Thursday, December 1, 2016

Breakfast With Mom & Dad

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
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JimDuchene.blogspot.com  American Chimpanzee
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  written for Desert Exposure Magazine
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Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Just Browsing

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.
     "Howdy, ma'am," my father said, nodding in her direction. Why he took on a western affectation is beyond me.
     "Can I help you?" she asked.
     "No, thanks," my father told her. "I'm just browsing."
     "O-kaaay," she told him, "but, just so you know, people usually knock before they come into my home."
 
 
Raising My Father
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  as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine
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Tuesday, October 18, 2016

An Email To My Atheist Brother

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 your penis, and praying to God may only make things worse for you. How much worse? Think Bruce "Trans" Jenner. Instead, pour yourself a beer, kick back, and enjoy the sound of laughter.
     I don't know why God does the things He does. Why did He make cannibals, for example. Do you know why cannibals don't eat divorced women? Because divorced women are too bitter.
     I think God loves us equally, but not at the same time. That's why, when He's busy making sure His favorite sports team is winning, He overlooks that one altar boy being molested by his priest or a Penn State coach.
     I don't mean to bring back bad memories for you.
     Speaking of asking something of God, I can't remember which comedian I heard this from, but he said that when he was a kid he wanted a bike. He prayed and prayed, but God never answered his prayers. And then one day he had an inspiration. He went out and STOLE a bike. He figured it was easier to steal a bike and ask for forgiveness.
     Myself, I was born and raised a catholic--although I do go to a non-denominational church now--and we were taught that if we said the Act of Contrition prayer, our sins would immediately be forgiven. As a kid, I thought to myself, "Well, that leaves me with a lot of wiggle room to be bad." I could lead the life of a worthless sinner, but as long as I said the Act of Contrition just before I died, I would get into Heaven on a technicality. Of course, I'd be playing the odds, but what were the chances I'd die without having the chance to mutter a quick prayer?
     Almost zero.
     Did I really believe all that or contemplate it seriously? Of course not. But I found the idea interesting in an amusing kind of way. Unfortunately, the nuns who taught catechism class weren't so amused. I was practically ex-communicated for heresy.
     At ten-years-old that would have been quite an accomplishment.
    
 
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Saturday, October 8, 2016

The New Waitress

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?"
 
 
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Monday, September 5, 2016

Dang, You're A Big One!

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 forward and confidentially told the man, "You better count your change."

 
 
Raising My Father
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Friday, August 26, 2016

Jesus Wept (John 11:35)

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.
 
 
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Saturday, August 6, 2016

The Dragonfly Statue

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
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Sunday, July 31, 2016

The Bickersons

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 just buried himself behind the newspaper, his usual morning ritual. Almost immediately, the bickering started.
     "You never listen to me when I'm telling you something," my mother told him.
     "What?" my father answered.
     "I said you never listen to me."
     "Of course I do," my father assured her, but not taking his eyes off the newspaper.
     "No, you don't."
     "Yes, I do."
     I felt like I was the substitute teacher for a class of third-graders. My mother picked up her menu, and got in one more grumble, "No, you don't."
     "What?" my father said.
     Exasperated, she complained, "I'm getting a headache."
     "Go ahead, honey," my father told her, still reading. "Get whatever you want."

 
Raising My Father
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as featured in Deseret Exposure Magazine
 

Saturday, July 30, 2016

Feeling Your Oats

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 answered, in even fewer.
     “I can cure that.”
     He then took me outside, into our backyard, and handed me a shovel. It was early afternoon, but the day was already hot.
     My Dad told me what he wanted. He wanted me to dig a hole 3 feet wide by three feet long by three feet deep. So I did. I could see he had his belt secured around his waist, and that’s where I wanted it to stay.
     When I was done, he came outside, looked at what I had done, and told me I had dug the hole in the wrong place. So he had me fill it, careful to place the grass back on top, and then dig another hole, 3’ x 3’ x 3’. After doing this same dance several times more, I was tired, sweaty… but no longer hung over.
     “Learned your lesson, son?” my Dad asked me on our last dance.
     “Yes, sir,” I told him, respectfully. I didn’t want to antagonize the man who could keep me blistering my hands into the night.
     “You’re dismissed,” he said, finally. “Go take a shower. You stink.”
     I wasn’t offended. I did stink. How can I be offended by the truth?
     I went inside and took the longest, hottest shower I could get away with.
     My Dad’s 97-years-old now, and lives with my family and I.
     To this day, every time I get the urge to “throw back” a cold one, if my father’s around, I’ll decide to put what I learned about hang overs remedies to use, and I’ll pass.
 
