|
Addict
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Washington D.C.
Gender: Male
Posts: 107
|
Memoir Essay - What I Know at the Age of 50 - 1107 Words
Any advice, thoughts, comments...
In 2003, I came across an article in Men’s Health titled, What I know at the Age of 50. The author listed a series of 40-50 simple statements covering his thoughts on what he knows at an older age. Reading the fruits of another man’s journey in life instantly intrigued me.
From that article, I incorporated two bits of info: one, don’t underestimate the power and the interest of a good list of “stuff,” especially if the list is ranked. I read and re-read that list for the next several days.
The second thing I learned always accompanies the thoughts of my father and how I view him. From that list, one sentence stood out as if it were highlighted and outfitted with a colored array of asterisks: “Your father wasn’t the bastard, or the hero that you thought he was growing up. He was just another guy.”
Thinking about the gaps in my dad’s past, I think of the gap in the stories of Jesus. Between the times as a child to the time as a man., 2000 years in history remove me from the Religious Idol’s way of life. Larger than life as the Son of God, his is story starts at the Manger scene, he is found learning about his father as a boy, he’s a carpenter making miracles, he’s on the cross, dies, becomes reborn. Where is the part of stepping into his formative years? As a small child, I worshipped my father’s presence, though there were moments I also hated him, the same thing goes, I know even less of my father’s years through the gaps in his life story. The lack of his story in relation to my own causes me the same sense of displacement when I try to see the world through his eyes.
Most of what I know of my dad comes from fragmented comments of desires or thoughts that have to, in some way, be prompted by something in the current topic of conversation. Rarely is there a full story I can get him to tell. Despite my efforts, I don’t have any stories of him as a teenager. I don’t know where to begin to ask either.
From his childhood I know one of his classmates had an iguana as a pet that resulted in an appearance on a local T.V. show. “There was a kid in my class at school,” my father starts every time he sees a lizard, “he got to go on T.V. It was the coolest thing...” He shakes his head and smiles to himself. “I always wanted to get one of those you know.”
On one of my dad’s visits to see me in Virginia, we were going to lunch and a movie on a weekend afternoon. I don’t remember how I got him onto the topic of scaring people, but I fell into the goldmine of stories. “I must have been eight or nine years old,” he started. “Your grandpa was trying to fix the television. The screen started to run so he took the back off the box. It was so hot that day. I watched from the kitchen while he puttered with that thing. Didn’t know what the hell he was doing, you know.” He paused to look over at me while I continued to drive.
“He kept poking around back there with his finger here or the screwdriver for a deeper look.” My dad would gesture at the dashboard as he continued. “If he touched the wrong box in the back of that box, it would put him through the back wall and be the last thing he ever saw. The sweat dripping off his nose, I could tell he was getting pissed, jerking his hand back if he became suddenly unsure.” I watched my dad as he told his story. I felt the smile on my face widen as I watched his grin grow with a chuckle.
“He tells me, ‘get me a cigarette.’ So I go into the kitchen, but before I give him it, I stick in one of those poppers you know?”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding my head, grinning.
“Those little poppers, you have to push em down into the cigarette so when the ember hits it, it makes the rest of the cigarette explode.” He laughs to himself. I can see where this is leading and begin to feel a bit giddy with anticipation. “So I hear my dad yelling for his cigarette and I am trying really hard not to mess it up. My hands were sweaty and I was having a hard time packing the tobacco back in. Finally, he yells, ‘what the hell is taking you so long, godamnit.’ I rushed into the living room and gave him the cigarette. He mutters and eases back on his knees to light it and then lets it hang from his lips as he starts to explore again. Now at that point, I started backing up into the kitchen again just watching. I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. He was just about buried into the back of that TV to the elbows when that thing exploded in his mouth.” My dad could hardly tell the story through his laughs.
“He screamed,” my dad chokes out. We are both laughing and I can hardly keep the car on the road. “… and fell back on his ass, stunned and staring at the TV… I fell over honking …and screaming.” He begins to wheeze and that forces him to regain some of his composure, but when he starts again, he cannot keep the laughter out of his words. “When he realized what happened, he was up in a flash and after me cursing. I barely had a chance to run out the door.
“I didn’t come back til later that night. I still got my ass whooped though,” he manages to choke out. We were nearly in tears. My dad is wheezing so hard now that I begin to think he might die on the way to lunch. That was the only thing that cut into my enjoyment.
It’s rare that my dad can deliver a funny story or a punch line. It astonishes me to this day that we laughed as hard as we did together. There aren’t many moments where we interact on the same wavelength. Every moment is precious and the times we do connect, it closes that gap I feel with my dad. Hero or bastard, it’s the mixture of the two roles that make us another person.
__________________
http://detroit2dc.blogspot.com/
If I was being executed by injection, I'd clean up my cell real neat. Then, when they came to get me, I 'd say, "Injection? I though you said 'inspection.'" They'd probably feel real bad, and maybe I could get out of it. -Jack Handey
|
