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
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