Willie hates me.
I have become Moriarty to her Sherlock; Q to her Picard, Thanos to her Avengers. I am all that is wrong in her world. Worse, I delight in hastening the demise of her independence.
Ooh! I am Khan to her Kirk! How could I have missed that one?!
As far as I can tell, it started with the driving test. Not the preliminary driving test, which involved zero driving, thereby allowing Willie to easily pass.
Indy failed that same test. The occupational therapists recommended a more extended test in which driving actually occurs. Since Indy had to go, they suggested Willie go too.
And it is this test that, in the space of a single morning, turned me into a more hirsute Lex Luthor.
Although the test takes two hours to complete, I was determined to accompany Willie and Indy.
I don’t trust them.
Which is one of the reasons Willie hates me.
I usually enjoy a tidy little circle like that. Not this one.
Oh, who am I kidding? The fact that Willie’s hatred for me is so orderly satisfies my inner Obsessive enough for me to be tolerant of Willie’s ire. It’s like looking at the neat lines a vacuum cleaner makes in a deep-pile carpet.
You find that satisfying too, right? We might not get along that well if you don’t.
Anyway, my distrust of Willie and Indy is not without merit. One time, a failure to remember an issue with Indy’s blood pressure and associated medication took me three texts, four emails, and two phone calls to get straightened out with Indy’s team of doctors.
There was also that time Indy needed an MRI before he could see neurology. I had called in a few favors to get Indy into a neurologist.
So yes. Willie never told Indy about the MRI I scheduled for him.
And took Indy to a baseball game instead of the MRI.
And thought it was acceptable to A) forget about the appointment and B) prioritize baseball over healthcare because this tremor in Indy’s left hand is nothing anyway.
I was on vacation in Wyoming when I found out. I had to call MRI to reschedule, then reshuffle the favors I called in to change the neurology appointment.
You’re probably asking yourself who vacations in Wyoming.
Ranks. Ranks vacation in Wyoming. We Ranks don’t take beachy, umbrellas-in-your-drink vacations. We take what I call working vacations. Hikes. History lessons. Houses with woodpiles and ponds with little boats, both of which have snakes in them.
I used to be surprised by these vacations. Then I started wondering when we would take a normal people vacation. Then the Stockholm Syndrome finally settled in so now that’s just the way we vacation.
One persistent problem with the Rank Working Vacations is sometimes cell service is spotty, as was the case in Wyoming.
Awful, right? I mean, we had Wi-Fi, but am I a prisoner of some sort? Why do we have to be somewhere with almost no cell service? And no Starbucks? And no Target? And no other people or buildings or signs of any civilization except for the one-room schoolhouse across the street?
Am I being punished? Am I supposed to think the excellent fishing, potential for bear attacks on the way to the car, and 4000 hot springs in Yellowstone make up for everything else?
Indeed I am. Because, you know, a bison walked right past our car on the Wyoming highway taking us into Yellowstone. You can’t experience that in Target.
Although Target does have a really cute picture of a Highland cow in their home décor section.
So trying to reschedule Indy’s appointments from a house with limited cell service and no landline was a challenge.
When I tried to say as much to Willie, she told me her failure to remember the MRI was a moot issue; the baseball game would have precluded her from sending Indy to the MRI whether she remembered it or not.
So I don’t trust Indy and Willie.
Mostly Willie though because I like Indy better.
Indy and Willie’s appointment for the two-hour driving test was the first week in December. The therapists explained Indy and Willie would need a referral. I downloaded the referral form from their website.
Indy and Willie just happened to have an in-person appointment with their doctor scheduled for that week. I brought the form to Indy and Willie, all filled out except for their doctor’s signature.
I showed Willie and Indy the form. I explained their doctor needed to sign it for the driving test. Then I tucked the form in Willie’s purse.
The next day, I texted their doctor. I told him to check Willie’s purse for a referral form.
“It’s a good thing you did that,” Willie told me later. “I had no idea what the doctor was talking about when he asked for the form.”
