Jeebus! I just got off the phone with my 74 year old father. Wednesday he was stepping out of the woodshed in his backyard with an armload of oak and stepped on a piece of bark. He twisted his body and dislocated his hip. My father used to be a nurse, and apparently you only have about 10 minutes before your body stiffens up and only an orthepedic surgeon can help you. So he hopped over to the wheelbarrow by the persimmon tree, propped his leg up on the wheelbarrow and leaned against the tree for support. The he took a deep breath, grabbed a hold of his pantleg, and pulled up as hard and as high as he could. He said there was an audible click, and there you go -- ball popped back into socket. I asked him how much it hurt. He said, "babe, I thought I was going to pass out. I've never felt pain like that in my life. But I knew if I passed out, Mom would look out over the back porch and see me lying facedown in the mud and call the goddamn paramedics. So I gritted my teeth and did it." I asked him how he was doing two days later. He's "a little sore" but he's babysitting my 4 year old nephew and just ran around the block with him, and put in a new starter cellunoid in his Jeep.

This is a man who pulled his own tooth with a pair of pliers in the bathroom. Who fought a ground war in Korea in winter at 17 after lying about his age in order to join the army and see more of the world than just working at the mill. Who was standing in a tree a few years ago with a running chainsaw when a branch came crashing down on his shoulder and he fucking held onto the chainsaw "because he didn't want it to get ruined." Who cut himself with said chainsaw and patched it up himself with plastic stitches. Who hunted, fished, and grew a lot of our food, made a good portion of our furniture, and just redid all the floors in the house and jacked the house up 6 inches because it was sagging. This man is tougher than tough!

While I do not claim even 1/10th of my father's absolute badassity, I thank my lucky stars I am related to him, and my mother too (incidentally, her birthday today -- Happy Birthday Mom!). As my friend Craig once said, "German and Japanese -- you're like Darwin's titanium." Indeed.