Justin Halpern: Sh*t My Dad Says

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.

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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.