American Chimpanzee

My father. I don't know how he knows, but he knows. He can't see to the end of the room, but whenever I'm doing any kind of work in the house, he somehow always manages to situate himself right in the middle of it. He's like a cat. A very old, very grumpy cat. When I'm in the den or kitchen to do anything, he knows I'm there, and, a few seconds later, so is he. I'll only walk in early in the morning to fix my wife and myself a cup of coffee, I won't even turn on the light, and I'll see him looking out of his door. There's no way for him to know I'm there, but somehow he does. I'll see him walk out and toward the main house. Sometimes I'm able to sneak back upstairs with our coffee before he makes it into the house. Sometimes... "Where's my coffee?" my wife will ask when I walk back into our bedroom empty-handed. "Um... ah... well..." I'll begin to explain. "Dad?" "Yeah." For the last thr...

"Wherever you go, there you are." from the movie The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension The Big Tree    I am driving my father to visit an old military friend a few cities away. On our way there he decides he wants to visit relatives who live somewhere in between, so I make a little detour to accommodate him. It's no big deal. I know how to get there and I know the area. In fact, we’re almost there. "Are you lost?" he asks me. I continue to drive down the street I'm on. I say nothing. Between you and me, I'm on the right street. Out of the corner of my eye I see him looking out up and down the street. Side to side. His head on a swivel. "I think you're lost," he tells me, his eyes bugging out. "I don't recognize anything." One funny thing about my father that I've noticed the few times we've traveled together is his eyes tend to bug out when he thinks I'm lost. I'm not lost. And I've go...