There was a time when my relationship with my brother was so strained I was ready to show him the door. That was an hour ago. However, I will admit over the past year my relationship with Wild Thing has matured to the point where we have a budding friendship. My father has also witnessed our relationship mature. My father proposed nicknames to highlight our special bond: “Big One, Little One”, “Double Trouble”, and then hit the jackpot with “Frick and Frack.” From that point forward whenever we were together we wanted to be recognized as Frick and Frack. A proper introduction was essential when establishing expectations. Whenever we interacted with anyone we started off telling the person we were talking to with, “You’ve got Frick and you’ve got Frack.” I took the title of Frick and Wild Thing was assigned Frack.
I firmly believed the tagline “You’ve got Frick and you’ve got Frack” would eventually go down as the best tagline in history. Our love of the phrase led us to just randomly say it in public at a noticeable volume. My father often appeared embarrassed when we would just randomly shout out, “You’ve got Frick and you’ve got Frack” without provocation. However, from our standpoint we were awesome and the tagline was awesome; therefore, we were going to utilize the tagline with the long-term objective of making it one of the best taglines in history.
We quickly learned using the tagline outside of our house caused a lot of confusion, even chaos. A prime example of the chaos occurred at the playground last week. Frack and I climbed to the top of the main tower and yelled, “You’ve got Frick and you’ve got Frack.” A woman sitting on the bench next to my father muttered to herself, “Did someone really name their children Frick and Frack?” My father dismissed her initially. However the woman persisted, “Those kids may be lost souls in the future.” The fuse had just been lit for my father was about to explode. “Yes, their names are Frick and Frack,” my father declared calmly. The woman appeared caught off guard but continued, “Why would you name your children Frick and Frack?”, the woman asked in a condescending tone. My father appeared noticeable annoyed that this woman was in his eyes seeking personal information. My father had a proclivity to hyperbolize his responses when he thought a person had no business inquiring into a personal matter.
“Well, I never thought I was going to have kids, so I named my dogs my favorite names that I would have used for children. So, later in life when I had kids the good names were already taken; therefore I gave them names that differentiated them. My inspiration for the names came from the Rice Krispies cereal characters Snap, Crackle and Pop,” my father explained. The woman had difficulty processing my father’s confounding answer. My father summoned my brother and me over to the bench. In general I cannot read my father’s cues or just him in general (a true enigma). However, his fake smile was an unmistakable sign to put on the full crazy show of Frick and Frack.
I nudged my brother and then deafeningly shouted, “You’ve got Frick” and Wild Thing followed, “You’ve got Frack.” As the woman was beginning to relax from her startled state, I asked the woman if I could see what was inside her purse. My father glanced at me with a look of “Where are you going with this?” but let me proceed uninterrupted. The woman quickly responded, “No.” Meanwhile Frack was being his peculiar 2 year old self and was sticking his nose out trying to smell the woman. Frankly he would likely have been trying to smell her anyway, but it definitely helped he was doing it in that moment without taking signals from my father or me.
The woman showed signs of being flustered but did not depart. At this point Frack had clearly invaded the woman’s personnel space and had bent over to get his nose approximately 2 inches from her kneecap to get a better whiff of the woman. “Can you control your children?”, the woman barked at my father. “Frack could you please give the woman some additional space”, my father requested. Frack looked up with a strange smile that even gave me the willies, then slow retreated.
Finally my father came to realization that this woman was entrenched in her positon and escalating this situation further was not productive. My father directed me and Frack to stand-down. The woman slightly turned her head and continued to scowl at my father as if to demonstrate she had won this squabble. I preemptively started chanting support for my father but abruptly stopped when my father spoke.
“Thank you for your time this afternoon, it has truly been a memorable experience,” he stated. I was confused. “Is this one of those times my father says random stuff just to see how people react,” I pondered. He continued further, “We appreciate the insights you provided and we will take them all under review and consideration.” At that point my father had officially lost me on the tactic he was deploying. “Frick and Frack, it is time to go,” my father then stated. “Ma’am, you have a blessed day,” my father said in closing. As we walked to the car I asked questions feverishly seeking clarity on how things deteriorated so quickly while we had the upper hand. My father repeatedly stated he would provide answers when we got to the car.
“Do you know what sarcasm means?”, my father asked me when we got into the car. I deliberated, “Was this a loaded question?”. I finally responded, “No.” My father explained that sarcasm was when a person says serious and real comments on a topic with the objective of poking fun at the underlying topic. “Well, dad that explanation sounds like you are talking out of both sides of your mouth and changing the definition mid-sentence”, I thought.
When we arrived home my mother asked me how the park was. I replied, “It was fine until dad picked a fight with a woman on the bench.” My father shot me a look of “Dude, chill.” I knew that look so I followed-up by saying my comment was “sarcasm.” I looked back at my father, and he shot me another look of “Just Stop!” Utterly confused and exhausted I muttered something random like my father would do in a moment of awkwardness, “I never learned to ride a camel, but my Lego book has the answers.”
Before leaving the room I asked my father a final question. “Do you believe the tagline “You’ve got Frick and you’ve got Frack” is now famous?” I asked. “One may say infamous versus famous but we can work out the semantics of that later”, my father stated, providing yet another mystifying response. I was saved by a FaceTime call from my grandparents. “You have Frick and you got Frack”, my brother and I proclaimed. I then followed by saying, “Dad just told me I am infamous.” A loud slapping sound then followed, which was the sound of my father slapping his hand to his forehead muttering, “Why do I even try?” It remained unclear whether my tagline had become famous (or infamous) but if the tagline caused my father to have that reaction, I was confident we had something very powerful to work with.