Smoke: Corollary

It's been awfully quiet at the Nguyen residence all week because my mom and sister have been in California visiting relatives since Monday. My mom told me it would be the perfect bonding opportunity for me and my dad, but the only thing we've managed to do together this week is watch TV in complete silence.

My dad and I don't have a bad relationship; we just have trouble communicating with each other sometimes. If the topic isn't about politics or sports, we have absolutely nothing to say to each other. There is no such thing as small talk between us.

Tonight, for the third night in a row, my dad and I were eating our TV dinners and watching CNN together. Eventually I grabbed the remote control and changed it to ABC, which was airing a TV special about Peter Jennings. I've been watching any news coverage about Peter Jennings all week because I've found his life story to be both fascinating and inspiring.

What I've noticed, however, is that every time I tuned in to watch something about Peter Jennings this week, my dad would leave the room. I wasn't sure why. But tonight, sprawled out on the recliner after eating an entire family-sized meatloaf dinner, my dad was too lazy to move. So instead, he decided to bitch to me about my obsession with Peter Jennings.

"Why you watch this man so much? You gay? You queerdo? Faggot?"

"I'm just interested in his life, Dad. He was a great man."

"Great? What's great? He Canadian son of bitch. You only interest because he die! ABC ratings through roof now because of fool like you!"

"Well yeah, his death is a big reason why I'm so interested. Did you know he quit smoking 20 years ago? And he still died way too early. He could have done a lot more great things for journalism if he'd never picked up a cigarette in the first place."

My dad quickly jumped out of his recliner, then he turned around with fire in his eyes and growled, "All I see you do is watch TV. What you do productive? Turn TV off, now. Turn off it! Learn discipline, imbecile."

What the fuck ever. Fucking pissed off that he would talk to a 23-year-old man like that, I shut off the TV and walked into my room to get an early start on my packing for U of I. My dad let out a big sigh, then went into his den to go on his computer.

A few hours later, he went to bed, and that's when I decided to be a snoop. I was still in a bad mood from my dad's unreasonable bitch-out of me, so I think what I wanted to do was look for something that could be blackmail material. Sometimes I like to check the history of his web browser to see what kind of porn my dad's been looking at. Yes, I was that pissed.

And what I saw in his browser history surprised me. I expected to find the Persian Kitty website. Instead, the first thing I saw in his history was an article about how smoking affects people in your environment.

I scrolled down, and there was more. LOTS MORE. Every site he perused tonight was about smoking. And there were sites giving tips on how to quit. There were sites explaining in detail the biology behind his addiction. There were sites full of statistics and studies done about second-hand smoking.

It all finally made sense to me about him. I thought to myself, My dad is trying his very best to educate himself, and ultimately quit. Not for himself, but for the people he loves. His family.

I continued to snoop around my dad's computer, but instead of feeling pissed off like I was before, this time I was maybe holding back tears.

It's a shame that we have trouble showing affection and communicating to each other. It sucks that our father/son time is reduced to long periods of silence. But for what it's worth, I dearly hope that at least these periods of silence won't stop for another 50 years.