Hal-isms, Vol. 26

My dad and I have a tradition. Or we tried to have a tradition. Last year we got really into the Minnesota State Flower, the Showy Lady's Slipper. It was a pretty exciting time. We drove around and stared and pulled over and took pictures and bonded over these beautiful orchids, which grow plentifully up by my parents' place. I swore that for the rest of my life my dad and I would share this every summer. But this year I got lazy and couldn't get up there to see them. Oh, the phone calls! Please enjoy Hal-isms, Volume 26, which is basically a transcription of one phone call in which he berates me for not driving 14 hours in one weekend to see him the Lady's Slippers:

Sorry, Dad.

On my recent trip to Mount Rushmore. "Kady. You drive out to see the president but you don't drive up to see me. It's a stone. And then I go to see a coyote and people say 'ugh'."

"I would sit on the sharpest stick for you. Four feet long. Wait- that would come up under my heart, wouldn't it?"

"It's not ethnic groups. The prejudice that I have in me is city people versus normal people."

"Ignorant isn't a bad word. It just means you don't know."

"My prejudices are more toward...you people from the city, from the big town. You're the problem."

"I'm going on facebook to talk dirty like the rest of you kids."

"I stopped the tractor and I look around. And I'm six feet up. Oh my God, Kady, there are HUNDREDS of lady's slippers on Butch's field. Not five. Not ten. HUNDREDS."

Then I asked how he could possibly burn out Butch's field. "I can't do it. It would be like murdering a Kindergarten class."

"You have to come now, or be one of them dummies. One of them city people. Look at your cement blocks. Look at your empty cans of beer. The money. And go clubbing. And don't worry about the Lady's Slippers. Why worry about it? Right?"

"Kady there's an old expression. You've never heard it. It goes: Stop and Smell the Roses."

"There's more to life than cement buildings, and crime and people who don't have a clue because they've never driven up to the lake and looked at the stars through a telescope where there isn't so much light."

"I knew a guy who was a walking thesaurus. Well I'm a walking encyclopedier."

"Why don't you look at another cement block. And say, 'I don't think I've seen that one before.'"

"There's more to life than not having mud on your shoes, Dear."

"Tell 'em I apologize for misconstruing their perception."

"People say, 'save a whale, they're all dying'. And so I go, 'oh no! the whales are all dying!' Well there's a bunch of whales and they're not all dying."

"It just came to me today. As I'm sitting out looking at my pristene view. Kady, I gotta tell you. Can I change the subject?"