 
Raising My Father
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Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Who's The Grown-Up? Not Me!

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.
     Only worse.
     Late today, he was complaining to my wife about this, that, and the other. Maybe "complain" is too soft of a word. His idea of being subtle use to be telling a friend, "With all due respect, your sister's a..."
     Well, we don't have to go there.
      My wife's a saint. I think I've told you that before. She speaks to him in a calm, reassuring voice that Martha Stewart would be envious of.
     It doesn't work.
     From a distance, I see him, red-faced, with his flabby arms waving around like an angry Muppet.
     I've tried to intercede before.
     "You're not helping," my wife has told me, and she's probably right.
     It ends with my Dad going to his room, slamming the door, leaving a few choice words in his wake. You know, in all my time growing up, I've never heard him cuss. Now, it's like his knowledge of English words is disappearing and all that are left are the curse words.
     It's time for bed. My wife goes to our room upstairs.
     A few minutes later he comes out like he hasn't just upset my wife, sits in the great room, and turns on the TV. He looks around, probably wondering why my wife isn't there to wait on him hand and foot.
     I, moving like a ninja...
     "Look for, they cannot be seen. Listen, they cannot be heard. See them, and you are already dead."
     ...and with the help of The Force...  
     ...hide around the corner and use the extra remote to turn the TV off.
     "What the...?" my father says, and turns it back on.
     I turn it off.
     He looks at the remote in his hand, and turns the TV back on.
     I turn it off.
     He flips the remote to look at the back, then turns it back around to look at the front, and turns the TV back on.
     I turn it off.
     He sits up straight--well, as straight as he can-- and mumbles something that wouldn't be proper to repeat in a family blog like this one. He turns the TV on again.
     Again, I turn it off.
     Now he just sits in the great room--TV off--considering his options. He uses a tooth pick to fiddle with what's left of his teeth. I guess it helps him think.
     Well, played, old man. He knows that, along with the smacking sounds, him fiddling with his teeth grosses me out, but I'm a stubborn old coot just like he is. I have all night to wait him out.
     He sits and he sits and he sits some more.
     I hear him mumble something every once in a while.
     Finally, after thirty minutes, he gets up and goes to his room.
     Sometimes you win the battle. Sometimes you win the war. With my Dad...
     I'll settle for the battle.
   
   
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Saturday, July 16, 2016

Over At Twitter

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, lifeless desert. Old age is the beautiful oasis we find at the end of it.
     No, "oasis" isn't the right word.
     Maybe they could have called it the "This Is Crap" Senior Advisor.
     Or the "I Knew That" Senior Advisor.
     The "I'm Constipated" Senior Advisor.
     Or the "I Just Crapped The Bed" Senior Advisor.
     The "You Always Serve Me Too Much" Senior Advisor.
     Or the "They're A Bunch Of Characters" Senior Advisor.
     The "Who Are You?" Senior Advisor.
     Maybe even the "Why's That Guy I Don't Know Always Hanging Around?" Senior Advisor.
     The "He'd Better Not Be Trying To Get Frisky With My Daughter-In-Law" Senior Advisor.
     Which would lead to the "Where's My Gun?" Senior Advisor.
 
