Best Dad Evar's Legacies #gbe2

Today Best Dad Evar can be found in the midst of blaring music, 20-somethings with bare shoulders and tight shorts, heavy breathing and the smell of sweat. Over the noise of his own pounding heartbeat, Best Dad Evar hears the soft voice of his conscience, er, personal narrator.
“Best Dad.”
Best Dad’s head shakes involuntarily at the intrusion. It’s as if he’s in his own little world, his zone, his… perfect elliptical stride. “Go away!” he mutters to the voice in his ear buds.
“But Best Dad, I’ve been thinking.”
“So what?!” Best Dad is exasperated now.
“Thinking about our last conversation, about religion, heaven and hell…” the narrator refuses to give up, continuing to butt in on Best Dad’s gym routine.
“All right, out with it.”

“In light of your beliefs-”
“Or lack thereof.” Best Dad intrudes, rudely.
“Yes, that. In light of that, you have a problem to think about.”
“Just one?” Best Dad replies, a bit nastily.
“One in particular.” the narrator goes on, undaunted.
“Yeah.” Best Dad replies, his sarcasm turned down several notches.
“Death.”

Best Dad Evar shifts uncomfortably on the pedals of his personal training machine, not saying anything for a long time. “Don’t remind me,” he mumbles finally.
“What are you feeling, Best Dad?” The narrator keenly identifies his pained expression and body language.
“When I think about death,” Best Dad replies carefully, “I immediately get a pit in my stomach, an uncomfortable sensation-”
“I believe you’ve just described paralyzing, debilitating fear,” the narrator.
“Well, that might be going a bit far, but when I have those thoughts, I get shaky. I have to change the subject. Take my mind away from it.”

“Every time?” the narrator wonders. Best Dad Evar nods.
“Wow.” The narrator pauses to assess. “So how do you deal with this fear?”
“I think about my plan.” He says with a quick, certain nod, the kind of nod that only those who actually lack certainty can manage.
“Your plan to cheat death?” the narrator responds in a tone that suggests a smirk, that is, if Best Dad could see the expression on his face, which he can’t.
“No, no. No one can cheat death. Even the religious know that.”
“So what are you planning?”
“I’m planning to use whatever time I have to leave a legacy.”
“A legacy.” The narrator says with no question implied this time. It’s as if he’s letting the idea sink into his head. “Your writing?” He finally wonders.

Best Dad Evar smirks himself at the thought. “My writing… hmph. I don’t know what kind of legacy that will be. It feels like a parody of my real life.”
“Well, even if it is, it’s something that could survive after you’re gone.” Best Dad scoffs. The narrator continues undaunted. “It could even last a long time-”
“I doubt it!” His scowl quiets the narrator, but it fades as he realizes that a blonde young woman, who was probably born after his hairline started receding, has looked at him with her eyebrows raised slightly. Best Dad looks back at her for a second, maybe a second-and-a-half, but just as quickly turns his eyes back to the green digital numbers that display how many calories he’s burned tonight.

“All right, Best Dad. What’s your legacy plan then?” The narrator’s question prevents Best Dad from dwelling on what kind of impression he’s made on the pretty young thing.
“Okay,” Best Dad’s mind is now completely back on the subject, “Number one is to have my DNA continue to live on in our species.”
“Yes, you have two children, so you’re off to a good start.”
“Uh, huh.” Best Dad’s face displays just a hint of pride as he nods.
“And you’re giving them a very strong foundation-”
“Of course it couldn’t hurt to have a few more.”
“What?!” The narrator is downright doubtful, “your wife has other ideas.”
“Yeah, but there are other ways…” he says with a slight smile. He sneaks a peek over at the young blonde nearby. “I have a lot to offer fertile young women, don’t you think?” He says with a devilish grin.
“Best Dad Evar!” The narrator scoffs disgustedly. “You’re going to sleep with other women just to pass on your genes?!” Best Dad peers over at the young woman again without answering, openly admiring her figure, at least as long as her eyes are turned toward the magazine in front of her.

Finally, the left corner of his lip turns upward and he slowly says, “Of course, I don’t have to sleep with them to pass on my genes, do I?”
The narrator makes a sound that’s akin to a pirates “Aargh!” as he realizes he’s been had.
“Gotcha!” Best Dad smiles broadly, showing off the crow’s feet aside his eyes.
“A sperm bank.” the narrator says in a small voice.
“I haven’t actually done it, but it’s a thought I had.”
“That seems ethically… ambiguous.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s something I have to think through before I do anything. I just haven’t had the time.”
“What else is new,” the narrator says knowingly.

“I have other legacies to pass on, though.”
“Right, your family trees.”
“Not just family trees. I’m also making digital copies of family photos, collecting and organizing our written history and I even have a digital audio project that I plan to work on.”
“Wow, now that’s a legacy you can be proud of.”
“Yes, I already am proud of what I’ve done so far, and I feel like I have a lot more I could do.”
“A life’s work.”
“Mmhm.” Best Dad replies.
“But one life’s work isn’t enough for you.” This is not a question, it is a statement of fact. Best Dad’s head drops a bit and he chuckles softly. The young blonde is looking over at him again, but he just smiles ever-so-slightly and nods at her while slowly turning his eyes back to his machine.
“Nope, it’s not enough.”
“Nothing is ever enough.” This is an accusation but BDE just smiles through it.
“No, but I’m not so dissatisfied that I’m going to jeopardize the good work I’ve done so far…” he cocks his head toward the pretty young thing without looking at her, “while I pursue my next project.”
“You’re wise beyond your years, Best Dad.”

Eventually Best Dad must leave the comforting, simple throb and beat of the gym and its music and embark for home. Home typically means a completely different kind of noise, and today is no different. Even from outside his front door, Best Dad can clearly hear the caterwauling of two … what, cats? No, screech owls, maybe? Oh, no, it couldn’t be crazed, hungry or injured animals, it’d have to be his daughters. He opens the door and is almost blown backward again by the volume from within.
“What are you two doing?!” He yells immediately upon crossing the threshold.
Two sets of eyes turn toward him and the noise stops. Then just as quickly it begins again as both run full speed toward him yelling “Daddy!!” and “Best Dad Eeevahr!” at the top of their lungs.
“Ooof!” he says as they both crash into him, giving hugs and chattering incoherently.

Shortly he steps back and looks at them suspiciously. “Why are you calling me ‘Best Dad Eeevahr’” he says emphasizing their deliberate mispronunciation, particularly eyeing older child, who is fond of the name.
“We’re making up a song, Daddy!” Younger child shouts loudly, then dances away, her feet pounding mercilessly across the stained carpet.
“A song about you, Best Dad Eeevahr,” older child says, while tilting her head and pouting her lips in that way that she only does when she’s proud of herself.
“A theme song for Best Dad Evar?” He asks, raising his eyebrows in amusement.
“Yeah! Yeah! A theme song!” They’re both shouting over each other again.

“All right, let’s hear it.” He says, shaking his head. Not knowing quite what to expect, but sure he will have to listen to it. Older child makes a huge production of setting up a stage, and moving (shoving) younger child into just the right position. It takes several moments until she’s convinced it’s just right. All the while younger child’s hands are wagging around and her fingers are dancing, so excited to get to perform their little song.
“Ooookay.” Older child says, waving her arms. This is her way of letting her audience know she’s ready to begin. She begins to sing in a style that’s reminiscent of a middle school cheerleading squad:
“Best Dad Eeevahr’s good, no, great!
Best Dad Eeevahr serves food on a plate
He’s so great that he makes me cheer
He makes me cheer right outta here!”

There’s a pause, and then older child turns and whispers into younger child’s ear. She quickly sings her part:
“A bootie too and a la la loo
Rallay loo to the foo lay roo!”

Immediately older child starts up on her next verse:
“The children are my sister and me
I like to copy his family trees
Best Dad Eeevahr’s hilarious, too
He helps my sister pee and poo!”

Best Dad waits to see if there’s more. But then the girls are both bowing and asking how he liked their song.
“Is that how we’re going to end my theme song?” BDE asks, his eyes questioning, but his lips making a slight smirk of distaste. The children are oblivious.
“Yes, Dad, that’s perfect,” older child beams. Younger child claps and laughs heartily.
Best Dad Evar can’t help but smile and nod. “You’re right, girls, it’s perfect.”

“You’ve got a lot of work to do.” The narrator comments after Best Dad has made his way back to his closet to change out of his workout clothes.
“Hey, don’t be insulting my legacies!” Best Dad Evar replies sharply.
“I was only joking, Best Dad, take it easy.”
“Ha! This time you got me.” He says with a chuckle, tossing down his sweaty shirt and sweat pants in an all-too-familiar heap on the floor.

Best Dad Evar's Shenanigans #dad #blog

It’s a Sunday, so, like every other weekend day for as long as he can remember, Best Dad Evar is in the midst of an endless string of chores, tasks and events for other people. In this case, he’s in the car, returning from a big box store with a lone box of very convenient, but very expensive “pull-up” diapers. “Day of rest, my ass!” Best Dad mutters to himself.

“Best Dad Evar,” the narrator’s voice calls out, as if on cue, “I want to ask you about something.”
“Yeah, what.” Best Dad Evar replies with lazy dread.
“Well, I was listening in on your job interview this week and I heard you say something.” the narrator’s voice has just a hint of a scold that’s about to occur.
“I’m sure I said a lot of shit, that’s what you do when you’re trying to get someone to hire you.” Best Dad rolls his eyes as if this should be plainly obvious.

“You mean a lot of bullshit?” the narrator replies sharply.
“Not necessarily.” Best Dad answers warily. “Just ask me your question already, what did I say that you objected to.”
“You said you’d been someone’s ‘right hand man’ in the past and you’d be happy to do that again.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, I don’t believe you,” the narrator lays it all out on the table.

“Which part don’t you believe, that I’ve been someone’s right hand man or that I’d be happy doing it again.” Best Dad Evar’s eyebrows are raised. It seems he might be avoiding answering the question.
“I know you’ve done it before. But I also know that you believe you’re meant for greatness…. That you have important things to do in your career.”
“And you think that I can’t do that without being the man out front, the principal, the big cheese.”
“No, I think you think you can’t do that without being the big cheese.” Best Dad pulls into his driveway and ponders the thought as he navigates a winding path through the toys, bicycles and random lawn furniture that inevitably park themselves on the concrete walkway leading to the front door.

