The One About Grace And Frankie & Fun Quirky Details About My Dad

June 15, 2022 / Ally Bean / 240 Comments

[Spoiler alert]

• • •

OVER THE WEEKEND I FINISHED WATCHING the last hilarious season of the TV show, Grace and Frankie. One of the episodes* in this season involves Grace [played by Jane Fonda] reconciling with her younger brother [played by Jamey Sheridan] who she hasn’t seen in years.

She invites him to her house on the pretext of familial love, but the truth is she’s feeling unexpectedly nostalgic and wants him to give her the family recipe for chicken paprikash.

He knows this recipe by heart.

In the course of their conversation he figures out the subterfuge and starts to walk out, but Frankie [played by Lily Tomlin] finds a way for the two of them to get along.

He was young when their father died and he wants to know fun little details about the man. So for every chicken paprikash ingredient he says, Grace tells him something personal about their father.

This episode was quintessential Grace and Frankie, funny and poignant.

Absurd, yet believable.

• • •

THIS EPISODE GOT ME THINKING ABOUT fun little details about my father; he died when I was 15 so my memories of him are from a kid’s point of view. The details I remember aren’t about his professions, or his accomplishments, or his character– just idiosyncratic things about an adult.

Thus in honor of this coming weekend’s Father’s Day in the US, and for snorts and giggles, I share a list of some fun quirky details about my dad.

Ostensibly it’s about my father, but perhaps gives a glimpse into who I am as well. I’ve read that the oldest daughter is a female version of her father. Maybe so, maybe not.

All I know is he was character.

• • •

✅ He could wiggle his ears.

✅ His favorite holiday was St. Patrick’s Day. He wore a green necktie and green suspenders, and insisted we have corned beef & cabbage dinner– with a shot of Irish whiskey for the adults.

✅ He collected antique guns.

✅ He was a camera-shy** camera nut, with more brands and lenses and tripods and lights than you can imagine. Equipment everywhere.

✅ He kept bees and we ate honey from the hive.

✅ He had a pair of boxer shorts underwear that had a white background with red ants crawling around. When he wore the underwear he’d say he had “ants in his pants.”

✅ He was ambidextrous.

✅ He didn’t suffer fools easily, nor dawdling little girls, so if I was being pokey and said “I’m coming, I’m coming” he’d yell “SO’S CHRISTMAS.”

• • •

Questions of the Day

If you knew him as a child, what fun and/or quirky little details do you remember about your father?

Are you like him in any ways?

If you watched it, what did you think of Season 7 of Grace and Frankie?

Did the series finale work for you?

* Season7, Episode 14 – The Paprikash

** The best photo of him I have is of him sitting by a cadaver he worked on in med school. While interesting, it is macabre, not suitable for this PG-13 blog.

In Which I Inadvertently Distress My Primary Care Doctor

February 12, 2019April 12, 2022 / Ally Bean / 95 Comments

Example of daily planner page [via Canva] similar to the ones on which I write my annual doctors’ appointments because I am a good patient.

Well this is awkward…

I went to the primary care doctor’s office for my annual physical.

I see a PCP, a woman, who is in her late 30s. She’s competent, engaging, and most importantly from my point of view, not an alarmist. Mellow about everything.

Usually.

Anyhoo, I’m sitting there in the examination room with her and she’s looking at a computer screen, reviewing which doctors I see for annual check-ups. Which I do because I’m a dutiful adult patient who does what she’s told to do.

[Also because I’m a doctor’s daughter. And let me tell ‘ya, if as a child you listen to enough detailed dinnertime conversations about people who are icky sick because they didn’t go to their doctors for a regular check-up, then as an adult you make those time-consuming appointments with your doctors for your annual check-ups.]

Again, anyhoo, getting to what I want to tell you…

So my doc looks on her computer screen and confirms with me that I’m seeing a certain dermatologist. Let’s call him Dr. Face. She asks me which one of his associates I see when I go for my annual skin care check. I tell her I see him.

