Would Even The Jedi Mind-Trick Have Worked?

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 that I had corrupted a soon-to-be-saint.
     As my wife finishes up washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen, she decides not to leave well-enough alone, and asks me, "Do you think your father wants something to drink?"
     I don't even bother to look up from the newspaper.
     "He's fine," I tell her.
     "Why don't you ask him if he wants something to drink?"
     She puts it in the form of a question, but we've been married a long time. I know what she's actually doing is telling me to take a break from one of my few joys in life and get him something to drink.
     What my wife doesn't understand is that my father and I have a deal. I don't bother him and he doesn't bother me. It's a good relationship and I'd like to keep it that way. Why fix what isn't broken? A stitch in time saves nine, and all that.
     "If my Dad wants me to get him something to drink, he'll ask me," I tell her, but I can tell she's annoyed by my answer and my attitude.
     Notice, I didn't tell her that if my Dad wanted something to drink he'd ask me, because he wouldn't. He'd ask his lovely daughter-in-law. In a world where you can't depend on the politicians you vote for or the city councilmen you pay off, my father can always depend on my wife, his daughter-in-law.
     He can depend on me, too, but with a different level of enthusiasm and participation.
     This annoys my lovely wife.
     Which amuses me.
     Which annoys my wife even more.
     She shows her annoyance by doing the job she thinks I should be doing. She goes over to my father and tells him, "Dad, I'm going upstairs. Would you like something to drink?"

     "Huh?" my Dad says, looking up. "You're going upstairs?"
     "Yes."
     "Well, why are you telling me?"
     I thought that was a pretty reasonable question coming from my father. My wife ignores it because past experience has taught her that to answer it would send her off on a completely different conversation, so she returns to her main point.
     "Would you like something to drink?" she repeats.
     "Who?... Ah?... Wha?..." he says. Mumble, mumble, mumble. "What's that again?"

     "Would you like something to drink?"
     I don't know how many ways she can say this that would make it easier for him to understand. Would YOU like something to drink? Would you LIKE something to drink? Would you like SOMETHING to drink? The possibilities aren't endless, they just feel that way.

     "Ahh... hmmm..." my Dad tells her and mumble, mumbles some more. "Who's going upstairs?" he asks, finally.
     "I am, Dad. Would you like something to drink before I go?"
     "You want something to drink?"

     My wife looks at me.
     I look at her.
     And smile.
     She gives me her go-to-hell look, and doesn't return the smile.
     She tries again.

     "Before I go upstairs, can I get you something to drink? Some tea perhaps? Or juice? Maybe some chocolate milk?"
     "You're going upstairs for something to drink?"
     "Dad, would you like something to drink?"
     "Oh! You mean me."
     "Yes. You."
     "But I'm not going upstairs."
     "Dad, I just want to know if you would like something to drink."
     "Well, why didn't you say so? I thought you said you were going upstairs."
     My wife is determined to stay on point. I'm thinking she should try the Jedi mind-trick and speak like Yoda, "Something to drink you would like, hmmm?"
     Instead, she unimaginatively repeats, "Dad, would you like something to drink?" and it finally sinks in.
     "Something to drink, you say? Hmm... something to drink, something to drink."
     "Yes, something to drink."

     "Something to drink..."

     "What would you like, Dad?"

     My father thinks about it, and then he thinks about it some more. And then he says, "No, nothing. I'm fine."
     "Okay," my wife says, and then turns to leave.

     "But before you go," my father really does tell her, "can you get me something to drink?"
 
 

Raising My Father

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@JimDuchene

   

Who Doesn't Like Tater Tots?

