Sunday, October 8, 2017

McThis, McThat

I had a headache and thought it might be because I hadn’t had my morning coffee.
     “Maybe it’s a tumor,” my father helpfully suggested.
     “It’s not a tumor,” I told him, wondering where I had heard that exchange before. When it came to me, I couldn’t help but think, “This is what my life’s become: a bad scene from a bad movie.”
     When I was still working, I used to look forward to retiring. Little did I know back then I’d be spending it chauffeuring my father back and forth from his many doctor visits, most of which are unnecessary.
     “You’re perfectly healthy,” one doctor even told him.
     “That could change,” my father replied.
     We were on our way back home from one such visit and I thought I’d pull in to the first fast food place I’d see and get myself a cup of something hot and black. Angela Bassett came to mind, but she wouldn’t fit in the cup.
     Coffee isn’t the only thing I hadn’t had recently.
     “You hungry, dad?” I asked my father.
     “Hungry for what?” He wanted to know.
     “Hungry for food,” I told him.
     He’s ALWAYS hungry.
     “No,” he said.
     Well... he’s always hungry at home, but, then, he likes how my wife serves him. She serves him like a king, and that's why he wasn’t hungry at this particular time. Once we got home, he’d be consuming calories like King Henry the 8th, with my wife as his serving wench.
     Hmm... serving wench.
     Move over, Angela Bassett. I have a new image to occupy my mind.
     Unfortunately, this morning I slept in, so I didn’t have time to make myself a cup of the gourmet coffee I enjoy. My wife has offered to make me a cup every morning, but I prefer doing it myself. It’s one of several things I prefer doing myself, habits I picked up the twelve years between my first and current marriage. Vacuuming’s another, as is doing my own laundry.
     “I do a better job washing my clothes,” I tell my wife. “You should let me do my own laundry.”
     “Maybe I should,” she sniffs, but she never does.
     “What are we pulling in here for?” my father complained at the disruption of his routine, not making a connection between my asking him if he was hungry and then pulling up to the squawk-box of a burger joint.
     I thought I’d be funny.
     “Because,” I answered him, “I have a McHeadache and want to get a McAspirin.”
     My father looked around.
     “This is a McBurger King,” he said.
     
 
Raising My Father
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