In which my dad bums some furniture
(Repost from 'Dad Stories')

Picture the scene... It's early Christmas evening. The presents have all been opened. The Christmas dinner has been demolished. Her Maj has been toasted at 3pm with the first sherry of the day (A tradition at my folks' house - though they give nary a tinker's cuss for the royals for 364 days of the year) and it's just about that sort of time when...

Ma Jimlad: "Anyone for charades?"

We never learn. It always descends into trouble. But we're all rather merry and in fine festive fettle so myself, my brother and the 'rents settle into a game.

It's all jolly good fun. To begin with. Ma pulls off an impressive 'Gone With The Wind' with a flatulence mime. I get lucky and manage to do 'Imagine' in under 5 seconds while my brother raises a few guffaws by goose-stepping his way through 'Fawlty Towers'. So that brings it round to...

My dad loves a game of charades. Though it does tend to bring out his competitive side. This will quickly be illustrated by what happened next. I'll be as descriptive as possible, see if you can guess what he was trying to do....

Having read the card he pauses for a second in thought and looks around the room.

"Are you ready?" I ask, in my role as time-keeper for the round, "Go!"

"No! Wait!" he screeches and belts out of the room.

Cue three puzzled faces from the remainder of the family while we hear him unlock the back door, run across the patio and burst in to the garage. We can hear some commotion and the clock is still ticking.

"Is it 'The Invisible Man'?" quips my bro. Ho ho!

We hear him coming back and, even though we're all au fait with his competitive nature, none of us were quite prepared for the sheer WTF-ness of what happened next.

He *leaps* back into the room. Wearing a welder's mask and a weird sort of tea-towel scarf *thing*. He has a Christmas card in his hand. The one from Aunty Carol if memory serves.

After standing there in a "Well? Isn't it obvious?" pose for a few seconds, he points at the Christmas Card. Then resumes said pose. We all look at each other, not sure wether to laugh or have him sectioned. He gives us an exasperated look then starts jogging round the coffee table holding the Christmas Card by his side. He stops and gives us a pose that screams "oh come on! You must have got it by now!". No-one's made a single guess since he returned. I think we were all too stunned. We don't know how many words or anything, he forgot about that bit.

I look at the timer and in my stunned state barely manage to blurt out "15 seconds left, do something else quick!"

I so wish I hadn't said that.

He gives us one last infuriated, exasperated stare. Pulls me off the sofa and proceeds to dry-hump it. Hard. Still holding the Christmas card by his side and occasionally looking at it as though it was keeping him going in his furniture-bumming ways.

The buzzer goes.

He continues to give the sofa a seeing-to.

"Come on!", he shouts, now that he's allowed to. "It's obvious!"

"I don't think we're gonna get it dad..." ventures my brother, which is finally enough to stop the cushion-thrusting.

He gets up, red faced and beaten. We can all sense the frustration and anger bubbling under the surface so no-one wants to say what has to be said. He looks at us all in turn like we are dirt. We're an idiot-convention of the world's worst charade-guessers and he hates us.

It was my mum that finally cracked.

"What was it love?"

If, at this point, anyone has guessed correctly then I would suggest you are some form of superior being for if we had guessed for the rest of the day I don't think any of us would have expected him to bellow:

"I'M FUCKING BATMAN!"

There's a silence.

"BATMAN! Look!", he pulls off the tea towel. "What the hell did you think this was?"

Silence. And shrugs.

"It's a cape!"

Then came the questions... And the giggling.

"And the welders' mask?"

"It was the most bat-like mask I could find!"

"What was the little jog round the coffee table all about?"

"You must know the 'Batman Run'!!!? That's how he runs!"

"Oooooo-kaaaaaay... What the hell were you doing to the sofa?"

"THAT WAS THE BATMOBILE!"

We're in hysterics at this point and he's just getting angrier and angrier. Through tears of laughter my brother asks "Since when did Batman carry Christmas cards around with him?"

My dad picks up the card, turns it to face us and points with great conviction at the one detail that might have helped us.

"IT'S. A. FUCKING. ROBIN!"

He refused to play the next year
(R. Jimlad twitter.com/sirmarkymark, Sun 22 Dec 2013, 4:56, 6 replies)

This
is one of the greatest stories ever.
( social hand grenade I was a lurker before you were a lurker, Sun 22 Dec 2013, 12:28, closed)

Thank you!

(R. Jimlad twitter.com/sirmarkymark, Sun 22 Dec 2013, 16:12, closed)

Just as good
as it was the first time I read it. Have a click.
(DarkLite swallowed my entire undercarriage, Sun 22 Dec 2013, 15:31, closed)

Thanking you, ta

(R. Jimlad twitter.com/sirmarkymark, Sun 22 Dec 2013, 16:12, closed)

i love you so much

( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 23 Dec 2013, 10:20, closed)

Totes reciprocated

(R. Jimlad twitter.com/sirmarkymark, Mon 23 Dec 2013, 21:49, closed)