A Wasp's Tale

The hard lessons learned from my father.

Just in time for Father’s day is a story about how “Can-Do” attitudes are taught and how karma can sting.

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Sometimes my Dad was tough on me but I know now it was in order to teach me useful life skills, like how not to be a pudding headed teenager. Which ironically was a pretty accurate moniker through much of my teens, possibly even into my early 20s.

But seriously, my Dad wasn’t that tough. He didn’t have time to be that tough. He and Mom were too busy busting their humps at work to then arrive home and have the energy to deal with the hi-jinx from my young sister and I.

Dad worked days at whatever job he could get. TV repairman, Linotype Machine Maintenance, or whatever he could do to apply his myriad of skills to for money.

My mom worked nights as an E.R. Nurse in one of the local hospitals.

Perhaps during most of the year, the number of hours they got to spend together added up to about a week. There was also that one week of vacation each year where we’d all spend time at my Grandma Ida’s house on Cape Cod. But to my Mom this didn’t really count since Grandma Ida would endlessly pester her about whether she was taking proper care of her boy, Sonny. Grandma Ida’s nickname for Dad.

My mom loved the Cape, but not the Cape Mother-in-law.

Dad really should have found other vacation stays, but money and time were pretty tight for us back then.

At least that’s what I heard. It didn’t matter to my sister and I. We were having fun on the beach digging for clams, or listening to my Grandpa Jim tell stories about his time in the Merchant Marines during “Dubya Dubya Two.” It was amazing how much Narragansett Beer Grandpa Jim could suck down in an afternoon once he got going with the narratives.

Speaking of narratives, where was I going with this?

Oh yes, my Dad.

When Mom and Dad bought that run down house in 1976, it was actually a step up from living in a mobile home. Don’t let anyone tell you mobile home life was wonderful back then. It sucked. I don’t know how many times during the cold winters my Dad and I would have to scramble under the thing to unfreeze a pipe.

The words “No, Idiot! A wrench! A wrench! Not the pliers!” will forever ring in my head from that time.

Dad’s short temper was in full heated display when the mercury dipped to 20 below.

The new old house wasn’t much better at first. It required lots of work. The windows were all old and the home barely had any insulation, so you’d freeze your ass off in the winter and boil in the summer.

I’m sure this gave my Mom flashbacks of the mobile home.

But thanks to my Dad’s determination and skills, he eventually made it a home. A never-ending toil of repairs, installs and updates, but nevertheless, a home.

Somewhere along the line, he also managed to show my dumb monkey brain a thing or two about home repair and how to have the determination to succeed.

For that, I will be forever thankfully to him. Especially now that I too own a fixer-upper in need of ceaseless repairs.

It’s funny how sometimes no matter how much you try not to, you still manage to emulate your parent in one way or another.

Dad left this mortal coil back in 2011 and there isn’t a day that I don’t think of him or do something that reminds me of him, like when I’m yelling at my wife Deb while trying to make a repair in the house.

“The wrench, Dammit! The wrench!”

Although I do try to keep that part of his shared short temper legacy suppressed as much as possible.

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A Further Note:

Yes, most of this is true. The house was rotten with Yellow Jackets. There’s nothing quite like waking up in the morning and putting a little pep in your step by landing your naked foot on a wasp as you get out of bed. Or better yet, wandering into the bathroom, looking in the mirror, and finding that due to a wasp sting, your nose is size of a tennis ball. That makes for a fun school day.

Thank god I wasn’t allergic to the little buggers. On the plus side there’s still probably enough Wasp venom floating around in my system to alleviate any high blood pressure.

“Oy Gavolt!”, says the WASP.

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To all my friends out there who are Dads, may you all enjoy a wonderful father’s day next Sunday. And remember, let the kids do all the dangerous tasks around the home. You’ve earned it.

Cheers,

Ed

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