"A Man's Worst Nightmare": Chronicles Of An Adult-Child Of Aging Titans (for adults who need to laugh to keep from crying over their parents)

A Man's Worst Nightmare (continued from "You're Costing Me Money")

"Owen, did you bring the food?"

"The food?"

"Yes.  The food for tonight "

"Uh-"

"Go back and get it."

"[Expletive, expletive, expletive].  Why didn't you say anything earlier?  [Expletive, expletive. expletive].  I'm not going back!  [Expletive], Gladys, you did this on purpose..."

We are waiting for the garage door to swing open and when it does, my dad juts through with only the merest space between the top of the car and the garage door. For some reason, both my mother and I compulsively hold our heads as he passes through, still swearing and refusing to turn back. But his words fade away as we swing onto the street which is covered in white fuzz and more is raining down as massive shopping bags of "toilet paper bombs" are deployed from windows above.

"Holy christmas," my dad turns to my mom but she turns to me instead to respond, still miffed with him from his earlier hijinks.

"Have the children gone mad?"

"This," I suddenly realize, " is why your neighbor looked like he'd just crawled out of a heating duct... he'd been toilet paper bombed."

"Yes, and never said a word to his elderly neighbors. Should've laughed even louder at him in the elevator."

"What should we do?" My dad is stopped in the ramp leading up to the street, still under the cover of the building.

"GO GET THE FOOD!"  My mother whirls around on him and breathes the words like a dragon.

She startles my dad so bad he follows her command in a near frantic, almost knee-jerk response that has us turned back the other direction so fast that there's like a lag time - and I have to blink really hard to focus - before my brain catches up to present time.

Just as my dad is tapping the garage door opener though, four police swoop past us on motorcycles and block the doors.

"At this time, there will be no entries or exits from the parking garage until further notice," one of them announces into a megaphone.

By now two other cars are lined up in back of us to get into the building and as we wait for them to back out, my parents have already resumed the argument in their minds so it takes me a beat to figure out what they're talking about.

"Nothing doing."  My dad is gripping the steering wheel rigidly and staring straight ahead.

"Yes.  There.  Is."

"Not doing it."

My mother breathes through her nose and fogs up the window on her side of the car - in nine thousand degree heat. Which means her breath is hotter than the air outside...

Slowly, my dad backs out and into a parking space on the street and there is silence.

A silence that builds and builds until it becomes this ominous cloud hanging over us. The kind of silence where you can tell the people are trying to choose their words carefully. Except not for the sake of prudence but for slice-and-dice-you-up, box-you-around-the-head-with-my-words type of effect. Before lightning strikes, I jump in the mix.

"I'll go get it," I say for the heck of it, not intending to go anywhere, but my dad opens his door and swings a leg out.

"No, Tucker, you stay in the car. And Gladys?"

My mother turns to him belligerently and he points a finger at her, standing in the door. Although it is very hard to take him seriously as he is already beginning to look like a zombie in a B movie, and keeps being overtaken by sneezing fits, and twitches every time debris falls in his eyes.

"This is the first and last stop. Once this car gets rolling, I'm not stopping again for one.  [Expletive].  Thing!"

He slams the car door for emphasis and then disappears into the white haze, sneezing and twitching and swatting his way through the debris.

And I watch as a small mirthless smile indents my mother's face on one side.

"Tucker, I think," she shifts so she's facing forward again in her seat, "I'm going to have some fun with your father..."

"No, no, Mom, I can't take anymore of you all's fun!"  I cry, fed up now.

"Oh yes. Revenge, my dear, is a dish best served cold..."

