Background, and being ageless.

As the older sibling, I have had the great pleasure of four additional years of interaction with the man known alternately as "Dad" and "Himself." I recall a distinct displeasure with him starting somewhere around the age of 16 or 17--let's call it a combination of not being allowed to go to the college I wanted to and a growing resentment for him leaving our family, so typical teen angst if you will--and I vowed that once I was 21, degreed, and financially independent that I would never have to interact with him ever again. Thankfully, by the time I was 23 or 24, I realized the error of my ways and since then have allowed years of his glorious, unwarranted introspections on life, the universe, and, well, everything. Mom is the same way; she's an orator-at-will, is the best way to put it. The topic doesn't matter, as one of them has to know at least one thing to launch a conversation about it--even if said conversation becomes a train wreck of segues and interruptions that have absolutely nothing to do with the original topic. (Perhaps now you can imagine why this marriage ultimately didn't work in the long run.)

But, as I'm genetically predisposed to do, I have digressed. Dad is an amazing creature: born deep in the Midwest, schooled across a twisted latitudinal line between St. Paul, Minnesota and Blacksburg, Virginia, and settled for the past 20+ years in the City of Brotherly Love. He has failed to adopt the twisted, vaguely Jerseyan accent so well-known to citizens of Philadelphia, and instead apologizes with the dulcet almost-Canadian tones of "sore-ry." He's a former Marine, but bears no symbols of his enlistment in any permanent form other than memorabilia--no Devil Dog tattoos here. He quite possibly could serve as a substitute for "The Most Interesting Man" character featured in that Dos Equis marketing campaign.

Ah, but I'm leaving out the most important thing.

I can't go out to eat, or anywhere, really, with Dad without at least one stranger, be it the server at a restaurant or an usher at a baseball game, thinking that he and I are on a date.

Yes, on a date. You read correctly. For the record, we've got some 30 years between us in age. It certainly bodes well for him, and I suppose for myself and my sister as well, because hell, if we can be in our 60s and look perhaps 20 or so years younger than that, then amen. Still, it amuses and creeps me out all the same. I don't want to be thought of as a willing participant in such a slanted May-December relationship, a la Richard Gere and Winona Ryder in that movie where she was dying or something. Hell, I don't know. I'll admit that it's funny when we're out to dinner and the server pauses before taking our order, judging silently, it would appear, in an attempt to parse through what he/she's seeing. Usually it's a male server, in most instances. I usually interject a comment during the drink order that includes the word "dad" for clarification.

Outside of restaurants is a bit trickier. At more than one baseball game, I've definitely noticed people giving us looks as we made our way to our seats. There, however, alcohol definitely fuels the brazen nature of people's actions toward strangers, and nothing tends to be held back. Sometimes Dad will go so far as to insert himself into other people's conversations about sports, because, as mentioned before, he's an expert on everything. Once he makes a reference to something older than I am, that's enough of a clue for the sober participants in the conversation to move on from wondering about our relationship to each other.

As I get older myself, Dad gets funnier and funnier, if not wholly inappropriate. From his insistence that I could always adopt "one of those Oriental babies" if I didn't want to have my own child to his assertion that Donovan McNabb "lacks a black soul" and everywhere in between, there's a virtual cornucopia of wisdom that we hope to share with Teh Intarwebz through this blog. In all seriousness, I just hope that at least one person laughs at this shit.