When I get together with my brothers, we laugh so hard we cry when we talk about Dad. I mean, he has general behaviors and sayings that are funny. But the things he says to us individually are hilarious. A famous saying of his is, "Dammit, Allan!" Granted, Allan is sort of the black sheep of the family and has been in a lot of trouble. (I thought I took that title when I got married at 17, but that was nothing.) We joked that Allan should get a tattoo of that.

Another thing he says when irritated is, "Goooood God." I'm not sure just from the text that you can get the tone and hilarity of it. Once at a family gathering, he was teasing me about my tattoo, and I threatened to get another one that said, "Well, good god." Everyone cracked up at that.

I tease him about his jeans, too. Always have. I remember as a teenager teasing him about his "bell bottom" jeans. He wears Levi's 517 boot cut (dark). I said, "But, you don't wear boots, Dad." (Who knew those dark jeans would be in style now? I grew up wearing acid washed.) He also carries his wallet in his right back pocket and a comb in the left one. This wears a wallet-shaped mark on one pocket and a comb-shaped mark on the other. This is more fuel for teasing. I bought him a pair of jeans for christmas once, and put "comb" and "wallet" labels on them. Not to mention that Barbara told me to get a size bigger waist since he was in denial about the size he'd worn for 2 or 3 decades.

I think I may have mentioned his marital woes in a previous entry, but I'll recap. He married my brothers' mother, Barbara, when they were in high school. She was pregnant with my brother, Scott. Two years later, they have my other brother, Allan. I'm not sure when they divorced this time. He then marries my mother, Randy. I think they were married 7 years. When he was in the Army and stationed in Germany, Randy was with him. There she had an accident on the autobahn resulting in severe head injuries and a brief coma. The resulting mental, um, imbalances may have resulted in a quite ugly divorce, and Dad eventually winning custody of me. By this time (1978-79), he was back with Barbara and remarried. I think they divorced again in '84 or '85.

For a few years, it was just me and Dad. This was after my two brothers moved out. I visited Barbara on occasion and she and Dad seemed to get along ok. Then he met and married my former stepmother, Linda in 1989 (I think). At first, I liked her. Then it became apparent that she was trying to drive a wedge between Dad and his kids. She was instrumental in my moving out and getting married at 17. I thought she was just being helpful. After I moved out, we felt like we needed an engraved invitation to visit. Dad and I would even meet for dinner without her knowing about it.

Well, he divorced her in '95 or '96. To this day he still claims to not know about the hateful things Linda did and said to us. Oh, well. Hasta la vista. He then retired, moved in briefly with Allan, then moved to Charleston with Barbara when her job transferred her. Oh, yeah. Did I mention he was back with Barbara for a third time? Though this time they didn't remarry. They felt no need to. He's still with her today. He told me during his divorce from Linda that he never loved her, and had never been happy without Barbara. How sweet. I never understood why he would stay with a woman he didn't love for so long, and even have separate bedrooms for the last two years of their marriage. Hmmm.

I think that's enough for now.