Your father could always hold his own in a fight against all your other friends' fathers. This is an important fact when you are eight-years-old. When you are eight-years-old, you are the sum of your parent's parts. The father half of your parents is Atticus Finch. He is John Wayne in 'The Searchers'. He is Elvis Presley when Elvis Presley wore more leather than sequins. He is James Dean is Lou Gehrig is Johnny Unitis.
He is what you hope to one day become.
You watch him work up a sweat while fixing a broken stair behind the house when you are eight-years-old.
You don't watch him to learn how to repair a broken stairstep, as no ten-year-old, to your knowledge, has ever been called upon to utilize this knowledge. You watch him because this is what he is currently doing and everything he does seems abnormally important. He is fixing a stairstep. It was broken and in a minute, it will no longer be broken. He is ingenius, he is perfect. He is an unstoppable force. Davinci would pout, and Thomas Edison would weep in awe, your father is that amazing with this damn step. He is listening to Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis and he is grinding down a broken stairstep with number 6 sandpaper and he is amazing. He is incendiary. He is tired and frustrated and curses loudly and asks you not to tell your mother. He takes a break and pours you and he a glass of lemonade.
This is the brilliance of your father, he abutts two empty glasses against one another and pours both glasses of lemonade without ever halting the pouring process. You do not believe what you just saw, through the use of close approximation of two empty glasses and quick and precise shift of the pitcher from one glass to the next, your father has saved himself two to three seconds and immeasurable wrist strain. He is King Kong. He is Thomas Edison.
You think about how it costs you the use of both hands to simply tip the pitcher of lemonade yourself, and you normally spill.
When you think of your father, these are the images that immediately spring to mind:
1. Sunny. Saturday afternoon. 12-5:30. Every window in your apartment is open and the sounds of the city are brilliant and busy and loud and hypnotic.
2. Summer. Heat waves make everything wavy, dream-like, funhouse mirrored.
3. Chicago Cubs. You are a cliche. Baseball is a cliche. America is a cliche. You are unoriginal. You are uncool. America is uncool. Baseball is uncool. America is baseball is you.
4. Bruce Springsteen traveling to Darlington County. For some inexplicable reason, the thought of your dad's cut-off jean shorts always accompany this Springsteen song. Springsteen was cool in '88 and you suppose jean shorts were cool as well, or if not cool, at least common.
They are no longer common and unfortunately photographs still exist.
5. Sweat. You think of his need for that lemonade and the manner in which your dad wipes the sweat from his rounded sturdy face. He doesn't use his arm or his palm; in one motion he removes the turtleshell sunglasses from his head and uses the inside pocket of his elbow and bicep to sop up the massive amounts of sweat your father generates.
Your father is an artist. Your mother married a photographer. But your father is Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent and Peter Parker and lives a double life. People who take pictures are silly and sissy and gay. They are gay even though you do not yet know what gay is. Peter Parker was not a photographer. Clark Kent was not a journalist. Bruce Wayne was not a millionaire. Your father is not a photographer. He can beat up your friend's dads and he can fix broken stairsteps in your home and he listens to Jerry Lee Lewis. He is Spiderman is Superman is Batman.
If dad is damn near perfect, you could never be anything but a complete and utter failure by comparison.
Dad treats you like a glass crescent star and handles you with kid gloves. As big as he is, he is the most gentle man will ever know. When you think of him, you will not think of his roadster in the garage or the sounds of the Beach Boys blasting out of the roadster's speakers. Or The Who or The Doors. You don't think about the time you and he were playing catch and he threw a baseball into your face at a probable speed of 570 mph. The ball caught flame, lost it's seams, began to bleed. You could not have possibly caught a ball thrown with such force. Your nose was a swollen apple. It was no longer a nose but bloody pounded hamburger. What you remember about your father has nothing to do with ther magnitude of your father's pitch, but with the guilt that he felt after hitting you in the face with it.
The amount of ice cream he bought after you stopped crying like a ridiculous baby.
You remember the look your mother gave him for being so awesome at pitching and you hope your mother never gave you a look for being so inable to catch his awesome pitches.
You remember how your father still hasn't forgiven himself for hitting you with that baseball.
You remember how quiet your father is and you will always wonder what he is thinking.
Sometimes your father wears white shirts with tiny red stripes that make him look as if he is wearing a solid pink shirt. This is sad for you and somewhat confusing as he has been heard saying that he does not care for the color pink. What also confuses you on this particular night of this particular year is your father's request to join him on the back deck of the porch. The problem is, that on this night 'Perfect Strangers' is on television and to be left out of the goings-on of 'Perfect Strangers' would mean social ridicule from your friends on the monkey bars the next morning.
