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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