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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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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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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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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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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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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