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 don't like the way corn comes back out in your poop. That's gross."
     "How about peas?"
     "Too mushy."
     "There's always cauliflower."
     "It looks like a giant white brain. We're not cannibals."
     "Broccoli?"
     "Too green."
     "Carrots?"
     "There's no snowmen in Ireland, so we have no use for carrots."
     "Pumpkins? They make good pies."
     "Gourds really creep us out."
     "Cucumbers are good.
     "We tried cucumbers once. We didn't see our women-folk for years."
     My point is, there had to be something else to eat in Ireland besides potatoes. It's an island, for Christ's sake. An island is surrounded by water. You know what's in water? That's right, fish. Are you telling me they couldn't go fishing?
     "Only Protestants go out in boats to fish," the Irish Catholics probably argued.
     "Only Catholics go out to fish in boats," the Irish Protestants probably countered.
     So... fishing was out.
     In my case, the potato doesn't fall far from the tree. I love potatoes, too. Especially mashed potatoes. My youngest daughter also loves potatoes. She loves them so much I used to call her Spuds. A nickname she liked, by the way, although I must admit she was only in the lower single digits at the time. Unfortunately, my always correct wife had to stick her two-cents in and correctly pointed out that  "Spuds" wasn't really a proper name for a little girl. Or anyone else, for that matter.
     At least, according to my wife.
     I once gave my brother's first-born daughter the nickname "Peanut Head." When she was born, her head was exactly the shape of a peanut. During birth, my sister-in-law must have taken a break when my niece's head was only half out.
     "Hey, Peanut Head," I would loving coo to her in her crib. And she would laugh and giggle and smile. I don't think my brother appreciated it, though. Again, my wife had to stick her two-cents in and point out that thing about what makes a proper nickname for a little girl and blah, blah, blah. But it wasn't my fault my niece had a peanut-shaped head. And it's not like anybody who saw her wasn't going to tell everybody later about the peanut-headed baby they just saw. But I stopped calling her that anyway.
     In case you're wondering, she grew up to have a perfectly-shaped head.
     I bring the humble potato up because one recent morning I found myself having to cook breakfast for my Dad and grandson. My wife was off giving a seminar on nicknames and the proper naming of them thereof or some such nonsense.
     My grandson's only a toddler, but he isn't picky. My Dad's an adult, and...
     "Where's your wife?" my Dad asked when he saw me cooking.
     "She had an appointment," I told him, purposely keeping it vague and simple. He only hears every third word, and the ones he hears, he doesn't understand.
     "She's not cooking breakfast?"
     See what I mean?
     "No," I said, keeping it down to one word, one syllable. What I wanted to say was, "Do you see her cooking? No, you only see me, don't you?" But, since certain people are always assuring me that God will one day pay me back (and those people would be the ones NOT taking care of my Dad), I don't.
     My Dad makes himself a cup of hot tea. He's learned that if he waits for me to make it for him, then he's going to be waiting a long time for me to do something I'm not going to do.
     Do I sound like a jerk?
     Yeah, I probably do.
     The thing is, we're both adults, we're both capable... but I'm the one in the middle of cooking breakfast. I don't have the time or desire to wait on my father hand and foot.
     In the time it takes him to make his tea, I'm able to finish cooking. As my Dad sits himself down at the table, I'm placing my grandson's breakfast in front of him. My grandson gets served first because my Dad and I can serve ourselves, my grandson can't. It's that simple.
     Plus, he's so darn cute.
     "Oh, boy! Tater Tots!" he says. The smallest things make him happy. My Dad, not so much. Speaking of whom...
     "What?" my Dad says... "Tater Tots?" ...waking up... "I don't like Tater Tots." ...sounding unhappy... "They're no good."
     See what I mean?
     My grandson, meanwhile, starts to eye his Tater Tots suspiciously.
     "You like Tater Tots," I tell my Dad. "And you like Tater Tots, too," I tell my grandson.
     To illustrate my point, I snatch up one of my grandson's Tots from his plate and pop it in my mouth and chew enthusiastically.
     "See?" I say, still chewing. "They're good."
     "Hey!" my grandson said. He probably wanted to say, "What do you think you're doing, old man, eating one of my Tots?" but doesn't, because he's probably also been told that God will pay him back. He's barely learning his numbers, but he does understand the mathematical concept of one-less-for-me.
     Meanwhile, my Dad is still trying to convince me that he doesn't like Tater Tots. He's 95-years-old. I've known him for over half of his life. And I've NEVER heard him say he doesn't like tater Tots.
     "You like potatoes, don't you?" I ask him like F. Lee Bailey on steroids.
     "Yeah."
     "Well, Tater Tots are made from potatoes." I rest my case.
     "I don't care, I don't like Tater Tots."
     He likes any kind of potato. Mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, fried potatoes. He likes french fries, home fries, and steak fries. He likes potato soup, potato casseroul, and potatoes au grauten. If he could, he'd hollow them out and wear them as shoes. That's how much he likes potatoes. And he's telling me now, after 96 years, that he doesn't like Tater Tots?
     "You like hash browns, don't you?"
     "I love hash browns," he admits.
     "Well, they're just like hash browns, except they're rolled into little balls."
     "I don't care. There's something about them I don't like. Maybe it's the way they look."
     "It's not how a food looks that's important, it's how it tastes."
     "It doesn't matter how they taste, because I'm not going to eat them."
     "I'm going to serve you some anyway."
     "You can serve me all you want, I'm still not going to eat them."
     Maybe this kind of crap works with my wife, but my Dad doesn't know who he's fooling with. In a battle of wills, my Dad is sadly outgunned. If he thinks he's going to act like a spoiled 2-year-old, he's got another thing coming.
     I look at my grandson. He's ignoring us, and happily chowing down on his Tater Tots.
     You know why I ended up not serving my father any Tater Tots?
     Because life's too short.
   
