My Lazy Ego

Here’s how I view the relevant differences between fathers and mothers:

Mothers are nurturing. They hold you when you’re hurt, help you with your homework when you’ve fallen behind on a project, and coach you through life’s mysteries as you grow older.

Fathers, in the words of Royal Tenenbaum, are meant to “brew some recklessness” into their boys. My pop taught me how to play poker (our favorite was always 3-5-7), how to body surf through an impending tropical storm, and how to use colorful language to get your point across. But these are just a few things I learned from my dad.  Here are my all time favorites:

How to get rid of an old car.  Back when I was little, the apartment my mom lived in backed up to a wooded area in Houston. It was a great place for little kids to play in. To build forts. To play jailbreak in. And a prime spot for your dad to dispose of an old car in.

My dad has never been much on fancy cars. Or working cars. Not long after my folks were divorced, they moved into apartments not far from each other. My dad would frequently come by and visit and on more than one occasion, the car might have trouble starting back up. Dad would tweak something under the hood or maybe get a jump and the car would be back and running in no time.  This happened on a succession of cars over a number of years.

One car in particular gave my dad fits though. I can’t remember the make or model, but I do remember that it was green, old, and big as hell. It had died in the parking lot of my mom’s apartment complex and in my dad knew exactly how he’d handle this situation. Instead of getting it towed or figuring out what the problem is, my dad instead recruited me, Andy, and 3 or 4 of our pals from the neighborhood to help him get rid of the car. As my dad steered the car, he had 5 or 6 8, 9, and 10 year olds pushing the car through the street. We weren’t exactly sure where we were going but we made a turn to head back behind the apartment complex. We kept pushing, the car getting heavier and heavier (they made cars out of raw steel and iron back then I could swear) until we pushed the car over a curb and right into the woods (and we didn’t exactly make a great effort to hide the car either. It was basically on the edge of the woods). The kids were kind of giddy (especially Andy) because we knew we were doing something wrong but this time, we had adult supervision — if my then 45 year old dad could be called “adult”. To this day, whenever I think of the final days of one of my cars, I wonder where I can find an undisturbed, pristine section of woods that I can use to dispose of my car.

Exploiting child labor. When I was probably 10 and Andy 8, my dad experimented with getting out of the restaurant business for a few years and instead managed a Radio Shack. About once or twice a month, pop would take us to work with him. This was pretty much the coolest “take your kid to work” situation I could’ve hoped for. While my friends went to sit in a cubicle with their dads, I got to hang out at the mall and play with the cool gadgets Radio Shack sold (remote control cars! color computers!! short wave radios!!!). However, more often than not my dad motives other than mine and Andy’s enjoyment when taking us to work.

Every month (or quarter, I can’t remember), Radio Shack would make their stores count inventory. In most retail establishments, this is probably not a huge deal. But did you ever go to a Radio Shack in the 80s? And did you see how much tiny, microscopic crap they sold? Diodes, LED lights, the stuff that goes into electronic equipment!! This was a monumental pain in the ass for the average manager.

But not for Bruce Muehleman

He would take his two youngest boys, ply them with $5, a slice of Sbarro pizza, and maybe some free time at the arcade, and get them to do the counting. Andy and I thought we’d died and gone to heaven. Now we’re getting PAID to go to work with Dad?!?  This was AMAZING. Maybe we weren’t the most reliable inventory specialists in the organization (we were, after all, little kids easily distracted by remote controlled cars) but we always got the job done. And dad was always very pleased with our work.

Bonus child labor exploitation story: Brewing recklessness wasn’t limited to the Muehleman boys. He also didn’t hesitate to get Amy involved in the racket. Back when he owned a restaurant, he’d get Amy, then 15 or 16 (or thereabouts) to run the bar when things were slow. This was great until a representative from the Texas beer and liquor licensing department came in and noticed this transgression. Whoops?

To my dad, Happy Father’s day.

And to all the father’s out there, don’t forget to brew some recklessness into your kids.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 20th, 2010 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.