Lies My Father Told Me

Written & Painted by Curtis Shalo

2017

for Lauren & Colin

Outlandish Tales

Page 6.    Lies My Father Told Me

Page 14.  Hot Sauce

Page 17.  John Whatshisname

Page 21.  The Count

Page 24.  The Gym

Page 29.  Barney

Page 34.  Love Letters

Page 43.  My Favorite Things

Page 47.  Discovery

Page 52.  The Prune Incident

Page 56.  Rituals

Page 61.  Is Anyone Behind Me?

Page 66.  The Six Button Benny

Page 72.  Harvey & Sinai

Page 79.   The Five Theories of Curtis

Page 85.  Goyishe v. Jew

Page 91.  Six Feet Over

Page 97.  The Common Sense Diet

Page 102. Worst Dad Ever

Page 107.  Patience is Not My Middle Name

Outlandish Tales

Page 112.  Don’t Get Up

Page 117.  No Shawarma in Charlotte

Page 124.  100 Days

Page 129  Three Confessions

Page 137.  Dunkin Donuts

Page 143.  The Fishing Trip

Page 149.  One Word

Page 154.  Aimless

Page 160.  Relic

Page 163.  Gus

Page 166.  Arf!

Page 172.  Linguistics

Page 175.  Bad Taste

Page 179.  Bucket List

Page 184.  Wordbirth

Page 189.  Miraculous Fetes

Page 194.  Sixty Years

Page 197.  Clichés

Page 204.  Uberlyftist

Outlandish Tales

Page 210.   Five Guest Tales

Page 214.  Love at Any Age  by Dr.David J Levens

Page 216.  Boots on the Bed & the Boston Blizzard          by Linda Keyes Levens

Page 218.  What’s Your Favorite Bird? by Howard Solomon

Page 225.  It Gets Easier  by Lauren Rachel Karpf

Page 229.  Chaim & Shalom  by Colin Lee Shalo

Page 237.   The People that Count/The People to   Remember

Page 244.  And In The End...

Awful Art

(My Apologies to Joan Miro)

Page 20.   Wrong Turn 

Page 42.   Dancing in the Moonlight 

Page 65.   Love is All You Need

Page 90.   Happy Birthday

Page 111. Soul Mates

Page 136. Irresistible

Page 153. Greetings & Salutations

Page 171. A Day at the Beach

Page 188. Surreptitious 

Page 209. Moving On

Page 224. Happy Happy Joy Joy   

Lies My Father Told Me

Recently, at a Sunday family dinner, my eldest grandchild Cooper looked at me and said Poppop, did your dad ever tell you something that scared you and then it turned out to be a lie?   I thought about it for a few seconds and then responded that a few instances came to mind.  Really? he replied.   What were they?  And I started to reel them off one by one as my dad’s voice began ringing in my ear.

The earliest lie I could remember was my dad telling me that if I kept sucking my thumb it would fall off.  Of course I didn’t believe him, but then he held up his hand and did the trick where it looked like his thumb could pull apart.  See, he said, "I used to suck my thumb and this is what happened."  I actually did stop sucking my thumb after witnessing his performance and to this day I never learned how to do that trick.

Every time my dad would drive on a country road and pass a farm he would always tell me the reason cows huddled together on the ground was because it was about to rain (and I always thought it was because they were tired).

We couldn’t have a dog as a pet because my dad claimed he was highly allergic to dog hair and would break out in hives if a dog went near him.  It never dawned on me that he never sneezed whenever he petted a dog.

Then there was the most common parental fib that he felt the need to impose on me: I couldn’t go swimming until an hour after I ate or I would get a cramp, sink to the bottom of the pool and drown.  I have no idea where this prophesy came from but I believed it until I was sixteen years old.

To this day I am still afraid that if I burp, sneeze and fart at the same time I will die instantly.  A few other lies I remember were my dad always assuring me I wasn’t going to get a shot at the doctor’s office, that the toy store was always closed, that smoking will stunt my growth, that crossing my eyes will permanently make me cross-eyed,  that if I go outside with wet hair I would catch a cold,  that if I sneezed with my eyes open they would fall out, that if I swallowed chewing gum it would stay in my stomach forever, that watching too much TV would make me blind and my favorite...that my mom and dad were just wrestling on the bed.

