do anything.
"Let them come after you," he told my son-in-law. "They can't get blood from a rock."
All this advice, coming from a 63-year-old grown man who lost several houses and several million dollars, and is now forcing his grandson out of his room because if he didn't live with my daughter and her husband, he'd be homeless.
I once asked my daughter, "Why doesn't he just move in with his girlfriend?"
"Because she's not family, so she doesn't have to take him in," my daughter answered discreetly. She's a wise one, my little girl. Just like her dad.
About what was going on with the bond company, I told my daughter for her to tell her husband to suck it up and do what has to be done. I told her that from what I've heard so far, her husband's father was not looking out for them.
"He's got nothing, so he has nothing to lose," I told her. "He can live in a park if he has to. If they take away your house, where are you and the baby going to live?"
They could live with me, it they had to, but I didn't tell her that because it would just give her father-in-law another great idea.
Now, I know nothing about construction, but with all this brouhaha going on, I'm learning. So I thought the advice I gave her was sound, both for her family and her finances. Sometimes you just have to take the hit so you don't take a bigger hit down the line.
What I found funny is that her husband--a good guy-- told her, "You should have waited to tell your Dad. My Dad and I are trying to work it out."
My daughter told her husband, "It's not a hard question on whose advice to take. Do we take your dad's advice or do we take my dad's advice. Since my Dad doesn't live with us, I say he must have some good advice."
That's why she's my favorite.
Unless my other kids are reading this.
When my son-in-law's father received his inheritance he bought motorcycles, antique cars, two houses in Las Vegas, and two in the county where I live, which is a prosperous county, judging by my property taxes. Now, what does anyone need with four houses? He used that inheritance to travel all over the world and spent, spent, spent it all with his second wife, Mrs. Arm Candy. The story behind this story is that he left his first wife for a female cliche who was really only after his money. She did the same thing to a friend of my son-in-law's father.
After spending all of this friend's money, she left him and hooked my son-in-law's father like a guppy when he suddenly became "rich." Unfortunately, after my son-in-law's father went broke as well from trying to please her, she dumped him.
Now, three million dollars is a lot of money, but it's not A LOT of money. It's a lot of money if you're smart, but it's not a lot if you let your Anthony Weiner lead you around. I told my daughter that if it had been me, I could have lived off of the interest.
Besides all that, before moving in with my daughter and her family, my son-in-law's father borrowed money from them. He needed six thousand dollars.
"I don't have six thousand dollars," my son-in-law told him.
His father's great idea was for my son-in-law--his son--to cash in a Life Insurance Policy that his grandparents (The dead ones with the three million dollars they were able to leave to their son. I bet they also had some good advice to give when they were alive.) had gotten for him.
Did my son-in-law do it? Did he cash in a Life Insurance Policy that should have been saved for his wife and kids?
Let's just say that my son-in-law feels sorry for his dad.
If any of my kids ever felt sorry for me in that way, I'd ask my wife to shoot me.
In the meantime, my daughter had another baby--a girl, this time--and that baby has to sleep with her parents because her grandfather--the broke one--doesn't seem to be leaving any time soon.
He was telling my wife that he wants a new dentist. He's only been going to this one for decades, but, besides feeling that this one takes his money when he's not looking, he is positive that he has also screwed up one of his teeth. Once my father gets something in his brain, that's all he thinks about.
The problem is this, my father has one tooth that he fiddless with all the time. I'm talking about ALL the time. He pokes at it with tooth picks, flosses it, pokes at it with his fingers, and then complains to us that it hurts.
My father is closer to being 100-years-old than 90. I don't know how many times I've felt like telling him, "Dad, your teeth are about to celebrate their centennial. Be happy you still have them." I should also tell him to quit gargling with his tea before drinking it, but my wife says I should just mind my own business.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine is adding some personal aggravation to my life. Well, he's not really a friend, he's more of a co-worker. An EX-co-worker. We're both retired from the same company, but I can't say we were ever buddies. I'm not the only one who feels that way. He wasn't well-liked by most of the people he worked with, and that hasn't changed since he's retired. Once a month, some of us retirees get together for breakfast or lunch. It's always the first Friday of the month. The last time we got together, I invited him along.
I was gently asked not to invite him again.
He's a funny guy, but he is c-h-e-a-p! Jack Benny cheap. When his wife turned 60, their children wanted to throw her a party and were mad at my buddy--their dad-- because he didn't want to chip in.
When he was complaining to me about it, he said, "I told them, 'Hey! I'M not the one throwing her a party. Why should I have to chip in?'" While he may have had a point, the right thing for him to do would have been to put up his share, even if it was just for his kid's sake.
"You're right," I told him, just so I could change the subject to something where I could end the sentence with, "See you later."
He must get it from his father.
Once--many, many moons ago--my buddy asked me to help him with a fence he was repairing on some rental property he owned. His father was also helping him, so I thought, "Why not?" While it sounded like work, it also sounded like fun.
