When I was in middle school, I had a boyfriend for 15 minutes. Ok, maybe it was a week, but in the rearview mirror of retrospect, it seems like 15 minutes at best. Somewhere along the way, boys discovered, and relished in the fact, that my name and the pet dinosaur on the Flintstones cartoon were a mere vowel off from each other. When all a girl wants is to be adored and prized, when her single goal is to be in one of those adolescent power couples – those years-long junior high couples that seemed so mature, when her hobby has become expert application of baby blue eyeshadow, the last thing she wants is to be called Dino in public. Finally, as 7th grade was coming to a close, an 8th grade boy asked me out. It was weird out of the gate. I should’ve known better. Let’s call him John, since that town is only 15 minutes away from here. He was a bad boy. He had a gravelly voice, and he did bad boy things like ride dirt bikes and work on carburetors. Popular girls who’d never spoken to me shimmied out of the woodwork to warn me away. “He’s going to hurt you.” “He’s been in juvie before.” “I heard he shanked someone.” That made me want him even more. He threw himself a birthday party at the community center of the local trailer park. I was his date. Several of the 8th graders were drinking, or claimed to be drinking, or promised they really did just drink before they got there. I sat behind the pool table and kissed him. Hello, popularity, at last we meet. Except, my new role as bad boy queen came to a screeching halt when he dumped me the very next week. It was on a Thursday night. I was walking through my house carrying the base of a baby blue princess pushbutton slimline telephone in my left hand with the receiver tucked tightly between my right shoulder and my jaw. I still have chiropractic issues from that pose. The 25-foot cord was wound around my waist. “Hey, what are you doing,” the gravelly voice slithered out of the phone and into my ear. “Nothing, just watching television,” was my witty retort. “Good. Watch Dynasty with me,” John ordered. I was equal parts euphoric and terrified. This boy wants to sit in front of our respective televisions and watch a TV show with me over the phone. I gulped, and with tears in my voice said, “I’m not allowed to watch Dynasty. My daddy says it’s too adult.” I heard his breath for several moments. “Then, what are you watching?” I answered, “Alice.” I never heard from him again. Heartbreaking story for the ages, right? Except, that’s not what I’m here to tell you. Alice became a show I hated that became a show I forgot that became a show I treasure because my dad liked it. So many other things fall into this honor thy father category. Allow me to share a few.
Over the summer, I was blessed to spend a week on the beaches of Galveston with my grandchildren. One morning, after the cleanup from homemade pancakes was completed and the process of packing for the beach had commenced, my granddaughter found me snuggled up on the couch, eyes glued to the television. She wanted to know why I was crying. “It’s because Gunsmoke is on, sweetheart. It makes me think of Grandaddy Ted. I always hated Saturday afternoons because that’s the day these western shows came on and my dad wanted me to love them like he loved them. But, I told him these were awful shows, and I would never watch them. Now that I’m a grownup, Chynna, I love them so much. I just wish I could tell my dad.” And, just like that, I had a seven-year-old sweetie pie under the cov-ers with me, explaining the characters of Miss Kitty and the Marshall and why Festus walked with a limp. There are so many lessons my father frustratingly tried to teach me. He could not understand how a person wouldn’t get excited over 60 Minutes. I mean, it’s the news but with Andy Rooney at the end. What’s not to like? These days, I wonder if he knows how my heart beats a little faster when I hear the ticking of that clock in the opening credits. My father forced me to learn his favorite song, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys’ rendition of Faded Love, on the violin while he accompanied me on the organ. I was mortified. It became his penultimate parlor trick, this vaudeville performance of ours. Guests are trying to leave but listen to this song with my daughter on the fiddle. Does he know how hard I cried when I chose this as the last song played at his funeral. I love it, so. And, when he took me to the country church where his mother was baptized as a girl, surely crushed at how his introvert daughter didn’t mesh well with the youth group who all went to a different school, was he able to predict the love for church and community I have now? He must know. He’s gotta know.
There’s a full circle-ness to life that seems to have overtaken me lately. The things that never made any sense suddenly do, with startling clarity. The questions have answers. The messages that seemed to have been written in foreign languages now easily understood. Except for the words John bestowed on me all those years ago over a Dynasty vs. Alice breakup, that one I still do not understand. Kiss my grits, John.
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