The aliens also dress really well

Let me preface this by saying that my Dad is totally cool, as Dads go, and especially as 82-year-old Dads go. He's not just from another generation, he's from a whole different era, but he's always been fine with letting me live my life however I want and do pretty much whatever I want to do. I mean, he's always been supportive of me, even though he's ex-military and a hardcore Republican and I'm ex-stoner and live in San Francisco.

Now, with that being said, we have to remember that Dad is from a different time and he's maybe even gotten a little more conservative as he's gotten older. I remember asking him about the gays in the military thing when it first appeared on the radar about 20 years ago and he goes, "Sure, I know guys in the military who were like that, but they were just fine. Never caused any problem." At the time, I thought that was pretty damned impressive.

ANYWAY, all this is leading up to a semi-funny story. As you may know, The Sister and Super Hot Irish Girlfriend and I were all at my Dad's place this past weekend doing some wedding prep and just hanging out and so forth. So two friends of The Sister's who happen to be a gay couple came to town to hang out with us and they stayed at Dad's house, and he seemed fine with that, even though, of course, no one talked about the pretty obvious elephant in the room. He was perfectly nice to them, because he's just generally a nice guy, but he might have felt a little awkward, I don't know.

SO, Friday night The Sister and the gays are getting ready to go into town, specifically to go to a country music bar and the fact that one of the gays is a HUGE country music fan is its own separate topic but whatever. So when they're getting ready, Dad pulls me aside and darkly tells me, "You tell your sister that it's not safe for them to go to gay bars." Now, I immediately almost burst out laughing but didn't, and so off I went to tell my sister this very dire warning.

She did not resist in bursting out laughing. "Are you kidding me?" she said. "That's about the safest place I could go." We're not sure what Dad thinks goes on at gay bars, but I'm pretty sure that it rarely involves sacrificing straight females to their god or stuff like that. In fact, I'd be way more worried about my sister at a straight club than at pretty much any gay bar. As it turns out, they went to a country music bar and everyone got home safely, although I'm pretty sure you're about 50 times more likely to get knifed in a country music bar than a gay bar.

The next night, though, Dad hung out with all of us at home and when I was in the kitchen helping make dinner I could hear him chatting it up with the gays in the next room and having a big old time. The next day, he told them, "Anytime you're in town, you're more than welcome to stay here, whether or not [The Sister] is here. You make sure and call us, OK?"

SHIG put it best. She said that when we're all 80 years old, our kids will be friends with the aliens and at first we'll be scared and say, "I don't want any aliens in my house," but then after we talk to the aliens for a while, we'll be all "Well, I wasn't sure about their tentacles and stuff, and I don't want to say that I support the alien lifestyle, but once I got to know Gor, I gotta say, he's alright."