It’s No Easy Thing, Being This Guy’s Daughter
So I say to my dad, “Hey Dad, how about I write your column this week?” and he says, “Sure, I could use a little rest,” then rolls over and goes back to sleep.
He seems pretty busy, my Dad, but he’s not. Mostly, he spends time explaining things to my mom, like why he keeps leaving sunflower seeds in his pockets that end up in the washing machine. Each baseball season, they have this argument.
“Why are there sunflower seeds in the washing machine?” Mom asks.
“Maybe they were dirty,” my dad says.
“No more seeds!” my mom says, sounding like a policeman. And Dad takes the seeds she washed and puts them back in his pocket.
Things get pretty weird around here sometimes. Mom’s, like, this really busy person. My lovely and patient older dad isn’t. So there’s, like, this conflict all the time over who needs to do certain stuff.
“Sure, I could install the ice maker,” he says, “but who’s going to watch the Dodger game?”
Which doesn’t make her laugh like he thinks it will.
“I guess I’m installing an ice maker,” he mumbles, then turns off the TV and goes to the garage.
This is how he does stuff. First he goes to the garage. Then he goes to the hardware store. Then he goes back into the garage. Then he goes to the bathroom for, like, an hour. Then he goes back to the hardware store. That’s my dad. Always on the move.
“Be back in a minute,” he says, then runs out and buys lumber or propane.
It’s pretty clear he’s just stalling when he runs around like this. Mom calls it his “prevent defense.” I call it stalling.
“Gotta get some more anchor bolts,” he says, then disappears. For 10 years, he’s been buying anchor bolts.
My little sister, she’s not much better. She thinks Dad is so cool. She and the dog follow him around and watch him do stuff, and sometimes they go to the hardware store with him, all three of them, to buy drill bits or grass seed or whatever.
“Mom, gotta get some anchor bolts!” my sister yells, and off they go.
Mom says he’s turning my younger sister into a little wise guy, her hanging around him so much. Mom says he’s not a very good influence on her, which is probably pretty true.
“She’s turning into such a wise guy,” my mom keeps saying.
“Yeah, isn’t it great?” says my dad, all proud and stuff.
“We don’t need more wise guys,” she says.
My little sister isn’t the only one. My brother, he’s a wise guy, too. He constantly drives me crazy, especially when I have friends over, so sometimes we tie him up and stuff him in the couch, which makes Mom sort of mad.
“Don’t stuff your brother in the couch!” she yells. “And untie him too.”
It’s pretty funny if you ever saw it.
I don’t know if you know this, but Dad says the reason we moved to California was so my mom could be a big star, “like Greta Garbo or Goldie Hawn,” whoever they are.
He says the plan was for Mom to have her own TV show so he could be a trophy husband and never have to work again, just manage her career and get first-class dental care, which is what the husbands of movie stars mostly do, he says.
What happened, I guess, is that by the time they got to California, they already had two kids, me and my brother, and one more on the way. So it was hard for her to go out on auditions, all pregnant and waddling like a duck and stuff.
“CBS was interested for a while,” my dad says. “Then her water broke.”
I think he’s kidding, but you can never tell with him. He’s always making jokes.
“It’s too bad because she’s pretty talented,” he always says, then pinches my mom on the backside and she jumps and they horse around in the kitchen like they’re young again, grabbing each other’s wrists. It’s so gross. Believe me, it’s even more sickening when you see it. Yuck. I guess when you’re married, you get pretty desperate.
Parents today can be so strange. I swear they are the dullest people I ever met and they just happen to be my family. How unlucky is that? I mean, I love them and everything, except they drive me crazy.
Sometimes, I talk about how in two more years I’ll be going away to college and that I need to start visiting some places, which makes Dad kind of grumpy and he grinds his teeth and doesn’t want to talk about it.
My friends say their dads grind their teeth too. Mom says that’s what men do instead of talking. Grind their teeth.
“She’s 16,” my mom reminds him.
“Who’s 16?” he says.
“Your first daughter,” she explains, meaning me.
“No way,” he says, and he gets this faraway look in his eyes like he’s watching a baseball game on TV, or searching the horizon for ships.
“Sixteen?” he mumbles.
He looks like a puppy when he gets like this, kind of old, but like a puppy, if you know what I mean. An old puppy.
Mom calls it his “Walter Matthau look,” whoever that is, some old movie star or maybe he was president, I forget.
They talk in code sometimes, my parents. Whenever they whisper, I can tell when something really good happened, like some uncle got arrested or somebody had a baby who wasn’t legally supposed to. I know that stuff happens. Even in our family.
Which is why we really moved to California, I think.
Other than that, things are pretty dull around here. I hope this wasn’t too boring. Who knows, in the future, I might have an ice maker to tell you about. Just don’t hold your breath.
Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.
