RaisingDad

Our father walked into the kitchen for breakfast and he was shaking in his rubber-bottomed socks.      “I just had a HORRIBLE nightmare,” he told me, his voice trembling.      “What is it, pop?” I asked him.      I was honestly concerned.      “I dreamt that your brother got the Caronavirus.”      “And the horrible part was that he died?”      “No, the horrible part was that he LIVED!”       Raising My Father RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com. American Chimpanzee @JimDuchene   

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine    I wasn't planning on writing a story for our issue dedicated to the noble turtle. My daughter submitted a whimsical tale for the occasion and I thought that was enough of a family representation. Plus, turtles have never been much of a muse for me. My granddaughter on the other hand... We were at the beginning of The Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020, and I was taking my granddaughter to visit with my sister. She lives in the house my parents owned, the one I grew up in.      Across the street is an elementary school where I got into all kinds of shenanigans as a kid. I wouldn’t say my friends and I were troublemakers, but, if there was trouble, we were usually around. Sadly, there’s a chain link fence surrounding the school now, so the playground was inaccessible.      “Inaccessible,” my granddaughter repeated. “What’s that?”      “That mean...