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A Short Family Conversation
While my extended family is pretty creepy (wait until you hear about Easter!), my immediate family was pretty cool. My parents
were hippies, planning on joining the Peace Corps during Vietnam.
As it happened, when they went to sign up, they were told that they could not take their babies with them and so could
not be in the Peace Corps.
The babies were my brother and me.
I remember one conversation that to this day blows me away. I honestly think this is hilarious. If you don't, that's fine,
because I'm Canadian on it.
My brother wanted a car. Everybody else had a car, he said. He'd pay for the taxes and insurance, he said. He could not
get around without a car, he said.
For months we heard this. I did not care, I had my Maverick and it was so temperamental that my brother asked to borrow
it only once.
One night we were all reading in the family room. My family was big on reading. My parents felt that television was a
governmental tool of oppression (or something like that, I forget, I said they were hippies!) so we had a nine-inch black-and-white
TV in the basement for major stuff like Watergate, but otherwise we did not watch TV in our house. We played board games and
read books and played music or we were outside.
My brother, Brian, started in again on the car. "It's getting ridiculous!" he raged. "Everybody has a car
but me! I can't believe you guys won't help me when you have enough money to buy five cars!"
My father put his book down and said, "Son, let me tell you something."
We knew it would be one of Dad's sayings. My father had so many sayings that every time I remember one, I write it down.
Most of them were absurd. But I miss my father so I like to write his sayings.
Many of Dad's little nuggets of wisdom were movie quotes (TV = tool of oppression; movies = groovy entertainment); he'd
come out and scream, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!" and then he'd point at one of us and we had to
name the movie.
Generally it was "Apocalypse Now" because my father loved that movie. (Don't get the wrong idea; my father hated
war. He felt "Apocalypse Now" captured perfectly every single thing that was so very wrong about war.)
But this time, with Brian bitching about not having a car, my father said, "I cried because I had no shoes...until
I saw a man with no feet."
Dead silence.
My brother is a genius. Both of my parents were as well although they did not believe in IQ testing as it was just another
way to diminish the proletariat. (I told ya!)
Then my mother said to Dad, "Danny, you saw a man with no feet? Where was this? Down by your office?"
Picking up on Mom's words, I said, "Was he on crutches, Dad, or just crawling, or what?"
Mom looked at me and said, "I can't believe he didn't mention this! This is really fascinating!"
My dad was just sitting there with his mouth hanging open. "Where were your shoes, Dad?" I asked. "And
it's summer, why would you cry? You're always barefooted!"
My father said, "Oh for crissakes, forget it."
We all went back to reading and then my brother said, "Dad?"
My dad said, "What."
Brian said, "Why would a man with no feet want your shoes anyway?"
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