She stops what she’s doing, turns to me and says: “You see him?”

I say: “Yes.”

She says: “I go to that practice and I never get to see him. He’s the best, I wanna see Dr. Face, too.”

I say: “Yes, he’s good.”

She says: “But Dr. Face doesn’t do your procedures, right? Some other med assistant or doc does them?”

I say: “No, he does them.”

She says: “Well, how does that happen? Why does he work on you and not me?”

I shrug.

Then she says: “How’d you find him?”

I say: “You referred me.”

There is a long pause while she looks at my chart on the screen and I say nothing.

Then she says, more like a girlfriend than my doctor: “Well darn, I gotta refer myself. I’m jealous. I can’t believe you get to see Dr. Face and I don’t.”

At which point, even though this was kind of funny, I didn’t smile at my good fortune, instead I made murmuring sounds of sympathy for my doctor’s sad realization that she wasn’t getting the best healthcare that she wanted.

Because doctor is a nice woman, who I am sorry to report, doesn’t seem to have the right connections to get in with Dr. Face.

Go figure!

Parsing A Trending Word, Thinking About My Dad

February 9, 2018May 6, 2021 / Ally Bean / 77 Comments

IF I OFFEND YOU, my gentle readers, by mentioning this charmingly old-fashioned word, please forgive me. But you see, “pissant” was one of my father’s favorite words.

Dad’s been a long time gone from my life, so I’d forgotten about his use of this word. However when I saw “pissant” listed as Trending Now on the Merriam-Webster website, I immediately remembered Dad using the word.

OF COURSE WHEN DADDY, a physician, used the word “pissant” it didn’t stand alone. Oh, no, no, no. He’d further explain that the “pissant” in question was EITHER “in need of a high colonic” OR “in need of a frontal lobotomy.”

The first phrase, with the enema reference, was for those people who didn’t tell the truth– full of sh!t, ‘ya know?

The second phrase, the brain surgery reference, was for those people who were speaking illogically, making no sense– perhaps crazy.

DAD HAD A WAY WITH WORDS, I’ll give him that. And because he was never one to not opine about events, people, &/or ideas– many of his words have stuck with me in one way or another.

Don’t quite know what more to tell you here, my gentle readers. Just a passing thought, from a blogging wordsmith who came by her love of words + writing early in life.

Listening to her elders [one in particular] go on & on about things. 🙄

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

Do you ever hear a word and immediately think of someone who uses, or used, that word because the person and the word are inextricably linked together in your mind?

If so, what’s the word and who’s the person? If not, what prompts you to recall someone? Photos? Music? Food? Scent?

~ • ~

How To Turn A Bully Into A Fool [Part 1 of 2]

October 13, 2016October 14, 2016 / Ally Bean / 40 Comments

Watching The Donald make an ass of himself while attempting to intimidate Hillary reminded me of this story from my childhood.

My father, a genius, did not suffer fools easily.

He had zero patience for stupidity combined with malice. It’s from him that I learned how to shut down anyone who gets out of hand by flaunting his or her willful ignorance &/or bad manners in my face.

Be forewarned.

However, as a kid I was not naturally inclined to defend myself. You see, I was a shy, bookish child with poor coordination, no siblings, and thick eyeglasses.

Bullies used me for target practice, because I was physically weak and because I was a girl and because of my legal first name.

In the first few weeks of kindergarten one bully, Karl, an oversized-oaf with pale blond hair and a need to be noticed [sound like anyone in particular?], started bugging me on the playground and in the classroom.

I was upset and didn’t know what to do.

When I told my mother, an introvert, about what was going on she gave me her general advice about people: “just ignore ’em.” This, as you can imagine, was of no help to me in this situation.

Kindergarten is not the time for taking the high road.

So I turned to my father.

He listened to my problem then told me exactly what to do. I didn’t understand what he wanted me to do, but I knew, even at a young age, that this guy had a way of dealing with people, so I did exactly what he said.

[Tune in tomorrow for Part 2.]