Email To My Brother: As God Is My Witness

 

Our father must have been in the mood to set some family history straight.
     We were talking about how President Trump heroically couldn’t serve in the military because of his patriotic bone spurs and how Clueless Joe weaseled out of going to Vietnam by receiving a Section 8.
     “I know my brother wanted to join the Navy,” I told him, “but dropped out when he got a girl pregnant.” 
     “Is that what he told you?” he asked, then told me the real story: Seems you volunteered and were itching to go, but in the middle of your physical you were discharged when, standing in the middle of a room full of guys in their underwear, you popped a boner.
     “Really, pop?” I asked, not believing it.
     “As God is my witness,” he sadly confirmed.

  

RaisingDad

RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com

JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com. American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene

Christmas Fair

 as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine

My wife lied to me.

     “No, I didn’t,” she insisted.

     But she did. 

     By omission, that is.

     You see, every year we go to a Christmas Fair with my buddy Maloney and his wife, Gail. Local businesses set up booths there to sell their wares. This year, however, my beautiful wife “conveniently” forgot to tell me Maloney wasn’t coming. He played it smart and scheduled an appointment with an exterminator to fumigate his house. I’m not saying shopping with your wife is boring, but when a man would rather breathe poison, well, you tell me.

     It cost five dollars to park in the underground garage, but a sign said no cash. Credit or debit only. 

     “What if you don’t have a credit or debit card?” I asked my wife. “By the time you see the sign, you’re stuck.”

     “Who doesn’t have a credit or debit card?” my wife wanted to know.

     She had a point. All I had was a weak argument.

     “Well, somebody,” I said.

     We parked and got out of the car. By the time we got to the elevator, I had to see a man about a horse, if you get my drift. Everybody piled inside. The doors closed, but we didn’t move. It looked like I would soon be having to apologize to an elevator full of unhappy people. 

     Turns out, no one had pressed the button. Finally, when somebody did, we began to move.

     Walking into the holiday extravaganza, I looked around. Apparently, masks were optional. There was a 60s Volkswagen Beetle decorated like a Christmas present. The bathrooms were right behind it.

     “You guys go ahead,” I told my family. “I’m going to take a look at that Beetle.”

     “Why do you want to look at that old car?” my wife wanted to know.

     “I just do,” I answered.

     Nobody needs to know my business.

     When I came back, Maloney’s wife was there and she was already in the middle of giving everyone a hug.

     ‘You won’t believe my mother,” she told us.

     “What now?” I thought to myself.

     “She has BEDBUGS!”

     Without thinking, we all took a step back, away from her.

     They had just returned from vacation. Before they left, she made arrangements for her mother to stay at their house and watch their dog. Maloney complains that his mother-in-law loves that dog more than she loves her grandchildren. Personally, I think his wife loves that dog more than she loves him, but that’s another story.

     “Can you believe she didn’t tell me?”

     Yeah, I could believe it.

     “I could SEE them on her, but what could I do? We were leaving when she got there.”

     “Is it a problem with the apartment complex she’s living in?” I asked.

     “It’s a problem with HER,” Gail said. “She never cleans or washes her sheets. Her place is filthy.”

     “Poor you,” my wife offered.

     “Poor Maloney,” I thought.

     The first booth we came upon sold peanut brittle. I love peanut brittle, but not for ten bucks a pop. As you know, $5 is my price point.

     I heard music. Going off with my youngest daughter, I headed toward it. A Native American gentleman was playing a flute. He had a variety of them for sale. As I walked over to look at some, he immediately put down his instrument and walked over.

     “Can I help you?” he asked, but I think he was just making sure I wouldn’t steal anything.

     I was thinking of buying one for my six-year-old granddaughter. She’s very musical. Recently, she's begun taking piano lessons, and, to the consternation of her teacher, she prefers playing without looking at the sheet music. I understand the consternation. You first have to learn to do things the right way before you can do them YOUR way. 

