I'm Back for More Cash

by Tony Kornheiser

  “Well, I guess that whole thing might be a bit strenuous,” I said. “Going to the service, and then to the luncheon. But maybe I could come over to your house?”

  “I don’t think I’m gonna make it, Tony.”

  This time I understood what he meant.

  “It’s okay, really,” he said. “I know I’m going to die. I’ve made peace with that. I’m not afraid.”

  I make my living with words, but at that moment I didn’t know which ones to use.

  “You playing any piano?” I asked.

  “I can’t. It’s real hard to sit up and play.”

  “Well, at least spring’s here, right?” I said. “And baseball’s starting.”

  “Yeah, the Yankees look pretty good this year.”

  “You watching them on TV?”

  “Yeah. And you know what I miss, Tony?” Ricky said, his voice thinner than I remembered. “I miss having a catch. I miss standing outside on the front lawn throwing a baseball around. You remember when we were kids, and you used to come over here, and we’d have a catch?”

  “I do, Ricky. You were always a terrific baseball player.”

  “I’d give anything to have a catch again,” he said.

  Ricky didn’t stay on the phone long after that. I asked to talk to Linda, who’d been so strong through all this. I could hear music in the background. Linda told me it was Ricky playing. He had come out of the bedroom and sat down at the piano. She was thrilled.

  I went home earlier than usual that day. I took my old baseball glove down from the shelf in my closet. I went outside on the lawn with my kids, and we had a catch.

  Bald Out by Dad

  Here’s how my day started: I called my father in Florida to say hi, and we had our usual conversation—which is to say he informed me that the high temperature in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday was 89 degrees, the low was 68, the high on Wednesday was 91, the low was 71, and a large frontal system passed through accompanied by thunder showers, dropping as much as two inches of rain on Baltimore, and the outlook for Thursday called for a high of 92, with winds gusting up to 20 miles an hour in the outlying suburbs.

  This was a typical conversation between my father and me. They go like this: How are you? How are the kids? Do you know the barometric pressure in Washington is dropping? There might be monsoon winds and hail the size of eggplants. You better go out and buy milk and toilet paper.

  “Thanks, Willard,” I say.

  See, I accept this as one of my father’s idiosyncrasies.

  He has lost much of his eyesight—by that I mean that on the street my dad frequently stops to chat with large shrubbery. When he watches TV all he can see are shapes and colors shifting around. This depresses him if he is trying to watch, say, Suddenly Susan. But the Weather Channel is all Doppler radar, which is just shapes and colors shifting around; this pleases him. He feels it levels the playing field. So the Weather Channel is all he watches.

  Whenever my dad sees (by the bright, pulsating reds and oranges chugging across the TV screen) that some killer thunderstorm is bearing down on Washington, he calls me to inquire, “Do you still have power?”

  And if I didn’t, what good could he do about it? He’s fifteen hundred miles away. He can’t drive. He can barely walk. It’s not like he’s gonna rush over and nail up storm shutters.

  Apparently my dad isn’t the only person who calls during storms. My friend Nancy and her mother do the same thing. Do you have power? Do you have flashlights? Do you have whiskey? (Nancy is Irish.) Nancy knows of one older parent who doesn’t call her children during storms because she believes that if lightning strikes during the phone conversation, it will come straight down the telephone pole, into the receiver, and explode everyone’s heads!

  Speaking of heads, it was after his weather update that my father said to me, and I am quoting him verbatim: “Have you ever thought about getting a hair transplant?”

  This is a sensitive issue for me. My dad is almost eighty-seven years old, and he has a head of hair like Einstein. He has the same hairline now that he had when he was thirty. When we walk down the street together, if you just looked at the tops of our heads you might think he was the son, and I was the old man—if it were not for the fact that he has shrunk to the size of a hedgehog, and he walks stooped over, and he’s always bumping into walls, and I keep calling him “Dad” in a voice loud enough to wake a hibernating bear because let’s face it, his hearing isn’t what it used to be, either.