 
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Sunday, June 12, 2016

Battle of the Remote Controls

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.
     Then I remembered that I was married and my wife was sleeping in bed besides me. If those guys were to make their way upstairs they'd have to deal with my very angry wife. I knew I couldn't put them through that, so I reached for Doggy. My gun. My grandson calls it that because I joke that "it barks here but bites over there." To make a long story short, I went downstairs and found my father sound asleep in the family room, with the TV blasting away. That's when I first came up with the idea of hiding the remote control, because, forget burglars, my Dad is going to kill me before I have the chance to spend any of his inheritance.
     But it's hard staying one step ahead of the old gummer. At first, turning off the TV downstairs with the extra remote was all it took to get him to bed. Well, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention, so somehow he has miraculously learned how to work the remote control. He can now change channels, raise the volume, and raise the volume some more. The worst thing, however, is he now knows how to turn the darn thing on. Personally, I've always thought that he's been screwing with us this whole time with his I-Can't-Do-Anything-Anymore bit. He only acts helpless because he likes being served.
     Recently, I turned off the TV four times using the spare remote control. Each time, he turned the set back on. I know you're probably thinking, "So he turns it back on. I 've seen cats do the same thing on America's Funniest Home Videos."
     Well, what makes this such a big deal is these last few years that he's lived with us, he's come into the great room, sat in his--my--favorite chair... and waited. Waited for my wife--his daughter-in-law (whom he treats as his personal servant) and mother to his grandchildren--turn on the television set for him. He waits for her, because if he waited for me, he'd be waiting a long time for something that wasn't going to happen. So, four times I sneak downstairs and use the spare remote to turn off the TV, and four times, after I go back upstairs, I hear the TV come back on downstairs.
     One time, I decided to take a different tack, so I muted the volume. I saw my father look quizzically at the remote in his hand, and figured I had him stumped, so I went back upstairs.
     "Hee, hee, hee," I tell my wife, pleased with my deviousness.
     "I have  headache," she tells me back.
     A few minutes later... I hear voices from downstairs.
     Now I have a headache.
     For someone who waits for my wife to salt and pepper his food for him because otherwise he'd just it there and stare at the shakers, he sure has learned to work the controls to the remote, so I decided that my next plan of action would be to hide the remote or, on one of his many trips to the bathroom, pull the batteries.
     Another day, I went downstairs at 0600 hours (6am)and he was already sitting in the family room. There's no telling what time he got up. He takes a long time to clean up and get dressed, so he was probably up before 0530 hours (5:30am). This time, however, he didn't wake us up with the TV blasting at Zero-Dark-Thirty.
     My father's erratic sleeping/waking routine is what drives me nuts. One night, for example, after toying with me for over an hour like a cat with a mouse, I finally turned off the TV and hid the remote. The guy just DID NOT want to go to bed. When he came back to the great room from the bathroom in the hall, he came back to an empty room with the TV off. I stayed on the stairs just long enough to hear him grumble, "What the fudge?"
     So... what happens?
     What happens is the next morning I found him asleep in the family room in front of the blacked-out TV. He must have fallen asleep waiting for my wife to come downstairs to turn on the TV for him. He looked kind of sad, laying with his arms and legs splayed all over the place on that big, comfortable chair without a blanket. Thank goodness it was me and not my wife who found him, because if it had been my better half, I'd be writing this from a cardboard box on the corner of Norfolk and Way.
     The bottom line is: he screws up my routine.
     I like to get up early, put the dogs out, and make myself a hot cup of gourmet coffee. You know, just sit and relax for an hour, watching the old Bowery Boys movies* I have recorded on TV. I like doing this all alone. It's meditative for me. Gets me ready to start my day. But my Dad...
     ...he likes screwing with me.
     It's now early Sunday morning. I've got my gourmet coffee in front of me, the TV is on the news but I'm not really watching it, I'm just waiting for the weather girl to come on. My wife is baking biscuits and getting things ready for breakfast. It's peaceful here, and we are enjoying some alone time together. 
     Then...
     My father walks in. He has his usual Screw-The-World look on his face, his floppy arms waving around like a disgruntled Muppet who's been laid-off from Sesame Street because of the bad economy.
     Without looking at anyone--no greetings, no good mornings, no "Thank God for another day!"--he says, "The toilet's plugged up." I shiver at what I might find when I go take a look. Meanwhile...
     He sits at the table and waits for his VIP breakfast.
 
  
Raising My Father
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*Thank you, TCM!
(And I'm not just saying that because they pay me.)
 
   

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Thank You, Muhammad Ali

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 closer to $3.50 in today's dollars.
     I didn't really understand the concept of gambling or paying off your gambling debts at that age, but I was caught up in the moment. It was something my father and I were sharing and I didn't want to spoil the moment.
     Now, if I lost, how would I have paid him?
     I didn't even have two wooden nickel to rub together back then, much less half a buck to pay him with if I had lost. It wasn't about the money to my father, he just wanted to make the fight more interesting, but it was about the money to me.
     As it turned out, I won and my Dad paid me. My Dad was not one to back down from a fight or welsh on a bet. I have no idea what happened after that or what I bought with the money. I bet it was something good.
     Thank you, Muhammad Ali.
 
