Uhh...

This showed up on my voicemail last night. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I started counting the times I've heard my dad sing. I never made it to one, and now I think I know why.

But the thought was nice. Whee!

Advice.

1990:
Someone once told me, "If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning." When it comes to fixing cars, my dad embodies the latter half of that theory. Back in the days when I was learning how to do my own car maintenance, I used to ask dad how to go about fixing the various and numerous things that broke on my old truck (the venerable SS RUST).

The first few times I tried solo projects, I'd pay heed to his advice and take good notes, following his instructions carefully. But invariably, his advice would take me in ridiculous directions. I'd get halfway into the job and start wondering what the hell he was talking about. It took awhile, but it finally dawned on me...

Get dad's advice, and do the exact opposite of what he suggests.

After I figured that out, I never had a problem fixing the truck. To be fair, he wasn't wrong all the time - he often steered me in the right direction in the bigger picture, but got the details wrong. He meant well. And I learned.

Who knows, maybe he steered me wrong on purpose.

Fight Club.

I'm not sure how this popped into my head, but tonight I was reminded of the only time I've ever seriously wanted to punch someone. I've never started a fight, never hit anyone on the playground, never even had to defend myself in a fight. I've always been able to talk myself out of those situations.

By the time I was 15, I had pretty much gotten over the idea of big piles of gifts for Christmas. Not that I don't like gifts, I just prefer to have a nice gift or two and be mellow about it. Better to give, blah blah, blah. Anyway, when I was 15 the only gift I asked for from my dad was a pair of ice skates. I even picked out a pair that was well under $100; a basic, low-end pair of Bauer hockey skates.

Christmas came, and I got no skates. In fact, I got nothing at all. I was pretty hurt. My dad hates receiving gifts of any kind on any occasion. Birthdays, Christmas, Cinco De Mayo, whatever - DO NOT buy him a gift. I never understood this hatred, and to now have him apply this holiday methodology to me was all kinds of Not Good. Hell, I'd even spent some of my hard-earned Burger King job money to buy him a gift anyway - angry tirades against giving him gifts be damned.

The situation came to a head when I walked over to his home the day after Christmas to ask him about it. I don't remember what his exact words were, but I do remember him being quite smug about not buying me a gift and not even the least bit apologetic, as I had hoped. This drove me beyond hurt straight to the angry off ramp.

I remember him standing up at one point during the argument, so I also stood and put my face about a half an inch away from his as I yelled "ALL I WANTED WAS A PAIR OF FUCKING SKATES!"

Funny thing I remember noticing at that moment was that he really is two inches shorter than I am. I was looking down on him. And if he had not backed down, I know that I would have tried to punch him.

He bought me a pair of skates the next day.

Hunyuck(er)

After asking a few people here and there, I think I solved the hunyucker mystery. I found out that my dad just added an -er to the end of hunyuck. So he pretty much called me a rednecker. Just for that, I'm gonna ring his phone up a few times and leave some cryptic messages.

Too bad he doesn't know how to retrieve voicemail.

Voicemail from dad.

When I'm at work, on the bus, and about town, people stop me all the time to ask me one question: "Dude, why are you so weird?"

I've got a good answer for that. This is my source, my floating air biscuit of weird, if you will:Yes, he wears his hat like that all the time. One night Melba asked him why; he said: "Because my little Jap doctor told me to keep my head warm." Oi vey.

My dad has recently discovered this newfangled hula hoop called voicemail. He loves to leave me weird little cryptic messages, and for some reason he thinks he needs to shout to be recorded. Here's a good example of a message I got yesterday (volume warning):

Then, 30 seconds later, another fragment of the puzzle:
From the messages, you'd think he was answering a question I'd left on his voicemail. You'd be wrong. My message to him was "Hey, I have a surprise for you. Give me a call." I had to call him back to figure out what the hell he was talking about.

Tonight, I got two messages:

And then exactly THREE minutes later:

WTF!? He gives me three minutes to return his call. And I don't even want to know what a "hunyucker" is.