Dear Jessica Brennan,
I have been heard from time to time (daily) telling Dad that he’s hopeless. It doesn’t bother him, because for the most part he is hopeless by choice.
What I mean by that is this. He doesn’t know anything about the passwords to our accounts, how to set the clock on the microwave, how to make the TV work, anything about computers, or even what songs he has, and has not produced over the years. When I die, most of this information will go with me.
None of this lack of knowledge is because he hasn’t been told, or in the case of the songs, actually done the work, it is because he has chosen not to commit it to memory, leaving him hopeless by choice.
Recently we were sitting on our deck on a summer evening when vocalist Jean Meilleur texted a song to Dad from a few years back. I said to Dad, “I remember that song, and I can hear your production style all over it.” Dad looked at me blankly and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.” It was a song he had produced for the Ontario Summer Games. Dad was none the wiser after listening to the whole piece. Why would he need to remember this song if I do?
It turns out that while Dad is hopeless by choice, I choose to enable that hopelessness.
When we talk about it he laughs. I mean why would he learn about furnace filters, pay channels or Google drives if he didn’t have to? That might clog up all that genius going on between his ears. Plus, he will say, “You’re so good at it.” (She knows she’s being played but lets it go).
All of this hopelessness came as a bit of a shock at first, coming from a family where my dad could fix anything. I am glad that my dad taught me how to do things, so I can look after them, but I feel a bit hopeless myself when I think of what would happen if your dad was ever left to his own devices.
According to Mr. Webster, Dad’s particular form of “hopeless” is this – – incapable of redemption or improvement. Yes, that sums it up.
Dear Jess, your Mum and Dad have both come to grips with this being the case. We know that there is no hope that he will ever press the reset button on the outdoor receptacle, talk to tech support about any issue or do anything but scream up the stairs at me when he sets the security alarm off. As it counts down, 15, 14, 13, 12, he may shout one more time “Sharon!” the way Ozzie Osbourne would, but there is a better chance that he may just go downstairs and answer his email. It is anyone’s guess, but one thing he isn’t going to do, is learn the code to turn it off and prevent the police from coming.
When it comes to these things, we have a good system. Dad complains about them, and I fix them. Hopeless.
Love,
Mum xo
