Odd Addendum

My mother was going in for a surgical procedure this week, nothing serious just a routine, but my father was going to drive her to the hospital and wait until the procedure was over just in case the doctors needed him on hand.

“[Son], what do you know about The Great Gatsby?”

"I know quite a bit,” I said, looking at him across the dinner table the other night.

“Well, is it any good?”

My father is 56-years-old. My father loves to read. My father is one of the people who taught me a love of reading.

MY FATHER HAS NEVER READ F. SCOTT FITZGERALD'S THE GREAT GATSBY.

“Well,” I said. “It is considered by some to be the perfect example of the modern novel. And many consider it to be the greatest novel of the 20^th Century.”

“You have, like, three copies around here somewhere, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, give me one of them before Wednesday. I’ll read it while your mom is in surgery.”

I excused myself from the dinner table, went to my room, opened my bookcase, and returned with my weathered old copy right then and there.

My father read The Great Gatsby through in one sitting today. And when he came home, leaving my mother semi-doped out of her mind in the recovery room, doing well by all accounts.

“So, I read The Great Gatsby,” he said after giving me the obligatory update on mom. “I’m 7 pages from the end.”

My younger brother, a bartender, was with us as we prepared to go out for dinner.

“Why did you read The Great Gatsby?” He asked.

My father pointed at me. 

“I made him lend me a copy.”

“Yeah, but haven’t you read it before?”

My father shook his head. 

My brother looked at me. My brother is the person in our family who NEVER reads fiction out of a strongly-professed belief that it’s not practical.

“Dad, I’VE read The Great Gatsby! I HATE to read, and I read it all the way through in High School.”

Dad just shrugged and went out to the car. 

 In that instant my brother and I both shared the same “this is the strangest thing we’ve ever seen” look before we both followed our odd-ball old man out to the car and drove to the next town to get our 92-year-old grandfather and head to Buffalo Wild Wings.

So, e-hem, that is my Odd Addendum before signing off. 

My father read the greatest American Novel of the 20^th Century today and I still don’t know what he thought of it. He’s saving his book report for when mom is sentient and back in the fold.

I will keep you posted.