Dearest Dad,
On this day, the day you are having brain surgery (which sounds so much cooler than “having a subdural hematoma sucked from your skull”), I’d like you to be responsible for a few things:
1. Don’t die.
Even though you’re worth more to us dead than alive, we need you to be alive and mobile enough to help move furniture, paint walls, and run a pressure washer. Plus, if you’re dead, mom would become even more loquacious with me and Jackie and her stories about people at the Country Club and people we went to high school with, whom we either don’t know or don’t remember.
2. If you do die, thanks for the cash and the books.
Again, it’s not my wish that you leave us to be with Jesus (even though you don’t believe in going to church, he might be there to greet you). But if you do, I hope you’ve made all of your financial arrangements easy to understand and equally distributable. I know where the Important Papers files are kept (as well as your old Playboys); I just hope you’ve set it up with pictures and diagrams. You know me and you know Jackie; we’re not the sharpest knives in the financial drawer. You might not have passed along your financial responsibility prowess, but you passed along a love for reading. We certainly didn’t get that from mom.
3. Golf.
I hope Jesus likes hearing “Baba Booey!” in the background at random times during the day. Please don’t be upset if I never watch another minute of The Golf Channel.
4. Try to understand what my job is.
It’s so much more than just click-clacking away on my toys at all hours of the day. I mean, there is a lot of that. For an example, have mom show you this exact website. I mean, I get to READ and call it WORK. What’s not to understand? And I know social media is difficult to understand for senior citizens (hey — once you start getting free coffee at McDonald’s, you’re a senior citizen) like you. If there is a class up there (fingers crossed you go up and not down) that teaches you how to understand kids these days, sign up.
5. Pick a favorite.
Hopefully mom will get a chance to read this to you before you drift off to the long sleep. (Mom — Hold this up for dad to see.) Once and for all, point to which daughter is your favorite. Or if you don’t want to point and show favoritism, stay alive if it’s me. If you die, we’ll know Jackie is your favorite, and she’ll have to live with that guilt.
What I’m saying is don’t die, mkay?
Love and fist bumps,
Angie — The Pretty One
