The Ωmega Man, Part One

It's pretty funny the kinds of things you figure out as a kid, even without too much effort. By the time I reached nine, my Mom had told us enough stories about my father's childhood I made the correlation between his overwhelming emotional scarring ~ stemming from an exceedingly unhappy, terribly abused, and neglected upbringing ~ and the incredibly abusive and unpredictable behaviours he exhibited in our own growing years. From that point of realization, I resolved to shower both my parents with as much attention and approval as humanly possible to hopefully counteract or reverse some of the damage.... for them, and to us; constant cuddles and kisses, handmade cards, and gifts of my hoarded-up candy seemed to buck them up some and curb a serious lot of the beatings or cruel words. At the same time, I always felt like there had to be something else I could do to make them happier.

Thus, the dating began.

These independent forays off the familial estate began partway through high school, aided by the facts that a) my sister and brother were away in Alberta at Christian grad school and high school, respectively, and b) I was earning a decent income through teaching piano to several private students a week. With some of my earnings ~ and lack of fear in inciting my sister's ire for what she described as "sucking-up to Mom and Dad," I would take my mother out for classic films and unrepentant chick flicks, coffee, and dessert, and my father out to various restaurants around the city to hunt down the best calamari ever ~ his favourite treat. (Yes, please don't remind me about the problem of oversquidding and the resulting plight of thousands of starving, dehydrated pilot whales washing up on the New Zealand beaches. I know. It sucks, and I barely eat it now as a result. But still... when done right, it's so fookin' dee-lish.)

Anyhoo.

Recently, my parents were both down for a visit; when it came time for me to take my Dad out, it was a no-brainer. Earlier on during the three weeks they ended up staying, they babysat so Chef Boy and I could go out to see Dave Bazan perform and speak at the Triple Door; conveniently and quite wonderfully, the Wild Ginger Restaurant upstairs serves their savoury delights during TD shows. Their salt and pepper squid (done up more like calamari) is generally phenomenal and one of my top picks in the city, so we ordered one for our appetizer, and another to have prepared just before the night ended so I could take a piping hot box home to Dad. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you view it), I ended up spending a nice while after the show in lovely conversation with the warm and kindhearted singer-songwriter himself, swapping stories and thanking him deeply for his many years of empathy, amusement, and food for thought. By the time we got home, everyone had gone to bed, so the calamari was stashed in the fridge. The next day, in eager anticipation of thrilling my father, I accidentally over-reheated the stuff, rendering it far too rubbery for his poor dentalwork to manage.

I felt awful. He made such a game try at eating it, too, despite my many pleas to make him stop chewing to try to make me feel better.

Thus, I resolved to take him on a Daddy'n'me date to the restaurant proper to get him a fresh order I couldn't screw up. The day just before they were booked to return home, we left the kids at home with my Mom and took the bus downtown. He especially loved the fact I'd specified ~ while making a reservation ~ a nice view window of Benaroya Hall, where I'd once done an enjoyable internship for the Seattle Symphony, as well as a concert hall he'd long admired through acoustical engineering journals for its spectacularly innovative sound-isolation breakthroughs (the concert hall is located directly above AmTrak rails, and while the passage of trains often cause buildings around to rattle slightly and make notable sound, it's dead quiet and still in Benaroya's recital halls.)

While we were waiting for our yummies to arrive, I noticed he was wearing a handsome, solid, heavy-looking watch. My aesthetic appreciation piqued, I leaned in a little closer, peered at it, and froze in shock. It was an Omega. (While I'm generally filled with a kind of silent horror at the materialism surrounding luxury goods, I absolutely love watches, especially if attached with meaning. When pressed heavily by my mother as to what I would like her to bequeath me when she passes, the only thing I could finally bring myself to request is her upside-down nurse's watch, affixed by a pin that she would attach to her white uniform. Strangely enough, her dearest possessions left to her by her own father are his watch and pen, relics from his service as a Police Superintendent in Hong Kong.)

