Sh*t My Dad Says

by Justin Halpern

  “No, you gave her a huge tip, so she was being nice. You asked her to describe in-depth the beef preparation, and that took eight of those ten minutes,” I replied.

  “You don’t know shit. I know when a woman is sweet on someone, and that girl was sweet on you.”

  Our argument escalated, with him insisting she liked me and me refusing to believe that, until finally it ended with my dad yelling, “Fine, she thought you were a jackass! You’re right, I’m wrong!”

  Silence filled the car for about fifteen seconds, until my mom turned around, looked me in the eye, smiled, and said, “I think you’re handsome!”

  “So there you go. Your mother thinks you’re handsome. This should be an exciting day for you,” my dad barked.

  We rode the rest of the way home mostly in silence. A few times my dad pointed out landmarks he recognized from when he had lived in Los Angeles in the late sixties. We arrived at my apartment, and he parked the car on the street in front.

  “You can just drop me off. You don’t have to park,” I said.

  “Bullshit,” he replied, jerking the emergency brake into place.

  Both my parents got out of the car, and my mom gave me a big hug and told me how much she loved me and how proud of me she was. Then my dad grabbed me and enveloped me in his standard bear hug, which consisted of squeezing the life out of me while simultaneously patting my back with his right hand.

  “Don’t think you can’t call us unless something big happens. Don’t be one of those guys, because those calls, they take a little while to happen,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “You’re trying. You’re giving it a go. That’s a big deal to me. You may not think things you do mean shit, but remember that they mean shit to me, okay?”

  “I know.”

  “Yeah, you know everything. That’s why you jerked off to your gay neighbors.”

  “Dad, we’re right in front of their apartment.”

  He laughed, then gave me another hug.

  “You always got us. We’re family. We ain’t going anywhere. Unless you go on a fucking killing spree or something.”

  “I would still love you, Justy. I would just want to know why you did it,” my mom said earnestly, having gotten back into the car and rolled down her window.

  My dad got back into the driver’s seat and leaned over my mom to see out the passenger window.

  “Remember. Family,” he said. “Also, how do I get back to I-5? I hate this fucking city.”

  On Airlines’ Alcohol Selection

  “They serve Jim Beam on airplanes. Tastes like piss. You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, because you drink shit. I don’t.”

  On Managing One’s Bank Account

  “Don’t get mad at the overdraft charge…. No, no—see, there’s your problem. You think of it as a penalty for taking out money you don’t have, but instead, it might help you to think of it as a reminder that you’re a dumb shit.”

  On Corporate Mascots

  “Love this Mrs. Dash. The bitch can make spices…. Jesus, Joni, it’s a joke. I was making a joke! Mrs. Dash isn’t even real, damn it!”

  On Understanding One’s Place in the Food Chain

  “Your mother made a batch of meatballs last night. Some are for you, some are for me, but more are for me. Remember that. More. Me.”

  On Birthdays

  “Listen, I don’t give a fuck if you forget my birthday. I don’t need people reminding me I’m closer to death. But your mom, she still enjoys counting them down, so cancel your fucking plans and drive down here for her birthday party…. Fine, I’ll let you know if she changes her mind and ceases to care about meaningless milestones.”

  On How to Tell When a Workout Is Complete

  “I just did an hour on the gym machine. I’m sweaty, and I have to shit. Where’s my fanny pack? This workout is over.”

  On Aging

  “Mom and I saw a great movie last night…. No, I don’t remember the name. It was about a guy or, no, wait—fuck. Getting old sucks.

  On the Proper Amount of Enthusiasm

  “You hear that? Your brother’s engaged!…‘Yeah’? Did you just say ‘yeah’? What the fuck is that?…No, that’s not gonna fucking cut it unless you say it while you’re doing a somersault or something.”

  Sometimes It’s Nice When People You Love Need You

  “Listen, the dog likes garlic salt, so I give him fucking garlic salt.”

  After having lived in Los Angeles for about a year, I decided that it would be cool to get a dog. Notice that I said “cool,” not “a good idea” or “cool to think about.” I wanted a dog and wasn’t considering non-dog options.

  When I was a kid, my family had a dog named Brownie, who I enjoyed playing with, particularly when my older brothers were no longer living at home. I loved that dogs just seemed to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted; it was a quality I admired. One time during a family dinner when I was around thirteen, I looked outside and Brownie was in the backyard, licking himself vigorously until he ejaculated on his own face. Then he lay down and went to sleep as if nothing had happened. Self-administering oral sex is not my cup of tea, but you have to hand it to him for his ruthless determination to enjoy himself.

  A year out of college, I had a decent job waiting tables at an upscale Italian restaurant where I only needed to work about three days a week to make ends meet. I spent most of the rest of my time writing in my bedroom. I thought getting a dog might spice up my life a little bit.

  “You can barely take care of yourself. Where are you gonna keep him?” my friend Dan asked.

  “My apartment,” I said.

  “You don’t have a yard. Where’s he gonna go to the bathroom, or run around? Dogs need to run around. They can’t just sit around an apartment.”

  “I’ll get a small dog. If I was tiny, my apartment would seem huge, right?”

