King Daddy-o

My wife had dinner tonight with some special friends of hers, and my son is visiting his grandparents. So tonight became a Dad and Daughter night, and we had a pretty good time.

We ate pizza at Mellow Mushroom. In getting some napkins, I knocked over the salt shaker. My daughter said she thought I was supposed to throw it somewhere. I don't think that's exactly how the superstition is phrased, but I used my right hand to toss some of the salt over my left shoulder. After doing so, I wasn't sure that was right so I asked the waitress. My daughter asked "you can do that? You are just gonna ask her?" The waitress was cool about it and asked around the restaurant to get an answer. Sure nuff, I had tossed it properly and avoided whatever bad luck that would have otherwise followed me the rest of my life.

I also introduced my girl to pictures of The Beatles on the wall - John, Paul, George, and Ringo. We also spotted pictures of Bob and Ziggy Marley. She is pretty perceptive and picked up on a couple of things even though she didn't know much about the music of any of them. She asked if the book "Marley & Me" had anything to do with Bob or Ziggy Marley. It did - the author and his wife named the dog after one of them (can't remember which) because they liked his music.

She then asked if it was The Beatles who sang "that song with the lyrics that didn't make any sense". I told her she'd have to be more specific because John and Paul wrote about a walrus, included the line "coo coo kachoo" in a song, penned Revolution #9 on the white album, etc.

She recalled singing something by The Beatles at a rock band camp she and her brother attended last summer. We both tried for a few minutes to think what it might be when I asked if it was Come Together. Yes, that was it!

Some of her favorite parts were "he's Coca-Cola" and "he's got hair....down...to...his knees". One of my favorite quirky parts of it is "he's got toe-jam football." Dude John, what the heck were you thinking when you wrote this thing?

We then got into a debate about what followed "he's got to be a joker..." She said it was "cause he do what he please". My vote was "cause he's so hard to please". So again, we brought over Miss Hippie Waitress to help us with our problem. Unfortunately, she didn't know the answer, wasn't too interested this time in asking others in the restaurant for help, and tried to make us believe we were both right (thanks Miss Hippie - its kind of like the soccer kids who ALL get trophies and don't keep score). We agreed we'd Google it when we got home to have a clear winner.

From the Shroom, it was off for ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. Ice cream was intended to be eaten in a cone outdoors. So that's what we did - she with the Chocolate-Peanut Butter and me with some sort of Vanilla-Chocolate-Caramel swirl thing.

She also got to ride in the front seat in my truck to the pizza joint, ice cream parlor, and back home. My wife hasn't let her ride front seat shotgun yet - so that's just a little secret between dad and daughter.

Once we got home, she thanked me over and over for the fun time.

I'll sleep great tonight knowing we had a fun time and for at least a few hours I was perhaps the greatest dad to ever walk the face of the earth.

By the way, she was closer to being right on the lyric than I was. Rats, beaten again by her intellect. Nice work dear.

"Got to be a joker
He just do what he please"

TMC