Me: It's wednesday.

Dad: What was yesterday?

Me: Tuesday, the 20th.

Dad: Then, is today the 21st?

Me: Yes.

Dad: (points to tuesday on the calender) then how come tuesday says 20?

Me: (pointing at wednesday)Today is wednesday the 21st, yesterday was tuesday the 20th.

Dad: (slight pause)Was yesterday the 19th?

Every single morning he asks for the day. We have 2 calenders in the kitchen, I have my Salvador Dali calender in my room, his cellphone (which still baffles him) displays the day/month/year/time, yet he always asks. My mom, as you may have guessed, gets annoyed with this question, it's one on her least favorites, but I find amusement in it. Hell, I'm not married to him, I'm young, I can afford to see it as a comic routine. My dad talks to me more, I don't get as easily annoyed as my mom would. If I weren't here, their marriage might be even more strained. I don't know, really. If either of my brothers were here, the dynamic might be different, since they've got their jobs to tend to, while I wake up and go to the computer or watch TV. I'm just a buffer between my parents; I relieve my mom of the questions that come out of my dad's 64-year-old brain, and I can listen to my mom when she talks about work and her gardening. I go to the cheap theatre on saturdays with her while dad is at work, I go shopping with her, I play badminton with her when he won't, I have my supply of movies when the weekends activities are dry. I feel useful. I think maybe that they aren't annoyed with me being a lump sometimes, or am I trying to weasel my way into being one? I'm just trying to see that maybe they do like having me around, trying to see the positive in me being back home. I can't live here forever, and someday they'll be gone. I like to reflect on the times I've spent with my parents. I went away to Vancouver, and ten years later, I come back to old people. I can see it in their greying hair, hear it in their wavering voices, sense it when they talk about the future I should've had, comparing me to my more successful brothers. I don't know what the future will hold. It drives me crazy, thinking that I have to know what'll become of me in five or ten years from now, and it drives my parents even crazier that I don't have a concrete answer for them.