working with my dad

Monday I was “working at home” at my parents’ house. My dad decided to stay home and “work” with me. This ended up being not very productive because my dad felt the need to interrupt me every 15 minutes while I was trying to work on a network concept diagram to ask me questions.

His first question had to do with what I wanted for breakfast. This was a trick, because he was trying to get me to make him breakfast. I told him I wasn’t hungry so he decided to stand at the kitchen table, where I had my temporary office set up, crunching cashews really loud and wondering if I didn’t want to make some oatmeal because he would eat some too.

He was also obsessing about going to Trader Joe’s so after breakfast time came and went he decided to ask me every 15 minutes if I might want to go to Trader Joe’s. Then lunch time came and he asked me what I was having for lunch. I finally broke down and went to the refrigerator and handed him a bag of cooked chicken and told him to have that. Then he said he needed something to go with it. I handed him a Tupperware container full of red beans and rice and watched him stand there holding it for a full minute before breaking down and putting it in the microwave for him.

The food kept him occupied for about a half hour, and then, right as I was joining a conference call, he came out of his office and started mouthing “Trader Joe’s” to me, so after the conference call I went into his office and said “Okay, let’s go.” He glared at me and said “I’m in the middle of working on something right now.”

We ended up going for a 7 mile hike in the late afternoon, and then going to Trader Joe’s where we were supposedly only going to buy more oatmeal. We ended up buying cheese and chocolate because my mom won’t buy either, and now that I’m here my dad can pretend it’s for me, even though I don’t really eat either. We also got some really good wines. I am sorry to report that the French coconut sorbet is no longer carried by Trader Joe’s, and that was the main reason I wanted to go shopping there. But we did find some nice lemon tarts.

I was reminded yesterday of being a little kid and going into work with my dad. He used to even bring me to meetings where I would take notes (this at the age of 8). I also would sit by a computer and feed punch cards into it, type up his papers (I learned to type when I was 6), and file things which was fun because the filing system had a wheel that you had to turn to open the passageway to get to where the files were. For doing a few hours of work I would get a huge gumball out of this dispenser that was in the lobby of the building where he worked. I thought it was the best thing ever.

A year ago he brought me into his current office. I had to get a badge so I made a weird face when the lady took my picture so I would seem to be a person whose eyeballs were falling out. In my dad’s office he had a picture of my ex boyfriend but none of my family. We went to this engine museum where my dad was treated with a lot of deference from the staff. They looked on in horror as I did things like ask him “Dad, what kind of engine is that?” pointing to a Christmas tree. He dared me to climb on an engine, which I did while he distracted the guard by giving him a cup of shit coffee he had gotten at the badge office and decided not to drink.

The whole point of going to the museum was to steal cookies that were for visiting dignitaries. My dad shoved them into my bag. I was just an innocent bystander.