RaisingDad

Yesterday...      ...my father was sitting in his--uh... make that  my --favorite chair in the great room watching a baseball game on the best TV in the house. You know what I call the baseball games he watches? E pluribus unum.      He has a perfectly fine TV in his own room. It's even bigger than the TV I usually end up watching upstairs in my work-out room.      My father is sitting there, picking his teeth with an old worn-out tooth-pick. He has just finished a five-star, four-course meal courtesy of my wife. I hear the catholic church is in the process of making Pope John Paul Ringo & George a saint. Well, before they do, they'd better put my wife at the head of the line if they know what's good for them.      Me?      I'm sitting at the kitchen counter enjoying a hot cup of Irish coffee, just minding my own business, trying to remember when the last time was...

My Dad is a potato-eating guy.      I don't mean potato-loving in a love-that-dares-not-speaks-its-name kind of way. I'm just saying my Dad loves potatoes. To eat them, if I still haven't made my point clear.      In fact, my Dad likes potatoes so much you would think he was Irish. However, unlike the Irish, my Dad does eat other foods. He just likes potatoes. A lot.      Since I brought the Irish up, I've always wondered--and maybe one of you can tell me--how did the great Irish famine end up killing so many Irish men and women? I mean, was potatoes ALL they ate? Didn't they have any other kind of food? I can only imagine the conversations Christian missionaries must have had with them.      The missionaries: "Why don't you guys eat other foods?"      The Irish: "What can we say? We like potatoes."      "But what about corn?"      "We ...

My Dad has started to enjoy watching cartoons with his great-grandson. I don't know why, maybe because when he was a kid there weren't any cartoons. Heck, there wasn't even TV.      At this very moment, my father is in the great room watching cartoons with his great-grandson. I'm sitting there, too, but I'm busy writing this because cartoons these days are apparently geared towards toddlers and people over the age of 90.      As I sit in here, my father's smacks and clicks   and oohs and ahhs are driving me crazy. He goes, "Ooohweeeee, it's cold in here," and keeps turning his head to look at the clock. His head must be on a swivel, the way it keeps swinging back and forth to check the time. When Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Pit and the Pendulum , he must have been thinking about the back and forth motion of my Dad's head.      Not to get off the sub...

A man walks into a bar and says, "Bartender, give me two beers. One for me and one for my little buddy here."      With that, he pulls out a three-inch man from his pocket.      "Wow!" says the bartender when he sees the little guy. "Can he drink a whole beer?"      "Sure," says the man, so the bartender serves them both a beer, and the little guy drinks it all up.      "Well, I'll be," says the bartender. "Can he walk?"      "Sure," says the man, and the little guy walks over and pours himself another beer.      "That's amazing," says the bartender. "Can he talk?"      "Sure," says the man. "Little Buddy, why don't you tell the bartender about the day you told God to prove He exists."     Raising My Father RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com jimduchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee @JimDuchene  

I had been upstairs for several hours doing whatever it is I do when I'm upstairs.      Sometimes I don't even know myself.      When I come downstairs, there's no one there. The great room is dark and quiet. No Dad. No TV. No wife with one more chore for me to do.  I almost feel like I'm in a Twilight Zone episode where a man wakes up to an empty world... and finally finds happiness.      Yeah, I could get used to this.      I don't turn on the lights, but I do turn on the downstairs air conditioner. It's a little warm today. High 80s . And the humidity doesn't help. I also turn on the TV. It's just about time for the weather lady on Action News , but first I have to listen to the newscasters blah, blah, blah about all the problems we have on the other side of the world. I don't know why they call it Action News , when the only thing ...