Letting Dogs and Sleeping Dads Lie

So this is what happens, my dad leaves his computer on in the middle of one of those dopey columns he’s always writing and then I get to do it for him, which is what happened today. He turned the computer on and went to take a nap, like he was doing something but really wasn’t.

My dad doesn’t sleep a lot, except during the summer. I don’t get it. It’s like he’s a grizzly bear or something, only he hibernates in the summer instead of the winter and he wakes up real hungry and scratching himself all over, just like a bear. He’s pretty hairy too. Like a bear. When I get older, he says I’ll be a bear too.

I don’t know what he was going to write about this week. Could’ve been anything because if you ever read his column you can tell he doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about things to write; he just sort of does it and gets it over with so he can go goof around with his friend Paul.

Once, not too long ago, I’m pretty sure he wrote about our dog. That’s right, our dog. Like, you really wanted to hear about our dog. Like, I’m even related to our dog and I don’t want to read about him.

I think this week he was going to talk about taking my mom to see “Wild Wild West,” which was like this big TV show when my dad was a kid and now they made a movie of it.

I think he thought it would make him feel young again. I guess when you get to be his age, you’re always looking for things to make you feel young again. I hope that never happens to me, even if I’m really hairy and old.

Anyway, him and my mom went to see “Wild Wild West,” after which he says, “I really like that Kevin Kline.”

Then he winked and says, “I really like that Mira Sorvino, too,” even though Mira Sorvino wasn’t in “Wild Wild West.”

And my mom, she doesn’t even give him a dirty look or anything like you’d maybe expect she would. I guess after a while, you get used to people.

“Mira Sorvino wasn’t even in it, Dad,” my big sister finally tells him.

“So?” he says and just folds up the Sports section like he usually does, then goes out to the garage, where he pushes the paint cans around a little and pretends to look for stuff.

“Are you sure that wasn’t Mira Sorvino?” he asks my sister when he comes back in.

All afternoon he talks about Mira Sorvino and then he tells me to mow the lawn or read a book or something useful, and he goes outside to check on his tomato plants in the backyard.

When he comes inside he mumbles something about crab grass and women taking over the world, then turns on his computer and takes a nap, which is where he is now while I’m writing this nice column for him.

I don’t know why he’s always trying to take naps on summer days. My mom says it’s on account of he’s got this hammock in his head that he goes to when he takes his nap. He doesn’t really have a hammock. He imagines he does.

Now I ask you, is that a good example for a kid?

Anyway, I think he’s waking up.

It must be dinner time because he’s always waking up in time for dinner, at which point he says, “Who do you have to sleep with around here to get a big frosty margarita?” And my mom kind of smiles.

“How about Mira Sorvino?” she says, and my mom and dad kind of flirt with each other, which is sort of sickening when you think about it.

“Stop it, you guys!” my big sister always tells them when she sees them flirting, then she runs to her room and slams the door, like she always does when something really disgusting like that happens.

“What’s her problem?” my dad says.

And then they go off to the video store together, my mom and dad do, and they come back with two movies nobody ever heard of, “The Philadelphia Story” and “Cat Ballou,” and my dad tells this really long, boring story about how the kid at the Blockbuster didn’t even know what “Cat Ballou” was, that this kid never even heard of it, like anybody ever would.

Which makes my dad feel old again, and my mom sits close to him on the couch while they watch the movie, telling him he’s not really old, he’s just hairy and he smells like barbecued ribs, which is how he always smells in the summer.

“You smell like smoke, Daddy,” my little sister always tells him, which he thinks is a compliment.

“Shhhh, he’s asleep,” my mom tells her.

“Again?” my big sister says.

“Shhhhhh,” my mom says, then pulls a blanket with baseball players on it up over his legs.

I guess I better go now before he catches me writing his column for him, even though once he falls asleep on the couch with that baseball blanket over him he’s pretty much out for good.

So that’s all I really have to say. I think I did just as good of a job as my dad does. Look at it this way, at least you didn’t have to hear too much about our dog.

He’s a nice dog. In the summer, he sleeps a lot.

Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.