It's all about the Benjamins.

That is an eerie resemblance.  

Tell me a story. Make it about Father's Day because no one will be talking about that this week.


On Father's Day, I imagine my father woke up and, after the universal morning amnesia wore off, silently mourned the fact that he can no longer have a fried ham steak for breakfast because he hasn't eaten meat since some careless person told him about "Pink Slime." 


After declaring that the local paper continues to be a "rag" and decrying the existence of whatever Parade magazine is called now, he probably resigned himself to an afternoon of watching television at a volume so loud that God himself would know which episode of "NCIS" is on, if he didn't already know everything. 


But it wasn't to be. 


Because this Father's Day, instead of floating his Lazy-boy through a dream-like limbo, sandwiched between consciousness and dad-ness, my father took my mother to the Victorian house where he runs his business and the two of them shoveled sewage, mud and water out of the basement. Then they taped over the vents so that the remaining fumes wouldn't travel throughout the house. I assume the fumes will stay in the basement, pressurize, and eventually form beautiful, stinky gemstones that mole-people use for currency.  


Later in the day he worried about money for a while, probably not unrelated to the poop garden growing in his basement. His ruminations were interrupted briefly by a call from his sardonic eldest daughter, who, despite her many redeeming qualities, still believes people will feel better if the shortcomings of their decisions are explained in trite, metaphoric terms that all revolve around personal responsibility, much like Benjamin Franklin with a dye-job. 


Filial lecture concluded, he spent the rest of the evening watching a movie that put my mother to sleep within 15 minutes and then went to bed hoping that the tape on the vents will hold. 


The tape has to hold.
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