often.
Timmy, laugh a little. We’re laughing because we love you. If you can’t have fun, we should leave you at home.
None of the rest of us gets upset at our father’s jokes. We think they’re hilarious. He’s always got the newest one about the president’s wife. He’s got leper jokes, quadriplegic jokes, Helen Keller jokes, everything. You name a topic, and he’s got a joke. It’s an art to him. We’re all jealous; our jokes don’t match up. Stevie once tried to get him to pull his finger so he could auto-respond with a box on the ear, but Dad already knew that one; he pulled Stevie’s finger and hit him at the same time, yelling, “Gotcha, too slow,” as Stevie fell to the floor with a hand to his head. We all laughed, and Stevie laughed too. He said, “That didn’t hurt.” Later our father taught him how to knock people in the nose by pointing at a make-believe stain on their shirts. Stevie thought this was great and used it on almost everyone he met for almost a whole year. He was still using it the next time our father stopped into town, and they shared a misty-eyed moment over this; Stevie thanked Dad for his parental guidance and our father blushed and beamed, bowed his head.
Stevie gets Dad’s jokes, Timmy, and he’s three years younger than you, and your mom’s prettier. Don’t be such a baby.
He picks us up one by one in his new van. When we’re all packed in, he stops and dares us to dare him to do a wheelie. We do dare him, but then he hedges like maybe he won’t, like it might be inappropriate behavior for a man his age. Timmy, who’s a whiz with cars—auto shop is the only class he’s ever gotten above a C in— thinks it’s impossible; he thinks our father’s toying with us and he tells him so. Dad grins at him. His foot to the floor on the gas, he pops the clutch and, to our glee, we lurch into the air. Our stomachs tingle and we come down giggling. Even Timmy’s in awe of the wheelie; he hadn’t counted on all the motor work our father had done expressly to pull off this trick.
We beg him to do it again. We’d be happy to forget all about eating and just speed around town spinning out on the ice in the grocery store parking lots, burning rubber at stoplights, doing wheelie after wheelie after wheelie and listening to our father tell jokes all night.
He says no, though. We’re going to Red Lobster.
Putting Little Petey in his lap to turn the wheel, our father asks Lisa to crawl down between his legs and push the pedals with her tiny hands. He shouts commands, and we bounce, in their creaky control, toward the restaurant. Half a block down the street, Lisa gets confused between the clutch and the brake. She stops abruptly and knocks her head on the steering column, but she doesn’t complain and she doesn’t give up. She corrects her mistake quickly and has no problem the rest of the way. When she climbs out, we can see that a slight bump is growing under her hair, but she waves our attention away with a laugh. “No pain, no gain,” she says. We think that’s not bad for a six-year-old who has yet to break her first bone, and we laugh along with her. When Stevie teasingly taps the welt, she refuses to flinch.
Before we go in, our father has something to tell us. It’s nothing bad, he says, but he wants to get it out of the way before we’re so swept up in fun that there’s no room for serious stuff. He corrals us into a corner of the parking lot and waxes ambiguously about the new mystic faith he’s been trying to apply to his life. He says it’s helping him get himself together. He says he’s accepted that he’s a simple man who’s made mistakes and has many regrets, that he’s learned to forgive himself and keep moving onward, that he’s learned to live with the fact that life will never stop being confusing. He’s not very specific about what all this means, but it somehow relates to the guy with the funny Arab name he keeps mentioning. We don’t get
Timmy, laugh a little. We’re laughing because we love you. If you can’t have fun, we should leave you at home.
None of the rest of us gets upset at our father’s jokes. We think they’re hilarious. He’s always got the newest one about the president’s wife. He’s got leper jokes, quadriplegic jokes, Helen Keller jokes, everything. You name a topic, and he’s got a joke. It’s an art to him. We’re all jealous; our jokes don’t match up. Stevie once tried to get him to pull his finger so he could auto-respond with a box on the ear, but Dad already knew that one; he pulled Stevie’s finger and hit him at the same time, yelling, “Gotcha, too slow,” as Stevie fell to the floor with a hand to his head. We all laughed, and Stevie laughed too. He said, “That didn’t hurt.” Later our father taught him how to knock people in the nose by pointing at a make-believe stain on their shirts. Stevie thought this was great and used it on almost everyone he met for almost a whole year. He was still using it the next time our father stopped into town, and they shared a misty-eyed moment over this; Stevie thanked Dad for his parental guidance and our father blushed and beamed, bowed his head.
Stevie gets Dad’s jokes, Timmy, and he’s three years younger than you, and your mom’s prettier. Don’t be such a baby.
He picks us up one by one in his new van. When we’re all packed in, he stops and dares us to dare him to do a wheelie. We do dare him, but then he hedges like maybe he won’t, like it might be inappropriate behavior for a man his age. Timmy, who’s a whiz with cars—auto shop is the only class he’s ever gotten above a C in— thinks it’s impossible; he thinks our father’s toying with us and he tells him so. Dad grins at him. His foot to the floor on the gas, he pops the clutch and, to our glee, we lurch into the air. Our stomachs tingle and we come down giggling. Even Timmy’s in awe of the wheelie; he hadn’t counted on all the motor work our father had done expressly to pull off this trick.
We beg him to do it again. We’d be happy to forget all about eating and just speed around town spinning out on the ice in the grocery store parking lots, burning rubber at stoplights, doing wheelie after wheelie after wheelie and listening to our father tell jokes all night.
He says no, though. We’re going to Red Lobster.
Putting Little Petey in his lap to turn the wheel, our father asks Lisa to crawl down between his legs and push the pedals with her tiny hands. He shouts commands, and we bounce, in their creaky control, toward the restaurant. Half a block down the street, Lisa gets confused between the clutch and the brake. She stops abruptly and knocks her head on the steering column, but she doesn’t complain and she doesn’t give up. She corrects her mistake quickly and has no problem the rest of the way. When she climbs out, we can see that a slight bump is growing under her hair, but she waves our attention away with a laugh. “No pain, no gain,” she says. We think that’s not bad for a six-year-old who has yet to break her first bone, and we laugh along with her. When Stevie teasingly taps the welt, she refuses to flinch.
Before we go in, our father has something to tell us. It’s nothing bad, he says, but he wants to get it out of the way before we’re so swept up in fun that there’s no room for serious stuff. He corrals us into a corner of the parking lot and waxes ambiguously about the new mystic faith he’s been trying to apply to his life. He says it’s helping him get himself together. He says he’s accepted that he’s a simple man who’s made mistakes and has many regrets, that he’s learned to forgive himself and keep moving onward, that he’s learned to live with the fact that life will never stop being confusing. He’s not very specific about what all this means, but it somehow relates to the guy with the funny Arab name he keeps mentioning. We don’t get
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