Tales of Terror - I've become my dad

All kids go through a faze where they decide to never be like their parents. They make a heartfelt sworn promise over their Nintendo-consoles that they will never learn to appreciate mom-pants, prunes or Tom Petty. I used to be one of those kids, until today. It all suddenly dawned on me that I’ve become just like my father. That which was not meant to happen, has indeed happened, and the process of becoming like him has had quite a lot of time to sneak up on my sub consciousness. All at once I became aware of the similarities that had been increasing rapidly for months (NB: all sport haters are advised to leave the premises, this is painful to read).

1: After having poured myself a glass of milk from a milk carton, I simply FORGOT to put the milk carton back into the fridge.

For you this may be as normal as having your 27th- birthday party at a nude roller disco, but what you need to understand is that my dad is the kind of person who buys food, comes home and just puts the bags of food on the kitchen counter. He then leaves the kitchen to go watch some football or read the paper, twice, just in case he missed something, and these are activities that may take whole days to finish. Be it ice cream, milk, cheese or frozen meat, that food is dead and buried unless I just happen to stroll into the kitchen by accident (yeah right, we all know a woman only enters the kitchen for one thing, and she never leaves unsatisfied). One thing that he never forgets to put in the fridge though, is the BEER. Bless his manly heart. Ugh, ugh.

2: During the last football match with my local team SK Brann (don’t sit there looking stupid, look it up and love them), in which Brann naturally had the favour of the gods and brutally slaughtered their opponent, my two brothers, my dad and I were discussing the match. There’s nothing odd about that, you say, and no, there wasn’t, until I said something I shouldn’t, or shouldn’t have been able to say. Complaining about shitty defence players, I used the word “backroom”, a very footballey term in Norwegian, that just sort of popped out of my mouth. Now, to put things straight, I don’t know football terms, I merely watch and enjoy, I’m a woman for Christ’s sake! If I ever had anything to say about “backrooms”, I’d call them “the side of the football field where the keeper is”. So for something like this to have entered, or more like exited my mouth in front of such an audience, is almost on the verge of a scandal. All of a sudden I found myself at the centre of attention, and in my dad’s shady eyes I could see the spark of fatherly love begin to grow to new heights. This far surpassed any A I ever got on a test, any boyfriend I dumped because my dad didn’t like the way that boy pronounced Bob Dylan’s name and even that bottle of gin I got him for his birthday when everyone else got him socks, this was LOVE, the sporty kind.

I immediately had to leave the room, running to the bathroom to splash water on my face and cry in the shower to the sounds of German acid techno, over and over again I checked my reflection in the mirror to see if I could still recognise myself, and to some extent I did, when I turned slightly to one side and pouted my lips.

To understand my reaction to this, you need to know that for years and years and even more years (bloody hell, I’m not THAT old!), my dad has lavished tons of football facts, results and quotes on my brothers and me, and we all just sort of turned a blind ear and went on with our crayons or insect torture, thinking nothing of it. It was just sports, right?! I’ve always thought that my brothers and I were immune to this cruelty called “love of sports” and our dads constant “voice of God” from the corner of the room, until now. Now I realise we’re all fucked.

3: The other night I was casually typing away at my keyboard in some sort of brain dead inner monologue in front of my computer, when I all of a sudden had this shooting pain in my thigh. It was like an old grenade injury from the Vietnam war acting up on the nerves in my thigh, and whilst I was sitting there hugging my leg, and the faded memories of my fallen mates from the battle of Quangwhothefuckcares flashed before my eyes, it dawned on me once again that I had yet another dad-syndrome. The old war wounds from the time my dad was in the navy and there ALMOST (not really at all, just pretend) broke out a conflict between Norway and Russia when they discovered a secret Russian submarine in the Oslofjord and had to kindly escort it out of there (secretly hoping the Russians would at least leave behind some floaters of vodka). You know, that injury he got from standing on deck waiting for orders, staring at the calm sea, yes, exactly, that brutal one right there. Not to mention what he got from the Korean War, even though he was born in 1954.

Other times it’s his old top athlete-injuries that act up on him when he’s casually lounging in his TV-chair. Some of the classics are “the thigh pull”, “the ankle snap” and “the back pain”, which all just magically appear whenever there are dishes to be done. You just watch, next I’ll be blogging about my time in the Boa war.

4: Even though I’ve not been able to stand peanuts at all my entire life, lately they’ve started to taste heavenly to me. We’re talking about a kind of food that has been my dad’s life source and snack ration for 50 years. Any time of day, any occasion calls for a peanut or ten. In this house, peanuts are as healthy as vegetables and fish, and it can cure anything from a mild headache to AIDS.

5: A Thursday night when my dad and I were watching some meaningless program on TV, up popped a couple of teenagers to answer the reporters silly questions about material values or something. The teens were of the kind that you see hanging on a street corner with an S-shaped posture, saggy trousers, gigantic headphones, shrieking mobile phones on a leash and a coke bottle glued to their spotty lips (don’t ask me how lips can be spotty, too many bad memories), so naturally I couldn’t suppress a comment about what a waste of space those teens were, hearing their answers about how they couldn’t live without their i-pods and that their parents were dumb. I think it went something like “kids today, have they no shame?”, and in an instant I could feel my dads cold stare at me from the side. Ice filled my veins as I slowly turned my head to meet his gaze, there was that little smile at the corner of his mouth, and the love spark in his eyes again and there was no turning back. Sobbing, I broke down right there in the living room, realising that nothing says more about the loss of youthful spontaneity and old age than criticizing the younger generations.

Tomb, sweet tomb, here I come. I might as well join a football supporter club and learn to enjoy the fine cuisine of hot dogs and beer, and the literary genius that is the sports section of the newspaper. Bring in the clones, thank you and goodnight!