Domestic Duels with Death-traps

I love dad. No seriously. I LOVE dad. Not only does he keep me sane, he also frustrates me to the point that increased the rate of our monthly pillow fights from an average of 2 to almost 5. Lemme tell you why.

It all started with the duck dance. Dad was waltzing around the dining room table doing his victory dance, which involved him revolving around the dining room table, drawing on his cigarette as he shook his butt at me in sheer defiance, punching his hands into the air cha-cha style at intervals with every butt cycle as he sang encouragements to himself into thin air. Why you may ask?

He’d upgraded the PC to windows 7, 64-bit, and for some reason, Adobe Flash Player had not yet released a compatible version with it, so all the YouTube videos or online songs wouldn’t play. I’d dismissed it with “Windows 7 sucks, my laptop’s better. HA!”

You see, we’re kind of competitive.

So I glance his way to see what he’s so happy about, and he keeps glancing at the playing YouTube video of a dude in a tux talking about rubber duckies, and glancing back at me sticking out his tongue then doing another cycle of the duck dance.

I mentioned the competitive bit now didn’t I?

“What? You can’t believe me?” – He says at my figure, walking up to PC almost magnetically. “Windows 7 sucks eh? Lemme see you make it work”, he said defiantly as he closed the browser, leant against the wall with his cigarette, looking on.

I click on internet explorer, type in YouTube with a more than usual dexterity on the keyboard glancing his way as he snickers at my jovial methods of trying to impress him.

It doesn’t work.

So, as he takes another turn around the dining room table, doing a cartoonish impersonation of my dexterous typing in the air and squeaky voice as I say windows 7 sucks, waiting for me to ask him how he did it. And so I did.

“When adobe flash player doesn’t play with 64-bit, what’s the first thing you think of?” – he says.

“Playing it in 32-bit?”

“Exactly. And windows 7 comes with two version of internet explorer, one is 64-bit and the other is?” – he relishes.

I pout. “Very funny…”

“So you can crack Photoshop and save me $300 something but you can’t play a YouTube video?” – he says and draws a deep breath of his cigarette, smiling as he does, hardly puckering to exhale it from the urge to laugh at me.

“Show me what you’re made of” He says as he draws a big cardboard box that was sitting in the entrance hallway. “That’s a vegetable cabinet, almost as tall as you *he snickers*, put it together”. He lets his voice trail into space as he pulls out the dismantled plastic pieces. He looks at me, smiling that oh so provoking grin at me as he says “And no jackhammer…” He places the catalogue on the floor for me, grabs his lunch from the dining room table to the couch to get a better visual of me sitting in the middle of the rubble.

“What if I can’t do it? Do I scratch out engineering from my future aspirations?”

“No hunnie, you scratch out ‘college’ from your future aspirations.”

I gulped and grabbed the manual, a dog-eared one paper with instructions on it.

“But dad it’s not in English”

“I should have taken the manual away then…Since it’s so useless” – he reaches for it.

“NO, “ I snatch it. “It’s ok.”

‘This is just Lego blown out of proportions’ – I think to myself soothingly.

15 minutes into it.

“WHERE THE FUCK IS THE JACKHAMMER?” – I scream as I grab a leg that conjoins the two compartments and use it as a pseudo hammer.

“What the hell are you dooooooooiiiing!? This is PLASTIC! You don’t ..” I cut him midsentence.

“Go away I'll figure this out.” – I had no idea how I was going to figure it out but I was not taking his help.

I’d managed to put the helix together, standing up now to reach, and got to the part where you have to put in the wheels. After a couple of trials with the pseudo jackhammer, he interjects “Are you sure that last shelf is on right?”

I pause, not looking his way, and for the first time, even though I was looking at the shelf the whole time, I see that it’s on upside down. I flip it.

“Ehmmmmm” – He teases me.

After a lot of banging, the wheels were in, now for the compartments, I had to fix on the door with the knob on to the three-sided cube and push it through the rail into the helix. I kept staring at them, figuring out where all the things slide in, projections and hollows, and managed to figure it out on my own, he helped to fix it since apparently I wasn’t strong or thorough enough to make it bullet-proof because there was an insect in it. “It’s a friggin ant hunnie!" – He said as he cleaned it out. I didn’t let him touch the rest though.

I slide in the compartments, stand up in pride and head off to the bathroom to wash my hands, and, to tell you the truth, to do my own version of the victory duck dance as I walked away.

He stops me midway, singing out a “Where do you think you’re off to? You’re not done yet.”

I go through the whole process in my head, looking at my finished work standing so proudly in the middle of the smithereens of paper, manual and cardboard box.

“Are the compartments in right?” – He ventures, taking a mouthful of lunch, chewing it ooh so slowly.

“Yes!” I say confidently. “Well, yes I believe they are” My confidence dwindles. “Or aren’t they?” I say pulling them out.

From the placement of the sole sliding wheels on the other side, I logically conclude what I’d done wrong.

I’d slid them in backwards…

“So you can crack Photoshop but you can’t put together a vegetable cabinet. Interesting”

“Oh come on gimme a break I did a good job! I did an EXCELLENT job!!!”

“No, just good. Not excellent. Good for a first time though”. He then goes to pinpoint where I went wrong, pulls out another cigarette and winks at me heading off to the bathroom.

God, I friggin love him.

However, If he didn’t have work in a couple of hours I would have shown him what I’m made of, in a good pillow fight.