That Is Not News!

It probably was twenty-five years ago. Mom and Dad were eating dinner on TV trays while watching the local news. A story came on about a little lost dog. My dad, three sheets to the wind, suddenly growled, “THAT! IS! NOT! NEWS!” and hurled a jar of garlic powder at the TV.

KER-BOOOM! The whole tube blew up.

Mom just sat there, thinking, “Well! Now I’ve seen everything!”

To her credit, she let the TV sit there, the jar of garlic powder stuck in it, till finally my dad called the repair shop. (But Dad conveniently made sure he wasn’t home when they arrived.) The repair man told my mom, “You wouldn’t believe how often we get called to fix these kinds of things.” He did ask if he could keep the screen “to display in our shop window.”

That story has become famous, one of the great mythic tales of our family. We mostly tell it in the context of "how impossibly difficult Dad was."

But this year I find myself relating that story more and more. I was telling my daughter, “You know, lately I understand where Grandpa was coming from.”

I mean, did we really need non-stop coverage of Balloon Boy or Michael Jackson or Tiger Woods?

All I can say is, ”Somebody get me some garlic powder!”