  I knew my dad would probably have a similar response so I didn’t tell him, or any of our family members who might leak the news to him. My roommate had grown up with dogs in her house and did not object. So I made a trip up to the pound in Lancaster, California, which is about fifty miles northeast of L.A., and scoured the narrow, cage-lined halls, passing dozens of sad and snarling faces in search of the perfect puppy.

  “I want something that’s gonna stay small,” I said to the pound employee who was guiding me.

  The worker assured me she’d help me find a small dog, and led me to a cage filled with six tiny brown puppies. I couldn’t tell what kind of dogs they were; they just looked like mutts. I pointed out the smallest one, and a week later, after he had gotten his shots, I returned to the pound to pick him up. I named him Angus after Angus Young, the lead guitarist of AC/DC.

  Very early on, I realized I might have made a huge mistake. Angus was a fun, loving dog, but he had an unbelievable amount of energy and suffered from serious abandonment issues. Every time I left him alone in the apartment, I’d return to find my living room carpet covered in dog crap. Evidently, he’d take a rebellious—or emotional—dump, then step in it and walk around the house like he was re-creating a Jackson Pollock painting. At first, I thought he did this because he had to empty his bowels, so I started taking him out to do his business right before I left. He’d go right away, but still, when I came back home after leaving him alone, his feces would be everywhere. I’d have to get out my cleaning supplies and go to town for an hour on the mess, just to make the apartment bearable. My roommate was a good sport, but she was quickly tiring of the situation.

  About two months after I got Angus, I returned home to find that he had gotten into the cupboard where I kept his dog food. The door was open, and little pellets of dog food had spilled all over the kitchen floor. Normally, as soon as I walked through the front door Angus would greet me with a slobbering grin and wagging tail. This time I heard nothing. I turned toward the living room and saw him lying on the couch on his back, paws in the air, like a man who had been chal
lenged to a pie-eating contest and had won in double overtime.

  “Angus, nooooooo!” I intoned.

  He rolled his distended belly toward me, then gave me a look that I had only ever received once in my life—from a sorority girl stumbling in front of my college apartment complex, right before she projectile-vomited on the ground. What happened next did not happen to her, fortunately.

  I picked Angus up by the sides of his belly and, like a plastic IV bag whose hole had been stretched, a steady stream of diarrhea shot out of his butt onto the couch and floor. That was the final straw. The power of denial is strong, but seeing—and smelling—your furniture covered in fresh dog diarrhea is stronger. It was time to give Angus away.

  But I loved him, so I wanted to give him to someone I would be able to visit on occasion, to check on him. My brothers and all of my friends immediately turned down my request to take Angus. That left one option: my parents. They had a big backyard, and Angus was growing at a ridiculously rapid rate. A dog that I was told would be no bigger than thirty pounds when fully grown weighed thirty-five pounds at only four months.

  Angus was adorable, and I knew that the best strategy would be to casually show him to my parents before dropping the bomb on them. I wasn’t worried about my mom; she was always easy to win over. My dad, of course, was a different story.

  So, on a sunny Saturday morning in April, I drove down to San Diego with Angus on my lap, and walked into my parents’ house unannounced, carrying him like an oversized baby.

  “Awww, look at him, he’s so cute!” my mom said, coming out from the kitchen, where she had been cooking, to pet him.

  “That is a good-looking dog right there,” my dad said, reaching over and rubbing his ears.

  “Wait. Whose dog is this?” my mom asked, suddenly suspicious.

  “Well, here’s the thing,” I said.

  I went on to explain the whole scenario, fudging a few details to make me sound less impulsive and Angus like less of a handful.

  “We can’t take this dog. This is your responsibility—we can’t just take a dog because you didn’t think things through,” my mom said, her tone increasingly annoyed with every word she spoke.

  I was surprised and became worried because if my mom was reacting like this, I could only imagine what my dad was going to say. He was quiet for a few moments, and then he grabbed Angus and held him up.

  “We can take care of him.”

  “Sam?” My mom was as surprised as I was.

  “It’s a dog. It’s not like Justin knocked up some lady and he’s walking in with a kid.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t do that,” I said, chuckling.

  “You bet your fucking ass you didn’t,” my dad snapped, without an ounce of humor in his voice.

  My dad took Angus outside, rubbed his belly, and set him down on the ground.

  “This is your new home. Shit and piss where you like,” he said to Angus.

  I felt the way I did at age twenty-one when I gambled in Las Vegas for the first time and won a hundred dollars on my first slot machine pull: unsure about what had happened but confident that I should take off before my luck turned.

  “Okay. Well, I better get going, you know. I’ve got work tomorrow, and it’s a long drive, so….”

  And with that, I hurried down the driveway, got in my car, and drove back up to Los Angeles.

  Every couple months or so, I’d head home, and each time, Angus would be larger. Eight months later, he was 105 pounds. He looked like Scooby-Doo on steroids.

  “Dad, he’s so…buff. What are you feeding him?” I asked, during a visit around Angus’s first birthday.

  “In the morning he gets a half pound of ground beef, half pound of potatoes, and two eggs, then I cook that together and put some garlic salt on it.”

