Growing up, I thought my father’s full-time vocation was embarrassing me.
This was a self-centered view, of course. But I was a hemmed-in, quiet kid, while my father was an expansive, boisterous soul who gave out hugs like candy at Halloween.
I was a congenital rule follower. My father never met a rule that he didn’t want to go out of his way to disobey. To him, a “No Parking” sign was less a construct of an ordered society and more of a dare.
All of this led to a lot of pain for me, at least in my own head. My father never meant any harm, ever. He was what we in the D&D-adjacent community might call “chaotic good.” Still, that was difficult to stomach for someone like me, who always felt strongly that spontaneity has its time and its place.
He would walk up to pretty much anyone at any time and say whatever popped into his head. He would rope me and my friends into listening to his endless shaggy dog story jokes. He would dare me and my brothers to flaunt what he saw as meaningless rules. He had a manic energy that kept me alternately cringing and rolling my eyes, wondering what he would cook up next.
He never cared what anyone thought of him. Only after he was gone did I realize that was a strength, not a weakness.
His wardrobe — or lack of it — was a common source of anxiety. Famously he would sit splayed out in threadbare shorts, in mixed company, leading to what Gunther on Friends called “showing brain.”
After a lifetime of this, I did definitely get desensitized to it. There was the time as a young adult when I was visiting him in Florida, and he took me along on his water run to a nearby 7–11.
You see my father never connected his tiny house to city water, because that would have been “giving in to The Man.” The water that came from his well was disgusting and not drinkable. So he would make the trek to one of the many water vending machines scattered around his south Florida community. You would bring empty water jugs, put in a quarter for each gallon, and fill up for the week.
My father being who he was, he had found a way even with this to “beat the system.” He knew of one machine where you could get your first gallon with a quarter, then smack the side of the thing like a pinball machine in a very specific way, and get a second gallon free. It was like using a coupon — something else he loved — but with trickery!
So we pull up at this convenience store and set up our empty water jugs. He does the tilt trick, once, to show me how it’s done. The second time, an alarm goes off. We are made.
The 16-year-old clerk inside the store looks up and around. “Let’s go!” my father said, grabbing the rest of the jugs. We jumped into the borrowed Lincoln we used to get there (because his station wagon was in the shop) and sped off.
“I’m glad we’re not in my car,” my father said, “in case they got the license.”
By this point in my life, a low-rent larceny caper stealing water with my father was just a Wednesday for me.
Often I dreamed of turning the tables on him. Surely something would make *him* embarrassed, somehow. Right? But he was impervious. It was like a superpower of his.
I only ever saw my father embarrassed once. One time. But it was a doozy.
We had flown out east for my brother’s college graduation. My father had left his suit in a hanging bag on the plane, so he needed to shop for a last-minute replacement for the ceremony.
My mother and her college roommate, who she was visiting on the trip, left me and my father at a small fashionable menswear shop, the kind where all the clothes bear the owner’s custom nameplate. As was his wont, my father struck up a genial conversation with the shop owner about men’s clothing, and by the time we were standing at the counter ready to pay for his new suit, my father and the owner were new fast friends.
Talking to the gentleman, my father spied what he thought was a stray thread on the man’s tie. So he reached over, in a friendly and helpful way, to pluck it off the owner’s impeccable suit.
Except it wasn’t a thread. It was a wild grey chest hair that had snaked out of the man’s shirt and onto his tie.
The poor guy yelped and jumped back.
My father, bless his heart, was mortified. Mortified!
I was too embarrassed myself to really enjoy the moment. Especially because right after that, the owner informed my father that his credit card had been declined. We had to wait in the store for my mother and her friend to return from their own shopping so she could give him another card to use.
That was awkward. But amazing!
As much angst as my father put me through growing up, it’s taken me many years to realize the brilliance of how he lived his life. I still wish I could loosen up, love people and enjoy things with the zeal that he did. And I would give anything to be embarrassed by him, just so I could have him standing next to me again.