The YCMTSU File

YCMTSU stands for You Can’t Make This Shit Up.

I just got off the phone with my dad.  To be honest, he called yesterday and I didn’t pick up.  I hear you gasping.   A couple months ago when I did pick up he was having some financial problems, so I was a little gun-shy yesterday.  But because I am a bad Catholic daughter, the guilt got the best of me today and I picked up.

He said he’d tried calling yesterday.  I said I was skiing.  That was a lie.  (Told you I was a bad Catholic.)  He said, “I didn’t know you were a skier.”  I said, “Dad, I’ve skied with you.  You know I’m a skier.”  He said, “I don’t have any short term memory anymore.”  I said, “Dad, I’ve been skiing for 37 years.”

He called to share a story with me.  It seems that yesterday he’d decided to “end it all”.  He’s sick of the weather, his car broke down, his renters aren’t paying and he’s done with the whole damn thing.  (Please understand that I have heard the “end it all” talk my whole life.  First, I heard it from my grandma, then my dad.  This talk is attention-getting at it’s worst.)   I reminded him that the Catholic Chrch wouldn’t really take too kindly to his committing suicide.    He said, “Well, yes.  I would go straight to hell.”  I said, “What’s the point of being a good Catholic all those years only to end it with suicide and go straight to hell?”  He said, “Well…….”

I said, “Geez, Dad, at least you could wait until the end of golf season.  You’ve got at least one more good season in ya.”  He said, “Yeah, you’re right.  I’ve been swinging really well.  I’ll rethink this thing in October.”

I said, “So did you call to give me the story of “Ending it all”?  He said, “Oh yeah, that’s right.  So I was walking to meet my buddies for lunch at Burger King.  You know, since my car broke down.  And as I was walking across the street I saw a big semi and some trucks heading for me and I thought, ‘I could do this right now.’  So I stopped in the middle of the road.  And you know what happened?  The truck in the front stopped and the semi stopped and everybody else stopped.”  I said, “Well, Dad, I guess God put his big hand down to direct traffic, huh?”  He said, “Guess who was driving the first truck that stopped.”  I said, “I don’t know, Dad, tell me.”

Insert dramatic pause here.

“It was your ex-husband.”

Before I hung up the phone, I told him to stay out of traffic.

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7 comments

  1. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So I laughed. You’ve gotta admit– it is funny!

  2. Phyllis,

    I laughed! I have to. You picked the correct response.

  3. My gasp didn’t come at the beginning. It was at the end. Who could see THAT coming?!

  4. I laughed… oh my…

  5. This is so typical of your dad. I could hear the whole conversation in my head and how it was said. lol

  6. The stuff of legends…
    I think your dad and my dad and my boyfriends dad…would probably try to kill each other or…would maybe form their own tribe and then fight over who gets to be the leader…and their favorite part would be to daily plot and argue their individual justifications in long, painful, soap-boxing debates…which they start filming or tweeting or publicizing in some way…

  7. E,

    God! Are we related?