Monday, April 26, 2010

I’ve Created a Monster…

Dad has the day off.  It is so weird him having so much time off lately.  For years, he worked day after day – week after week.  Mom says he will just “disappear” though.  I couldn’t help, but laugh. 

Mom’s called me early this morning.  We are obsessing over my cigarettes today.  I made the mistake of telling her to tell dad to put a carton out on the porch for me to pick up today.  I should have just called dad on his cell phone and not gotten mom involved. 

“You haven’t come to get your Pepsi and cigarettes this morning,” mom told me.

“I am running late,” I said.  I have been up since the wee hours of the morning.

“Just what are you you doing?” my mother asked inquisitively.

“Home theater stuff,” I replied. “I am just enthralled that I can receive TV channels with Dolby digital 5.1 sound encoding. I can get lost for hours in the surround sound.”

“Okay, you sound like you just spoke a different language,” mom replied laughing, one of the rare moments in which mom will laugh.  She is so serious and strictly business most of the time.

“Come get your cigarettes,” mom then said insistently. “It’s worrying me.”

I smiled and wondered if this is what I would would be like if I had a child.  Would I obsess when my schizophrenic son doesn’t come and get his cherished cigarettes?  Would my world become disrupted when my son didn’t come and get his beloved six diet Pepsi that I so carefully place out on the porch every night?  Probably so.  The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree as they say. 

2 comments:

forsythia said...

You're right about the apple. Thanks to parental genes, both our kids have OCD. As one of their psychiatrists said (he was from India), "It vaxes and vanes." OCD: the gift that keeps on giving.

Summer said...

You would be an excellent father.