Pajiba

I could probably write a book length work of non-fiction that people would be convinced is fiction based on embarrassing things my father has done. I'm in a Disney mood from my vacation, so let's go to one of the all time classics.

My family--mother, father, brother--and I are visiting Disney World. We're going to that hip new Animal Kingdom theme park. My father is in a bad mood to start the day because the commissary at the budget Disney hotel had both coffee machines out of order. He's walking along through a park in 90+ degree weather, sun beating straight down on him, grumbling "I need coffee." We all brush it aside and force him onto Dinosaur, which back then was the only decent ride in the park. The line is already an hour long and my father is getting cranky. The "I need coffee" grumble is now an audible chant. I calmly tell him to "calm the fuck down" and watch as he goes into a tirade about how I'm out to get him, hate him, and don't want him happy. Again, the family ignores it; this happens weekly, in person or on the phone. According to him, I ruined every major holiday for the first 17 years of my life, including all birthdays and religious festivals. But I digress.

We get to the front of the line and out of nowhere he just starts screaming he needs coffee. He walks through the ride vehicle to the exit screaming "I need coffee." We're now dealing with an EDP: emotionally disturbed person. The family all agrees to ignore him and go on the ride.

We then track him down to a coffee hut located a few minutes from the ride. He's crying. "Carol," he says, "the coffee's too hot." Why he ordered hot coffee in 90+ degree heat, we'll never know. What we do know is what it's like to be the newest attraction in Animal Kingdom.

Did I ever tell you guys about the time my Dad got crabs? No? WELL!
We used to go to a rural area in Mexico over Christmas vacation every year to visit the motor-home snow bird grandparents. There was good skin diving to be had at a small Island a mile offshore. Here we are, dad and me (all of 8 years old probably) snorkeling in the reefs around the island. We kept seeing these great seashells on the bottom, nice big ones that looked like good take-home souvenirs. So Dad swooped down to the bottom and loaded up with 1/2 dozen or so of these conch-like shells. He had no way to carry them, so he industriously stuffed them down his swim trunks. So we are swimming along, looking at moray eels and tropical fish, anemones, urchins, etc, and suddenly dad starts convulsing and thrashing like he is being electrocuted. He then proceeds to reach down his shorts and begin extracting the shells POST HASTE, as they had suddenly sprouted CLAWS. That's right: He had stuffed a load of large Hermit Crabs down his pants and they were understandably agitated at finding themselves nestled up against his wedding tackle. Not Amused. There was pinching. I will never forget floating there in 15' of water watching my dad do battle with crabs on his willy.
Good times.
Moral: Be careful what you let in your pants. Even if it is in a pretty package, it might have crabs.
Words to live by.

I remember back in the 80's, in the U.K., coming home to smoke billowing out of our kitchen window. I walk in and it turns out my old man had tried to grill these little tomato and cheese pizzas on both sides...

Hey, sorry to interrupt but what's with the new spam-bot that wants us to buy fashionbags and talks to us by stealing the voices of fellow Pajibans?
People, I'm worried...

One summer, my mother decided she wanted fruit trees. So my family planted fruit trees, which the beavers in the pond came out and ate. They planted more fruit trees, further from the pond, which the beavers also came out and ate. Then the beavers ate a corner of my parents' deck, causing it to collapse. That was the final straw, and my father swore to eliminate the beaver menace.

There were six beavers. The first two were eliminated rather quickly via semi-legal hunting. The next two were goners when my father rowed out to the middle of the lake and burned their lodge down. The remaining two rebuilt the lodge. He burned it down again.

I, meanwhile, would come home for weekends from college and find my father, face fully painted and in his old military gear, hiding behind a tree, trying to snipe a beaver. The beavers would slap their tails on the water, taunting my father, and he would shout horrible things at them. The fifth beaver was eventually successfully sniped. Due to the only semi-legality of this whole business, my father would load up the beaver corpses in the hyundai and take them to various parts of the rural highways near our home, tossing them in front of on-coming semis to hide the evidence.

The last beaver snuck up to our home in the dead of night and ate the new deck. It, too, collapsed.

Finally, I came home one weekend to be greeted by my mother running up to the car telling me to in no circumstances let the dogs out of the yard. Curious, I wandered down to the lake, where I discovered the beaver trails had been covered with rubber tarps.

