Broke Girls ’

My take on Progressive’s ‘becoming your parents’ commercials

Ilove the Progressive Insurance commercials that say they can’t save you from becoming your parents. Watching Dr. Rick trying to curb those who are falling prey to their own genes made me do some self-reflection. Here are ways I am becoming my parents:

Get up grunts

Old cultural references

Whenever I was kickin’ it, my mom used to say, “That boy’s living the life of Riley.” I finally asked her what that meant and she said, “ ‘The Life of Riley’ was an old TV show.” Now, thanks to Monsieur Google, I know that it was a radio show before that and was only a TV show for one season in 1949 and 1950. I also noted that a popular character on the show was Digby “Digger” O’Dell and I can’t help but wonder if that’s where my mom got my middle name Odell.

I don’t particularly care for my middle name, but I guess it’s better than Digger.

Anyway, she would be saying that life of Riley thing in the 1970s so her references were 20 to 30 years old. My old references can go from 45 to 50 years back as both of my regular readers can attest. If you came here looking for me to drop current names like Ariana Grande or Keke Palmer, you are only reading them here ironically. No, I am much more likely to bring up H.R. Pufnstuf, “The White Shadow,” Weebles or “What’s Happening!” Now if you think that is somehow going to change just because I am aware I do it, you’ve got another thing coming.

You may have thought that last sentence was just yet another typo in my columns and that “thing” should have been “think,” but it was not. I was referring to the 1982 Judas Priest song, “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming.” See? While they have lessened as both my wife Beth and I have dropped and maintained over 100-pound weight losses respectively, we were in the habit of verbalizing the old people get up grunt as we fought the gravitational pull of the sofa – and that has not changed. If we get up simultaneously, we’ve actually inadvertently harmonized. Muhammad Ali

Believe it or not, young people reading this (Just kidding. I know no young people read this), growing up, there used to be heavyweight boxing on free television before the rise of pay-per-view. I loved watching Black Superman Muhammad Ali (old cultural reference) box and I also hated it.

The reason I hated it is because my dad would get all keyed up watching the matches and then want to roughhouse. I was a book-and-comics-readingcartoon-and-sitcom-watching nerdy asthmatic and that was the last thing I wanted to do. My dad would throw punches and bob and weave and say he was the champ and then tag me in my chest. He didn’t hit me hard and it was not any form of abuse. But just the same, I would always start crying and my mom would tell him to leave me alone. My dad would always say “Oh, shoot, I’m just playin’ with the boy!”

I had a daughter so I never boxed her, but I do throw

Tony Wade The last laugh haymakers and jabs at my Chiweenie Chunky Tiberius Wade from time to time. I don’t make contact, but he doesn’t like it. I have no doubt that, even minus the ability to make a fist and all, one of these days he’ll have enough of my foolishness and knock me smooth out.

Dad telepathy

Now I should mention that the Progressive commercials make it seem like becoming your parents is all bad stuff. Not so! I mean, one of the cool parts of becoming my dad was that I was granted the power of telepathy – dad telepathy. I used to use it like a Jedi Mind Trick on my daughter when she was small.

With just a look, not a single word, she knew it was not a good idea to ask me something when the automatic Dad No was going to be the answer. She might as well have been reading my thought balloons.

Pixabay/Courtesy photo Tony Wade used to love and hate watching Muhammad Ali box on television.

Channel changing

You know what I used to really hate? My dad would come in the living room when my brothers and I were watching TV and just change the channel to something boring like a baseball game or “60 Minutes” (I hated it then, but love it now – another symptom of my dad metamorphosis). He’d sometimes say “Isn’t there a game on?” or something as a preamble, but more often than not he just wordlessly ignored us and changed the channel from the one we were watching to one of the other two we received.

Now, mind you, this was way before there were DVRs or even VCRs. So whatever we were watching, we missed. And believe me, we knew better than to protest.

Now, I have done a similar thing now, but I am nowhere near as rude and blunt as my dad was. No, I have the common decency to use my Black Belt in Passive Aggression to get my way. Subtle and not-too-subtle whining and complaining usually achieve the same result as my dad got.

Fashion surrender

Another area where becoming my dad is not such a bad thing is that I could now care less about fashion. Think I’m exaggerating? Uh, no. I walked my dog once wearing a striped shirt, plaid pajama bottoms and completed the ensemble were white sandals accentuated by black dress socks.

Thanks, Dad.

Fairfield freelance humor columnist and accidental local historian Tony Wade writes two weekly columns, “The Last Laugh” on Mondays and “Back in the Day” on Fridays. Wade is also the author of The History Press book “Growing Up In Fairfield, California.”

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