  “Garlic salt? Like he wouldn’t eat it if it didn’t have garlic salt?”

  “Listen, the dog likes garlic salt, so I give him fucking garlic salt.”

  “So he’s eating, like, three thousand calories a day?”

  “Well, probably more, since I give him that same meal at night, too.”

  “Jesus Christ, Dad. That’s why he looks like a WWF wrestler.”

  My dad explained to me that he had tried lots of traditional dog foods, but that Angus liked human meals cooked for him best.

  “Isn’t that a lot of work? I mean, you’re like his personal chef.”

  I followed my dad outside as he carried the bowl of food he had just prepared for Angus. The instant he smelled the meal, Angus jumped up in excitement and put his paws on my dad’s chest like a long-lost lover.

  “Okay, okay, take it easy, you crazy son of a bitch,” my dad said. Turning to me, he added, “Yeah, it’s a lot of work, but he’s my friend.”

  I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. Was my dad becoming sentimental in his old age?

  “Wipe that stupid fucking look off your face. I ain’t crazy. They’re called ‘man’s best friend,’ for chrissakes. It’s not like I made that up.”

  I told him I was glad that Angus had become a good friend.

  “You know, I was never really a dog person before this. I mean, Brownie was great, but he was your brother’s dog. And I had lots of dogs on the farm, but they were work dogs. I guess with all you guys gone, and Mom working all the time, it’s nice to have somebody around who depends on me. And who tears up my fucking rose garden—goddamn it, Angus,” he said, turning and pointing toward the churned-up soil that had once hosted his red roses.

  “He’s just like you: He’s a pain in my ass, but I love him. And he shits everywhere. Which is mostly why he’s like you,” he added with a smirk.

  On Airport Pickup Duties

  “My flight lands at nine-thirty on Sunday…. You want to watch what? What the fuck is Mad Men? I’m a mad man if you don’t pick me the hell up.”

  On Built-Up Expectations

  “Your brother brought his baby over this morning. He told me it could stand. It couldn’t stand for shit. Just sat there. Big letdown.”

  On Canine Leisure Time

  “The dog is not bored. It’s not like he’s waiting for me to give him a fucking Rubik’s Cube. He’s a goddamned dog.”

  On Talking Heads

  “Do these announcers ever shut the fuck up? Don’t ever say stuff just because you think you should. That’s the definition of an asshole.”

  On Long-Winded Anecdotes

  “You’re like a tornado of bullshit right now. We’ll talk again when your bullshit dies out over someone else’s house.”

  On Today’s Hairstyles

  “Do people your age know how to comb their fucking hair? It looks like two squirrels crawled on their head and started fucking.”

  On Tailgating the Driver in Front of Me

  “You sure do like to tailgate people…. Right, because it’s real important you show up to the nothing you have to do on time.”

  On My Brother’s Baby Being a Little Slow to Start Speaking

  “The baby will talk when he talks, relax. It ain’t like he knows the cure for cancer and just ain’t spitting it out.”

  On the Right Time to Have Children

  “It’s never the right time to have kids, but it’s always the right time for screwing. God’s not a dumb shit. He knows how it works.”

  You Have to Listen, and Don’t Ignore What You Hear

  “Sometimes life leaves a hundred-dollar bill on your dresser, and you don’t realize until later it’s because it fucked you.”

  As I mentioned in the introduction to this book, it was a breakup with a girlfriend that landed me back at my parents’ house at age twenty-eight. Our split hadn’t been one of those overdramatic ones where we screamed and cursed each other’s names, then I left with the slam of the door and a “go to hell!” I’d been through a couple breakups before, one of which ended with my ex saying, “Go fuck yourself, you stupid fuck.” That was easy to get over; you don’t stay up late at night hoping the woman who called
you a stupid fuck comes back. In fact, none of my previous relationships ever felt that serious. But I had been with this girlfriend for three years, and I was sure that we were right for each other and had thought we would marry at some point.

  When she decided to call it quits, it wasn’t because of anything specific. Something that had been there before was now missing, and neither of us could figure out what. Our relationship just wasn’t working. So when I moved into my parents’ house, I was really down. I don’t generally wear my emotions on my sleeve, but my dad could tell I was upset.

  “Sometimes life leaves a hundred-dollar bill on your dresser, and you don’t realize until later it’s because it fucked you,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder while I was eating breakfast one morning about a week after I’d moved back home.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to try to cheer me up,” I replied.

  “Shit, I know that,” he said. “But I figured I had to say something. Otherwise, just grabbing the cereal from you and leaving might seem a little callous.” He chuckled, hoping to lighten the mood.

  The next day I woke up at around six-thirty in the morning. Unable to go back to sleep, I groggily sauntered out into the living room in my boxer shorts. My dad was sitting at the dining room table eating Grape-Nuts and reading the paper.

  “When’d you wake up?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know, five maybe. Like usual.”

  “Jesus, that’s early. Why do you wake up so early?” I said.

  “Always have.”

  “But why? You’re retired now. It makes no sense.”

  “Son, am I being interrogated here? I’m an early riser, what the fuck you want from me?” he said before resuming reading the paper.