Why I Want To Kick My Father, Part 1

I think everyone wants to hurl their parents into a lake at one point or other, and my desire to do so to my father is compounded by the fact that he once did so to me, on purpose, because he thought it was funny.

Okay, so not a lake. It was a pond. The kind full of little fish and their poo, with scum on the top but not the kind that is green, just scum, with water that smells nasty all the time.

We were about to go to dinner, and we had to wait while I stripped down completely, locked in a bathroom and wrapped in a big fluffy guest towel while Mom used Grandma B's washer and dryer to try and salvage my clothing. Meanwhile, I had to wait in the bathroom until the clothes were dry while my cousins (who had flown in from Colorado for the fist time in ages) played with my brother and not me. I was a tween at the time, young enough to want play still.

But that is not why I want to kick him right now. I'm saving something special to repay him for that.

I want to kick him for my fancy cookies, the Sausalito kind that I have mentioned before. Milk chocolate macadamia nut ones.

I have accepted the fact that he will eat them, though I was the one who bought them. I just hid them, and they escaped notice.

But now his food-stealing behavior has developed past the occasional nibble and delved into the stage where whole meals go missing because Dad has gone into the fridge every five minutes or so all night long, taking a bite sized bit or two, and walking away. Because that is not snacking, or having a whole meal. No, that is nibbling and nibbling doesn't make you fat.

According to Dad.

First half a pizza disappeared. My pizza that I would have shared but I still wanted. I could have made do with a slice, maybe two, and still been happy.

Then I noticed I was out of special cookies. He had found the hiding place.

Finally, Mom and I had gone out to Culver's for dinner and I had gotten chicken. I ate some, and saved the rest.

Dad came home holding a giant Tupperware thing full of sandwiches but wanted other food, so Mom told him to eat some of the Culver's. I called out, "But not the chicken!"

And he came around the corner moments later gnawing on my chicken. He insisted he hadn't heard me. But he had. He responded to me. So either he ignored me, or he forgot a moment later in a strike of encroaching senility.

It could reasonably have been either.

I want my chicken, and I don't want to have to put a mini-fridge in my room to protect food from him. Do I have to label things now? I hope not.

If I were him I would start worrying about the safety of my shrill little Irish whistles.