Daddy's Story

Not a heavy, serious story. Personally, I was thinking of a movie "Night at the Museum" while I was writing this story. Hope you enjoy.

Daddy’s story

It was snowy day. A blizzard hit the entire state last weekend. Many houses on the eastern state were damaged and lost electricity for a week after. Good thing I moved to the western state a year before. There was still two feet of snow on the ground. Most of the town was closed temporally. I hadn’t gone outside for three days which I didn’t mind at all. However, my refrigerator was almost empty, like my wallet. All I had in the refrigerator was a quarter gallon of milk, two apples, half dozen eggs, a pack of beer and beef nacho burrito from the night before. 

I could’ve lived another day with these but I had a seven year old son with me that week. After my divorce from my ex-wife, she had a custody of my son but she had to go to Chicago for her fancy business trip. We’d been repeating the relax, eat, movie, and more relax routine for the last three days. You know, real quality son and father time. I wished he was older so that we could have some beer and watch UFC match. I still loved every moment I was with him. It seems he didn’t mind either. The night before we went to bed, I asked him “How do you like your step dad?”. He said, “He’s okay but seems like he only cares about mom.” Even though my son hadn’t seen me for a year, he told me I’m still his favorite daddy. I couldn’t help myself smiling. I felt like a real father once again.  

Anyway, back to the story. My boy used to eat like a bear before hibernation so I had no choice but to go out. The temperature was below 0˚ and I couldn’t open my garage so I had to walk all the way to the store. There wasn’t a single footstep on the sidewalks. Apparently I was the only stupid one who wasn’t ready to feed my child. Everyone was looking at me from their windows like they’ve never seen a guy walking on the street before.

There was one kid who stuck his head out the window. I frankly didn’t care what he was doing. All of sudden, the kid yells out, “You Idiot!”. I ignored. These days children certainly do not know how to respect elders. A few seconds later, the kid yells out again, “I mean you! I just called you an idiot!”. I tried my hardest to keep calm and turned around. When I turned around, I saw the kid captured by his mom. She forced him to apologize and he apologized to me with all insincerity. It was my first time seeing that kid and first thing I heard him from was a purposeless curse. I hope my ex-wife doesn’t raise my only son like him. Anyway, the worst part was that I was the half way to the store.

That god damn place could not be any farther. Although I was lucky that the store was opened. I think I was the first and last customer of the day. There was only one clerk who seemed extremely bored. She looked at me astonished like, ‘How the hell did you get here?!’ and I looked at her impressed like, ‘How about you, lady?’. We had a good half an hour talk. Even though it was the first time that we actually talked, I felt like she was my best friend and I could tell she felt the same way too. 

We started to “explain” why each of us had to be here. She said that she owed her boss eight hundred dollars but she couldn’t pay him back so she had to work every day instead of paying him back. Her boss sounded like a total dick to me but she was really appreciative. She was eight years younger than I was but I found her really mature and even slightly attractive. We felt like we were the last two people in this world. However, I had to walk this blizzard romance off for my son at home. I bought some burgers, chickens, ramen noodles, two packs of soda, and a large meat lover pizza which is my one and only son’s favorite. As I stepped out of the store, the clerk gave me couple handwarmers and told me not to freeze to death on the way back home. I had nothing to give her but I promised her a knit pair of mitten for the next time. I followed my footsteps back in the snow to my house and I saw another man’s footsteps next to mine. 

I assumed he might have been in the same position as I was so I didn’t think it was a crazy man. The other footsteps continued parallel to mine. A couple minutes later, I saw an old man with a very dark brown homburg and a long black coat that I could tell was all worn out. From the distance, it appeared he was walking slowly like he was thinking and walking, not walking and thinking. As I came closer to the man, I was sure that he was a stranger. Even though I was fairly close to him, he didn’t look back or do anything. He kept his head down and walked steadily with silence. 

Ten minutes later, I finally was in front of my house. The moment I saw my mailbox, I was happier than when I got divorced. Right before I twisted my door knob, I heard something drop in the snow. It was a slight noise but I was close enough to hear it. It was a wallet. I noticed the wallet was the old man’s. I spotted him right away but he kept walking his way. I looked at him and he was lighting his cigar. I guessed he dropped his wallet when he pulled out his cigar from his inner pocket. He didn’t seem to realize what was happening. 

I gingerly walked over to grab the wallet. I checked his wallet and it wasn’t a normal one. There was no ID, no credit cards, no business card, but six thousand dollars cash. I was surprised but confused at the same time. I still can’t understand how he could not feel his thick, fat wallet missing and secondly why wasn’t he so careful.? Matter of fact, he didn’t seem to care about anything but the cigar he was smoking. It was such a temptation and a painful dilemma. I looked up and there were absolutely no people around. I mean, at that point of my life, I just was starting to live like a normal human being. It wasn’t an ideal life but I had a stable pay job and could feed my dog regularly. If I had that six thousand in my pocket, I could do so many things. I could pay the clerk’s debt and I could fix the damn garage door that won’t open in heavy snow, fill up my empty refrigerator and buy another one and fill that one up too. Oh, and I wouldn’t have to starve my poor French bulldog anymore. ‘Should I keep this money and thank the lord or should I give this back to him and put my wishes away?’. Then I thought of my son.

I realized that I was only thinking about myself. Then I remembered that I was still my son’s favorite daddy. I always wanted to be a perfect father for my child when I was younger. I kind of screwed that up by having an ex-wife. Furthermore, I didn’t want my son to remember his dad as someone who failed his business miserably and lived in a s**t hole compared to his mother’s house. I still wanted to be a truthful father for him at least. I don’t think he was looking out the window but I wanted to be an honest man in front of my son. 

I looked around once more and took the deepest breath. Then I went up to the man and gave his wallet back, telling him to be careful with it. He didn’t say a word and gave me a gentle smile like he knew what I was thinking about the whole time. I turned around and stepped into my house with a big sense of pride and relief. My son ran up to me, gave me the biggest hug for bringing him the meat lover pizza, but for me it was the warmest hug of approval for a truthful father from my one and only son.

I haven’t seen that old man ever since. I wish I knew his name so that I could find him and thank him. He was the trigger for me to restart my engine for my son and the trigger for the son of mine to be willing to spend more and more time with his dad ever since.

Author's Note

So what do you think? and if you don't mind, how old are you?

Reviews

[gcp]

I think this is about the old man and the father - but the old man doesn't even feature until over half way through. So possibly trimming this down - reducing the words to those that are really important to the story you want to tell. For example - in the first paragraph you almost immediately (the second sentence) go into reflection and historical events - I think this slows the pace of the narrative and risks wandering from the purpose of the tale.
It's interesting - and has some lovely detail, but it feels rather rambling and unfocused. Good fiction is like life but with all the boring bits taken out.