Leave it to TVR

Have you seen the new ad for DirecTV with TVR?

It’s a heartwarming tribute to a father’s spending quality time with his son. A six-year old joyfully runs into the living room carrying a book and excitedly asks his dad to read him a story. Dad, though, is enraptured by a football game (a very modern scenario; the guy, obviously, is a single parent, as I don’t know many married dads who get to spend their Sundays chilling in front of the tube). But when the perceptive kid sees the game on TV, he stops in his tracks. “Oh…football” he says glumly, all-too-aware that story time is not a regularly scheduled program.

But, wait! What’s this? The father explains that he doesn’t mind turning off the game – way to sacrifice, Pops – just so he can read a story to his son with this inconvenient interest in books because Daddy “can stop time.” And wonder of wonders, Superdad picks up the remote and freezes the game. Then he starts it. Then he stops it. At this point, Junior has forgotten all about his stupid book and is leaning forward, eyes aglow. Dad can freeze time! “Do it again, Dad!” the boy crows. “Again. Again.” Son snuggles up next to dad and they "bedoop" the day away.

What a happy ending. Thank god for TVR available thru DirecTV! Otherwise, fathers across America might get stuck reading to their children. Whew! That was a close one. And as a bonus, now the kids are hooked on TV, too! Thank you DirecTV.

It warms my heart to know that my dad never would have shirked his reading responsibilities in favor of playing with TVR. He never could have worked the remote. This is a man who doesn’t turn his cell phone on unless he wants to make a call. Two years ago I went home to New York for Thanksgiving, only my parents were in Texas for the holiday. Interesting. My therapist says I’m over that, though, so let me continue with the story. I commandeered my dad’s Chevy Impala and drove into NYC to see some friends and immediately found a prime parking spot within a block of their apartment. “I don’t know why people complain so much about parking in this city,” I told my pals, who looked at me like they wanted to ask a question, but chose not to. The next morning, I stumbled out of the apartment and walked back to the spot, which was, strangely, wide open again. My bloodshot eyes were not the problem – the Impala was AWOL. I had parked in front of a synagogue, which, apparently, was not kosher. A professional Mover put down his dolly cart and wiped his forehead. “Blue four-door?” I nodded. “Yeah, they towed that, like, 15 minutes ago.” Good thing I had hit snooze three times.

If you’ve never had a car towed in New York City, I can tell you anything you need to know, as I’ve had a foreign car towed in summer (VW, 1995) and a domestic car towed in winter (Chevy, 2003). I guess I’ll have to buy a Harley in 2011. So, I dialed 911 and told them my car had been towed and the nice lady gave me the number of the lot at Chelsea Piers where they take all the idiots’ cars. But I had one problem, and it seemed like a big one: I didn’t know my dad’s license plate number. How was I going to get the car back when I couldn’t prove it was my car? Sure, all I had to do was call my parents in Texas, but I would have licked the floor in a corner of a NYC Subway terminal before informing them that their Country Mouse son had, once again, gotten a car towed in the city. There had to be another way. With my brother living in New Zealand and my sister in Austria, though, I didn’t have many options. I wandered the Upper West Side shivering and wracking my brain to devise a way out of this jam without my father ever knowing his car had gone on an adventure. Like Yukon Cornelius, I came up with nothing.

On Tuesday, November 25th, I failed to correctly time my call to my dad’s need to place a call and I went right to voice mail. “Uh, Dad, hi, uh, heh heh, I need the Chevy’s license plate number. Can you give me a call with it? Thanks. Tell mom I love her.” Then, numb with cold, I decided to head down to the lot and see if I could wing it. Turns out you don’t need to know the license number, since most people don’t know theirs. All that is needed is the make, model, color and zip code in which it’s registered – conveniently, all information I already possessed in my pea-sized brain. Doh!

Two weeks into that December, my father called, presumably regarding my flight information for Christmas. “Got towed again, huh?”