After everyone at the dinner table stopped laughing, I asked my two children if they could remember anything I told them that wasn’t factually correct.  They both answered simultaneously, We’ll get back to you.

About a week later I received an email from my daughter Lauren. Dear dad, it read, "Here are my top ten lies you told me told me when I was growing up:

10. FM radios are not available in Dodge Rams and Mazdas.  Apparently because child support was so expensive you could only afford AM.  I listened to sports talk most of my childhood until one day when I realized the oldies station that we listened to was on FM. Nicely played Dad.

9. Every song that comes on the radio mentions my name.  I knew you named me after Lauren Bacall but I never realized how popular she was until we would get in the car and you would sing along with every single song that came on the radio.   If any song had a girl’s name in it you replaced it with Lauren instead of the real name in the song.  Imagine the Beach Boys singing Barbara Ann and all I heard was Laur-laur-laur-laur-a-ren.

.8. Don’t bring drinks to bed.  You told me that when you were a child you would sneak soda and comic books into bed at night.  One night (as the story goes) you spilled the soda and fell asleep.   When you woke up, your mom thought you peed in the bed and rushed you to the doctor’s office to undergo a series of painful tests.  I never thought to ask myself why my grandmother didn’t notice that the pee smelled like Coca Cola and the stain was a dark shade of brown.  Also, would a doctor really do all kinds of testing on a child that had one pee accident? Nonetheless, I never once took a drink to bed.

7. You are supposed to eat the peanut shells. Even though you lived an hour away from my mom’s house, you would always bring me a snack every time you picked me up; usually either red pistachios (who eats those?) or peanuts in their shell.  When I would ask you what I was supposed to do with the shell you acted like I was insane for not knowing the obvious answer:  You eat them!   And so I did as you said and popped an entire peanut in my mouth, chewed it up and swallowed.  I still remember it tasting like crunchy dirt and almost vomiting. When I looked over to you, you were chewing your peanut avec shell and said to me Mmmm, pretty good, right?  I couldn’t bear to swallow so I rolled down the window, spit it out and then incessantly wiped my tongue with my shirt.  You’re disgusting! you yelled. You better not complain that you’re hungry before dinner.

6. Duck sauce is made from squeezing a duck over a pot.  It all started with an innocent question about what the orange stuff on the table was at a Chinese restaurant. You were a self proclaimed expert on everything and so you described to me precisely how it was made.  I still remember you rambling on about squeezing a live duck over a pot until the orange gel-like stuff oozed out of its body.  My little brother Colin and I were horrified every time you told the story.  We just pictured mean old Chinese men squeezing poor innocent little ducks over pots of boiling water.  You continued to tell the How to make Chinese duck sauce story every time we went out for Chinese.  Colin is twenty nine years old and he still tears up when he hears the story.   Neither of us has ever tried the orange stuff.

5. Kinko’s is an important part of your business and you quit smoking.  This goes under one category because after the Marlboro man got a warning from the surgeon general you promised that you would quit smoking cold turkey.   At the same time of your pledge you would start going to Kinko’s four to five times a day to make copies of important papers.  I always wondered what you were doing with so many copies of whatever you were copying and why you couldn’t just make one trip a day? Turned out that Kinko’s = Nicotine fix.

4. You would always take a bullet for your children.  If I ever got cranky or whined more than usual on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon between 1pm and 4pm you would tell me that I was very annoying and that it must be your fault for not being a good dad.   You would then tell me that instead of punishing me, you would take a time out and go to your room.  You would then go to your bedroom and close the door before reminding me that because you were being punished I couldn’t bother you.  As I look back I’ve now come to realize that your punishment coincidentally always happened when either Penn State or the Miami Dolphins were playing a game on TV.

3. When you can’t find a tissue, it’s okay to use a leaf, even if it’s a fake one.  We are a family of allergies; always sniffling, sneezing and itching especially during ragweed season.  You sneeze a lot and especially loudly and messy.  On one occasion when we were shopping in a mall you sneezed so loud that it seemed like everyone turned around to see where the sound was coming from.  As your nose began to run you grabbed an artificial leaf off a decorative plant in the walkway and used it to wipe and blow your nose.  Why are you running away you yelled making sure everyone knew I was your kid.  You later explained to me (way before the Green revolution) that using leaves whenever possible was saving trees. Everyone does it in Europe, you explained.

