Dad's Prank at the Pizza Parlor
Why I stopped trying to get even with my father
“Hey Rick, what time is it?”
It seemed like an innocent, everyday question.
But the day my father asked me to check the time was the day that my love of Shakey’s Pizza Parlor lost some of its idyllic shine.
I was twelve, and my family had gone out for pizza. The Shakey’s restaurant chain had interior windows looking into the kitchens so kids like me could climb on the bench and watch the employees make pizza from scratch. My friend and I kept tapping on the glass whenever the dough guy would toss the raw pie into the air, thinking it would be funny if we could make him drop it. It never worked, but we did make him smile.
We eventually hopped off the bench and over to the long wooden table our families had gathered along for one of our regular visits.
I loved the novelty of the kitchen window, the sense of community, and the mouth-watering smells of the tangy tomato sauce, heavenly bread, and baked mozzarella that filled the restaurant. But the best part, of course, was devouring that crusty cheese pizza and washing it down with Mountain Dew, the beverage we ordered by the pitcher and shared.
On this same day, I had finally purchased my first wrist watch, probably with my own allowance money, a proud moment of my adulting as a young man. I had just picked up the pitcher to pour myself a satisfying glass of the fizzy green soda when my dad said, “Hey Rick, what time is it?”
This, of course, played right into my eager pride and I was only too happy to show off my latest acquisition. Unbeknownst to me, he had purposefully sequenced the request so that when I rotated my wrist to read the face of the watch, a splash of the soda tipped right into my lap.
I’m not sure he even thought it through, or how likely it was that I’d take the bait. It was in the mood of the jokes, puns, and pranks that were common in our house growing up, and generally it was good-humored and welcomed in a way that brought us closer. But in this case, the combination of the sticky soda soaking through my pants and everyone else at the table laughing at me for foolishly falling for the gag caused a loose thread in my head to disconnect from my funny bone and re-wire itself to a circuit of revenge.
Without thinking, I turned toward my dad who was sitting next to me, and upended the entire remaining contents of the pitcher into his lap.
As you can imagine, there were a few long, silent seconds at the table when everyone wondered what might happen next. I remember the initial look of shock on my dad’s face which slowly gave way to an eyebrow raise, a slow nod, and then a reflective smile—which came as an acknowledgement that the retaliation was not un-deserved.
Clearly the episode felt like a slap to my pride in the moment, but my dad was in no way a mean-spirited man. And his ability to check his own impulses before reacting poorly served as an emotional safety zone that benefitted me greatly growing up.
His measured response gave the group permission to indulge the relief-value of their laughter, and the incident was properly remembered henceforth with fondness and frequency. But my father’s capacity for emotional self-restraint went both ways.
As an adult I once attended a personal growth workshop where I discovered I’d disconnected from my capacity for healthy anger. Digging down, I realized I’d interpreted my father’s commitment to self-regulation as a blanket indictment of anger as an emotion—and now I had work to do to reclaim it.
Unfortunately, I thought that redeeming this part of myself should include confronting my father about his lack of willingness to acknowledge his own anger, and set out to fix him by importing the workshop exercises I had just experienced into his living room.
It didn’t go well.
Not because he finally lost his cool. He didn’t. I just broke my own heart watching myself try to change my dad, aggressively suggesting he ought to be different than he was. It wasn’t until I became a father myself that I started to see things differently.
Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I could detect an additional measure of tenderness from my dad once I had kids of my own. He relaxed in a deeper way. Almost like he felt I better understood him. Or that I’d joined a club to which he was already a longstanding member. In fact, I had joined his club, but like all dads I had no clue that the cost of entry to that society would be paid in tiny installments over a very long period of time. And that one part of that payment would include being misunderstood by my very own children, having to bear witness to them wishing I were different, while being unable to stop the multi-ton train of my own habits to appease them.
The job of fathers is a little different from mothers. They are subject to a kind of impossible meritocracy, not automatically given a place in the family heart, but must earn it by navigating a minefield of criteria that there is no way to traverse without losing parts of themselves along the way. I’m not suggesting it should be any different. The parts of dads that go missing on the parenting journey are often precisely what we most hope they’ll shed—arrogance, impatience, control. But the complexity of families is a kind of battle zone, and sometimes there are casualties. If we’re insistent enough that he changes, a father might lose dignity, hope, or a dream instead of the idiosyncrasies and eccentricities we’re sure the family would be better without.
Like all fathers, my dad helped me to discover who I did and didn’t want to be. And he went first before me, alone into fatherhood, navigating it with dignity and minimal complaint, and was standing there to welcome me when I arrived.
I know that compared to some, I’m lucky to have evened the score on that day with my father and lived to tell about it. If I could make it through my life as a dad with half the integrity he’s demonstrated in the time I’ve known him, I’ll be thrilled. I think of the kindness I’m shown by my own children, and how much of my father’s sense of humor, capacity for self-reflection, and compassion for others has miraculously reached them over the bridge of my life.
I’m not cured of being annoyed or irritated by my father’s habits, but I decided that I’d never try to storm the fortress of his heart again by force. Focusing on what’s wrong or missing in each other is a family game that has no end, and trying to change each other would lead to the exact opposite of fun, only serving to bring each other down.
Last I checked, we really don’t have time for that.
Rick, thank you for this beautiful story. The way you move from that moment at Shakey's to the deeper understanding of fatherhood is so skillfully done. I found myself nodding along with recognition at how our perspective on our parents shifts once we become parents ourselves.
That line about fathers being "subject to a kind of impossible meritocracy" really struck me. There's something so true about how we expect our parents to be different while also inheriting so much of who they are, often without realizing it until much later ◡̈
Really appreciate you sharing this. It's a lovely reminder that sometimes the most profound growth happens when we stop trying to change each other and start seeing each other more clearly.
This is a beautiful, playful moment with the pitcher at Shakeys.
It got me thinking about what might’ve happened had I not been so terrified of my dad’s temper and instead reacted as you did to your dad’s mischievous prompting for the time. Hard to say. I was scared all the time that one day he’d lose it and kill or maim someone physically. Expressing his anger was nothing he needed help with.
But I love thinking about your natural response. It creates an alternate reality — a model — where I’m far more empowered from a young age which carries over and merges with right now. This alternate me exists.