RaisingDad

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine desertexposure.com   Nobody, that is, except me.     I’ve always considered it a privilege to change my children’s diapers.     Other kids?     Not so much.     In fact, not at all.     Change is inevitable, and this is especially true when it comes to dirty diapers, but since nature has effectively kept men in general, and me in particular, out of the equation when it comes to baby-raising duties that bond the parent with the child--such as childbirth and breastfeeding--I had to take my bonding moments where I could find them, and I’m not talking about in the pages of an Ian Fleming novel.     Thinking about it, maybe that’s why children are closer to their mothers than their fathers. That reminds me of something I heard happens in prison. In prison, prisoners are invited every Mother’s Day to send ...

I was getting rid of some of our mother's things today.      I thought my buddy Maloney's mother-in-law could have the old rocking chair pop bought mom a long time ago, but it was in too poor a condition for even Maloney's mother to have.      I also went through a bag of a bunch of religious cards. Cards from funerals and St. Jude asking our mother for money and giving her cheap jewelry in return. Actually, it was my three-year-old granddaughter and I who went through it, and, like I thought, it was a bunch of trash.       My granddaughter kept some of it.      She’d go, “This was grandma’s and now it’s mine?” Which was her way of asking, “Can I have this?”      “Yes,” I’d tell her. “That was grandma’s and now it’s yours.”      Some colorful rosary beads. A bracelet made up of little wooden squares with picture...

The recent funerals of Aretha Franklin and John "Wet-Start" McCain (an old fighter pilot nickname of his) reminded me of how my father has become rather fond of attending them.      It gives him something to do, he gets to socialize with friends and family he hasn't seen in awhile, and the food is usually good.      At one recent funeral, the food was especially good. Instead of a pot luck where everybody brought something, they family of the deceased had it catered. I noticed that my father went back time after time for seconds, thirds, and even fourths.      "You're going back again? " I asked him, when he got up for a fifth time.      "Why not?" he asked me back.      "People will start to think you eat like a pig," I told him.      "They won't," he told me back.      "Why won't they?"      "Because I've been...

By the many stories I've told you, it may sound like my father got pulled over a lot for speeding, and maybe he did, but I take full responsibility for that.      You see, my brother and I were  very rambunctious as young boys, and he had to spend half of his driving time threatening us in the backseat to get us to stop fighting with one another.      It was a stormy night, as this memory takes place, and my father had pulled to the side of the road because a police officer had pulled us over. In his yellow rain slicker, it was obvious the police officer was not happy to be doing his job.      "Isn't it stupid of you to be speeding with your family in the car with you?" he tried to chastise my father.      My father isn't one to be chastised.      "Stupid? Me?" he told the police officer. "YOU'RE the one standing in the rain."   ...

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine desertexposure.com     Lest you think I consider my father a burden, I don't.      It's just if all I wrote about were unicorns and rainbows, both you and I would be bored. Besides, I find everything my father does incredibly entertaining. Maybe not at the time, but, you know, when I look back. Now I understand the saying, "I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you." I'm not laughing at my father, because I'm just like him. I'm laughing with him, because I can see what the future has in store for me.       Old age takes pity on no one.     One of the reasons we bought this particular house is because it had a small guest house in the front where we knew my father could live and have his privacy. It was a way for him to keep his independence, yet let us keep an eye on him at the same time. In his home away from home he has his own TV with its own...

My grandson, who's a pretty bright kid (he gets it from me), was telling me how he was learning about fire safety at school.      He's in single digits, and they were teaching him about Stop-Drop-And-Roll, dialing 9-1-1, and that it's "Smokey Bear," not "Smokey the Bear."      Testing his knowledge, I asked him, "What would you do if your school clothes were on fire?"      Probably remembering how his mother lays them out for him in the morning, he said, "I'd leave them on the bed."     Raising My Father RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee @JimDuchene   

I’ve told you how my buddy Maloney and his wife ended up living together...      ...but I've never told you how they got married.    Maloney was laid low with an aggressive bout of the flu, and Gail moved in to take care of him. Unfortunately, once he got better, she never moved out. As far as I could tell, her taking care of him consisted of Maloney sleeping the entire day and Gail eating bonbons and watching TV.    But that’s neither here nor there.    Well, maybe not here, but it DID end up there. At the Justice of the Peace, I mean. Where the two of them entered only the first of what’s considered a trifecta of fine institutions. Prison being the second, and a mental facility being the third.    “You’re already living together,” I pointed out. “Why get married?”    “It’s a case of opposites attracting,” he told me. “SHE’S pregnant, and I’m not.”     Raising...