My only acquaintance with Omega watches comes from seeing their ads in massive glossy magazines, modelled by ballerinas and elite athletes, revered for their supreme mechanical perfection and quality of craftsmanship. When and where on earth did he get his watch? Did he finally, after our years'-long encouragement, succomb to begin selling off his museum-worthy collection of antique acoustical, visual, and computer equipment (he has two tower mainframe computers I remember seeing on vintage episodes of "The Avengers," which had us rolling on the floor in laughter because that's crazy old) and treat himself to something special, just for once?

No.

I had to ask. When and where did he get it? Did I see it growing up?

"Oh! Yes, you did. I think I took a picture of you playing with it when you were a baby, while Mommy was trying to change your diaper. I got it sometime between 1964-1967, when I was working for Air America. It's a funny story, actually. We flew between Tokyo and Bangkok delivering cargo and relief supplies to usually six stops in between, like little villages in Laos and Cambodia. My job, as the Electronics Specialist, was to sit between the pilot and the co-pilot and monitor and troubleshoot all of their equipment before, during, and after flights. One of my responsibilities was to make sure the RPMs of the engine never exceeded .999998 per second. You see, .999997 was perfect. .999998 was okay, but not optimal; pilots could still take off and fly normally at this stage. But if the meter read .999999, the plane was grounded; no need to confer.

"So one time, we were in Tokyo, getting ready to leave, and the dial read '.999998,' and the pilot announced, 'Okay, looks like it's a no-go, boys. We'll stay here in Tokyo for the night.' 'But, it's fine,' I told him. And he kept insisting that we couldn't take off, and I kept insisting we could. Eventually, I told him I'd have to call my supervisor if he didn't just go because it was getting too late. The thing is, you can't not take off for something so trivial; we had civilians on that flight, as well as cargo, and if you didn't leave when you were supposed to, you could mess up a lot of schedules for quite a while, leaving quite a ripple effect, and this was a case where it just wasn't worth it. Eventually, after I checked my watch for the last time, he asked me if he could take a look at at it. You know, Chinese people, we wear Mickey Mouse watches... junk. And so I took it off and passed it over to him, and he threw it out the window and right onto the tarmac."

At this point, I found it unbearable not to interrupt him, blurting out, "Wait, did you just say that pilots can roll down their windows? Like cars, but better reinforced and airlocked or something? And all aircraft, like giant Boeings? MiGs? F-18s? Fokkers, too? *snicker*" (Swearing in front of one's parents ~ and getting away with it ~ somehow offers such a distinct form of puerile, perverse pleasure.) As it turns out, they surprisingly can. According to my father and this super-informative article, cockpit windows can be opened for fresh air, oral instructions to runway crew, emergency evacuation, escape routes for hijacking, etc.

"So," he continued, "after he tossed my watch out, I just picked up my headset and radioed my supervisor, telling him exactly what happened while the pilot stared at me with so much hate. Of course my supervisor told me I had permission to override the pilot's decision, so we took off. It turned out the pilot had a girlfriend in Tokyo and he wanted to spend another night there, so all of this happened just because of that! Ha ha ha...

"Then, a week later, I received a package. 'What's this?' I thought. Inside was this watch, with a note from my supervisor saying there was no way I could do my job with or without a Mickey Mouse watch. And... the company slowly deducted over $800 off my paycheques to cover the cost. That was a lot of money then, but it doesn't really matter. So that's how I came to have this watch. It's still working perfectly, even after all this time. Funny, yeah?"

Ah, Life. While often hardly ever fair, it's relentlessly shaping, tempering, and full of neat and amusing surprises. I'm relieved to have been lucky enough to suss my Dad out fairly early on; if I hadn't, my adolescence could've been the various sorts of nightmares it had been for both my sister and brother. The closeness I now cherish with each of my parents might not even exist.


As a special bonus, I also get to hear some pretty fantastic stories.




(photo credit: This sensational little image is the work of photographer/artist/director Brian McCarty.)