Show-Man

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 20, Verse 8

"A king sitting as judge weighs all the evidence carefully,

distinguishing the true from the false."

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

So, they buried Ariel Sharon today.  It's okay.  You can make jokes about it because he's basically been dead for nearly a decade.  To call what he was since 2006 a "vegetable" is even kind of considerate.  There's way more vegetables I'd do it with before I'd be caught dead with that crypt keeper.

See?  It's funny!

The thing is, being a narcissistic prick, when I first heard of Sharon's passing, I immediately thought of my father.  Not who he is now, the Red Lubster-lovin', nearly bald, Americanized mush-pot carrying around a phone book-sized wallet held together by a rubber band-- the man he was: a mustachioed, dashing, olive-hued, Sabra-fucking, cigarette-puffing warrior of the desert.  I was thinking about that man.  

He served under Sharon.  Well, pretty much everybody did.  Still, I was thinking about who my father was in those days, and who Sharon was before he became a mean fat old bastard, and then a perpetual ICU patient.  I could ask my father, in fact, I think I have.  I remember driving along a winding road one day years ago, probably when Sharon first stroked out, and my father said that they had dispatched Sharon to Vietnam so that he could learn something about the tactics being employed there.  When Sharon returned to the Holy Land, he gathered thousands of soldiers around, my father included, and stated soberly and, like a true Israeli, that he had learned, "not one fucking thing." 

I know my father killed people.  He's not the kind of veteran that you have to tiptoe around and never walk behind and never mention "the war" (there were a few, you know) but you don't exactly want to go around asking for gory details, just like I'm not too keen on hearing a Spalding Gray-like monologue about the night I was conceived.  This past weekend, while my wife and babies were visiting my parents, my father and my nephew put on a little show at the dining room table.  It consisted of two brightly colored rubber worms each inside a tall drinking glass, in front of which sat my father.  At the far end of the table sat my nephew, aged four, playing a plastic bugle, drums, Bosendorfer, a variety of musical instruments.  While he played, my father jerked and moved around spasmodically in his chair and tugged on two invisible strings tied to each rubber worm and made them dance with excitement.  My mother and sister and wife were laughing, and even my babies were smiling.  I was standing there, holding my daughter staring.  Just staring.  And all I could think was, "this man has killed people."  My father looked over at me and, catching my expression, he must have thought his performance needed a little bit more pizzazz, so he plunged one of the rubber worms-- the orange one-- straight down his throat.

"He's a total show-man," my wife said to me tonight as we reminisced about the snake charmer act while emptying the refrigerator of dead things.  She's right, of course.  I want to own the performing arts in my family, but any urge I have to get up in front of people and make a fucking ass out of myself comes straight from him, passed down through his crazy blood into mine.  It's in there-- it's all in there.  I'm just more subdued about it-- tempered by my mother's ceaseless shyness and introspection, calmed by living in a land that isn't under attack, or threat thereof, every moment of every day.  I don't need to let it all hang out at the supermarket-- it can wait for the stage.

Usually.

       

I want to go on record, at this point, by stating that I'm fully aware that this is the second post in a row about my father, and that's okay with me.  Frankly, I don't understand the guy one single bit, I'm constantly frustrated with him and confused by him, I'm always pulling away from him and running towards him at the very same time.  I'm embarrassed by him and obsessed with him.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Because he and I are one; show-men to the end.