The joy of cable

My soon to be 80 year old father is the perfect gentleman. He holds doors open, helps a lady on with her coat and respectfully comments on a pretty woman. "She's an attractive gal."

He never makes inappropriate comments or alludes to anything remotely sexual. The reason I'm telling you this is to illustrate for you how funny the events of Monday night were.

I had a late meeting so my father offered to pick up my dog, Bernie, and take her to my parents house until I got home. I pulled into their driveway around 7:30 and was greeted at the door by Bernie and my mother. Mom quickly went about doing what she enjoys the most, catering to her family. She had made me a steak dinner and was arranging it on a fancy placemat at the dining room table.

My father is usually in the family room watching CNN or Jeopardy and he'll turn the TV off to come to chat and ask me how my day was. He didn't do that Monday night. I heard the chatterings of a Spanish speaking commercial and I assumed he was flipping channels between the news and Alex Trebek.

One commercial led to another and I peeked my head around the corner to see him leaning back in his recliner.

"Hi. How are ya?"

"Good, Chrissy, how are you?"

"Good." I turned away, puzzled that he had made no attempt to get up.

I sat down in the dining room with my mother.

"Is Dad ok?"

"Oh, yeah", she rolled her eyes, "every night at 7:00, he watches that show."

"What show?" I leaned back in my chair to try to get a glimpse of what he was watching while the din of rolling r's sang from the TV. He still hadn't changed the channel.

"Just wait. You'll see. He's watching those hot mamas.", she leaned in close and whispered.

"Wha??"

By know, the proliferation of commercials had ended and the main feature was once again on the air, a show called "12 Corazones", a dating show on the Spanish channel, Telemundo.

From what I could deduce, since I speak bad French but no Spanish at all, it's a dating show where each contestant is identified by their Zodiac sign. Yeah, I don't get it, either.

By the time I got there, the show was half over, although I'm sure that if I had watched the first half that I wouldn't have been able to tell you what happened anyway. And neither could my father.

"Hey, Dad, whatcha watchin'?"

"Oh, I don't know. Whatever's on."

"Do you understand anything they're saying?"

"Nope"

But he understands how young, hot women in short skirts and low blouses look when they appear to be auditioning for a Charo lookalike contest. I was waiting for one of them to say, "Coochie Coochie Coo!" after they shook their boobies in a contestant's face and starting making out with them.

Hysterical! And more hysterical that my sweet father is so mesmerized by this.

I guess a man is a man is a man.

And women still get jealous. My mother joked and kidded all through dinner about how funny it is that he watches it every night. But once he got up to come and join us and forgot to turn the last 5 minutes of the TV show off...

"Aren't you going to turn that damn thing off?"

"I was going to watch the end."

"What do you need to watch the end for? Girl swallows man's tongue. The end!"

Dad turned the TV off and I just shook my head and chuckled.