O.K., I am getting older. Not a senior citizen yet but only a few years away. That means my parents are quite aged if not deceased. Both of mine are still breathing.
Many aged people get into very fixed routines. My father is one. Routines like a breakfast of two eggs fried in butter each morning (cardiologist be damned) and reading the morning newspaper promptly at 6 A.M., condolences to his newspaper delivery person on late days. There are other routines of omission, like turning the T.V. up to full blast because he will not wear the hearing aids that he purchased and so desperately needs to wear.
And other routines like watching Jeopardy on that same cranked up television each evening.
He does this and calls me up every night from 300 miles away and recounts the questions that Alex Trebek put to the contestants a half an hour ago. I watch the same show on my television but I go along and pretend to be overwhelmed at his vast knowledge and concur when he points out how the errant contestant had to be “dumber than a sack of rocks” for not knowing the Final Jeopardy question.
My siblings who reside near our father, frequently drop by and watch Jeopardy with him. So they say.
But I have always felt this wasn’t happening, that they were claiming to do so in order to shame me into coming 300 miles to visit our father.
I did visit Dad recently, the holier-than-thou guilt got me.
After arriving at my parent’s house, I called up all my nearby siblings and invited them to come and watch Jeopardy with me and Dad. This would test their self-proclaimed paternal devotion.
They did show up. Probably out of reverse guilt. I was in the driver’s seat now.
We have lots of brothers and a token sister in my family. We all spread out across the T.V. room with our father seated in his easy chair.
The Jeopardy category board popped up on the screen. It wasn’t until Alex Trebec spoke that I realized the harm done by people who ought to be wearing their hearing aids but do not. We were barraged by decibels louder than a front row seat at a Metallica concert.
I begged for the volume control but no one could hear my pleas above the din. My siblings seemed fine with it. I plugged one ear with my finger and went along.
As the Jeopardy game unfolded, question after question was flashed on the television with Trebek bellowing the written clue on the board. I shouted out the answer (actually the question) as quickly as my mind would provide for me. My sibling didn’t shout out anything which I attributed to their lack of interest or their pronounced ignorance. The latter seemed plausible, I grew up with these people and came to know them.
Several times, I shouted out the correct answer before my Father shouted out his correct answer. Sometimes he correctly shouted first. And yet each time after Alex Trebek verified our shouted answers, my Father would turn to us, his children, and scold us, “HOW COULD YOU NOT KNOW THAT?”
Each time that Dad asked that question after I had beat him to the answer, I held my arms out with palms up and shrugged my shoulders at my silent siblings. No response except a few of them made a slight smile and shook their heads from side to side.
I started getting the drift. They had seen all this before. My siblings had already been through this learning lesson.
At the end of Jeopardy, my father shouted out the correct Final Jeopardy answer, a few seconds after I had already shouted out that answer. We were both right. But me first.
One of my brothers stood up, then walked over and pressed the ON-OFF button on the television. Metallica stopped.
Dad picked up the phone and dialed one of his Jeopardy loving buddies. They analyzed the game and rated the contestants. Then my father ended the telephone conversation with the frank admission that his own children could not come up with even one of the answers in the game just viewed. The shame.
My siblings picked up the conversation where it left off before Jeopardy was turned on, like there hadn’t been a major travesty committed against us by our father. Not so for me.
My youngest brother watched me rise to my feet and aim my index finger at our father’s chest. He grabbed me and spoke low in my ear, “Let it go.”
Now a younger brother should not be speaking to an older brother like that but his advice was probably sound.
So I begged off and said goodbye.
My Dad asked, “Aren’t you staying for Wheel Of Fortune?”
“My ears are ringing, I’ve gotta go.”
“Go see an ear doctor. You can borrow my hearing aids if you want.”
“No, you keep them in abeyance,” I muttered trying to stay cool.
Then he came up with a profound insight, “Maybe you can’t hear the questions an’ that’s why you can’t come up with any answers?”
Somebody thoughtfully pressed the ON button and the T.V. screen came to life, showing lovely Vanna turning a letter. There was a simultaneous bell ring that was louder than Big Ben. Nobody heard me slam the front door on my way out.
I’m coming back to see my father after I visit the ear doctor. I’m going to get some screw-in ear plugs that make Alex Trebek’s voice whisper at the max volume setting.
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