Fadder's day...ha-toy-a-toy-tee-toy!

(Photo removed, sorry)
Um, the title was supposed to be me doing an Irish accent. This is my family, sans the three girls, or as we refer to them: The family pride (as apposed to the "family shame"). So, you have my big bother (not a typo) Mickey the Mexican, moms, pops, and me, the li'l sh*t. This was taken back in the late '90s. My dad still looks older than Yoda, but now sports an awesome 'stache. My mom still looks way too young for her age and my brother (Los Zapato) is getting closer to his life-long dream of becoming a sumo star in Japan. I haven't wore my hair in drapes in a long time and I believe I just shaved off my soul patch in order to look halfway decent for this picture.

See, here's the deal: my family is close, but, then again, not. I don't have many pictures of me and my pops. We all depend on each other for various reasons and the struggles over the years of dealing with each other have put both of us in a relationship of "Are you alright? Ok, then, quit yer bitching!" We aren't clamoring to be side by side so we can get documented proof of our closeness, but don't ever doubt the love. See, you just have to substitute "I'm not yelling" and "I'm not angry" with " I love you daddy" and you get "us".

The honest truth is that my dad has been the best dad he could be given all of the health and psychological challenges he's faced for about thirty years. I am amazed at how he stuck with it through all of the crap. A lot of people doubted the trials he went through. I remember the last time he worked, around '85, that was a real blow to me. I used to think that he didn't want to work. I used to believe the other grown ups who used to talk to me about him, when they'd suggest that he was just being lazy. They thought that severe depression, panic attacks, and anxiety were either the cause of sin or just fabricated maladies--like he could just repent or snap out of it. I remember a respected man in our community coming into our home and tearing my father to pieces in front of the whole family, humiliating him, basically telling him that "Everybody gets depressed, Milt. Snap out of it!" My dad refused to let all of this do him in.

Today, dad's body may not be getting better, but over the years of adjusting certain medications, he has been able to live a more normal life. I don't know what life would have been like if he were able to have been healthy and working, but that is not the life I got to have. What I do have is my father, of whom I've learned to be proud of. It is too early to tell how all of these experiences and my relationship with my dad will benefit me in my life, but I know for a fact that my humor and sensibilities were forged from them. I love you pops!

The deadly power of imagination: Accompanied by the song "Yellow Submarine" by The Beatles

"In the town where I was born,"
Phoenix: yeah, it was hot. Kind of like what Matthew Broderick's character, Eugene, in "Biloxi Blues" complained during basic training when he uttered, "It's hot. Damn hot. Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this heat!" Good thing there were plenty of pools to swim in. Hey, this was how you picked your best friend if your family didn't have a pool.

"Lived a man who sailed to sea,
And he told us of his life,
In the land of submarines,"

My best friend Jason and I were always coming up with strange games to play in the pool. One game involved live crawdads captured from the irrigation canal and unleashing his mammoth German Shepard into the pool where we would proceed to watch "Schultzie" swim to and fro, catching these little creatures in his snapping jaws. Cruelties to critters aside, we had a dream...a dream of sailing the ocean beneath the pecan trees in Jason's back yard. An episode of "Gilligan's Island", and the featured song, fueled our imaginations of what was above and below the chlorinated depths we sought to conquer.

"So we sailed up to the sun,
Till we found a sea of green,
And we lived beneath the waves,
In our yellow submarine,"

Boxes are like a world unto themselves when you're a child, so full of possibilities. In our case, we came up with a solution for a problem we had faced: what to build our submarine with. Boxes, loads and loads of boxes left over from his oldest sister moving in after she got divorced. Honestly, I don't know what we were thinking. It seemed so simple, so right. We were going to tape together a bunch of boxes, get inside, and by some kind of magic, motor about his pool. We even incorporated a periscope into our cardboard submarine's design. Hello, cardboard tubes anyone?

"And our friends are all aboard,
Many more of them live next door,
And the band begins to play."

There was a kid that we sometimes let hang around us: Kenny. We tolerated him a bit, but we really wanted to keep our cardboard "skunk works" away from his know-it-all "I'm older than you" crap. I was five, so was Jason; Kenny, being about a full year ahead of us, kind of put him in a position of unwelcome authority. Oh yeah, he'd give in long enough for us to let him join in a given activity, but then invariably would take over and start lording over us. Tips for kids: If you aren't considered cool amongst your own peer group, find some younger kids and start bossing them around--they love that sort of thing! Yeah, we didn't want this project fall into the enemies hands.

"As we live a life of ease,
Everyone of us is all we need (is all we need)
Sky of blue (sky of blue) and sea of green (sea of green)
In our yellow (in our yellow) submarine (submarine. Blaaaha)"

Jason and I had the vessel ready to go. We didn't even use duct tape. The best I can recall we poked holes around the boxes and joined them together with bits of string. I'm predicting that in fifty years all sea going vessels will be using this method of construction. It has been my dream to be mentioned in the same breath as Da Vinci and the Wright Brothers. I guess I will have to settle for Michael J. Fox and Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver to you). Technically, we would not have been the first to have sailed in a submarine, but we certainly would have been the first to do it using cardboard boxes.

We dragged the vessel out to the edge of the pool, no christening or ceremony. I think one of us cried because a bee started chasing us. Just as we were about to take our maiden voyage in this death trap, Kenny spied us through the slats in the fence, shouting, "I'm telling your mom. You guys are gonna get drowndeded!" Yeah, we were totally busted. Jason's mom got the news from Mr. Killjoy and put an end to our hopes and dreams of becoming Captain and "Super-Duper" Captain Nemos. The lecture we got from his mom actually made sense to us, enough so that we finally understood why what we had planned on doing would have been dangerous. Not being a complete mean old hag, Jason's mom told us that we could play with the "submarine" indoors. She even fixed us grilled cheese sandwiches. The only real downer was having to deal with Kenny's sense of smug self satisfaction, knowing that he was right. It all worked out. We didn't let him in the submarine.

All together now!

"We all live in a yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine,
We all live in a yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine."

This experience did not deter Jason and I from playing "Three men in a tub" (sans a third man) using an empty kiddie pool as a raft. His big brother had to rescue us from drowning then. Ah, good times!