The Exalted Fogey
Details about my dad stand out now in ways they didn't before.
He played the harmonica; he sang the munchkin song from the Wizard of Oz to make us laugh; always cereal and yogurt, usually in front of the television.
When he got older he got really buff as a way to offset the look of his face from the laser surgery to cut out the cancer.
He watched the Price is Right and daytime TV and liked to hang by the pool.
Long after he passed away, I still continued to believe he was around living another life. I believed that he had faked his death so that he could live beyond our judgment -- a free life as a fogey, wearing torn jean shorts and playing the harmonica, going to the thrift stores and hanging by the pool, he would give his money to strangers freely.
I was looking out the window one day from my car when I saw a man in an old, sun-worn t-shirt and jean shorts. Few were as skinny and sunbaked as my dad.
But there he was.
I followed the man for a long time. Eventually, I lost him. But I thought that that really could have been him. Just some guy somewhere, living his life. I might not even recognize him until it was too late.
This was around the same time I was reading Shane Joseph’s Fringe Dwellers. In the story, the main character smells a dirty old man and says, “So much for cultural disparities--we are all one, at least in our filth.”
I thought about what that would mean for us, his family. What does that mean that he faked his death? What did it say about us and how he felt about what we did for him (to him) in the later part of his life?
It seemed entirely logical to me though that he might try to fake his own death just so he could live as a kind of fogey, in a world, apart from us, where fogies are exalted.
Like fogies? This short story collection has a story about one. Check it out
He played the harmonica; he sang the munchkin song from the Wizard of Oz to make us laugh; always cereal and yogurt, usually in front of the television.
When he got older he got really buff as a way to offset the look of his face from the laser surgery to cut out the cancer.
He watched the Price is Right and daytime TV and liked to hang by the pool.
Long after he passed away, I still continued to believe he was around living another life. I believed that he had faked his death so that he could live beyond our judgment -- a free life as a fogey, wearing torn jean shorts and playing the harmonica, going to the thrift stores and hanging by the pool, he would give his money to strangers freely.
I was looking out the window one day from my car when I saw a man in an old, sun-worn t-shirt and jean shorts. Few were as skinny and sunbaked as my dad.
But there he was.
I followed the man for a long time. Eventually, I lost him. But I thought that that really could have been him. Just some guy somewhere, living his life. I might not even recognize him until it was too late.
This was around the same time I was reading Shane Joseph’s Fringe Dwellers. In the story, the main character smells a dirty old man and says, “So much for cultural disparities--we are all one, at least in our filth.”
I thought about what that would mean for us, his family. What does that mean that he faked his death? What did it say about us and how he felt about what we did for him (to him) in the later part of his life?
It seemed entirely logical to me though that he might try to fake his own death just so he could live as a kind of fogey, in a world, apart from us, where fogies are exalted.
Like fogies? This short story collection has a story about one. Check it out
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