Who Doesn't Like Bagel Bites? (Part One)

When I retired I didn't think that I'd be spending the last few good years of my life taking care of a baby.
     The baby I'm referring to, of course, is my father.
     Of all my dependents and grand-dependents, my father is the one who's been the most work. There's not one thing we can give him that he won't complain about. There's not one thing we can offer to do for him that he won't take for granted. There's not one good deed that doesn't go unpunished when it comes to my Dad.
     Today, my wife offered to make my father Bagel Bites for lunch. He refused.
     "I don't like them," he told her.
     "Sure, you like them," my wife told him.
     "No, I don't."
     "They're like mini pizzas."
     "I know what they are."
     "And you like pizza."
     "I like pizza, but I don't like Bagel Bites."
     "But you like pizza."
     "But I don't like Bagel Bites."
     My wife decided to take a different tack.
     "You've eaten them before," she reminded him.
     "Just because I've eaten them, doesn't mean I liked them."
     My father's logic was irrefutable. 
     "I just didn't want to hurt your feelings," he told her. "You know me, I don't like to be any trouble."
     Eventually, even my wife knows when to give up, so she gave him a choice of five--five!--different meals that she could cook for him instead.
     Do you know how many choices I get?
     Two.
     I can eat...
     ...or I can not eat.
     Those are my choices.
     Fortunately, my wife is an excellent cook, so two choices are one more than I actually need.
     After a lot of hemming and hawing, he finally decided on what he wanted. I'll spare you the conversation that lead up to his decision, mainly because the human brain is an amazing organ and forgets painful things like childbirth or an accident or one of my Dad's conversations.
     After looking at me with one of her your-father-drives-me-nuts look, she then cooked him a five-star lunch that Wolfgang Puck would be jealous of.
     The rest of us got Bagel Bites.
     By the rest of us, I mean me and my grandson. My grandson is an amazing kid. I take him hiking, camping, traveling and he doesn't complain one bit. My father complains if one of his bacon strips is shorter than the other.
     But that's okay, I love Bagel Bites and so does my grandson. They are just like little pizzas, and I love pizza. This is the funny thing about my wife, under normal circumstances she doesn't allow me to eat pizza per my doctor's orders. He didn't really tell me I couldn't eat pizza, but "that's what he meant," my wife says.
     I don't know what my doctor means, I only know what he says, and he said I could have pizza in moderation.
     "Once a week is fine," he said.
     "Never," is what my wife heard.
     Somehow, Bagel Bites seem to get a pass.
     As she baked us our Bagel Bites, my father sat down to eat. When my father eats, he takes no prisoners, so he was done before the Bagel Bites were ready.
     "Was it good?" I asked him, knowing that he wouldn't bother to thank my lovely wife for his special meal.
     "It was okay," he said.
     "Better than Bagel Bites?"
     "What?" he asked, his hearing suddenly and suspiciously faulty.
     But my wife gave me The Look, so I didn't repeat myself.
     "Isn't The Price Is Right on?" I asked him instead.
     This is a mean trick I play on him when he starts to get upset for no reason. When I want to distract him I'll ask him if The Price Is Right is on so he'll spend the next few minutes looking for it on the television set.
     When the Bagel Bites were done, they were so hot that I told my grandson, "Let's go upstairs until they cool down."
     "Okay, Lito," he told me. He calls me Lito which is short for abuelito, which is Spanish for grandfather.
     So we went upstairs to dilly and dally until our lunch cooled down. Meanwhile, my father was still occupied looking for The Price Is Right.
     When we returned downstairs a short while later, who do we find eating our Bagel Bites?
     If you guessed my Dad, you guessed right.
     We walked into the kitchen and stopped in surprise just as my Dad was stuffing one of the last Bagel Bites into his mouth.
     My grandson looks at the cooking pan and then looks up at me. With sad eyes, he whispers, "Lito, he ate our Bagel Bites."
     When my father finally notices us, he gives us his cat-caught-with-the-canary smile.
     "Hey, these are good," he tells us. "Did you want some?"

    

 

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