...at the age of 74...
Muhammad Ali
6-3-2016
 
My father?
Still alive and doing the Ali Shuffle at 97.
 
 
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Monday, May 30, 2016

My Dad In The War: Still Another Memorial Day Memory

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 he (the opponent) lose the fight, but he wouldn't even be able to knock the cigarette dangling coolly from his (my father's) mouth.
     Sadly, my father's opponent found out the hard way that my Dad was as good as his word.
      But my father didn't solve all his arguments with his fists. When he had to, he could use his head and talk his way out of a fight.
     Before World War Two, my father worked a variety of jobs, one of which was delivering bread to grocery stores. Apparently, competition was fierce in the bread business, and, to discourage customers from buying their competitor's product, they would give their competition's loaves a vicious squeeze, thus making their own product more attractive by comparison.
     The bread guy who had space on the shelf next to my Dad finally grew tired of having his merchandise purposely damaged, so he told my Dad that if he did it again he'd beat him like a red-headed step-child (my apologies to red-headed step-children). He was a big guy, an oak in a world of pine trees, and was supposed to be a pretty tough cookie himself, but nobody tells my Dad what to do, even to this day, so he did it again.
     My father was a pretty big guy himself, but next to this guy he looked like a munchkin from Oz. He didn't know how many guys it would take to chop down this particular tree, but he knew how many there was: just him.
     "Before we fight," my father, who had never backed down from a fight and wasn't going to start now, told him, "I just want you to know that, if I beat you, I'm going to tell everybody how I kicked your ass, and, if you beat me, I'm going to tell everybody how you only pick on guys smaller than you."
     Which was essentially everybody.
     The guy thought about it. It was a lose/lose situation for him. While it would only be embarrassing for him if he lost the fight, he could lose stores and customers if it got around that he was a bully.
     While they didn't exactly become best friends like they do in the movies, they did come to an understanding: he wouldn't ruin the loaves of bread my father would stock on the shelves, and my father would extend to him the same courtesy.

     The Army, while they didn't teach him how to fight, they certainly did refine his skill.
     "In the Army," my Dad once told me and my friends dramatically, "I learned how to kill with my hands."
     My friends and I were suitably impressed, but couldn't help but wonder, "Who did he practice on?"
 
 
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Saturday, May 28, 2016

My Dad In The War: Another Memorial Day Memory

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 yelp at the sight of the giant lizard eyeing them hungrily. "Eenie, meenie, miney, mo," the pre-historic man-eater almost seemed to be deciding to itself.
     The sergeant was visibly shaken, but had to laugh when my father joked, "Don't worry, Sarge, he fell asleep listening to you, too!"
 
 
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Sunday, May 22, 2016

My Dad In The War: A Memorial Day Memory

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 stopped shooting at us," he said, seriously.
 
