Like Father, Like Son

“Dad,” came the dejected voice of my number one son over the phone. “I’m having one of your days.”

 My heart sank for my boy. One of my days is not a good thing. When I’m  having one of my days I tend to just walk around muttering ‘that’d be right’ and ‘typical’ as things fall apart around me. I’ll go to use our trailer and, after filling the thing up with rubbish, find a tyre is flat. I’ll go to change the tyre and won’t be able to find the jack. I’ll borrow a jack and something on it will break so I’ll have to race to the local auto shop to buy a bit. Then I’ll get to the tip and it’ll have closed ten minutes ago.

Master21 was on his way to university. He was walking up the road chatting to me on his phone.

 “What’s happened?” I wanted to know.

“I ran out of petrol coming back from taking Frances to work this morning.”

“I see. That’s not too bad,” I said.

“I didn’t have my phone or wallet. I had to walk home.”

Still not too bad, I was thinking.

“I was in my pajamas.”

Ah, there it is.

“Not only that,” he went on, “I’ve been growing my face out because Frances wanted to see what I’d look like with a beard. This morning she told me she didn’t like it so I could shave. Only my shaver broke. So I was in my pajamas with one half of my face shaven and the other hairy.”

I laughed. Tracey’s right, it is funnier when it’s happening to someone else.

“Are you tired?” I asked him. “I usually find if I haven’t been sleeping well lots of bad things happen because you’re slower to react and don’t think of consequences before you act.”

 He agreed. “Frances is keeping me awake.”

 “Half your luck.”

“Not because of that.” We love Frances. She’s a keeper. But it seems thinks aren’t working out so well in the bedroom. “She’s sleep- talking,” he told me. “Sleep-talking. Sleep-thumping. Sleep-waking me the hell up to sleep-tell me stuff.”

 “Like what?”

He should be used to this. We’ve a house full of sleep-walkers and talkers in this house too.

“Well, last night she told me there was something seriously wrong with the whales because they had turtle faces.”

 “I see.”

By now we were both laughing.

 “And then she was upset because no one wanted to buy stuff at her shop.” There was a pause. “It was a hand shop.”

 “A secondhand shop?”

 “No. Just hands.”

“I see,” I said. “No, I don’t. Why was she selling hands?”

 “I asked her. She got cross with me and told me ‘because there’s nowhere to keep them at home’.”

“I see.”

“I’ve started recording her if you want to hear it for yourself.”

Hell yes I want to hear this. I would suggest the world wants to hear this: needs to hear this.

By this time Master21 was laughing with me. Sometimes it helps just to say it out loud. Sometimes just savouring the ridiculousness of life is enough to get you through. I always comfort myself with the knowledge I’m going to get a good story out of it.

It ended up being one of the funniest phone calls I’ve had in ages. All it needed was a final punch line. And my boy didn’t let me down.

Soon he was only about a kilometer from where he’d ditched his car and we chuckled how the nightmare day was nearly over. Or so we thought.

“That’d be right,” I suddenly heard Master21 mutter down the phone. “Just typical.” But I could hear the amusement in his voice.

“What’s happened?”

“It just started raining.”

Budda-ching! Thank you very much. You’ve been a great audience. Try the veal.

Hey it could be worse. Instead of the odd bad day he could have inherited my nose, and there’s just no laughing at that 🙂

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