"What the heck," I thought, "at least I'll get a free meal out of it."
I mean, who asks someone to work for them and doesn't pay them back with some suds and sandwiches? As it turned out, not only did I work for free, but when we were done we went to a restaurant afterward and my buddy asked for separate checks.
I found out later that his father charged him $10 an hour.
Which is a long way to tell you that last year, my son-in-law tried to start his own construction company. Everyone tried to talk him out of it, but a man's got to do what a man's got to do. If there's one thing I've learned in life it's that the more people try to talk someone out of a bad idea, the more determined that someone is to do it.
In my own personal experience I know that when I was a kid, I never cared to listen to anything my Dad wanted to tell me. I knew everything, so what could he teach me? It's amazing that the older I got, the smarter he got.
Still, my son-in-law is young. He has time to fail and bounce back. His father, on the other hand, is old and broke, and that's who my son-in-law decided to go into business with. Besides some blue-collar know-how and a construction license with a low number, his father has nothing to indicate he was someone you would want to be tied to financially.
I told my son-in-law to go into it slowly. Have a game plan. Some money in savings. All that stuff. I--as a man who has made a lot of money and, I'll admit, has also lost a lot of money--do have a little knowledge about life and finances. But my son-in-law--being 30, still young enough to believe in his dad--did what his father told him was a great opportunity.
This is the same father who, after inheriting over $3,000,000 and several houses when his parents died, squandered it all, and now has to live with my daughter, her husband, and their son. The father's only income is supplied by Social Security and the only thing he owns is a truck. He has no more, and he has no less.
How does this connect with my cheap buddy I was telling you about earlier? Well, while he was still working, my buddy began buying rental property. He could afford it from all the money he saved not paying for birthday parties for his wife. The thing about owning rental property is, when something breaks, you have to fix it. And my buddy was one who would always look for the cheapest solution to any problem.
That's where my son-in-law comes in. Starting a new business, he and his father were willing to work cheap. Using my connection with my buddy, my son-in-law and his father did jobs for him as he needed them. They would also get their own jobs, make their own deals, and do their own stuff. This went on for about four or five months.
One day, my buddy hires them to install a floor for a very nice lady. When they were done, she seemed very happy with the work they did, signed off on it, and had no problem paying my buddy. My buddy, in turn, paid my son-in-law, who then gave his dad his share of the profits. In the meantime, my buddy continued to call them for other work.
Sixteen days after they installed the floor, my buddy calls my son-in-law and tells him that the very nice lady is now not so nice and not so happy with the work they did.
They go back and forth, back and forth about it. Blah, blah, blah this. Blah, blah, blah that. My son-in-law tells my buddy that he will redo the whole floor... but not for free. Free is what my buddy wants. My son-in-law tells my buddy that the lady was happy sixteen days ago. What's changed since then?
Well, my buddy "hees" and "haws" and "therefores" and "woebegons" and things went down hill after that. My buddy would only say that thing's weren't right, but he wouldn't say exactly what it was that wasn't right. Even more than that, he couldn't explain why was it right sixteen days ago, but not why it wasn't right now.
In the end, my buddy tells my son-in-law that the customer is always right, but the truth is, for my buddy, the customer is always right as long as it doesn't cost him any money. He tells my son-in-law that he is going to advise the nice lady to go after my son-in-law's bond. A bond, in the state where I live, is like insurance, but a kind of screwy insurance. When my son-in-law got the bond, he and his father signed it, assuming nothing would go wrong. Nothing wrong with assuming, but you know what they say, "When you assume, forget that making an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me' stuff, sooner or later you're going to get screwed."
Weeks later, my son-in-law and his father got a letter from the bond company. Basically, the very nice lady was filing a not so nice complaint against the work they did. It went back and forth, back and forth--yadda yadda this, yadda yadda that--and ended with my buddy throwing my son-in-law under the bus. To make matters worse, my buddy even wrote the bond company a letter on behalf of the unhappy customer.
My buddy did what he had to do, right or wrong (mainly wrong) to clear himself of any responsibility or wrongdoing in the matter. In the letter, he wrote a lot of stuff against my son-in-law and his father. Some of it was true, and some of it wasn't (mainly wasn't).
Personally, I never saw the work that was done, but my son-in-law had the foresight to take pictures of the finished job. (You're welcome, America.) I saw those pictures and it appeared to be a good job. Everyone was happy for the sixteen days prior, so I really can't say what happened to change that nice lady's mind, because I don't know. In a court of law, I would be useless. In politics, I could be president.