 
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Sunday, May 15, 2016

Bob's Malady

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.
     "And he doesn't have to come back unless he is sick."
     I had planned on asking the doctor if my father could stay there with him, but that settled that.
     Speaking of doctors, a cousin of mine (I'll call him Bob [since that's his name]) had one of his knees operated on Thursday. Both of them are bad, but his doctor was only willing to risk making matters worse one knee at a time.
     "As long as you're having surgery," I suggested, "why don't you have your doctor give you huge breasts?"
     "I would," Bob told me, "but if I had big breasts I'd never accomplish anything."
     I went through the obvious jokes.
     "Are you going in a Bob and coming out a Caitlyn Jenner?"
     "Which knee is he working on? The left knee, the right knee, or the weenie?"
     His surgery went off without a hitch, and my wife, saint that she is, recommended that I go visit him.
     "Why don't you come home, shower and change, and then go visit him?" she suggested.
     Well, I was out and about, doing this and that, just a-coming and a-going, so that wasn't going to work.
     First off, I was closer to him where I was at than if I went home.
     Secondly, it was late in the afternoon. If I went home and showered, I probably wouldn't go. It's simple physics.
     Newton's Law states: "A body at rest STAYS at rest," and you can't argue with Newton.
     You know why?
     Because he's dead.
     No, once home, I'd only want to stay home.
     "They"--Bob and his wife--"have always supported us," she reasoned logically, and if there's one thing I can't do, I can't argue with logic.
     "There'll be a lot of people already there," I grumbled, half-heartedly.
     "It will mean a lot to him," she said.
     "He won't be feeling well."
     "You'll make him feel better."
     "I don't want to go."
     "Well, you're gonna go," she said, finally, and, if there's one thing I've learned, you NEVER argue with my wife.
     It's not that I wasn't planning on visiting him, but I thought I'd wait until he felt better and was already comfortably home. I thought I'd go with my wife on Sunday, maybe even take my Dad, and, since he has a swimming pool, we'd bring our bathing suits and appetites. At the hospital, they charge for meals. At his house I could always shame him into grilling for free. Well, free for us, that is.
     "You can't baby that knee, Bob," I'd tell him.
     So I went to the hospital to see him after I was done with my shenanigans. He was spending the night in the hospital. Well, I'm glad I went, because it was a sad sight.
     He was all alone in his hospital room.
     No one was there.
     His father wasn't there, his brother wasn't there, and his sister wasn't there. His son didn't fly in from out-of-town, his daughter was at a dance recital, and his wife was at the dance recital with her. Aunts and uncles? Cousins, nieces, and nephews?
     Forget it.
     Just about every holiday, Bob, who has a big spread, has his family over for a good time and some good food. Everybody shows up. They swim, they eat well, and they have a good time.
     They... weren't there.
     Last summer, a nephew of his asked if he could invite a few friends over to swim. Bob, good guy that he is, said sure. Those few friends turned out to be A LOT of friends. His nephew didn't think to supply food or drinks or towels, he just assumed they would magically appear. Bob had to go to the store and buy sodas and hot dogs to feed these animals. His wife suggested pizza.
     "Do you know how much it would cost to buy enough pizza for this many people?" he told her. "Hot dogs will be fine. Cheap hot dogs."
     When the party was in full swing, he looked at his backyard. It looked like the scene from the movie Caddyshack, when the Country Club let the caddies take over their swimming pool.
     "The girl-watching was good, though," he told me later.
     When his nephew had enough of the festivities, he went home, leaving all those strangers there enjoying themselves until the wee hours of the morning.
     "Didn't your wife say you were going to get pizza?" one of them wanted to know.
     Well, his nephew wasn't at the hospital either.
     Just me.
     Which is a long way to get to the point of my story:
     Facebook.
     Personally, I'm not on Facebook. I have no interest in inviting people into my life, and I have no interest in seeing a picture of what they're having for dinner.
      Bob's on Facebook, however, and for some reason our conversation in the hospital veered off into that direction. He said he got together with some old high-school buddies, and they were talking about all the old classmates they were able to contact through it.
     "Did you see Cindy?" one of them asked the others. "She looks old."
     "How about Sarah?"
     "Yeah, she looks like my grandmother!"
     "They haven't aged like a bottle of fine wine, more like a gallon of milk."
     (That last one's me, interjecting something clever.)
      A bunch of fat, balding, middle-aged men complaining about how the girls of their youth are no longer attractive.
     So, at the hospital, Bob got his iPad out for me and we strolled down Memory Lane. Some of the girls still looked good, but when you say, "She looks good," you have to qualify it with, "for her age."
     Our age, too, I guess.
     It was interesting, but bittersweet.
     What it comes down to is this: I want to remember my old girlfriends the way they were in high school, not the way they are now. Young. Innocent. Not so innocent. Sadly, however, while I'm only interested in seeing sexy pictures of their younger selves, they're only interested in posting pictures of their grandkids.
 
 
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Sunday, May 8, 2016

Captain America Saves The Day!

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 don't think it was jammed in there, but it would have been if I had panicked.
     My wife, meanwhile, saw what was happening and gave me a couple of whacks on my back, but by that time the worst was over.
     "That was scary," she said.
     "For me, too," I admitted.
     "Yeah," my Dad agreed, his mouth full of popcorn, "I was afraid I wouldn't get to see the movie."
 
 
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Sunday, May 1, 2016

The Last Doctor Visit

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 doctor said, just as surprised as we were. "He must have misunderstood me. What I told him was, he's so healthy he doesn't have to see me for another year."
     Needless to say, it's been my job to go with him to his doctor appointments ever since.
     Unfortunately, on our last visit, I had to excuse myself for a minute because I had to go "see a man about a horse," if you get my drift. When I returned, my Dad was walking back into the waiting area.
     "That was quick," I observed.
     "Yeah, well," my Dad answered.
     "What did the doctor say?" I asked.
     "He said I had to start killing people."
     "What the fudge?" I thought, only I wasn't thinking "fudge."
     "He said you had to start killing people?"
     "Yeah, but not in those exact words," my father explained. "He told me to get rid of the stress in my life. Same difference."
 
