RaisingDad

A man walks into a bar and says, "Bartender, give me two beers. One for me and one for my little buddy here."      With that, he pulls out a three-inch man from his pocket.       "Wow!" says the bartender when he sees the little guy. "Can he drink a whole beer?"       "Sure," says the man, so the bartender serves them both a beer, and the little guy drinks it all up.       "Well, I'll be," says the bartender. "Can he walk?"       "Sure," says the man, and the little guy walks over and pours them both another beer.       "That's amazing," says the bartender. "Can he talk?"       "Sure," says the man. "Little Buddy, why don't you tell the bartender about the day you told God to prove He exists."      The point of that story was that you don't have to be embarrassed about the small size of...

The last time I took my elderly father to a restaurant, we had the misfortune of getting a new waitress on her first day of training. The poor girl got BOTH of our orders wrong, even though we ordered the same thing.      But she tried, I'll give her that.      Instead of hamburger steaks, we got hamburgers. Instead of mashed potatoes, we got fries. Instead of coffee, we got diet colas.      At the end of the meal, the flustered waitress smiled and asked if we would like dessert.      My father perused the dessert menu for a second, and then asked her, "Now... what do I have to order to get some pie?"     Raising My Father RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com JimDuchene.blogspot.com  American Chimpanzee @JimDuchene as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine  

The only thing my elderly father enjoys more than shopping with my wife at one of those members-only warehouse stores is sticking his nose into other people's business. Recently, he got to do both.      We were in line to pay for our too much of everything, and my father was looking at his box of corn dogs. He was in the mood for ONE, so, of course, my wife insisted on buying him a carton of 42.      When my dad finally put it down, he looked up and saw the customer standing in front of us, who was very tall.      "Dang, you're a big one," my father told him, stating the obvious. "How tall are you gonna be when you reach your full growth?"      "I'm six-ten," the man answered. He was polite, but obviously tired of continuously being singled out.      "Wow!" our eavesdropping cashier chimed in. "I'M four-eleven, and you're TWICE as tall as I am."      My father considered this, then leaned for...

When Jesus was on the road to Canaan, He came upon a man who was weeping.      "Why do you weep, my son?" Jesus asked him.      "Because I am blind," the man told him, so Jesus touched him and he could see.      Further down the road, Jesus came upon another man who was weeping.      "And why do you weep, my son?" Jesus again asked.     "Because, my Lord, I have leprosy," the man explained, so Jesus touched HIM and he was healed.      Still further down the road, Jesus came upon a third man and he was weeping most bitterly of all.      "Tell me, my son," Jesus said softly, "why do YOU weep?"      "Because," the man answered, "my widowed father has come to live with me in his old age."      And so Jesus sat by him and they BOTH wept together.      Thus sayeth the Lord.     Raising My Father RaisingMyFath...

My wife loves gardening.      Unfortunately, she recently hurt her leg so now she's temporarily forced to do her second favorite thing: spend time with me. We were enjoying a hot cup of coffee together in the outside patio one morning, when my elderly father overheard her complain about the small decorative dragonfly statue in her garden.      "It's broken?" my dad asked. "I'll fix it."      One of its wings had broken off, causing it to look like Jim Croce's main character who "looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone" in his song You Don't Mess Around With Jim . My father's solution was to break off the opposing wing to give the poor dragonfly a more aesthetically pleasing look.      My wife leaned her head confidentially closer to mine.      "Don't tell dad I hurt my leg," she whispered.     Raising My Father R...

Back before television, there was a family sitcom on the radio called The Bickersons .      As my parents got older, they reminded me more and more of the two main characters. There wasn't a story my dad wanted to tell that my mother wouldn't correct him on, and there wasn't a place my mother wanted to go that my father wouldn't tell her, "Go without me."      One Saturday morning, I thought I'd invite them to breakfast at a restaurant of their choice. As usual, my father wanted to stay home, but my mother eventually nagged him into it.      My father already knew what he wanted, something from the three main food groups: cows, chickens, and pigs. In other words, steak and eggs with a side of bacon. To this day, my father's heart is perfectly healthy. Me, on the other hand, if I eat lettuce my cholesterol goes through the roof. Go figure.      As my mother and I looked at the menu, he jus...

At 18, you could say I was feeling my oats.      It was the late 70’s, and Congress—in their wisdom—had just lowered the drinking age, so my buddies and I thought we’d do our patriotic duty and throw back a few.      My father only had 2 rules for me: 1) don’t miss my curfew, and 2) don’t drink. Unfortunately, he didn’t add another rule to that short list: 3) don’t be stupid. If he had, I might not have broken the first 2.      To his credit, my father—whose belt not only held up his pants, but was also in charge of administering justice—didn’t overreact. In fact, he even let me sleep it off.      When I woke up the next afternoon, hung over didn’t even begin to describe how bad I felt. I didn’t think I was hung over, I thought I was dying. I felt so bad, my teeth even hurt.      “Hung over?” my Dad asked. He was a man of a few words.      “Yeah,” I answe...