Lessons from my Dad: Never pass up a good deal

Junior High was not my favorite age.  It was extra awkward, and I wasn't exactly Miss Popular.

During my eighth grade year, my father retired and stayed at home full time. Parents are already mortifying enough at that age, and now my dad had forty extra hours a week to embarrass me.

Somehow I ended up in Band during Jr. High, I didn't like it, and I was terrible at it.  My brothers were in band in junior high and I think it was just one of those things we did in our family.  Band didn't make me more popular... are you shocked?  Even worse, since I was terrible at band, the band nerds shunned me.  This video reminds me of my band talent... except I didn't have the jazzy dance steps or the sparkly outfit.

My dad decided to take up new hobbies all of which mortified me at some point during my eighth grade year, but perhaps the worst offense was becoming a bargain hunter.  It's a noble and admirable hobby, but combine that with my dad's engineer brain to make all things more efficient, it would encroach on my life.

One day, my dad was scheduled to pick me up from school which was a special treat, since I rode the bus.  My dad had just found the mother of all deals on Toilet Paper and had stocked up.  Our Buick Skylark was loaded down with 24 packs of Charmin.  The trunk was bursting, the backseat was packed, and the luggage rack was loaded up with TP.  My dad pulls up in front of the school in his Toilet-Paper-Mobile with Dionne Warwick blasting from the stereo.  My dad honks and waves madly at me, while I try to disappear into thin air.

(I tried to recreate the scene with my crazy awesome photoshop skills.  This is the actual car from this harrowing experience.  She later became my car when I turned 16, I preferred to drive her around town sans Toilet Paper.)

Everyone is staring and I start to climb into the front seat of the Buick, only to have my dad says, "Oh... no we have to pick up your brother you'll have to sit in the backseat."  He opens the back door, pulls out giant packs of toilet paper, I get in, and then he proceeds to stack toilet paper on my lap. I am squished between a wall of toilet paper and the car window and as I look out the car window there is a sea of gaping mouths belonging to my peers.  It is at that moment I knew popularity was forever going to be just out of my grasp.