North Star Writers Group

In the pure style of the classic procrastinator, I bring to you a Father’s Day column days after the holiday. This time, I have a great excuse. You see, my father is dying. And this is supposed to be a humor column. So on June 17, when I sat down to write my column, the words just wouldn’t flow. I couldn’t think of a way to honor him, on what very well could be his last Father’s Day, that didn’t make me cry rather than laugh.

Eight days later, it hit me that humor is the best way to talk about my Dad. After all, he is the funniest man I know. His sense of humor propelled my family through some very hard times. Like when he lost his job at the steel mill and we had to sell our house and move into a small apartment. Trust me, you need a load of laughter when you’re a pre-teen who’s sharing a bedroom with her brother!

I remember as a young girl, and the shortest in my class – and the two classes behind me for that matter – coming home to cry on his shoulder. “Daddy, my legs are too short!” His reply? “What are you talking about? They go from your butt to your ankles. If they were any longer than that, you would be an exhibit in the zoo!”

What could I say? He was right. All I could do was laugh at myself, which he taught me to do very well.

So, I inherited a few obvious things from my dad. Not only his outlook on life, but also his love of baseball. It occurred to me this past week, as I watched our favorite team, the Cleveland Indians, be overtaken by their division rival Detroit Tigers for first place, during a few pathetic losses to a very pathetic team, that my Dad probably got his sense of humor from being a lifelong Indians fan.

My Dad was born in 1944. His birth mother passed away and he was adopted into a new family in 1948, and moved to the city of Cleveland. That was the year – the only year – the Indians have ever won a World Series. That’s when he became a fan.

Since we haven’t won a World Series since, you could say that it’s been all downhill from there. But our relationship was built watching baseball, and I think part of that is thanks to their near-60-year dry spell. For one thing, it was during some of the Indians’ worst years that we could afford to go to the games. We didn’t have much money, but in those days, a $2 bleacher seat just meant that come the fifth inning, you could sneak down to the box seats. Once, we got all the way down to the third row behind home plate.

For another, the players we watched became lifelong metaphors that we use in our own language that my mother and brother, not so much Indians fans, don’t really understand. Like when it was my turn to serve the volleyball in junior high games, and I could hear my dad yelling, “Who? Who? Ju-lio” at me, just like we cheered for Mr. Franco in the '80s.

Or when I flunked a 300-level political science class my freshman year of college. I didn’t belong in that class anyway, but I was an overachiever. I thought I could do it. When I called my dad to tell him I was going to fail, he said to me, “Hey, one political science class doesn’t make you Joe Charboneau,” referring to the ill-fated Indians Rookie of the Year who never made it through his second season.

Again, he was right. And I had to laugh at myself.

Somehow, the Indians made a few good runs in the mid-to-late 1990s, just as I was ending a relationship with my very first love. The funny thing was, I knew after talking with my dad that I’d done the right thing. All he had to do was point out to me that I seemed more upset about the Indians’ World Series loss to the Florida Marlins than I was about starting over on my own.

Again, he was right.

Looking back, the Indians got us both in a lot of trouble, too. Like when my Dad let me skip school to go the home opener with him and my Mom found out. He did it again the next year anyway. And the next. Or when the Indians beat the Mariners in the 12^th inning in the 1995 American League Championship Series, and I decided to scream, do cartwheels, and stomp around my third-story apartment at 2 a.m.

My downstairs neighbors called the police. Considering I was home alone doing this little dance, they thought I was nuts, but didn’t arrest me. I called my dad, who has never stopped laughing about that.

So, this column is for my Dad. Because he taught me how to have a sense of humor. Because he taught me how to talk my way out of trouble. And most of all, because he taught me to be as faithful to my commitments as he is to those Cleveland Indians – even when they break his heart.

I love you, Dad!

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