Free I Still Have It. . . I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It by Rita Rudner Page A

aggressive with my child. Don’t you ever go near him again…or else.”
    “OK, now you’re threatening me. Now we have to go back into Gymboree and get counseling. Follow me.”
    We stomped back in, and I approached Philip, the Gymboree receptionist.
    “Philip, I don’t know what to do. I come to Gymboree, I wind up talking to O.J. He says I can’t ever touch his child again ‘or else.’”
    “That’s right,” said Psycho-Dad menacingly.
    “I didn’t touch your child. I don’t want to touch your child,” I told Psycho-Dad emphatically. “I want you to set boundaries for your child so I don’t have to get involved.”
    Sean, bless him, then chimed in supportively.
    “She’s right. He doesn’t set boundaries. He knocked Elise over on the stomping board today.”
    Another parent whom I didn’t know also offered up a negative experience.
    “I saw him throw a beanbag at another child. This guy just stood there and watched.”
    Three other Gymboree parents who had witnessed the puzzle and slide incidents sided with me.
    Psycho-Dad had his own opinion.
    “You’re all crazy. I want my money back. I’m not bringing my son to a place where people manhandle him.”
    Philip gave him his money back and we never saw Psycho-Dad again.
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I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
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Father Days
    B EING THE ONLY CHILD OF AN AGING PARENT comes with inevitable responsibility. I knew that one day my weekly phone call to Miami wouldn’t be sufficient and I would be welcoming my colorful father back into my daily life. The move actually came at my suggestion. With my father’s eyesight failing and his driver’s license still valid, both my husband and I felt it was time to shift my elderly relative and his limited wardrobe to Las Vegas.
    I anticipated an automatic no from my father followed by many hours of coaxing to facilitate this major life change. To my surprise, my dad jumped at the suggestion.
    “I’ll be there next week,” he said enthusiastically.
    “Well, first let’s get all of our ducks in a row,” I replied. “You have to sell your house and we have to rent you a place in Vegas.”
    He saw the sense in this. “OK, I’ll be there in two weeks.”
    The real estate market was in a good mood and the old house that I grew up in sold within a month. I had been six years old when we first moved into the brand-new house, and now, forty years later, it was time for the Rudner clan to officially leave the building. Our house had gone from being the best house in a bad neighborhood to the worst one in a good neighborhood. At this point my father’s castle wasn’t as much a tear-down as it was a blow-down. I don’t know who bought his house, but unless it was a family of termites, I apologize.
    My father had never married again after the death of my stepmother and had lived alone for the last twenty-five years. Even the sanest person allowed to live alone for a quarter of a century will develop a few idiosyncrasies, and my dad was never one to be called sane.
    The first clue as to how strange he had become were the boxes that arrived for us to unpack a few weeks before his arrival.
    “Martin,” I inquired of my husband as I scrutinized the contents of the package, “why is my father mailing cans of pineapple juice?”
    “I don’t know,” Martin replied, staring into his opened box. “I’ve got baked beans in here.”
    Box after box was stuffed with canned juices and beans. Dirty shirts and socks were intermittently wedged between them to keep them secure.
    “Look at the date on this V-8 juice,” I exclaimed. “January sixth, 1992. He’s drinking ten-year-old tomato juice.”
    My husband looked at the date on the can he was holding. “That goes nicely with a twelve-year-old can of baked beans.”
    Not every box was filled with canned goods. One package contained rusty tools and ten boxes of freezer wrap. Another