In a month, he'll be 80

I try to keep this in mind every time my dad does something that seems a bit off. Or odd. Or even questionable. My dad has 80 years of memories swimming around in his noggin. And he is a storyteller and a character. It is not uncommon for him to tell a story seamlessly oonly for me to realize that the beginning of the story is 50 years ago (no, dad, I don't remember that man, I'm 42), and suddenly the subject of the story is the same, but we have shifter to az decade later. By the end of the story, we are talking about the same experience, but in the recent past. EB has witnessed this.

The doctor reassures him he doesn't have oldstimers disease, but if he did, would he remember what the doc has said?


I think my dad is a smart man. I am pretty sure he didn't finish the 6th grade because he had to go to work in his pop's store i Brooklyn. In spite of this, he worked as a mechanic in a government job for 30 years. After retiring from there, we owned a campground and in that small town in upstate NY, he was the judge for 17 years.

My dad has been a semi-professional photographer since he was 13 and someone gave him his first camera and help him set up a darkroom. He has a lot of cameras. A. Lot. Of. Cameras. Every time I see him, his digital camera is new. The last one I recall was 7 megapixel. He doesn't sell the previous ones. When I signed up for Ravelry, (only 7,773 people ahead of me currently) I asked him if he had a digital camera he could send me so we had a spare. He asked what I would be taking pics of, and I told him yarn, to put online. Lots of pics of yarn.

His answer was an easy yes, surprising a little that it was easy, and he said he would work on getting it mailed out. So this morning, there is an email from him with the subject "birthday". It said:

"11 day of september is the day the twin towers went down. have a nice day will try to find right cords for camera after the wedding this week. i am trying to get ready for winter. inspector wilson scotland yard."

Here's what I surmise. He remembers I have a birthday soon, hence the subject. He then remembers what else happened on Sept 11. Then he has a flash of the camera conversation, sees it sitting on the desk next to the computer and realizes he has not yet sent it. Someone is getting married. Someone I know? Someone he is performing a wedding for? A wedding they are attending? And of course, it often snows on my bday up there. He always had to get the woodstove going for my parties in the game room at the campground so we wouldn't freeze our asses off.

Then there is the signature. That would be my father's clever secret identity so no one can access his personal info. Clever, yes. But not so clever that he knows to use it when setting up the account. When the setup asked for his name he used his real name. So his name appears in all the from lines on every email he sends. That email took him about 8 minutes to type, too. Chatting with my dad is ideal for multi tasking. No need to ever say brb because he is still typing his reply to your q when you return from peeing, or making a sandwich, etc.

I am glad he uses the technology at all, but his emails are often a little cryptic. I like it though, if nothing else for the adventure through my memories that they send me on.