Bad Luigi!

It's official. I've become my father. Oh, how I wish that were a typo. Every woman I know has children, hits their 30's and one day finds themselves saying things like, "Stop running with scissors!" or " Just wait 'til your father gets home!" or "Get your tongue out of that light socket!" And then they realize that it's happened, they have become their mother.

Not me. Every year I get closer and closer to the bane of my teenage existence, my father.

My brother and I used to joke about it. We would be having one of our family dinners and off Dad would go. We knew it was coming because he would drop his dish towel (he hates paper napkins) and rest his elbows on the table. Brace yourself! "You aught not be out at that time of night anyway. Nothing good ever happens after midnight." Brad would push the imaginary tape recorder at the edge of the table. Today's sermon: Number 52! It really would have saved him alot of breath if he had just recorded them all and spun it on the Press and Preach. He could have gone right on eating his salmon croquettes and white bread with butter, while we were still getting the benefit of his life lessons.

And now, it gets more and more frequent that I hear myself saying something and I'm immediately transported back to 3321 Brookshire and his voice is in my head. Only it was my voice coming out of my head at my own daughters.

This latest deja vu experience was Sunday. The girls had seen some dogs for adoption at the Corsicana Art Festival. Before you think that's strange, I should tell you that we adopted our Chihuahua, Mario, from the Ennis Polka Festival five years ago. Anyway, they saw some dogs and wanted to know if we could get a second dog for Christmas this year. I thought they wanted a Wii, but what do I know? Sure, they're small, let's take two. And then they said, "Yeah, and we'll name it Luigi, get it? Mario and Luigi!!"

And now I am sucked into the vortex of my past. 35 years ago, we adopted a poodle when we were still in North Carolina. We must have gone to a breeder, because they all had ridiculous French names. Ours was Pierre. Before we could even get him home we had changed his name to Pete with this pronouncement from my dad: "I'm not going to go running down the street, yelling 'Pierre! Pierre!' after some dumb dog!" At the time, I thought that was actually a great visual. How do you say Pierre with an Oklahoman accent?

But now it's my turn. I imagine myself in traditional Italian peasant dress running down the street, yelling in my best Godfather accent: "Luigi! Luigi!! Come back! I make-a you your favorite meatballs!" no, no way. I am not running down the street yelling 'Luigi' after some dumb dog.

My girls think this is hilarious.