He opens the front door, finding the nearest flat surface to toss down his box-‘o’-diapers; whatever end table, bookshelf or whatnot happens to be just past the doorway. He continues talking, oblivious to whether any of his family members happens to be in the living room he’s just entered, “Well, you know what, I do think I have important work to do, both in my career and in my life.” He thinks a little bit further, and then continues, “But at some point you have to figure out who you are as an individual and play to your strengths.”
“What does that mean?” the narrator is doubtful.
“It means that if being a support guy to someone else’s big cheese is the best role for me in the business world, I shouldn’t look down my nose at that role.”
“Hm.” It’s clear the narrator still doesn’t quite believe what he’s hearing. “But will you be satisfied in that role long term?”

“Well, yes, I think I will, as long as I’m helping build something great for my team. At the same time, I need to find other outlets for my inner big cheese.”
“Like your family history and family tree research.” the narrator is getting it now.
“And my writing.” Best Dad says with a smile of triumph.
“And your writing.” the narrator murmurs in reply, as if considering whether these things could possibly satisfy Best Dad’s ambition. At this moment, a shadow appears behind Best Dad Evar. It looms behind him like a ghost emerging from the fog, but Best Dad doesn’t see it. The narrator lets out a gasp as the shadow seems to rear up out of the depths of the sofa and then….

“Bounce!” the shadow yells and leaps onto Best Dad Evar’s shoulders and back.
“Aaack!” Best Dad yelps like a girl, but he quickly realizes that the arms that are just this close to strangling him and the body that is draped onto his back are those of his older child.
“Got you!” the girls shouts directly into his ear, causing a ringing that will last for several minutes.
“Jeezus, you scared the sh-” Best Dad stops himself from using the expletive in front of the child, or perhaps even children. The other one may be around here somewhere if this one was sitting on the sofa listening to him talk to himself. Actually, it’s more likely she didn’t notice him come in at all, at least until she thought of jumping on his back.

“Piggy back ride!” She shouts again.
“Damn, you’re heavy!” He says, smiling now. Luckily she’s not old enough yet for a comment on her weight to sting. “Where to?”
But before she can reply, another shadow streaks out of a nearby hallway and immediately launches itself toward Best Dad Evar’s legs. “Oof!” the air puffs out of his lungs as the full force of younger child’s charge strikes. Somehow he manages to stay on his feet despite the blow.
“Hey, you can’t jump on me like that!” Best Dad says to the little one, but kindly. “You could knock us both over. Now, if you were to climb up onto the sofa, you could jump from there and balance out your sister-”

A head peeks around the corner from the kitchen. Best Dad’s wife’s face is countenanced with a scowl and eyebrows pinched together in the middle. “Hey!” She says in the unmistakable mommy disapproves voice that all mommies seem to have. Three sets of eyes turn toward her sheepishly. “You know I don’t like these shenanigans!”
Best Dad and both girls stand stock still, as if they’re not sure what to do now. Older child speaks up first, “They’re just pick up tricks, Mommy,” she says with just a hint of a pout.
“Yes, but someone could get hurt!” she continues, but softens just slightly, providing Best Dad just a little bit of an opening.
“Just one time around the house, okay?” He pleads with her, “I promise, no one will get hurt.”

Her lips scrunch up and her eyes roll just a bit as she gives in. “All right. One time.”
“Yay!” the little one shouts and somehow she’s already leaping from the sofa, launching toward Best Dad’s chest. Surprised, he lets out another gasp and barely gets hold of her as she bounces off of him.
He whispers to her, “I almost dropped you on your a-… on your butt.” he chuckles. “That wouldn’t have been good.” Older child laughs heartily in his ear, still clinging on tightly. The thought of her sister getting dropped is perfectly raucous humor for her. The possibility that the little one might be hurt doesn’t really enter her thinking, at least not until the crying starts.

Best Dad’s wife is still standing there with her hands on her hips but she doesn’t say anything. Her facial expression says it all.

Best Dad Evar on Confrontation #GBE2

It is just past nine o'clock and we peer over the shoulder of Best Dad Evar, hunched over in an uncomfortable chair in a darkened corner of his bedroom. The dim light in the room mostly emanates from the screen of a laptop that sits upon, well, it's not a desk, more of a cart. Best Dad's house has a variety of modern devices, but all of them are hand-me-downs or purchased long ago when they had money. Best Dad is staring at the screen and lets out a guffaw which he quickly stifles. Best Dad can feel his wife's disapproval of this violation of the hour-after-bedtime cone of silence even though she's out of sight and in another room. Still, Best Dad's expression remains incredulous.

"What is it, Best Dad Evar?" the Narrator says quietly, his voice inaudible to the other members of the household.
"Someone responded!" Best Dad whispers back.
"To what?" the Narrator is out of the loop.
"To my idea about continuous power!"
"Um, what do you mean, 'responded'? 'Responded' to what?" Clearly he's still not sure what Best Dad means.

"I posted my idea on one of those message boards." Best Dad replies excitedly.
"You did?" the narrator is duly shocked.
"Yeah. After we talked about it, I got to thinking about how to make sure someone heard about my idea. So I posted it on some random solar power forum and someone actually wrote back." He still sounds excited.
"Well, what did they say?"

"Oh." Best Dad's face falls as he reads the response. "They say, 'Newbies always come on here asking about connecting cars to the grid. Why didn't you read those threads, dumbass'."
"They called you a dumbass?!" the narrator is horrified.
"No, it doesn't say 'dumbass', I added that because that's the tone of this guy's post." Best Dad's expression reverts to its typical low level annoyance.
"Good, 'cause that sounded pretty harsh. Are you going to respond?" the narrator places the ball back in Best Dad's court.

"No, I don't want a confrontation." Best Dad raises the white flag, as usual.
"You're not really one for confrontation are you?" The narrator responds knowingly.
"No, I don't feel like confrontations solve anything."
"Or you're too chicken to get into it with someone," the narrator deadpans.
"Hey!" Best Dad sounds wounded but indignant. "You should know better. You've seen me get into it with my daughters."
"Yeah, but that's different, you're in a position of authority."
"I am?!" Best Dad responds with overdramatic, wild-eyed surprise. "You could have fooled me!"

"You don't give yourself enough credit, Best Dad Evar." the narrator responds, softening his tone this time.
Best Dad isn't finished, though. "In what way do they respect my authority?" Confrontationally, he adds, "Name one, I dare you!"
"That's the spirit." the narrator responds, and he doesn't back down from the challenge, "They, uh, they do what you say sometimes."
"Only when I threaten to take away their stuff." Best Dad says sulkily.
"Well, that counts." the narrator hands it back to him.
"Does it? To me, that's not authority. That's a power play on my part. That's not respect."

"What would respect for authority look like to you, Best Dad?" the narrator asks, as if he really wants to know.
"I make a request and they do it without resistance."
"Dream on!" the narrator replies sarcastically, but then his voice changes. "Seriously, Best Dad, you know sometimes they do what you ask without a confrontation."
"Hardly ever," Best Dad grumbles.
"You're hopeless." the narrator mumbles quietly.

"Oh, wait, there's another response." Best Dad says hopefully.
"Well?" the narrator says expectantly.
"It asks if the car really talked to me."
"You mentioned that, too?" the narrator is just shy of appalled.
"I just said, 'If my electric car could talk, it would say it wanted continuous power.'"
"Oh, okay." the narrator is relieved.
Best Dad continues. "The guy says he's been working on artificial intelligence and he's been curious to know if a complex, integrated computer-operated system like a modern automobile could take the next logical leap to some form of intelligence." The glow of the computer screen doesn't illuminate Best Dad's face quite enough to reveal whether he's amused or wondrous.

"Is he pulling your leg?" the narrator pipes in like that annoying parrot in Aladdin.
Best Dad smirks. "I don't know, maybe. I guess I could message him separately and find out." He begins to type.
A few minutes later, there is an audible beep that makes Best Dad Evar's heart leap and a he lets out a girlish yelp. He sheepishly recovers himself and says, "Hey, he responded again."
"Go on, read it." the narrator prods.
"He wants to know if I have noticed anything out of the ordinary with the car. What should I say?"
"Tell him the truth." The narrator responds.
"That I have an all-seeing, all-knowing 'narrator' who talks to me and tells me what my car is saying?" Best Dad Evar says with just enough seriousness to give the narrator pause.
"No!" the narrator responds in kind, with a hint of exasperation. "Tell him about any messages or signals the car has given that aren't typical."
"How am I supposed to know what's typical and what's not? It's not even my car."

"I think you know what I mean," the narrator scolds.
"Hmph. I guess so. Anything that doesn't seem to fit." There's a pause while he thinks this over, scouring his less-than-perfect memory banks for any clues he could give this AI maven. "The problem is, there really hasn't been anything like that."
"Well there you go."
"Well, can you tell me anything the car would say... You know, about this artificial intelligence idea?" Best Dad pleads, grasping at straws.
"It would say that it doesn't have any way to send messages to you."
"It can't send a message through that fancy cockpit display thingy?"
"Not any message you'd recognize. It's limited by the parameters programmed into its computers to analyze and optimize the car's systems."

"It can tell me the battery is low on power."
"But not that it would love to chuck the whole battery."
"Hm. So this guy's whole artificial intelligence theory is off base." Best Dad says with finality.
"I didn't say that." the narrator says playfully.
"What?"
"I just said it doesn't have a way to communicate with you, whether it has intelligence or not."
"Hmph." Best Dad grumbles and pauses to think for another moment. "That still leaves me with nothing to tell this guy."
"Yep, you're probably right. Does that bother you?"
"Yeah, it kinda does."
"Well, get used to it," the narrator says like only a parent can.
"Now we're going to have a confrontation!" Best Dad Evar exclaims.
There's no reply.

Big Ideas - #GBE2

It’s just after bedtime at the Best Dad Evar household. Best Dad is in the family garage seizing a few moments of quiet. The remnants of a massive shoving-aside project are evident all around him, with boxes, books and piles of stuff stacked to eye level on every available flat surface on either side of the borrowed electric car and its charging station. The clearance on either side of the vehicle suggests that Best Dad will have to back the car out of the garage and into the driveway before loading anyone else into the car. Best Dad is also squeezed into place next to the car, which is far nicer than any of the stuff that surrounds it. He’s checking tonight’s charge-up.
“So, you’re analyzing how much this power-up is costing you, right?” the Narrator voice ends the silence.
Best Dad’s face displays its ever-present slight tinge of annoyance, “I always think about how much things are costing me.”

“So, how much?” the Narrator asks the next logical question.
“Huh?” Best Dad plays dumb, or was he just not paying enough attention?
“How much is this costing?” the Narrator shows the ultimate in patience.
“Well,” there is a long pause, “I haven’t quite figured that out yet.”
“So what are you really doing out here?” the Narrator asks pointedly.
Best Dad Evar chuckles softly, “Honestly?”
“Mm hm?”