~Look for "Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold", another episode of Chronicles, next week~

#aging #comedy #funnystories

"You're Costing Me Money!": Chronicles Of An Adult-Child Of Aging Titans (for adults who need to laugh to keep from crying over their parents)

"YOU'RE COSTING ME MONEY!" (continued from last week's "Daddy's Girl")
 "I'm not even sure we should still be going to this thing after all this.  What time is it, Knotty?"
My mother asks this while we wait for the elevator to go down to the parking garage.
My dad look looks at his wristwatch and scowls.  "[expletive], [expletive] watch's stopped."
"Oh, we'll never get there in time. It hardly seems worth the drive."
"Gladys-"
My dad's chest rises as he gets ready to blow up but it's cut off by the arrival of one of their neighbors who appears to be covered from head to toe - even (ick) his face and hair and eyelashes - with shredded paper of some sort.
We stare in wonder. And somewhere within me I am gleeful that finally there is someone stranger then we are to focus on.
He is oblivious to our stares as he presses the button to go up and I try to imagine what happened. And even though my lips strain like a highstrung racehorse at its gates to push into the "W" shape, I manage to stay silent.  Because the only plausible answers would be something like:
"My dog and I had a teeth-wrestling fight over a Costco-sized packet of toilet tissue."
...or...
"It's a new fabric softener I'm trying. Oh, and I use it on my skin too."
... or maybe he sleeps inside his mattress rather then on top of it...
The elevator arrives while I'm still caught up in my musings but I jump on at the last moment, when I realize I'm about to be left alone with the man.
"Can anybody say Dustbuster?"  My dad asks as soon as the door closes and he and my mom laugh loudly.
"Shh-shh, he still can hear you with the doors closed," I try to whisper over them.
"Well, if he does hear us, he has only himself to blame, Tucker."
"Yeah, your mom's right.  What kind of man it goes around looking like that? When I was his age it was three-piece suits."
"Oh, my," my mother interrupts in a breathy tone, "there must be a happy, twenty-first century medium.  Somewhere."
"I don't care what you say, Gladys, I like my three-piece suits!"  My dad proclaims, holding the elevator door open for us when we get to the garage.
"I like them too, dad."
"Do not encourage your father!"  My mom scowls ferociously at me then turns to my dad waggling a finger.  "The next time I see a three-piece suit, it better be on a GQ model first!"
"Oh, get in the car, woman."
"Which reminds me. Your costing me money."
"Yeah, yeah," my dad grumbles, walking around the car to the driver's side.
"What money, Mom?"  I scoot forward in the backseat, interestedly, sensing juicy gossip.
"Car insurance."
"Car insurance?  But dad hasn't even had a fender bender in years."
"No, it's not that. That nice young man over at the car insurance agency told me he'd give me a hundred dollars a month in grocery store gift cards if we let them put a video camera in the car so they could study people's driving habits and patterns. But of course I couldn't let them do that - they'd have your father locked up, or thrown into an insane asylum, or get so discouraged they'd stop selling car insurance altogether..."
She trails off because now that I have finally caught my breath.  Finally.  I let out a hoop of laughter.  And then another.  And then I'm laughing so hard it's like my mouth is about to flip itself inside out and swallow my head.  A mainly silent torturous laugh.  One from which I imagine the vision for The Scream may have found its origin. I flop from one side of the car to the other nearly prostrate from the force of it, and beside myself trying to get it out of me.
Because I am besieged by all the flashbacks of my dad's tyrannical style of driving at once. And they are accompanied by sound effects, squealing brakes, screeching tires, the omnipresent expletives and those of other drivers, the growl of an accelerator revved to it's max.  
Even now, in the parking garage, I cling with both hands to the shoulder strap of the seatbelt as a car in the next aisle over and ours barrel down the short stretch of road and over two speed bumps to get to the exit lane first, reacting to some sort of intuitive homage to pugilism.
Although my dad stops short of actually burning rubber to turn into the exit lane in front of the other driver, then turns a contrary look on my mother before quaking with a deep belly laugh.
And when my mother finally turns to him her smile is gangster-like and unwavering even as she speaks.

"I hope you have nightmares every night for the rest of your life."

