Sadieandleo

May 1st, 2008

Peter Boyle, as Frank Barone from Everybody Loves Raymond, reminds me of my Dad.  Then again, Peter Boyle, as Frankenstein from Young Frankenstein, reminds me of my Dad.  Both in good ways of course.  Let’s take this for example: email received from Dad today reads, “net flix started sending me movies again—i hope they are not billing your visa? tell them i don’t want movies if they bill you. it’s so hard to change account.”  I gave a gift subscription to Netflix to my Dad a while back with only the intention of giving him access to free movies and I thought it would be fun.  And it was.  Until the gift subscription was over and to this day Netflix is charging my Visa for a full-on subscription.  Dad found out and wouldn’t hear of it, he asked me to cancel it.  That is his big heart.  He doesn’t care how old we get, how successful we get, the kids shouldn’t pay.  (You should see this mans resilience when it comes to trumping my brother-in-law out of dinner tabs; he’s a master.)  Point being, in one of my favorite episodes of Raymond, Ray presents his parents with a certificate to the Fruit-of-the-Month club.  How do they react?  “What are we going to do with all this fruit?  Who could eat all of this fruit?  Oh!”  Of course my Dad didn’t react this way, but it sweetly reminded me of that scene.  He’s the type of guy who doesn’t want gifts but you want to get him something just to let him know that you love him and you think about him.  The parents react this way in this episode because deep down they don’t feel like the kids should be taking care of them, they are the providers and that is the way it should be.  Dad has the same sentiment here.

The rest of his email reads as follows, “how are you and mike.–I’m having my roof done –what a mess. i think i will come to visit labor day—let me know if that is a good time—you don’t have to take time off from work to entertain me. i prob would have come sooner but, the plaines are no good. love dad”  I can’t wait for Labor Day.