   

Raising My Father

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jimduchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene

     

Are You Crazy?

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 subject, but back in Poe's day, they really knew how to torture people. The idea of a huge blade swinging back and forth, lowering inch by inch, until it cuts a person in half terrifies me in its originality and entertainment value. Another popular torture was of the equine kind. They would take four horses, tie one end of a rope to each horse, and then tie the other ends to a man's arms and legs. A good whack on the hindquarters of the horses would cause them to gallop away at a great speed. Unfortunately, it wasn't so great for the man being tortured, because he would have his arms and legs torn off in the process.
     What do we have today?
     Water boarding?
     Pleeease.
     Water boarding sounds pretty refreshing to me in this 100 degree+ weather we've been having lately. But I digress...
     My Dad has watched Mike the Knight, Pocoyo, Little Guppies, and Nick Jr. for the last two hours. Myself, I'm still trying to figure out what Pocoyo even is, and what's worse, this is where I know I'm heading. When my dead ancestors tell me to come to the light, I know that light is going to be coming from a television set with SpongeBob SillyPants on.

     And, sadly, I might be hearing from my dead ancestors sooner than I'd like.
     My rude awakening came years ago from a very nice young lady I used to work with before I retired. It seemed to me that, when we talked, she was a little bit too friendly. She'd laugh at all my jokes, and would even put her hand on my shoulder when she wanted to emphasize a point.
     In the interest of full disclosure (and perhaps trying to stoke a little bit of the fires of jealousy), I'd tell my wife.
     "Dream on," my wife would tell me back.
     So much for that.
     The young lady was about 25-years-old, and, like I said, she was always friendly with me. I never took it as a come on, but I thought it was because she was probably attracted to me. Before you laugh, let me tell you that every guy thinks this way. My Dad included. He's almost a hundred-years-old now, but if the weather lady on our local news channel wished him a happy birthday, he'd swear it was because she liked him. It wouldn't matter that they've never met. Somehow her infatuation would have come from some kind of TV osmosis.
     Women know what I'm talking about. A girl can't say "hello" to a boy, without that boy bothering her for the rest of her life. Anyway...
     This went on for several months. She would come to my desk and talk about nothing. If a guy was talking to me about the same nothing, it would have put me right to sleep, but "nothing" becomes interesting in direct proportion to how pretty the girl talking to you is.
     Everyone in the office knew my wife, so there was no way I could even act like there was anything going on. I would describe to you how this young lady's face was a 7, but her body was a 9, which made her face an 8, but that would be sexist, so I won't.
     I began lifting weights years ago, because I think  it's a good idea to be stronger than your daughters' boyfriends, and one day this young lady even complimented me on how buffed my chest and arms were. She didn't exactly say it using those exact words, but I knew what she meant.
     Hmm, I thought to myself, maybe that's why she keeps touching my shoulder.
     After that, I made sure to flex them for her benefit every time she came around.
     Did I suck in my gut?
     Well, that goes without saying.
     But sadly, one day when she was talking about something I couldn't less about, she made the "Statement of Death."
     She told me, "You know, you look so much like my Dad. He's dead now."

