clicker tender_square i try to prioritize time for us two, my dad and me. my mom has a tendency to monopolize visits. i don't blame her. she needs the company and the conversation when the man she loves can't follow the threads of family narratives and thorny issues. she needs a break from her anxious dog. quick catch-ups turn to hour-long convos and dad is waiting for us to play jeopardy. i longed to watch another western with him on tcm, one with john wayne as a no-nonsense patriarch who's trying to keep his reckless kids from getting killed on the frontier. i like it when my dad talks through the scenes, remembering what it was like to view this hero through the eyes of boyhood. i had to quickly switch the western i located in eight hundred channels. the music was ominous. a husband had been shot at point-blank range in front of his family. then, the bandits surrounded the mother and the teenage daughter and began to rip at their clothing. i hit the clicker as soon as i could, turning my eyes away from the brutality, my heart pulsing that in fifty years since, times are no better. 230918 what's it to you? who go blather from