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 June 2006 Back to Table of Contents Back to Archives Main Page Section: Humor The Greatest Gifts for Father's Day By Theodore Rickard
And, please, don’t give me anything electronic having to do with numbers. There is nothing I need to calculate so badly that I want to figure out how to do it. I use a plastic pen your mother took from our last stay at a Holiday Inn and do any figuring I require on the back of the envelope that brought the telephone bill. On the big things, I am sure the people who handle the pension payments know a lot more about it than I do. And I’m not likely to win any arguments with them anyway.After all, it is they who hold the money and it’s in their computer someplace. Besides this, one of the boys works at something called “risk management” at a gigantic bank. If a banker doesn’t know about money, who does? And “risk management” sounds reassuring enough for me and I’m proud of the way he explains it, even if I don’t understand it. Besides, your mother handles the finances. Actually, she’s been managing risk ever since she said “I do.” For Father’s Day, have your six-year-old son telephone to say he’s lost another tooth. Then I can suggest ice cream as the only gumable nutrient, in double dip of course, to cope with any potential calcium deficiency occasioned by the missing dentine. Leave the two of us to then discuss the imponderables of females, mothers and sisters, man to man, the way these things ought to be talked about. And whether being an astronaut is a better job than fireman. And, at the end of a long day, let me watch my son-in-law carry his sleepy daughter upstairs to her bed so I can fly back thirty years to feel her mother, warm and baby-light, pink and ivory and so terribly fragile in my arms. Tell me you’ve made peace with your sister over the high-school party where the borrowed dress was ruined in a food fight involving spaghetti marinara, and that you’ve forgiven your younger brother for the perfect way he could mimic the boyfriend with the lisp. Tell me you remember, instead, when you were stood up at the last minute for the high school prom and your big brother took you, despite his being an older man and a very mature college freshman. The next day you had more new girlfriends than you’d ever imagined: including the woman who’s now your sister-in-law. Tell me, my little boy banker, that you remember the 12 dollars you proffered years ago when you learned that I’d suddenly lost my job. I thought of this the other day when we had lunch; it’s the precise amount of the tip you left. I thought it was too much money then, just as I did years ago. When you were only ten, the amount had nothing to do with it. But the value did. Two weeks later I landed a better job. It had a lot to do with confidence, and your 12 dollars. Ask the kindergarten artist if I can have another calendar, even if Father’s Day does come in the middle of the year. I need a reminder of all the important family dates — with her own birthday marked in bold red crayon and circled several times. And tell me her parents let her keep the stray kitten even with the new carpeting. I will happily forgo the Father’s Day subscription to the profound journal on economics or avant garde art. But I need news of soccer scores and swim meet times and piano recitals. You know, the real stuff that counts. back to top back to table of contents Current Issue | About Forever Young | Where to Find | Advertise | Our Advertisers | Community Calendar | Contest | Clubs | Contact Us | Archives | Home |
