You call this vacation? Give me a break

I’m BACK FOR SPRING break, so my dad says, “Hey, here’s a good writing exercise for you.”

“What?”

“My column,” he says. “It’s like a love note to America.”

“Who knew?” my mom asks.

“A trained seal could do it,” says my dad.

No kidding. If you notice, he doesn’t even use complete sentences sometimes. If I turned in stuff like that at school, it would come back full of red marks. Seriously. But here goes. My dad’s column, by me his oldest daughter, the lovely and completely patient one.

You would not even believe what’s been going on at this place since Christmas. Every time I come home from college, I am amazed that I turned out as well as I did. Seriously. The promiscuity that goes on around here. The new baby. They’ve been married 22 years and they’re still making babies. How twisted is that?

If you think that’s weird, you should see the TV shows they watch, Mom and Dad, all that Food Channel and home makeover stuff. Literally, they sit there watching other people’s paint dry.

“Practicing for retirement, Dad?” I ask.

“Look at that Corian,” he mumbles.

So here I am, 20 years old and spending spring break in my room writing a column for my dad. Wait till all my friends hear about this. They’ll never want to go to Cabo again. They’ll just want to come here and watch my dad watch TV.

It’s more unbelievable than ever around here. Did you know that they eat cake for breakfast sometimes? Yuck. And they won’t even try soy milk. Last week, my dad drank like a whole half gallon of 2% milk. From a cow.

Dad says that if were up to him, we’d have our own 2% cow and maybe a couple of 3% chickens. Some ducks. A goat or two. He thinks that eventually we will be a completely agrarian society again, on account of the way things are going lately.

“Just wait,” he says.

“What are you, like a survivalist now?” I ask him.

“I’m a dad,” he says. “Same thing.”

And, lately, when telemarketers call my dad, he chats with them forever. He talks to them about refinancing or kitchen remodels or whatever they happen to be selling. “Lou, it’s been great talking to you,” he tells the telemarketer. “Thanks for calling.” Seriously. Dad says he feels sorry for the telemarketers. He says they are the caged poultry of corporate America. Imagine if you had to do that all day, he’s always saying. All telemarketers want is to be treated with decency.

“Does Dad need more friends?” I ask my mom.

“No, just better ones,” my mom says.

You should see his friends. There’s this Paul guy. I don’t know why my dad likes him, except that he makes Dad laugh. Then there’s this dude named Don. I don’t know why my dad likes him either, except that he makes my dad laugh too. With my dad, if you can make him laugh, you can pretty much be his friend. His whole life is based on behavior he learned in seventh grade.

“We’re writing a book together,” he announces one day.

“Who, Daddy?”

“Don and I,” he says.

Dad says this new book is going to be huge, really huge, as in “Under the Tuscan Sun” or “The Holy Bible.”

“Each copy will be handwritten by monks,” he says.

“Why, Dad?”

“It’ll be a great marketing tool,” he says.

Monks? What’s that about? Like my dad knows any monks. He wouldn’t know a monk if one fell out of a tree and landed on his $7 haircut.

“You can find anything on EBay,” he tells me.

“Monks?”

“Anything,” he says.

“True and everlasting love?”

“Anything,” he says.

“Your father is very good with computers,” Mom assures me.

Yeah, right. She’s always defending him like that. Poor Mom. It’s like being an advocate for Daffy Duck.

Dad says that’s because marriage is all about teamwork and he’s the coach. Mom thinks she’s the coach, so all of a sudden it’s as if you had a team of all coaches and no players. That’s what their marriage is like. The more I see of marriage, the more I want to stay single. At least through my junior year.

“Any more advice on marriage, Daddy?” I ask him.

“No, that’s pretty much it,” he says.

“What about love?” I ask him.

“Love makes the world go ‘round,” he says.

“Wow, Daddy, that’s really profound,” I say.

“He comes up with stuff like that all the time,” my little sister says.

Hear that? I don’t even know why I go to college, when you can learn so many valuable life lessons right here. This may be the best spring break ever.

Seriously.

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Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.