Over the tarps? Live wires. The last beaver fried to death soon after.

OK, my friend Kathy was spending the night so I guess we were around 12. It was Saturday morning and my mom was up but my dad was sleeping in. We were trying to keep quiet, watching cartoons and Schoolhouse Rock ("We the people, in order to form a more perfect union...") and mom was making some breakfast when all of a sudden smoke starts billowing into the living room from the water heater closet. Kathy and I start yelling, and my mom comes flying in from the kitchen and she yells for my dad and he comes running out of the bedroom to see what the hell is going on and he? Is stark naked. Completely buck naked. And at attention. And Kathy? Is standing right in front of him. My dad froze, mid-run, for about three seconds (which is a really looooong time in dong years), yelled "Shit!," and then did a perfect about-face and ran back to the bedroom.

After a few seconds of shocked silence and sideways glances, my mom, Kathy, and I lost it even though smoke is still coming out of the closet. My dad came back out in a few minutes, wearing shorts, and put the fire out while we continued to laugh.

Luckily, Kathy's parents had a great sense of humor and found it just as amusing as we did. My dad, however, didn't find it "so goddamned funny."

Oh, you mean besides my dad walking around in nothing but his tighty whities in front of the bay windows of our house every morning when the neighborhood bus stop was right across the street?

Let's see... Only a million excruciating things come to mind, but for some reason the first thing I thought of was when I was applying to art schools, and we were in the waiting area of one school to meet with someone to review my portfolio/application/etc. We were completely alone in the completely silent room save for the female student with a shaved head (it was 1995) who was working behind the front desk as a receptionist or whatever. So he leans over and completely non-discreetly "whispers" into my ear, thinking he was obviously the most witty human being on the planet earth: "She would be pretty ... If she had HAIR."

Since I've had two dad's for reasons I've stated before I'll give you a couple of stories.

Dad number one was always hurting himself. Now one would assume that he's clutzy but that is not the case. When it came to doing things he favoured efficency over safety. One day, he's trimming the hedge with electric trimmers. He's using a ladder and dutifully moving down the row trimming the top. Once he comes to the portion of the hedge that is in the garden, he decides that he no longer needs the ladder as the overturned canoe will suffice. I wasn't home at the time but I followed the trail of blood up into my parent's bedroom where I'm told he stated to my mother, "I think I need to go to the hospital" before promptly passing out. The scary thing was that he was a scuba diver (there's another story) and did salvage dives so we were always terrified that one day we would get The Call because he got himself in trouble.

As for dad #2, one day he comes home after my friends and I have had a lunchtime session of hot knives. Dude totally freaks out, hollering about the police finding out and all that shit. Grounds me, tells me I'm not allowed to hang out with those kids, yada, yada yada. Four years later I find out that he's a regular smoker as he's passing that shit on our way to a movie.

Saint Patrick's Day of 2006, my family and I were in Buenos Aires visiting family friends who live there, and we found the one Irish pub in the city, and my dad proceeded to drain the place of all of its Jameson. He was so drunk that my mom and I had to hold his hands the whole way back to the house so that he wouldn't trip and fall on his face. Even sober, my dad likes to sing and dance in public, so this particular day it was super pronounced. But whatever, he's the best and everyone loves him.

MyySharona where do you live? Because I have been directed to look out for the "giant fucking cross on a roof" many times while driving to friends houses.
Embarrassing parent stories. When I was about 11 or so my dad was supposed to pick me up from some middle school dance. He shows up, about 30 minutes early and comes in looking for me, in his jogging gear. This was the mid nineties so naturally that meant fluorescent colored short shorts, and a ratty t-shirt, covered in sweat. Also he was sporting (and still does actually) a mustache that belongs on Tom Selleck.
I haven't forgiven him for it yet.

My cross house was in St. Louis, bummer. Though I do go to school in New Orleans now.

I'm at Tulane

Embarrassing is what my daddy does folks. Seriously. This is the man that without fail wakes everyone up on weekends despite the fact we may have guests over with realistic barnyard noises and demands it's time to milk the cows, slop the pigs and get the eggs. He's the guy who ran through the neighborhood (back when we lived in a subdivision instead of east-jesus-nowhere) in nothing but tighty whities and a pair of socks at five thirty AM in the early hours of an ice storm after he'd accidentally let the cat out trying to bring in the paper, the cry of 'goddamn sonovabitch' ringing down the block as he chased after my beloved Captain Hook.

