My Dad Loves 24

My Dad loves to have long conversations. He tends to draaaaag things out with loads of "uhhhhs" and "aaahhhs" injected into otherwise mundane questions or thoughts. For example - "So, uh, I was uh wondering if uh you happened to watch the uh President's speech...it was uh, pretty impressive." Now if you had timed that, you'd know it took him 4 minutes and 34 seconds to ask me that. So my conversations with my father never last less than 2 hours and twenty minutes. He wonders why I sometimes take a few days to return his phone call and I try to explain to him that it's because I have to block out a chunk of time on my calendar to speak to him where I can have no distractions because the slightest glimpse of Gossip Girl on the tube and I've completely forgotten what we are talking about in between trying to piece together verbs and adjectives between all the damn "uh's."

So tonight he called to check in and see how the new daytime digs worked out for me today. I was kind of in a chatty mood so I thought I'd update him on all fronts of my life...like, Leia the Wunderdog is so snuggly, it's really nice...our New York Times delivery guy never double bags the Sunday Times and it really annoys me b/c it shows up half wet....I bought a Dirt Devil Kone and it's changed my life. The usual riveting conversational prose. Oddly, Pops was kind of rushing me through, not asking the usual 20 questions about each fact I presented him with ("Is that Kone with a K? Why do you think that is? Does that thing use a vacuum bag? What kind of charge does it take?") Instead it was "Aha, that's nice...okay, so anything else?"

And then something unbelievable happened. For the first time in my entire life, my father ended the conversation before I was ready to get off the phone. "So uh, it was nice talking to you but listen, 24 just started and I gotta run...okay? Talk to you soon? Okay? Gotta go, love ya, see you..." Click.

I just got dissed for Jack Bauer from my highly intellectual statistical engineer father. Crash and burn.