  I was stunned that my father brought up my baldness. I didn’t think he cared that I was bald. Actually, I didn’t even think he could see that I was bald.

  Note to geriatric readers: Please do not be concerned that this column is insensitive to my dad. It is all in good fun. I had him read this column and approve it before it went to press. Of course, for all he knew, he was reading The Brothers Karamazov.

  But I digress. My dad was on the phone, asking me about my hair in that subtle, diplomatic way dads can broach a sensitive subject.

  “So, Tony,” he said, “you think maybe you wouldn’t look like such a schlemiel if you just had a little something on top? Your head looks like somebody’s thumb. Don’t you have a friend in the transplant business?”

  It was so quaint the way he said “the transplant business,” like the guy was a furrier.

  “I know someone who does hair weaves,” I said. “They take someone else’s hair and weave it into your hair.”

  “Nah, not someone else’s hair—you’ll never be sure where it came from. I’m talking about growing your own hair. How long would that take?”

  “About two or three years,” I said.

  “Even for just a few strands?” my dad asked.

  “Dad, it’s a human head, not a pot holder.”

  I felt bad.

  “Just out of curiosity, Dad, why do you think I should get new hair?”

  “I think it might help your career,” he said. He has seen me on TV.

  “My career? My career? Dad, this may come as a shock to you, but I’m almost fifty years old. I’m not up for those Brad Pitt parts anymore. I don’t think a few strands of hair is standing between me and international stardom.… What made you think of this now?”

  “The announcers on the Weather Channel all have hair.”

  Oh.

  Blue Face Special

  I have just returned from visiting my eighty-seven-year-old father in Florida, and I am pleased to report that he is still blind, deaf, and short.

  How short is he, Tony?

  Amazingly, my dad is now the same size sitting down as he is standing up. He reminds me of a footstool. It is quite convenient for us to travel together because he can be stowed neatly in the overhead.

  Now, you all know I love my dad. So don’t send me nasty letters about how cruel and heartless I am, and how glad you are that I’m not your son. (By the way, your son is a cross-dresser.) The fact is, my dad loves that I write about him. I tell him he’s in the column almost every week. He thinks he’s my friend Nancy.

  Anyway, I called him about a month ago to let him know when I was coming down. And he said, “Hold on, let me check my schedule.”

  And I said, “Please do that, because I wouldn’t want my visit to conflict with your arrival in Oslo to pick up the Nobel prize for peace.”

  At this point my father’s schedule consists mainly of breathing. He can’t drive. He can barely walk. It takes him so long to go from his apartment to the mailbox that he has to bring lunch.

  A few days later he called to inform me that he cleared his calendar, just for me.

  “But we’re eating all our meals out,” he said. “I don’t intend to cook.”

  I was greatly relieved. I don’t want this man going anywhere near a gas range.

  You all know about dinners in Florida, namely the “early bird specials,” which people begin dressing for around dawn. At about 4 P.M., every schlock restaurant in the state offers fixed-price, multi-course dinners, featu
ring some of the best iceberg lettuce for blocks! The conversation is very congenial: “Hey, I get dessert with that! And coffee. Whaddya mean coffee is eighty-five cents extra? Okay, gimme water then.” And after a pleasant meal you’re done by 4:45. You’ve eaten your last meal of the day, it’s blinding daylight outside, and you have nothing to look forward to but death and Tom Brokaw.

  My first day in Florida, we went to this chain steak house that looks like a bad Tudor castle and offers a wide variety of eight-ounce prime rib. My aunt and uncle joined us, bringing discount coupons. The highlight of the meal was the check. With the coupons, the dinner for four ended up costing $28.95. Being a sport, my dad threw $30 on the table.

  “That’s sufficient, isn’t it?” my dad asked me.

  “Sure,” I said, “if the waitress goes home and eats dog food.”

  “How much should I leave her?”

  “I’d give her five more dollars, and ask Uncle Arnie to throw in a car wash coupon.”