Lately, now that he's out of the subdivision and back out in the boonies which he loves so dearly, he's taken to defending his delightfully stupid dogs from the insanely large snapping turtles in the pond that lies in the sinkhole off the house's suspended porch. The dogs, both sweet and adorable of about 15 pounds each and the brains of a dirt clod between them, have decided in the two summers since Magpie and Maxine have come to live at our house, that they just love to go swimming. And as cute as they look coming back up to the house, green to their little ears from the algae in the pond, the pond is home to a host of aggressive snapping turtles that repeatedly grow over two feet long and can weigh more than twice what the dogs do. Understandably, Daddy values the dogs far more than the turtles.

His solution to the Turtle Problem comes in two ongoing phases, but essentially involve two basic principles- his best shot gun and a book about WW2 fighter planes to pass the time as he waits for the little bastards to pop their heads out of the water.

Phase One is the everyday phase. Daddy comes home from work, moos at the cows in the pasture by the lane, swears at the cats, puts on a pair of shorts and a ratty tee-shirt that shames my step-mother and camps out in a lawn chair on the suspended deck with his shotgun and his book, until the turtles come up to enjoy the late afternoon sun and he can pick them off.

Phase Two is reserved for weekends and often when we've got my uncles or my step-mom's quilting ladies over, in which case Daddy takes his gun and his book and sometimes a Mountain Dew and a bologna sandwich out in the little tin rowboat and sits out waiting to catch them up close. He saves this method for company because when he bags one, he can show off the kill and offer the guest the shell. The quilting ladies giggle and think this is charming while my uncles actually take the shells.

Yep, my dad's pretty much made of awesome. (:

My old man is a terrible dresser. TERRIBLE. The secret house rule is that he is never allowed to be alone when getting dressed for something important. This rule was instituted after his 20th high school reunion when he wore electric blue huarache sandals, pleated electric blue walking shorts and a tropical-print vest featuring toucans that was primarily black, electric blue and hot pink. "But, Bullet. You didn't describe his shirt." No. No, I didn't. And that's why my father is no longer allowed to dress himself.

Well my dad is from north africa and has a very thick french accent which is really embarrassing enough as a school child but he also had this habit of kissing some women's hand when he met them. He did it at parent teacher interviews! He even did it to a hairdresser once when he picked me up. I don't know how it came across as charming rather than creepy but I seemed to be the only one dying of embarrassment every time.
Strangely enough, the habit seems to have ended now so was pretty much in existence for my school years only, where it would cause maximum embarrassment- THANKS DAD!

And the combination of frenchness and being a chef leads to him not believing in vegetarians. So when i would have vegetarian friends over he would cook a lovely vegetarian quiche or a roast vegetable tart but we would eat it and it would have bacon or chicken in it! "Just a little bit" he would pout- he considered it vegetarian because it had lots of vegetables! I'm so glad he waited until a vegan friend of mine had left until he strongly proclaimed that vegans must have mental problems. THANKS DAD!

And how could I forget the most absurd and embarrassing moment of my life- I was in high school, my mobile phone was under contract and had been not working but I was getting the run around from the phone company so it had been a few weeks before we decided to go into the store in the city and get some face to face help. I went in with my level-headed mum (as opposed to fiery dad for reasons which will become apparent) and yes they were rude and patronising but they said they could fix my phone but it might take up to four weeks. "Okay, whatever" we said and then called dad and told him and asked him to pick us up from the food court of the shopping centre.

He came up to us a while later and shouted "let's get out of here!" which seemed a bit over the top so we're like "..." and he rolls his eyes at the inconvenience and goes "they called security. the phone people". Oh no. "Whyyyy did you go there dad? We told you we sorted it out!" "Four weeks is too long! I threatened to blow up the store"

...Yes my dad threatened terrorist action. (I said he was fiery) So we went home and sat waiting for the police to drive up all afternoon. They didn't, but my phone was fixed within the week. THANKS DAD!

Lets see...

Daddykins is in a wheelchair, and he used to be an actor so he's one diverse BAMF! Often at random intervals in crowds he shouts 'WHEELCHAIR COMIN THROUGH!' and says generally rude things about asians before saying' Thats was a bit LACIST!'

