Monday, October 10, 2005

Broken Toes and Hot Air Ballons

Okay I was planning on seeing Mandi tonight but her dad was on his way over so I was not going to get to see her. So I went over to MAt and Jeff's house tonight to watch family guy.

Ughhh They did not have it on because of a baseball game. I mean do they not have entire channels to show this shit on. Why ruin everyone elses normal Sunday routine for a game that maybe 10 people are watching. We ended up watching some episodes of Firefly on DVD instead. After i ranted for 10 minutes on how much I hated sports. Which Jeff followed up with the coment, "Are you sure your not gay?"

I broke my toe. I did it tonight. I would like to say I did it doing something heroic like saving a child from a burning house, kitten up a tree, had it run over by bank robbers as i chased them out of the bank. I did it, by dropping a bowl I was getting ready to fill with ice cream. The damn 5 pound ceramic bowl slipped out of my fingers and homed in out my middle toe on my left foot.

I am now a proud owner of a black and blue toe. It hurts when I walk. It hurts to move it. ANd I have a job where I AM going to be up on it all night tomorrow. I am hping it will be better tomorrow.

For some reason breaking my toe made me think of my dad. I think it had to do with the one time he broke his foot chasing our dog down a railroad track. ANd he hit the track and tripped breaking his Big toe.

He lost three days of work for that. And he cussed that dog for several days. So I started to think about him tonight.

He died in 2000, on December 16th. I have went over that story on this blog before. So i will not retell it. When i moved out of the house, I asked mom if I could have his flag. The one that had lay over his casket, for my apartment. It sits on my headboard in my bed room.

I use to think my dad thought I was useless. I never liked working on cars. I was never good at doing the stuff he loved doing when he was my age. He would always yell at me when I did something wrong, because I just could not figure out how the hell to change the oil filter on my car.

I see now that he never really did think of me as useless. He would sit at the table with us when we role played. He would make fun of me or say soething stupid, and just agrivate the piss out of me. I used to think it was because he thought what i was doing was a waste of time.

It was not until later that I understood what it was. He wanted to be apart of my life. He told me before how impressed he was that I could come up with this stuff off the top of my head that made people have a good time. I was not the mechanically inclined son. I was the smart one.

My dad was no idiot. Yet he knew how intelligent I reallly was. I think that is what made him proud. I never realized it until one day he seen someone he had not seen in a long time. We were working out of a stare warehouse, we sold old movies for a buck and built new stores for Blockbuster.

The guy cam in and my dad talked to him. He introduced me again to this man. He told him, this here is my son, my boss. I never hada lick of trouble from him growing up. He was a good kid. I could not ask for better.

I can remember two weeks before he died we were sitting at the break table. We were just talking. And I remember him saying something about wanting grandchildren before he died. I told him, Dont worry, Sarah and i are trying. Besides you are going to be around for a long time bugging the shit out of me.

After his death, there was one thing I remember doing that he would have been proud of. When I was like 10, we were driving down a road, near a camping area we had bought (Here is something funny the camp spot is one we bought from Ben's stepdad, years befor I even met Ben).

We pulled over because several cars were lined along this road because they were trying to take down a huge hot air ballon. They had to land it in a field nearby. My dad and about 10 other people took this thing down over an hour. I can still remmeber it to this day.

A year or so after he died, a hot air balloon landed in a field out back of where we lived. I went to see what was going on. I spen the next hour taking it apart. I never felt so alive after I did that. I think it was neat getting to do something I remember my dad doing to help some one else.

I regret not giving him his grandchildren. My biological clock is ticking away myself. I just dont know if it will ever happen or if it will even be possible.

On another note, I am thinking of next sunday going to a singles dance. MAybe, you see i am not sure what age groups attend these things. I just have this horrible vision of it being full of people older than my mother.

I have no clue where things are going to go with MAndi, so i am going to give this a shot because frankly I am not getting anywhere with personlas ads. So its either this or speed dating.

And thats all considering if my toe is better in a week.

Later
R

posted by Hendersonman @ 3:05 PM Comments: 0