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| Dear Ole Dad The Charmer |
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Okay, so Father's Day was a few days ago. Meaning this is late. Or you're just now getting around to reading this. No, it's late. Sue me. Anyway, the following is not only based on fact, it is fact. And now you know why I am the way I am.
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If
If you can keep your
church offering when saps about you
Aren’t buying jelly
doughnuts or chocolate milk,
If you can trust
yourself when everybody else
laughs as you
scratch yourself with a fork,
If you can blame
anybody but yourself
when the car conks
out on the off-ramp even though
the gas gauge says
“empty,”
Or being allowed
first in line, say “sucker”
Or being
complemented, say “doofus”
And “dressing up” is
washing your hair with soap and
bathing in Old Spice:
If you think fancy
cuisine is an
onion sandwich with
yellow mustard,
and canned sardines
that make you burp
or liverwurst that
gives you gas,
yet can save room to
suck hot peppers from a jar;
If you can get a
sunburn using only a bottle
of Baby Oil and
iodine,
and peel enough skin
to give each child a buck for the
“biggest piece,”
If your feet smell like Italian cheese and your teeth fall out
before you’re 40:
If you can share your
philosophy on
people of other
races, faiths, and culture,
and not get beaten
up,
If you can manage to use all varieties of the Lord’s name when
bashing your thumb with a hammer,
Or the ‘F’ word when
talking to a priest
when draining your
pool into his yard,
If you think all
God’s creatures, great and small
take a final ride to
New York State
If you can make fun
of the overweight while
sporting “man
boobs”:
If you can make one
heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one
hand of pinochle with uncles and aunts who aren’t related,
And lose, and laugh
and say, “Eh, what the frig?”
even though your
children need new clothes,
If you could say, with a straight face, that you didn’t get the
promotion because you really like
manual labor,
If you can sneak into a drive-in movie through the exit at four in
the afternoon:
If you can cover your entire home with shag carpet-even the toilet
tank-because you “found it”
next to the new Holiday Inn,
If you can set the
walls on fire putting in a dimmer switch
and keep your composure long enough to yell, “Get the hell out of the
house!”
If you can replace every bedroom door with plastic fold-outs that
fall apart in six months,
Yet find time to make beds out of particle wood that collapse before
the doors,
If you think electrical tape can fix everything from a frayed wire to
a broken bone,
And finishing painting
the house is optional:
If you can talk to
crowds and keep making fun of them,
Or set yourself on
fire while on the toilet,
If neither foes nor
loving friends like to hear you speak,
If you can fill the air with one blast of your after-dinner
flatulence or your carton of Kools,
Yours is the Earth
and everything that’s in it,
And-which is
more-you’ll be a Man, my son!
A man which no one will like to admit knowing.
But, a man nonetheless.
