My favourite things that my dad babbled about in the hospital (an incomplete list):

I ended up going to see Dad in the hospital, and we've had a lot of quantity time together. He tends to ramble a bit, but I've enjoyed it. The topics I've most enjoyed are:


1. Why Marijuana will never give you cancer (and you should maybe eat less bananas). The gist: Marijuana is not radioactive. Cigarettes are radioactive. They cause cancer. Marijuana does not. I said, "Bananas are radioactive. I eat lots of bananas," and Dad said, "Maybe you shouldn't. Bananas are radioactive. Maybe you should rethink that." [Full disclosure: Dad was in the hospital for cancer treatment, but I don't think he ever smokes or even has ever smoked much marijuana. Or cigarettes. Or bananas. So, basically, he hasn't tested this theory on himself.]

2. A scientific explanation for Extra-Sensory Perception [ESP]. It isn't paranormal! It can be scientifically explained, but it's too complicated for me to explain it, here. Dad was good at explaining it. Einstein's daughter (who is actually nonexistant) probably couldn't explain the Theory of Relativity, either, so cut me some slack.*


3. The Voludyne 5000. ["You wouldn't think, with a name like Voludyne 5000, that it would be this plastic piece of shit."] It's a contraption that basically gives you goals to make you breathe better and keep you from getting pneumonia after surgery. He's supposed to exercise his lungs every hour. So, every hour for the first few days, he would say , "Hand me my Voludyne 5000. You wouldn't think, with a name like Voludyne 5000..." This is what the Voludyne 5000 looks like:



You wouldn't think, with a name like Voludyne 5000, that it would look like such a plastic piece of shit, would you?


* Why would Dad feel the need to explain ESP? He has the gift of ESP, and he wants to explain how it works. The biggest thing that happened was that one day, Dad was getting into his car, and he suddenly had a terrible pain in his back. Really awful. He fell over. It was absolutely bizarre. An intense, completely inexplicable pain. It lasted, in a milder form, for days. We happened to call Grandma on Sunday, as was our tradition at that time. His mom, a.k.a. Grandma, said that she had fallen down some steps and severely hurt her back at the exact same moment that he got the terrible pain in his back for no apparent reason and fell down in the driveway from the pain. And, and, and- this is the spookiest part- the pain was in the exact same spot as Grandma's back injury. He felt his mother's pain from 3000 miles away. OMG, right? And this is why he felt the need to come up with the scientific explanation for such things. Maybe he'll write a book about it.

"Don't even call it cancer," he said.

My dad, who is, incidentally, very famous in Europe (European Steel Guitar Hall of Fame) has always been important to me. You might say that he was the main parental influence in my life. (Parenting is not my mother's strong suit.) He's also a good friend. (He only tells me what to do when I'm really being an idiot.) Dear Old Dad is sick in the hospital today. He's been in surgery for seven hours to remove a tumour in his pancreas. The pancreas is situated in a difficult spot. I looked at one of our rubber people models in the health classroom at school today. The pancreas is an unfortunate spot for a tumour. But, at least they noticed it, somehow!

So, I'm honestly a bit of a wreck. Seven hours is such a long time. I'm not even there. I'm 2000 miles away. If I were there, I guess I couldn't do much. but it's still not the best situation. At least he's been unconscious for the seven hours- at least, I hope so! I woke up during surgery once, but then they gave me a drug to forget it, so I don't remember it. They have drugs for all sorts of things. Except for removing a tumour in your pancreas. I guess they have to do some pretty intensive surgery for that.

This is a rambling post. I apologize for that.

I just love my papa. Waiting for a phone call...

And in case you, like me, don't really know what the heck a pancreas is, Weird Al can somewhat incoherently sing about it for you:



Update: Phone call received. Dad out of surgery and they got the whole tumour! Now for the recovery part. Poor Dad. I hope they give him good drugs.

Incredulous

Somewhere in the south, on a warm sunny day, we were talking about this and that and my father admitted to photoshopping his Facebook picture.


"Well, you didn't think I really looked that good, did you?"

"What??!!! I've been exercising and dieting and what all and you're telling me all I had to do was use the Photoshop????!!!"

I was shocked. Dad has never been the type to fuss over his looks.

I double checked his Facebook photo later. He does look good. I remember when I first saw that picture, how great I thought it was of him.

It's all a sham!

We took a family portrait at the house. Later on, I was downloading it to be printed at the store. At the last second, I used the "retouch" tool in iPhoto and evened up my dad's skin tone. [I wouldn't want to be inconsistent, after all.] Then I minimized my double chin. [Why not?]

And then I sent it to be developed.



The picture of the diner scene up top was taken by Little Z. As far as I know, it is untouched.

Growing up Hippie, Second Installment

My dad told me a lot of stories when I was a kid. I'm not sure why. Probably just because it was fun. When I say "stories," I guess I really mean, "lies," but they were all pretty harmless lies, so I'm not sure they were really lies. Can't you lie to kids now and then? What about that Santa Claus thing? (I don't lie too often, but Little Z may currently believe that she came from an egg, like her favorite penguin.) He told me so many stories about so many things, that when he told me that wood came from trees, I absolutely did not believe him. Who could believe such insanity?

