Parenting, Pranks, and Pappo
My daughter turns sixteen today, and that’s the kind of milestone that makes a father reflect. Am I doing right by this girl? Is she becoming a well-adjusted young woman? Have I guaranteed that she’ll remain out of prison, off the pole, and on a path to independence—financial, physical, spiritual, and otherwise? So far, so good.
And I’ve done okay myself. Even though the way my dad raised me was wildly different than how I’m raising my daughter. Approaches to parenting vary, to be sure. There are carrots and sticks, threats and bribes, recognition and praise, and on and on.
Right after our son was born and we were learning that two babies is actually more than double the work, we saw a couple with five children under five years old. The mom and dad each had an infant dangling from their chests in one of those wraps, they were each pushing a toddler in a stroller, and the dad had a preschooler by the hand. I couldn’t even get the whole question out. “Uh, excuse me… how do you guys manage—”
“Pills,” the mom said.
“And neglect,” added the dad.
Most parents have a childrearing Swiss army knife, a collection of tools they use depending on the context. Pappo, my dad, stepped into the parenting game a little late and didn’t have the benefit of acquiring a menagerie of tools. He pretty much relied on the one strategy that came naturally to him. Pranks. In fact, I’m confident that he was the model for George Bluth in Arrested Development:
I searched the internet for a survey on favorite holidays, and most everything I came across was unsurprising. Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and Easter all topped most lists. Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day, Juneteenth, hell, even the Superbowl was listed as a favorite holiday in some surveys, but none of them included April Fools’ Day, Pappo’s favorite 24 hours of the year. April Fools’ Day also happened to be the key tenet to his parenting strategy.
So today, on my daughter’s sixteenth birthday, just one week after April Fools’ Day, I’m curating a list of Pappo’s greatest hits to remind my daughter that there are other strategies I can put into play to get her to do the dishes or be nicer to her brother. Here goes:
Several times Pappo covered our toilet in plastic wrap. He worked in HVAC and knew a thing or two about craftsmanship, so when he stretched that plastic wrap across the toilet, it was imperceptible. As we cleaned up the inevitable mess, we were reminded to replace empty toilet paper rolls and wipe down the toilet seat as necessary. Note: this definitely informed my bathroom habits.
In the event that we used up all the hot water or did something to make him late for work, he would smear the gate latch with a thick glob of Vaseline. The walk to school would then become a jog to school to avoid a tardy slip after the requisite 17 minutes of handwashing.
Note: I one time retaliated by smearing Vaseline all over his steering wheel. At 4am, his call time for work, he was not likely at his sharpest. He started his truck, shifted into reverse, and started backing down our long, steep, narrow driveway—a difficult task when your steering wheel has all the grip of a freshly caught rainbow trout. Apparently, he lost control and careened off the driveway and into the side yard. No permanent damage, but I made my point, and he respected my game.
A lot of my creative process is about paying close attention to specific details and asking myself, “What could I do with that? How could I use it to make something beautiful or joyful?” This creative process was definitely influenced by Pappo. To wit: he got his hands on a full-size cardboard cutout of Hannibal Lecter, and he staged it outside our kitchen window. You could hear it whispering, “A teenager once refused to do the dishes and I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti!”
My mom worked in the school district, so we were on a first-name basis with most teachers. This emboldened Pappo because he could take his pranks to the next level. For instance, he filled a pump hairspray bottle with Jose Cuervo and called my sister’s teacher to ensure her that my third-grade sister was being pranked and was not recovering from a weekend in Tijuana.
Tired of us eating all the See’s candy around the holidays, he bought a new box, ate his favorites, and refilled them with dried dog turds that we had overlooked in the yard.
I’m not sure of the philosophy behind this next one, maybe just to keep my mom on her toes. He stuffed a bunch of clothes, cinched them together, and added a Cabbage Patch doll for a head. Then he got my sister to yell, and he threw the “body” off the roof in front of a window where my mom was on the phone. I’m not sure who she was talking to, but I’m pretty sure her next phone call was to a hit man.
Of all of Pappo’s pranks, though, what follows is his Sistine Chapel. I had recently moved out on my own, and I got a call late one night. My mom sounded like she was having a panic attack. A rattlesnake had gotten into their bedroom, and she wanted someone to talk to while Pappo dealt with it. I was acting as an inadvertent 911 operator, there for support as she became more and more hysterical, teetering between crying and laughing.
Pappo had recently hurt his back (he probably should have seen The Mobility Guru) and my mom got him one of those trash picker uppers so that he could reach things without having to bend over. He was currently using it to grab hold of the rattlesnake that had coiled up under their bed. Full transparency: this is not part of the prank. This is all very true exposition.
My mom gave me her hysterical play-by-play, a tone not unlike her direction in the bunny rabbit incident: “Oh, my god! He’s got a hold of its tail! Be careful, be careful, be careful! It’s like three feet long, but he’s still pulling it out from under the bed…” And then when she couldn’t manage the anxiety any longer, she screamed. “Ahhhhh!”
“That isn’t helping!” Pappo said.
“Yeah, mom, maybe don’t scream while the man with the bad back is wrangling the venomous—”
“Ahhhh! It’s like four feet! It must be a world record or something. The worst world record of all—”
“Hold on,” Pappo said. “It’s a good five feet. If I keep pulling, it’s gonna strike. Get me my rifle.”
So my mom gets him his rifle. He’s got the snake’s tail in the trash picker upper in one hand, and he’s aiming the rifle with his other hand, and all the while my mom continues ranting, “We’re moving. Do you hear? We’re moving. I can’t ever sleep in this bed—”
Bang!
“Shit!”
“What happened?” I asked.
“He missed.”
“What did he hit?”
“Not the snake—”
Bang!
“Ha! Got him.”
Most men, having killed a rattlesnake, would have quickly disposed of it. Not Pappo. He knew an opportunity when it was rattling right in front of him.
You know how you can space out when you turn on the tv? Pretty sure that’s what was happening to my sister when she came home the next day. She thought she’d come home, turn on the tube, and have a snack while vegging out to some midday Oprah Winfrey.
What actually happened is this: she pulls a box of leftover pizza from the fridge. She puts it on the kitchen table. Cold pizza is, and remains, a delicacy in our family. She grabs the remote and turns on the tv. She surfs a few channels, and she shifts into autopilot. One hand on the remote, one hand on the lid of the pizza box. Flips threw a few more channels. Opens the pizza box. Then, finally, eyes fixed on the tv, she reaches down and grabs a handful of the five-foot long dead rattlesnake coiled up in the pizza box.
To the best of my knowledge, she has still not forgiven him.
Pranks as parenting is probably controversial in this culture that seems more and more sensitive. And I get it. Pranks are similar to a roast. Sure, there’s some darkness, maybe even some schadenfreude, but it’s its own kind of love language, the kind that shores up your resilience, makes you creative, and reminds you not to take life so seriously. All this to say, Happy Sweet Sixteen to my beautiful daughter. You stand warned, kid.
Thanks for reading! If you’re looking for more stories that skirt the line of trauma and laughter…
Claw and Disorder will tell you everything you want to know about seafood restaurants and the violence therein.
Tell Stories, Get Fit: A Guide for Six Packs, Thigh Gaps, and Shoulder Caps will give you a foolproof roadmap for your summertime bathing suit bod.
Avocado of Doom will outline the dangers of stress, anxiety, and butterknives.
The Canyon Zombie and My Beautiful Wife will make you grateful for the person sitting beside you.
And my recently published novella Dig will make you aware that you’re always just one bad decision from total self-destruction.
Have a great week!
oh I laughed so hard. This was great.
I'm worried about you.