     I’ve told my granddaughter that the piano is her secret friend. Whenever she’s happy or angry or sad, she can always confide to the piano through writing her own songs. “And a piano will always keep your secrets,” I promised her.

     I decided on a small traditional flute and a pan flute. I recall a late-night commercial where some musician was selling CDs of his pan flute music. “He’s sold more albums than the Beatles!” the announcer announced. That sounded suspicious to me, considering I had never heard of the guy before. Both flutes were past my price point, but I asked myself: Will I regret not buying them? Yeah, I would. So I did.

     “Da-aaad!” my youngest daughter groused. “She doesn’t need ANOTHER thing to annoy us with,” but she said it with a smile. She loves her niece, too.

     A local jeweler had a booth. “Designer for the stars!” a large sign read, and under the words were pictures of pretty young women wearing her jewelry. None of them were stars. 

     A guy with a vibrating muscle massager tried to cut me off.

     “I’m looking for my wife,” I told him, using the truth as an excuse not to stop.

     “Give me two minutes,” he pushed.

     “You’d only be wasting your time,” I told him.

     Next to him was a foot guy. Now THAT I considered. When you get older you’ll discover your feet will hurt for no reason. Still, I kept walking. He was past my price point, too. My father tells me I’d rather suffer than spend my money, and, yeah, he’s probably right.

     My daughter and I stopped at a booth that sold knitted hats of cartoon characters. Star Wars. Marvel. Even Disney.

     I quickly got on my phone to give ol’ Walt a heads up.

     Turns out, he died in 1966.

     Where does the time go?

 

************************************************

I love Christmas office parties,

but I hate having to look for a job the next day.

theduchenebrothers@gmail.com

@JimDuchene

Email To My Brother: Yes, But (Part Two)

I once asked our father if he really took you to all those places you say he did, and he said: “I took your brother everywhere... but nobody would take him.”

  

  

RaisingDad

RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com

JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com. American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene

    

Email To My Brother: Yes, But (Part One)

 

I once asked our father if he really took you to all those places you say he did, and he said: “Yes… but he always found his way back home.” 

  

RaisingDad

RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com

JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com. American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene

    

Somehow He Knows (Part One)

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine

My father. 

     I don't know how he knows, but he does. He can't see to the end of the room, but whenever I'm doing any kind of work in the house, somehow he knows and a few seconds later he’s situated himself right in the middle of it. It could be something as simple as my walking into the kitchen early in the wee morning hours to fix my wife a cup of coffee. I won't even turn on the light, but I'll see the light go on in the little in-law house in the front of our property. Then I’ll see him walk out his door toward the main house. Sometimes I'm able to sneak back upstairs with our coffee before he makes it into the house, but sometimes...

     "Where's my coffee?" my wife will ask when I walk back into our bedroom empty-handed.

     "Um... ah... well..." I'll begin to explain.

     "Your father?"

     "Yeah."

     For the last three days I've been trying to dust-mop and buff the oak floor downstairs. As usual, no sooner do I start to dust the floor, than he walks into the kitchen for his tea. And then, once he has his tea--and also proving in the process that he doesn't need my wife to make it for him--he sits himself in his favorite chair in the den to watch the TV.  Sometimes he even turns it on. These last few days it's been on, and that meant I couldn't use the buffer. It makes too much noise. 

     Today, I finally got lucky and was able to finish dusting the floor. No dad. He was still in his little house. I quickly grabbed the buffer. Just as I was about to turn it on, guess who walked in? My father. Only, there I was with the buffer, standing between him and his favorite chair.

     “Can't he see I'm busy in here?” I thought to myself.

     So I pretended not to see him, and began fiddling with the buffer, giving him time to leave. Instead, he stood there looking at me fiddling with this and fussing with that. From the corner of my eye,  I could see he was trying to figure out his next course of action. He stood there, not saying anything. No "Hi, how are you?" No "Good morning." No "You’re in my way.”

Smacking his lips, he attempted to let me know he was there. Smack, smack, smack! "Ahhhh, well..." Big sigh, then smack, smack, smack some more. He finally came up with a plan. Instead of coming straight in through the kitchen, he detoured down the hall and into the den. 