~Look for "A Man's Worst Nightmare", another episode of Chronicles, next week~

#comedy #aging #funnystuff #jokeoftheday

"Daddy's Girl": Chronicles Of An Adult-Child Of Aging Titans (for adults who need to laugh to keep from crying over their parents)

"DADDY'S GIRL", (continued from last week's "I Got Kicked Out!")
"That's right she's a daddy's girl.  If it weren't for her I'd have no allies in this family.  Because you - you are a piece of work."
My dad barrels through the door, drops my mother's shoe just at the threshold of the foyer, and then drops himself into a chair at the table to finish breakfast.  The way he wields his knife and fork - like the Texas Chainsaw Murderer of Breakfasts -  gives one the impression he's all too happy to have his hands busy.
"Oh, Knotty, really.  Must you use the same expressions day after day, year after dreary year?  I've been a 'piece of work' for fifty years now."
"Yes, you have" my dad finishes eating in time to slam down his knife and fork at this, "and I have about fifty more expressions I could use on you right now, but I guarantee you you won't want to hear any of them!"
"You are very agitated," my mom crosses her arms resolutely.  "Too agitated to drive."
The rage my dad emits adds at least two degrees to the temperature of the room and I pretend to be digging in my bag, while stealthily swaying and doing something like a grapevine with my feet towards the air conditioner.
"Listen, Gladys, this car is going up the road with or without you."
"It better not."
"Oh, but it will."
"It will not."
"Will too."
"Will not."
"Tucker, you wanna drive?"  My dad asks this just as my hand is hovering right over the AC switch and when they swivel their heads in my direction, I snatch my hand away and beat it with my other arm.
"What on earth?"
"I saw a spider."
"You did not.  There are no spiders in here."
"Mom, every house has spiders."
"Not this one."
I fall silent because I refuse to go to the mat with my mother over the fact that I saw a spider when I never did.
"Don't give me that look.  Where then?  Where is this spider?"
"Oh, Gladys, leave Tucker alone.  Leave us all alone, for Pete's sake."  While my mother and father engage in another bout of l-can't-stand-to-love-you fury, I decide to saunter by the AC and try to nudge it on with my shoulder.
Of course I miss.
And rip a little hole in the seam of my shirt.
"Oh, can it, Knotty, you wouldn't even know how to tie your own shoes without me," my mother is saying.
And round and round they go while I watch.  And wait.  When they get locked into this type of argument, they normally reach a point where a zebra with translucent fairy wings and red wellies on could make itself dizzy and collapse right at their feet after galloping and leaping around the room in circles unbeknownst to them.
Naturally, the moment I manage to score with the AC, they lose momentum and my mom stands up.

I do a jazz hands move for added insurance but they don't look my way.
"Well, I'm ready to go now.  If Tucker's driving..."
"Sure, I'll drive."
"No, you won't.  I'm driving."
"Dad, I said I'll drive."
"Let her drive, Owen.  It's bad enough you're costing me money."
"How's dad costing you money, mom?"
"Don't listen to your mother.  Anyway, I said I'm driving and that's the end of it." He swings open the door.  "Anybody who has a problem with that can stay here."
"Don't press your luck, buster.  Do you know how much money we could be saving if it weren't for you?"
They glare at each other as she walks through the doorway and I wonder with the internal brio of a reporter what money my mother is talking about.
"Can it, woman."  My dad mutters this with his back turned, locking the door.
They pass by me and I look at the door cheerlessly because I think of the AC and how I never got cooled off and how it's going to be freezing when they get back and they'll run and fling open all the doors and windows with fumbling hands rigid with cold, and pile all the blankets in the house on their shoulders and drink back-to-back cups of tea until the temperature goes back up to ninety-nine degrees.  And they'll be calling me and inevitably I'll miss the call and they'll leave at least five messages apiece which I won't listen to because in every last one of them they will be instructing me to "pick up the phone, it's your [father/mother]".  And then when I do call and try to explain why I didn't "pick up", my dad will testily dismiss the concept of voicemail as nonsense before handing the phone to my mother who will triumphantly declare post-haste:
"You're costing me money!"

