Hot Dog Beehonkus

Daddy always has concocted nicknames for random people in our lives. I first remember his applying a nickname to a third grade classmate. Lamar Cryer was our chorus teacher’s male favorite, as she assigned him all possible gender-appropriate solos. However, Lamar deserved his Belwood Elementary fame because no one could croon about monsters under his bed or having a blue, blue Christmas with such rasp and sophistication. Daddy even felt moved by Lamar’s performance, particularly after he portrayed a chef in a school play. (That’s all I recall about it.)

“Hey, Chef Lamar!” Daddy hollered at Lamar every time they ran into each other. This continued throughout high school.

Around the same time Daddy decided to become my softball teammate Melissa’s* greatest fan. Although rotund, Melissa really hustled. So Daddy called her Rocket.

“Yeah ROCKET!!!” he screamed as she rounded the bases at every game. She smiled hugely while she ran.

Sometimes Daddy’s monikers weren’t as well-received. Like my sister’s friend Jesse Yoder.

“Jesse yo-yo-yo-yo-yo-YODER!!!” Daddy yelled when he came over. Jesse usually sort of stood there. To be fair, I don’t know how I’d respond either.

Two years before meeting her, Daddy devised a sobriquet for my boss, whose last name is Thacker*.

“How’s that Thacker woman doin’?” he often asks me on the phone. My boss took the nickname in stride, and has written “T.T.W.” on the return address of a few cards she sent to my parents.

So now Daddy calls her Tay Tay Dubya.

In my first Hot Dog Beehonkus post, I mention a Moon Pie goody bag my boss prepared for Daddy’s Birthday. She signed the card “T.T.W.” and clarified “That Thacker Woman” with an asterisk. She compassionately wondered if he would remember what that means. Luckily, Tay Tay Dubya is cemented in Daddy’s long-term memory.

“Of course I know what Tay Tay Dubya is!” Daddy answered when I asked. “You tell Tay Tay Dubya I said hello,” he now always reminds me when we check in while I’m at work.

I think most people find Daddy’s nicknames endearing or flattering. Daddy recently phoned his good friend Byron Barron, retired Command Sargeant Major and fellow Airborne Ranger. I was taught to call him Sargeant Major Barron, and Daddy shortened that to Smadge. Daddy called to inform him of his diagnosis but didn’t address him as Smadge. My mother thinks it bothered him. When Sargeant Major Barron called the house to speak to Daddy a few days later, Mother carried the phone to the living room and said, “Robert, it’s Byron…”

“Smadge!” Daddy exclaimed while leaping from the sofa.

I think that relieved us all.

*Name has been changed

Last Saturday Mother and Daddy picked me up in Atlanta, and we drove to Augusta to have lunch with Timber.

“Sorry, I’m still drunk from last night,” I notified them when they arrived. (I had prepared an enormous vat of rosemary gimlets for a dinner party including one of Ryan’s out-of-town best friends. Ryan’s stepfather calls the delicious but dangerously strong libation the Date Rape Cocktail.)

“Ugh…” Mother frowned.

“We’ll getchye a barf bag,” Daddy offered. “Just make sure you throw up in the front seat. I’m sittin’ in back.”

While I grasped my stomach in pain, Daddy talked a lot, during perhaps more than any car trip we’ve ever taken.

“Probably because he always has to compete with three women,” Ryan later suggested.

I learned a lot about Daddy as we coasted along Interstate 20: that he was an Eagle Scout, received the “Most Dependable” Senior Superlative at Hart County High School and managed his high school football team.

“I played my freshman year, but I decided I didn’t want to get the crap beat outta me anymore,” he explained. Daddy even received an offer to help train the University of Georgia football team but joined the North Georgia College Corps of Cadets instead.

At one point Mother and I reviewed Ryan’s and my wedding invitee list, which incited me to ask questions about their own matrimonial event.

“Whatever happened to your best man?” I asked Daddy.

“He lives in California now. He got real mad at me when he got engaged. I told him he was marryin’ the whore of North Georgia College,” Daddy reminisced.

“DAD-DIEEE!” I guffawed.

“She was the campus whore. Turned out to be true, too. He remarried a real nice woman.”

Daddy has worked God-awful hours since I can remember, often rising at 4 a.m. and returning home around 6 in the evening. At one point a couple years ago he labored until midnight at a carpet mill in Lyerly, Georgia. My whole life Daddy has worked, gone to church and slept.

“I’m seeing all this as an opportunity to spend more time with your Mother,” Daddy recently told me on the phone. His outlook inspires me. I’m looking forward to spending more time with Daddy, too, and learning about his history, like the Eagle Scouts and campus whores.

Daddy with his Birthday chili dogs

“I’m doin’ fine. Just cain’t remember shit.”

If you ask my father how he’s doing, that’s how he’ll probably respond. Last Monday my family received a diagnosis we had been waiting for since Christmas. Daddy has a brain disease, more specifically mild cognitive disorder. We had hoped depression and anxiety could explain his sudden memory loss.

I first noticed odd behavior around August, when my family celebrated my sister Timber’s Birthday. Before my now-fiance Ryan and I departed, the five of us drove to El Nopal for an early dinner. Daddy seemed unusually distant and despondent, and remained disinterested in ordering his customary huevos rancheros or other rich Mexican meal.

“What will you have, sir?” the waitress asked.

“Hot dawg.”

Daddy requested two hot dogs from the children’s menu.

“Robert!” Mother gasped while rummaging through the chip bowl.

Hot dogs became a symbol of the progression of Daddy’s disease. Right after Christmas, he took medical leave from work, often requesting Mother to drive him to Kennesaw, downtown Atlanta or even Dawsonville to pick up a half-dozen chili dogs.

Chili dogs, bologna and chocolate soon overtook his diet. For Daddy’s Birthday I brought him six steaming chili dogs from the Varsity, setting the hot greasy box on the counter. Plus, my boss sent him a goody bag. She had participated in Mardi Gras festivities in Orange Beach the week before and gathered Moon Pies of all flavors and sizes, delivering them in an attempt to lift my family’s spirits. Also in an effort to encourage healthier eating, she included two apples.

Among Daddy’s Birthday gifts he unwrapped a Swiss Army knife, new pants and a political book. But his favorite present was the chili dogs.