Looking Good (Part Three)

My father and I were visiting an old friend of his at the nursing home he now called home.

“Wouldn’t you like to stay in a facility like his?” I asked my father on the drive there.

“No,” he answered.

I don’t think my beautiful wife would like it either. 

Like the end of Down & Out In Beverly Hills, we’d all stand there looking at him leave, and then, at the last second, make the mistake of inviting him back to stay with us.

His friend was happy to see us. 

“You look good, you son of a bitch!” he told my father.

“I lost twenty pounds,” my father bragged.

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” my father assured him, “but you should have seen me before I gained it all back.” 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HOME bALONEy

The last Saturday before Christmas was busy.      By the time I got home it was dark. My wife was already in bed watching something on her tablet. I'd tell you what, but I've forgotten. That's nothing unusual. I can forget any number between one and ten just by counting scoops of coffee into my coffee maker. My wife, on the other hand, says I don't listen to her, or some such nonsense.      My two daughters were getting ready to go out and my granddaughter was by herself watching  Home Alone  in the living room. On the TV screen, a young girl was busy miscounting the children.      Personally, I’ve never cared for  Home Alone . With the exception of John Candy, there’s not one likable person in it. Sure, little Kevin is cute, but do you really like him? In a reflective moment inside a church, even  he  admits he’s a bit of a turd.      I wanted to get on...
Read more

I Retired For This?

   as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine RaisingDad by Jim and Henry Duchene I Retired For This? “yeah, I thought so”    My wife and I were cleaning our oakwood floors downstairs.      Wood floors need a good, old fashioned cleaning and waxing several times a year to keep it rich looking, and all that cleaning and waxing takes an awful lot of elbow grease. With the grease usually coming from  MY  elbow. The whole affair takes too long to do all at once, so we break it up into sections.       Which reminds me of the following joke:         What did the broom say to the vacuum cleaner?      “I’m tired of people pushing us around.”        But I digress...      By we, I’m not including my father. He was sitting in his (my) favorite chair. I couldn't see him from where I was, but I knew he was there because ...
Read more

Another Four Stories

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine    RaisingDad by Jim and Henry Duchene Another Four Stories “let sleeping angels lie”   When my granddaughter was four-years-old we were driving back from a road trip and she was asleep in her car seat. She looked like an angel, her hair a delicate tangle of curls. She was perspiring the way children sometimes do when they slumber.  Suddenly, she startled awake. “Are you okay?” I asked her. She looked around, slow to take in her surroundings. “I dreamt my hair was on fire,” she finally told me. “Well, you’re safe now,” I assured her. After a few seconds I dipped a toe into the water. “You woke up pretty quick,” I said. She nodded. “You wake up fast when your hair’s on fire,” she told me. I guess you do. Now my granddaughter is eight, and she’s a pretty bright kid (she gets it from me). She’s back at school and was telling me they were teaching her about fire safety. She had learn...
Read more