Justin Halpern - Sh*t My Dad Says

“I know—good stuff, right?” my dad said, confused as to why Evan was upset.

“NO! I’m twenty-eight, and I live at home! I wash dishes at FUCKING Hooters!”

Evan rarely cursed, and never, ever, ever cursed at my dad. I don’t know if my dad was angry or shocked, but he got stern real quick.

“What is your fucking point?” he said.

“My point is it was humiliating to sit there with some woman that’s probably used to dating doctors and models and whatever the fuck else!”

Then came the line that sent my dad into a frenzy.

“She’s out of my league! It was humiliating!”

My dad looked down at the floor and mumbled quietly to himself “out of your league?” over and over, like he was Indiana Jones trying to figure out if what a weird tribal person had told him right before he died was a clue. Then he exploded.

“This is complete fucking bullshit!” he screamed.

At that point I left the living room and tried to hide in the hallway so I could still listen.

“Out of your league?! What fucking league are you talking about?! You are a man, she is a fucking woman! That is all that matters, goddamn it!”

After that I couldn’t make out the yelling, but a few minutes later Evan stormed past me. I peered into the living room and could see my dad felt bad about what had happened. Normally after arguments, he wore a red-faced look of conviction that you see on famous world leaders addressing a hostile United Nations. This time he just looked sad. I went to bed, not wanting to agitate him.

Nobody talked about what had happened those next few days. I figured the argument had passed. Then, my dad came home from work about a week later and told Evan and me to get in the car, that we were going to dinner at Black Angus, which, in my opinion, was the Kansas City Royals of steak houses. Yes, it technically qualifies as a franchise, but it’s not worth getting excited about.

“Black Angus?” I replied, a little disappointed.

“Don’t be an asshole,” my dad said.

We drove to Black Angus, where we sat down in a dark booth with cracked leather seats, and my dad ordered three porterhouse steaks, his favorite cut. I had no idea what my brother was thinking, but I was wondering why in the hell we were at Black Angus, given that this was not a holiday and there was no apparent cause for celebration. Generally, steak is eaten by my family only on special occasions.

My dad exchanged a few pleasantries, asked us how we were doing, how our week was, and then, as the waitress set down our steaks in front of us, he said, “I want to tell you a story about the time I get mono from a stewardess.”

He dove into a long, convoluted story about meeting some stewardess, how they “spent some time together,” and what followed.

“I told everyone I got mono from this stewardess. You know why? Because I couldn’t believe a woman that attractive would be with a guy like me, so much that I was bragging about getting goddamned mono. Then I went into the hospital with fucking Guillain-Barré syndrome, and it was a whole mess, and I almost died. Anyway, my point is: It took me a long, long time to realize that I was worth a damn to women. You don’t have to brag about getting mono.”

The three of us sat quietly for a moment before my dad called the waitress over to our table and said, “Let’s see a dessert menu, I’m feeling frisky.”

Evan and I glanced at each other, unsure if we were supposed to comment on our dad’s anecdote.

“Gee, Dad, that’s a great story,” I said sarcastically, trying to stifle my laughter.

Evan started giggling, which sent me into a fit of laughter. My dad shook his head.

“Well, you both can go fuck yourselves,” he said. “I’m trying to impart some fucking wisdom about women.”

This only made the two of us laugh harder, to the point that Evan was almost unable to breathe and nearby patrons looked sympathetically at my dad, pitying the man who had to suffer two such inconsiderate sons. But he just started chuckling as well.

“As long as you two jerk-offs are happy, I guess that’s all that matters,” he said, as the waitress returned with the dessert menu.

“Vegas? I don’t get it, neither of you are old enough to gamble. You’re not old enough to drink. The only thing you’re old enough to do is rent a hotel and—ah, I gotcha. That’s smart.”

“I’m five foot eleven! I used to be six feet, goddamn it. Boy, going bald and shitting infrequently ain’t enough for God, huh? Gotta rub it in, I guess.”

“He was a good dog. Your brother is pretty broken up about it, so go easy on him. He had a nice last moment with Brownie before the vet tossed him in the garbage.”

“Listen, I understand you’re upset. But you’re both nineteen, you can’t think you were only gonna screw each other forever. That’s just silly talk.”

“Coming down with something? Please. You reek of booze and bullshit. Don’t lie to a Kentuckian about drinking or horses, son.”

“If it’s not bourbon or sweatpants, it’s going in the garbage…. No, don’t get creative. Now is not a creative time. Now is a bourbon and sweatpants time.”

Although my mother came from a Catholic family, and my father, though not religious himself, developed a great understanding of Judaism and its customs, they decided to raise me and my brothers in a totally secular home. My dad is not a fan of organized religion. He’s a scientist, and he believes in science, and that’s that. “People can believe whatever the fuck they want. A turtle is God, whatever, I don’t give a shit. I got my own beliefs,” he told me when I first asked him about God over breakfast at age eleven.

In fact, the only time I ever experienced any sort of religious education was when my mother insisted I get in touch with my “Jewish roots” and sent me to a day camp in north San Diego County for kids who had one Jewish parent and one Catholic parent and wanted to learn more about Judaism. I lasted about three sessions before the rabbi complained to my parents that I just kept asking him to prove how he knew there was a God.

“Well, what’d you tell him?” my dad said to the rabbi.

“I discussed the idea of faith with him, and how God—”

“Listen, I think he just hates giving up his Sundays learning about it. No offense,” my dad said, cutting the rabbi off.

I never went back.

But my brush with religion had done nothing to abate my fear of death. Like a lot of people, I have always been afraid of death and plagued by the question, What am I doing here anyway? And having been raised with zero religion or spirituality, I never received any answers—or anything to comfort me when my anxiety got the best of me. Every once in a while I’d hear that someone famous or a friend of the family had died, and I’d start thinking about death and how I had no idea what was going to happen to me, where I would go, if I’d even be cognizant of what was going on. As my thoughts spiraled, my heart rate would quicken, I’d lose color in my face, and then I would have to lie down.

During a baseball practice in college, I heard that a kid I had gone to high school with had died in a car crash. As was par for the course, I got so light-headed I had to lie down. When my teammates and coaches asked why I was lying down on the field, I went with the obligatory no-one-will-question-this-excuse excuse: “I think I have diarrhea.”