“I’m thinking.” Best Dad says, as if that answers the question.
“About?” the Narrator is now curious.
“Sometimes I have philosophical thoughts.”
“Really?” the Narrator is genuinely surprised. “Like what?”
“You know, like ‘What are we here on this Earth for?’ and ‘What does it all mean?’”
“And staring at this car and its charging station help you figure those things out?” the Narrator asks, with a bite of sarcasm.

Best Dad laughs, but not bitterly. “No, not really.” He sighs deeply. “Sometimes the ‘meaning of life’ questions are too deep and I end up thinking about random stuff.”
“Like?”
“Like, if this car could talk, what do you think it would say?”
There’s a long pause, which Best Dad could interpret as the Narrator taking a moment to carefully consider his response. “Well,” the Narrator starts, pausing for effect, “You know there are certain benefits to being an all-knowing, all-seeing Narrator.”
“What, you mean you can talk to cars?” Best Dad is incredulous, but clearly he’s going to press the issue further.
“If the car could talk, I know what it would say.” the Narrator says cryptically.

“Well, can it?” now it’s Best Dad’s turn at patience with the Narrator’s coyness. Best Dad’s not big on patience, in general.
“Hypothetically?”
“No, not hypothetically, actually!” Best Dad is annoyed now. Perturbed even.
“Well, I didn’t say I would tell you if it could talk.”
“You are a fucking tease!” Best Dad is shouting now. “Just tell me what it would say!”

“Continuous Power,” the Narrator says simply.
Best Dad’s mouth curls up into a puzzled smirk. “What does that mean? The car wants to rule the world?” Disbelief and disdain are evident on his face now.
“Think about it.” the Narrator leads.
“Not political power.”
“No.” the Narrator’s voice suggests he should go on.
“Power, as in electricity.”
“It is an electric car,” the Narrator now indicates that he’s caught on.
“It would want a continuous power source.”
“If it could talk.”
“Right. But that’s-”
The Narrator quickly cuts in, “Don’t say ‘That’s impossible’!”

“No, I wasn’t going to say that.” Best Dad has now caught the thread, his hand rests on his chin, rubbing it in the classic manner of a thinker. “I was thinking that’s not what this car was designed for.”
“Nonetheless…” the Narrator is going to let him puzzle this through.
“Huh.” Best Dad continues to think this over, he’s clearly interested in this line of thought. “How would you bring continuous power to a car like this one?”
“I know a lot, but I can’t see the future, Best Dad Evar.”
“Good to know,” he says, but clearly this conversation is going further.

“Okay, but you said you could speak hypothetically.” Best Dad picks up the thread again.
“No can do.” the Narrator replies. “It seems like a pretty simple problem to solve, though.”
“Simplicity isn’t my strong suit. I’m more of a big idea kind of guy.”
“Yes, you are, aren’t you. You’re long on big ideas but short on the nuts and bolts.”
“That’s me.”

“Well, maybe continuous power is another big idea that you’ll think about for a moment but leave to someone else to figure out how to solve the problem of actually doing it.” the Narrator says sadly.
“Maybe so, but you said it’s simple.” For once, Best Dad is going to play the bulldog and not give up on this one.
“It seems simple. An electric car that’s surrounded by appliances and devices that are continuously powered.”
“The seemingly simple solution would be to somehow connect the electric car to the same grid that powers that other stuff.” Best Dad is on a roll!
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“But the obvious problem is that the car is moving.”
“Aha! Yes, that’s the rub, isn’t it.”

“And that’s where I usually give up.” Best Dad says sadly but not dejectedly.
“You sure?” the Narrator nudges.
“Well,” there’s a pause as Best Dad convinces himself to take the next logical step. “There could be an electrified track that the car could connect to.
“Not an unprecedented solution.” The Narrator points out helpfully. “The buses in San Francisco still use a system like that.” There’s a pause. “Or?” The Narrator nudges again.
“Or, well, we have a wireless charger for that portable tablet thingy.” Best Dad holds up a finger as if to forestall the end of the discussion. “Maybe the technology will someday advance to a point where that kind of system will deliver enough power to keep a car moving.”
“Now you’re talking.” the Narrator sounds impressed.

“Yeah, but all of this is just idle chit-chat.” Best Dad throws in the towel.
“Why?” the Narrator sounds crestfallen by this turn of Best Dad’s mojo for the worse.
“Because I’ll never have the money or the position to even experiment with the possible solutions to these technical problems.”
“No, you probably never will. But every big advance starts with an idea, right?”
“So?” Best Dad clearly doesn’t see the point any more.
“So, maybe just having the idea is enough.” this smacks a bit of desperation.
“Not if no one ever hears of it.” Best Dad heaves himself away from the box labeled ‘Extension cords’, but which might actually contain Christmas dishes or ten year-old papers still left unfiled, and turns toward the door that will take him back into the maelstrom, er, the house.
“True, so how could we make sure at least a few people hear about continuous power, Best Dad Evar?” the Narrator shouts after him as he walks away.
Best Dad Evar throws up his hands but doesn’t turn around. “I have no idea.”

The Perils of the Road #GBE2

Today, Best Dad Evar is doing errands around town in the aforementioned electric car. His two children are strapped into their car seats behind him, noisily announcing to no one in particular (certainly not to each other, god forbid) that they exist and they have interests and ideas and, you know, stuff going on in their heads. All the while, Best Dad is gritting his teeth, trying not to rear end today’s slow poke, a white minivan with bumper stickers he can’t help but read.
“Oh, what the hell is this moron doing?!” He yells suddenly.
“Who are you talking to, Best Dad Evar?” the narrator softly asks.
“Just this b-” he stops himself from saying the expletive out loud; too nasty for little ears, but he gestures at the minivan in front of him, which has now come to a complete stop in the middle of the block for no apparent reason.

In fact, the door of the minivan has abruptly swung open forcefully and the driver has jumped out of the vehicle.
“Oh, you’ve got to be frigging kidding me!” Best Dad slumps in his seat. “Some of us have to get where we’re going!” he yells, but not so loud that the woman could possibly hear him through the window seals and metal frame of his little Northern California dream car. It looks like she’s got something else on her mind anyway and wouldn’t have responded if she did hear. She takes off running toward a gravel walking path that meanders away from the avenue they’ve both been driving on.
“Where the hell is she going?!” Best Dad says, not even yelling any more. This is more of a helpless lament than an angry blast.
“Dad, don’t you know her?” Oldest child says from the back.
“Who?” He asks dumbly.
“That woman.” His daughter says, now pointing so he can’t possibly misunderstand who she is referring to. The woman is about to disappear up the path, but he now realizes…

“Oh, shit, yeah. That’s Jane.” He rolls his eyes. Better not to say aloud the description of Jane that first comes to his mind.
“Don’t say it.” The narrator whispers in his year, this time a beat behind Best Dad.
“I know.” Best Dad says disdainfully. “But I better help her, I think she may have finally completely lost her mind.” He begins to pull the car over to the shoulder and park it safely out of the flow of traffic.
“No, it looks like-” the narrator starts, but is interrupted by younger child.
“Daddy, she jumped into the creek.” She says in the matter-of-fact voice only a four-year-old can manage with a straight face.

“She what?” Best Dad asks.
“Do you have wax in your ears, Best Dad?” The narrator asks bitingly.
Best Dad sighs heavily. “Come on, girls, we have to help her.”
“Your enthusiasm for this rescue could be a little higher, Best Dad.” The narrator chides him. But whether he has any enthusiasm or not, the process of getting both girls unstrapped from their car seats (he can’t very well leave them there, can he?) ensures that he will be, at best, the fourth or fifth responder to what he still believes to be a mental health emergency.

As they run up the creek-side path, the father and daughter come upon a scene that’s quite different from what Best Dad had imagined. “What the-?” he says lamely. A handful of people are shouting from the bank as Jane holds onto a very large branch along the opposite side of the creek. She is struggling with something under the water with her other arm. She heaves that something out of the water, it’s… a boy! He surfaces with a giant gasp as if he’s been under a long time.
The crowd cheers as they believe the boy has been saved, but then they gasp again as the boy is pulled back down under the surface. There’s something down there, pulling him down with a force equal to heroic Jane’s efforts. Best Dad Evar’s facial expression is a mixture of surprised appreciation and sheepishness. So much for the crazy b- he’d berated for slowing them all down!

No, that crazy b- is gathering herself. Jane’s face contorts with effort and she gives all her strength to her next heave to try to pull the boy out for good. In the next moment, the culprit makes its appearance, it’s the boy’s bicycle and it surges up out of the water. Unfortunately, Jane doesn’t know her own strength and the bike whips around, the rear wheel catching her square in the face. The gathered crowd groans with dismay and sympathy. A great gash of dark red appears on Jane’s face, but if she’s disoriented or in pain it doesn’t show. Instead she continues to fight to keep the boy above water.
“Aren’t you going to do anything to help, Best Dad Evar?” the narrator quietly pushes
“Well, my girls are here. I can’t leave them…” he trails off, realizing the weakness of his excuse.

There’s a splash as a young man, a teenager perhaps, jumps in to help. He latches on to the same branch and after a couple of failed attempts, manages to get hold of the handlebar of the bike with his free hand. With this second pair of hands helping, the bicyclist also manages to grab the branch and seems able to hold himself just far enough out of the water to be out of mortal danger. He does, however, gasp in horror as he looks over at Jane and spies the gash on her face, which is oozing blood. She still seems oblivious to her own injury and continues to work to free the boy’s clothes, which have clearly gotten caught in the bicycle’s chain. There’s another splash as a third rescuer jumps in. This man is large, he could be a fireman or lumberjack. With some quick work, he frees the boy’s pantleg from the chain and the foursome begin to head for shore.

Best Dad Evar’s daughters begin to cheer for the heroes. The gathered crowd, at least those that aren’t trying to pull the wet four out of the water, also clap and shout. Best Dad simply stares. He finally remembers himself and says, “Come on kids.” He and the girls approach Jane.
Best Dad removes his shirt and offers it to Jane. She looks at the garment as if she has never seen anything like it before, and her eyes flash at Best Dad as if she wonders what kind of pedophilenut would take off his shirt when he sees a young boy rescued.
“For your face.” He says, recognizing her confused expression. She still seems not to understand what he means, though it seems she has also recognized him, at least.
“You’re bleeding like crazy, Jane.” He says, pushing her softly back to reality.
“Uh, I am?” She takes the shirt but doesn’t lift it to her face. Best Dad gently raises the shirt to her face and presses it to the wound, which is definitely going to require stitches.

