Tantrums...

My dad is notorious for his outbursts. He can resemble a toddler in the cereal aisle with a mild case of turrets.

One of his most notable tantrums came one summer post wheat harvest while he was baling straw. Amy and I were plugging away on the disks and working like we were supposed to be, or so we thought. I happen to look up and dad had gotten off the tractor and was throwing his hat in the air and jumping up and down. He looked a lot like Yosemite Sam when Bugs Bunny got the best of him. We weren’t varmints, but we were free labor. Apparently I was driving in the wrong direction – in a wide open field. I was not aware there was a right or wrong at the time, apparently it wasn’t his direction. I didn’t know he had that kind of vertical.

Both tractors stopped. “What did you do?” Amy asked over the radio – it was nine times out of ten my problem because I didn’t listen or misunderstood.

“I suppose I breathed today,” I answered. “I have no idea.”

Another outburst came building fence. Most of dad’s outbursts involve grandpa, and only because both of them are never wrong. We were winding wire and pa was harping and dad finally blew up. You could see it coming, it was so obvious and we just sat back and waited. He blew, threw his gloves (which we later had to hunt down because the pair went in opposite directions), stomped off and walked the half mile back to the house.

“What the hell is his problem?” Pa said.

I just looked across the winder and said. “Uh, I suppose it was you.”

“He needs to relax,” was all pa said. Right, because pa was the poster child for chilling out.

We started to drive back to the yard and Amy looks at me from her perch on the fender. “Keep your mouth shut,” she said. (I had a tendency to need the last word and was normally quite argumentative and almost always got my own ass in trouble).

“Do I look like a have an effin death wish?” I answered.

Those outbursts had subdued since we’ve aged, but over harvest old dad came back for just a moment. This was a classic tantrum.

He was tired, sweaty and mad - three main ingredients for an explosion. He needed to make a call and he kept moving around trying to get a signal and finally the bars appeared and the call was placed – for a second, then he lost it. He dramatically flipped the phone shut, yelled “F**KING PHONE,” and drew back his arm and chucked it across the field.

My sister, not immune to such behavior herself, looked at dad and simply said. “Mature, real mature.”

“Help me find it,” was all he said and they scoured the patch of stubble and found the phone.

I’m not sure if the toss made him feel better, but it sure did make for a laugh at the supper table.