I never had kids so I never got a chance to pass along all the quirky stuff my dad used to do. I sometimes wonder if any fathers still do the crazy things he did.
“Don’t look at them!” Imagine a family cruising along the highway with the dad driving of course. He looks into the rearview mirror and casually mentions there’s a police car behind us. A five-year-old can’t resist and turns to look. Here’s where Dad goes ballistic screaming not to look at them, as if me looking would tip off the officer about the 500 pounds of cocaine we had under the hood of the station wagon.
Fight or Flight. That’s the natural reflex humans have so when they’re suddenly scared or startled, their brain quickly decides to fight the danger or run from it. Dad loved scaring me and my siblings when we were kids by hiding and then making some scary noise as we neared. And for the record, I usually decided on option three: wet myself.
“Resting my eyes.” You know, that thing everyone else calls napping. I guess that would be too embarrassing for dad to do in the middle of the day, so whenever he became unconscious on the sofa with his head down and snoring like a jet engine, he made sure you knew he was just resting his eyes. Go ahead, change channels and see if he doesn’t wake up.
Rise and Shine. Dad had this peculiar belief, especially on the weekends, that if it was early in the morning and he was the only one awake and up, he shouldn’t be the only one awake and up. He would literally go through the house banging on bedroom doors. When we would walk into the living room rubbing our eyes and asking why, he would simply smile and say, “It’s morning.”
“That wasn’t me; that was your mother.” Yes, my father was the only person on the planet who never passed gas. So apparently, not only did Mom have severe gastric issues resulting in loud seismic discharges, but she was also a talented buttocks ventriloquist.
Impossible punishment. Our pop was a master at threatening punishment, sometimes very real in the form of a belt or switch, but oftentimes it would more fall under the legal jargon of “Exaggerated Utterance.” Some of my favorites were: “I’ll slap the taste out of your mouth” and “I’ll knock you clear into next week.”
But, alas, I only have dogs so it’s not the same. I try. Sometimes I say, “That wasn’t me; that was Kiki,” but they never fall for it. What crazy things did your dad do