For once I’m not talking about myself.
I’d actually debated whether or not I was going to post this story. On the one hand, there’s the potential for completely humilating my father, whom I love in a public space viewed by literally tens of people.
On the other hand, it’s quite funny and it wasn’t my fault.
So Micah’s first birthday is (too) rapidly approaching and AM & I decided that in order to keep things simple, we’d actaully have her one year old photos done a week or so early. Off we went to Sears, where we had had our four month pictures done.
The last time we had Micah’s picture taken, we ended up devoting a large portion of our package to pictures that would go out to relatives, most notably our respective parents. However, I couldn’t remember what size photo we had standardized on. Maybe it was a 4×6 and some wallet size. Maybe it was a 5×7. So I decided to call around…just to make sure that frames could be reused should parental units choose to do so.
The first person I called was my mother.
“Hi Mom. We’re going to Micah’s one year photo appointment. What size picture do you want? What size did we get you last time?”
“Last time?”
“You know…Micah’s four month picture?”
“You never got me a four month picture. I know that your sister got a wallet size. I got the little picture book over the holidays. But neither I nor your grandparents got photos.”
“No mom, I swear we got you pictures. I thought we sent them up to you with dad and Nancy…”
“Well, I never got them…”
“Ok, well…I’ve gotta go. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
After a hurried conversation with AM, we both remember our intention to send out pictures. It was so vivid. We had had the pictures taken. Dad and Nancy visited us at some point in September. We had intended that they take the pictures with them as they were going to see my sister and my mother before we would and we didn’t want the pictures to get ruined by the mail.
I’d had good intentions go bad too often in my past to seek to blame my father. I’d be just like me to make this elaborate plan and then fail to enact it once the time came. It could be that I screwed up. It could be that I never actually gave the pictures to my father.
It could be my fault.
I tried to call my father twice that morning. Both times I went to voicemail. In the mean time, we’d spoken with AM’s mother, and she had given us the general guidelines on what she’d wanted based on the pictures that she had actually received last time.
Finally, after the photoshoot, I get a hold of my father.
“Your mother isn’t speaking to me.”
“What? Why?”
“Well, she called me a few moments ago, and she opened with: ‘Dan and AM are getting Micah’s pictures taken for her first birthday. And he said…’ She didn’t even have to finish the sentence. I knew what she was calling about.”
“So…we did give you the pictures?”
“Yup….and we never delivered them. In fact, I think they’ve probably gone back and forth between Georgia and New Jersey a number of times since then.”
Of course my mother tells a slightly different tale. Hers mostly matches up, but according to her my father started to catch onto the upcoming question the moment she mentioned the one year picture session and before she started in the ‘So Daniel tells me something interesting…’ routine.
Either way, I just about busted a gut. To make matters worse, this whole thing played out in front of my sister. And by now my grandparents know as well.
Yup. You’re screwed Dad. But at least it was really really funny.
Categories: Daily Life
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