Many of my dad's stories had to do with the city around us. Among other things, he told me:

* If the bridges were ever out, we could go across the bay in either my Grandpa's or Uncle David's car, because Volkswagens float.

* Those trees over by city hall are actually planted upside down. They raise them, then dig them up and turn them over.

* There are no cemeteries in San Francisco, save the military one. (This is actually true!)

* A dinosaur guards the San Francisco Mint.

That last one is really embarrassing. I mean, how could I ever believe that? I would always try to find the dinosaur, whenever we went by there,
"Where is the dinosaur?"
"Oh, he's off around the other side."

I fell for that crap!

I still believed in the dinosaur even after we moved to the suburbs, when I started school and we went on a field trip to the San Francisco Mint. I still remember the bus ride, when we road through the neighborhood that had all the racy movies. The first theatre's marquee said, "X RATED MOVIES!" And all the kids on the bus said,

"Oooooo...." The next sign said,

"XX RATED MOVIES!" And all the kids on the bus said,

"OooooHooo......" The next sign said,

"XXX RATED MOVIES!" And all the kids on the bus cheered!

Anyway, they gave us a great tour of the mint, but the whole time I was wondering when they were going to show us where the dinosaur lived. Surely it would have to be a big sort of room or something, right? Luckily, I was too shy to actually interrupt the tour and ask out loud where the dinosaur was kept. It was partly because I was shy, and partly because I actually had this nagging dread, the sort of sinking feeling that maybe, just maybe...

There was no dinosaur guarding the San Francisco Mint.

Dad also told me that they took "gullible" out of the dictionary, on account of that indian chief named "Chief Gullible" being so offended.

I'm not the only one in the world, right? I mean, you've fallen for something once, haven't you? Anyone? Anyone?

Growing up Hippie

I was following a police vehicle all the way home today, and it brought to mind a drive long ago, when I was around twelve years old and my dad was driving some little boxy Honda thing he had then.

Dad: "Oh, there's a cop. They shouldn't allow them on the road, you know? They hold up traffic... Look at this! Everyone slows down as soon as they see a cop. They're holding up traffic! Shouldn't be allowed on the road."

Little Me: "You're not supposed to call them, 'cops,' Dad. It's, like, derogatory or something. We're not supposed to call them cops at school."

Dad: "Derogatory? No! What?! No! But they're cops! How could calling them 'cops' be derogatory? It's what they are! What are you supposed to call them, then?"

Little Me: "Police officers."

Dad: "Police officers?! POLICE OFFICERS?! You should call them, 'pigs'. The next time they tell you to call them 'police officers' at school, you just say, 'I call them pigs.' Really. That's what we used to call them. They should be happy you don't call them 'pigs'."

I was very pleased that I had gotten my dad all riled up like that.

He probably doesn't remember this conversation.

Other People's Stories, Part 5 of ?: "Cocaine"

My Dad, unlike most hippies, leads a second life as a successful country and western musician.* He plays steel guitar.

Years ago, probably in the late 1980's or early 1990's, he played a gig at a high school prom. The band he was with was a country band, but everyone in it could play all sorts of music, so when the kids at the prom didn't seem so into the country, they switched over to rock. The high school principal had chosen a country band in order to keep things under control, so it was not much to the principal's liking when the band veered off into that wild rock n' roll territory. Things really came to a head when the band played the old Eric Clapton hit, "Cocaine." They completely rocked the house. By the end of the song, the entire junior and senior high school class was screaming, "She's all right, she's all right, she's all right, COCAINE!"

They were never invited back.


*And he's probably lost fifty pounds since that picture on his web page was taken. Get a new picture, Dad!

Later Edit: See b0b's comments here for the real story.

Other People's Stories, Part 2 of ?: "They locked me up until the barber was available."

This one is about my dad, who reads this blog and I'm sure will correct me if I tell it wrong!

My dad hitchhiked across the country, from Western Pennsylvania to San Francisco, or vice versa, a few times in the late 60's. He was (and maybe still is) a hippie, with the long hair that comes with that lifestyle choice. During one trip across the country, he was arrested in *Joplin, Missouri, for having long hair.

Seriously, he was arrested for having long hair.

It was a Friday afternoon, and they kept him in jail until Monday morning, when the barber was ready to cut his hair. Apparently, the barber didn't work weekends. He was fed three square meals a day, and the meals were cooked by the sheriff's wife, who was actually quite a good cook. He was warm. He was dry. It was actually a nice break from hitching, there was no one else in the jail, so he didn't much mind. Monday morning, the barber came and cut his hair, and my daddy went on his merry way.


*In college, I had a boyfriend from Joplin, and that's when my dad told me this story. I ended up staying with that idiot for two more months, and afterwards I thought, man, I should've known as soon as my dad told me that story about Joplin. I should've dumped him then. But, you know, hindsight is golden.

"A Twinkle In My Eye"

When I was a child, and my dad told a story about something that happened before I was born, he used to say,
"That was back when you were just a twinkle in my eye."
I really liked the thought of being a twinkle in his eye. I didn't know what it meant, really. I took it literally. (Wow! I was a twinkle once! How does that work?) And then as I got older, realized the impossibility of this, and yet still I thought this was a magical expression.

It's still one of my favorites. (Especially in this economy.)