He also has the habit of finding THE BIGGEST BEEFIEST androgynous looker on the street and asks very loudly "CAMILLA? IS THAT A MAN OR A WOMAN? I MEAN, HE HAS BREASTS BUT THAT DOESN"T NECESSARILY MAKE HIM FEMALE YOU KNOW!!!"

But, there was this time my dad took me to see a play festival where in one short play, a ginger man stripped nude, stood back to the audience and started getting 'friendly' with his finger and his bottom...

I, being a polite 12 year old girl, looked up at the rafters to avoid awkwardness of being in THE FRONT ROW for this event and waited out this play until it ended.

Dad told me to stop being rude JUST AS the ranga turned around to reveal the full monty to my innocent twelve year old eyes (the same eyes my mum said weren't allowed to watch benny hill or any 15+ rated films)!!!

Later in the car, after some silence, Dad remarks "Well... I think we all learnt something today"

He was talking, I kid you not, about the fact that we now had full knowledge that gingers have ginger pubes...

My Dad.... Bamf.

Where do I start?
Sometime in the late 80's my father is very busy typing something on his new pc. 8 year old me is in the next room with a cool little screwdriver that I saw earlier that day being placed into a wall socket that made a litte light bulb come on in the screw driver (phase tester). So I try to do the same. All I remember is a huge bang,flash and finding myself about 6 feet back from where I had been proding the socket with the screw driver,I had also tripped the power and he had lost all his work. My father walks in, picks me up and carries me into the next room, he places me down on the floor in front of another wall socket and says. "OK. Do it again"
He had trained the dogs to fetch me on command,we had Irish Wolfhounds. He did this whenever we had visitors.
Whilst at a ceremony for him and in front of 500 people, I fell asleep and he wrote on my face. I was 12.
He mailed me a huge and angry rain spider for my 14 birthday in boarding school and it made me the least popular person at the breakfast table.
One time he asked me to make him some coffee and as I was stood next to the very slow to boil kettle he shouted to me from his study asking me if I wouldn't mind taking the snake out from under the counter. It was a Rinkhals.
He bribed my room mate in college for info on me. For years he and his friends knew all the girls I had hooked up with, in almost as much detail as I did and he blamed me for one their heart attacks.

My dad just died about 3 months ago, so I really don't have a bad word to say about him.

Yet.

I have tons of stories about my folks. One of my "favorites" is when I went with my Mom, Dad, and my relatives, Chris, Peggy and their son Scott to Belize. The three men have loud speaking voices and when inebriated become even louder. During this vacation;
1) My father ran to the bathroom to vomit. Pulled open the stall door and began his business before realizing that the stall was already occupied. This didn't stop him from finishing. He then closes the stall door, realizes he hasn't ruined the poor man's day enough, reopens the door, punches the guy in the face and then runs out of the bathroom and out of the bar. When we catch up with him after paying our bill and ask why he punched the guy he said he thought he should do it before the other guy could get out of the stall and punch him.
2) Different night, different bar. Scott was making friends and buying drinks for anybody who'd sit with us. So we have a rather large table of people getting drunk and steadily louder and louder. At which point a group of three people at the next table start protesting that we're too obnoxious. This starts a fight between Scott (a very large man), my father, Chris and the next table. A guy gets up from the other table and very aggressively confronts Scott about being a jerk. So, my father, while still sitting in his chair, punches the guy in the face. He didn't need to get up because the other guy was a "little person".
3) After another late night, Scott and I find wheelbarrows in order to get our parents back to their cabins. This involves numerous tumbles out of the wheelbarrows because they think it's some kind of roller coaster ride and keep raising their hands above their heads and yelling "wee" as we attempt to keep them balanced.
4) Because of the wheelbarrow incident, my father has a swollen foot. The next night we're walking down the street when I realize my father is wearing one dress shoe and one Teva sandal. When I ask him why he didn't just wear two sandals he replied that he "thought it would look strange."

The day we checked out of the hotel everybody in the lobby clapped and cheered.

My father was an interesting character, but my favorite embarrassing story involves a sleep over and him wanting to show off.

He decided he should demonstrate how to drink a flaming shot, but the cognac wouldn't catch. My mum has the idea to heat it up, and it catches fire fine, but now it is boiling hot.

