Insulting Things (part three)

I’m guessing when you get older you lose the interior editor that keeps you from willy-nilly blurting out insulting things to the rest of humanity. 

     When my father gave himself a nice conk on the head and we were sitting in the waiting area of the ER, just people-watching to pass the time, one of the hospital's cleaning staff came in to empty out the trash. He was a young man with longish hair and one arm littered with colorful tattoos. He had on some old-fashioned headphones and was nodding his head to something the rest of us couldn't hear.

     "I hope he doesn't take those headphones off," my father said, leaning over to me confidentially but still talking in his normal volume. 

     "Why's that, pop?" I asked him.

     "Just by looking at him I can tell I won't like his music."

     One of the things they tested my father for at the hospital was to see if his facial nerves were okay.

     "Can you smile?" he was asked.

     "What have I got to smile about?" my father answered.

     The doctor must have been used to dealing with grumpy old men because he said, "Humor me," and my father did. Although it was more of a grimace than a grin. "Now show me your teeth."

     "I left them at home," my father said.

     In the end, he checked out fine. The doctor gave him a few instructions before leaving. Don't do this, don't do that, get help lifting heavy objects, and don't climb any ladders to get on the roof.

     "Oh, I leave all that to my son here," my father told him.

     "You do?" the doctor asked him, looking at my gray hair. I'm not saying I'm old, but when Moses split the Red Sea I was on the other side to greet him.

     "Yeah, he's still a young pup," my father said.

     All of us, my beautiful wife included, were hungry, so we walked over to the cafeteria to see if it was open. 

     It wasn't.

     "It's closed," a lady who was closing and locking the metal gate to the cafeteria told us.

     "Just as well," my father told her, for some reason being friendly. But then he made the mistake of continuing to be friendly. "Is the food as bad as the last time I ate here?"

     "Probably," the lady said. "They still have the same cook."

     "Who's that?"

     "Me."

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If I had a torture chamber, my wife would want to decorate it.