The Rents: Part 2 - The RX Man Can

“You fell asleep in Antarctica.”

My father said hovering over me in the morning.

I had fallen asleep dreadfully early the previous evening watching the Discovery Channel program “Planet Earth – Ice Worlds” with him. He had joined me when he heard me giggling like a little girl from the next room watching fat penguins waddling through the snow and ice. Halfway through the program I had passed out.

A combination of hundreds of miles of driving, championship drinking, hauling gear through nature preserves, my new found obsession with bodily improvement, and a general lack of sleep had driven me to the point of exhaustion by Tuesday night. But it was the sleeping pill that really did me in.

My father had offered it to me the night before, in a manner someone might offer you gum or a breath mint.

“Sleeping pill?”

He does this sort of thing all the time. Being a rather elderly man, he has access to quite a few prescription medications. This has given him the delusion that he has the magical powers to cure any and all ailments.

Got sinus problems?

Breath easy!

Depressed?

Clear those grey clouds!

Trouble sleeping?

Consider yourself in La-la-land!

It might make a little more sense if the family used him like a Pharmacy, but that’s not how it works. You’ll be sitting around minding your own business when along comes dad…

“Take this.”
(brandishing a little white pill in hand)

When you inquire what it is, you never get the logical answer of something like:

“It’s an aspirin.”
or
“It’s an antihistamine.”

It’s always:

“For your sinus problem.”

See, you have a problem and he’s going to fix it. That is so the essence of my dad. But at this point you just might be asking yourself…

“What the fuck problem do I have? I don’t have a sinus problem?”

Now you’re wondering how he came to this conclusion.

“I heard you sneezing.”

Never mind the fact that you had just been snorting cracked pepper. You have a sinus problem and it demands immediate action, take this pill!

My father’s ability to put 2 and 2 together and get 22 has driven me mad my entire life. If my father sees a tree stump and a hub cap, obviously there was a car wreck. And upon further inspection he sees some glass on the street, so the driver was killed during the crash. What actually happened was the neighbor had cut down the dead tree in his yard last week, a bum had left the hub cap, and someone else entirely had poorly discarded the remains of their Yoohoo.

This has prompted me to view life from an entirely different manner. I see a situation, I note the issues, and I wait for all the facts to come in before I make an assessment. I have never understood how my father, given his way of thinking, made a career out of rocket science. Of course, perhaps my father’s mind set lent itself to sending men to the moon. I don’t know. I’m waiting for all the facts.

I’m a night owl. The thought of falling asleep at 9:30 at night somehow troubles my soul. But as I swallowed that pill, I couldn’t have been more relieved to know that sweet slumber would be mine. But there’s always a catch to when I fall asleep so early. Namely confusion.

I awoke at what I thought was the middle of the night. The TV was off, the lights were out, my parents in bed. What good is a sleeping pill if you wake up half way through the night? I wearily shot my arm out into the dark in search of my phone to check the time. I press a button, bringing my fellow slumberer to life (if only I had an instant wake button). I have a voice message. It’s from Crystal. When did she call? She called at 11:26pm. Checking the time I see that was…

17 Minutes Ago!!!

It’s 11:43pm?
I stared at the time dumbfounded. I continued to stare, thinking if I look long enough my weary eyes would come to and realize what my brain really wanted it to be; 3 maybe 4 in the morning. But the numbers never changed. My brain just could not reconcile this. It struggled to find an excuse as to why the time could still read before fucking midnight.

Did my phone reset?

No. The sad truth is I had just woken up from a two hour nap. I listened to Crystal’s message in which she suggested that I was mad at her for not calling me back the night before by not answering my phone. I thought about calling her back, since it wasn’t so late, but realized that my only form of communication would be grunts, which she might interpret as a lewd phone call. We’d have to settle this another time.

I rolled over and to my surprise fell fast asleep. I gently woke this morning feeling quite rested. I got up, showered and dressed, and had plenty of time for an eat in breakfast.

My only real complaint about my morning…

…I burnt my bagel in my new toaster.


-D