My parents arrived Thursday.  (They left about three hours ago — yes, they woke up in the middle of the night and left before sunrise to beat traffic in both Los Angeles and Phoenix.) And while I appreciate having them around, their presence always stresses me out.  I know, I don’t claim exclusivity on that.  But one of the main factors is my dad and his propensity for pushing buttons… and not just my own personal buttons, but the ones on my stuff.

Dad used to get upset when I was a kid because I constantly play with electronics, especially if it’s music-related.  I’m a chronic station-flipper on the radio, and before the advent of CDs, I’d run through cassettes in rewind or fast-forward, hitting stop and play every few seconds, trying to find a particular song.  He’d always tell me, “Stop doing that, you’re going to break it.” Thing is, I knew what I was doing and I knew how to work the machines.  Dad, on the other hand, is about as technologically advanced as an 18th century Eskimo.  Mom and I came home from running errands on Saturday to Dad saying, “Something’s wrong with your TV.” Well, the something wrong was that he’d reset the settings on my amplifier (which also controls the video signal for the TV), had even changed the amp to the radio so he was blasting rock music (which he absolutely hates) and the TV was on one of the random inputs that I never use, like Video 3 or something. 

Then there was yesterday morning, when I woke up at 4am to find Dad hovering over the air conditioner, trying to scoop out some water from the bucket I put behind it for the condensation spillover.  Naturally, Dad tries to strike up a conversation with me, but at that hour, I don’t want to be talked to — I’d just rather take care of whatever woke me up, then get back to sleep.  The problem was, what woke me was the fact that Dad was playing with the A/C controls for some unknown reason and had somehow changed the A/C to the “fan/heat” setting and turned up the temperature, so it was blowing in all the hot and humid air from outside, making the room close to 80 degrees and giving me a headache. 

I wouldn’t mind if Dad played with my stuff if he knew how to work them.  Instead, he’s a one-man electronics wrecking crew, and whenever my parents are in my apartment by themselves and one of them calls me, my automatic response when I answer the phone is, “What have you broken now?”