RaisingDad

For pop's birthday, I like to get him useful things.      Like Spider-Man comic books.      Something he can read to help pass the time. I also like to get him gift certificates to those very same comic book shops I like to frequent. That way, he can buy whichever ones he wants. I might be a Spider-Man fan, but that doesn’t mean pop wouldn’t like more of a variety.      One time, on the internet, I found a bunch of old issues of the National Lampoon magazine. I LOVED that magazine. I read it all the time in high school, and then in college. It’s a humor publication, and I know pop likes to laugh, so I got them for him for Christmas, and he really enjoyed them, too. He told me just that when he gave them back to me after he was done reading them.      You know how pop loves music?      Well, those vinyl Grand Funk Railroad albums I told you about--The ones I used to listen to all the time ...

Maybe the generations that came before us--our dad, our granddad, the granddads before him--had the right idea.      You just sit around and puff on a cigar and let the older folks with no sense be physical or fuss with the young pups. Dad may have a lot of surgeries, but none of them were for a torn meniscus or a bad anterior horn, whatever THAT is. Our grandfather, too. It took a bad turkey to knock him out of the game. Physically, he was in perfect shape to do the things he did, which was sit in the patio and puff on his cigar.      If they could see you, they'd laugh at that wussy surgery you're having.      "How did you hurt yourself?" our father might ask.      "I fell when I took my grandson to the park."      "Son, if there's anything I tried to teach you, it was to NEVER do anything with your kids. Doing things with your kids just snags...

Did you hear the news report about a 92-year-old lady by the name of Anna Mae Blessing who shot her 72-year-old son because he was going to put her in an assisted living facility?      Now I know why you keep your guns in a safe.       “You took my life, so I'm taking yours,” she said, but I’m not sure exactly when, and I'm also not sure where the incident took place--Fake News wasn’t specific--but it sounds like something you always hear happening in Albuquerque or Florida.       Anna Mae also tried to shoot her now-dead son’s 57-year-old girlfriend, but the younger woman managed to wrestle the gun away from her. I say, if you can't wrestle the gun out of a 92-year-old lady's hand, you don't deserve to live.       “Do you have any children?” someone might ask her in the other assisted living facility called prison.      “I had a so...

My father was quite the lothario as a young man.      And as an old geezer, too.      Recently, we were having lunch, and he told the friendly waitress who came up to greet us, "Where have you been all my life?"      The young girl laughed.      Fortunately, now that I think about it, considering the times we live in.      "To tell the truth, sir," she told him, sweetly, "I wasn't around for most of it."     Raising My Father RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee @JimDuchene  

I was driving in a car with my father recently.      We were on our way to lunch.      On my dime.      I don't want to say I don't believe the doctor who told me that my father suffers from pre-Alzheimer's, but sometimes I think it's mighty convenient that whenever we go out to eat at a restaurant my father always forgets to reach for his wallet.      Anyway, what happened next made me lose my appetite.      "Did you just cut one?" I asked my father.      My father gave me an innocent look.      "Of course I did, son," he told me. "Do you think I always smell like that?"     Raising My Father RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee @JimDuchene  

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine desertexposure.com   "I've got some bad news," my buddy Maloney told me.      It had been awhile since I'd heard from him, so I picked up my phone and gave him a call.      "How's it going?" he said, when he answered.      I took his inquiry at face value and began to tell him about my neighbors next door, the ones with the yappy little dogs. They had the Orkin pest control guy over, but he must have dropped the ball because my neighbors were still there the next day.      "You think you've  got problems?" Maloney groused. "I've got some bad news, some really bad news."      "What happened, Slip?" I asked, using his nickname. There's no conversational road Maloney travels on that he doesn't make a big ol' U-turn right back to himself.      "We got a call Saturday night. Sofia was in the hospital."  ...