     Hmm... did she mean I looked like her father when he was alive or how he looked now?
     Talk about bursting my bubble.
     (Which reminds me of something the wise Confuse Us once said: "Balloon. Like virginity. One prick. All gone.")

     Which also reminds me, when my father was already in his late 70's, and my mother was still alive, he confided in me that he could still do "it" and, in fact, wanted to do "it", but "Mom's just not interested anymore."
     Just what I wanted to hear.
     I know the doctors say that we can have sex into our nineties, but I've seen how ninety-year-old people look. Trust me, I don't think I'll be having sex in my nineties.
     The thing is, my Dad NEVER talked to me about sex when I was growing up. Why he thought it was appropriate to tell me this when I was still impressionable enough to have nightmares about it for the rest of my life, I have no idea.
     A few years later, Mom told me that he pestering her because he wanted to go see a doctor about getting Viagra.

     "Are you crazy?" Mom told him, quickly nixing that idea.

     Another bit of information that will haunt me until the day I die.
     Although, now that I think about it, giving my elderly father Viagra just before he goes to sleep might be a good idea.
     It would help keep him from rolling off the bed.

 

 

Raising My Father

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A Joke My Dad Told Me

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

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@JimDuchene

 

The Weather Lady

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 the newscasters do is sit and read.
     One of my sisters recently told me that she heard or read or saw or someone told her that things are so bad the U.S. is going to start drafting men up to 70-years-old.
     "It's true," she insisted.
     Well, I'm not quite 70 yet, but if my number's called, I'll offer to serve my time as a hostage. Now that I think about it, elderly soldiers might not be such a bad idea. If the enemy saw a bunch of geriatric soldiers stumbling toward them across a smokey battlefield, they'd probably all run away thinking it was an army of zombies coming to eat their brains.
     Hmm... eating.
     I'm hungry, but I'm not hungry hungry, so I toast a bagel, spread some peanut butter on it, cut a banana into quarter-inch slices, and make myself a peanut butter and banana sandwich Elvis would come back from the dead for.
     I also fix myself a nice, hot cup of gourmet coffee.
     I wouldn't say coffee is better than sex. I wouldn't even say it comes close. What I would say is that sometimes I have to settle for coffee when I'm in the mood for something else.

     As I did all this, I had my back turned to the TV because I don't need to see the newscasters to hear the B.S. they're feeding the American public. Besides, the only one worth turning around to look at is the weather lady. If she were an Almond Joy, the almonds would be extra large.
     "She's young enough to be your daughter," my lovely wife once chastised me indignantly, because, even though I do a pretty good job of pretending to be interested in what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, it's not good enough to fool my wife.
     Hmm... now I can't look at the pretty young weather lady in her tight dresses without feeling like a dirty old man.
     "You're determined to take all the things I love out of my life, aren't you?" I grumbled to myself.
     "What?" she demanded to know.
     I didn't think she'd hear me, but she did. She always hears. When will I learn?
     "Shhh..." I told her, trying to distract her. "I want to hear what John Kerry has to say."
     I really don't care what John Kerry has to say, because I remember when he had the wrinkles on that Herman Munster-looking face of his treated with Botox injections, then denied it when he was questioned about it?
     "Who are you going to believe?" he practically told the newsperson who questioned him about it. "Me, or these pictures?"
     I can't remember if his skin was still dyed orange from a bad spray tan that he also denied, but I do remember him looking directly into the camera when he made his denials. You know what his skin looked like when he did this? His skin looked like old leather with the wrinkles ironed out.
     Just face facts, Kerry. You're an old man. No amount of Botox or tanning liquid is going to change that. I can't get as agitated as I would like remembering all this, however, because guess who walks in just as soon as I sit in my favorite chair?