     "Oh, my..." he said to nobody in particular, plopping himself down in front of the TV. For some reason known only to him, he didn't bother to turn it on. He just sat there, watching a black screen. If she’s around, my wife will usually turn it on for him, but today she's not around. She was upstairs, keeping herself busy and out of my way. My father, however, was never one to take a hint. 

     Giving up, I began buffing the floor. I've never worked harder in my life than since I've retired, and there I was, building up a sweat, putting a fine finish on the floor. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. It was almost hypnotic. Very zen-like. My music was on, but I couldn't hear who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop because the buffer was so loud, but I swear I could still hear my father.

     “Ah… oh oh… my my my…”

     After I finished, I figured I couldn't pretend not to see him any longer, so I asked him:

     "Pop, do you want me to turn on the TV for you?"

     "What?"

     "Do you want me to turn on the TV for you?"

     "What?"

     "Do You Want Me To Turn On The TV For You?"

     "Do I want you to what?"

     "TURN ON THE TV FOR YOU!"

     "What are you yelling at me for?"

     I went upstairs.

     If it wasn't for his constant lip-smacking, I would be more than happy to sit and watch TV with him, just no more baseball games. I'm still shell-shocked from the first year he moved in. I watched more baseball games in that one year than all the other years of my life put together, but I wanted him to feel at home, so I watched. 

     After that year, I told my wife, "Sweetie, I love my father, but I can't watch any more baseball." She understood. I think that's part of the reason she caters to my father more than she should. 

     I returned downstairs an hour later. He was still there. Sitting. In the den. The TV off. Eyes closed. Not moving. Was he asleep? Or was he… was he...

     I stood there quietly.

     SMACK! 

     I went back upstairs.

     All was right with the world.

  

***************

Why is it the older I get, the earlier it gets late?

theduchenebrothers@gmail.com

@JimDuchene

Email To My Brother: Happy Birthday

Talking with our father on Saturday, I asked him, “How was your birthday?”

    “Your brother didn’t call me,” he said, and started to cry. “It was the best birthday EVER.”

  

  

RaisingDad

RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com

JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com. American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene

Saying Goodbye

 as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine

Every now and then one of my readers will ask about my mother.

     The reason I don’t write about her more often is because my beautiful wife can always tell when I’ve been crying. When I cried at my mother’s funeral, she asked if it was because of my haircut.

     I write about my father by default. When my mother died, my wife and I--mainly my wife--made the decision to invite my elderly, pre-Alzheimer’s father to move in with us. His good years were mainly behind him. He went from being someone who could fix anything to someone who could break anything at any time at the worst possible moment. I’m not particularly handy, so it’s been a chore.

     My youngest sister took care of my mother the last years of her life, and I’m grateful to her. Bathing my mother and changing her diaper, well, let’s just say I’m not half the man my sister is. My father, for the most part, can take care of himself, but my mother spent her last years bedridden with a UTI that refused to go away. No amount of antibiotics could get rid of it. I bought her some probiotics called Garden Of Life/Urinary Tract made especially for that. 50 BILLION live cultures. I feel sorry for the guy who had to count them all.

     Not only that, but my poor mother’s hearing was bad, her vision was worse, and walking was no longer a good idea. She had to be helped in and out of bed. Like I do now with my father, I took her lunch on Saturdays, but it had to be something soft because she had also lost all of her teeth.

     One of the last times I visited my mother she was in bed. Her lips moved, but no words came out. I remember her hands the most. They were soft and cool in mine. Delicate bones covered with skin so thin you could see through it. Then, her battery running out, she drifted off to sleep. When I stepped into the living room, my sister was there. She looked at me.

     “Are you okay?” she asked.

     I don’t think I was.

     The next week, my mother was more lively. When I walked into her room, she was talking with one of her sisters. My aunt, of course, wasn’t there. She had died years ago. It was just that damn UTI causing my mother to hallucinate. My sister would tell me that sometimes our mother would be up all night talking to friends and relatives who weren’t there, most of them dead.

