My Dad is 63 years old and I recently found out that he struggles with separating history and legend. In perfect Dad fashion, he finally decided to “check out this Game Of Thrones thing everybody’s been talking about.”
During his watch I would pop in from time to time to stand and watch with him for about 15 minutes in silence before walking out. Flip the script. During one of the later seasons when Drogon was fully grown, an episode had finished and he looked up at me and said, “Could you imagine what it is was like to actually see one of those things.”
“I’m sorry, what did you just say to me?”
This wasn’t a bit, or a gag, or a dad joke. It’s very important to me that you know this. Because I know if I saw this in a viral tweet or something I would immediately call bullshit. It looks like one of those toddlers with political takes Tweets, I know that. But it wasn’t that. My father has no control over his facial expressions. I’m able to tell him what he’s thinking all the time before he even opens his mouth. It freaks him out. I know when he’s lying, he’s physically unable to lie to me. So when I tell you that I said to him, “You know they’re not animatronics, that’s it’s all CGI right?”, that he was dead serious when responding “No I mean like seeing a dragon back in the olden days.”
My Dad is not a nerd. He doesn’t believe that the government has covered up dragons in conspiracy theories. He doesn’t even know any conspiracy theories. My Dad simply thought dragons went extinct and was looking at me confused like this was common knowledge.
I fell to the ground laughing. He cracked up laughing asking me what we were laughing at. In between my hysterics, after many minutes, I managed to squeak out, “Dragons were never real, they’re made up.” He was screaming “NO” and was trying to reason with me over my laughter. He kept yelling over me, “You’re fucking with me! You’re fucking with me! Google it! Cmon, cut it out now. Will you! Google it!”
I crawled to my phone like Anakin with no legs. Having my phone grounded me a bit. I was able to stand back up and show him proof from the History Channel website that said dragons aren’t real. I needed a source he would trust. I was back in control now and able to start joking about it. “Who did you think killed all the dragons? King Arthur?” The look of shock and realization that came across his face... Back to floor. We laughed together now though, while my father’s whole concept of history was dumped on it’s head.
But I got greedy. Him believing in dragons and King Arthur wasn’t enough for me. I wasn’t ready to pinch off this laugh. I’m not really a “quit while you’re ahead” guy. So I said “Would you like to talk about Adam and Eve?” Then his face just got sad. I didn’t laugh after that. So I said “I’m kidding about that one, of course I’m kidding about that.” We’re Irish Catholic and he clearly was not ready for this conversation.
With my happy moment suddenly turning very sad, I left. But do you know what cured that right up once he was out of earshot? Picturing my Dad’s face when he realized that dragons never existed.
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