My dad takes the shot and (sploosh) spits it back out in a deluge of burning alcohol. His beard, chest, and bits of the floor are all on fire. So he's slapping at his face repeatedly to put it out, while my brother and I are slapping the flames off his chest and Mum is stomping out all the little spots of fire on the floor.

As for my friends, they were standing in a corner in shock, convinced the house was about to burn down. They were all to freaked to ever come to another sleep over at my place, which I understood at the time but am now thinking maybe I had ridiculously wimpy friends.

soraya, I happen to agree with your father. There is no sadder moment than when accidentally getting the vegan brownie at the coffee shop. Goddamn hippies.

Love this comment diversion! Great stories all around.

When I was growing up, we were members of the local pool and tennis club and each year, the pool would put on a huge Fourth of July fireworks display. My dad, a couple of the lifeguards and a few other dads would drive down to South Carolina the week before and buy thousands of dollars of fireworks. They had the entire field behind the pool rigged up with tubes and trash cans. It really was quite impressive. For amateurs they did an awesome job.

One small hitch though, on the fourth all the dads would start drinking beer about lunchtime so by the time it got dark enough for the fireworks to start, they would all be pretty smashed. My brother, sister and I would sit on the hill to watch, but while all the other families were going Ohhhhhh! and Ahhhhhhh! my Mom was always grumbling loudly, "They are gonna kill themselves or blow their arms off!" or "Someone is gonna catch on fire, that will make a nice holiday... going to the emergency room." I was terrified someone was gonna get killed and I'm pretty sure anyone sitting near us was getting a buzzkill too.

It totally ruined all the fun for me especially since no one ever got hurt and the entire pool membership agreed our fireworks were the best in the city, which was no small feat. To this day, I can't watch a fireworks display without wondering if the guys running the show are as drunk as my Dad used to get.

Lauren and her dad's beaver genocide wins the thread. Hands down.

I don't really have a lot of embarrassing relatives, but my dad is pretty insane. And in the few years before college, much of his insanity was manifested in some horrible cases of road rage.

My dad had PROBLEMS with Honduran drivers, who are more than likely to pull out a gun and shoot you for cutting them off. And one of the worst people in Honduras are the bus drivers. See, we don't have normal, sane buses like you do in the US. We have the giant yellow school buses that have been converted into public buses. They will stop ANYWHERE to pick up passengers, and the very idea of bus stops is laughable.

Anyway, my dad, who drove a 1994 Grand Voyager (ie: a fucking submarine) and thought he drove a sports car, would be constantly getting into fights with the bus drivers. He was determined to get his shitty car to beat and EDUCATE these monsters in their gigantic buses. So he would carry a supply of giant rocks with him in the front seat.

If ever a giant bus would stop in the middle of the road, my dad would DRIVE ON TO THE OTHER LANE, into traffic, RACE in front of the bus, and accelerate while dropping a giant fucking rock out the window. The rock would bounce on the road and SMASH INTO THE GIANT BUS. He never broke any windows but man he got some people PISSED. I don't know how he wasn't killed. But it was so fucking terrifying that I refused to go in the car if he was driving for about two years.

He's calmed down a LOT since then but I can never get into a car with him without feeling slightly terrified.

He mailed me a huge and angry rain spider for my 14 birthday

Posted by: peanut at May 29, 2010 9:49 PM
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He *mailed you* a HUNTSMAN?!!! ohgodohgodhohgod that is grounds for disownment! I'm just picturing an envelope full of LEGS.

EEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeee . . . .

peanut and smokey
your fathers are awesome. i wish i had stories. my parents were divorced, and i was stuck with an abusive, though often absent, mother.
i make up for this by being as embarrassing as possible with my kids. i force them to dance with me in the grocery while singing along to the overhead. i ask them strange, unrelated personal questions loudly in public. i tease them about their "summer" teeth (they're 7 and 11).
my parenting model is calvin's father. the sun is really smaller than a quarter.

My dad has seen every Ice Age movie in theatres.

My dad liked "The Prequels".

He liked Indiana Jones and the Raping of My Childhood.

He didn't like Iron Man.

He thought The Dark Knight was stupid.

