SAN FRANCISCO, CA-

Marty couldn’t hear my father. Historically, all the men in my family seem to have a difficult time relating to some children. Nobody has ever quite figured it out, either. Some say it’s the baritone voice, others say it’s because we tend to talk to children like adults, rarely raising the pitch of our voice, and never dumbing things down. Marty, the younger brother of my best friend, Reed, was just such a child; it’s like he didn’t even know my father was in the room. We were on this dual family trip at our desert lake-house on Lake Mead, Reed’s family and my own, and one morning, before we all loaded up and headed out on the lake, my father tried to get Marty’s attention. It became the biggest inside joke of our two families, that everyone heard my father except for Marty. (more…)