Jack Sh*t 3: I'm the Father

"They got some old timers here, you know, Ba? It's a Jewish place." So said Jack Friedman, my father, after moving into the Tulsa Jewish Retirement Center, later known as Zarrow Pointe—but to him it was "The Hebrew Home." We'll go with that. In Jack Sh*t 3: I'm the Father?—the third installment of a 4-part trilogy—we are reminded that the world is Jack Friedman's oyster . . . or more accurately, Jack Friedman's scrambled egg on a soft roll. It's always been "The Jack Friedman Show." Those in and around his life—the owners of "Owl Head" Bagels, the doctors at the VA, the waitresses he hoped would never know the "horror of stretch marks," the woman he was "running with," his daughter (who he called "that woman from Long Island"), and his sons, including yours truly—were his studio audience. He knew his part; we knew ours. His dementia created moments of confusion and sadness ("Where's your mother, Ba, where's your mother?") but when the synapses were firing, his takes on longevity, IRS audits, bosom areas, and the possibilities of dairy products were the stuff of scholars and philosophers. "What do they want from my life, Ba?" "I don't know what to tell you, Dad." "Don't get so shook up. My question's academic."