Sunday, December 21, 2008

I Know How He Feels

Many Halloweens ago, I remember getting home from a long night of candy hunting, arms tired from my bulky pillowcase, and seeing my father waiting for us (my brother and sister too). He looked really excited about something. I always joked that in the film of my life Harvey Keitel would play the part of my father - in both looks and demeanor. So seeing him excited was strange. Then I saw them. Gifts! Small packages! Wrapped in the washed-out colors of the Sunday comic strips. Newspaper wrapping paper was pretty impressive from a guy that never even knew what Christmas presents we were opening (even the ones that said "From: Dad"). He had three gifts: one for me, one for my brother, and one for my sister. He handed us our presents and I remember the weight and feel of mine giving it away - I was about to open a very cool and heavy train locomotive. I was already thinking my brother and sister would be opening some other cars from the same train set. Super excited, I tore the wrapping away from the train and found a rectangular rock. I remember looking over and seeing my brother and sister holding their rocks. Then I remember my old man laughing.

Every Halloween when I set up the fog machine outside their house, I always grab rocks from under the tree to level the fogger and support it on the slope of their lawn. The same rocks we opened all those years ago. I can almost picture him digging through the ivy that night a few decades ago laughing out loud as he found three gift-sized stones to give to his children.

5 comments:

Grim said...

Man, that's mean. But... it sounds just like something I would do to my kids as a "joke".

The Captain said...

Your Dad sounds cool, in that funny Dad way of being cool.

"I got a rock?!"

Rot said...

I owe Charlie Brown for planting that idea in my father's head. Though his twist on it made it pretty evil - we all would have laughed had he just dropped a small stone in each of our bags...

but he was the only one laughing that night.

i've seen him give an empty box of roses picked from a neighbor's trash to my mother on valentine's day - with no back-up gift.

after his eventual murder, the whole family will be questioned and i'm pretty sure we'll each start out with: "sure, I had reasons to kill him, but it wasn't me..."

JHMDF said...

Dont kill your dad Rot....the cops might not let you back over there to decorate for Halloween!

JD said...

Your dad sounds like my grandma. My dad told me all of his childhood horrors. Seems like he's not the only one...