2. Girls who don’t wear ponytails can’t be trusted.  You always claimed that your first kiss wasn’t until your freshman year at Penn State when you were only five feet tall and drank the special water before you grew a foot.  You told me that when you were making out with this girl with long hair that came down to her waist, you put your hands on the sides of her head and your left hand slid right past where her ear should have been.  Traumatized, you lost your balance and fell to the ground. When you looked up and realized that the girl was missing an ear at which time you ran away and swore to yourself that you would never kiss a girl who didn’t have a ponytail.

––––––––

1. You sang to Elton John and got really great discounts at all the Ritz Carlton hotels. 

You told me and everyone else on the planet that when you were at a trade show in Atlanta you stayed at some hotel outside the city.   You convincingly recited your story that one night Elton John showed up to celebrate his secretary’s birthday and sat down right next to you in the lounge.  After a few drinks you jumped up on the table and sang Stray Cat Strut to everyone in the bar.   When you finished singing, you looked down to Elton and said to him Don’t you dare ask me for my autograph.  After everyone in the entire bar applauded, you jumped down from the table back to your seat.  You then went on to tell me that the CEO from the Ritz Carlton hotels was sitting next to you and told you that he was so impressed by what you did that he offered you a deal to stay at his hotels wherever you traveled.   I’m thinking this might be true because we always stayed at a Ritz Carlton hotel and since you always look for a bargain....maybe?

Lauren concluded the letter by telling me that this list was just her top ten. What I find amazing about Lauren’s archive is that I never thought she would remember all these lies and that they actually had an effect on her.

Colin just emailed me that he was sending over his list.  I can not imagine why both my children will not forget all the stupid things that I said or did.  I have.

Hot Sauce 

My daughter Lauren sucked her thumb from the moment she was born and continued until she started first grade.  Her mother and I tried everything to make her stop. Promises of toys, taking her to the circus and every parental bribe imaginable was to no avail.  It didn’t even matter to her that all the kids in her class made fun of her; she just kept on sucking her thumb.

Being the creative genius that I am, I refused to give up and began to conjure up plans to get her to discontinue this embarrassing habit.  When I wrapped her thumb up in band-aids, she chewed right through them.  When I tied a rubber band around her thumb and index finger, she just sucked both fingers.  When I made her wear a glove, she chewed through the fabric on the tip of the thumb.  When I dipped her thumb in salt before she went to bed, she called the dog in to lick it all off then started sucking again without washing off her thumb....yuck!

Having run out of ideas I decided to seek help elsewhere.   First I went to my mom who informed that I too was thumb sucker until I was six years old.  She also informed me that my sister sucked her index finger and middle finger until she was an adult (I think there’s some other issues involved in this one.)   When I asked her what she did to make me stop this habit she told me that she scared me with all kinds of threats.  She told me my thumb was going to fall off, that the wrinkles on my thumb from sucking were shriveling my thumb until there was just going to be a bone exposed and that the saliva from my mouth was going to turn to acid and disintegrate my thumb.  I realize this may sound pretty appalling but kudos to my mom for ingenuity.

Next I asked my dad, but when I approached him with my quandary he did not have a clue that I ever sucked my thumb.   My wife’s mother told me not to worry.  She’ll just stop when she’s ready to stop she declared.  My doctor told me to just keep trying and eventually she’ll stop.   When I went to the library to try and find a solution the librarian laughed at my question I posed to her and did not have a clue where I could look to find an answer. 

And then it hit me.  I woke up at 3am with the perfect, no chance-to-fail solution (I’ve always found it amazing that my best ideas have always come to me when I’m asleep.)  The next day I told my darling six year old little girl to come to the kitchen before she went to bed.

Lauren walked into the kitchen sucking her thumb and looking up to me with her sleepy eyes.  I told her that I found a cure for sucking her thumb.  I opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of hot sauce and showed her the bottle.  I told her that the small printed warning on the bottle read to be careful not to put any sauce on any finger and then put it in your mouth or it would burn your tongue off.  She looked stunned as I opened the bottle and pretended to pour a few drops onto her thumb.  Lauren reminded me that I also told her that the red stuff was poisonous but I don’t remember telling her that (I’m guessing she was right).

The next morning Lauren came running into my bedroom screaming Daddy!  She had a giant smile on her face as she jumped on my bed, stood up in front of me and exclaimed that she didn’t suck her thumb all night long!