An anecdote about my dad

A while back, my dad noticed that his car had begun the curious habit of generating cigarette butts. My dad didn’t smoke. No one who he rode around with smoked in his car. He’d go into work with a cigarette-butt-free vehicle, and by the time his shift ended, there waiting for him on the floor mats and under the seats and in the cup-holder a fresh litter of smoker’s dander had piled up.

At first, the phenomenon served as a refreshing novelty, a riddle for the work week, a real stumper. Quickly, though, the ever regenerating stubs began to feel like a burden my non-smoking father shouldn’t’ve had to bear. Basically, the cycle led to exclamations of not again and what the hell!

In fact, what indeed was the hell?

The creatio ex nihilo take sounded too much like a yarn of smoke and side-view mirrors. And the notion of a not-running, stationary car’s parthenogenesis of carcinogenic residue sounded to my dad as, at the very least, stupid.

But not long after having to wade through a nasty habit’s after-filth, he witnessed the mystery’s tragic reality. Coming back to his car after work, my father saw his passenger seat inhabited by a man who could find no other place to sleep.

When the homeless man woke with a start as my father eased open the driver side door, I wonder what was going through his mind. Did he feel embarrassed and frustrated with himself for sleeping too long and getting caught? Was he readying himself for one more person to sweep him away with shouts and gestures as if he were dirt collecting on a porch? Immediately, he burst into apologies and promises of never doing this again.

My father listened then interrupted with something like this: “Look, I don’t care if you sleep in my car. Go ahead. That doesn’t bug me. It’s just sitting here anyways. Can you just make sure to clean out all your cigarettes, so I don’t have to?”

From there on out, the man found in my father’s car a safe place to rest. And my father hasn’t had a cigarette butt in his car since.

That’s my dad. That’s a human being with an echoing heart beat.

Thank you for being the man that you are. I love you. Happy Father’s Day!