“Is the boy okay?” She asks, still in a shock-induced trance.
“Yes, he’s going to be fine.” One of the bystanders says.
“The boy’s not your son?!” Another asks incredulously.
“No, I just saw him fall from my car.” She says, now holding the shirt to her face independently. He sheepishly backs away again, holding his girls’ hands, realizing how harshly he’d judged her and doubting that he would have done the same had he seen the boy fall himself.

“Is that your car?” Another asks, pointing toward the street, where a tow truck is backing into position to move her minivan out of traffic.
Best Dad can only stand and watch as the two bystanders run back toward the street, flagging down the tow truck driver and the policeman who had called him to clear traffic. He watches long enough to satisfy himself that they’ve saved her van from the impound lot.

“I think we’d better get on home now.” He tells the girls quietly. They are smiling at him.
“Good job, Dad.” the older one says.
He looks at her with a puzzled expression. “For what?” he asks.
“You helped a hero.” He still looks at her, not quite believing that she thinks he actually helped in any way. “You gave her your shirt to stop all that blood.”
“I guess we all have to do our part, Best Dad.” The narrator softly says into his ear.
“A very small part.” Best Dad replies, still clearly a bit disgusted with himself.
“You prob’ly saved her life, Dad.” The little one says. She smiles her finest Daddy-is-the-best smile at him. He smiles back broadly. “I don’t know about that, but Jane certainly saved that boy’s life.”

This post is dedicated to Jane and her new scar.

The Do-Over #GBE2

Tonight we catch up with Best Dad Evar in the kitchen. If he’s in the kitchen, it means either he’s washing the dishes (which he isn’t), or it’s one of his two nights in charge of dinner. It also means one of two types of dinners will be served: microwave-from-the-freezer or oven-baked-on-a-cookie-sheet (also from the freezer). He seems to be fretting a bit, his mind lost in thought.
A voice interrupts his train of thought, “You seem to have a lot on your mind, Best Dad Evar.”
Best Dad Evar sighs heavily. “Change… again.”
“Wow, again?” The narrator seems to know exactly what type of change he’s referring to.
“Yeah, again.”
“Wow, that’s five times in what… five years?”
Best Dad Evar counts out the job changes in his mind. “Yeah, you’ve got it.”

“Do you ever wish you could go back and change any of the decisions you’ve made?”
“A do over?” Best Dad Evar responds with what would best be described as amusement.
“Yes, if you prefer, a ‘do over’.”
“Well, my theory is that every decision you make and everything that happens in your life is on a continuous path that led to where you are now. Change one thing and the path is disrupted. Everything changes.”
“So?” the narrator responds expectantly.
“So, I wouldn’t wish for everything in my life to change. I don’t want to have different people in my life, like my wife and children. I don’t want to live in a different place or-”

The narrator interrupts, “But those things wouldn’t have to change.”
“No, not necessarily. But I prefer to think of it that way.”
“Huh, interesting.”
“What?” Best Dad responds, immediately his guard is up, knowing he’s being psychoanalyzed.
“It’s like you’re validating all of your decisions by saying your life would be radically different and almost surely worse if you hadn’t made them the way you did.”
“No, that’s an exaggeration. I’m not saying I made the right decisions. I’m just saying once they’re made, they put you on a path and there’s no looking back.”

“Do you ever look back?”
“Well, of course I do.”
“Do you ever think, ‘This isn’t where I want to be or where I should be’?”
“Yeah, especially with my career… or lack thereof.”
“So, couldn’t you envision going back and changing things that would place you on a different path career-wise, assuming everything else would stay the same?”
“That’s just it, though, everything else wouldn’t be the same. Even if I was with my wife, I’d have different children because they would have been conceived at different times or places-”
“I get it.” the narrator says, sounding irritated.

“Just let it go, I’m not playing the game.” As he says this, Best Dad Evar’s two girls appear in the kitchen, as if drawn to the spectacle of their father talking with his imaginary friend. He chooses to sit at the kitchen table with them, shuffling his aching feet to find a comfortable position.

“What about your children, Best Dad, would they want any do-overs?”
“Well, let’s ask them.” Best Dad says with a devilish grin.
“Older child,” he asks, “is there anything you’d want to do over?”
“Yes, I would like to do over the fight I had with younger child today.” The girl is unfazed by the use of the generic ‘older child’ and ‘younger child’ monikers. There’s a soft chuckle from the narrator as he notices this.
“Really?” Best Dad Evar seems genuinely surprised.
“I want to start from the beginning and pretend the fight never happened.”
“Why do you want to go back and change that?” Best Dad asks her.
“Because it wasn’t something I liked.”
“About yourself?” Best Dad asks hopefully.
“About both of us.”
“Well, you can’t change your sister, you can only change yourself. Right?” Best Dad is now in recognizable parent mode. The girl sees right through it.
“Right Dad,” she rolls her eyes as if she’s heard this one a hundred times before.
“But I can ask her to change.”

Best Dad Evar chuckles and shakes his head. “That’s my oldest child.” He says to the empty seat across the table where he imagines the narrator to be.
“Younger child, would you like to have any do-overs?”
“No, I’m a good girl,” the younger one says with an impish grin, but in a tone of voice that suggests she fully believes what she’s saying.
“Well, there you go.” He says to the space across from him. “One of them wants the do-over to change what the other one did, the other thinks everything’s honky dory and wouldn’t change a thing.”
“Well, she did say ‘about both of us’.” the narrator puts in helpfully.
“I guess so. But where is the specific? What does she want to change about herself?” At this point, Best Dad Evar seems to notice that the girl is still sitting there, looking at him with an expression that is a mixture of anger and exasperation.
“Daaaaaad! You’re talking about me again with…. NOBODY and I’m right heeeeeere!”

Best Dad Evar looks embarrassed for a split second. Then he quickly recovers himself, and growls at her, “Well, answer the question: What would you change about yourself or your behavior?”
She looks embarrassed herself, as if she’d made a mistake. Then she pushes the chair back roughly and runs off.
“See,” Best Dad Evar says, his mouth twisted into a smirk, “I never get a straight answer out of that kid.”
“Well, what do you expect, she’s seven.”
“Yeah she is!” He stands up and wanders over to needlessly check on the dinner that’s being cooked by his automatic appliances. “Luckily we won’t have to do seven over.” He smiles to himself, enjoying his little joke.

Best Dad Evar on Change

Best Dad Evar sits behind the wheel sporty little electric car, mired in horrible traffic. He growls. “Sometimes I feel like my grandma after she started losing her sight.”
“I’m not following you, Best Dad.”
Best Dad continues as if he didn’t hear the narrator. “We all told her she ought to stop driving, but no one could tell her what to do and we weren’t in any position to stop her. So she kept on driving despite her macular degeneration.”

Best Dad gets this way sometimes, talking in paragraphs, carefully ignoring whoever he’s talking with. So he continues. “One day she was pulling in her into an innocent looking parking space when she heard a horrible noise like metal nails on a metal chalkboard. She wasn’t sure what the problem was until she got out of the car and found her little sedan wedged under the side of a delivery truck in the adjacent space.”
“She didn’t think the damage was too bad.” He continues. The narrator wisely chooses to let this story run its course. “‘Just a scrape,’ she said. But when she took the car to a body shop, they told her that the scrape had caused structural damage to both passenger doors and both fenders. All of them would need to be replaced, which would cost more than the car was worth. Her parking mishap had totaled the car!!

“So how is it you feel like her now, Best Dad? Your eyesight is fine.” the narrator asks doubtfully.
“Well, I feel like my life, my future is like my grandma’s driving. Things are changing around me, the world, my job, my children, et cetera, and I’m trying to make the right choices for myself and my family. But I feel like I can’t see where I’m going. There could be disaster looming just out of my line of sight.” Best Dad says thoughtfully, staring off into the back yard.
“Yeah, that’s kinda how life is, Best Dad.” The unspoken “duh!” is evident in the narrator’s tone of voice. “So, you job is changing, huh? No more forklifts?”
“Nope!” Best Dad smiles broadly. “Back to doing loans!”

“Sounds like you’re taking ownership of your future; going back to something you’ve always enjoyed.”
“Yeah.” Best Dad replies with a small, but satisfied smile. “I feel like financial services is where I belong.” He can’t resist a ‘but’, though. “But I’m always nervous starting a new job. I’ve had so many over the years-”
“No kidding!” the narrator rudely interrupts. Best Dad scowls. He’d be giving the narrator the old-fashioned stink-eye if he was visible.
“Honestly, it’s not really the job that’s making me uneasy. It’s …” Best Dad Evar hesitates, chewing on his bottom lip.

“What is it, Best Dad Evar?” the narrator’s curiosity is piqued.
“You’re not going to believe me.” He says, looking down at the steering wheel. This isn’t dangerous, as the car is crawling through one of the many bottlenecks on his short route home.
“Well, you can’t leave that matzah ball hanging out there. You have to tell me now!”
“What! This isn’t Seinfeld! I don’t have to-“ Suddenly Best Dad’s shoulders slump in defeat. “Oh, all right, I’ll tell you.”
“Out with it!”
“My Ipod, it… it won’t play the songs I want to hear.”

The narrator makes a “pfft!” sound, like someone who’s spit out a mouthful of milk or cream soda. Then he starts laughing loudly. It’s one of those belly laughs that seems like it will never stop. A guffaw. “You said I had to tell you.” Best Dad sounds wounded.
“All right, all right. I’m sorry.” The narrator replies, still composing himself. “Do you mean that if you choose a song, your Ipod won’t play it?”
“Well, no, it plays the first song I pick. But then it chooses some random song that has no connection to the one I chose!”
“I see that you have the genius feature turned on.” The narrator says, casually, but with the intonation of one who thinks he’s speaking to a techno-phobic idiot.
“Yes, yes, I know what the genius feature is and I know what it’s supposed to do. It’s supposed to play songs similar to or with some connection to the first one.”
“Right.” The narrator replies, with a questioning upward tilt at the end of the word.
“These choices are nothing like what I chose. Listen! Listen to what’s on right now!”

“Um…” the narrator tries to pick out what song is playing. “It’s… ‘Power’ isn’t it? I didn’t know you liked Kanye West.”
“You sound surprised. But whether I like it or not isn’t the point! The song I chose was ‘Clocks.’”
“The Coldplay song.”
“Exactly. Now how does the genius choose ‘Power’ to follow ‘Clocks’?!”
“It is quite a contrast in styles.”
“It feels like someone is messing with me.”
The narrator chuckles softly. “Well, it’s not me.”