     “Look who’s here,” my mother said.

     I wasn’t sure if I should say hello to someone who wasn’t there. Instead, I decided to talk directly to my mother.

     “How’s your sister been?” I asked her. “I haven’t seen her since...well…”

     Well, since she died.

     “Oh, fine, fine,” my mother said. “I was telling her you finally got married.”

     By that time, I had been married for 21 years. To my mother, it just happened. How I could have been recently married and already have had three kids and one grandchild is a math only the UTI understood. Somewhere down the road of our conversation, it was obvious she thought I was someone else. I wasn’t sure who, but when she told me that she loved me I knew it must have been someone close.

     “You know,” she confided in me, “my husband’s been getting up early. He takes a shower and leaves the house looking nice. I think he has a girlfriend.”

     “Maybe he’s just going to work,” I said, not wanting to contradict her.

     “Maybe, maybe,” my mother agreed, but wasn’t convinced. Taking a sudden right turn, she said, “You know, Henry moved to California.”

     My older brother had moved over fifty years ago.

     “He always wanted to live there,” I told her.

     “Yes, he did,” she said, and then quickly turned left. “I fell and hit my head,” she told me.

     “Are you okay?” I asked, a bit concerned. My sister hadn’t said anything, and she looked fine to me.

     “I’m okay,” she assured me. “I cut my head. There was a lot of blood.”

     “When did you fall?” I asked her.

     “Forty years ago,” she told me. “My head still hurts.”

     “I’m sorry to hear that, mom.”

     Taking a detour, she said, “Did I tell you? Henry died.”

     I wasn’t sure if she was talking about my father or my brother, they both have the same name.

     “He died?”

     “Yes. He died last week.”

     Trying to put some logic to what she was telling me, I figured it was my brother she was talking about, since my father was busy sneaking off with an imaginary girlfriend.

     I couldn’t wait to give my brother the news. Boy, was he going to be surprised.

     “How did he die?” I was curious to know.

     “He got sick,” she said.

     After a little more conversation, she told me, “So nice of you to visit.”

     That was her way of letting me know she was tired. Saying goodbye, I left, gently kissing her forehead on my way out. It was also soft and cool.

     My mother always loved talking with people, so I was happy she was having friends and relatives visit, even if they weren’t really there. In the solitude she was living in, at least she wasn’t lonely.

     I called my brother later that day and gave him the bad news.

     “What did I die of?” he wanted to know.

     “You got sick,” I told him.

     “I hope it was quick,” he said.

     “It wasn't,” I joked, but the humor fell flat.

We were quiet for a few seconds, neither of us knowing what to say.

“You should call her,” I finally told him. “She’d be happy to know you’re alive.”

       

***************

Special thanks to my Twitter followers.

7000+ and growing.

@JimDuchene

desertexposure.com

 

Underwater Math

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine

2021 has been a milestone for my 6-year-old granddaughter (and if anyone can tell me what a milestone is, I’d be grateful). A few months back she rode her bike without training wheels for the first time, and recently she swam without floaties.

    I guess all kids look cute, but she looked ESPECIALLY cute dog-paddling across the pool all by herself. She’s evolved to a more traditional way of swimming now, and, cold water or not, is not afraid to jump in. That little girl takes up a lot of my time, but the day will come when she'll have other things to do and other people to do them with, so I'll enjoy it while I can. 

    Myself, I didn't learn to swim until I was 13, and only because I didn't want to look like a dork to any of the girls at the public pool. You can't put a move on somebody when you're drowning.

     My mother, bless her heart, was deathly afraid of water. If I so much as stepped into a puddle, she'd yell, "Get out of the water! You'll DROWN!" If we visited someone who had a pool, she'd warn me, "Don’t go near the water! You'll DROWN!"

     Funny, but she didn’t seem as concerned with my brother.

     "Jump in," she'd tell him. "The water's fine."

     "But mom," he’d whine, "I can’t swim."

