Guess what today is? If you said Monday, you'd be wrong, because it's Friday. See, it says so right up there in the date line. August 5th. Would the date line lie? I think not. And today, the 5th, is my dad's birthday. I can't think of a more heart-felt and cheap gift than to share some dad stories with my closest internet friends and a couple of other people who stumbled onto this site by Googling "d'artagnan cartoon porn." Seriously, people do searches for some freaky stuff to end up here. Once my page came up after someone did a search for "pantsless man and an excited donkey." Yikes. Just...yikes.
Anyway, here's a little background information. When he was growing up, my dad wasn't allowed to do much of anything. There was a dip in the road in front of his house that would fill with water after rainstorms. All the other kids in the neighborhood used to swim and splash around in it on hot summer days, but my grandmother (not the one who was in the car accident) kept him away. "Sure, you can go play in the water with the other kids...if you want polio!" So my dad stayed inside and sweated out the heat. To his knowledge, none of the other kids ever got polio.
Nana wouldn't let my dad or his sisters eat popcorn at the movie theater, either. She said they'd choke in the dark. She invents things to worry about. I used to stay with her and my aunt on the weekends. It was great, because every Saturday morning, my aunt would take me to Toys "R" Us, and Child World. We'd come back with the back seat loaded with toys. Although my mom may have seen differently, the toys were a necessity. Nana didn't want me to playing in the back yard, because there was a well back there that I could fall into. And I couldn't play in the front yard because I could get hit by a car. She might as well have drawn a circle on the floor around me and said, "Here, you can play anywhere you want. As long as it's in this spot." The only thing I could do while I was there was play with my new Legos in the saftey of the living room.
Nowadays, my dad eats popcorn in the dark with reckless abandon. I'm not sure if she knows that or not. I can only imagine what she said when he told her he was going to Viet Nam.
Also, maybe it's just me, but I think he kinda looks like George Washington. Or he did until his face got all droopy. Geez, it's like he's melting.
My dad has the uncanny ability to somehow screw up any story he's trying to tell. For example, remember those Sprint PCS commercials from a few years ago, where everyone misheard everyone else until that guy that looks like Judd Nelson introduced them to the Sprint PCS Free & Clear plan? Well, dimple monkey twice the pudding octopi for tango man. I mean, one night my mom told Glenn to take out all the Chinese food for dinner, but he thought she said "shiny spoons," so when she got to the kitchen, all the spoons where on the counter and the leftover Chinese food was still in the refrigerator. It was just like something out of one of those commercials, so we all started laughing, even though "take out all the shiny spoons" seems like an odd request. Now here's my dad's version of that story when he told my aunt about it a couple of days later:
Debbie told Glenn to take out the Chinese food, but he thought she said to take out the Chinese silverware....
See how it's not quite the same? There was another commercial a few years ago for McDonalds that had an Asian guy saying "quarter pounder with cheese" really fast in broken English, so it sounded like "quarter pounder witchies." Again, we all laughed about it, but when my dad told someone about it, the phrase inexplicably changed to "bacon egg and cheese." Bacon egg and cheese isn't funny! Well, now it is, I guess. But the whole point was the guy was saying witchies. Quarter pounder witchies! How do you get bacon egg and cheese out of that?
Glenn has one of those Gorbachev marks on his head. You can't really tell it's there because his hair covers it, but one time my mom noticed there was a little fleshy thing on it. So she asked my dad to point it out to the doctor when he takes Glenn for a check up. She wanted to know if he could remove it because she was worried that it would get ripped off with a comb. So the doctor removed the fleshy thing and sent it out for a biopsy. The reply came in the mail. Dad read it to Glenn:
UNTRULY BENIGN. FOLLOW UP IS NEEDED.
My dad told him that he had a brain tumor. Glenn was horrified. Untruly benign! That sounds bad. The poor kid sat in tears on the steps, waiting for my mom to come home. He thought he was going to die.
When my mom got home, he told her what it said. "Untruly? Is that even a word?" She looked at the paper.
ENTIRELY BENIGN. FOLLOW UP AS NEEDED.
So anyway, be sure to say "Happy Birthday" to my dad today. Just be sure to say it really loud.