Best Dad Evar's Safe Haven

Today, Best Dad Evar is driving back from the grocery store, the rear compartment of the sporty little car that doesn’t belong to him filled with bags of frozen fish sticks, Dora-themed yogurt, and caffeine-delivery systems for the grownups. The children are in the rear seats making a racket. The younger child is singing along loudly with the song playing through the car’s speakers, while the older child scowls and growls, “Daddy, tell her to stop!”
Best Dad Evar is trying hard to ignore them both, but failing. He sighs loudly. You might call it a “huff”.
“Stop what?” He rolls his eyes toward the older one, who’s within his line of sight if he simply turns his head a bit.
“Tell her to stop singing!” The knitted brow and pout of the oldest one tell him clearly that this … is … serious!

“Why should I tell her to stop singing?”
“Because she doesn’t get the words right and it’s annoying!”
When they reach the next stoplight, Best Dad turns completely around in his seat and in a syrupy-sweet voice, asks the younger child, “Please honey, could you be a little quieter? Your singing is bothering your sister.”
The younger child is downcast as she agrees, “Okay, Daddy.” She shoots a look filled with daggers at her older sister. You can almost see what she’s thinking, she always gets her way.

“How does she know this song, anyway?” Best Dad Evar asks open-endedly, but knowing that the older child will quickly answer if she knows, which she usually does.
“This song plays all the time when we’re in the car.”
“Really? How did that song get on here?”
“It’s your Ipod, Daddy.” Says the sassy seven year-old. “Don’t you know how it got on there?” She doesn’t say this in a mean way, but it’s obvious Best Dad is distressed to find that he doesn’t know how the song came to be on his machine.

Best Dad changes the subject quickly, asking the younger child about the song, “You know the words to this song, little one?”
“Yes, Daddy, I like that song!” She shouts agreeably. The older one rolls her eyes again.
The family arrives home and the children tumble out of the car quickly. They run up the driveway and thump through the front door. “Mommy!!” they both shout as the door crashes into the wall of the entryway, further compromising the sheet rock that stays nicely out of view only when the front door is open.

Best Dad Evar stays in the driver’s seat of his brother’s car a moment longer. It’s a rare opportunity to collect himself, which he doesn’t want to miss.
“I’ve always thought of the car as a safe haven to sing your heart out if that’s what you want to do.” He says to himself, but as if he knows someone might be listening and might want to talk with him. “I’m not embarrassed if someone else sees me singing and I would like for my kids to feel free to sing in the car themselves.” He pauses a moment to see if his personal narrator will reply. Or is it the voice in his head? He’s still not quite sure.
Sure enough, “Well surely your kids will believe the car is a place they can feel free to sing.” The narrator replies with a tinge of hope, “But maybe not while they’re in the car together.” Best Dad Evar nods knowingly and chuckles softly. Then his thoughts shift again and his brow knits.

“You look puzzled, Best Dad Evar.” The narrator’s voice asks from somewhere inside the cockpit. (That’s what they call the area around the driver in these newer cars because it is loaded with gauges and control panels like some newfangled jumbo jet).
“I barely know that song.”
“What song, Best Dad?”
“The one my daughter was singing along with. I guess it’s called ‘Listen to Me’.”
“The Buddy Holly song?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“Isn’t it on your Ipod?”
“I guess so. I just didn’t know I had it on there.” His brows are furrowed now.
“Do you keep your Ipod set to genius?”
“I must have. But I still can’t figure how it chose that song.”
“What song did it start out with?” the narrator asks helpfully, trying to unravel the mystery.
Best Dad’s head slumps back until it contacts the headrest and he laughs ruefully. “I don’t remember!”

Best Dad Evar on Clarity #GBE2

Dust billows up between the planter boxes and the jam-packed storage shed that form the boundaries of Best Dad Evar’s recently overgrown lawn. He wrestles with his aging lawnmower, zig-zagging around various obstacles as he crops milkweed, clover and wall-climbing Bermuda grass. His eyes are bloodshot, his throat wheezes with every breath and his nose is dripping so badly, the stream of it has crossed the threshold of his upper lip.
“Allergies?” a voice breaks through the growl of the motor.
Best Dad tries to breathe in, but his nose produces only a halting snort that clearly doesn’t penetrate the sinus cavity. He lifts up his sweaty, grass-flecked t-shirt and wipes it across his nose. Finding the initial wipe to be inadequate, he grasps his nose with another, drier section of shirt and blows hard.
“Best Dad Evar!” the narrator is horrified.

“What?” Best Dad sounds exasperated, but cowed. “You sound like my mother.”
“More like your wife. What would she say if one of your children used their clothes as a Kleenex like you just did?”
“Oh, I know what she’d say, ‘cause she does say it regularly. Kids are wired to ignore the value of tissues. And clothes are so convenient to wipe on.”
“That doesn’t excuse you doing it.”
Best Dad protests weakly, “But I’d have to stop my whole lawn-mowing project to get a tissue.”
“My god, you sound just like your oldest child!”
Best Dad Evar chuckles, nodding his head slightly in agreement.

“What if they saw you using your shirt as a tissue?” The narrator continues, sounding suspiciously like the aforementioned spouse. “Wouldn’t that be setting a bad example for them?”
“They won’t see me doing it. They never look out here when I mow the lawn. The noise scares them.”
“That’s just a convenient excuse. You know they watch you all the time. They probably see much more of your actions than you realize.”
Best Dad sighs and rolls his eyes. “Stop lecturing me. I can’t be perfect.”
“All right, I’ll stop.”

Best Dad has also stopped. He hasn’t started his mower back up again and seems to be staring off, not into the distance, but instead at … a potted plant?
“Are you all right, Best Dad Evar?” the narrator asks with some concern.
“What? Oh. Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You were thinking about something, though.”
“Yeah, sometimes I’m reminded of things or people.”
“You’re looking at that plant, what does that remind you of?”
“My grandmother. It’s one of her succulent plants, you know, I mean, it came from her house.” He says, with a sad look flashing across his face. “And I can picture her with clarity, tending to her succulents with her straw hat and her wrinkled, dirty fingers.”
“That’s what you have the plant for, right, to remind you of her?”

“Yes, you’re right. But when I’m reminded of her, it also makes me sad.”
“Sad, why? Because she’s gone and you’ll never see her again?”
“No. I mean, yes, I’m sad about that, too. But I’m more sad that my girls will never get to meet her and know her like I did. She was so important to me and such an inspiration.”

“Yeah.” The narrator replies as if he doesn’t know what to say next. After a pause, he regains his normal role as the all-knowing, wise expert on Best Dad’s life. “But you are honoring her by showing your children your enthusiasm for the things she loved.”
Best Dad brightens, “Bird-watching, family tree research, old pictures, gardening… Mm hm. Yeah, I do carry those passions forward so my kids can see them.”
“You’re keeping her memory alive as best as you can, Best Dad.”
“Yeah, but I still wish they could have met her.”
“Well, that’s not the way our world works, is it?”
“Nope, it isn’t. So they’ll never have the clarity of memory that I have of my grandmother. But a little piece of her will be passed on to them one way or another. That has to be enough.”

Balance #GBE2

We catch up with Best Dad Evar at the gym that’s just a few blocks from his home. It’s actually quite late, 9 PM, so the gym is mostly populated by the die-hard regulars (the buffed out weight fiends) and those who are too shy about their physiques and/or their workouts to attend earlier in the day. Best Dad Evar’s loose clothes and paunch suggest he is in the second category. Best Dad has worked up quite a sweat, so much so that he’s dripping on the elliptical training machine. He seems to be successfully staying aboard the eighteen-inch-long and six-inch-wide pedals, but just barely. Occasionally his body jerks awkwardly as if one of the pedals has dropped out from underneath his foot unexpectedly, although from any angle it can be seen that the pedals aren’t going anywhere but in their normal ovals.
“Are you all right, Best Dad Evar?” A voice breaks through the music playing in his tiny earbuds.
“Uh,” Best Dad Evar pauses to catch his breath, “Yeah,” there’s another pause, “I’mfine,” and yet another pause, “Why-”, he puffs in another breath, “D’y’ask?”
“Because it looks like you’re about to fall off that machine!”

“Well-“ Best Dad puffs again and then stops pedaling. He leans over the console of the machine and starts panting like a long-haired retriever on a summer day. Over the course of the next minute his breathing slowly returns to normal. “-my brother-“
“Your brother again?”
“The same.” Best Dad tosses his drab sweatshirt over his shoulder, ready to leave the gym. He strides toward the exit door, shooting a smile at one of the attractive young girls that the gym always posts at their front desk. He is unsurprised by the fact that her eyes break contact with his as soon as possible.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He mutters under his breath once he’s past her station.
“What’s that, Best Dad?”
“They’re afraid if they smile back at an old guy like me, I’ll get the wrong idea and start stalking them.”
The narrator simply chuckles at this absurd interpretation. “Best Dad, you always think the worst of people.”
“Yeah, well. Would it kill them to throw a bone my way every once in a while? I’m a nice guy, and I’m happily married. But I still like to get a smile from a pretty girl. It doesn’t have to mean anything!”

The narrator decides to move on, “You were saying about your brother?”
“Oh, yeah.” Best Dad pauses for a long moment to regain his previous train of thought, “We were talking about my brother, weren’t we…,” He pauses another moment, his short term memory completely failing him once again. “Um, exercising and my brother.” There’s another pause. His eyes brighten up as the light bulb goes off finally. “Oh! I remember. My brother got me started on those ellipticals.”
“How did he do that?” the narrator simply prompts him.
“Did I tell you that in addition to being a world traveler and shit-disturber, he’s also a fitness freak?”
“No, you hadn’t mentioned that.” The narrator replies
“Well, he is. So, when it comes to staying in shape, I actually listen to him a little.”
“And?”
“Well, he told me that as we age one of the most important things you can do when you work out is exercises that help you maintain good balance.”
“These elliptical machines help you work on that?”
“He told me they do.”
“It doesn’t look like it’s going very well in your case.”
Best Dad Evar laughs heartily, but then stops laughing suddenly, a sad look clouding his face. He’s now standing at the driver’s side door of his old car, the one with the peeling paint along the roof and hood. You might think he was contemplating his own reflection in the dusty window of the car, but you’d be mistaken.

