My Sunday Feeling

It is a law of the universe that men and women are just wired differently. So it should come as now major surprise that they tend to have different approaches to certain celebrations. Most guys I know could pretty much give a rip about Father's Day. Don't get me wrong. It is great fun to get a card drawn by hand from a 4 year old. It is a great excuse to go buy sporting goods or cologne (that's how I celebrate it) and you can get a free pass to go fish or play golf. But that's about it. Mother's Day is a considerably bigger deal for women. Even when they say it's not.



The owner of the bookstore here in the People's Republic of Hillcrest once said of her grown children, " If they can't be nice to me 364 days of the year, then I don't want anything for Mother's Day." Of course this means that there would be brains spattered against the wall if any of her kids took her at her word and didn't remember her.

One of our local DJs put it best when he said, "Women want to gather the family all around and spend time sitting around visiting and all that. All I want for Father's Day is I just want Josh to give me back the debit card. Please God, give me back the debit card."


Or as my friend Richard said back when in the kids were in the house, " All I want for Father's Day is to go by myself to Brown's Country Kitchen where I can eat a meal in peace and maybe get a vanilla ice cream cone."


Dad died in 1977 so I haven't celebrated Father's Day in forever. I don't know what my brothers have on tap. Maybe John and his buddy Rollo will take the boys out to play golf. Bob works the graveyard shift at the nervous hospital so he will go to work around noon which will cut into the time for celebrating. I'm sure whatever they do it will be pretty low key and consistent with the regular guy ethos of not wanting much in the way of a fuss.

And if you are a Dad, I hope you get what you want even if all you want is to be left the hell alone.

Speaking of Father's Day: Last Monday myself and 2 other guys read short stories we had written for Father's Day that will be broadcast later on this month on public radio station KUAR's "Tales from the South." While God knows I have done public speaking on numerous occasions this was the first time that I had ever read a story live. My excellent friend PJ, who teaches the "talented and gifted (and from what I can tell extremely neurotic) program at one of our local high schools, is the one that got me into this. About the only advice she had for me was to speak slowly and to use facial expressions more than I normally do.



Great. I am pretty poker faced at my most animated. One of my numerous exes used to say that I was "hard to read." That's how I like it. Anyway, I decided to go with my strengths and I concentrate on the speaking part when I rehearsed it.

I guess it went OK. The story I read was a rewrite of the Father's Day piece that first appeared here. This was a piece that was described by one reader as "one of the saddest things I had ever read' although that was not my intent when I wrote it. But it was the only Father's Day piece I had and the deadline was upon me so I sent it in.

It was odd. The audience laughed at some parts that were not written for comedic effect. For example, I described donating books I had bought on step-parenting to the library after I had split up with a woman who had children. It brought down the house. "Jesus" I thought to myself as I paused for the laughter to subside. " It wasn't very funny at the time. Maybe I can work in some suicide jokes for you people too."

And the big joke I added for the story, the one that made me laugh out loud when I wrote it (and I think I know funny) produced not a titter. I paused waiting for the laughs to come. Dead air. I peered over the top of my papers to see if my audience had been taken by the Rapture or something. No such luck. I decided to move on before they started throwing stuff.

My buddy PM says that happens to him all the time when he reads his stuff in public. And a couple of years ago local authors read a chapter apiece of "The Great Gatsby" outside the library for the Arkansas Literary Festival. PM read the last chapter, which as you know, has precious few yucks in it. He said they were rolling in the aisles.

That's show biz.

After I got through reading, I sat and listened to the others. The taping was taking place at a restaurant downtown. A street person shuffled in and quietly took a seat behind me where she sat and listened politely. After awhile she tapped me on the shoulder. I leaned over. On her countenance she wore a beatific smile.

"I just love poetry." she said. She then got up and left.

I guess prose can come through as iambic pentameter when you are off your lithium.

It was an interesting end to an interesting evening.

Again, the program is called "Tales of the South" and will broadcast on KUAR FM 89 here locally on June 28 at 7pm CDT. Or you can listen to live streaming of the show on http://www.kuar.org/ . If you something better to do that night, and I can't imagine that you do not, you can listen to it on the archives at http://www.kuar.org.tales.html/ .

I hope you enjoy it. And that you laugh at the lines that were written to be intentionally funny.

Let me know what you think.