I remember going to that Little League coaches’ softball game, the one they have at the end of every season, and watching my father - this man who had taught me to keep my elbow up and back foot planted - take to the plate and ground out weakly to third. He would play ball with us, but he was a terrible athlete. But they never had time to fully atrophy. The biceps would grow spongy with the years. To his children, they looked like oak branches. His hair, as described by my mother, was “tired,” wispy and flyaway. My mom teased him about this, this 6-foot-2 man with the barrel chest and olive skin, teetering on spindly legs. They might have worked on Sophia Loren but on Dad they looked like manhole covers. He’d don a logo T-shirt that was compulsorily a size too snug, if you know what I mean, and shorts that were, uh, short, like something John McEnroe wore at Wimbledon in 1979. He’d come home from work, shed the powder-blue suit with reversible vest, the tie so polyester it would melt during heat waves, the V-neck Hanes undershirt of startling white, the gray socks bought by the dozen at Burlington Coat Factory. He was the corporeal embodiment of an Air Supply eight-track. Let’s get something straight right away: my father was hopelessly unhip. Published on Father’s, Day June 15th, 2003.
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