“What are you thinking, Best Dad?”
“I don’t like getting old.”
“No, nobody does,” the narrator replies with a softly sympathetic tone.
Best Dad stares into the driver’s side window of his still-parked car. It seems he’s forgotten his train of thought once again.
“Um, Best Dad, did you forget to do something?”
Best Dad snaps to attention. He looks at the car for a moment. Then he pats the pocket that he usually keeps his keys in. “Crap.” He pats the other pocket in his sweats and comes up empty again. Next, he whips the sweatshirt off of his shoulder. He feels the pockets, but the lack of a jingle is a dead-giveaway. The keys won’t be there. His shoulders slump.
“Shee-it.” He says, his lips crinkling into a disappointed frown. He trudges slowly back toward the gym to commence the embarrassing search. At the front desk, the otherwise perky young woman in the form fitting t-shirt gives Best Dad a sidelong glance, then carefully looks the other direction as he sidles through the already open door.
He throws up his hands in exasperation and says one word “Keys!” as he arrives at the scanner that typically responds to the plastic thingy on his keychain. She looks down at her homework and chuckles softly, waving him through the entry without a hassle.

The Car Seat #GBE2

Peeking out from below the unfamiliar car in the driveway of Best Dad Evar’s suburban home, we see one grown-up foot. The foot flexes on top of weeds that have found a permanent home in the cracks that run unevenly across the cement. There is a grunt and a curse. Then another curse.
“Where the fuck does this thing go?” Best Dad Evar scowls at a latch thingy.
“Having trouble with that car seat, Best Dad Evar?” The narrator asks with a drip of sarcasm.
“Yes!” His yell reverberates inside the small, crisp vehicle (all the windows are closed and only the rear passenger door is open). “Well, I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”

“There’s a hook back there for that latch, isn’t there?” the narrator asks helpfully.
“Where...?” Best Dad asks, looking around the entire backseat frantically.
“Right there on the back of the seat.” The narrator says, slightly impatiently.
“Wh-? Oh.” Now Best Dad looks completely sheepish. “I didn’t see that there.” He peers at the icon on the back of the seat. It’s an anchor with a cars eat next to it. Next to the icon is a metal bar that’s just the right size. He latches the hook into place, then goes to work threading the seat belt through the seat. He looks at the receiving end of seat belt.
“This is nice.” Best Dad says. “There’s only one receiving seat belt latch.”
“Why do you sound so relieved?” the narrator replies.
“Usually there are two. Both my car and my wife’s have two, right next to each other. So instead of just latching it in, I have to use the process of elimination to find the right one. You know, try the male end of the belt into the first female receiver. ‘Nope. Guess it’s the other one.’”
“Yeah, but that just takes an extra second, doesn’t it?”
Best Dad rolls his eyes and chooses to ignore the narrator’s biting question. “Now let’s see if this car has that zipper sound that means the seat belt’s going to lock into place.” He extends the belt as far as it will go. Yes indeedy, the belt lets out a pleasing zipper sound as it reaches the end of its length. Best Dad Sighs with relief.

“Don’t you read instructions, Best Dad?” the narrator asks skeptically, as Best Dad tugs on the belt to test it for tightness.
“Sometimes,” he responds, while raising his eyebrows, giving himself away. He obviously doubts himself.
“Never.” The narrator corrects him.
“No, no, no, not never!” he protests weakly. “Rarely?” he wonders.
“That’s closer to the truth.”
Now Best Dad is tugging strongly on the top of the car seat itself to see how much play it has. It moves about an inch and a half before the locked belt stops its forward progress.
“Is it supposed to move that much?” the narrator asks, concerned for the safety of Best Dad’s littlest one.
“Yeah, that much play is normal.”
“Is that what the manual says?”
“No, that’s what my judgment says.”
“What about your wife’s judgment?”
Best Dad is sheepish again. “She’d put her entire body weight into tightening that belt until it didn’t move a millimeter.” But he perks up. “You know what, though, it’s not her car, it’s mine and I’m driving the kids today. So it’s my judgment that matters this time.”

“Well, now, it’s not your car, is it?” the narrator scolds.
“No, not literally. This is the car I was telling you about, the one I’m babysitting for my brother.”
“It’s very nice.”
“Yes, well, it’s new.” Best Dad still sounds completely unimpressed.
“It’s not just new, it’s newfangled.” The narrator is at the opposite end of the impressed spectrum.
“Yeah, one of those all electric jobs.” Best Dad says with a smirk.
“I thought this car would appeal to your environmentalist streak.”
“I’m sure it will impress me. Once I figure out how to turn the damn thing on!” As usual, Best Dad is nonplussed and annoyed.

“Didn’t your brother give you the keys?”
“’It doesn’t come with keys,’ he tells me. Just this remote thingy.” Best Dad holds up a palm-sized black electronic gadget. He looks at it disgustedly. “What if I just-“
“Start pressing buttons?” the narrator is concerned.
“Naaah, I wouldn’t-” Best Dad says with that shrug that says, ‘yeah, I would’.
“You wouldn’t?” the narrator interrupts doubtfully. “Mr. ‘Doesn’t read the directions’?”
“Well, this one looks like an on-off button. It’s got the right icon.” Suddenly the air conditioner hums to life in the small vehicle, and the video display on the console blips on like a television. “Progress!” Best Dad Evar shouts triumphantly.
“I don’t hear the motor running.”
“Hm. Yet another button to find. I think I remember my brother telling me about this one. It’s gotta be…. this one!”
“Are you sure?” the narrator asks doubtfully.
“No, but if I don’t try it, I have to spend twenty minutes locating the manual, so, here goes!”

The Dream #GBE2

Our hero, Best Dad Evar leans against the doorway into the living room of his in-laws’ home peering across the room. It is evening and the rest of the family is clearing dishes and food from the table. Best Dad’s oldest daughter sits at a dusty but well kept grand piano carefully picking out notes on the white keys and singing a tune quietly, while he watches her quietly. Though he’s in plain sight, his posture indicates that he’s melting into the shadows, so as not to disturb the youngster. His eyes shine with approval despite the occasional, obvious sharp notes.
The narrator quietly interrupts his enjoyment of the moment. “Best Dad Evar, do you have a dream?”
“Do I dream? Of course I dream” Best Dad says with a smirk.
“No, I don’t mean the dreams you have at night. I mean a dream. Dream with a capital ’D’.”
“Oh, that kind of dream. Like my daughter’s dream to be a famous pianist and singer?” He looks at the child, still playing quite nicely and singing not quite in tune. “Yeah, I had a dream like that once.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I had a dream to be the next Jack Sikma.”
“Jack Sikma? Who’s that?”
“Well, in the late 1970’s and through the 1980’s, Jack Sikma was one of the top forwards in the National Basketball Association. He was six foot ten, had a very consistent shot and played well on the boards getting rebounds. When I was younger, I watched all the big sports, and I thought if there was any player that I could be like, it would be him.”

“So, Sikma was your favorite player?”
“No, no. My favorite player was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. So of course, I practiced my sky hook, too. But Jack Sikma was a white guy like me. He had a shot I could emulate and a rebounding and defensive style I could work towards. He wasn’t my idol, but he was my model.”
“There’s just one problem, Best Dad Evar.”
“I’m getting there. When I was twelve and thirteen years old, that dream seemed realistic. I had two uncles who were pretty tall. Nowhere near six foot ten, but still, there’s always that hope in the back of your mind that you’ll be the exception. Especially when you’re in the middle of puberty and everything’s changing.”
“And when you reached fourteen?” the narrator asks knowingly.
“Yeah, at fourteen, my teammates were starting to tower over me and I stopped growing at just short of five foot ten. Nothing close to Jack Sikma‘s height and size were in my genes.”
“And by sixteen?” the narrator prompts him further.
“At sixteen I found myself competing with the little, quick guys who were great ball-handlers and whose feet moved at lightning speed defensively. That just wasn’t my game at all. When I finally got a little playing time that year, I hurt my knee and spent the rest of the season in a flexible cast. The next year I decided to ‘get real’ and focus on my classes so I could get into a good college and I never played organized sports after that.”

Suddenly, there is a commotion at the piano. Best Dad’s younger daughter has asserted herself onto the piano bench and without asking has claimed her turn at the keys. She gleefully pounds the keys in a cacophony of sound that even a parent couldn’t love. Actually, a parent is very likely to become immediately annoyed, particularly due to the complete lack of manners displayed in the interruption. The older child reacts with a screechy, ear-splitting yell of “Get off!!” Best Dad rolls his eyes and strides over to avert a sibling meltdown. He sighs and tells the younger child she can only have a turn if she asks nicely. When she does so, he shrugs and asks the older child if she will allow the youngster to take a turn.
“I’ll give you a turn playing games on my phone,” he adds as incentive. The older child’s shoulders slump in defeat, but she agrees and slides off the bench.

Best Dad slinks back to the doorway and leans heavily against it again. He watches sadly as his older daughter accepts the electronic bribe and plops down on the sofa, now enthralled with mindless video games. The narrator continues, the random clanging of notes preventing the children from hearing him, “Haven’t you developed another dream since your passion to be the next Jack Sikma died?”
“A dream like that one? An all-consuming passion that leads to you dedicating your life to one single pursuit to the exclusion of all others?”
“Yes?” the narrator asks in a hopeful tone, knowing full well that the answer is a resounding “No!”
“Nope, since then I’ve had something else. I don’t know what to call them. Perhaps you could call them ‘pursuits’ or ‘interests’ or even ‘hobbies’. ‘Careers’ I’ve had, too, several of them. None of these interests or careers has ever felt as firmly rooted in my heart as that first one. I wanted to be a baseball statistician, an economist, a mortgage broker, and maybe a few other things. I’ve dedicated a few years to each of them, but they’ve risen to the level of a ‘dream’.”
“This is a running theme with you, Best Dad: a lack of loyalty to your dreams, ideas, pursuits, et cetera.”
“No argument here.” Best Dad says sadly, but matter-of-factly.

“Except one thing.”
“Hm?”
“Your family history research.”
“Yeah.” Best Dad pauses for a long moment, the gears of his mind turning over this item. “I have been pretty loyal to that pursuit, haven’t I?”
“So much so that you might refer to it as a ‘calling’?” The narrator says, half question, half statement.
“I’ve actually been doing research on my family tree and family history for my entire adult life. My grandmother got me started on that path when I was a teenager when she showed me her family tree that goes back to the Mayflower.”
“Wow!” The narrator is impressed.
Best Dad continues, “But… since there’s no money in that pursuit, it will always be just a hobby. And beyond that, there’s no single thing I can call my ‘Dream’ in family history.”
“You know that’s not true.” The narrator rebukes him.
“No, you’re right." Best Dad pauses for a satisfied smile. "I did have a dream in family history research.”
“And?”
“And it already came true.”

