dad...

a few months ago when i was back home, my dad started talking about this camping trip that him and his friend want to go on. he starts talking about it, about how it's like a festival out in the desert somewhere and it sounds like alot of really neat people go there and party. uh oh. burning man. thinking about my dad at burning man freaks me out, like, it's the ultimate "embarrass your kid" move ever. and i can just picture him walking around in shorts and sandals with a t-shirt draped over his head held on by sunglasses, drinking a beer and talking to people about peyote and other things that were cool in the 70's. and so, i'm trying to discourage him from going as much as i can, telling him how it's nerd city and very uncool. but he keeps on talking about it, and so i tell him that it's not just a camping trip, you have to do something like build an art project and you can't buy stuff-only trade, and on and on, but he's not discouraged at all. one night, after my mom and i had spent 3 hours looking at tear-drop trailers on the internet and dad came home, we thought we could inspire him to want to build a tear-drop trailer if he looked at some of the cool ones we found. and he's all irritated that we're making him look at stupid pictures that he doesn't care about, and he finally goes, hold on-i got to look at something... and googles something and opens up some photo he found. yeah of course he googled burning man, and what comes up first? a photo of a naked woman standing in the middle of a group of guys painted green. one of the guys is about to put some paint on her chest, and she's looking down all interested, boobs everywhere. and my dad scratches his chin and goes, "now that looks interesting." and i knew i'd never be able to convince him not to go to burning man now, and he'd never want to build a tear-drop trailer. i talked to ellie about it, and she said i should encourage him to go, he'd probably have fun. and looking back at old photos of him, in his guatemalan tunic, you know he'd have fun. and people would want to hear about peyote and other cool things from the 70's and no one will go, "aw dad, not again."

but, living in nebraska he will never have to see this kind of shit while walking down the street.