You’re warming up to my mistrust, aren’t you?
I picked up Indy and Willie on the day of their test. Indy was silent as we drove.
We entered the office or, as I like to call it, the garden where Willie’s seeds of hatred were planted.
The staff requested Indy and Willie’s driver’s licenses. Indy couldn’t locate his. Indy’s wallet was thick with membership cards to stores that no longer exist.
Later, I would tell Don the wallet was like George Costanza’s wallet on Seinfeld. Don joked that if we thinned it out, maybe it would cure Indy’s Parkinson’s like doing so had cured George’s back pain.
I located Indy’s license and handed it over.
Willie had already produced her license. As the staff checked it over, they noted the license was expired.
“No it’s not,” said Willie. She handed them a piece of paper.
“This is just your camera card. It expired months ago,” the staff pointed out.
Willie, exasperated, explained that if they would just check the date of the camera card, they would see it had been issued in February. The pandemic started soon after, so what was Willie supposed to have done? Go stand in long lines at the DMV, waiting to get her picture taken?
She’s old, Willie told the staff. She couldn’t risk getting COVID. Her license isn’t expired, she insisted.
I explained to Willie that, without the new picture, her license was indeed expired.
You know in Ghostbusters when Gozer is on the roof with the Ghostbusters, and she tells them to die as she shoots lightning from her fingertips?
Yeah. It was that bad.
Willie told me she had used the license all year with no problem. She’d even showed it to a police officer.
I didn’t ask why Willie was showing her driver’s license to a police officer. There are only so many problems I can fix in a day.
The staff tried to explain that, without a license, their insurance prevented them from putting Willie in one of their cars. She would have to renew her license and reschedule the test.
“I’m leaving!” Willie declared. “I’m not staying here!”
Apparently, she forgot she didn’t have a car there, which isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of your ability to drive.
I reminded her that she’d ridden over in my car.
“Then I’m going outside!” she roared.
Sighing, I ordered Willie to stay put while we got Indy settled. Being a dictator probably didn’t score me any points with Willie, but I knew there was nowhere to wait outside.
As the staff spoke with Indy, Willie turned to me. “I’m NOT coming back here. You know that, right?” she hissed.
“We’ll discuss it later,” I said, like a parent disciplining a willful child.
If you ever want to murder the affection your parent has for you, treat them like a toddler. That should pretty much get the job done.
In the weeks since my epic tumble from favorite child to least favorite child, I have renewed Willie’s driver’s license – which also made her angry with me – and rescheduled her driving test.
“I’m not going,” Willie told me last week, a spectacular show of defiance that was clearly meant to be my Christmas present, despite being two weeks late.
I again got to be the bad guy, insisting that she go.
I remember reading an interview where Anthony Hopkins described how often he’s asked about Hannibal Lecter, despite the other roles he’s played. He said people remember the bad guys, and that makes the bad guys fun to play.
I don’t think it’s wise to argue with a guy who relishes having played a cannibal, so I’ve decided to embrace the villain Willie has made me.
I won’t eat anyone though. I eat enough weird stuff as it is – venison heart, anyone? – and I’m definitely not eating anything Willie has prepared, human or not. I don’t like Willie’s cooking, which probably does nothing to improve my Most Hated Daughter status.
Willie makes this dish called Beef Skillet Fiesta which could only be made worse if she did actually put humans in it. I’d rather eat the skillet than the beef fiesta cooked in it.
I just realized how good I am at being a bad guy. Just a few weeks in and I already have a mortal enemy. I’ve attacked something she holds precious – in this case Beef Skillet Fiesta. If Willie were Iron Man, my dad would be Pepper Potts. But Beef Skillet Fiesta would be Rhoady.
So bring it. Scorn me for rescheduling the driver’s test. Come at me with the dreaded Beef Skillet Fiesta.
I’m going to Joker the hell out of this.
And, you know, not eat the Beef Skillet Fiesta.
It’s seriously gross.
And almost as bad as me.