The monkey bars, for an eight-year-old, is to social normalcy what the water cooler is for a thirty-something office worker. And if you're going to miss the goings-on of tonight's episode of 'Perfect Strangers', you cannot imagine what your father feels warrants such a disturbance.
Your back porch is creepy at night. Neighbors living upstairs trudge upward in unseen commotion. You hear voices, you hear noise, you hear unidentifiable sounds. What would people think of the two of you sitting on your porch when it's dark out? It's creepy. Would they assume you were spying? This is what goes through your mind seconds before your dad lifts your chin and points it directly into the open starless city sky. "In about fifteen minutes we're gonna see Haley's Comet."
This is essentially where you and your father part ways. There was an argument you had last month about whether Little Richard's version of Long Tall Sally was better than Elvis', he says it is. And although you don't readily agree with this, you cannot argue with Zeus or wrestle Poseidon, so Little Richard wins and Haley's Comet stands as your only current impass. Sure you've heard of Haley's Comet, but you have no idea where. You're mildly aware that it's a rare sight to behold, but you'd much rather be doing... well, anything almost. When you're 8-years-old, rare is a relative term, as everything is new and everything will happen again and again and again as far as you know.
Your Dad has the a passion of Shakespeare and Joni Mitchell and the color red and he wants you to see something that many people might never see. He wants this for you and all you can think of is Balki's dance of joy. You envy his romanticism (your father's, not Balki's). You envy it because it is not inside you. In eight years you have ceased to develop passion and romance. Instead, you're stuck with an eight year version of realism. He sees a once-in-a-blue-moon occurence you see five seconds of light and twenty minutes of wasted television viewing. You know you should be more awe-struck by the comet and more dumbstruck by your father's romanticism. He is Godzilla, he is the President, he is King Midas. But none of this means anything when you're sitting atop the monekybars tomorrow afternoon at school and everyone is talking about what was on television the night before. You will turn to your friends and mention that you saw Haley's Comet and they will all stare at you as if you were bareass naked.
You ask, "How much longer?"
Your father, without taking his eyes of the night sky says, "Ehh... who knows? Why? You got someplace to be?"
It would not be good for you to answer this question honestly. What comes out of your mouth instead of honesty is silence. Your father looks down at you for a moment and then back to the sky.
"Your mother doesn't care for this type of thing. You know what she always asks me?"
You do care what she always asks and you tell him so.
"Why bother?" is what your father rests with. And at first you aren't sure if he is referring to Haley's Comet or your attitude. "She asks me, 'why bother'. She asks me all the time, whether I'm waxing my car or vying for a raise. 'Why Bother?' You know what I say?"
You shake your head and the thought occurs to you that maybe your father's answer and Haley's Comet will somehow be poetically linked and arrive in your astral plane of existence at the exact same moment in time. Your father looks down at you once again. This will be magic. This is will be epochal. His eyes are soulful and beating a hole right through you.
"I usually just shrug and smile and tell her 'what the hell'. That's what I tell her. What the hell."
Your father looks back into the sky and you both sit on the back porch for another half-minute or so. No magic. No epiphany. You are thr same as you were sixty seconds ago. You can't imagine a better philosophy in life and you let your father's words sink deep inside you for as long as it takes for Haley's Comet to appear.
And then it does; fast and bright and straight and true. He is Galilleo and the comet is the fireballing Northstar. He is Plato and Des Plaines and the smell of burning leaves and the comet is a white hot fastball down the middle of the plate.
As soon as it disappears, he looks at you with a wink and says, "you can probably catch the end of your show if you hurry." My father is Houdini or maybe The Amazing Kreskin.
The next day arrives quicker than you would like and sure enough, there you sit atop the monekybars. You have a friend named Charles and Charles has two gifts in life: the first is his amazing collection of Star Wars action figures. The second is his uncanny ability to dangle from the monkey bars with multiple parts of his lower appendages. You wish you had the simple bravery to use something other than your hands and arms for dangling. The only thing you can do to strike out the bitterness you feel toward your dangling incompetence is to mention on a whim that you caught 'Perfect Strangers' on televison (leaving out that you only saw the final ten minutes). Nevermind that you saw Haley's Comet. Nevermind that it was your dad who showed it to you. Nevermind that you don't really know what happened on television last night. Appearing to know is more important that what you were actually doing and who you were actually doing it with. Charles will ridicule you for hanging out with your father, he'll make fun and embarrass you. You will be out of the loop, so for now, to Hell with King Kong and Lou Gehrig and Fonzie and John Wayne. To Hell with your dad and the time spent with him.
To Hell with the time he spent with you.
You mention how funny the show was last night and Charles confesses to having been outside watching Haley's Comet.