“Mm hmm.” The narrator replies knowingly.
“Yeah, I had what I felt to be a mystery in my family history that I wanted to solve, a hole in my family tree that I felt should be filled. And through my own initiative and research, I discovered that missing link in my family tree. I opened up a whole section of our family history, discovered well-known and respected ancestors, even found the gravesites of several generations of my family.”
“So, not only did you have a dream after Jack Sikma, it’s already come true.”
“Yeah." He says, continuing to smile. "But that’s one of the drawbacks of dreams.”
“What’s that Best Dad?” the narrator asks with surprise.
“The dream-come-true moment is only one moment and then that moment passes."
"Ah," the narrator understands.
"Once that moment is in the past, it's a memory, not a dream any more and, inevitably you have to find a new dream.”
“And that’s not so easy, is it?”
“No, it isn’t. But you know what?”
“What?”
“It’s pretty fun to watch these little ones developing their first dreams.”
“First dreams are like first loves aren’t they?” The narrator wistfully and rhetorically asks. “Pie-in-the-sky and head-over-heels.”
“Except for one thing. Unlike first loves, we parents can share those first dreams along with our children. Those dreams sink deeply into us, and they become our dreams, too.”

Planning #GBE2

We find our hero, Best Dad Evar sitting in a black, wheeled office chair at a desk with numerous scratches and dings. Behind and below the chair the carpet in the family’s living room bunches up unnaturally, so that when he rolls the chair back a bit, Best Dad has to give an extra oomph just to move into a more comfortable position. That’s tough these days. Finding a comfortable position, that is.
“Best Dad Evar,” a voice calls out in the darkened room. Best Dad Evar doesn’t look up from his computer screen. “Is it true that you actually planned to have your children?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.” Best Dad replies.
“Well, I overheard some of your co-workers discussing their own children today and from what I heard, it sounds like none of their children were actually planned.”
“They just sort of happened when they happened.” Best Dad finished the thought. “Yes, I heard that, too. For us, it just didn’t make sense to have children if you weren’t fully prepared to be a parent.”
“And you and your wife didn’t feel prepared for all those earlier years you were together?”
“No. Even right up to the moment we took our first child home, we didn’t feel prepared.”

“The planning must have helped, right?”
“You would think it would, wouldn’t you? Well, it sure didn’t feel that way…. Doesn’t feel that way.”
“No? You think parenting is just as difficult even though you did everything you planned to do beforehand?”
“If anything I find myself wondering often if we didn’t make a huge mistake by waiting all those years. You know what that did to us? It made us older.”
“Not wiser? More experienced?”
“Not when it comes to parenting.” Best Dad replies with a tired rub of his eyes. “We’re just older, our joints creakier and muscles more sore, our brains have lost more cells, we’re more dependent on caffeine and thus we’re crankier. None of this helps us be better parents.”

“Still, Best Dad, some of your plans have to have helped.”
“Well, let’s put it this way. Some of the things we planned to do, we’ve actually done.”
“Like what?”
“Like always having someone who is family or ‘like family’ watching the children when we’re away or working.” Best Dad’s face changes into a very slight smile, which is about as much emotion as you ever see from him.
“You never hire babysitters?”
“We never have. We’ve always had grandparents, aunties or very close friends who’ve watched them.”
“Wow, Best Dad, that’s really impressive.”
“Yeah,” he says softly, that slight smile still on his face. “That’s one thing that has really worked for everyone.”

“But we also planned that we would be settled in our careers by the time we started our family.”
“Oh.” The narrator’s voice betrays his dismay.
“We thought we’d be financially solid and secure.”
“Yikes.” You can almost hear the narrator cringe.
“We figured we wouldn’t be worrying so much about money and success.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. And one year ago, I effectively had to start my career over from square one.”
“Uh huh.”
“During the worst recession of our lifetime.”
“Yeah.”
“And having my industry of choice in ruins.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. You can’t plan for all that.”
“No.”

A tone on the computer indicates to Best Dad Evar that he has an email. He quickly reads the message on the screen, then lets out his breath in an exasperated “Hah!” His arms slump down onto the desk in front of him, followed by his head. With his forehead resting on the backs of his hands, his head shakes back and forth.
“What is it Best Dad Evar?” The narrator shows genuine concern.
“You’re not going to believe this.”
“Try me.”
“That was an email from my brother.” He pauses for a long moment. The narrator chooses to quietly wait, realizing that the final shoe has dropped. “As if I don’t have enough to do in my life, now he wants me to babysit his fucking car!”

Bedtime #GBE2

The lights are deliberately low at Best Dad Evar’s home. The hallway filled with framed family photos, and occasional crayon marks and furniture scrapes is particularly dark, as it leads to the children’s bedrooms. Everything in the house is dark and quiet... for the moment. The silhouette of our hero appears in the doorway at the end of the hall, then tiptoes out, one step, two-
“Brrrriiiinggg!!!” The telephone loudly announces that some fool is calling at bedtime!
“God damn it!” Best Dad Evar grunts through gritted teeth. He lopes across to the phone and roughly pulls it from its base before the second ring.
“Hello!” He hisses into the receiver. A voice can be heard on the other end of the line, but its words are muffled. Best Dad Evar rolls his eyes. Next he nods.
“Well, we just got the kids to bed, but... well, now’s okay.” It must be clear to the person on the other end of the line from his tone that it’s not okay, right? Or maybe not, because whoever it is, they keep talking.

“Uh huh.” Best Dad says quietly, moving quietly into the kitchen to ensure that his half of this conversation can’t be heard in the back rooms. Anything to avoid disrupting the now (hopefully!) sleeping children.
“Mmmm.” He says.
“Oh... yeah.” He says.
“That sucks.” He says. His fingers are now tapping on the counter impatiently.
“Well, why don’t you-” He stops as the voice on the other end of the line breaks in, interrupting. Best Dad now glares ahead. Eventually the voice stops.
“Well, I gotta go.” Best Dad says.
After a moment he says, “I have some things to do to prepare for tomorrow,” explaining himself to the doubter on the line. The voice continues for another minute or two.
“I’m sure it’ll work out. I’ll talk to you later, okay?” Another minute of chatter ensues from the phone as Best Dad glares at it. At one point he holds the phone away from his ear and makes a face at it.
“All right, well I really have to go now.” Finally the other party relents and Best Dad says goodbye and hangs up the phone.

“Wow, Best Dad Evar, what was that all about?” The narrator asks now that Best Dad has settled in to wash the dishes.
“Oh, it was my brother again.”
“Does he always call-”
“At Bedtime!” Best Dad exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air, sending soap suds flying toward the yellowing ceiling. “Can you fucking believe that?! How many times have I mentioned to people that we try to keep everything quiet and calm at bedtime?! It’s not like we’ve ever changed when bedtime is, have we? Everyone knows when bedtime is at our house. But every other night that god damn phone rings at 8:15 or 8:30!”
“Well, why did he call? It must have been important.” The narrator says. Is that mock obliviousness in his voice or imbecilic sincerity?

Best Dad raises one eyebrow and his lips curl into a smirk. “Bull shit!”
“What?” The narrator sounds wounded, but he could just be playing along.
“It was some spat with his girlfriend.”
“His on-again off-again girlfriend?”
“Did you know that already?” Best Dad sounds impressed.
“No, based on what little you’ve told me about your brother, I guessed it.”
“Yeah, well. It was some stupid shit that won’t matter day-after-tomorrow. But he just had to call me to ask what I thought about the whole thing.”
“I notice you didn’t really tell him.”
“And he never really gave me a chance to, did he?”
“No, it sounded like he was just talking non-stop.”
“That’s because the only thing he wants is for someone to listen to him talk. He doesn’t really want anyone else’s help or advice. He just wants you to listen and agree with him and his ideas and plans.”
“Speaking of ideas and plans…?” The narrator wonders.

“Whatever do you mean?” now it’s Best Dad’s turn to mock obliviousness.
“The favor, I want to know what the favor was!”
“Ooooooh, you want to know about the faaaaavor.” Best Dad pauses for dramatic effect. “You’ve been itching to know about the favor.”
“Well, yes, Best Dad, I'm very curious about the favor.”
“A little mystery like that burns inside you, doesn’t it. Soon you’re longing to find out what it is, smoldering with curiosity. It could be something stupid or mundane.” He says raising his eyebrows playfully.
“But knowing your brother, it’s probably not.”
“No.”
“So?”
“Well, you’re going to have to wait a little longer. He talked a lot, but he didn’t mention it.”
“Damn it!”
Best Dad laughs heartily, amused that even his personal narrator swears.

Where the Wild Things Grow #GBE2

Today our hero Best Dad Evar is standing in the small, multicolored back lawn of his faded home, clutching a cheap hose with a plastic nozzle. Water shoots out in uneven fountains from the nozzle into a surprisingly lush garden nestled into the back corner of the yard, the kinks being so bad that occasionally they lessen or completely interrupt the water pressure. “Cheap piece of shit.” He exclaims, but not loudly, and despite his foul words he seems almost, dare we say it… content.

The familiar voice of the narrator quietly rises, as it typically does, when Best Dad is out of earshot of the rest of the family. “Best Dad, I’ve noticed that you have a number of…” he pauses, searching for the right term, “plants growing wild around your property.”
“You mean weeds?” Best Dad replies with a wry smile.
“Well yes, those, too. But you also have a number of flowering plants and even vegetables sprouting up in odd places.”
“Ah, yes, our volunteers.”
“Volunteers?”
“That’s what we call plants that we end up liking that we didn’t actively plant ourselves. We have a bunch of them. We have flowers: our lilies and our four o’clocks. Our mint, too. Did you know that fresh mint makes a very tasty tea?”
“I hear it grows like a weed.”
“Yeah, it does, but it’s manageable.” Best Dad says. For once he doesn’t seem annoyed by what could be a very vexing problem.

“What about this pumpkin plant coming out of your flower patch?”
“Oh, that’s actually transplanted from my compost. So not a volunteer, but pretty cool anyway. We’re going to get three pumpkins out of that plant!” He’s proud, it’s obvious.
Suddenly, a commotion can be heard from inside the house. Screams and the pounding of footsteps can clearly be heard even outside in the yard. Best Dad doesn’t move. The narrator asks curiously, “Um, shouldn’t you check on what’s going on in there?”
Best Dad sighs deeply. “Yeah.” He walks over to turn off the hose. Clearly he doesn’t think the commotion is an emergency. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Ten tops.”

