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Old people shouldn't eat pizza with everything on it.
My eyes pop wide this morning at seven a.m.
I'm laying in bed.
Still.
Listening.
Listening for the impending storm.
Minutes pass.
I am still.
Leslie touches my shoulder and ask "are you awake?", I nod my head quietly.
It's now seven-thirty.
The calm before.
Seven-thirty-five.
Off in the distance, I hear something.
Seven-thirty-eight.
Thunder!
The storm has begun... Nope, not thunder after all, it's just my dad unloading all of his crap.
The Fable of the (Backporch) Reconstruction Part II is back underway.
My pop shows up this morning at 7:38, ready to work.
I'm still in my underwear. I answer the door yawning, scratching my nether-region, and picking crunchies out of the corners of my eyes.
"Hey old man. How 'bout a cup of coffee?"
"C'aint. Ain't got time. 'gotta get that roof on before it gets too hot." He's saying this to me as he rushing by me with a ton of tools and a portable air compressor.
He's tooling around ('scuse the pun) like a rat on acid. Trying to slow him down, I say "Dang Pop it's only going to be in the 70's today. No need to rush." He ignores me.
So I'm drinking my coffee as I'm watching the old man scale the ladder like a fireman. I guess I should feel guilty that he's up on top of the porch taking care of business while I'm still shaking off the morning ugly. But I know that if I give him that particular inch, I'll be paying for it the rest of the day.
Eight minutes, and two cups of coffee later. I'm up on the other ladder, in full battle gear-- blue jeans, tshirt, baseball cap, Fat Max attached to one side, my hammer to the other.
We're hammering our way into the morning twenty-five feet up on top of what are basically wooden monkey bars, when he looks at me slyly and says "I know this is going to scare you, but you're gonna be walking on top of this in a few minutes." To which I replied "Scare Me?! You think the thought of falling to my death scares me. I'll tell you what scares me... I'm scared you're going to launch another one of those grizzly, old man, farts of yours. God, will you let me know before you do that again? I walked right into the last one, and my face is still numb."
He smiles proudly, whacks in another nail then says "Pizza last night."
4/17/2004 10:37:00 PM
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