Page 72 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
picked me up when I fell down, or he caught me before I would do so, until he worked the miracle of teaching me how to tame the Schwinn bicycle that he had bought for me as a surprise. When I got sick, he was, obviously, the parent who did the most ministering to me. In those instances when he had to give me an injection in the behind, he had a wonderful way of distracting me and then asking me if I was ready for the shot, well after he had already accomplished it without my even noticing the pinch. Similarly, he was a wizard with what was then the standard instrument for measuring body temperature—the rectal ther- mometer. When my stomach had become frozen with pain as the result of a medication that was tried in order to help me lose weight, I recall that he spent what seemed like hours holding me and pressing my belly to force out the gas that had to be expressed in order to return me to comfort. It was at times like this when he would do his best to make me laugh. Judging by the way in which he gloried in his grandchildren and was always ready to get down on the floor and play with them, or the way that he would display a corny kind of physical humor—mimicking a ballerina, for example—he must have played with me a lot when I was very young.
He delighted in puzzles of all sorts—logical, verbal, optical, and mathematical—and would share his enthusiasm with me, not only by challenging me with brain twisters that he enjoyed but also by providing suitable books to me when I was old enough to understand them. He was also fascinated by the secrets of magic tricks, so books on that subject were often brought home for my entertainment. Over the years, he became pretty proficient at hand magic and learned how to make cards and coins vanish in thin air, to my delight, to the delight of his younger patients, and, ultimately, to the delight of my children.
Dad was very much an autodidact and a “do-it-yourselfer” by pref- erence. When he got interested in a subject, be it bridge, golf, or anything else that struck his fancy, the house would rapidly be filled with “how to” books and articles. When new kitchen cabinets required the con- struction of soffits from which they were to be suspended, he read up on the subject and built them by himself. Rarely were outside experts
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