My daughter has always had a way of being an absolute “truth teller” with me. While she tries to avoid it as much as possible when it’s not required, she has a way of leveling me with a broadside whenever it suits the moment and she thinks I need an intervention.

Surprisingly, this is a good thing. My daughter and I have always had a hot and cold relationship, largely of my own doing. Sure, I can blame being a pirate for much of it. You see, her birthday was during Seafair and in my younger days and in her impressionable years, I would often have to celebrate her birthday a week before it’s actual occurrence. And yes, I can hide behind the fact that I had alternate weekends seeing her and her birthday always fell on that other weekend, but it didn’t.

I said I could blame this all on other things, but it’s largely me. For the longest time, I refused to be an adult, or even when I was one, a very responsible one. Thankfully, we do get along better now, especially since I came to my senses and returned home, just in time since she has now given me my first grandson, something I didn’t think important, and now find to be very, very cool.

We had an early Thanksgiving at my mother’s house on Sunday. My daughter and her husband came along. It was a great time, surprisingly. I have found over the years that I’m not usually into family gatherings – a long history of unresolved issues there, perhaps that’s another RobZerrvation.

Suffice it to say that I am often filled with dread about these things. And this was certainly the case Sunday. But it was a lot of fun. I really love my daughter and my son in law and it’s nice to see her happy and well adjusted, even if I didn’t have a big role in her life, save those four formative and formidable years between 14 and 18 when I think I actually did have an impact on how she turned out. Again, another RobZerrvation.

The conversation at the table was lively as always. At one point, the topic turned to living alone. My daughter was kidding her husband about how nice it would be to live alone and how her friends at work were in the midst of moving to new digs and trying to decide whether or not to have a roommate.

I offered that I could never have a same sex roommate, that I can barely stand the company of guys when I’m in a bar, let alone the sanctity of my own home. Any guys I know would instantly be a Felix and Oscar sitcom, me being Felix, no, Oscar, no…

I said I could live with a female as a roommate in a platonic sort of way. it was then that my daughter burst out in laughter. She knows my bullsh**t when she hears it. She said, “Dad, when is the last time you ever lived with a woman where a relationship wasn’t involved.”

I tried to cover. I said that I had managed to live platonically with Connie for almost two years, and she reminded me that I had to barricade myself in my room every night with my entertainment center so she couldn’t break in and try to have her way with me.

“No, dad,” she said. “Platonic means living with someone without sex.”

I shot back, “Ah, then that would be Michelle, my last ex,” I said.

Becca replied, “You didn’t have sex with Michelle?”

“Well,” I said. “I had sex with her, but she never had sex with me, I think that should count.”

Everyone burst out in laughter, since we all knew that I was the next best thing to her having a mirror with a dick mounted on it. Which would probably have been her preference.

Then there were lots of follow on jokes about Wicked and Les Miserables, and that her favorite musicals should have been a hint about her outlook on life and her relationship with me. ‘Nough said.

But as usual, the old truth-teller was spot on. I know I could never have lived with a woman platonically. As Billy Crystal said in When Harry Met Sally, that “sex thing” would always get in the way. Eventually, I would try to put the moves on my roommate and even if it worked out in an FWB kind of way, eventually we’d have to have that talk. We’d either have to become a couple or one of us, most likely her, would have found someone else that floated her boat on more levels than just an occasional hoochie coo in one or the other’s bed.

It’s these times that I find so funny. I know I live in a delusional world, at least in certain areas that have to do with me. I like to think I am certain ways, only to get a little reality therapy from those closest to me who can pull back the old curtain any time they want and see that there’s just a guy lurking behind it, pulling all the levers. With just a few words, they can make the old wizard feel like a humbug.

I guess that’s why I like them all so much. My kids, my mom and the Janmeister keep me all grounded. I could never believe my own fluff-n-stuff because they will quickly and efficiently sweep it away with a sentence or two.

Even the wizard needed Dorothy and company to keep him honest. And to think, I didn’t have to bring them the witch’s broom, even though I was in enough hot water to last me a lifetime.

In the Emerald City, keeping a weather eye out for flying monkeys from Florida,

– Robb