Things My Mother Heard (for Andy, who never gets tired of this)

Also, to be fair to Dad: cell phones and parents and I often make a hilarious misheard combo.

Six or seven years ago, when I was still working up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, I had a 3/4-mile walk through a corporate park from my bus stop. In order to make the corporate park more scenic, a number of manmade ponds were added. In order to make the ponds hugely unappealing and less scenic, a bunch of fatass Canadian geese took up residence there year-round, making sections of sidewalk a veritable minefield (of poop, that is, not mines).

It was particularly tough in the spring, because birds, like any barely evolutionized lizard, are spastically protective of their nests. So not only did you have to hopscotch around poop, you had to be wary of the hissing, sometimes charging mama ganders (who were, and always will be, jerks, motherhood aside).

One morning, I was talking to my mom via cell phone on the way past one such pond. A mama gander hissed at me, even though, as I recall, I was not making eye contact or figuring out how to eat the delicious, delicious eggs in her stupid nest, and I said, mid-conversation, "Oh, shut up."

Mom: Who are you talking to?
Me: Oh, a goose hissed at me.
Mom: ...where was he sitting?
Me: By the pond.
Mom: Was anybody watching him?
Me: ...wait, what?
Mom: Didn't you say a goof hissed at you?
Me: (after 30+ seconds of solid laughter) No, no, no, a goose.

After Mom finished laughing, we had a discussion of what exactly constituted a goof and why he would be hissing at 8:00 in the morning.

E-mail exchanges: where hearing is less an issue (but everything is still confusing)

I sent Dad a link to the first post with the subject line "Here you go, Hadji."

His reply:
I hope you are having fun - making fun of me to the whole planet

I love you : )

Dad is mistaken that I am making fun of him. I'm pretty sure he knows that he brings some of this on himself with his smart-alecky interpretations of what I am saying. I think trying to be funny about it, on both sides, is because both of us can get frustrated at times--he wants to hear me; I have mushmouth (apparently, though...you know, I was in forensics in high school, and I feel like I speak pretty clearly. Maybe a little fast sometimes. But my volume now ranges from pretty normal to loud, thanks in large part to the many, many loud and/or hard-of-hearing people I spend my time with; let me make this clear: I am not a loud person by nature, nor am I Naughty By Nature).

Which is my way of saying: oh, you'll know when I'm making fun of you to the whole planet...

My reply:
Look, if you are not going to start writing "Get Over Here Where The Work Is," [Ed. note: Dad's long-threatened memoir about his farm childhood] someone in this family has to record our history.

Also: yes, I am having a lot of fun making fun of you to the whole planet.

I love you too.

That's when things began to devolve...

His reply:
So, you won't share a post with me - Hmp!

Just for that you can't use my posts either - wood or metal!

Me (after holding back and not replying "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?"):
What do you mean I won't share the post? I just sent you the link!

Him:
I tried to look at the rest of your blob but it said you had not shared your posts with me so you can't look at my fences either : P

First of all: "blob" is new. Usually his preferred terminology for a blog is "booger."

Second: it will never not be startling and odd when my dad uses that emoticon. Who taught him that?

I sent my brothers an e-mail ("Would one of you two ding-dongs please see what Dad is talking about next time he visits?"), to which neither had a reply--their excuse will be that they are wrangling their eleven children or working or, in Andy's case, watching "Man on a Buffalo" for the 30th time--and then replied:
I didn't think I had any privacy bells or whistles on my booger. I'll check. It's just the first post, so there wasn't anything beyond your Hadji fillets.

Dad:
If you have a blob of boogers you need more than a post to keep them in

And that's where I officially gave up, because I may be making fun of him, but he's (probably) always going to be the one to get off the last, best line.

Tuesdays with Jeffrey (My Father Who Is Half-Intentionally Deaf)

(discussing dinner)

Me: I'm making cod fillets.

Dad: Hodge fillets?

Me: What? What would hodge fillets even be? Or mean?

Dad: Say it again.

Me: Cod fillets.

Dad: Hadji? The character on Jonny Quest?

Me: (having lost all composure and am in the middle of cackling laughter) What?!

Dad: Yeah, he was the Indian character on Jonny Quest. He wore a turban.

Me: Well, I am certainly not eating fillets made out of a Jonny Quest character.