The other day I was thinking about my father. He died a little over a year ago and I still have plenty of thoughts about him, though they come in dribs and drabs at the weirdest times. I haven't publicly written about his death and I'm not sure why. I've written about my father before and God knows I'm not afraid of sharing in this space, but lately I haven't had much to say period, let alone about my father's passing. And I don't have to anything to say about it right now. This is more about a memory that I have of him. A very peculiar memory.
The last few years he spent the summers at our house and at night my son and I would sit with him while he watched television. It was nice and I relished that time. Not that it was just me and my dad but that it was all three of us. It gave my son a chance to get to know him and spend some time with him. We'd sit around and shoot the shit, remembering the past and talking about a wide array of topics, as we were wont to do.
But it was during these times that some of my father's peculiarities showed. He watched a peculiar variety of shows. We'd spend plenty of time watching American Pickers or a wide variety of those car repair/rebuilding shows. But as I've said before, my father is a paradox and on top of those shows, my father loved genre television. Cowboy shows were a staple as was scifi. He was a regular viewer of this guy called Svengoolie, where I watched FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA and the ever classic ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN with him. I also remember watching the Americanized version of the 1954 GODZILLA movie featuring Raymond Burr. And it's Raymond Burr that got me thinking about one of my father's strangest peculiarities.
My father also like procedurals like SHERLOCK (BBC version), LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT and, in particular, the old PERRY MASON starring Raymond Burr. The first time I sat down and watched it with him (to be fair, I was on my laptop writing or putzing around on Twitter) my father did something I found bizarre. As the show came to it's climactic end when they trial was about to be decided, he turned the station. I was taken aback. I looked up at him and thought he was just messing with me, but he didn't acknowledge my befuddlement and, being who I am, I said nothing to him in return. This became the habit. We'd watch 55 minutes of PERRY MASON and my dad would switch channels for the last five minutes. We never watched the resolution of a case.
Now I know that Perry Mason almost always won and I always wondered if that was part of my father's reasoning. But I found it so frustrating. And the lack of explanation just made it worse. I never pressed or pushed. Maybe I didn't want an explanation. Maybe the wondering was more interesting to me. Maybe he already knew the ending. Maybe he was more interested in the investigation and didn't really care about the ending. Maybe my dad was just peculiar.
It's weird quirks that I remember about my dad. And maybe being peculiar is what makes us memorable.
