My Father The Bore

I walked away from My Father after eating an admittedly great and elaborate steak dinner without helping him wipe up the dinner table. (The food was so good I had to show my appreciation by taking a shit.) Was he going to be mad for abandoning him after virtually single-handedly making Sunday dinner for us?

Nope. Instead, he baited me into having a 45-minute, one-way conversation by cutting a piece of cake for me and telling me he has some forms he needs help filling. I sat the whole time with my back straight and my shoulders tense, waiting for that first cutting comment that son-of-a-bitch most always sets me up for.

But that didn't happen. Instead, he did something I forget he also does from time to time: Drone on and on about stories and things on his mind. Tonight, he told the following things (I might not be totally correct about these, and there may be other things he talked about, but near the end my eyelids were getting very heavy):

1) His potential real estate purchases in Las Vegas.

2) There is some form (online or paper?) where you can input income, rent, insurance and other stuff and ... I don't know. Either I got bored and stopped listening to dad at this point, or he didn't know where the fuck he was going with this either.

3) Stay hungry. Like that study of monkeys, if you eat less, you look for food and improve yourself. Get your fill to eat and you stay content and dull. (He too scoffed at the study; he knew this was true by the Shaolin monks and their diet. Stupid studies.) This led to the only quasi-confrontation question he asked me about regarding my current state of existential loss: "What is your plan now?" I gave him a lie about meeting an alum today who wants to meet next week. That did get him off my back quick.

4) The Chinese come up with inventions way before Americans do. For example, you remember the Exxon Valdez? One guy tried to contain the slicks of oil on the water with hair. But the Chinese already knew that. (I don't know if this is true -- a lot of his stories I suspect aren't true -- but that's what he said.) He boasts a lot about Chinese culture. Did you know that we're descendants of the architect of the Great Wall Of China?

5) The codes and regulations here in Minnesota are a lot worse than they are in Vegas.

6) Uncle needs money, but he'll reach Social Security soon ... what?

Again, there may be more, but he bored me to death, so I forget. The troubling thing is is that this time, for what I believe to be the first time ever, he went back and talked about things he already told me. There may be troubling age-related forgetfulness going on. Or he may be just boring himself, who knows.

I would be more forgiving, even appreciative of the fact that he wasn't yelling at me if he wasn't so hypocritical. I know in my bones that if I or some stranger tried to regale him with things only he or she thought were important, he would either sabotage the conversation or, in extreme cases, physically walk away. I've seen him do it. But I still have to live here, so instead I just stayed quiet, kept my guard up and, in a passive-aggressive way, tried to goad him by responding to some of his tedious bullshit with a very quiet "Okaaay" in that same whiny tone of voice he uses when he's agreeing with something we're saying just so we'd stop talking. I was ready for a fight if he picked up on my passive-aggressiveness, but alas, he seemed to be too full of himself.

There were some things I intend to keep in mind: The number of properties he owns here and in Vegas; the price of two stocks he's looking to buy; and he wants me to mow the new sod (though I'm not going to till next week because people say new sod needs to be left alone for 30-45 days and we haven't reached that yet). So why in the hell couldn't he just get to the important stuff and not waste my time with his other bullshit? Like I said, some of the things make me worry that this time it's different, but I still believe that this self-absorbed part of Father, though better than the bitter and vindictive Father I see a lot of the time, is someone I can do without.