A Story About My Dad

I was sitting at my laptop the other day, doing homework (okay, I was probably surfing the web or drawing on Paint), when I heard an unusual sound coming from beneath my feet.

Screaming.

It was my dad's voice, and he was yelling "OH NO! OHHHH NOOOOO! THAT'S SO DISGUSTING! OH MY GOSH THERE'S ANOTHER ONE! OOOOOHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"

After a moment's consideration, I bounced out of my chair and ran down the stairs to find out what was going on, and to watch if I could. I wasn't sure what was up, but it sounded pretty hilarious.

I found them in my dad's bedroom. He sleeps in a cave room in the basement, with no windows. At least, that's how it first appears. In truth, there IS one opening in his room aside from the door and the vents. It's a secret passageway, a wooden panel that lifts up and leads to a crawl space under the house. The crawl space is concrete on the bottom, and exists only because the house has been extended upon. The only things in there are dark, cold, and electrical wires. Oh, and . . .

"Spiderwebs!" Dad screamed again. The crawl space was open - my fourteen year-old brother was holding the panel up and laughing silently - and my dad's voice echoed from inside. "Oh my holy, there are a million spiderwebs in here!"

"What is he doing?" I asked Nik, grinning broadly.

Nik shrugged. "He keeps putting his hand through spiderwebs, though." We laughed heartily as my dad screamed again. After a few minutes, he crawled back to the opening, wide-eyed and out of breath. I noticed that all he had for a flashlight was one of those little light-up rings on his finger. No surprise. "Alright," he said. "I know what I need now. Get out of the way, I'm coming down."

Oh. Perhaps I should have mentioned that the opening to this crawlspace is a good six or seven feet off the ground. My little brother was standing on my dad's bed in order to hold up the panel. The room is so small, there's barely a foot wide path through the furniture, so I figured my dad would step down onto the desk to get out of there. I was bewildered, therefore, when he started climbing out headfirst.

"Dad! What are you doing?!" I yelled, laughing.

"I'm coming down. What's it look like I'm doing?" he said, reaching one of his rather stubby arms out to grab hold of the bedpost. He was balancing on the edge of the opening now, rocking on his shapely belly. He squirmed his way down, almost falling on his head as his short legs kicked in the air. Miraculously, he made it out alright. "Ah!" he said, satisfied. "Jess, we need to go to the hardware store so I can buy a cable for my television."

The madness explained, I joined in. This caper would not be missed by the likes of me!

* * * * *

My dad is a 44 year-old man, and I am his oldest daughter (at 20 years of age), but I have probably been to the hardware store almost twice as many times as he has. In my family, it's my mother who owns the toolbox, who fixes the appliances and builds the fences. Actually, we kids bought my dad a toy toolbelt for his birthday last year, because he isn't allowed to have a real one.

So it makes perfect sense that Dad had no idea what he was doing at the hardware store. I walked along beside him nonchalantly, not realizing what a big deal this was for him until he turned to me with almost giggly excitement and said, "I feel sort of manly." He paused, then added, "in a terrified sort of way."

It was up to me, then, to find out where the cables were ("There are SIGNS, Dad. Look!") and get us to the right aisle. But I'm no handyman yet, I had no idea what exactly we were going to need, and so we asked a gruff old man in the Home Depot apron for help. He pointed and grunted mostly, but he was very nice. Even when my Dad kept asking where this-and-this was, and the answer was always "it's right in front of your face, sir." However, I don't think the old man was prepared for my dad's exuberant gratitude. After Dad had made sure he had everything he needed, he turned to the employee and exclaimed happily, "I love you!"

I slapped my forehead. He does this all the time. The man looked shocked and mumbled a response awkwardly, anything to get us to leave. I grabbed my dad by the arm and dragged him out of the store, scolding him firmly and trying to explain that "normal people don't say 'I love you' to strangers at the store, Dad. It's just weird." The lesson was argued, and he felt the need to ask two teenage girl cashiers if they thought it was a socially acceptable course of action. "I love you!" he said to them, then asked, "See? That's not weird, right?" He couldn't believe it when they muttered, "Uh, yeah, it kinda is."

* * * * *

We made it back home, and now it was my job to hold the panel up for him as he climbed back into the crawlspace. I'd asked my mom for a real flashlight for him, and he finished hooking up the cable quickly. I couldn't convince him to turn around and step down from the crawlspace like a normal human being, so I had to watch again as he took the penguin's route. (By the way, my dad performed this second venture into the crawlspace shirtless, so as to not get his clothes dirty. This is my dad: you think it can't get any weirder, and then it does.)

He needed to drill a hold through the panel to pull the cord through. Apparently it's a girl thing to think you should drill it through the corner of the panel, because he went right through the middle of it. Halfway through, however, he realized that this panel had been a window before. His drill hit glass. "Well, what are you going to do now, Dad?" I asked. "No problem," he said. "I'll just punch a hole through it."

I didn't have time to respond. I dove to the mattress, throwing a thick blanket over my head just in time, as I heard the glass shattering above me. "There we go!" my dad said pleasantly.

* * * * *

Well, in the end he accomplished his task. He got the wires all set up so that he can watch TV in his bedroom now, and with very few cuts/bruises for the trouble. He was proud as a peacock, and didn't understand what we all thought was so funny about the whole thing. And I got a pretty good story, which I'm glad for because sometimes it's hard to explain just what it's like living with him. Now you know.

The truth is stranger than fiction. But nothing is stranger than my dad.