Your Father The Hero Day!
Some guy passed out on the subway tracks and your Dad climbed down and lied down on top of him while the train pulled in. He stayed down there under the train, protecting the guy, keeping him from coming to and getting hit by the train’s undercarriage.
Police and EMTs showed up and safely got both your dad and the guy out from under the train. They told your dad he was a hero, and the whole world was about to find out what a great thing he’d done.
Then they turned their backs for a minute and your dad disappeared.
Now everyone is on the hunt for your dad. They want to celebrate him. Newsmagazine shows are even offering cash rewards to anyone who finds him. The grainy security footage of your dad jumping down from the platform has been playing on a loop, round the clock. Everyone wants to know why he’d disappear.
“You should tell them,” your mom says.
“Then they might call off the search,” is your response.
“I want him off our TV,” she says. “I want to get this over with.”
She wants you to tell the news people that he ran off on you and your mom when you were six, and he knows if he starts appearing on TV and gets celebrated as a hero, you and your mom might track him down and ask him to be a father and a husband to you two again.
“Just tell a reporter that you want it to be clear that we want nothing to do with him,” your mom says. “He can come out of hiding and continue to have no contact with us. Tell them to print that, so this circus can end and he can have his fifteen minutes before disappearing completely again.”
The doorbell rings. You look through the peephole.
“I think they figured it out,” you tell your mom, before opening the door on the dozen news cameras and microphones waiting for you on your front step.
Happy Your Father The Hero Day!
