I Need a New Father

I’m 26 and so I’m pretty sure I’m too old to be adopted, but I don’t care. I need a new father. Even if it’s just a nominal title that someone assumes. The reason is simple: I don’t think my father is a sane man. Sorry, Abba, but someone has to say it. This epiphany came to me earlier this week. It was Sunday night and I had just gotten home from a wedding. I left early, meaning I got no dessert. I love dessert. Missing it is not something I enjoy, or do very often. Making this even more painful was the site of a table full of those clear plastic wraps that go around warm cookies right outside the wedding hall’s ballroom that you take on your way home. My problem, though, was that I left before the cookies were put into the bags, which is pretty much the equivalent of seeing a turkey in the oven on Thanksgiving day but then leaving before it’s brought out. This, as you can imagine, led to a crazy craving. I told this to my dad when I got home that night. “I don’t really like warm chocolate chip cookies,” he said. After that he informed me that he also hated puppies, America, Rock and Roll, football, cold beer on a warm summer night, sunshine, Batman, the Fast and the Furious movies, Pat Sajak, ice cream, comfortable beds and Disney World. OK, none of that really happened. But the part about warm chocolate chip cookies did. I had to know more. How could someone not love something so savory and delicious? “They’re too rich for me,” he said. ” They make me nauseous sometimes.” Upon realizing that additional questioning would only further shatter the positive image that I had of my father, I decided to cease with the follow-ups. Enough damage had been done. The man who taught me how to throw a baseball, and how to drive, and how to complain about New York sports team, was no longer a man I could look up to or respect, which is why I need a new father. Anyone up for the gig? Seriously, though: what kind of man doesn’t like warm chocolate chip cookies?! How is that even possible?