After i got out of the navy i was at my parents house giving my dad a hand in the shop working on cars and projects he had going. Well his lawnmower had a gas leak adn a broken handle he being the man he is decided he should weld the handle and fix the leak but did not want to waste the full tank of gas . Well he gets his welder set up and looks me straight in the eye and imparts his wisdom on me, He says " ok now im gonna weld the handle while there is a gas leak DONT DO THIS ITS DANGEROUS!!" now i just got out of the navy with a massive injury due to a IED and he was being very protective and my dad knew his shit but i was a lil woried to say the least . So he gets to work as im holding the handle and shocker the sparks ignite the gas and we freak he screams for me to get the hose while he pushes the mower in he yard away from all his toys(i.e. 2 classic muscle cars and his and my moms harleys)i grab the hose turn it on and while im running back to him i notice the hose is not hooked up . He freaks runs to the green room and grabs a bucket of water and throws it on the mower putting the fire out , all the while my mom and ex wife are laughing at us, funny now but so fucking embarassing.
He also had a habit of walking around the house in his tighty whiteys only , while guest were over and as funny as that shit is now , it was not when you are 14 and your friends and gf are over.

@Lauren
The spider came in a small parcel and a note at the bottom informing me that my new friends name was Fred and that he didn't like loud noises or sudden movements. I can tell you the breakfast table was never cleared so fast. He had a history with inflicting animals on me in unusual ways. I often woke up in the morning with a large but normaly dead rain/huntsman spider on my bed. My peregrine falcon died when I was away in boarding school,which upset me greatly. He then gave it to me STUFFED for Christmas. My first of many scorpion stings was thanks to him hiding one in my sock drawer. When I was 10 I came home from school to find a Boerboel that wasn't ours sitting in the kitchen, growling at me. This I was told was my new dog that came courtesy of police dog unit. They told him it was untrainable, I think they ment untamable. Whenever I came into the house and I could here him chuckling away in his study,I would have to proceed very cautiously because I knew that he was up to something.

Oh man there are a couple of first menstrual stories on here that I have to add to. This is actually a friend of mine's bad dad story. She got her period for the first time, had no idea what to do, her dad took her to the pharmacy and wandered up and down, couldn't find what he was looking for. He finally stopped a store employee and asked her "where are the belts?"

A tad late to the party. And I have to go back and read them all. But when I was 18 and home from college with my ex boyfriend and we were watching some movie where the dude was having and LSD trip and then flashbacks. So later at the dinner table, I innocently say. Man, I don't get why anyone would ever do acid. So my dad goes, "everyone should try it once." And I asked him, dad you tried to acid?!?! And he was like yeah it blew my mind, it was so intense. I asked him why he would do that. And he looked at me in all seriousness and said, "well in my defense.....I thought it was speed."

Elementary school: I'm sitting in the pickup truck with my dad in the school parking lot. We're waiting for a bus to pick me up for the school trip. It's early morning. At some point, I realize I know some of the other students waiting by the school and mention it to my dad in passing. But he decides to roll down the window (they're by the school entrance on his side of the truck and can't see me) and says, "hey girls, come sit in the truck!" I'm MORTIFIED, they say "noooo!" with disgust (smart!), and then making it faaaar worse for myself, I lean over and say, "hey it's me, this is my dad, do you want to come and sit in the truck?" Yeah. Still no. My dad had no clue, thought I and the girls were being ridiculous and I was that kid in school that no one really liked. Hated it. High school was equally nightmarish and embarrassing, thanks to my immigrant parents who really didn't get small town life. I feel sorry for them now, they just didn't know so much.

Oh man there are a couple of first menstrual stories on here that I have to add to. This is actually a friend of mine's bad dad story. She got her period for the first time, had no idea what to do, her dad took her to the pharmacy and wandered up and down, couldn't find what he was looking for. He finally stopped a store employee and asked her "where are the belts?"

This thread should become an annual tradition.

My dad is certainly mild compared to some of yours, and I supposed I'd be more embarrassed by him if I weren't so strange myself. But he did get me on occasion.

My parents moved up to Santa Barbara while I was in college, but my siblings and I stayed at our home in Long Beach. During this time, our friends would often come over, and we'd encourage them simply to walk in the back door without knocking (we never lock our doors. We can only do this in Long Beach because we have nothing for anyone to steal).

My friend Kel lives across the street, and she'd often come over to hang out.

Well, after college, my parents' business failed and they moved back to Long Beach. But, by that time, our friends had gotten used to barging into our house without knocking.