  The next night Dad wanted Chinese food, and we ended up at a place with a buffet for the extravagant price of $3.95. (If Uncle Arnie were here, he’d have a coupon where they would pay us to eat.) The food was set up in a giant steam table—maybe thirty different dishes, twenty-eight of which looked like sesame chicken in brown sauce.

  “What’s that?” he’d ask.

  I’d read the label, and he’d say, “That sounds good, give me some of that.”

  When we got to the tenth dish I realized that it could be Dog’s Intestine in Custard Sauce with Dead Flies, and my dad would say, “Yeah, give me some of that.”

  So I got him a little of everything. By the time I was done I’d filled six plates. A waiter came over and asked if I was expecting anyone else at the table.

  “The Taiwan Little League team,” I said.

  My dad had been coughing all day, and his coughing suddenly got worse. He was hacking and hocking. Loudly. The sound he made suggested what would happen if you crossed a moose with a rabbinical student.

  “I’ve got something in my windpipe,” my dad said.

  “What, the Hindenburg?”

  He coughed furiously and began to spit stuff into napkins.

  “Give me another napkin,” he’d say.

  I went from table to table, picking up napkins. Meanwhile, the terrible guttural noises had driven away the other three couples sitting near us.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” my dad said. “I think I just need to give myself the Heimlich maneuver.”

  Pardon me?

  I’m no Nervous Nellie, but I think it’s reasonable to be concerned about the health of an eighty-seven-year-old who is pounding himself in the chest, trying to cough up something the size of a hedgehog.

  “There’s a hospital a quarter mile from here,” I said. “Let’s go there and fix you up.”

  “No,” he said. “Just give me another napkin.”

  I could feel the cold sweat on my face. “I’m really beginning to worry,” I said.

  “You’re just like your mother,” he said. “You worry too much.”

  I noticed the owner of the restaurant looking nervously our way. “How about if we just go home?”

  I could see this was a difficult decision for my dad, because three full plates of food remained untouched. “Let me have some of that egg foo yong,” he said.

  Finally, he agreed to let me drive him home. In the apartment he told me sternly, “I’m going into the bathroom now. No matter what you hear coming from in there for the next fifteen minutes, do not come in.”

  I felt like I was trapped in a Sigourney Weaver movie.

  Actually, the sounds weren’t so bad. I could barely hear them over the beating of my own heart.

  True to his word, my dad came out in fifteen minutes with a big smile on his face.

  “So where do you want to eat tomorrow night?” he asked.

  They Took the Wrong Geezer!

  My dad is steamed at NASA. “How come they sent a young punk like John Glenn into space?” he groused the other day. “He’s only seventy-seven. If they really wanted a geezer, they should have sent me. I’m eighty-eight.”

  So what if my dad has shrunk so much he can’t see over the dashboard on the space shuttle? It’s not like anybody’s going to ask him to drive.

  No. 1. He’d ride the brake and keep the turn signal on the whole way.

  No. 2. He’d back into the Hubble telescope by mistake.

  If my dad got on the shuttle, he’d be thrilled just staring out the window for the whole ride, like my dog Maggie. It would play right into his obsession about weather. Every phone conversation I have with him is the same. I call him in Florida. He asks about the kids, and after a brief pause he inquires about Washington’s weather. “Is it cold up there yet? I saw on the Weather Channel it was twenty-four degrees in Cleveland, and it was headed your way. Bundle up. Take the plants in.” It’s like talking to Willard.

  But if my dad were in space, he wouldn’t need to ask about the weather in Washington, because he’d be able to see it. And even if he had short-term memory loss, because of how fast the shuttle orbits Earth, every ninety minutes he’d see it again.

  I’m sure it’s smarter to send John Glenn. And to people who say that John Glenn going up in space is just a publicity gimmick, I say John Glenn is an American hero. If he wants this ride, he has earned it. If for some inexplicable reason Johnny Carson decided that he wanted to return to TV to host World’s Most Dangerous Aardvark Awards, you might question his judgment. But you’d have to let him do it.