You see your father at the edge of the playground... at least for a split second you think you see him and he looks as if he's failed in some way. As the image of your father disappears into the morning air, you realize that between the two of you, it is not your father who has failed.
He is what you hope to one day become.
You watch him work up a sweat while fixing a broken stair behind the house when you are eight-years-old.
You don't watch him to learn how to repair a broken stairstep, as no ten-year-old, to your knowledge, has ever been called upon to utilize this knowledge. You watch him because this is what he is currently doing and everything he does seems abnormally important. He is fixing a stairstep. It was broken and in a minute, it will no longer be broken. He is ingenius, he is perfect. He is an unstoppable force. Davinci would pout, and Thomas Edison would weep in awe, your father is that amazing with this damn step. He is listening to Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis and he is grinding down a broken stairstep with number 6 sandpaper and he is amazing. He is incendiary. He is tired and frustrated and curses loudly and asks you not to tell your mother. He takes a break and pours you and he a glass of lemonade.
This is the brilliance of your father, he abutts two empty glasses against one another and pours both glasses of lemonade without ever halting the pouring process. You do not believe what you just saw, through the use of close approximation of two empty glasses and quick and precise shift of the pitcher from one glass to the next, your father has saved himself two to three seconds and immeasurable wrist strain. He is King Kong. He is Thomas Edison.
You think about how it costs you the use of both hands to simply tip the pitcher of lemonade yourself, and you normally spill.
When you think of your father, these are the images that immediately spring to mind:
1. Sunny. Saturday afternoon. 12-5:30. Every window in your apartment is open and the sounds of the city are brilliant and busy and loud and hypnotic.
2. Summer. Heat waves make everything wavy, dream-like, funhouse mirrored.
3. Chicago Cubs. You are a cliche. Baseball is a cliche. America is a cliche. You are unoriginal. You are uncool. America is uncool. Baseball is uncool. America is baseball is you.
4. Bruce Springsteen traveling to Darlington County. For some inexplicable reason, the thought of your dad's cut-off jean shorts always accompany this Springsteen song. Springsteen was cool in '88 and you suppose jean shorts were cool as well, or if not cool, at least common.
They are no longer common and unfortunately photographs still exist.
5. Sweat. You think of his need for that lemonade and the manner in which your dad wipes the sweat from his rounded sturdy face. He doesn't use his arm or his palm; in one motion he removes the turtleshell sunglasses from his head and uses the inside pocket of his elbow and bicep to sop up the massive amounts of sweat your father generates.
Your father is an artist. Your mother married a photographer. But your father is Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent and Peter Parker and lives a double life. People who take pictures are silly and sissy and gay. They are gay even though you do not yet know what gay is. Peter Parker was not a photographer. Clark Kent was not a journalist. Bruce Wayne was not a millionaire. Your father is not a photographer. He can beat up your friend's dads and he can fix broken stairsteps in your home and he listens to Jerry Lee Lewis. He is Spiderman is Superman is Batman.
If dad is damn near perfect, you could never be anything but a complete and utter failure by comparison.
Dad treats you like a glass crescent star and handles you with kid gloves. As big as he is, he is the most gentle man will ever know. When you think of him, you will not think of his roadster in the garage or the sounds of the Beach Boys blasting out of the roadster's speakers. Or The Who or The Doors. You don't think about the time you and he were playing catch and he threw a baseball into your face at a probable speed of 570 mph. The ball caught flame, lost it's seams, began to bleed. You could not have possibly caught a ball thrown with such force. Your nose was a swollen apple. It was no longer a nose but bloody pounded hamburger. What you remember about your father has nothing to do with ther magnitude of your father's pitch, but with the guilt that he felt after hitting you in the face with it.
The amount of ice cream he bought after you stopped crying like a ridiculous baby.
You remember the look your mother gave him for being so awesome at pitching and you hope your mother never gave you a look for being so inable to catch his awesome pitches.
You remember how your father still hasn't forgiven himself for hitting you with that baseball.
You remember how quiet your father is and you will always wonder what he is thinking.
Sometimes your father wears white shirts with tiny red stripes that make him look as if he is wearing a solid pink shirt. This is sad for you and somewhat confusing as he has been heard saying that he does not care for the color pink. What also confuses you on this particular night of this particular year is your father's request to join him on the back deck of the porch. The problem is, that on this night 'Perfect Strangers' is on television and to be left out of the goings-on of 'Perfect Strangers' would mean social ridicule from your friends on the monkey bars the next morning.
The monkey bars, for an eight-year-old, is to social normalcy what the water cooler is for a thirty-something office worker. And if you're going to miss the goings-on of tonight's episode of 'Perfect Strangers', you cannot imagine what your father feels warrants such a disturbance.
