Socially Unacceptable

“This reminds me of an old joke I once heard.”  He began.

A few months ago, my father was sitting across from me at a restaurant, fingering the parsley some uninventive chef tossed atop of his chicken and pushing it aside.  Mom was in the restroom. 

“What’s the difference between parsley and a pussy?” He asked.

I smile and shake my head.  “What?”

“Nobody eats parsley.”

Mom’s temporary absence always seems to unleash dad’s most boorish behavior.  It’s as if whenever she leaves the room, she charitably presses a thorny hidden button de crude so dad can become the backcountry hick he was meant to be.  Like maybe she feels that inevitable Catholic guilt for transforming him into the sophisticated professional he always pretends to be in mixed company when she knows that, behind closed, bolted, and barricaded doors, he’s really just a lout.  So she pushes that button when she knows she won’t be the one to witness my father as that coarse man she never would have married.

I discovered this transformation when I was small.  Once, when my suited and chivalrous father dropped the family off at a restaurant so he could park the car, I insisted on staying with him.  I was absolutely certain that the three minutes it took to park the car alone, walk across the parking lot alone, and join his family would result in suicidal loneliness and he would achieve the zenith of despair on his journey.  I couldn’t bear for anyone to experience such agonizing pain, so I was polite and gallant and sat there in the back seat while everyone else got to choose his dining seat first.

The instant the door slammed, dad farted.  Loudly. 

It must be said that dad’s farts are never silent and deadly.  They are always, with astonishing consistently, loud and putrid enough to make anyone in a mile-radius wonder what creature was laying dead nearby after being ripped apart by vultures with diarrhea spawned by a penchant for month-old meat.

“Dad!” I wailed, suddenly regretting my recent polite gallantry. 

“What?”  The tone in his voice was pure innocence.  As if I’d accused him of eating the last cookie and it was still sitting on the table before me.

“You farted!  You’re disgusting!”

“I didn’t fart.”  Indignation, this time.  “An elephant just ran under the car.  Didn’t you see that?”

I giggled.  Dad, in his helpless propensity to disgust, is hilarious. 

Thereafter, I always stayed behind when dad parked the car.  Mom thought it was cute.  “Aw,” she’d say, “she doesn’t want you to be lonely!”  I still score points today for that behavior from thirty years ago.  Meanwhile, I got to giggle and laugh at dad’s most unsightly, inappropriate, and discrete behavior.

Dad and I regularly and privately exchange the most bizarre and vulgar jokes, like Bunny Suicides, sharing them with nobody else in the family because they might be offended and certainly wouldn’t appreciate their emailboxes being cluttered with such morbid foulness.

The other day, I used some vulgarity like fuck or shit or ass or some combination thereof while talking to both of my parents on the phone.  Dad knows how much this offends mom, so he chivalrously tried to put the kibosh on my endless obscenities.

“Please don’t use that language.  Neither of us appreciates it.  It’s unnecessary, vulgar, and not ladylike.”  He paused, then added, “I have no idea how you got so crude!”