Chatty Charlie

My father should start blogging. I can hear the roars of laughter coming from my mother and three sisters as I write this. Dad is still adjusting from the rotary telephones. My sister Carla gave him her old cell phone, which has the little number pad on it. His big fingers try to struggle to punch in the correct number.

My cell phone rings. I see “Dad” coming up on my caller id. Oh Lord. I know he is out on the job working on some machine doing excavating. Why does he want to chit-chat with me now?

“Hello?”
“Ah, yeah—is this Dempsey Pipes?”
“Dad, you dialed me idiot!”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha!" His big wheezy laugh was blaring out of my Nextel speakerphone, as I shook my head in disbelief.
He had mistaken “Debbie” from “Dempsey”. I’m going to bring him to an eye doctor if he calls me one more time.

My dad is a talker. He can talk your ear off sometimes. That’s what we love about him though. He has stories that are so incredible, sometimes too graphic; nevertheless, entertaining. Often enough, we hear the same stories, over and over again. I guess it gets better with age, like a fine wine. Hmm. If you try to leave while he is talking, he will continue to do so, until he is left talking to himself. He knows everything about anything. You ask him, he’ll tell you. He knows everything from cancer treatments, foods that cure health problems, to his excavating expertise and any kind of cooking recipes you can even imagine. He’ll also teach you how to hide evidence of a body while watching Forensic Files.

“Ahh what do they know—huh? They leave evidence around like dey’ wanna be caught! Ya stupidjas! Just get yourself a good butcher and call it a night! No- dese’idiots wanna get caught. Ahhh---whadya’ gonna do? Forgetabowd’it!” As he throws his arms up in the air.
“Lovely dad.”

Forget about even watching a movie with this man. He will tell you what “he” would have done. If you can last through an entire movie, and tolerate his massive smoke stacks that are being distributed throughout the living room, then I give you credit. I usually have to walk out of there within the first five minutes coughing like a mule. He’s a chain smoker.

All I hear is, “Just shut up now! Shush! Don’t tell me! Just shut up!” My mother screams back, frustrated that her movie is being dictated by some ‘loud mouth know it all Italian’.
“You don’t wanna hear da’troot! Du troot of da matta is, he shoulda’ just cut all his hands, feet and his head—throw it down da river in a suitcase. Simple. But you don’t wanna hear dis! Ahh---why am I even tellin’ you dis?”
“Shut up! Just shut up now!”
Mom yells at him again, then she chuckles, as I stare at her—giving her that ‘wouldn’t wanna be you’ look.

Twenty below zero weather and dad is walking around with no shirt and a pair of shorts. He grabs an ice-cream out of the freezer.
“For the love of God, you’re not in Bermuda dad!”
“Yeah, but you drink a cold beer in dis weatha, huh?”

“Well, yeah, it a big sweater and some heavy jeans...Uh, you may want to lower the heat down to 85 degrees, instead of 95 degrees pop…”

What is it when our parents get older? They want to literally live in an oven. When you walk into their house, you feel as though you just opened a door to a sauna. You run inside to make sure everyone’s okay. And they are. They’re sitting around in shorts. What on God’s green earth are they doing??? My next step is to give them a one way ticket to Florida. The heat is everlasting.

Dad just got two of his teeth pulled. After they were pulled out, he had an abscess that was really getting infected. The doctor gave him antibiotics and pain killers. This helped for only a short period of time. Now we have figured out it was a nerve that was giving him all this pain. I hear him screaming bloody murder every time he eats something or talks.

“Everytime I tawk, ---AHHHHHH!----it hurts----AHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!----so----AHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!---much, ya know?---AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”
“Dad, don’t talk.”
“I can’t even-----AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!-----eat…------AHHHH!!!!!”

“This can be a blessing in disguise poppy.” I said, almost bursting into a giggle.
“Ah ya witch----AHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

As I am typing this post, dad called...

“Dempsey Pipe? Ha-ha-ha---AHHHHHHHHH!!!!”
“Dad, what did the doctor say?”
My sister interjected so that my father could shut that mouth of his.
“You were exactly right on your diagnosis. It was nerve damage and he needs to be on a certain medication and possible electronic therapy."
“Carla, we may want him to remain silent, if you catch my drift.”
I said, knowing I was on speaker phone.
“What a wacko---AHHHHHHHHH!!!!” I hear him say in the background.
“Good, let him talk Carla. Poke him in the jaw for me!”

Growing up with dad, we expected these long-winded (almost blog-like stories) No wonder I am viewed as quite the "chatty Cathy" in some of my posts. I think I got it from dad.

Or as dad would say, “You got it from ya’mudda!”