as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine
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They don’t make westerns and war movies the way they used to, but you can always count on Sylvester Stallone to come out with another Rocky movie.
Recently, my wife and I took my father to see Creed 2, and I'm not just saying that because the Italian Stallion paid me to. As we were waiting for the movie to start, my wife offered me a gummy bear. I took a few because they're my favorite. Don't ask me why.
As I was chewing on one, enjoying every gummy morsel, I made the mistake of inhaling. When I inhaled, the 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. 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. It wasn’t 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 father agreed, his mouth full of popcorn, "I was afraid I wouldn't get to see the movie."
When my phone rang, the last thing I expected was to hear my daughter crying on the other end. She hasn’t been married for very long, and she and her husband had just had their first big fight and she wanted to come home.
It broke my heart, but I told her she was home.
It broke my heart, but I told her she was home.
I was out with my grandson the other day. We were at Sears, looking at what lawn equipment might be on sale. He pointed to a shiny new lawnmower. It was fire engine red.
"You should get one of those,” he said.
“I already have one,” I told him.
"You do?"
“Yeah... YOU!”
Sometimes taking my father to his various doctor appointments is a chore. On this occasion, my wife was with us because there were other things we needed to get done. It was pretty obvious that I was having trouble finding the street the doctor’s office was located on, but my wife was kind enough not to mention it.
When I finally found the office, I said, “Whew! I didn't know how to get here.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” my wife told me.
“Why not?”
“Because you certainly know how to get everywhere when I’M driving.”
The forecast said rain.
Personally, I didn’t think so, but my father disagreed. Pointing out the window, he told me, “Son, those are some serious clouds out there.”
“Those aren’t cirrus clouds,” I answered him, misunderstanding. “They’re cumulus.”
Giving me the stink eye, my father did his best impression of Tuco from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and said, “There are two kinds of clouds in the world, my friend. Those that are serious, and those that aren’t.”
I know we live in the time of Uber, but my father and I were doing my buddy Maloney a favor and dropping him and his family off at the airport. Thanksgiving is one of the busiest times of the year to travel, so the porters were overwhelmed and Slip, his nickname at work, wasn’t able to get the attention of one to help them with their luggage.
“Oh, man,” he whined, “we’re going to miss our flight.”
“Let me have a twenty,” my father told him.
Maloney hesitated, but Slip's mother-in-law gave him a quick elbow to the ribs.
“Give it to him,” she ordered, and then gave my father a flirtatious smile.
Though surprised, Maloney opened his wallet. Pulling out a twenty, he handed it over.
My father raised it in the air.
Almost immediately, we had three skycaps running over to help us.
My wife is an excellent cook, but somehow, on my birthday, the cake she had made for me was crumbling badly, even with her best attempts to hold everything in place with frosting.
“Hey, that cake’s just like you,” my father told me when he saw it. “It’s falling apart.”
I don’t know why, but my father likes to go shopping with us. Not so much with me, but with my wife. I think it’s because my wife never tells him no when he wants to toss some useless item that he’ll never use or eat into our cart.
The line we were in wasn’t long, especially compared to the other lines, and two older ladies looking to save time were making their way to us.
“That one looks good,” one lady told the other, nodding in the direction of my father.
“Sorry, ladies” my father said, “I’m married.”