 
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Sunday, April 24, 2016

Say Your Prayers

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 the courtyard looking into the house. I see my father's Muppet-like arms go high into the air, as he stretches in his--my--chair. He gets up, high-steps it a bit, and then--please, no--walks into the kitchen.
     My father has no curiosity about anything that happens in our household. If his little yappy dog were to have an "accident" right in front of him, my Dad would just ignore the mongrel and continue to watch The Price Is Right until my wife or I come into the room and do something about it. However, when my wife is cooking something, especially something for me, he always has to know what it is. The guy has never lifted a spoon in his life to prepare a meal, so why he finds the pots and pans so interesting when they're steaming on our stove is beyond me.
     He makes his way to the kitchen table--the very same kitchen table where we (mainly me) all sit to eat--reaches into his pant pocket for his handkerchief, and starts blowing his nose. Even from where I'm standing, I can see that his nose is running. Maybe it's just my imagination.
     His handkerchief must be past the point of no return, because he puts it back in its holster and grabs a paper napkin from the little napkin-holder on the table and uses that to finish the job. When he removes it, I can see a clear droplet of booger juice hanging from his nose.
     I guess it wasn't my imagination after all.
     This goes on for several minutes.
     How it's possible for him to have so much snot in his nose, well, that's like the mystery of the great pyramids. Who knows?
     Still in the kitchen, he finally finishes emptying the contents of his head. Something he could have done in the great room where he has slept all day, but, no, he had to walk into the kitchen for that. As he walks toward the stove, my wife makes the mistake of walking away for a split-second. I see him stop and look at the pans of food on the stove, and then--quick as a Ninja-- he puts his nose not two inches from a pan of my food and smells it. He takes several good whiffs before my wife is able to get between him and my dinner. Knowing I'm outside, she gives a quick look my way, then back again.
     "What're you cooking?" he asks her, as if two of his senses aren't enough to give him enough information. Maybe his eyes aren't what they used to be, but he was practically stirring the food with his nose, so that should have given him a hint.
     "Nothing," she tells him, politely. "It's for me and your son. Do you want some?"
     She knows he can't have any, but more important than that, my Dad knows he can't have any, but he takes a while to "Ahhh... hmmm... well...," and then decline the offer.
     Again, just to remind you, he can't eat what she's cooking. He has a hard time chewing regular food. My wife could serve him soup and he'll complain about how tough the broth is. The problem is, my wife didn't expect him to wake up. She thought she'd be done before that.
     My wife glances my way again. She can see I'm exacerbated, exasperated, discombobulated--take your pick. She gives me The Look because she knows I've just crossed dinner off my list. I won't eat anything my father has touched, smelled, or tasted. It's not that I'm squeamish, I'm not. It's just that his nose is always running. He blows it all the time.
     All the time.
     Hmmm... my wife is giving me The Look AND she's raising one eyebrow, John Belushi-style.
     Why my wife gets mad at me for being right, I have no idea.
     I walk into the kitchen and look at the food on the stove. In front of my dad, I tell her, "I'm not eating that."
     "You're not eating what?" my Dad asks, all the nuances of the English language conveniently going over his head.
     My wife mumbles something. I know she's irritated, agitated, maybe even infuriated, because she knows it's true. I won't eat anything that sits on the table, on the kitchen counter, or is put in front of my father. He likes to see, smell, touch, inspect, and interrogate whatever my wife leaves out in the open that is edible. He'll scan, scope, scout, and scrutinize every morsel. If this were Viet Nam and his face was on patrol, his nose would be point. Food would be the enemy, and napalm would come dripping out of his nose.
     Drip, drip, drip.
     To make a long story short... I had leftovers for dinner.
     Later that night, the house is dark. My wife and I are upstairs. All's forgiven. At least I hope so. I'll find out later.
     I excuse myself.
     "Where are you going?" she asks.
     "To check the locks," I say.
     Meanwhile, my father is downstairs, watching the game.
     All of a sudden, the TV set goes black.
     "Wha?" I hear my father say.
     Hmmm, must have been a short in the wiring.
     I go back upstairs.
     To pray for forgiveness.
 
 
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