You can see why she’s in PR
SO HERE’S THE deal: My dad says he’ll help me move into my new apartment if I write his column for him this one last time. I say sure, that’s a fair trade: a menial task in which you don’t have to think much in exchange for one where you have to lift a lot of heavy boxes and stuff.
“Exactly!” he says, and goes off to get a U-Haul.
“Are you sure he’s OK with this?” I ask my mom.
“He really likes driving trucks,” Mom explains.
Seriously, it’s been so weird around the house lately. My dad’s moving me for, like, the ninth time in the past five years. Plus, my baby brother is teaching himself to belch, and Rush Limbaugh is criticizing conservative Republicans. I swear, it’s like the world is ending.
“Dad?” I said to him one morning.
“Huh?” he said through a mouthful of pancakes.
“Are you OK?”
“I can’t believe the Cubs,” he says with a heavy sigh.
You should see my dad read the paper. It’s like watching Hitler repair a watch.
He gets mad. Then grunts. Then huffs. He’ll be hunched over the paper, and suddenly he’ll blurt out, “Swaziland! What a place to put a country!”
“What’s Swaziland?” my little sister asks, and then we get this whole spiel about South Africa and the history of Dutch colonization.
I think that’s the stuff I’m going to miss the most.
Anyway, he’s got this backyard project going and he’s trying to buy a new suit. Frankly, I think it’s all a little much for him.
“I’m like the male Martha Stewart,” he keeps telling my mom.
“You mean you’ve done time, Dad?” I ask him.
“Ha, you’re a funny girl,” he says with a smirk.
Did I mention I have this new job? I’m really liking it. It’s in public relations, a growing field. Dad says what the world needs is fewer journalists and more public relations specialists, on account of we’re more positive about things and very pro business.
“Are you serious?” I ask him.
“Your dad’s never serious,” Mom explains.
“I was serious once,” Dad says. “Gave me hiccups.”
Poor Mom. You should see her lately, chasing my baby brother around. This morning, she caught him divvying up the food between the dog bowl and the cat dish. “So it be more fair,” my baby brother explained when she caught him. Dad says my little brother seems to have an innate sense of justice, even though he acts like a chimpanzee most of the time.
Anyway, in the past few weeks, my poor mom has fallen asleep on the couch every night, watching some doctor show. Sometimes she’ll nod off and the phone on TV will ring and she’ll jump up, half asleep, and yell, “Hello? Hello? Where’s the phone?!”
I say, “Don’t worry, Mom, Dr. McDreamy answered it.” And she goes, “Oh, OK,” and lays back down and falls asleep.
I can’t wait to get married, let me tell you.
My dad says the reason my mom watches so many medical shows is on account of she still dreams about marrying a doctor.
“That’s right,” she says and turns up “Grey’s Anatomy.”
“I’ll just be over here looking at our wedding photos,” my dad says, then takes his glass of wine and sits over on the couch, reading his Sports Illustrated.
Poor Mom. How am I going to leave her with that man?
“He’s not so bad,” she says.
“He’s not?” I ask.
She explains that they agree on most things politically, disagree a lot over Oprah, and when they go out together, they almost always order the same side dishes.
“That’s a start,” I say.
“Or an ending,” says my mom.
“Two out of three ain’t bad,” Dad says proudly.
So that’s my story. My last story, I guess.
I’m off to my new home. It’s an apartment in the Valley, kind of like “Melrose Place,” except the tenants seem a lot smarter.
“Fortunately, real people are smarter than the ones on TV,” my dad tells me.
“Fortunately,” I say, agreeing with him for once.
Dads. They’re OK, I guess. I mean, who else are you going to get to move 40 boxes of your junk on a Saturday? I’d have to have, like, three extra boyfriends.
“Maybe you can come for dinner some time,” I told my dad when he was done unloading.
“When?” he asked, all excited he had someplace to go.
“In a year or two,” I said.
“I’ll be here Tuesday!” he yelled and went skipping off toward the rental truck.
I think he was kidding. Wasn’t he kidding? With dads, you never really know.
Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.
