Not So Bad

My dad is always in a hurry. He inhales food, and gets dressed and paces an hour or more before he has to be somewhere. I think he’s even in a rush to die; for almost 33 years now I’ve listened to him estimate that he has about 5 years left. There were times this assessment followed aspects of a heart condition, but there were also times a little ache or pain convinced him he wasn’t long for this world. Even though he annoys me sometimes, I’d be glad if he was wrong about his life span for another 20 years.

The most annoying thing for me is being rushed, especially when we have a parade or a feast to get to. I was feeling particularly pressured on Saturday morning, because I had to go to the bank first to renew a CD, and it was the only pocket of time I had all week. True to form, though there were few customers when the bank opened, the woman who would help me would be in the process of having her keyboard replaced. “It will just be a few minutes, sir,” she assured me, while I fidgeted in the waiting area, picturing my dad at home in the driveway.

On the plus side, interest rates didn’t drop as much as people were predicting. On the down side, the best rate of return was only for a period of nine months; hopefully I get get something better than 5% by then. Most importantly, the transaction went smoothly otherwise, and left me time to grab a bite to eat before driving to the job. When I got home, my dad was standing by his car.

“Give me five minutes to eat a bagel, brush my teeth and change my shirt; I already did everything else before.”

“I’m not rushing you! I’m just looking at the train schedule for tomorrow; take your time. We have at least 15 minutes.”

The band leader we were playing for on Saturday was playing with us on Sunday in another band for another parade. Since this guy doesn’t drive, my dad was checking what time we’d have to pick him up at the train station. I’m not sure why he was checking, but as I’ve said, my dad is very time-conscious. This became evident ten minutes later when he popped his head in to ask if I was ready yet.

It wasn’t until we arrived at the job on Saturday that I realized my dad’s not so bad. We met up with the band, made some small talk about how ridiculously unseasonably hot it was for October, and waited for the job to start while admiring the costumes of some dancers from Italy.

“Guess what time we got up?” asked our snare drummer, the band leader’s son.

Now, being that this particularly family spent most of their years in Brooklyn and never learned to drive, I’m never surprised to hear about them arriving an hour or two early. His dad can be as bad as, if not worse, than mine, and he’ll take an earlier train to avoid complications just as my dad will leave an hour earlier to avoid traffic. Since the job on Saturday was set to start at noon, and we were told to be there by 11, I figured the leader and his son were there at least an hour or two earlier. I responded to his question with a question: “When?”

“3:30”(which came out “tree turty”, but I’m translating here)

Anticipating delays because his wife was coming along and uses a walker, and his son was bringing his girlfriend and her little boy, our leader opted to take a train at 4:40 AM for a parade that was over 7 hours away, and he woke his family up an hour before that.

After the parade was over, a trek that included a hill our leader ran up for some reason, shouting at us to keep pace, I told my dad: “I’m not going to complain anymore; you’re not so bad.”