Galveston Parrot ~ The Gulf Coast's Favorite Newspaper

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Taking Care of Dad
Written by Marsha Mellow

A month ago, I was living the life: parties, guest spots at the new fab Star Bar on the Sea Wall. Also got to flirt with a very sexy beefy bartender at the new 3rd Coast Downtown, you know who you are. (WINK) Was set to be a scheduled guest on Oprah (Which did not work out when she realized I was not a twelve year old orphan who had been abandoned by wolves.) Still I got the flight to Chicago and got to stay in that plush hotel for one night on lil’ Ms. Money Bags. Had dinner with my favorite gal pal Pink and after dinner we wrapped my other gal pal Sally Struthers house. Was even on the 104 KRBE Gay PRIDE float with partner in crime Special K. June was like a trip to Shangri-La, now in this heat I have landed in a Salvador Dali painting known as my parents’ house. I had agreed to stay with my dad while my mom was off doing good for other family members, not really sure where because I have not heard from her since she left and the numbers she had posted on the fridge were either out of order or when someone on the other end did answer they spoke in some dialect I had never heard of but I think they were asking me how much starch I like in my pants.

Day one with my dad was like a trip to Disney World, it seems like fun but then you get stuck on the tea cup with some psycho kid who had obviously not been trained on ride etiquette and had been dropped off by bad parental figures who were rotating the tires on their home contemplating on whether or not they would return to collect the future inmate number 12219484. There you are on the teacup ride and the douche-tard begins to spin way too fast and you cannot even lift your head and you are praying to the glittery god in heaven that the pimpled face kid operating the terror ride would just push that damn button and stop the insanity before your head flies off.

The first day we spent several hours focusing on television programing that made me want to rip a smurf from limb to limb placing the blue remains in several boxes and sending them to several of the programing directors that put these vile shows on the air. There is a reason they were canceled - so people would not have to be subjected to them.

“Blind Justice”, a show where the lead character is a detective that is blind? And he has a gun and solves crimes; I guess it was somewhat believable since he did get the right to work because he won a lawsuit. Well if OJ can make it work why can’t someone who was handicapped in the line of duty beat the system allowing him to use a gun. BUT HE’S BLIND!

“Commander in Chief” was this ever a gem of things that would never happen! A woman President? Seriously. What’s next, a homosexual President? We have not had a moe in the White House since Abe Lincoln, and we all know what happened to him. For the first thirty minutes of this waste of celluloid I thought I was watching a lost episode of Fantasy Island, wondering where the hell that foreign guy and the little Ompa Lompa in the white suits were.

“Father Murphy” I was never a fan of Little House and the Prairie, and even less of fan of this fraud. The whole basis of this show is that the character played by one time NFL star, Merlin Olsen, is a drifter in the 1870’s and hooks up with Moses, not the one that sees the burning bush, but one who is actually a con-man pretending to be a reverend to protect orphans from being sold into the workforce. My dad continued to tell me how this show delivered a good message, but I never really got his point. This is also unrealistic. Besides who would use children but the GAP, and they don’t even have factories in the United States. Without Michael Landon laying on the water works this show failed, so it was no doubt it would be on a highway to cancelation.

By the time I suffered through several hours of watching Andy Griffith solve crimes that a first grader could solve with a detective kit mail ordered from a third world country, and more hours of every Law & Order known to man from the original to the Criminal Intent one, to the SUV one I was about ready to call and have my dad committed. Honestly though I did not much mind the SUV one because of the hottie, Christopher Maloni.

My dad can not find his way to the market and back but he can find exactly what time it is and what channel Maury is on. OMG!

By 5 o’clock I thought I would be just as loopy as he was if I did not get out of Amityville. I called my Jiminy Cricket to see if he could swing by and sit with my dad and he told me NO. What the hell - I am not used to people telling me no. He just went off on some zippa dee do dah what the hell ever about how I needed this time to reconnect with the man that gave me life. Well when life throws you potatoes make vodka. I would be forced to take my dad to happy hour with my buddy, Special K.

Arrived and hour late because it took us twenty-one minutes to wrangle up Shaft, Kojack, Friday, Brisco, Brennan, Beretta, Colombo, Monk, Rockford, Starsky, Hutch and Poofy Poppy Poopy Pants, all of whom are cats that my dad takes in during the day and tosses out before my mom gets home. Then it took another fifteen minutes when he made me slam the breaks on in front of old Mrs. Harris’ house who was out watering her lawn to tell her that he had contacted the authorities about his cat MacGyver and he would be pressing charges if she did not let him out of her home. I asked him why she can’t just keep the sneaky animal since he had twenty-three others. He was not hearing it at all. It was the principle of the matter he had invested money in that cat and he did not care if she was a widow and lonely or not, she could get her own damn cat.

I could tell my dad was a bit out of place at the bar. He kept telling me that he needed to get home but could not give me a reason why. After his third cocktail he was a lot more at ease. Telling my friends stories about me as a child. Quite embarrassing, I must admit.

Nothing, and I do mean nothing, could have prepared me for what would happen next. It was karaoke night at the bar. I had been called away by a call from the nursing agency that I had called after watching three hours of John Ritter pretend to be gay on Three’s Company; I knew then I would not have been able to do this every day. When I returned there was my dad on stage wearing a pair of Blues Brother’s Ray Bans and a fedora. Where the hell did he get props? As if that was not bad enough it was his rendition of Sublime’s Caress Me Down that sent me nearly screaming into the night. Where did he learn such a song? No one wants to hear their dad sing about masturbation and Kung Fu grips. I don’t care how European one might pretend to be.

Hours more of drinking and listening to my Dad’s catalog of Sublime, Morrissey, Guns N Roses, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, George Strait, and Three Dog Night (he actually screamed out before Jeremiah was a Bullfrog, ‘this song is for you Marsha Mellow!’) in all my years I never thought I would be serenaded to that song being sung by my dad. It was hard to believe that so many hours had passed and I was actually having a great time with my dad. We stumbled home together laughing and slaughtering Lady GaGa’s Poker Face.

As much fun as this day turned out to be I knew that he would be better off with his new nurse that would be coming tomorrow.

TO BE CONTINUED…

John Bostock