If I can't take my coffee break, Something inside of me dies!

"Pop?!"

"Yeahuh?!"

"You hung up on me"

"When?"

"At 4:30, I called to find out how you and Mom were doing. And you answered the phone" (sounding confused and old, I'll tell you) "and you said 'Hello? Hello?' then I bet you cursed or something. I was shouting 'Pop! Pop! Do you have your ears in?" And you just hung up on me. . . Only you didn't, because I could still clearly hear that you were watching Montel Williams on TV."

Daddy starts laughing hard, in my minds eye I could see him wiping tears away.

"I kept yelling 'Pop? Mom? Anybody?'

And he's just laughing and trying to tell me something, but he can't stop, finally, through stuttered laughter, he says:

"I couldn't hear anything. I thought you had hung up. I didn't know I had the phone upside down!"

So, he had put it back in the cradle upside down too.

"It's hard getting old. You don't understand that," he says "but you will."

I understand it's hard watching him get old. That's all I need to know right now.

"You're mother is doing much better today. She's gone to choir practice. She even says that coffee tastes good again, so she's doing real good."