Every so often throughout the rest of the day, my dad would get fired up about something, bound into the living room from the kitchen or front yard or wherever he’d been, and shout something like, “Are you putting ketchup on that hamburger I made you?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Why? What the fuck do you mean,
It was good to be home.
For as long as I’ve known him, my father has been a blunt individual. When I was little, I mostly felt terrified of him, so I couldn’t appreciate that I was dealing with the least passive-aggressive human being on the planet. Now, as an adult, all day long I dealt with people—friends, coworkers, relatives—who never really said what they were thinking. The more time I spent with my dad in those first couple months back home, the more grateful I started to feel for the mixture of honesty and insanity that characterized his comments and personality.
One day I was on a walk with him and my dog, Angus, who was sniffing around in a bush outside a neighbor’s house. My dad turned to me and said, “Look at the dog’s asshole.”
“What? Why?”
“You can tell by the dilation of his asshole that he’s going to shit soon. See. There it goes.”
It was at that moment, as my dog emptied his bowels in my neighbor’s yard and my dad stood there proudly watching his prediction come true, that I realized how wise, even prophetic, he really is.
I took that quote and posted it as my instant messenger away status that evening. And every day after that, I’d take one funny remark my dad said and use it to update my status. When one of my friends suggested I create a Twitter page to keep a record of all the crazy things that come out of his mouth, I started “Shit My Dad Says.” For about a week, I had only a handful of followers—a couple friends who knew my dad and thought he was a character. Then one day I woke up to find that a thousand people were following me. The next day, ten thousand. Then fifty thousand. Then one hundred, two hundred, three hundred thousand, and suddenly a picture of my dad’s face and his quotes were popping up everywhere. Literary agents were calling, wanting to represent me; TV producers were inviting me onto their shows; and reporters were asking for interviews.
My first thought was: This is not good. The emotion that followed can only be described as sheer panic.
To illustrate how much my father hates any kind of public attention, let me share his opinion of contestants who compete on
“Are you fucking kidding me? Look at those people. They have no fucking respect for themselves. No dignity. Going on a reality show like that, it sickens me.”
I knew I had to tell my dad that I had been posting his quotes and quips online and now had publishers and TV studios interested in adaptations of the material. But before I did, I figured I’d call my oldest brother, Dan, with the hope that he would tell me I was blowing the situation out of proportion and that our dad would be fine with it.
“Holy shit, you did what?” Dan said to me, in between giant belly laughs. “Dude, Dad is going to—I don’t even know what Dad’s going to do. You better be prepared to leave his house. Like, if I were you, I’d pack up my stuff beforehand, fugitive-style. Only important belongings that can be carried with one arm.”
I decided to take a walk around the block and gather my thoughts before I confronted my father. A walk around the block turned into a few miles around the block, and as I was finally heading back toward the house an hour later, I spotted him sitting on our front porch looking like he was in a good mood. I figured it was now or never.
“Hey, Dad, I have to tell you something . . . weird,” I said, tentatively sidling up next to him on a nearby deck chair.
“You have to tell me something weird, huh? What is weird that you have to tell me?” he replied.
“So, there’s this thing called Twitter,” I said.
“I know what Twitter is, goddamn it. You talk to me like I don’t know what shit is. I know what it is. You have to start up the Internet to get on Twitter,” he said, making the universal sign for turning a key in the ignition when he said the words “start up the Internet.”
I laid it all out there: the Twitter page, the hundreds of thousands of followers, the news articles, the book publishers, the TV producers, all of it. He sat quietly and listened. Then he laughed, stood up, ironing out his pants with his hands, and said, “Have you seen my cell phone? Can you call it? I can’t find it.”
“So you’re . . . cool with all this? You’re cool with me writing a book, the quotes, everything?” I asked.
