I Win

Yesterday when my dad and I called to collaborate about our the results of our appointments he suggested that this year is going to be "our year." To understand this I have to give a little background...

My dad and I are extremely competitive. Extremely. It drives everyone around us nuts at times, but that doesn't stop us, well sometimes it does.

When I was in junior high I took up downhill skiing with some friends. I immediately fell in love. At the time, I was unaware that my dad had learned to ski back in the dark ages when you strapped wooden planks to your feet, threw yourself down a hill, and called it skiing. After I went skiing a couple of times my dad decided it was time for him to start skiing again too. This is when things got ugly...

One of my favorite pics of us (it's old obviously...also, no, I don't hunt)

It started innocently enough. My dad was the cool dad that bought me awesome gear after I had skied maybe twice. Then I used those skis three times before he upgraded me to a step below racing skis. He outfitted himself in a similar fashion. It seemed almost sweet, but it wasn't. It quickly turned into who had faster skis, who was a faster skier, who fell more, who could handle the cold better, who could get more runs in a day...

That's when "I win" started. Everything became a race and a challenge. We would both be headed to the living room and as soon as we saw the other one we would flat-out run screaming "I win" upon arrival whether it was true or not (quick tip here...for me it was true, for him it was not). Same thing for the bathroom, or dinner, or you name it.

me loving on an anesthetized red panda

Then I went away to college and the time and money for skiing ceased to exist, but much to my mother's dismay our enthusiasm for competition did not. Fast forward a few years and I was accepted as an intern at the Minnesota Zoo as an animal management/health intern for the Northern Trail (aka moose, tigers, red pandas, taken, bison, prairie dogs, wolf, musk ox, bacterian camels and more). In order to get to the zoo I needed a car and fast.

I have never enjoyed driving and for the most part was fine using public transportation in Minneapolis/St. Paul to get around up until this point, but I knew exactly what I wanted. The new VW beetle in turbonium green (other colors non negotiable). Did I mention my internship was full-time and unpaid? So back to the car, I wanted ALL the bells and whistles. It seemed reasonable to me.

Me with one of the Amur tigers and other staff

My parents had a different vision. The elderly mother of one of my dad's friends was giving up driving and subsequently selling her car. It was barely used and it was cheap and it was a Ford Festiva. Also it was the color of tweety bird.

Since I didn't have the funds to purchase a car, I didn't have much of a choice. My parent's helped me buy the car and then my dad sabotaged me. He took care of my license plates...

He did get me custom license plates, but they read "I Lost" and they were on a bright yellow party in a box with wheels. I was not amused with him. Little did I know that first of all, that car was awesome! It rarely went less than 90 mph on the interstate (I drive like a fricken grandma now), I could parallel park it ANYWHERE (really!), and those stupid license plates got me out of a bazillion speeding tickets (if the state of MN or WI had actually kept track of all the times I was pulled over I would have lost my license about a million times over...I probably should have too).


Despite the love I eventually developed for that car, I still hold a grudge against my dad for the intentional public humiliation he caused me (this is where I explain that the reasons I never got speeding tickets is because the police officers always wanted me to explain the license plate and would drive away laughing their asses off).

So back to my original story...

So my dad suggested 2013 would be "our" year and we would share the drama. As he so eloquently put it, in 2011 he fell and broke his hip and then had a blood clot and then bleeding drama from the blood thinners, then in 2012 I had cancer. I think he forgets that 4 days before he fell I had a major post-partum hemorrhage. That was "our" year. I told him "no thanks. you can have it. you can be the center of attention." He replied, "no, you can." Eventually, we agreed to graciously pass it on to someone else's family, preferably no one we know.

Apparently he reconsidered. This morning the phone rang as Geoff was trying to run out the door to get Ella to daycare and I was trying to run out the door to get E to preschool. No one EVER calls at that time in the morning so we both looked at each other and rolled our eyes because we knew it wasn't going to be good. I answered the phone and it was my dad.

All I heard was something about "fell (for the record he swears he said "slipped")...hip...can't stop shivering...shock." All I could think was "shit...hip...blood thinners...clot...shit...shock...emergency...shit." (yes, I swear in my head and out loud more often than I should...I'm working on it...eternally). Geoff turned around and mouthed the question "your dad?" as I yelled something about "go to the emergency dept. and get off the phone with me!"

Once I was off the phone Geoff and I resumed our frantic scattering out of our house. Just as I was about to drop off E my dad called again. I asked if he was at the hospital this time and he replied he wasn't going. I rolled my eyes, shook my head, cursed under my breath, and told him I would call him back after I dropped off E.

It wasn't until I called him back that I realized that there was some "miscommunication" and he never actually fell. He slipped and contorted his leg/hip to some awkward and painful position, but there was never an actual impact. Regardless my brother had an appointment with the family's MD this morning and ratted my dad out so now my dad has an appointment tomorrow morning.

Thanks to my brother I feel like "I win." The perfect scenario would be if he would drive to the appointment in the little yellow Ford Festiva with license plates that say "I Lost" that is sitting in his garage.