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Copyright © 2010 Andrea Langworthy
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The other day, my husband and I switched channels on the television for awhile trying to find a movie. We happened upon a romantic comedy with Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston. “Along Came Polly” is the story of a young woman my mother would call a flibbertigibbet. She’s an outgoing slacker who can never find her keys, doesn’t make plans, and whose apartment looks like she just moved in. Stiller’s character is an uptight introvert. A planner who believes there’s a place for everything and everything should be in its place. His job is to assess risk for a large insurance company and he leads his life based on what’s risky and what isn’t.
My father was in the insurance business before he became an attorney. He had a claims adjusting company and after he graduated from law school, he opened a firm specializing in personal injury cases. When we were little it wasn’t uncommon for Dad to pile one or all of us kids into the car on a Sunday afternoon when he had to snap photos of a client’s wrecked car. When a tornado hit South Minneapolis in 1958, he drove us past the uprooted trees and damaged homes. I still have a picture of myself standing next to a car flattened by a big oak.
It often seemed our lives were guided by the devastation and disaster Dad saw daily in his work life. Hay rides in the fall were off-limits. They could get too rowdy; we might fall off and be run over by one of the wheels. Sledding on a nearby hill came with more rules than we could remember because Dad had a client whose son hit a tree and got a concussion. I was afraid Dad wouldn’t let me get my license because of all the accidents his clients had been in. That wasn’t the case, though. My siblings and I were given cars not long after we had that precious piece of paper from the DMV in hand.
I doubt Ben Stiller’s character in “Along Came Polly.” would approve of cars for teenagers but still, he and my father were alike. Dad put labels on the linen closet shelves so “flat twin” sheets would be placed on the bottom shelf where they belonged and “fitted full” would go on the ledge above. He labeled metal shelving units in the garage with designations for tools and play things. Put up peg board with hooks and clips for brooms and rakes. Shovels, too. When things got out of order, Dad hollered up the stairs on Saturday mornings to tell us kids he expected the garage to be spanking clean when he returned. That everything — pogo sticks, hula hoops, bikes, and balls — should be in its place. It didn’t take long for the five of us to assess the situation, scramble out of bed, and get ready to heed Dad’s command. Not doing the job right wasn’t worth the risk of making him mad. A hay ride with rambunctious teenagers or a wayward toboggan would have been safer.