  I have a few questions about Glenn’s trip, though:

  Is Discovery spending nine days in space because it’s cheaper when you stay over a Saturday night?

  Will Glenn wear a bathrobe? All guys his age pad around in bathrobes.

  Under weightless conditions, how do you keep your false teeth in a glass of water?

  And at seventy-seven, what, exactly is the Right Stuff? Polident or Ensure?

  Normally, I’d make a joke about how old somebody like Glenn is in dog years. But the fact is if we sent a dog into space who was the equivalent of Glenn in human years, that dog would be eleven! A dog that old can’t even sniff. That dog would need his own Seeing Eye dog!

  When he announced his retirement from the U.S. Senate last year, he said he was too old for the job. Now here he is romping in space. Talk about your Viagra fantasy: a seventy-seven-year-old man strapped into a gigantic cigar-shaped rocket ship, thrusting into the heavens. If that isn’t symbolism, I don’t know what is. And don’t think that symbol was lost on Bill Clinton, interim president of the United States, who was in attendance at the launch.

  Ostensibly, Glenn is up there having experiments conducted on him about aging. Scientists already know that prolonged time in space causes the body to age. One of the theories Glenn is testing is that an older person might not show as much aging as a younger person. But if that theory proves wrong, and aging is accelerated, next week Glenn could come back looking like Gabby Hayes.

  There’s a series of experiments tailored to see how an older person can function in space. One involves Glenn taking Metamucil; scientists want to find out—and trust me, so does Glenn—if geezers can successfully, um, have a movement in space. (What, you were expecting something more esoteric? Hey, intergalactic trips are long; you can’t just say: Let me out at the next gas station.) Glenn was, however, left out of the sleep experiment for obvious reasons: At his age, who can sleep? You have to get up every twenty minutes to go tinkle.

  NASA assures us that the senator’s duties and responsibilities are the same as all the other astronauts, even though they are thirty-five and forty years younger than he is. There is one concession to Glenn’s age, though: For an hour a day all experiments will cease while Glenn gathers everyone around to watch Matlock.

  When the hero returns to Earth, people will suggest new tasks for him to take on, to demonstrate how an aging man can do anything a you
nger man can do.

  I’m inclined to put him on the Redskins’ defensive line.

  The greater question, though, is: We’re not actually thinking of sending eighty-year-olds into space, are we? Because if we are, then let’s move them out of Florida and resettle them in condos on the moon. I can picture my dad now, in his white shoes, out in front of the Man in the Moon Deli, a couple of blocks from the Sea of Tranquillity, at three in the afternoon, in line for the early bird special.

  Like Father, Like … I Forget

  I just got back from Florida, where I spent some time with my father, who is eighty-eight years old.

  I know what you’re thinking: Here comes another of Tony’s cruel columns about his aging father. He’ll string together a series of superficial, stereotypical anecdotes about how his father can’t see and can’t hear—what’s next, that his father has no teeth? I’d like to see Tony try to wring a laugh out of that. How can he profess to love his father and write such nasty things about him? What does Tony’s father say when he reads these terrible things?

  Oh, please.

  My father can’t see well enough to read.

  But somehow, incredibly, he can maneuver in total darkness like one of those cave-dwelling fish.

  “Tony, are you up?”

  Am I up? Nobody is up. Conan O’Brien is asleep. My father is the only person in the whole world who’s up. And of course the first thing he does is turn the radio on loud enough to liquefy every Miracle Ear in the condo.

  “Mmmmfff.”

  “You’re going to have to move your car,” my dad said. “The roofers are coming.”

  “What time is it now, Dad?”

  “It’s five fifty-two.”

  5:52? I happened to know that roofers don’t usually show up in the same geologic epoch as the day they promised, much less when it’s still high noon in Okinawa.

  “Okay, Dad. Let me know when you see them on the roof, and then I’ll move my car.”

  I drifted back to sleep. What seemed like just six minutes later, I heard pounding on my door again.