     "I'll watch you," she'd assure him, and then walk away. 

     Of course I'm only kidding. She never encouraged any of us to jump in, not even my brother.

     The first time my granddaughter swam by herself we were at the pool in the apartment complex my daughter lives at. As my granddaughter was putting her Olympic-level skills to work, she tuckered out and swam to the ladder that was in the four feet section. My granddaughter was “taking five,” as she put it.

     Hanging on the handrail, she told me, “Look, grandpa, I can do underwater math.”

She pinched her nose and dunked her head below the surface. When she raised it, she informed me the ladder had three steps.

     Hmm… underwater math.

     Without intending to, she came up with ANOTHER original math theorem.

      First, like I told you last month, she came up with: 

 

Everything Equals Itself,

 

and now: 

 

Math Is Constant (Even Under Changing Conditions).

   

     So, whether you’re on dry land, underwater, or flying through space, math doesn’t change. It remains constant. You can’t say the same for anything else. 

     Is this important? 

     Well, it was certainly important for NASA to know the math they used here on earth to get Neil Armstrong to the moon would stay the same once he was there so he could get back.

     Obvious?

     Yes.

     But it took a falling apple for Isaac Newton to discover something as obvious as gravity. No one had made that connection before. And don’t get me started on whoever came up with zero or negative numbers.

     If you’re looking for useless concepts, look no further than Schrodinger's Cat or Zeno’s Paradox. Other than sounding pretentious, what practical purpose do either of these concepts serve?

In the first, physicist Erwin Schrodinger asserted if you put a cat and poison into a box and sealed it, the cat will simultaneously be alive and dead. Alive because it wasn't exposed to the poison, and dead because it was. It is only when you look inside that the cat becomes one or the other. 

In the second, Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea proved movement is impossible. Say you wanted to walk from here to there. First, you have to get to the midway point. Before that, however, you have to get to the quarter point. But before THAT, you have to make it 1/8th of the way there. Then 1/16th of the way. Then 1/32nd, and onward into infinity. Infinity, well, goes on infinitely, thus making movement impossible.

    Those two notions remind me of the scene in Animal House where three college students are getting high with their professor, and one of them blows his own mind imagining that a whole universe could exist in the tip of one of his fingers. I don’t know what Schrodinger or Zeno were on, but I’d like to give some to my father when his Alzheimer’s causes him to become aggressive.

     Meanwhile, my daughter taught me a little something about negative numbers. We were at Barnes & Noble. As we were looking around, I found the only copy of a book I had been looking for.  “Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy. I heard about it from Greg Fitzsimmons, a comedian whose podcast I enjoy. It takes place in the days of "Lonesome Dove," but it’s a darker tale. I was going to buy it for myself, but I made the mistake of telling my daughter that my brother would like it.

    “He would?” she asked, taking the book out of my hand. “Can I buy it for him?”

     He’s her godfather, so what could I say?

     “Can you lend me twenty dollars, dad?”

    I got out my wallet and lent her the money. I peeked inside before closing it. Yeah, it looked pretty negative to me.

    I prefer underwater math.

  

***************

Math books are sad because they have so many problems.

theduchenebrothers@gmail.com

@JimDuchene

Email To My Brother: The Delta Variant

I was talking with our father and he told me he was worried about you.

     “Why, pop?” I asked him.

     “Because of this new Delta Variant of Covid,” he told me.

     “I wouldn’t worry,” I tried to assure him. “It’s only dangerous to people with a pre-condition.”

     “THAT’S the problem,” he insisted, “his whole FACE is a pre-condition!” 

  

  

RaisingDad

RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com

JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com. American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene

    

Bad Math, Bad Day

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine

Last year, my then five-year-old granddaughter came up with a math theorem that was elegant in its simplicity:

10 = 10.

     I was playfully showing her math equations on my phone’s calculator, mainly adding ridiculously long numbers together, when she snatched it from my hand and taught me this important lesson: Everything Equals Itself.

