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My Father Thinks It's Normal By Tim Boisvert My father is a "thinks it’s normal" kind of person. He thinks it’s normal, the way he is. Every day he wakes up and proceeds to bathe himself in gallons of homemade grape jam. It has to be made of seedless grapes, though; anything else is "just weird." First he spreads the jam around his naked body with the toothbrush he used to clean his teeth from 1987 to 1991 -- two amazing feats here: 1) he still has that brush, 13 years later, and 2) he actually used the same toothbrush for four years. Anyway, after he spreads the jam around with the old toothbrush, he pulls the loofah off of its clip, chants a quick Asian prayer, points three random fingers toward the sky, and commences scrubbing. After resting in the tub for at least 45 minutes, both to allow for exfoliation, and to give him time to read an article from the current issue of "Matchmaking Mathemeticians" magazine, his favorite monthly publication, he moves on to the rinsing stage; not rinsing "wouldn’t be normal." "Rinsing" isn’t really rinsing at all. He leaves a pump bottle by the side of the tub, the kind of bottle usually reserved for lotion or shampoo. Dad’s pump bottle, though, is actually full of strawberry Kool-aid, premixed and extra-sugary. He shakes the bottle up, then raises it over his head and begins to pump. The pink liquid flies out of the bottle and "rinses" him off. Very fruity, you may be thinking, but sticky, no? His bathing completed, his daily preparations made (by "daily preparations," I refer to the process of fastening his velcro shoes onto his feet, then somehow putting his socks on, followed by his slacks, then his underwear, and finally, a wrinkled shirt), he moves on to the attic, where he’s set up a makeshift dinette area. I onced asked him why he didn’t eat his breakfast in the kitchen. His response was a simple "Well, duh!" along with a look usually reserved for circus clowns and dancing midgets (he turned his hands upside down, raised his shoulders, extended his arms to an angle parallel to his body, crinked his hip, hitched his knee, and stuck his teeth out. This is how circus clowns act, apparently). He hums a song, pours some coffee into his cup of sugar, stirs it with a miniature Alaskan totem pole he received as a retirement gift (mind you, he’s only 43, and I’m not sure how genuine his "retirement" was), and eats this paste with three little red straws. He’s supposed to take his pill with water, but instead he grinds it up with a rolling pin and mixes the powder into four beaten eggs, and then prepares a breakfast burrito out of the egg/powder mixture (and some sausage, cheese, salsa, etc.). That or he uses a 10-year-old’s "My First Science Set" to divide the pill into dozens of 4-millimeter wide pieces ("my mini-pills," he calls them), then he spreads the "mini-pills" over a bowl of corn flakes and tops them with honey and root beer. Milk is "just not right." I leave for work soon after that. Dad can be trusted to stay in the house all day, as long as I go through the house before I leave and unplug all of the toasters, hide the TV’s remote control, lock the china cabinet, and remove the power cord from the hairdryer. I once forgot the part about the hairdryer, and by the time I arrived home that evening, he had used it to melt every candle, crayon, and Hershey-bar in the house in order to construct a "fort" out of the wax and his Lego collection in the corner of my study, complete with an altar to General MacArthur and a working fax machine. His "band" comes over every Thursday at 12:17 sharp. They sit on the stoop and play bongo drums, and one guy plays an Iranian flute thing, in three-hour increments. The neighbors to our right once called the police because of the disturbance, but when the dispatched officer arrived, my father refused to stop playing and accused the officer of having a problem with "the arts." The officer found no law broken, and he left them to their "music." Evenings are another story. I get home anywhere between five and six, and he’s usually napping when I pull in. He always shows up for dinner, though, right on time, and usually naked. One time he was kind enough to wear a little-girl’s pink tutu to the table, sparing my dinner guests much embarrassment. Afterward, he told me that he had planned on wearing a jock to the table, but it must have been hidden or lost or "maybe you stole it, you little bastard." We didn’t speak for a week after that. I usually put a DVD on for him after dinner, his favorites being "Steel Magnolias" and a collection of Snoop Dogg’s music videos, none of which I care for. I leave him at about 10 PM -- he’s big enough to put himself to bed, even though his sleeping situation consists of a harness and some bungee cords. I read a bit and then fall asleep with the light on usually. The last thing I hear each night is the sound of my dad prancing around the house with his tap-dancing shoes on, most definitely thinking about the weather in France or the problem with pink bow-ties. But I love my dad, you know? We’re different, that’s for sure. He’s got his things, his "normal things," and I guess I don’t have a problem with that. What father and son are exactly alike, no? I would never think of bathing in grape jam, for example. I much prefer to take my bath in a pool of lemon gelatin. Anything else wouldn’t be normal. Back to Tim's Short Stories |