With Apologies To Rudyard Kipling

 

Dear Ole Dad
The Charmer

********

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.

********

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.

 

   

8 comments:

  1. It sounds like your dad was quite the character.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hah! That was classic. I scrolled back to see how many of them MY dad did... yep, big zero. However, he could throw in, "If you can confuse chicken noodle and cream of Mushroom; if you can destroy your truck on a parked semi within 200 feet of your home; if the signal for another rendition of your butt-flute is "leaning over to look out the window"; if your first reaction to the aforementioned shattering of your truck is to pull a pair of women's underwear from the dash and state, "How do you suppose THESE got in here?"; if you never told a story that didn't end with "And he said, 'G-D it Woody, you're right'" or never found an argument against your opinion you couldn't answer with, "Well, that's what I say"; etc, etc.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Funny how fathers many times share common threads. Goodness knows the stories MY kids will tell!

      Delete
  3. Replies
    1. He was a pip, that much is true.

      Delete
  4. if finish painting the house is optional, mean the house will be mural..... beautiful....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My father would paint the front of the house before he just quit. He figured no one would see the back anyway.

      Delete

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