Your back porch is creepy at night. Neighbors living upstairs trudge upward in unseen commotion. You hear voices, you hear noise, you hear unidentifiable sounds. What would people think of the two of you sitting on your porch when it's dark out? It's creepy. Would they assume you were spying? This is what goes through your mind seconds before your dad lifts your chin and points it directly into the open starless city sky. "In about fifteen minutes we're gonna see Haley's Comet."
This is essentially where you and your father part ways. There was an argument you had last month about whether Little Richard's version of Long Tall Sally was better than Elvis', he says it is. And although you don't readily agree with this, you cannot argue with Zeus or wrestle Poseidon, so Little Richard wins and Haley's Comet stands as your only current impass. Sure you've heard of Haley's Comet, but you have no idea where. You're mildly aware that it's a rare sight to behold, but you'd much rather be doing... well, anything almost. When you're 8-years-old, rare is a relative term, as everything is new and everything will happen again and again and again as far as you know.
Your Dad has the a passion of Shakespeare and Joni Mitchell and the color red and he wants you to see something that many people might never see. He wants this for you and all you can think of is Balki's dance of joy. You envy his romanticism (your father's, not Balki's). You envy it because it is not inside you. In eight years you have ceased to develop passion and romance. Instead, you're stuck with an eight year version of realism. He sees a once-in-a-blue-moon occurence you see five seconds of light and twenty minutes of wasted television viewing. You know you should be more awe-struck by the comet and more dumbstruck by your father's romanticism. He is Godzilla, he is the President, he is King Midas. But none of this means anything when you're sitting atop the monekybars tomorrow afternoon at school and everyone is talking about what was on television the night before. You will turn to your friends and mention that you saw Haley's Comet and they will all stare at you as if you were bareass naked.
You ask, "How much longer?"
Your father, without taking his eyes of the night sky says, "Ehh... who knows? Why? You got someplace to be?"
It would not be good for you to answer this question honestly. What comes out of your mouth instead of honesty is silence. Your father looks down at you for a moment and then back to the sky.
"Your mother doesn't care for this type of thing. You know what she always asks me?"
You do care what she always asks and you tell him so.
"Why bother?" is what your father rests with. And at first you aren't sure if he is referring to Haley's Comet or your attitude. "She asks me, 'why bother'. She asks me all the time, whether I'm waxing my car or vying for a raise. 'Why Bother?' You know what I say?"
You shake your head and the thought occurs to you that maybe your father's answer and Haley's Comet will somehow be poetically linked and arrive in your astral plane of existence at the exact same moment in time. Your father looks down at you once again. This will be magic. This is will be epochal. His eyes are soulful and beating a hole right through you.
"I usually just shrug and smile and tell her 'what the hell'. That's what I tell her. What the hell."
Your father looks back into the sky and you both sit on the back porch for another half-minute or so. No magic. No epiphany. You are thr same as you were sixty seconds ago. You can't imagine a better philosophy in life and you let your father's words sink deep inside you for as long as it takes for Haley's Comet to appear.
And then it does; fast and bright and straight and true. He is Galilleo and the comet is the fireballing Northstar. He is Plato and Des Plaines and the smell of burning leaves and the comet is a white hot fastball down the middle of the plate.
As soon as it disappears, he looks at you with a wink and says, "you can probably catch the end of your show if you hurry." My father is Houdini or maybe The Amazing Kreskin.
The next day arrives quicker than you would like and sure enough, there you sit atop the monekybars. You have a friend named Charles and Charles has two gifts in life: the first is his amazing collection of Star Wars action figures. The second is his uncanny ability to dangle from the monkey bars with multiple parts of his lower appendages. You wish you had the simple bravery to use something other than your hands and arms for dangling. The only thing you can do to strike out the bitterness you feel toward your dangling incompetence is to mention on a whim that you caught 'Perfect Strangers' on televison (leaving out that you only saw the final ten minutes). Nevermind that you saw Haley's Comet. Nevermind that it was your dad who showed it to you. Nevermind that you don't really know what happened on television last night. Appearing to know is more important that what you were actually doing and who you were actually doing it with. Charles will ridicule you for hanging out with your father, he'll make fun and embarrass you. You will be out of the loop, so for now, to Hell with King Kong and Lou Gehrig and Fonzie and John Wayne. To Hell with your dad and the time spent with him.
To Hell with the time he spent with you.
You mention how funny the show was last night and Charles confesses to having been outside watching Haley's Comet.
You see your father at the edge of the playground... at least for a split second you think you see him and he looks as if he's failed in some way. As the image of your father disappears into the morning air, you realize that between the two of you, it is not your father who has failed.
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