A whirlwind is passing through the home, carrying with it presents and sweets. The children are jumping up and down and shouting, and it’s now apparent that these are gleeful shouts. Best Dad and his wife are briskly whisking toys and laundry off of the floor and the furniture, but are failing in their attempt to make the home presentable for their guest. As quickly as it arrives, the whirlwind is gone again only minutes later, leaving the children huffing and puffing as they come down from their sugar highs, and the parents slumped against the kitchen counters, shaking their bemused heads almost in unison. Best Dad rolls his eyes and returns to the back yard and his hose.
“Best Dad, what was that?!” the narrator asks with high-pitched alarm.
“That,” he pauses, gathering his breath, “was my brother.”
“Did you know he was coming?”
“Of course not, we never know when he’s coming. We never even know when he’s going to be in the country!”
“Surely you’re exaggerating.”
Best Dad chuckles softly. “You’re right, we know when he’s arriving in the country, because he always needs a ride from the airport.”

“Does he always stir everything up like that when he comes?”
“It’s just his way. The kids love him, of course. He’s fun. He plays with them. He’s loud and boisterous, which, let’s face it, kids find irresistible.”
“But he always seems to leave the grown-ups perturbed.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a shit-disturber. He can’t help but mention some complaint or gossip whenever he visits.”
“What was it this time?”

“He has a favor to ask.”
“That doesn’t seem like much. What was the favor?”
“Well, he couldn’t just come out and ask me the favor, could he?”
“No?”
“No, he says ‘I’ve got a favor to ask, and it’s kind of a big one.’”
“And then?”
“Then he says, ‘But I don’t want to bother you with it right now. I can see you guys are busy. We’ll talk about it later.’”
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Why wait, just ask me?’ But he was already heading out the door and he pretended not to hear me.”
“So you’re left speculating and worrying about how big a favor it could be.”
“Exactly. See what I mean? Shit-disturber!”
“Well, it could be worse.”
“Really, how?”
“Well, uh, I don’t know. It was just something to say.”
“Yeah,” Best Dad says with a smirk and a shake of his bald head. His watering complete, he tosses the hose loosely onto the lawn and looks longingly at his pumpkins, as if wishing everything in life could be so productively simple.

Does it ever stop? #GBE2

Our hero, Best Dad Evar, is walking quickly between the front door of his gym and his dusty little car, the one with the paint chipping away on the roof. Within moments, the car is bouncing into the driveway of the little house with the unpainted trim that his family lives in. He hops out quickly (though he still makes that grunting noise we talked about earlier), and a few minutes later he's changed and sitting at his computer typing.

"Best Dad Evar, I've been watching you." The narrator says, with a hint of a scold tinging his words.
"Oh yeah?" Best Dad Evar replies halfheartedly, his fingers still tapping the keys.
"I've been watching you for the past fifteen hours."
"Uh huh." Best Dad seems not to be paying attention.
"Do you know that you haven't stopped to take a break since seven o'clock this morning?"
"Mm?"
"You've been going non-stop, switching from one task to the next all day: shower, breakfast, commute, work, quick lunch, work, dinner, clean up, bedtime routine, gym, write. You even spent most of your lunch hour doing chores!"
"Yeah, that's my life." Best Dad replies, staring at the computer screen with a faraway look, no longer seeing the words on the screen.

"How long has it been like this?" the narrator asks.
"I can't remember. Certainly since I became a parent. Non stop chores from morning 'til night. Even the weekends mostly consist of chores I have to do to get the kids ready so *they* can have fun and not die in the process."
"Do you ever get a free moment for yourself?"
"A moment here, a moment there."
"Do you ever just do what *you* want to do?"
"Hah!" Best Dad bores his gaze into the spot where he imagines the narrator to be. "That's just not available to me."

"That's a pretty strange kind of life, don't you think?"
"Yeah, it is. But I trust that this life will end some day."
"Do you mean when you die?!" The narrator is horrified.
"No! What makes you say that?"
"Whew! I thought..."
"I know what you thought. What I meant was that there will come a day when these kids are a little older.... you know, when they turn eighteen and move the hell out of my house." The narrator chuckles. "When they move out, maybe I'll be able to spend a little time on me. Until then..."
"Okay, but Best Dad, what happens if you end up like so many parents these days."
"What do you mean?"
"With grown children living at home and mooching off of them into their 20's and even 30's?" Now it's Best Dad's turn to be horrified. The look on his face is pure panic. He's clearly never considered this possibility.
"But... I'll be ... in my 70's when my youngest is 30.... it just.... Noooooooooooo!" He runs for the medicine cabinet to grab a bottle of pills.
The narrator is relieved when Best Dad only shakes three pain relievers out into his now sweaty palm.

Best Dad Evar's Bookshelf #GBE2

Today our hero, Best Dad Evar, reclines on an unmade bed, reading. His position seems uncomfortable, so he shifts a bit from laying on his side propped on one elbow onto his back with his head resting on a contour pillow. Unfortunately this particular contour pillow doesn’t quite fit *his* contours. Beside the bed is a bookshelf stacked two deep with paperbacks and inspirational tomes.
“Best Dad Evar, I’ve noticed something about your bookshelf.” The narrator’s voice interrupts Best Dad mid-sentence.
“What’s that?” Best Dad replies. He’s grown accustomed to this omnipresent narrator and grown to like him a bit.
“Almost all these books are bookmarked.”
“Yeah. So what?”
“Well, almost all the bookmarks are less than a third of the way through the books.”

“You’re right.” Best Dad sighs deeply and places a bookmark into today’s partially read fiction. He wasn’t really that into the story anyway. He continues, “I guess you could say that it’s because of my grown up version of attention deficit disorder. I can’t stay interested in any book long enough to get halfway through it, let alone finish it.”
“Well that’s too bad-” the narrator starts, but Best Dad interrupts him.
“I do the same thing with TV shows.” Best Dad says, pointing at the small TV on top of the bookshelf. “There are some that I like a lot for two or three episodes. But somehow I always seem to lose interest.”
“What happens?” the narrator asks, not daring to ask a more detailed question for fear of getting cut off again.
“I don’t know, but by the fourth or fifth episode, I often just say ‘meh.’ It’s not that they’re bad shows. Some of them are good. I just can’t stay involved. Either the characters annoy me somehow or the plot’s not engaging enough.”

“This short attention span affects your career as well.” The narrator presses.
“It defines my career. I’m forty one years old and I can’t even count the number of jobs I’ve had.”
“True, but you have had one job for four years and another one for three years. That's a long time.” The narrator helps with a bit of positive spin on these facts.
“I guess, but even within those two jobs, I had individual projects that were much shorter. I had cases at my consulting firm job and loans and borrowers while I was doing mortgages. So even though the jobs remained mostly the same, they were actually constantly changing. That kept things from ever getting boring for me. Don’t you think that’s a problem, being consistently at risk of boredom?”

“Perhaps.” The narrator says diplomatically. “But you have had one constant in your adult life, one person you’ve always maintained your interest in. One decision you’ve never regretted.”

Best Dad Evar smiles, knowing without hesitation what the narrator is referring to. He nods. Then he pushes himself into a standing position and wanders off into the living room to settle into his regular spot on the couch. The indentation on his side of the sofa is paired with one on the opposite cushion which is soon filled, as always.

Mr. Fix-It #GBE2

We find our hero hunched over the sink in his bathroom. You’d think it was impossible for a standard porcelain sink to appear worn, but this one does. Best Dad Evar’s attention is focused on the mismatched faucet and its chrome handles. He tests one, twisting it gingerly clockwise, then back counterclockwise again. No water comes out of the tap.
Best Dad Evar sighs and lifts his head, looking at his own reflection in the mirror. His face is a blank mask showing through the flecks of whiteness that the brushing of four sets of teeth inevitably leaves behind on the mirror, but the lines on his face provide a hint to his disgust, in this case with himself.
“What’s up, Best Dad?” Our narrator’s voice arrives softly, not probing too hard.
“The sink doesn’t work.”
“I can see that.”
“Dad’s are supposed to have an instinct for this sort of thing, right?” Best Dad asks rhetorically, the disgust and disappointment now showing clearly on his face in the mirror.
“For fixing things?”
“Yeah, but somehow that instinct seems to have skipped a generation with me.”

“Your dad has the fix-it gene?”
“I don’t know if he has the gene, but when we were kids he always seemed to know how to fix things.”
“So what happened?”
“Actually, I asked my dad about that once.” Best Dad sighs again. “I said ‘didn’t you ever try to teach me to fix things?’”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Well, I tried to show you, but you never seemed interested in learning.’”

“What were you interested in as a kid?”
“Well, I did like destroying things. Like this one time, we had an old storage barn that my dad had built but which we didn’t need any more. My dad gave me a claw hammer and a crowbar and told me to go to town. I was happy as a clam tearing that thing down. I ripped off the roof with my gloved hands. I pried the plywood walls off the two-by-four frame with the crowbar. I whacked the framing boards with that hammer until they came apart. I even pulled out all the loose nails with the claw to make sure no one would step on them before we took all that wood off to the dump. Even tossing stuff out of my dad’s pickup into the gaping hole of the dump was fun for me.”
“Wow, it sounds like you liked destruction.”
“I missed my calling.”

“So why can’t you fix things?”
“I honestly don’t know. I suspect that part of it is because I’m always sure I’m going to break some little washer, bolt or tube or something and we’ll have to replace the whole damn sink (or whatever). That’s my instinct – that when you mess with things, they break.”
“So what do you do when something breaks at your house?”
“Well, first I stare at it for a minute or two. Then I see if there’s anything visible or obvious that I can fix, like a paper jam in the printer. If not, I loudly ask my wife something like, ‘Do you know what’s wrong with the dishwasher?’”
“That sounds like admitting defeat to me, Best Dad.”
“No, no, no.” He says, shaking his head and holding his hands up, palms forward. “That allows me to get her involved without directly asking for help.”
“Really?” The narrator asks, a clear sarcastic tint to his question.
“Yeah, yeah. Usually she’ll come over to take a look. Then I slowly back away, you know, to give her some space to take her own look at the offending appliance. I might even back right out of the room altogether if she’s not paying attention.”

“So after you’ve completely abdicated your responsibility as the man of the house, what then, Best Dad Evar?” Now the sarcasm drips obviously from the narrator’s voice.
Best Dad Evar chooses to ignore the insult and answers honestly, “Well, if we’re lucky, my wife’s tinkering is more successful than mine. If not, she usually calls her dad, who is unafraid of any challenge. He dives right in and can usually fix what for me seemed too big a risk to even touch.”
“You’re pretty lucky that you have at least one Mr. Fix-It in your life.”
“Yeah,” Best Dad says with relief apparent on his face. “I realize it every day. ‘Cause there’s pretty much always something broken around here.”