Best Dad's Bakery #GBE2

Our hero, Best Dad Evar, stands in his kitchen on sore feet. The tiles below his feet were nice once, but now many are cracked and the grout between them is crumbling badly in spots, leaving gaps to collect crumbs, paper clips and glitter. Best Dad is preparing to bake a meal for himself and his children, as tonight his wife has to work. Well, perhaps “bake” isn’t the right term. He’s tossing chicken nuggets and tater tots on a cookie sheet and heating them up. Despite his aching heels, Best Dad prefers to stand in the kitchen to dampen the high-pitched singing emanating from his children’s dutifully educational television show. He actually looks thoughtful rather than tired. This is atypical.

“Best Dad Evar, what are thinking about?” our narrator interrupts him.
“It doesn’t matter.” Best Dad replies disgustedly. There is a long pause. It seems the narrator is considering his next words carefully. But Best Dad replies instead, “I was thinking about a system to capture rainwater that falls on or around our house and use it to water the plants or flush the toilets.” He pauses for a moment, but continues. “But it doesn’t matter, because most likely I’ll never install any system like that.”
“Why not?” the narrator asks, innocently.
“Well, I can say that it doesn’t happen because we don’t have the money or the time, or because we don’t own the house...”
“But?” The narrator correctly deciphers the inevitable ‘But’.
“But the real reason is that I’m not a doer. My mind cooks up these ideas all the time-”
“Like a bakery!” The narrator butts in. Best Dad Evar just glares into the space where the narrator might be if he was visible to him.

“Yeah, like a bakery. Give my mind a couple of ingredients and it will cook up an idea like this one. I have them all the time. I just never do anything to make them happen.” Best Dad Evar frowns, fiddling with his wedding ring absently and leaning his upper body over the counter to take some of the weight off of his feet.
“Well, you must have had the idea to have children, and you made that happen.”
“Yes, but my wife was involved in that, too. She’s more of the planner and doer around here.”
“You also decided to get involved in the mortgage business and you made that happen, too.”
Best Dad Evar pauses to think. “Yeah, I guess I did. Fat lot of good that’s doing me now.”
“Still, you can’t say that you never make your ideas happen. I am aware of several other ideas you’ve made into reality.”
“You’re right, you’re right.” Best Dad replies, brightening a bit, but still showing his disappointment in himself.

“What you’re really saying is that you lament those ideas that you’ve cooked up that you’ve never been able to make real.”
“Yes!” Best Dad exclaims. “My god, I’ve had so many great ideas. So many things that would have made my life great or even changed the world if I’d been able to bring them to fruition!”
“I know, I know. But Best Dad, you’re just one man and you only have so many resources at your disposal to make these ideas real. Can’t you appreciate it when some of them come true?”
“That’s always been a problem for me, being satisfied.” Best Dad opens the oven to reveal lightly browned, sizzling patties of breaded chicken and spuds.

“Wow, how did you know it was time to take those out of the oven, Best Dad?”
“I cook using my senses. I have an internal clock that tells me about how long these babies take to cook and I can smell when they’re close to done.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Maybe I should have been a baker.” Best Dad says absently as he slides a pair of oven mitts onto his hands that are so badly blackened and torn that the narrator gasps, sure Best Dad’s hands are about to be burned. Instead, Best Dad gingerly pulls the cookie sheet off its rack and quickly plops it down on top of the range. The smell is wonderful, in a processed food kinda way.
“Yeah, but I’ve never seen you spend more than fifteen minutes in the kitchen at a time.”
Best Dad laughs and smirks. “You know me well. That’s one idea that I won’t spend any time fretting over.”

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