Dadstory: Part Three

Opening night was amazing!

I'm so proud of my little elves and my shoemakers.

Three more performances to go.

Wish us luck!

Dadstory: Part Three 

Foreground: Two little grandsons.
Background: Dad and his dancing doll

Dad was famous for betting banana splits, whenever the occasion arose for a wager. I lost several thousand banana splits on the Belt Trick, I am sure, and I don't think I ever paid many, if any, of them. But I come by that rightly - Dad never paid up on his banana splits either. Dad still owes my Beloved a banana split for a bet they held on 1977 World Series. I can think of several that I was never able to collect on, too. And Dad was sneaky. Everytime that you managed to corner him (and that was only way that you could collect, was to corner him), he always spent the entire consumption time explaining at great lengths how this banana split ran concurrent with all other outstanding banana splits, and the debt was now paid. We always tried to tell him that no, they didn't run concurrent, and that really there should be interest paid on un-collected banana splits. (Our idea of interest ran usually into 200-300% range - per banana split, per unpaid week. Hence his protests and lectures on concurrency, I am sure).

I really only got the better of Dad once in my life that I can remember. There were six of us in his new car, about 2 years before his death, and we were headed to the city to do some shopping. Dad really didn't care to drive, so he let me take the wheel. We had had a good chat all the way to the city, and when we reached the outskirts, I intimated that we were early, and that I thought a banana split would fill both the extra time and the extra space in the stomach - and besides, I added, Dad owed each of us several banana splits, so he could pay for them. Well, Dad immediately began his protestations, because he could see that this one was going to cost him a bundle. He kept on insisting that all debts were long ago paid, concurrently, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Well, before he had finished explaining (for the tenth or twelfth time on that particular trip) how all banana split debts ran concurrently, I had driven to the nearest Dairy Queen and wheeled into parking lot. "Well, I'll be corn-swaggled!", Dad exclaimed. And he was. It cost him twelve dollars for banana splits that day!  I'll bet he still swans when he thinks of that. And if there are banana splits in Heaven, Dad had better be saving up. He owes a lot of us, big-time . . .

Some of Dad's most sage advice over the years came from his time-honored sayings that many times I took for granted until I was more-or-less forced to stop and think about what they really meant. I think that anyone who knew Dad well would agree his hallmark saying was: "Wherever there is an advantage, there is a disadvantage". Many times when we were weighing the pros and cons of a particular course of action, whether in our individual or collective lives, Dad would come out with this particular saying, to help us all stop and think things through. (I am not so sure that sometimes he didn't do it just to aggravate us all a little bit more, but his gentle prodding nonetheless provided a good training ground for thought. Cogitation, really.) The phrase became such a trademark in the family that, of course, the rest of us soon learned to use it to our own advantage as well - always with great delight when we could turn the tables and use it on Dad!  After Dad passed away, Mom seriously considered putting the phrase on his headstone in the cemetery. I think she still wishes sometimes she had.

To be continued . . .