In the summer when I was five or six years old, I remember sitting in the grass in the back yard, seething about some annoyance. I was peeved. Really peeved. About something. My Dad got home from work and came outside still in his work clothes and sat in the grass next to me. He didn’t say anything. He just sat there for a few minutes, and then, looking into the trees, leaned over and nudged me with this shoulder.
“What,” I said. Short, clipped, the anger of a five year old.
“Wanna see a trick?”
I didn’t look at him. “What?” Still clipped.
He looked around in the grass for a moment, and then pulled a fat blade from the green, prickly carpet. He fiddled with it and placed it between his thumbs and then put it up to his face and blew. It made a screech like a train whistle and I jumped.
“Wow! How’d you do that?”
Anger forgotten. To this day I don’t remember what I’d been mad about.
Yeah, Dad… how did you do that?
