So I can go on about the jobs I searched for, and how lucky I am to find ABSOLUTELY NOTHING but I’m in Day 2 of being a dutiful Asian son while my ma is in Japan, and I’m trying to keep my dad from driving me completely nuts. I took him out to lunch and to a bakery. He loves buying pastries, but he usually doesn’t eat them. My mom usually uses me as a human garbage can to get rid of them.
In any case, I was asking him what he wanted for dinner, hoping that I could avoid cooking and also find something I could take out so I could finally see the Marlins beat the Yankees, but he said he’d eat leftovers. He had some turkey from lunch, and I knew there was rice in the freezer for emergencies like when my dad promises to take my mom out to dinner and at the last minute decides he’s feeling too bad to go out.
What happened was I realized why my mom should empty out the refrigerator before she leaves. My dad put a bunch of awful looking things together in a small pot, heated it up and ate it. My mom had left cooked rice sitting out on the counter in a Tupperware container, some stewed Japanese radish from Saturday (stewed in some sickly sweet soy sauce-based broth) that also had konnyaku, which is barely edible Japanese rubbery stuff. He also opened a can of Spam to put into this mess. That was his dinner.
I offered to take him out, I offered to buy him something at the store, I offered what is my own weakness — Popeye’s Fried Chicken but he wanted to eat leftovers.
Since this afternoon he’s been complaining that he has, “A touch of the ‘flu,” but that’s a common complaint from him, as well as, “A cold settled in my back,” and, “Give me a good rubdown.” He also likes asking questions I can’t possibly answer, like, “How much do you think it costs to sponsor a softball team like that?” or “What kind of oil do you get in Yugoslavia?” or “What do you think is wrong with my back?” and gets mad when I can’t give him an answer.
It’s proved one thing to me, though, that my college degrees are useless if I can’t answer those questions.
It’s a good thing that my sister is coming to make sure we don’t drive each other nuts.