Justin Halpern - Sh*t My Dad Says

“You bitch about not going, so why don’t you just go?… So then find a date…. So then meet more women…. Jesus Christ, son, I’m not continuing on with this line of questioning, it’s depressing the shit out of me. Do what you want.”

“Nobody likes practice, but what’s worse: practicing, or sucking at something?… Oh, give me a fucking break, practicing is not worse than sucking.”

“What were you doing that far out? You can’t swim…. Son, you’re a good athlete, but I’ve seen what you call swimming. It looks like a slow kid on his knees trying to smash ants.”

“What in the hell is the matter with you? This is the third time! You know, at this point I think it’s the neighbor’s fault…. No not really, it’s your fucking fault, I’m just in denial right now that my DNA was somehow involved in something this stupid.”

“Just tell me how much money I have to give you to never leave this couch.”

“You can’t have one…. Fine, then go play it at your friend’s house. While you’re there, see if you can eat their food and use their shitter, too.”

“Let’s finish talking in a bit, the news is on…. Well, if you have tuberculosis, it’s not going to get any worse in the next thirty minutes.”

“Yeah, I got him a gift. He got his kidney stone taken out. If you shoot a rock through your pecker, you deserve more than just a pat on the fucking back.”

“First things first: A car has five gears. What is that smell?… Okay, first thing before that first thing: Farting in a car that’s not moving makes you an asshole.”

Between the end of my freshman year of high school and the beginning of my junior year, I grew ten inches. Suddenly I was six feet tall. “You’re starting to look like a man, sort of,” my dad told me on my sixteenth birthday, as I bit into a filet mignon he ordered for me at Ruth’s Chris Steak House.

The downside of such a quick growth spurt was that I wasn’t really in control of my body. I moved around like I was being puppeteered by someone with cerebral palsy. The good news was: Despite barely being able to walk ten feet without tripping over something, I could throw a baseball pretty hard. I was moved up to the varsity baseball team as a pitcher and led the team in wins and strikeouts.

That year, my school’s cheerleading coach decided that in a show of school spirit, she was going to force her squad to attend all of the baseball games. Going to a high school baseball game is a lot like going to a student film festival; you’re there because you feel obliged to someone involved in it, and after two repetitive, mind-numbing hours of “action,” you congratulate that person and try to leave as quickly as possible. Needless to say, the cheerleaders mostly passed the time doing their homework and watching the grass grow on the sidelines. But my dad, who came to most of my games, thought otherwise.

“I’ve seen the way they look at you,” he said as he drove me home after a game.

I tried to explain to him that they didn’t look at me any way at all; that if they looked at anything during a game it was at their watches in hopes it was almost over.

“Bullshit,” he said.

Fortunately, he left it at that. But not for long.

On Sundays, my dad would usually wake up early and head down to Winchell’s Donut House, where he’d buy a dozen donuts for my family’s breakfast, including six chocolate-glazed twists specifically for me. But on one Sunday in the spring of 1997, I woke up to discover there wasn’t a box of donuts sitting on the dining room table next to the kitchen.

“Get dressed, let’s go get some donuts,” he said as I groggily padded into the dining room.

I tossed on a pair of basketball shorts and a T-shirt, and we headed out into my dad’s silver Oldsmobile. When I tried to turn the car radio on and he quickly shut it off, I knew he wanted to talk to me about something.

Then we cruised right past Winchell’s.

“I thought we were getting donuts,” I said.

“Nah, we’re going to have a real breakfast,” he replied as he pulled into the parking lot at our local Denny’s.

“This is Denny’s,” I said.

“Well, aren’t you the fucking Queen of England.”

We walked in, and my dad signaled to the hostess he’d like a table for two. A waitress led us to the far corner of the restaurant, where a small, square table was nestled right up against a larger rectangular table occupied by six hungover-looking college kids, including two guys who were wearing T-shirts commemorating a “solid rush class” for their San Diego State fraternity. The tables were basically attached, save for a leaf that had been folded under to provide some semblance of privacy. We sat down, and my dad told the waitress he wanted a couple glasses of orange juice for us. She left, and he turned his attention to me.

“I’m a man, I like having sex,” he said.

The group of college kids next to us froze, then burst into muffled laughter. In a growing panic, I realized he was about to lay whatever his version of a sex talk was on me here, now, in Denny’s.

“No—no, Dad. What are you talking about? Maybe we shouldn’t eat here. I think we should go somewhere else. I don’t think we should eat here. Let’s go—let’s go.”

“What in the hell are you talking about? We just sat down here. Denny’s ain’t the best food, but you eat garbage like this shit all the time,” he said right as the waitress dropped off two glasses of orange juice.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that the college kids were now focused on my dad and me like they had paid money to be there. I half-expected one of them to pull out a giant bucket of popcorn. Oblivious to my growing discomfort, my dad continued, telling me that in his day, he’d “had a lot of fun” and slept with, apparently, a significant number of women.

“I’m not that good-looking. Never was. But I didn’t give a shit. You’re not a bad-looking kid. Better-looking than I was. But nobody’s paying either of us to take our picture, right?”

I nodded in agreement, and right as I did I heard one of the college kids say “wow,” prompting his group of pals to burst into laughter again.

Then, my dad told me that the only way to meet women is to “act like you been there before. Don’t worry about them telling you they don’t like you. It’s gonna happen. You can’t give a fuck. Otherwise, guys like you and me will never get laid.”

Our waitress was ten feet away and quickly approaching to take our order. I was crawling out of my skin. I felt like all of Denny’s—all of San Diego—was listening, watching, and laughing, and I just wanted it to end. So I did something I rarely do to my dad: I cut him off.

“Dad, can you please get to the point you’re trying to make? I don’t want to talk about this the whole breakfast with all these people around us,” I said, as I looked to my left and right, indicating that people were listening and that it was embarrassing for me.