RaisingDad

Back when my mother was still alive, I used to go over my parent's house for breakfast on Saturdays. It was like being in the front row of a television sitcom about bickering spouses, only with better food.      During these times, my father would always bury himself behind the morning newspaper, ignoring the world and our conversation. One morning, however, he broke with his usual routine to complain about the latest celebrity marriage du jour .      Annoyed, he said, "I just don't understand how the ugliest guys get the most beautiful wives."      My mom smiled sweetly at me, and then smiled even more sweetly at my dad.      "Thank you, honey," she told him.         Raising My Father RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com JimDuchene.blogspot.com  American Chimpanzee @JimDuchene      written for Desert Exposure Magazin...

New Mexico is known for quaint little historic towns like Old Mesilla in Las Cruces or Old Town in Albuquerque. Tourists come from miles around to visit the charming museums and shops and galleries and restaurants mixed with old homes and churches. In fact, in the city of Chengdu, the capital of southwestern China's Sichuan's province, they have one called Ancient Town.      But who wants to drive all the way to China?      While visiting one such town in our beautiful southwest, my elderly father looked into a front window and saw an inviting selection of books sitting along a row of shelves.      "Hang on," he told us, "I want to take a look."      He opened the door and walked in, with my wife and I following close behind.     A woman was sitting down in a comfortable looking chair, and looked up from a book SHE was reading.  ...

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 them both 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."      The point of that story was that you don't have to be embarrassed about the small size of...

The last time I took my elderly father to a restaurant, we had the misfortune of getting a new waitress on her first day of training. The poor girl got BOTH of our orders wrong, even though we ordered the same thing.      But she tried, I'll give her that.      Instead of hamburger steaks, we got hamburgers. Instead of mashed potatoes, we got fries. Instead of coffee, we got diet colas.      At the end of the meal, the flustered waitress smiled and asked if we would like dessert.      My father perused the dessert menu for a second, and then asked her, "Now... what do I have to order to get some pie?"     Raising My Father RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com JimDuchene.blogspot.com  American Chimpanzee @JimDuchene as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine  

The only thing my elderly father enjoys more than shopping with my wife at one of those members-only warehouse stores is sticking his nose into other people's business. Recently, he got to do both.      We were in line to pay for our too much of everything, and my father was looking at his box of corn dogs. He was in the mood for ONE, so, of course, my wife insisted on buying him a carton of 42.      When my dad finally put it down, he looked up and saw the customer standing in front of us, who was very tall.      "Dang, you're a big one," my father told him, stating the obvious. "How tall are you gonna be when you reach your full growth?"      "I'm six-ten," the man answered. He was polite, but obviously tired of continuously being singled out.      "Wow!" our eavesdropping cashier chimed in. "I'M four-eleven, and you're TWICE as tall as I am."      My father considered this, then leaned for...

When Jesus was on the road to Canaan, He came upon a man who was weeping.      "Why do you weep, my son?" Jesus asked him.      "Because I am blind," the man told him, so Jesus touched him and he could see.      Further down the road, Jesus came upon another man who was weeping.      "And why do you weep, my son?" Jesus again asked.     "Because, my Lord, I have leprosy," the man explained, so Jesus touched HIM and he was healed.      Still further down the road, Jesus came upon a third man and he was weeping most bitterly of all.      "Tell me, my son," Jesus said softly, "why do YOU weep?"      "Because," the man answered, "my widowed father has come to live with me in his old age."      And so Jesus sat by him and they BOTH wept together.      Thus sayeth the Lord.     Raising My Father RaisingMyFath...

My wife loves gardening.      Unfortunately, she recently hurt her leg so now she's temporarily forced to do her second favorite thing: spend time with me. We were enjoying a hot cup of coffee together in the outside patio one morning, when my elderly father overheard her complain about the small decorative dragonfly statue in her garden.      "It's broken?" my dad asked. "I'll fix it."      One of its wings had broken off, causing it to look like Jim Croce's main character who "looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone" in his song You Don't Mess Around With Jim . My father's solution was to break off the opposing wing to give the poor dragonfly a more aesthetically pleasing look.      My wife leaned her head confidentially closer to mine.      "Don't tell dad I hurt my leg," she whispered.     Raising My Father R...

