Silly Man

There is a type of person I refer to as a "bubble-dweller".  Bubble-dwellers live in their own little world, usually a mild and pleasant place, surrounded by an invincible barrier that keeps them from acknowledging anything that they don't particularly want to deal with.  Bubble-dwellers, a.k.a. "space babies" (Ken's preferred term) tend to be dreamy and unfocused, pleasant enough company, but very disorganized.

My step-dad (I'll call him "my dad", now that I've distinguished him from my bio-dad) is not a typical bubble-dweller.  In his life as a businessman he is focused, and can be ruthless if you get on his bad side.  However, in all other respects, he is something of a space baby, and getting spacier as the years go by.

He just bought a new car.  His previous car was only one year old, but he's not a careful driver, and it was covered with scrapes and dents.  We all agreed that this car was too big for him.  He's better off with a small one so he'll have more room for error.  He assigned Ken to get rid of his old car.  He suggested contacting a business called Lease Busters, which he used the last time he wanted to get rid of a car before the lease was up.  Turns out the old car wasn't leased.  My dad had bought it, only a year ago, but he didn't remember that he'd bought it. 

My dad is forever misplacing his cell phone.  Once it was missing for a week when he dropped it into one of his shoes.  He doesn't have a smart phone because a) he's not that comfortable with technology and b) it would be more catastrophic when he lost his phone if he depended on it for his contacts and schedule.  Instead, he writes notes on little scraps of paper.  At least when he loses a scrap of paper it's only one piece of information that's gone.  The last time he lost his cell phone, my mom found it buried under the pile of scraps of paper on his desk.

My dad is usually on some kind of weird diet.  The latest thing is he sprinkles some kind of powder on his food while he's eating.  I'm not sure exactly what the powder is supposed to do, but there's one type of powder for sweet foods and one type for salty foods.  It's all very mysterious.

Recently he went out and bought a bag of avocados.  He put the bag in the trunk of his car without securing it, and by the time he got home all the avocados had escaped and rolled into every corner of his trunk.  He gathered some of them up and brought them inside, but he didn't get them all.  The remaining avocados froze solid, and rattled around his trunk for the next week or two.  He went golfing and there was an avocado in with his golf clubs.  He opened up his carry-case in a business meeting and pulled out an avocado.  I'm not sure if he saved those ones to eat.

Being inattentive is costing my dad a lot of money.  He has lost two wedding rings within the past year, and each time my mother has insisted (understandably) that he buy a replacement.  I don't know if the jewellery store has ever had such a regular customer in the wedding ring department, especially one who has never been divorced.  Maybe they think he's a polygamist who just married his third wife.