Happy Birthday?

When I wrote all my siblings and asked them to call me with their fave Dad stories, I had no idea it would basically turn into a collection of short stories entitled "How Not to Raise Your Children." Thankfully, no one can take a little heat better than Dad, so when I read my editor's version of these stories aloud on his birthday, no one laughed harder than him.

Sarah

Dad and I were driving home and I really had to pee. Bad. But I was too afraid to tell him, or them rather; Uncle Sam was with us too. So I just decided to pee. In the backseat. Of the company car. Hoping against hope that it would go unnoticed. Well, we parked in front of the house and dad took off his seatbelt, then he started to do that smelling thing that he always does, you know, "sniff, sniff." And I remember looking at the backs of his and Uncle Sam's heads and they just looked like these two mobsters and I was thinking, "Oh God, no."

So Dad immediately realized what the smell was and where it was coming from. He says,

"Honey. Oh Sarah. Look, if you had to go to the bathrrom you just gotta tell me. "

I was in awe. Like, I could tell my dad I had to pee and he not only wouldn't be mad but he would accomodate me? I was reminded of this concept a few years later when he caught me picking my nose.

"Sarah, it's ok to pick your nose, just go into the bathroom to do it."

It was great. All these things I thought were so shameful... needing to pee, picking my nose, they were ok. It was like he was telling me for the first time "It's ok to be you. It's ok to be human."

Granted this was coming from the same man who told me he was actually 100,00 years old and an alien.

Mary Lee

It's 1994 or so, and we're in Yosemite, camping. It's nighttime, we've had dinner, its been a long day, and it's time to go to sleep. I've brought my friend Andrea, aka "Dre" with me, and Ang has brought Eddie and Phil, I think. Anyways, they're still talking and trying to figure out something about a trail or who-knows-what, so I yell out the answer. Before I can even finish my sentence, Dad yells at me to go to sleep and stop talking. I try to explain that I was just answering Ang's question. But he doesn't care what I have to say.

"Mary just stop talking."

So now I'm pissed because it's such crap and I'm sitting in my tent with Dre, complaining about how stupid Dad is, etc etc. But i guess the volume of my voice raises again and suddenly...

"Mary? Mary? Is that you? I can't believe that's you!"

"But Dad, I didn't even..."

"I CAN'T believe that's you!"

I continue to get in little defenses here and there, but it's useless.

"I CAN'T believe you're still talking! SHUUUUT UP! SHUUUUUT UP! SHUUUUT UP!"

It was so embarrassing, but at the same time, I kinda understood why he got so out of control angry. I mean, I brought Dre with me who hates camping and, seriously, we stayed in the tent the entire time, listening to "The Chronic" album over and over. We didn't help with anything. All we did was sweep off our own sleeping mat and worry about breaking our ridiculously long acrylic nails; like so long that they curved. So, you know, I get it. Poor Dad.

Angelo

Dad went through this super long, weird phase where he would talk about baboons escaping from the zoo. Sometimes he would just say, "Oh man, baboon escaped," and not do anything about it. But once in a while he would really go the extra mile and pull out his baboon mask and scare the shit out of us.

My best friend Phil was over and he had never been through this whole baboon thing. Phil and I were hanging out in the dining room and it had these big long windows on the wall that looked out on to our dark backyard. Dad was watching TV with Mom in the other room, and he yells over to us,

"Oh hey, yeah, news just said that a baboon escaped from the LA Zoo. Last spotted it heading west, so they think its coming through this way."

God, he made it sound so convincing, and for Phil who had never heard it before, you know, why wouldn't he believe an adult? So I'm standing over by the couch and Phil's kinda just staring out one of the big windows. All of the sudden I hear this horrified scream and I look over and Phil is on his back and his hands are over his face and he's half-crying/half-laughing, and he's just repeating the same thing over and over again.

"Your dad's crazy. Your dad's crazy."

I look out the window, and there's Dad, hysterical. And in his hand, the gorilla mask.

Tim

Dad and I were folding laundry together and we had gotten to the part where it was time to fold the underwear. Now, this was during the time where Angelo and I had an overlap in our underwear size. So, there was size 30 worn by me, size 34 worn by Ang, and size 32, which we both wore. Problem was that tightee whitees have these tags where once they're washed so many times, you can't read the tag. It just becomes a memory of where the tag was.

So, Dad picks up some underwear, folds them then turns to me and asks,

"Tim whose are these?"

I look at the underwear, see the ghost tag, look at Dad and answer,

"I don't know Dad. There's no size on the tag."

Immediately, Dad just snaps.

"Don't get smart with me."

"Huh? No Dad, look there's no size... The tag,"

THWACK!!
He slapped me. In the face. He slapped me in my face and I couldn't believe it. I was just trying to answer the question the best I knew how. Then I thought, "This is CRAP!" ...so I slapped him. In the face. I slapped Dad in the face and I'm pretty sure I had to jump to do it. He was shocked. We both were. And we stood there staring at each other for what seemed like an eternity, but it was probably a half a second... and then Dad went nuts. He lifted me up by my waist, carried me to his room, and walloped me. Ugh, it was such BS.
Anyways, a few hours later i think he was feeling that feeling you get when you get too out of control with your kids and he comes up to me and says,
"Hey, uh, Tim you wanna get some pizza. Yeah, let's order some Little Ceasar's. How bout that, Tim?"

Me
I just remember Dad losing his mind in Mexico. The Belt Period. It was like, for everything and anything, you could possibly get the belt. If you answered him "what?" instead of "yes?" -the belt. If you ate candy in front of the poor kids -the belt. If you didn't finish your soup -the belt. If you were a totally out of control, disrespectful 13 year old brat (Sarah) -the belt. It was almost a nightly ritual.
But towards the end of our 90 day trip, Dad called us all in to the main living room and told us the most incredible and unbelievable news I had ever heard: we were going to get our chance to belt him. Each one of us. Line up and have at it. I think we each got 3 swings. The older kids kinda got the humor of the event. But man, I was excited! And I went for it! I remember standing behind him and really letting him have it. I know I was small at the time, but the centripetal* force alone! It had to hurt! But he was laughing, and I really think it's because as fun as it was for us, it was a relief for him. He was keeping it fair. When we got out of line, we got the belt. And now he had gotten out of line, and he was getting the belt. And this has been such a lesson that I have learned from my dad. As nutso as he could be, he was always fair! At least eventually. And that was not lost on any of us. Not a one.

*Is it centripetal or centrifugal? Whomever can answer this gets a prize. No, really.

Moonlight

Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy, especially as played by Van Cliburn.
The life in this song is so present that sometimes I can't listen to it.
Not tonight.
Over and over, it's playing. I have no intention to stop it.

And it makes me think of Papa.

He loved to record the most oddly random movies off of the television and onto VHS tapes.
He never wrote the actual names of the movies on the tapes. No. It was always some descriptive noun or adjective, followed by "movie," and written in all capital letters.

The titles were pretty straightforward, like


"PAVAROTTI MOVIE"

or

"CAR MOVIE"

There was this one we used to watch all the time about a few hapless bums and their racetrack dog. Papa entitled this one,

"GOOD MOVIE"

...and that's what we all called it. And it was.