Back before television, there was a family sitcom on the radio called The Bickersons .      As my parents got older, they reminded me more and more of the two main characters. There wasn't a story my dad wanted to tell that my mother wouldn't correct him on, and there wasn't a place my mother wanted to go that my father wouldn't tell her, "Go without me."      One Saturday morning, I thought I'd invite them to breakfast at a restaurant of their choice. As usual, my father wanted to stay home, but my mother eventually nagged him into it.      My father already knew what he wanted, something from the three main food groups: cows, chickens, and pigs. In other words, steak and eggs with a side of bacon. To this day, my father's heart is perfectly healthy. Me, on the other hand, if I eat lettuce my cholesterol goes through the roof. Go figure.      As my mother and I looked at the menu, he jus...

At 18, you could say I was feeling my oats.      It was the late 70’s, and Congress—in their wisdom—had just lowered the drinking age, so my buddies and I thought we’d do our patriotic duty and throw back a few.      My father only had 2 rules for me: 1) don’t miss my curfew, and 2) don’t drink. Unfortunately, he didn’t add another rule to that short list: 3) don’t be stupid. If he had, I might not have broken the first 2.      To his credit, my father—whose belt not only held up his pants, but was also in charge of administering justice—didn’t overreact. In fact, he even let me sleep it off.      When I woke up the next afternoon, hung over didn’t even begin to describe how bad I felt. I didn’t think I was hung over, I thought I was dying. I felt so bad, my teeth even hurt.      “Hung over?” my Dad asked. He was a man of a few words.      “Yeah,” I answe...

All day long my father has been in a crappy mood.      I don't know what he has to complain about, the way I look at it the guy's got it made. He doesn't have to worry about food or bills or anything, really. It all gets taken care of for him. My wife cleans his room, makes his bed, fixes his meals. She makes sure the TV is always set on his favorite channels. How she keeps track of what he likes to watch and at what time, I don't know.      From personal experience, I know that age has a way of robbing you of a good night's sleep. It used to be when I went to bed at night, I would wake up with enough vim and vigor to pester my wife in the morning, if you get my drift. Now I wake up, and, while the desire is still there, it's accompanied with various aches and pains. If I sleep too long on my right side, my arm will hurt. If I sleep too long on my back, my back will hurt.      And I know my father feels the same way. ...

Over at my Twitter account, they sent me a suggestion that I might want to follow Oasis Senior Advisor. I thought, "Why does Twitter assume I'm at an age where I'd want to follow accounts geared toward the elderly?"      I read the message all the way to the bottom, thinking it might say, "This is for your brother," but it didn't. I figured if Twitter knew I was at an advanced age, it might also know that I have a brother who was in more need of the information. He's not as old as I am, he just looks that way.      Taking my train of thought to its logical conclusion, I decided that if Twitter wanted to send him a message via me, it wouldn't be some senior advice account, it would be from the Oasis Getting No Booty Advisor.      I also take umbrage with the word "Oasis" as the name of that senior advisor account. That implies that old age is a wonderful thing. Something to be looked forward to. Youth is a harsh, lifeles...

A month ago, I was awaken at 0430 hours (that's 4:30am, for all you non-military types) by loud voices that were coming from downstairs. In the fog of my semi-consciousness, I'd have sworn it was several men. They were either burglarizing my house or leaving me a new wide-screen HDTV, but I doubt that second part.      I laid in bed for a few minutes, part of me trying to talk myself into getting up and the other part trying to talk myself into staying where I was at. I figured, if I'm asleep and they decide to kill me, well, I wouldn't know. I would just wake up in Heaven. Not a bad deal.      Thoughts about my Dad floated somewhere in my non-slumberness. He sleeps in the bedroom downstairs. He'd take the first hit. "Well, he's an old man," I tried to justify my lack of movement. He's led a good life. Maybe it would be a blessing.      Don't judge me, I was tired.    ...

My Dad is a big boxing fan.      To this day, if there's a boxing match on, he'll watch it, it doesn't matter who's fighting.      When Muhammad Ali fought Smoking Joe Frasier, I remember my father going by himself to see the film of the fight at the North Loop Drive-In. This was months after the fight was fought, and it was on a double-feature with The Godfather. A classic boxing match AND The Godfather? My father must have been in Heaven.      The first time Cassius Clay--pre-Muhammad Ali--fought Sonny Liston in 1964, my father and I sat in the kitchen and listened to the fight on the radio, television not being the affordable addiction it is now.      My Dad bet me 50 cents on the fight. Now 50 cents was like a thousand dollars in those days. I'm exaggerating, of course, but, for a kid, that's what it seemed like to me. It was probably c...

