Friday afternoon, my father called and asked me if I could fill one of those “music players you put in your pocket” with romantic songs. After telling him it’s called an ipod, I told him it wouldn’t be a problem. Then he clarified that by romantic music, he meant “good stuff like Andy Williams or Perry Como.” I could have easily supplied him with love songs from any decade, all the way back to the 70’s but 1950’s music? Eek! I scoured itunes and sampled song after song. You know, today’s musicians may be debaucherous, but there sure were a lot of male singers with soprano voices in the 50’s. They were doing strange things back then too. Eventually I combined two songs from the “Running with Scissors” soundtrack and one from the “Rushmore” soundtrack with half a dozen songs from artists who are extremely dead. What’s that? One of them still performs in Vegas? Seriously? Wow. Anyway, the ipod was emptied of everything except the requested music. One hour before the scheduled ipod pickup my father called me again. “Did you put “Love Me Tender” on there? I want that song.” Mmkay. The requested song was acquired and added.

My father walked in the house, took the pouch concealing the ipod and refused any directions from me. Then, he wandered off to talk to Tommy for a bit. Ten minutes later, my father rushed out the door to his “Valentine’s dinner” date. Did I mention that it was 10 in the morning? Please don’t let me ever start referring to 11 a.m. meals as dinner. A little while later, Tommy came upstairs to inhale the contents of the fridge. I asked him what his grandfather wanted to talk about. “He asked me how you turn an ipod on and where the volume switch is on it.”

An hour later my mother called. “Your father just stood up in Olive Garden and sang an Elvis song to me.” I feel like I helped perpetrate a crime against every person having “dinner” at the Olive Garden on Valentine’s Day morning.