Can't Make This Up

One of the last times my father drove, he was already legally blind, and insisted on taking his car to the Chrysler dealership to get some work done while he was staying here. He was following my van, which was being driven by my Significant Other while my mom and I were at home sipping morning coffee.

At 8:30 a.m., the two of them not gone ten minutes, I got a panicked cellphone call that my Significant Other had somehow "lost" my dad and his van. On I-95. One minute he was in the rear-view mirror, and the next . . . he wasn't. I screamed, "This is NOT the kind of call I like to get at 8:30 in the morning, that you have LOST MY BLIND FATHER as he is DRIVING . . . I don't even know if he knows how to operate his cellphone. AND HE HATES THE HIGHWAY! FIND HIM!"

I had visions of trying to explain this all to the police, and some sort of alert/APB going on on the morning news. "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?"

About twenty minutes later, I got another call. My Significant Other was hyperventilating. "Did you FIND HIM?" I asked, assuming the hyperventilating was the sight of my dad in a ditch.

"Yeah, I found him all right. He just threatened to murder me. For real. With his bare hands. In the parking lot of the dealership."

"He'll calm down."

"I don't think so. I think I saw him look for the tire iron."

Now, ordinarily, I presume, "I ought to murder you right now," might seem--to some--one of those vague threats. Suffice it to say, we don't take those threats lightly in my household.

But then again . . . I can't make this stuff up. I can't make up the time one of my dad's friends lovingly drew me to the side at a party and offered a free "hit" on someone I was not getting along with at the time, and how "easy" it would be to make it look like an accident. "Look, if you don't want the person DEAD, two broken kneecaps will put them out of commission for a while."

Indeed.

Now, I presume as FICTION writers . . . we make up most of what is in our books, tainted with truth here or there. You need a good imagination. But I also know that the most "colorful" aspects of my life have certainly helped my fiction along.

So in the "I can't make this up" category, a week from tomorrow, my dad moves in. He has decided to make this a permanent move. As in forever, or until one of us dies. Which could be me.

And so, I have NO doubt that this will most hilariously become a book. May the people of Richmond guard their salt and pepper shakers and cutlery (he's partial to stealing salt and pepper shakers) . . .

So come on. 'Fess up. On this beautiful (where I am), crisp Monday . . . what from YOUR real life trickles into your fiction? What can't you make up?