Well, since my sibs and I had taken over all three bedrooms when my parents left, they simply set up camp in the living room, where the back door of the house is.

Kel didn't know this, and she also didn't know that my dad doesn't have a normal bedtime, but just sleeps whenever he feels like it.

She came over on a hot summer day and burst through our back door. She was treated to the sight of my dad napping on top of the covers because it was so hot, wearing naught but his tighty-whiteys as he snored blissfully away.

Kinda tame by Pajiba standards, but super-scandalous in the uptight Asian community.

She was so embarrassed that she couldn't even tell me the story until years later. I now tell it with relish anytime we get together and tell funny dad stories.

PS. Period story and my dad.

So I got my first period on the field hockey field. They stopped play due to injury (it wasn't an injury obviously) but that's a whole 'nother story.

So...I'm only 11 and my dad is picking me up from the game and I'm already ashamed and feeling lousy and I have to figure out how to tell my dad because my mom wasn't going to be home until 9. I get in the car, I tell him. He's a peach! A gem!! A prince among princes. He stops at the grocery store, buys me pads and tells me to shower up and that we'll go out to dinner. He made me feel better about everything that had transpired earlier.

We went out to dinner and he told our hostess, our waiter and just about everyone who walked by our table that we were celebrating the fact that "his little girl was a woman now". I thought I was going to die.

Which is worse? Getting your period for the first time on a field hockey field or having your dad tell everyone in the world? It was a draw.

I am late as always, but have one moment to share--and it's not a "so embarrassing it's funny" story, but "so embarrassing that I still deeply loathe and resent my mother for it 20 years later" story.

I'm 15. I'm having stomach pains. They're not real bad, but enough so that I'm using them as an excuse to stay home from school which I hate. After a couple of days, my mom takes me to the doctor, a fill-in instead of my regular PCP, who demands to know, several times, whether I could be pregnant. No, not without some kind of divine intervention. Really, dude. Move past it.

They do X-rays, have me pee in a cup, etc. I undergo a humiliating examination in front of my mother, who was massively overprotective and wouldn't leave the room even when I asked her to. After all this fuss comes the verdict--constipation.

My 15 year old self is hanging her head in shame as we make our way to the check out desk. All the questions and prodding just to find out I'm stuffed with poo was beyond embarrassing. We're waiting at the desk, which is in the exact center of the crowded waiting room, providing a nice little focus for attention from all the bored sick people sitting around. My mom finds an unexpected charge on the bill--a pregnancy test.

So now I'm not only stuffed with poo but apparently untrustworthy too. My mom is enraged...by the price, not the HUGELY insulting maneuver on the doctor's part or that he didn't even ask her permission. When he shrugs his shoulders at her indignation and walks away, my mother shouts after him, "But she couldn't have been pregnant! SHE DOESN'T EVEN DATE!"

I would have thought it impossible to feel any more humiliation but my mother, in her usual tactless way, managed it by announcing my lack of social skills and undesirability to a large room full of onlookers. When we got to the car I burst into tears. And my mom says:

"Oh, don't worry, honey, the test wasn't THAT much money."

She's just as clueless 20 years later, but at least I don't need her to take me to the doctor.

I would've loved your dad Bessie :)
And I think I would've decked your mom.

Also, I remember once when some asshole in a porsche cut us off causing my pop to swerve and almost hit another car. I was 8 but I remember it being so frighting, it would have been a very bad accident. The porsche stopped, then sped off. So my dad followed him. The idiot stopped at a gas station and got out of the car. My father, told us to sit still and got out. Of course we all unbuckled our seatbelts and smashed our faces against the windows to see what was going to happen...

The idiot was screaming at my father for following him while my dad calmly walked up to him and with a grace and coldness I havent seen since, roundhoused this man in his face! I mean the execution was perfect. Me and my brothers were going crazy in the van! he then calmly walked back while this idiot is bleeding all over the concrete. He starts the vehicle and starts driving, we are all still going crazy and my older brother shushes us, anxious for my dads next words. We quiet down and the van stays silent until we get home. As he pulls into the driveway, he turns to the backseat and as deadpan as can be says, "I bet you boys didn't know I knew karate." He got out the van and went inside. He never mentioned that incident again.

Gamal, I love your dad.

This essay is understood good for everyone, I hope all of the folk know about it. Thanks