~Look for "You're Costing Me Money!", another episode of Chonicles, next week~

#comedy #aging #funnystuff #jokeoftheday

"I Got Kicked Out!": Chronicles Of An Adult-Child Of Aging Titans (for adults who need to laugh to keep from crying over their parents)

"I GOT KICKED OUT!", continued from last week's "Tasteless".
My dad is ejected suddenly from the condo, whirling awkwardly as if in the eye of the tornado of my mother's wrath.  The vacuum from the door whooshing open so forcefully has popped my ears and I start banging on the side of my head at the precise moment the neighbor across the hallway from them decides to open his door to leave his apartment.
He takes it all in with a little tremor; my dad lurching to get his bearings with arms outstretched like he's playing Blindman's Bluff with himself, my mother's shoe still arcing through the air from where she must have tried and fallen just short of kicking my dad in his rear, and me banging my head agitatedly as if there's something rolling around in there that I believe I can force out like coins from a piggybank.
The neighbor starts in one direction then the other then retreats, disappearing through the door.  He's a thin man and since he's barely cracked open the door, he's able to perform something like a magic trick in his utter haste to get back into his condo.
"And stay out!"  My mom directs this at my dad before yanking me inside.
"Your father gets more and more like a buffoon every day!"
"What happened?"  I say just a beat too late, and with all the aplomb I can dredge up from my only acting experience as a leaf in a Thanksgiving play when I was seven.
"Everything."  She responds in a disgruntled huff, plopping down on the sofa.
"And don't you dare touch that air conditioner."  She suddenly snaps upright and pins eagle eyes on me.
"But mom," I fling my arm at the thermostat, in a fit of pique already, "it says it's 92 degrees in here!"
"Can't be.  Feels downright chilly to me."  She shivers and assails me with a look like she's desperately cold.  Meanwhile, I feel as if I'm trapped in a burning house being ravaged by white-hot invisible flames.
As I open my mouth to protest, there's hearty knocking at the door.
"Don't answer it, Tucker."
"Tell your mother I can hear her."
"Dad says he can hear you."
"Tucker, open this door!"
"Let him stay out there, til he can learn some manners!"
"Mom..."
"Ignore him, Tucker.  Come, let's go on the balcony where it's more pleasant."
My dad is now beating on the door in that way that you do when you don't want one area of your hand to get too sore.
"Gladys [expletive]!  You [expletive] well better answer this [expletive] door before I reach the [expletive] number ten!  I'm not taking anymore of this [expletive]!  Not in my own [expletive] house!"
My mom is beckoning me from the balcony but I'm dragging my feet, looking between the door and then back at her balefully.
"UGH!"  She suddenly gets disgusted, vaults herself out of her seat and across the room - unhampered by the other shoe still out in the hallway somewhere - and flings open the door.  "You are such a daddy's girl!"

~Look for "Daddy's Girl", another episode of Chronicles, next week~

#comedy #aging #funnystuff #jokeoftheday

"Tasteless": Chronicles Of An Adult-Child Of Aging Titans (for adults who need to laugh to keep from crying over their parents)

     I'm standing outside my parent's condo, afraid to knock.  It's Saturday morning and I am exhausted from the week and dread over this outing with my parents.  We're headed to a family cookout about two hours away, four hours roundtrip, and I'm wondering if the good Lord'll see fit to let us make it back alive one more time.

     It's my dad and his driving that are   foremost on my mind.  Picture back to when little boys played on Big Wheels, trash-talking at the top of their lungs and hurtling their vehicles at each other at top speed, and here is where my dad would have flourished.  Perhaps if they'd had Big Wheels when he was growing up, it would have saved us and other drivers the harrowing experience that is my dad on the road but as it is - even after fifty some odd years of driving - the aggression has not abated.

In fact, both he and my mom share this trait.  Except she tends to unleash her aggression on him as she is doing now.  I could hear them as I got off the elevator in their somewhat tony building, squabbling over the blaring relentless drone of the news radio station they like to listen to, violating the code of silence observed by all their other neighbors.

"Where is she, Knotty?" My mother is asking him, using her nickname for Nottenwattle, which is our last name.

"How the [expletive] should I know?"

"Honestly, for a former executive you have an astonishingly limited vocabulary."

"It's because of my pea-sized brain."

"It must be the size of a pea.  By now.  From lack of use."

"Yeah, right, whatever, Gladys."

There is a pause where I can hear excessive, loud banging and rattling and clanging, presumably of pots and pans and cabinets, and the aroma of something burning begins to permeate the air before I hear my mother's voice again.

"I'm not eating this."

"What?  Why?"

"This toast is black, Owen!"

