My Father & the Double Entendre

At the risk of making my family appear even weirder, I offer a few comments about my dad. In case you missed it, you can review some prior family posts, like Portrait of my Brother as a Young Man, Portrait of my Other Brother as a Young Man, 100 Words About my Mother, Fatherly Advice, or Lessons from my Sister.

Whenever my father put something in the oven, he said "whip it in, whip it out, wipe it off, and worry." As a young boy, I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Then, at around age ten, I figured it out. It was a eureka moment, much like the time my mother said, while chewing on a steak bone, "the closer the bone the sweeter the meat." My sister blushed and my brother cleared his throat, but my dad gave a hearty laugh. No one expected me to get it, but I did.

Somehow, my father managed to be the captain of the double entendre. He could turn the most innocuous statement into something sexual. At times, it was like having a 14 year old boy as a father. It didn't matter what the subject was: wallpaper, middle east politics, brain surgery, long division. Of course, there were numerous topics that lent themselves well to that manipulation, like anything to do with oiling or greasing or anything long and hard or anything with an opening.

The most irritating thing is that I am sure he felt that I missed all of the references, and so he kept it up (see, there's one right there). Laughing didn't dissuade him either, because I got the feeling that he really didn't believe that I understood the joke.

He's turning 73 this year, and I heard him say that he wasn't ready to hang up his saddle just yet. I didn't even know he had a horse.

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