Slipping

“How many fathers do you have?”

It was the eve of Father’s Day, and I had just remarked to my daughter that I had totally forgotten to send a card to any of my fathers. As I uttered the statement I realized that it sounded rather peculiar, as did her response as it hung in the air waiting for me to re-gain enough concentration to drive and talk- the left hand turn out of the church parking lot into heavy weekend traffic sapping the sum of my mental output at the moment.

At the end of mass the priest had said a blessing upon fathers in honor of their impending day, and that’s what had reminded me.

“Well...” I said, “Your Grandpa S., of course, and I always send a card to your Grandpa N....”

“He’s not your father.” she replied, pondering the situation, “He’s sort of a father-in-law to you, but not really. He’s... a father-figure, right?”

“Yeah, that’s it.” I said, “And it’s too late for me to send cards out, so I’ll just send e-mails. But it’s not too late for you. We’ll stop somewhere before we head to the cinema so you can pick out a card for your dad.”

I’ve been working over 50 hours per week for the past few weeks. Things are starting to slip...
But I somehow ended up with a Saturday off, and decided to make the most of it, including a ‘girl’s night out’ with my daughter.

She & I consider ourselves to be connoisseurs of animated features, and so couldn’t resist seeing the latest addition the that genera- a flick called Kung Fu Panda. Although the title didn’t generate much interest for me (it sounded like something one of the next in line of relentlessly stupid Cartoon Network shows would be called) the critics were praising it, or at least not panning it- so it couldn’t be that bad, we thought.

Actually it’s quite good. We decided, over a cup of coffee at our favorite coffee house afterwards, that it was definitely one of the best animated movies we had seen in recent years.
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