I've heard those stories of me being a crybaby as an infant.      And they're probably true.      You have to blame our oldest sister for that. As an baby, she got me used to being rocked to sleep on a pillow on her lap. The way she got her husband used to it after they were married.      “It was either that,” she once told me, “or have sex with him. I didn’t do it four times, and look what happened. We had four kids.”      “Why didn’t you do it those four times?” I asked her.      “He took off his shoes and I passed out from the smell,” she said. “It was a trick he learned from Bill Cosby.”      I remember talking with our beloved late mother once, asking her about how difficult it was for her to take care of the many kids she had, and she said you were the easiest to take care of.      “He was?” I said, surprised. ...

I bet you’re getting plenty of “bedroom points” with all the fussing you’re having to do with the insurance company over this water leak situation. Showing your wife your files and transcripts and all the work you've had to do must be a real turn-on for her.      “Honey, I just got off the phone with the adjuster, and he told me...”      “Hang on. Give me a chance to put on my earplugs.”     Raising My Father RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee @JimDuchene  

I had forgotten about your ex-wife's older brother.       It makes me wonder even more if they all had the same father. Four kids, and all four look different and have different personalities.      Kind of like Princess Di’s two boys. One looks like Prince Charles, and the other looks like Princess Di’s red-headed bodyguard.       My granddaughter is happy going to school. She loves playing and making friends. Poor thing, but she gets up at 6am to leave the house by 7 to get to school at 8. The good thing is she’s an early riser. Radford Academy is in the central part of our city, but the morning traffic can be a pain. Leave at 7am and you’re fine. Leave at seven-oh-five, and your fighting with everybody else who’s trying to get to work. It reminds me of one time when I was in California. We were at a softball game somewhere south of where you lived. The games were over. Your wife...

Our beloved late mother came to me in a dream and said, “You know that house on Cuba Drive, the one you grew up in?”      “Yes, mom,” I answered.      “In ALL the years we lived there, and to this very day, it’s NEVER had a water leak. Nor has it EVER had mold.”      “What do you think it means?”      “It means your brother is a dipshit.”      Raising My Father RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee @JimDuchene  

That mold-removal and no-mold certification you just got on your home?       Sounds like a scam.       Anyone can buy a few fans at Walmart to pretend to dry out mold, run off a few copies of fake certificates on their printer (How do you think I became a doctor?), sign and give them to the rubes on the midway. Pay off the right government employees, and you can charge a ton telling home owners, “Yeah, sure. All the mold is gone.”       “Can I have some documentation?”       “Yeah, let me write it back on the back of this napkin.”       “Thanks.”       “You bet.”       “That’ll be six hundred dollars.”       “SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS!”       “These are expensive napkins.”      Sounds like a headache.      A headach...

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine desertexposure.com   There’s an old joke:     An elderly man with a hearing problem suddenly lost his hearing completely, so he immediately went to his doctor. After many failed attempts at communication, the doctor finally looked in the old man’s ear and discovered the problem. He asked his nurse for some forceps, and then used them to extract a suppository from the old man’s ear canal.     “Here’s the trouble,” the doctor told him, showing it to him.     “Oh, my goodness,” the old man replied. “What the heck did I do with my hearing aid?”     I told you last month that my father uses a hearing aid, sometimes to what he thinks is his advantage, but I've never told you how I found out.     Back when my beloved mother was still alive, I used to go over and join them for breakfast on Saturday mornings. My mother was an old...