"You oughtta be grateful you got somebody to make you breakfast."

"Grateful!" I hear a scraping noise which I assume is her pushing her plate away.  "Burnt toast is not breakfast."

"I'm not making you another piece."

"Where is your daughter?  She's half hour late already, we need to get on the road."

"And I'm not going up the road on two wheels, either."

At this my mother bursts out in her remarkably youthful- sounding laughter that sounds of crystals tinkling.

"What?"

"Nothing, Owen.  Here, you want this?"

"[expletive, banging of table], can't I sit down and eat in peace without you wracking my nerves over the toast?"

"Owen, my egg is getting cold."

"And why is Tucker my daughter all the sudden, when she's late?"

"Thank you, Owen.  You're a gentleman and a scholar."

"Aw, can it.  Acting so sweet now you've got your toast.  It was probably you who changed the setting on the toaster in the first place."

"Now, Owen, you know I never even go in the kitchen, so that won't fly."

"Yeah, but it wouldn't surprise me if you engineered the burning of your own breakfast toast just to keep me hopping up and down, doing your bidding all day long.  I never should've retired."

"I wish you hadn't retired."

"I should have worked til I dropped dead in my office."

"You should have."

"At least at work I could eat in peace if I wanted."

"Ha!  As if.  Don't talk to me about peace, buster.  Before you retired my life was well-ordered and serene.  Now the only place I can go for some peace and quiet is the bathroom!"

"Well....you could always go back to work."

I hear her chair scooting across their hardwood floor, then the dainty clomp of my mother's retreating footsteps.

"Where you goin?  You're not eating breakfast now?"

"Oh, Owen, eat it yourself!  I've lost the taste for breakfast."

"You better EAT this TOAST or YOU'RE GONNA WEAR IT!"

...Look for "I got kicked out", another episode of Chronicles Of An Adult-Child Of Aging Titans, next Tuesday.

#comedy #aging #funnystuff #jokeoftheday

Crochet-etry: Final Words from Lore of the Lookbook

Vol. 6 (continued from last week)
As I was shrugging into the Cinched Cardigan
a lean icy blade of wind

slung itself aimlessly

into the thick lazy honey golden haze of summer

Masquerading itself

among waves of heat

then plunging into the ocean of life

ambushing the revelers

causing them to straddle the hemisphere of Change that surprise visitor

announcing its arrival with big brassy invincible knuckles of certainty

Demanding Receptivity

Or Else
Watching us hide underwater

mutinously against the tides

Knowing the water would be too formidable an opponent  

ionically

that positivity would triumph
like Peace versus two men fistfighting underwater.
But you could find yourself somewhere where you'd have to fight to return to peace.
Dumpster diving through rubbish

in order to brandish a shard of truth
faithfully polishing it

til darkness would look elsewhere to avoid its gleam.
And with truth shining so bright,
you would know where to find Peace

In The Midst Of Change.

~Final Words in Lore of the Lookbook ~

#TravelTuesday

Crochet-etry: Another Ode To Clothes (& So On)

Vol. 5 (continued from last week)

"Not strange, not-strange, notstrange"
the stones seemed to be chanting that afternoon
nodding in vigorous assent
stirring the earth in outrage
as they click-clacked up against
made-new, centuries-old mosaic tile glossy with the toils of ubiquitous hands
the watery onslaught of sand
the maroon of fire, once.
And the stones danced defiantly
up against and around winding
tumbling and blurring the boundaries
of glass remnants of civilizations
too proud to disappear
yet winking merrily
underneath their frosty facades
flirting recklessly with detection
waving algae strewn limbs indolently
on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea.
Where I sat
in the Eyelet Bikini
watching sea creatures
swoop and dive and glide and careen
the bold, the demure, the haughty,
the primitive, the exquisite, the lumbering
the indiscriminate masses, plucky
yet divine
when perceived through the eye of the composition of life
unfathomably
absolute and resilient
legacy species enduring nearly beyond comprehension of time
manifestations of an amen proclamation on the Genetic 5th Day
after already the Spirit of God had moved upon the face of the waters.

~2nd to Last Ditty From Lore of the Lookbook ~

#TravelTuesday