RaisingDad

  RaisingDad by Jim and Henry Duchene   T hank You For Your Service “fifty cents and yellow skin”      My wife is not only beautiful but she’s also very generous.       More generous than I am, that’s for sure.       We were at a restaurant and my wife saw a young clean-cut gentleman in a wheelchair. He was missing a leg.      “Do you see that man?” she asked me.      “Who?” I said.      “The man in a wheelchair.”      I said no, not because I didn’t see him, but because I knew saying yes would cost me money.      My wife wasn’t fooled.       “Your  father  was in the service,” she said, giving me an elbow to the ribs, disgusted by my financial thriftiness. She got up and walked over to the young man.      “Thank you for your service,” she told him, her eyes moist with tears. “I’d be honored to pay for yo...

I wrote a little bit about food in last Monday's "Pigs Is Pigs" column. I have another observation. As much as Italians love life and enjoy eating, they really dropped the ball with desserts. France has delicious desserts. So does Germany. But Italy… I've never had panna cotta, but isn't it just custard? I've had custard. I'm not impressed. Tiramisu? Wasn't he the Japanese warlord from  Shōgun ? You can tell cannoli desperately wants to be an éclair, but fails miserably. And why have gelato when you can have the real thing:  ice cream!  Preferably Mint Chocolate Chip from Baskin-Robbins. Personally, I'm a Dairy Queen kind of guy myself, but the rest of my family loves BR's chilly green concoction. Many's been the night when my wife has interrupted a perfectly good rerun of  Just Shoot Me  by asking me to go buy her a quart. I go… …but I'm not happy about it. You see, I just don't have the energy anymore. Of Newton's Laws of Phys...

    Anthea’s Hope  story by Jim Duchene tech by Grok 1      The desert stretched endlessly before Thomas Jerome Newton. A cracked and desolate expanse that mirrored the fate of his home planet, Anthea.       He stood atop a dune. His thin frame cloaked in a tailored suit that  seemed out of place against the barren landscape. His eyes, hidden behind dark sunglasses, scanned the horizon. Not Earth’s, but a simulation he’d built in a Nevada warehouse. It was a desperate attempt to feel something of home. A planet dying of drought. Its inhabitants reduced to dust and memory.      Newton had come to Earth decades ago with a mission. Amass wealth. Develop technology. Save Anthea by bringing water back. He’d succeeded in part. His patents had made him richer than King Solomon, but the planet’s bureaucracies, wars, and petty squabbles had delayed him. Now, time was running out. Anthea’s last tra...

After church, I took my wife and granddaughter to eat at Red Lobster. I remember the first time I went to Red Lobster, I took my ex-wife. They kicked her out for bringing her own crabs. Anyway, my father didn't want to go, so we took him home. "Bring me back something," he told us. Now that he's older, he's become like Bigfoot and prefers to stay away from people. You're going to think I'm crazy, especially since I've told you how cheap-I mean, frugal-I am, but my granddaughter, who's 10-years-old, likes to order The Ultimate Feast. It's about forty dollars. If you include my tip, that makes it forty dollars and twenty cents. Fortunately for the server my wife does the tipping. I don't want to say she's too generous, but people have been known to retire after she tips them. "Tipping is the price I'll happily pay not to cook or do dishes," she tells me. Normally, if anybody else wanted to order a forty dollar meal on my dim...

  An interesting thing happened at the church I go to.       They stopped having Saturday services.      This may not seem like a big thing, but it goes back to something I've always wondered concerning Christian worshipping practices: Why do we go to church on  Sundays ?       I understand that's when Jesus rose from the dead, but in the original Ten Commandments, of which there were actually 613 we were supposed to follow, we were commanded in the 4th to "Remember the  Sabbath  day, to keep it holy." There's more to it than that, a lot more, but I'm giving you the Reader's Digest condensed version.      When did that change, who changed it, and why do we accept it?      Let me put it this way: If my father tells me to do one thing and my buddy, the one who's always getting into trouble, tells me to do something in direct contradiction to it, who should I obey?      ...

After dinner, my granddaughter wanted to know what we were having for dessert. My wife, who’s not only beautiful but an excellent cook, hadn’t made dessert, so she informed her, “You don't always have to have dessert.” My granddaughter wasn't happy with that news. “Then why did I eat all my food?” she demanded to know. Yes, you could say my granddaughter has a way with words. The other day I caught her studying my face. I thought it was with love. That is, until she asked me, “When I grow up, are my ears gonna stick out like yours?” But it's not just my granddaughter. The rest of the world can come up with an occasional odd quip. For example, when my granddaughter and I were hitting all the local used bookstores, we stopped at a sandwich shop you would recognize the name of. I bought a footlong we were going to share. “Can you cut it in fourths?” I asked the professional sandwich maker before he wrapped it up. He seemed to be in his late teens. “Sorry,” he said, “but I’ve a...

There's an old joke. I think I read it first in Bazooka Joe. A man answers the phone. "You don't say!" he says. "You Don't Say!" YOU DON'T SAY!" He hangs up the phone. "Who was it?" his wife asks. "He didn't say." Later, I saw it on Benny Hill. Anyway… My father answered the phone. This was back when we still had landlines. He's not one to gab, but he talked so much I began to wonder who he was talking to. "How ya doin'? I'm doing fine. How 'bout them Yankees? Blah, blah, blah…" I scooted a little closer, trying to get a bead on who he was talking to. You never know, it could have been someone out to cheat him out of my inheritance. Someone like my brother. Five minutes must have passed, which is a marathon for my father. He's not much of a talker. At least, not on the phone. Neither am I, for that matter. Now, five minutes might not seem like a long time, but try keeping your head underwater...