Sometimes it was hard, having such a serious man for a father. But it was extra sweet when he dropped his dignity and got a little silly. It was worth the wait.

While I was at John Minadeo School, one year a bunch of fathers of the children decided to put on a talent show. I can't remember why this took place, if it was for a charity of some kind; maybe they just felt like doing it for fun. My father got involved in it.

He was in two parts of this show; in one, he stood on the stage by himself in the kind of uniform that gas station attendants used to wear. (When they pumped your gas, cleaned your windshield, and gave you free maps.) He was pretending to be a weatherman. He talked on, pointing at a big map set up on stage, a map of our neighborhood and saying funny things about rain falling on our house but the sun shining across the street. Stuff like that. Well of course Judie and I and our friends and everybody went mad with hilarity. It was so unbearably delicious to see our father, the scientist, making everybody in the school auditorium laugh so much.

In the second piece a bunch of the men sat on chairs on the stage with a curtain hiding the top halves of their bodies; their knees were dressed to look like dolls and these disembodied legs danced to one of the songs from South Pacific. My father's legs were easy to identify; they were the longest legs and the ones with the most black curly hair.

We went mad with joy, to see our father, so dark and so tall, the man who walked down the steps in the mornings wearing a dark suit and a shirt so white it looked like ice, fooling around on stage with the other fathers and making the place ring with laughter.
Thanks, Dad