Even without the Army, my Dad was a pretty tough guy. He lived in a time when you fought for a girl's honor, even if that was more than the girl herself ever did for it.      A funny story he told me was about a fight he got into one night when he was drinking at a bar. He and another guy got into a heated argument, probably about who was the drunkest (" You're drunk!" "No,  you're  drunk!").      Finally, the guy told him, "You want to take it outside?"      "You bet," my Dad said, and led the way.      The heavy bar door opened outward, so my Dad swung it open, stepped outside, and then slammed it against the would-be pugilist who made the mistake of following too close behind him.      Winner! By A Knock-Out! My Father!      At the beginning of another fight, my father assured his opponent that, not only would...

On their way to the Philippines, my Dad's platoon found themselves in Louisiana.      Of course, the U.S. Army can't just have their soldiers sitting around doing nothing, so a Sergeant, who probably wanted to sit around and do nothing, instead found himself having to teach a bored group of them how to use a compass. Now, a compass is a fairly easy tool that all of them already knew how to use, so my father and his buddies weren't happy being treated like idiots.      They were standing by a lake, close to the water, and, this being Louisiana and all, they had an unexpected visitor stalking them from about five to ten feet away.      It was an alligator.      "I don't know how big alligators get," my Dad told me, "but this was a BIG one."      When the Sergeant turned around to see what his men were making a fuss about, he jumped back with a ye...

My Dad isn't one to talk about what he went through when he was stationed in the Philippines during World War Two. In fact, it seems most combat veterans prefer to keep the horrors of what they saw and experienced to themselves.      Every once in a while, however, my father feels the need to get something off his chest.      On once such occasion, he was talking about the Japanese finally surrendering after President Truman authorized the dropping of two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He and the rest of his buddies knew that if there was an invasion of Japan, they would be first in line. He was telling me how happy everybody was when the Japanese finally gave up and the war finally ended.      Naïve as I was and still am, I asked him, "And how did you guys know the war was over?"      "When they stop...

My father went to see his doctor recently.      After the doctor checked him out, he was giving him some advice for a healthy rest of his life, telling him what to eat and what not to eat. My Dad sat there attentively, thinking about baseball scores.      I guess the doctor's eyesight must have finally come into focus, because, after taking a good look at my Dad, he asked me, "How old is your Dad?"      I answered, "He's 97."      You think the doctor would have already known that.      The doctor put away my father's file.      "Oh, let him eat whatever he wants," he told me with a wave of his hand.      He turned to my Dad.      "Eat whatever you want," he told him.      My father nodded, and the doctor turned back to me. ...

Yesterday morning, my wife and I were nice enough to take my father to see an early showing of the new Captain America movie (and I'm not just saying that because they paid me to). As we were sitting there, waiting for the movie to start, my wife offered me a gummy bear. I took it because they're my favorite candy, don't ask me why.      As I was chewing on it, enjoying every gummy morsel, I made the mistake of inhaling. When I inhaled, the chewed-up candy got sucked in with the oxygen and lodged in my windpipe... sort of. It would have lodged completely if I had followed my first instinct to gasp in a huge lung full of air, but I didn't. Instead, to dislodge the almost-stuck candy, I tried to expel what little air I had in my lungs. It wasn't a whole lot, but it was enough. It pushed the little booger out of the way enough for me to take a careful breath and then cough the rest of the candy out. I d...

There's two things my Dad does more now than he did when he was younger. One of them is go to the doctor, and when he goes to the doctor, I go with him, because he only hears about every other word, and those missing words get him into trouble. The last time he saw the doctor by himself, my wife and I were waiting for him in the room where old magazines go to die. He came back white as a ghost, visibly shaken.      "What's wrong, Dad?" my wife asked him, both of us concerned.      "The doctor said I only have a year to live," he told us, his eyes bugging out like Roger Rabbit's.      "Oh, my God," my wife said.      Me, I asked to see the doctor. Fortunately, the doctor is a pretty nice guy, so he charged me a discounted rate to consult with him.      "Doc," I said, "my father said you told him he only has a year to live."      "What?" the d...

Today, my wife almost had to call the Pope.      She had just spent four hours cooking me a feast. I'm not talking about something you heat up in the microwave from Costco. I'm talking about a five-star meal, all made from scratch. That's just the way my wife rolls.      Forgive me for not telling you what the meal was. I just don't want you to evaluate your life and come up short in comparison to mine.      Now, my father, because of his lack of teeth, has to eat soft foods, so what my wife was making was for me and her, her and I, the two of us.      My father had slept almost all day in his-- my --favorite chair in the great room, with the TV blasting, because, apparently, the noisier a room is, the more conducive to sleep it is. He had only been awake for ten or fifteen minutes.      Myself, I'm in t...