     It’s an obvious concept, but not one that I’ve ever seen or heard expressed before. It was an original idea, and I’m a sucker for original ideas. The brilliance of her smile showed just how proud she was of her theorem. So proud she repeated it for me again and again.

    On the other hand, my elderly father is losing his relationship with numbers and their value. When I take him to the doctor, the receptionist will say, “Your co-pay is...”

     “Pay it,” he’ll tell me.

     I often wonder what kind of  math they teach in schools these days. A bad math, I reckon. Two plus two equals four if you’re a racing enthusiast, five if you’re not.

     I'm being unfair, I know. Teaching is a two-way street. There's the teaching part, then there's the learning part. Einstein could be your teacher, but if you refuse to learn, then you might as well let him choose your hairstyle.

     I was at a restaurant the other day. The total was $9.73. I gave the cashier, who had been my waitress, a ten. As she put the bill in the cash drawer, I handed her 73 cents. She looked unsure for a second, put the coins in the drawer, and then tried to hand me back 27 cents. I didn't take it.

     "It’s a dollar," I told her.

     "What?"

     "I should get a dollar back."

     "The total was $9.73," she told me.

     "Yes, but I gave you a 10-dollar bill and then 73 cents in change."

     She tried to remember. Looked at the register for help. It didn't give her any, so I stepped in.

     "I gave you a 10-dollar bill and then 73 cents in change," I repeated, "so I should get a dollar back."

     She wasn't convinced.

     "I first gave you a ten," I re-repeated, "and then I gave you 73 cents, so my change is a dollar."

     The problem was she let the cash register do the math for her. The total was $9.73. When I handed over the ten, THAT’S what she entered into the machine. Even though I handed over an additional 73 cents, the magic box told her she only owed me 27 cents.

     She finally broke down and handed me a dollar, but I think she was just tired of arguing. Did I think she was trying to cheat me? Not really. She had just been depending on the cash register for way too long.

     She was surprised when I gave her a 5-dollar tip. The waitresses here are sweet, the food is good, and times have been hard. It was the least I could do.

     From there, I drove to a fast food joint. I lost the sleeve to a gift card I bought and needed to get another. There was no dine-in eating, so I waited behind several cars before making it to the drive-through speaker. 

     "Rack-dack-ork?" the speaker said.

     "Excuse me?" I answered. 

     "May I help you?" the speaker said again, this time in English.

     "Yes," I said. "Your dine-in is closed and I need to get a sleeve for a gift card I have."

     "Sorry, but our dine-in is closed. May I help you?"

     "I lost the sleeve to a gift card and wanted to get another."

     "A sleeve?"

     "Yes."

     "What's a sleeve?"

     "It's the envelope gift cards come in."

     "Oh, you don't need an envelope," the speaker informed me. "All you need is the gift card. It has a little magnetic strip on the back that we scan."

     Oh. 

     Now I'M the stupid one.

     "I bought this card as a gift," I explained to her, "and lost the sleeve it came in. I’d like to get another one."

     "Sorry, but we don't have envelopes for gift cards."

     "That's funny, because, when I bought this one, they gave me one with it."

     "I don't know what to tell you, sir,” the speaker said, caught in a lie and doubling down. “We don't have envelopes for our gift cards."

     "Thanks for your trouble," I told the speaker.

     I've learned in life it's better to be polite. There's a better chance you'll make the other person feel bad.

     So I drove away. Kind of irritated, but what could I do?

     I needed gas. 

     There's a convenience store I go to that has the best prices. I can understand why the price of gasoline fluctuates on a daily basis, but I don't know why it fluctuates from gas station to gas station.

     I pulled up to the pumps. Got out of my car. Pulled the debit card out of my wallet the way a magician pulls a rabbit out of his hat. Inserted it into the slot. It didn't work. "See cashier," the screen told me.

     I got into my car and drove away,

     If I wanted to see the cashier I wouldn’t have used my debit card.

  

***************

Thanks to everyone who sent me their “butterfly dreams” (May 2021).

theduchenebrothers@gmail.com

@JimDuchene