As far as I'm concerned, bond insurance is a rip-off, but it's needed in my state. How it works is this: you make monthly payments to the bond company. If a customer doesn't like the work you've done, they file a case against your bond company. Now, this is were it gets iffy: any expenses that the bond company incurs investigating the complaint is paid by the holder, in this case my son-in-law. In other words, anyone they hire to go inspect the work, write the reports, pad their expense account, the holder has to pay for it. If the bond company finds that there is, in fact, a problem with the quality of the job done, they will pay the customer what they think is fair and the holder has to reimburse the bond company all of that money. The bond company is final word. Like my wife. They're also like our government, in the sense that they're never out any of their own money.
Sure, you could try taking the bond company to court, but their lawyer will just show the judge the document you've signed agreeing to pay for any and all of the bond company's expenses EVEN if they are in the wrong.
They never lose.
During the bond company's investigation, my buddy tells the investigators some truths and some lies (mainly lies). On and on, back and forth, Kay and Peele.
The more I hear about it, the more it seems to me that the very nice lady just wants the job done for free. She told my buddy that she did not like the space between the tiles and wants it all replaced. She told the investigators that my son-in-law only showed her three different samples and should have shown her more. My son-in-law's arguments were that she never asked to see any more samples, was happy with the spacing between the tile when she was signing off on the job. She paid her bill without complaint, and was living in the house for the week the job took to get done and not once did she complain about anything.
Sixteen days later, she wants it redone.
The company found my son-in-law and his father at fault, and the judgement went against them. The bond company mainly based their finding on my buddy's letter and testimony. If he had just kept quiet or stayed out of it, or backed up his employees, perhaps my son-in-law would have had a better shot, but that's neither here nor there. Well, it's less here and more over there as they now have to pay the bond company various fines and other costs.
Like most broke people, my son-in-law's father has all kinds of suggestions for how to get out of it. He wants his son to file bankruptcy, to sign his (my son-in-law's) house over to his (the broke father's) girlfriend, or...
...to not do anything.
"Let them come after you," he told my son-in-law. "They can't get blood from a rock."
All this advice, coming from a 63-year-old grown man who lost several houses and several million dollars, and is now forcing his grandson out of his room because if he didn't live with my daughter and her husband, he'd be homeless.
I once asked my daughter, "Why doesn't he just move in with his girlfriend?"
"Because she's not family, so she doesn't have to take him in," my daughter answered discreetly. She's a wise one, my little girl. Just like her dad.
About what was going on with the bond company, I told my daughter for her to tell her husband to suck it up and do what has to be done. I told her that from what I've heard so far, her husband's father was not looking out for them.
"He's got nothing, so he has nothing to lose," I told her. "He can live in a park if he has to. If they take away your house, where are you and the baby going to live?"
They could live with me, it they had to, but I didn't tell her that because it would just give her father-in-law another great idea.
Now, I know nothing about construction, but with all this brouhaha going on, I'm learning. So I thought the advice I gave her was sound, both for her family and her finances. Sometimes you just have to take the hit so you don't take a bigger hit down the line.
What I found funny is that her husband--a good guy-- told her, "You should have waited to tell your Dad. My Dad and I are trying to work it out."
My daughter told her husband, "It's not a hard question on whose advice to take. Do we take your dad's advice or do we take my dad's advice. Since my Dad doesn't live with us, I say he must have some good advice."
That's why she's my favorite.
Unless my other kids are reading this.
When my son-in-law's father received his inheritance he bought motorcycles, antique cars, two houses in Las Vegas, and two in the county where I live, which is a prosperous county, judging by my property taxes. Now, what does anyone need with four houses? He used that inheritance to travel all over the world and spent, spent, spent it all with his second wife, Mrs. Arm Candy. The story behind this story is that he left his first wife for a female cliche who was really only after his money. She did the same thing to a friend of my son-in-law's father.
After spending all of this friend's money, she left him and hooked my son-in-law's father like a guppy when he suddenly became "rich." Unfortunately, after my son-in-law's father went broke as well from trying to please her, she dumped him.
Now, three million dollars is a lot of money, but it's not A LOT of money. It's a lot of money if you're smart, but it's not a lot if you let your Anthony Weiner lead you around. I told my daughter that if it had been me, I could have lived off of the interest.
Besides all that, before moving in with my daughter and her family, my son-in-law's father borrowed money from them. He needed six thousand dollars.
"I don't have six thousand dollars," my son-in-law told him.
His father's great idea was for my son-in-law--his son--to cash in a Life Insurance Policy that his grandparents (The dead ones with the three million dollars they were able to leave to their son. I bet they also had some good advice to give when they were alive.) had gotten for him.
Did my son-in-law do it? Did he cash in a Life Insurance Policy that should have been saved for his wife and kids?
Let's just say that my son-in-law feels sorry for his dad.
If any of my kids ever felt sorry for me in that way, I'd ask my wife to shoot me.
In the meantime, my daughter had another baby--a girl, this time--and that baby has to sleep with her parents because her grandfather--the broke one--doesn't seem to be leaving any time soon.
Raising My Father
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