Andrew J. Lederer

When my father gave me three dinner choices last night, two were restaurants and one was having his girlfriend make fish. Even though I would have preferred a Mexican restaurant (it feels weird leaving Arizona without having eaten Mexican), I chose the fish, a choice my father clearly found less than satisfying. But who knows what he would have eaten at a Mexican place.

After dinner, we went to an enjoyable little Johnny Cash and Elvis show on the east side of town, where my father wasted no time in ordering an ice cream sundae, to be delivered to him during intermission. He assured me (with some humor) that everything was fine because he was only ordering a junior sundae. (In protest, I attempted to demonstrate restraint by not ordering ice cream, which, of course, I wanted.)

When I was a kid, my father used to challenge me to knock him down in the swimming pool. He would be immovable -- a rock. I could never knock him down. (Of course this probably says as much about my weakness as it does about his strength.)

Relatively recently, we were in a pool and he said to me, "I bet you could knock me down now."

He wasn't so weak -- it wasn't like he was a frail, old man or anything. Maybe, I could have knocked him down.

But, the thing is, I never wanted to knock him down.

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16 January, 2007 @ 15:16 GMT
http://blogs.chortle.co.uk/andrewjlederer