my computer has been really playing up lately. i guess i shouldn't be surprised it's a 2005 mac... it has had a pretty good run it's just no longer capable of updating any software and runs at a snails pace. while i was going through files trying to find stuff to delete that might...just maybe... make it run faster, i found this story i wrote about my dad years ago i thought i would post because i never write stuff anymore.
i love my
dad…i really do. he has always had a very interesting perception of honesty
within his survival. He IS a very honest person. very he’s honest about a lot
of things like with his feelings if I am pissing him off, he won’t HESITATE to
let me know or when someone else is pissing him off, again… no problems with
expressing that.
this other
perception of honesty I am talking about, is like, for example, years ago, when
we would go grocery shopping in montana in the big bulk-buy places and the
first thing he’d do is fill his pockets with some assorted nuts etc…just to
“tide us over” during our shopping experience. Or, we’d eat a bag of fresh
peas, shucking them as we shopped..and in his mind,”as long as we finished them
before we walked out the door, it wasn’t stealing”.
when I was
14, maybe 15, he worked for this chemical company… a product supplier for
service stations, laundromats etc… we were pretty poor living in a single wide
and there wasn’t any money for luxuries. my brother Jason and i started to
notice that conveniently and much to our advantage, there seemed to be a lot of
boxes of “damaged” goods “unsuitable for sale” that would somehow end up in our
possession.
the trailer
slowly became crammed full of enormous boxes of toilet paper, laundry powder
and industrial-sized cans of assorted cleaning supplies and room fresheners
with names like “smells like spring!”. they pretty much took over every kitchen
cabinet leaving very little room for all the cans of expired salmon and other
assorted expired goods my dad was so fond of. the amount of conversations jason
and I had with him about shopping at close-out stores fell on deaf ears. but, I
guess really.. looking back, they kind of had to. So we just turned a blind eye to the whole entire scene
because they were essentials.
then one
day…it got completely out of control.
I walked in from school to find my dad, tool belt around his waist, proudly eyeing his handiwork on the
newest addition to the trailer… the “ towelmaster”. usually more at home in gas
station bathrooms, with a few pumps on the old lever, the “towelmaster”
dispensed paper towels with a texture not far off coarse sandpaper.
and now…
lucky us…we had one of our very own…mounted right on the kitchen wall.
if that
wasn’t enough, right next to it was “the soap something or other”. the “towel
master’s” companion. massive cartons of paper towels and liquid soap littered
the floor, torn open with the grace of an over anxious 5 year-old at christmas.
my dad just looked at me, and beamed, as if suddenly, his life was complete,
and said “ i’ve put one in the bathroom too!!!!”
i was
totally speechless…. to my 14 year-old self, it was beyond embarrassing. even
worse than being dropped off at school in the pimp car with the gigantic semi-nude
mermaid hood ornament. slowly, our house was turning into the type of place
where long-haul truckers could stop and use the facilities. scenes ran through
my head of answering the door in daisy dukes, an 18-wheeler parked out on the
lawn, as I called out, “hey clem…what you haulin’ today? how’s that purdy lil’
wife of yours? well, hey… come on in… git yourself cleaned up, there’s plenty a
paper towels…here hon……take a roll for the road… this ones on me”.
the long
running joke between my brother and i after the towelmaster episode, was to
constantly ask the old man when we were going to get the condom and tampon
dispensers. you know… just to round it all out…no sense doing it half-assed.
truckers need condoms…the scary thing was, I did whole-heartedly believe one
day they’d appear.
when I was
seventeen and moved into my own place, you know, when parents usually give their kids, I dunno, furniture, a
toaster, maybe even some money to help them get started, my dad presented me
with a 75 pound industrial-sized box of laundry detergent, a few enormous cans
of aerosol sprays and my very own towelmaster. i could see it was a very proud
moment. there were tears in his eyes. what worried me was i’m pretty sure it
wasn’t about me growing up and moving out on my own, i’m pretty sure it had to
do with the towelmaster…
fortunately for me, in my mundane existence, this wasn’t
my dad’s first “stroke of genius”.
it was one of numerous little projects he dabbled in to keep himself
busy and me entertained. the thing i loved most about him was he would have one
of his little brainstorms and would never… ever… really stop to think, “ is
this a little insane? should I really do this? maybe this isn’t the best idea.”
NOPE…not papa p…he’d just do it. i was becoming increasingly reluctant to come
home after school because I never knew what to expect.
His passion
was watching TV. the TV was his best friend. they spent a lot of time together.
he would frequently even have conversations with it. for example, whenever he
would watch the opening sequence of “little house on the prairie” where “half
pint”, laura ingalls, is running through a field, i’d hear him screaming,
“don’t fall down…don’t fall down!” obviously she did… every time… then he’d say
to her, “you never learn.” the few times i observed him watching TV in silence,
concerned me. i would ask him whether the two of them had a little disagreement
and whether he thought they’d patch things up.
one
wednesday I remember well, i
walked in to find him, in his underpants, sat in front of the TV. i remember it
was a wednesday, because it was “western wednesday”…the day of the week he
would sit and watch westerns he had seen more times than I could even begin to
count. he seemed to know all of these obscure actors that no one else had ever
heard of. he would read the credits aloud, “oh…dirk hutzenbiler…hmmmm…haven’t
seen him in anything for while…I wonder if he’s related to so and so
hutzenbiler that was in blah blah blah”
this day
though, i almost subconsciously noticed that something was different. it took
me a minute or two, but then…
these huge straps of silver on the arms of the recliner caught my eye and
suddenly… i noticed… that he had duct taped the tv controllers to his recliner.
he had positioned them just right so they were aimed perfectly at the signal on
the tv and then he had actually DUCT TAPED them to the arms of his chair. he
sat there like a bastardised version of captain Kirk aboard the enterprise.
i just
stared at the whole scene in… i guess… disbelief. had I not been looking at it
with my own eyes, i wouldn’t have believed it. i tried to imagine the moments
that led up to this. at what moment did he think “SCREW IT… where’s that duct
tape?” what was that process like? he looked so smug sitting there. so…content.
i said,
“
dad…um…what the hell is this all about? what have you done?”
at
first, he didn’t even seem to know
what I was referring to. then, seeing my stunned stare fixed on his crazy
chair, he casually said, “oh…yeah…i got sick of not being able to find those
fucking things!…problem solved”. that was it. he took a swig of coffee and
placed his mug back onto his electric coffee warmer he kept at the side of his
chair, and went back to watching tv. like it was the most normal thing in the
world…I just shook my head and went to my room.
ps... f you read this papa pransky... it is written with big love in my heart and a slight sense of revenge for telling pretty much every potential boyfriend i had in my teens the story about how i liked to "ride" my stuffed donkey toy when i was 2!
ps... f you read this papa pransky... it is written with big love in my heart and a slight sense of revenge for telling pretty much every potential boyfriend i had in my teens the story about how i liked to "ride" my stuffed donkey toy when i was 2!