Those can't be real (and this can't be happening)

I think my dad's a tit man.

It took me nearly 40 years to discover this, but I'm pretty sure he goes for the big breasts.

I'm basing this on the fact that he brought up breasts and breast implants twice during a two-day visit to his house over the holidays.

The first "incident" was when we were talking about a woman who graduated from my high school a few years before I did. He told me that there was a rumor (and isn't there always a rumor going around in a small town) that this woman was seen by a schoolmate of hers working at a strip club and that she'd had some "work done."

He went on and on about how this woman, who is the mother of 2 or 3 teenage boys (I think), had "big ol' fake tits" and was dancing for dollars.

I didn't know how to react. Just how do you have a conversation with your father about fake tits? I'm sure some guys do, but I never had those conversations -- or any conversations -- related to anything sexual with either of my parents when I was growing up.

We never had "the talk." I hear some parents do have "the talk" with their kids, but you wouldn't know it from my household. Not that that prevented me from learning about sex. Thank God for Playboy magazine for showing me were the parts and pieces were, and for Penthouse Forum for describing various ways to insert Tab D in to Slot P.

And along the way, a few girlfriends in college expanded on the book learnin' to give me some lab experience as well. Because sex education was not home schoolin' in my family.

I learned enough to get a girlfriend pregnant when I was 25, but not enough to prevent the pregnancy (and not that I regret my daughter for a second, except for now she's a teenager and I know there will soon be boys wanting to book some lab time with her, which absolutely freaks me out). I still remember my mom's words when I broke the news to her that she was going to be a grandmother.

"Shame on you!" she said.

Shame on you? That's it? It was all I could do to keep from busting out laughing, except for the fact that I was stunned beyond belief by her reaction and freaked out about the whole daddy thing.

So, needless to say, I don't have the skills to talk about S-E-X with mom or pop. So, I tried my best to get out of the your-schoolmate-is-a-stripper-with-rubber-titties conversation. Of course, as fate would have it, I saw the alleged stripper the next day at a public function. And I probably don't have to tell you what kept running through my head every time I saw her.

Yep.

I wonder if those are real.

But if that weren't bad enough, the night of my dad's boob-job narrative, the subject came up again.

Dad and I were the last people still awake in the house. I'm a night owl by nature, so that was fine, but I couldn't have gone to sleep if I had wanted to since we were in the living room, which was doubling as my bedroom during the visit. Finally about 2 a.m. or so, dad decides to call it a night, and offers to give me instruction on how to work the remote control for the TV.

My parents have a satellite dish operated by a remote control of some ancient and mysterious technology that is now obsolete. So the remote control apparently can't be replaced. Or so my dad said. It has something to do with using sound waves instead of infrared. I don't know. And of course, the remote is about 15 years old, or more, and has a few buttons missing. So you can only flip through the channels one way. And of course, you have to point the remote at select objects at precise angles or the damn thing doesn't work at all. I half expected him to tell me I had to stand on my head and stick out my tongue just right to make the little sucker work. And changing the dish to point to a different satellite is apparently so complicated that I just shouldn't even go there.

So dad demonstrates.

Apparently because I'm a journalist, he asks me if I want to watch CNN.

No. I'm on vacation. I don't want to watch CNN. And how many more times can I watch the video of the tsunami and its devastation that all broadcast outlets were running? Too depressing.

Next.

So, dad keeps flipping. Along the way, he tells me that I can't watch the Playboy channel because they don't pay for that channel. But he says there are other stations. Then he stops on Showtime or Cinemax. And a movie is just starting. And what should come on the screen by a shot of a blonde woman, topless with double-D (or bigger) breasts. And she's just standing there.

"Those aren't real," dad says. "You can tell because they are too round. Real ones aren't that round."

Thanks dad.

Then he goes on to tell me about some trip he took to a strip club with my cousin somewhere in Northern California. Of course, that's the same cousin who took me to a strip club for the first time, but that was information I didn't plan to share with my dad.

But maybe my cousin had.

Blabbermouth.

Is that why dad kept bringing up tits, strippers and such? I don't know, but I did know I didn't want to have that conversation with my dad.

Isn't that what blogs are for?

So, dad leaves the TV on the T&A channel and shuffles off to bed.

I changed the channel.

Not that I didn't want to see some T&A. But my grandmother was sleeping in the next room for heaven sake! That's all I need is for my 90-year-old grandma to come tottering out in the middle of the night while I'm, um, uh, watching THAT on TV.

I've already heard the "Shame on you" speech once. Don't need that again. And I didn't need to try to figure out how to work the remote to get the soft core porn off the screen while my granny is standing there slack jawed at o-dark-thirty.

I saved my vacation T&A gawking for the strip clubs, thank you very much.

And no, dad wasn't invited.