A small price to pay

2 20-yard-line Football tickets: $41
1 package of Stouffers Skillet Sensation: $6
1 box of thin mint peppermint patties: $0.99
A weekend of playing host to my visiting dad: Priceless

I’ve been sick for the past three days, and it’s all thanks to the cold I got from my dad. He had a business trip to St. Louis this week, and he routed his flight through Salt Lake so we could spend the weekend together. He flew in Friday afternoon, and stayed through Sunday morning. But it was enough fun, that even if this cold lasts another week, it will have been worth it.

“Oh, that’s so romanticle!”

We didn’t really have any plans set, so we decided to go to the temple on Friday night—not the brightest idea. In Utah, Friday night is “date night” for many Mormon couples. And by “date” I mean husband and wife go to the temple together, which I can’t see as a very romantic thing, seeing as how men and women do gender segregated work in the temple, so a husband and wife really wouldn’t even sit together for most of the night. Hmm, on second thought, maybe that’s why they go there—they can call it a date but they don’t really have to do anything together—then again, isn’t that exactly what most middle aged couples are looking for anyhow?

“So what do you want?”
“I want them to stop looking to me for answers, begging me to speak again, write again, be a leader. I want them to start thinking for themselves. I want my privacy.”
“No, I mean, what do you WANT?”
“Oh. Dog and a beer.”

Our plan was to grab a quick bite to eat at the temple cafeteria before heading up stairs for an endowment session, but with as many people at the temple as there were, our quick bite to eat turned into the equivalent of waiting in line at Disneyland for the Indiana Jones ride, only without the fastpass.

“Remember the last time we had a quiet drink? I had a milkshake.”
“What did we talk about?”

Despite the crowded lines, the seating area was relatively empty. Dad and I picked the table farthest from everyone and sat to enjoy our chicken a-la-orange and some light dinner conversation. We talked about South Puget Sound League high school football, the health status of aging relatives, our personal exercise routines, dad’s recent sailing adventures, and lots more things that had nothing to do with the spiritual side of things, but everything to do with a kid and his dad just enjoying each other’s company.

“This is not my idea of a swell time.”

After dinner we went upstairs for an endowment session, but the crowds seemed to increase in strength and by this point I wasn’t enjoying anyone’s company. They packed us in to the endowment room to the point that there wasn’t an empty seat in the house. And to make matters worse, in the endowment, men and women sit on separate sides of the room, so I was packed in shoulder to shoulder with nothing but men.

“It always fit perfectly before. I don't think you're half trying.”

Experiences like this are just further evidence that the good Lord has always intended men and women to be together, because even just from a storage standpoint, men are not compatible with other men. By that I mean, you take two men and stack them together closely, there might be plenty of room for them to sit down, but their shoulders will be crammed together—like trying to fit a pair of shoes into a shoe box without pointing them in opposite directions. All evening long my shoulders were at war with the men on either side of me. Sometimes I’d get so frustrated with the incessant physical contact, that I simply surrendered the high ground and slouched over with my elbows on my knees, because at least that gave my shoulders some breathing room.

“Yeah, well, uh, just keep your Power Gloves off her, pal, huh?”

I’m not saying that the temple ordinances should be done differently; I’m just saying that I’d expect a place that teaches the importance of chastity, would prefer that humans keep their bodies a little farther spaced than where they placed us. Maybe the church should start using Tetris as an architectural training tool.

“Shut him up or shut him down!”

Saturday morning Dad and I went to the BYU vs New Mexico game. We ended up sitting right next to the biggest loudmouth I’ve come across in who knows how long. He spoke non-stop for so long, that I thought we’d have to call for the team doctors to bring up an oxygen mask for him. For the most part he’d just state the obvious. After a thwarted third and short conversion attempt he insisted, “That’s a terrible third down play! They didn’t get the first down—now it’s going to be fourth down!” He made probably two intelegent comments throughout the entire 3 hour ordeal, but I’m convinced that those thoughts weren’t his own—I’ll bet they were just regurgitated ideas he'd plagiarized off of the radio head set he’d been listening to for the play-by-play.

“You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility... And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there's nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to.”

Dad was sitting between be and the blabbermouth and though the guy was driving me nuts, Dad didn’t seem too phased by it—and by phased, I mean it didn’t seem like dad wanted to tackle this guy to the ground and rip his lungs out the way I wanted to. For a second there I wondered if it even bothered Dad at all that this guy wouldn’t shut up, then about half way through the third quarter, Dad turned to me and muttered under his breath, “why does it seem like I’m a magnet for these kind of people?” I couldn’t help but laugh, because 1.) Dad was as annoyed by him as I was, and 2.) I feel like a weirdo magnet all the time too, so it was funny to hear that my dad also goes through the same crap all the time.

“I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne.”

I felt pretty enlightened after seeing this side of my dad—he was as annoyed as I was, only way more gracious about it. On the walk home, as I was complaining about how annoying the guy was and Dad further impressed me when he said, “Yeah, he was driving me nuts too, but I figured I’d at least give you and especially his poor wife (who was sitting on the other side of the motormouth) a break. I mean, she must have to put up with that all the time.” I walked away with a new respect for my dad that day. He does get annoyed by people, yet he’s willing to put himself in harm’s way so I wouldn’t have to take the bullet—it made me think about how many times he’d done that kind of thing for me in other areas of life.

“The force is strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. And… my sister has it.”

Dad and I spent the rest of the weekend mostly just loafing around watching lots of college football and several childish movies that I know few other than my dad could tolerate, let alone enjoy. If you’ve ever been at a blockbuster trying to pick a movie and you come across some old Fred McMurray movie, or any number of out-of-date adventure flicks and you think to yourself, “Who on earth ever rents these things?” Well, it’s us—me, my dad… and my sister Stos. In a world where I’m often ridiculed for my taste in movies, I’m glad that I have a dad who is as disturbed as I am.

“All you have to do is think of one happy thought and you’ll fly like me.”

“Mommy!”

“My dad, Peter Pan.”

A father-son relationship is unique from any other relationship—and even more so with me and my dad, being the only males in the family. Driving him to the airport as he was leaving Sunday morning, I got that same feeling I’d get when I was a kid and dad would take me camping, just the two of us, or on a Saturday morning when me and Dad would explore the skeletal structures of near by housing complexes under construction, or the long weekend drives we’d make together as he’d drive me up to Woodinville for an AAU basketball game.

“I sense something. A presence I’ve not felt since…”

And even as I got the same feeling that I got when I was a kid, I could feel our relationship adapting to our new circumstances. We’re still father and son, but we’re no longer adult and child, just a couple of men—one middle aged, one hardly aged.

As I dropped him off at curbside check-in we unloaded his stuff and just before saying goodbye he asked, “so how much do I owe ya?”

I knew what he meant, but still I asked, “Owe me? What for?”

“For the football tickets and the meals and gas.”

“Oh… Nothing,” was my reply. And by ‘nothing’ I meant, “Well, after 25 years of your feeding me, clothing me, housing me and sponsoring my education… as long as you promise to let me stay at your place for a week each summer and on most major holidays, we’ll call it even.”

A weekend of playing host to my visiting dad: Priceless

He just said, “okay,” and smiled, but the sparkle in his eye was too obvious for him to hide. His eyes said what his voice didn’t, “You’ve grown up: I’m proud of you, and I’m glad we’re friends.”

I’m glad we’re friends too, Dad.