     My Dad.
     He walks in and mumbles something in my direction.
     I answer, "Yes, sir, it sure is hot outside," without really understanding a word he said.
     It never fails, no sooner do I sit down to write or read or eat or relax or watch TV, my father will walk in. His timing is impeccable. Mine is just plain peccable.

     He sits next to me on the sofa and starts watching the news with me.
     "Is that a sandwich?" he asks, pointing to what is obviously a sandwich.
     "Yes, do you want half?"
     "No," he says, and makes a face like I just offered him what comes out of my dog's hind end. "Isn't there a game on?"
     "I'm watching the news, Dad," I tell him. "I'm waiting for the weather lady to come on."
     "Oh, okay," he says, and settles himself in besides me. "The weather lady."
     "Hmm..." he says, and smacks his lips together.
     Smack!
     And then he smacks them some more.
     Smack! Smack! Smack!
     "Boy, oh boy," he says, and then clicks his teeth. Click, click, click! "What are you watching?"
     "The news," I tell him.
     "Oh, okay," he says. "The news."
     Smack, smack, smack! Click, click, click!
     "Hee, hee, hee..." he says. "...the news."
     "What's that, Dad?" I ask him.
     "Those characters," he tells me, but doesn't finish his thought.
     I wait.
     And then I wait some more.
     "Those characters what, Dad?"
     "Oh, those characters," he says.
     "What about those characters?"
     "Who?"
     "Those characters."
     "Which characters?"
     "The ones you were talking about."
     "Which ones was I talking about?"
     "The ones on the TV."
     "I'm not watching TV," he tells me.
     "What do you mean you're not watching TV?" I ask him. "You're sitting right beside me."
     "I'm sitting right beside you, but that doesn't mean I'm watching TV."
     I hate to admit it, but my Dad has a point.

     The weather lady is just about to come on when I hear my wife walking down the hall toward the great room. On her way over, she walks right up to the air conditioner control box and turns it off. She then walks over to where I'm sitting, picks up the remote, and changes the channel to a baseball game.
     "I thought there was a game on," my Dad says.
     My wife gives me an evil smile as she walks past me on the way to the kitchen.
     I get up and go over to my wife. My father quickly jumps up and takes my seat. For an old man, my father sure can move fast when he wants to deprive me of something.
     "Don't worry," I tell my wife, "I wasn't really watching TV."
     She gives me The Look--a Code Yellow--and answers ,"I know you weren't doing anything but waiting for the weather lady to come on."

     I whisper to her so my Dad with the selective super-hearing won't hear, "You're prettier than the weather lady."
     "Thank you," she says, a smile creasing her lips despite her best effort for it not to.
     "Why don't we go upstairs?" I suggest, knowing I'll get the same answer I always get when I ask her this question, which is at least ten times a day.
     "Okay," she tells me. "Go first and get started without me. I'll meet you when I'm done down here."
     Sure, I got the answer I wanted to hear, but the problem is she's never done down here. So I tell her, "You know, I like the air conditioner on and I like to watch the news."
     Again, she gives me the answer I knew I was going to get.
     "You know your father gets cold and you know he likes to watch baseball."
     I ask her, "Then can I have the TV and convertor box in his room?"
     She answers, "You know when he's in his room he likes to listen to his music."
     This is what I don't understand, why does my father need a huge HDTV with a converter box just to listen to music?

     I answer, "Can't he listen to his music on his stereo?"

     When my wife is about to lose an argument, she changes the subject, "I'm going shopping, do you want to go?"
     "No thanks," I tell her.
     "Why not?"
     "Because I'll be upstairs waiting for you."

     And, in fact, I will go upstairs, but as God is my witness, no sooner will I leave than my father will also leave and go back to his room. He has no interest in watching TV in the great room unless he knows he's keeping me from watching TV in the great room.

     The lights and TV, of course, will be left on, at my expense.

 

 

Raising My Father

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jimduchene.blogspot.com  American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene